by Laura Argiri
“I can’t see well. I must have been really sick.”
“You have, you have been very, very sick. And are yet. And we’re going to take care of you, but I intend to understand what brought you to this pass. Did Professor Klionarios do anything to you?”
Simion, who knew that his head was too fogged for conversations about Dori at this point, told a resonant lie: “No.” Better one that he could remember than several he couldn’t possibly keep track of. In fact, he could not recall much that minute. He knew something had gone wrong, but it was more than he could do to clarify those events. He had a faraway recollection of a crashing slap, of being terribly chilled, of an awful sinking sensation, and of closing the door of his room to have a cigarette and falling asleep.
“You mean, you intend not to discuss the matter.”
“I’m cold,” said Simion obstinately.
Karseth got up and moved out of Simion’s sight, returning with an object that turned out to be a room thermometer. He held this item where Simion could see it. Patently this gesture was intended to impress him, make him aware of the importance of something.
“It is sickeningly warm in this room. We’ve been feeding that fire around the clock and putting hot bricks all around you to get some heat back into you. You feel cold because you’ve almost died. Other than being cold, how do you feel? Pain anywhere?”
“I can’t feel my feet. And I’m thirsty. Could I have something to drink?”
“Yes, you most assuredly can have something to drink,” said Karseth. He moved off and returned with milk, cool but not cold, and he supported Simion’s head while he drank. His hands were gentler than either his words or his demeanor. Simion was more grateful for the milk at that moment than for any gift that anyone had ever laid in his hands—it seemed that he could feel the liquidness with his whole body. He drank a pint of milk and most of a glass of orange juice before having to stop. Then he looked up into Karseth’s craggy face with its expression of balked and disciplined anger. Moses often showed anger, he remembered, with this bland, artificially relaxed face; he might even smile, but you could see the rim of white under the dark iris. He might then utter some remark that left nothing in the room unsinged. It seemed that Simion was expected to say something. He didn’t.
“I don’t know enough about this mess to talk about it,” said Moses finally, “but I’d wager that it won’t bear the light of plain day. Regardless, I want you to understand that you can stay here if you like, even after we get you well. As a foster son rather than a concubine, which represents an improvement over the circumstances that led up to this if I’m not badly mistaken.”
“Why? Why should you want to do such a thing, that is?” Simion asked him, wondering foggily why anybody would want him.
Karseth’s face contorted in some painful combination of a hard man’s pity and anger, then smoothed itself out. “Let’s just say that I like you, in spite of your native rascality and extreme ways of expressing yourself, and I think I might make something of you. And I don’t mean a model for bare-arsed pictures.”
Simion gave a weak, rueful smile. He didn’t dare say he’d never had anything to do with such things, having volunteered directly and with enthusiasm even though Doriskos had yet to take advantage of his offer.
“I hate waste. And I hate death,” said Karseth. “And I hate pain. Especially that which comes from pure human foolishness.” It might have been his credo. Then he glowered again. “Those burns, will you at least tell me how you got them? If he did that to you, I’ll kill him with my bare hands. I’ll kill him before supper. I won’t even wait until tomorrow.”
“Burns? Oh. I did that. Cigarettes.”
“Hell’s bells, why? It’s not bad enough to smoke them and fill your lungs with tar—it’s also necessary to snuff them out on your bare hide and give yourself an infected burn to adorn your other troubles? You’re going to have a scar, you know, and you deserve it. May one ask why you did such a thing?”
“The real answer would take a long time, and I’m tired. I think I’m going back to sleep.”
“You certainly shall, if you’re tired,” said Helmut, making an urgent gesture to Moses.
Karseth stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Right,” he said. “Right. Go back to sleep. Is there anything that would make you feel better?”
“A cigarette?” suggested Simion. “Just to smoke,” he added.
“My boy,” said Karseth amenably, “you know what you can do with that idea.”
“I thought,” murmured Simion.
“No, really, tell us. Is there anything we can do that would make you more comfortable?” Helmut asked him.
“Well…I don’t like to sleep on my back. Never have. My stomach feels better when I have it under me,” he said, vaguely aware that he wasn’t making the world’s best literal sense. They turned him and helped him find the position he liked, flat on his stomach with only a thin pillow under his head, and set the heated bricks and hot-water bottles around him. They had barely laid the heavy covers back over him before he was asleep, this time a real sleep rather than the upper edge of coma.
Unable to belabor Simion as he would have liked, Moses subsequently went to work on Doriskos, seeing that he seemed a little more in the world and capable of answering questions.
“I…that I can’t say. It was the weekend before last that we quarreled,” said Doriskos, raking his hand wearily through his hair, which needed washing. All in all, he was lusterless and drained—much easier to address than in his usual closed-off, dark-shining beauty. “No, it was that Monday. It was about his going to New York. With Andrew Carpallon.”
“And why in hell shouldn’t he?” Moses had said hell about seventy-five times this week already. Hell was a mild substitute for some much better swearwords that he had schooled himself not to use, lest they make their lurid appearance in some genteel setting—rattle the crystal, appall the starched lace of someone’s holiday napery, and oblige him to sal-volatilize his hostess.
“They didn’t ask me. Didn’t even tell me. I came home and found him gone, and he didn’t come home for supper, and he didn’t come home that night, I was alone with my thoughts, scared out of my wits, and then he didn’t appear Saturday or Sunday. Then on Monday afternoon I received a telegram that asked me to collect him and that friend of his, Andrew Carpallon, at the train station. It was…arch, the wire…the tone of it…gaily and happily arrogant. I know Carpallon’s tone…and I understood that Simion had gone off with him and probably let Carpallon, well, do things physically…to him.”
“That seems likely enough,” said Moses. “Carpallon is a very persuasive and attractive young rascal, uninfected by the stupid solemnity we see so much of around here. His dance card was filled last year with all sorts of people eager to let him do things physically to them, as you put it. And you thought Simion deserved this, for doing what everybody in the world except clergymen knows comes naturally? For that you knocked him silly and let him starve himself?”
“I thought that he was eating! I knew he had things in his room, apples and cheese and that sort of thing. He’d locked me out, you see, after we quarreled. I was all fogged up myself after…what happened…but I prepared his lunch for him every day…”
“After what happened?”
“When he came home, we had words. He can be extremely…pragmatic…and…forthright. It’s amazing: In some ways he was the most unworldly creature I ever met when he came here, which wasn’t long ago. A hard purity like cold water out of a rock. And yet he somehow manages to talk as vulgarly as if he were raised in the back room of an alehouse, or somewhere worse. Something about it makes me feel spat upon; I simply loathe it. I’ve done everything I can to give him comfort for his body and beauty for his eye…and help…and affection,” persevered Doriskos, even under Karseth’s black look. “I may be unpracticed at certain things, but by all the gods, I have tried my utmost. And I don’t know why he has to talk to me that way! Anyhow, I hadn�
��t slept since the night before he left, and I felt right down to the end of my energies. And then he bounced in with that simpering young fop, all bright and silky, with a bag full of tourist junk and this freshly bedded look about him…”
“You’re familiar, of course, with his freshly bedded look,” said Karseth.
“I know it when I see it!” cried Doriskos. “You’re bound to know what I mean from somewhere, I mean, you are forty or so? I knew it by the pain it gave me!” He looked up at Karseth with a sort of distraught innocence.
“Yes, I know the expression you describe,” said Moses, finally.
“He used some vulgar words to me, it seemed he was admitting to everything I’d thought, and made a nasty gesture like any common boy might make…and I slapped him. I might have done worse, I admit, if he’d not fought back with such fury. He bit me, you see, and then the idea…that I’d frightened him like that, and the pain…it brought me to my senses.”
“And that was the worst of it? You slapped him and perhaps knocked him to the floor, and he bit you? That’s bad enough, mind—one of his back teeth was knocked loose when you hit him, and it’ll have to come out when he’s well enough to endure it. His back teeth are a ghastly mess anyhow, and it might have been loose for a while, but you have no business raising your hand to him.”
“Yes, I know…but that was all I did. His not eating, that began…you know, insidiously, and I was all fogged up and didn’t know what he was doing to himself. If I’d known, I would have brought him to you before he did himself such harm. If I’d but known!” said Doriskos, and his whole body seemed to cringe as he said it. “I didn’t know that being slapped would do such a thing to him. I swear to you, I’ve never lifted a hand to anyone else in my whole life except in self-defense. But I’d never in my life felt such rage as I did after that weekend. I spent it wondering if he were dead or alive, if perhaps his father…who’s an awful man…had spirited him away against his will. You see, he hadn’t had the goodness even to leave me a note about his plans, and then came this arch little wire, and then the sight of him…cheerful as a bird and utterly inconsiderate of me. I didn’t even know there was such anger, it was like some very fast movement in a tunnel. Like a roaring in the ears, and like drunkenness.”
“It was a pissy trick to light out without even leaving you a note,” said Karseth, reluctant to express sympathy but beginning to feel some against his own will. “If Hel-…well, I wouldn’t have liked that either. But it hardly seems to justify your knocking him silly and scaring him out of his wits. A liaison with a boy isn’t marriage! He’s too young for you to put a ring on his finger and make him your child-wife! He’s eighteen, and in some ways he’s uncommonly immature for his age. He’s uneven. He needs to even out, not get married. And boys are, you know…boys! Irresponsible, spontaneous creatures who like to throw eggs at houses on Allhallows. You get the exasperating side along with their tight skin and milky smell and other attractions.”
“There’s nothing irresponsible and spontaneous about him. In some ways, he’s older than I am and harder than ice in Russia when it’s coldest.”
“Patently not in all ways, friend,” said Karseth, feeling his temper on its tether again. “He’s the one upstairs, down to eighty pounds and gagging on every second bite of food, with a brand-new heart murmur as a souvenir of his first romantic involvement. And I’ve yet to understand how his crimes merit his punishment, even just the one you intended. If you’ve a predilection for little boys, you have to take the bitter with the sweet, and little boys run off to New York for the weekend, and drink champagne, and sign their elder protectors’ names to hotel bills, and let other little boys do things physically to them at times.”
“He didn’t do that. Carpallon paid.”
“A very gracious gesture on the part of both, I’d say. A little piker of the usual variety would have let Carpallon pedicate him on your money.”
“If anyone ever has…that’s a horrid verb, by the way…pedicated him, it was Andy Carpallon, not me. And I’m sure it was by avid consent. You spoke earlier of rape,” said Doriskos, swallowing hard. “I daresay you could look at Simion and tell if I or anyone had forced him in the way you thought…and by this time you’ve had a chance to look…so you know I didn’t, don’t you?”
“It seems as though no harm was done. That kind of harm, that is,” said Moses reluctantly.
“What I would like to know,” said Doriskos, “is why you were so eager to think that of me.” He paused and swallowed hard, then looked Moses directly, eye-to-eye. “If you should feel compelled to take this to the police, you can tell them that I hit him, which is true, and that I hope my heart will rot for it, which is true, and that I failed to see what he was doing to himself, which is also true. But don’t tell them that I forced him. I was angry enough for half a minute, but I love him more than anything in the world, and that I did not and could not do.”
For Doriskos, fear soon gave way to shock or something like it, a shocky lethargy in which he could move and answer questions, but the sense was falling away from the visible surface of the world. The third morning that he and Simion had been in Karseth’s house, Doriskos woke with a headache. Exacerbated, perhaps, by the excruciating cot that they had set up for him in one of the two bare upstairs rooms that they ordinarily never used—something had given the pain, as it were, a head start. The pain seemed distant but fairly intense, like a brass band in the middle distance. At any rate, a headache of his was unimportant. He wanted to see Simion, but they wouldn’t let him. His mind’s eye presented him with several versions of what was going on in that upstairs room, each worse than the last. The pain stretched its fingers up the back of his neck and into his head, and he almost welcomed it. It would feel like a kiss alongside what he was imagining now.
By midmorning, in his studio class, he was experiencing the shuddering chill and flow of salty spit to his mouth that meant one thing—he was going to throw up, and the only thing he could do about it was to send his students home before they saw him do it. He dreaded throwing up; he’d fight it as long as he could. Then the headache would hike itself one final intolerable notch, and the smell of old smoke on someone’s coat, or the sound of someone blowing his nose, would bring the nausea rushing up like a geyser. There were thirty minutes of class left, and he could tell he was going to throw up well before half an hour ran out. With effort, he raised his head from his cupped hands and interrupted the class’s work.
“Gentlemen, I find that I’m not well today, and I would like to dismiss you early. Don’t bother to clear up, please.” He swallowed hard and tried to smile.
“Nothing serious, I hope, sir? May I get you some water?” This was the dutiful Francis Finch, a sweet, homely boy from Charleston—who, unlike Peter, did not mistake being born in Charleston for a patent of nobility.
“No, thank you.” (Please, just go.) “Will the last out please close the door?” The pain had its metal tendrils in the back of his neck, the back of his head; its nails were in his left eye, as usual. When he was alone, he sank to his knees before the wastebasket and retched up coffee and curdled egg, then the usual mouthfuls of yellow bile. The pain slammed in his neck and temples with all its blunt force, then eased. As usual, there was a brief pause between throwing up and a reprise of the headache, the time when he might pass out and sometimes did. The room tilted around him.
When he opened his eyes, he was on the floor, but his head was propped up on what felt like someone’s lap—soft and warm. Before he could see who it was, he threw up again and again and again, and someone wiped his mouth.
“There, it’s all right.” Fingers rubbed his temples with a knowledgeable, lightly kneading motion, as if whoever this was knew what to do about a migraine.
Doriskos tried to open his eyes, but even the grizzling winter light stabbed him, so he shut them again and ventured, “Who’s there, please?”
“Let’s not be fractious and try to get up now, simply because it
’s me,” said Peter, in a cajoling, silky drawl. “I’m perfectly willing to let bygones be bygones. You passed out. You look extremely unwell.”
Doriskos recognized the speaker. “That’s very kind of you,” he said, shivering. “But you’re going to get your clothes ruined if you don’t get away from me. I’m going to vomit again. Quite soon, I think. Please go.” Anyone else would go, he thought, but what do I have to threaten him with now?
“Now, now, I wouldn’t think of such a thing.”
Before this dispute could continue, Doriskos got another bolt down his spine and wrenched himself over on his side. When the fit had passed, he tried to get up, but the effort brought on another fit of retching, ending up in painful dry heaves. There was nothing left in him.
Peter eased his head to the floor with surprising gentleness, loosened his collar with a competent and assured hand, and kneaded his tight neck.
Doriskos startled and tensed, remembering his own hand ripping Simion’s shirt. “No improper advances,” crooned Peter, sounding a little annoyed. “You’ll feel better with this loose, that’s all. Christ alive, what a bundle of nerves you are, and what a tight neck you have today.” He applied himself to loosening it, drawing his thumb round the inner curve of his captive’s jawbone, coaxing the tension out.
“I’ll have to remember that,” said Doriskos in a whisper. “That works.”
“Of course it works,” said Peter, seizing his opportunity to talk when this man couldn’t abscond at a half-trot. “Everything I do works, if you’d only find out for yourself. At least, rather better than what certain people accomplish on your behalf, if rumor has it right. I heard that your charming housemate spent a weekend in New York with that conceited Andy Carpallon. And he muffed a problem in Larch Stearns’s class—Larch is still preening. And I saw him lingering round the stables talking to your horse like it was a person and throwing his luncheon to the lunatics at the asylum—all sorts of peculiar things.”