by Laura Argiri
“Why does he cry out? Did you hurt him? He never does that.”
“It can’t be helped,” said Moses, too weary to be angry at this implicit criticism. “He’s beyond being brave about pain. These stimulants I’m using, they’re very crude but very powerful drugs. I should imagine that there is pain when they take effect, but I’m using the only things available—my back’s against the wall. I hope you’re prepared to afford some consultation and probably a fancy sanitarium for a goodly spell—that or a funeral.”
Simion lay at the dark border. In his dreams, he woke on the shore of a leaden river, but no boatman came; he had no obol for his fare. When conscious, he dared make no superfluous movement, and he swallowed whatever was put to his lips. Mostly, it was like floating in a storm cloud, a gray drifting with the occasional lightning-flare of pain. And when it came, he no longer bothered about dignity, just the next second and the next breath.
Simion returned from this far place to the sound of crying. He’d not wakened for louder noises by far; somehow, this time, the sea of his weakness cast him up.
Helmut, in Moses’s bedroom across the hall, seemed to be choking back convulsive tears. “That’s what it was I heard,” Simion thought. “He’s crying.” He tried to focus, to tighten his slack senses like a telescope lens and hear what they were saying.
Finally Helmut controlled his breath. “I can hardly bear to think of it, but if it gets much worse…you know, if he’s going, really going, Moses…perhaps you ought to let him go. I don’t want him having to go like this. This is the most awful thing I’ve ever seen in my whole life! If he’s going to die, I don’t want him to have to tear himself out of this life and go out flayed and defiled and crazy with pain. If he’s going to die, he should be able to die in someone’s arms, in as much comfort and composure as you can give him. He’s had an atrocious life, that’s more than plain, why should he have an atrocious death as well? Tell me that!”
“Oh, puss,” sighed Moses. “I don’t think it has to go that way. Though I admit that it’s hanging in a perilous balance and could. If he were fighting at all on his own behalf, I’d say his chance was better than even, but he isn’t. Even so, here’s my difficulty. If I let him go, gave him opium to make him comfortable while his heart ticked to a stop, I’d feel…well, as if I were abetting a suicide. Because what we’re seeing here is a suicide, a slow and grisly kind. The Oath says, first, do no harm—am I to ignore that? He’s barely eighteen, he doesn’t know enough about life to reject it; he’ll think better of it in time. Who knows what kind of achievement he’ll be capable of as an adult? I may be a sentimental old fool, but I all but feel as if he were my child who was stolen and appallingly wrecked by someone else, and I don’t feel that I can just let that damage go. And you could do for him what you did for me—give him a sense of perspective and humor, teach him some manners and get him civilized. Between us, we could launch him in life if he’d just let us!”
“Why is he doing this? Can someone just tell me why?”
“I think he wants to die, or at least sincerely believes he does,” sighed Karseth.
A struggle with breath and emotion, then, “Well, do you think he will? I want you to tell me so I can get used to the idea, if that’s how it has to be.”
“He’s hanging in the balance, that’s the honest truth. He could go either way, and it could happen any minute. What we’re seeing now, this can’t go on forever. He’s worse in every way. He began by refusing food, now he can barely swallow anything but water, and he’s losing ground every day that this goes on. There’s only so much ground left to lose. I wish I could say something that would make you feel better; I wish I could do the same for myself. He’s sleeping now, will you go for a little walk with me? Small good it does him for us all to be this close to the brink. I’ll have Doriskos watch him, and we’ll get some fresh air. You’ve been in here so long, you’re quite hysterical. Now, wipe your face…here, blow.”
Simion’s alertness sharpened a few more degrees. He put his right hand to his breastbone and summoned back a memory of a pain there, a pain sudden and sharp like the lightning bolt of one sudden and vicious kick. Though his chest seemed sore, he could breathe all the way down to the bottom of his lungs today, and this seemed unusual, as if some kind of bubbly obstruction had prevented it recently. He could also call back tangled snatches: frightened faces over his bed, a bitterness on his tongue that made his heart break into a lumpy speeding run and try to climb up into his throat, and the hornet stings of Karseth’s needles. Moses was ordinarily careful with those horrid things—he would hurt you as little as he could even if you’d been doing your best to aggravate him. Ordinarily, a hypodermic in his hands produced an intense but time-limited sting. A little too intensely for the memory of a dream, Simion recalled a metal bite into his flesh and something pumped directly into his vein; that time, Moses had not concerned himself with pain, only with speed in dire emergency.
Simion heard Helmut and Moses going downstairs, then the front door opening and closing, and their footsteps through the slush—all with a sudden and horrid acuity limned by the knowledge of his danger. All he knew then was that he couldn’t stand to be alone, not for one minute, and he struggled up in bed with a strength he hadn’t had for weeks.
“Dori!” he called. It was a panicking, almost hysterical cry. Doriskos, who’d been heading up the stairs even as he called, found him sitting up in bed, rumpled and deathly pale. He went to him at once.
“Dori, Moses says he thinks I’m going to die!” He gulped. “Please, I’m sorry I’ve been so nasty, I’ll stop it, I’ll try harder! Please!” And he proceeded to cry horribly despite all the drugs he got to blunt sharp-edged emotions. Emboldened, Doriskos took him carefully up and was impressed with the panicky strength of his arms around his neck. Not knowing what else to do, he rocked him and stroked his back. In whatever storm this was, it appeared, he made an acceptable port.
“Now, what’s this all about?”
“I heard them talking…they must think I’m far gone! Dr. Karseth says I’m hanging in the balance, or something like that. I think he’s given up on me!”
“He won’t give up on you,” said Doriskos, amazed at his own temerity. “Do you think I’d let him? Not on your life,” he said. “And I’d never give up on you. I haven’t. I couldn’t. Not in this life.” He forced a smile, which Simion tried to answer but couldn’t. He trembled all over while Doriskos wiped his face, realizing that he’d never seen him cry before. Doriskos then folded him into his embrace and rocked him like a small child. The sobs subsided, as if they were too much effort, but the tears continued as a steady stream. Doriskos ventured a kiss to the top of his poor disheveled head.
“Oh, God, Dori,” whispered Simion, “I feel so bad.”
“How?” Doriskos whispered. He thought, Gods, he’s so light. He feels like half of himself. “Where does it hurt?”
“I feel full of broken glass. Not just in my body. In my mind, too. I’m so tired.” More sobs, weak and broken-sounding. Doriskos remembered when Stratton-Truro’s cook’s second child had been stillborn and how, if he crept up the servants’ stairs at night, he would hear her in her bed crying—she had sounded much like this.
“I know you’re tired. You’ve been very unwell, but you’re better now. Why are you crying now?”
“Oh, God help me, I miss you! I love you!”
“You won’t have to regret it ever again,” said Doriskos. He let him cry, unendurable as it was, for that was what he needed. Finally the crying diminished to a weak flow of quiet tears, while Simion continued to cling with all his strength.
“Is there anything that would help, and I do mean anything at all…that I could lay my hands on and put into yours?” Doriskos asked him.
“Just stay with me. Say something to me. Other than how nasty I am.”
“Nothing else? Are you sure?”
“Nothing I can have.”
“What can’t you have th
at you’d like?”
Simion lifted himself up, brightening faintly. He mimed the motion of lighting a match.
Doriskos wondered briefly if even one cigarette might kill him, then decided that if he hadn’t yet killed himself, nothing sold by a tobacconist would do it. He kissed Simion’s nose and cupped his hand around one damp, hot cheek. “Done.”
He buttonholed the butcher’s boy, who’d just delivered a joint up the street, and tipped him generously to run an errand to Simion’s favorite tobacconist. The urchin loped off, then returned with several packages of imported cigarettes and a box of blue matches.
“Virginia Brights… Straight Cuts… Sobranies…my God, you bought them out,” said Simion when Doriskos brought the booty upstairs.
“I want you to have something to eat after your cigarettes,” said Doriskos.
“All right,” said Simion, avid-eyed. He looked over the array of forbidden fruit, opened the pack of Sobranies, and selected one as if he were choosing a single, perfect rose. He held out his hands and tried to smile: “Help me sit up. It’s dangerous to smoke lying down.” Doriskos helped him up, then lit his cigarette for him. He worked his way through three before his distraught look began to recede even slightly. “Well, I’ve had three of them, and I haven’t died. Whatever’s in my cards, Dori, I’ll remember those cigarettes. They were the best cigarettes I’ve ever had in my whole life. I’ll keep my end of the bargain if you’ll find me something that’s not too hard to swallow.”
Doriskos rummaged in the cold-pantry and found a bowl of tapioca custard. He put some of it in a parfait glass and hastily grated some sweet chocolate over it. He took it up with a glass of cold milk. Simion shoveled the pudding down with no pleasure, but speedily, as if he didn’t mean to give himself time to balk. He was still not finding it entirely easy to swallow, but that made him have to follow each spoonful with a drink of milk. Doriskos tried to look pleased but not to express the tearful relief he felt—Simion had eaten more in the past fifteen minutes than in the past three days. Doriskos offered him a smile and another cigarette, and Simion leaned back wearily into his arms and smoked it. His eyelids lowered, some of the tension went out of him. He only roused himself as he heard Helmut’s weary footsteps on the stairs.
“Hide these things quick,” he said. Doriskos slid a saucer of ashes into his jacket pocket and got ready to say, “Smoke? What smoke?”
Helmut surely smelled the smoke, but he said nothing. He took in the two of them, Simion looking sheet-white and far too tired but not actually moribund, and what seemed like the frail, shaky beginnings of a reconciliation between them. He could not have expected the next thing that happened, though. When he came to put his hand to Simion’s forehead, expecting to find it either too hot or too cold, Simion did the very unusual thing of reaching up like a small child and actually closing his fingers on Helmut’s Shetland vest. Ordinarily Simion would accept one’s handclasp or petting with pleasure, but barely seemed to know how to make any gesture that asked for it.
“Please,” he said. “I heard what you and Dr. Karseth were saying. I don’t want to go out gently, I don’t want to go out at all. I need…can you please help us? Do you know what I mean?”
Helmut disattached and held that freezing hand. “Moses is very worried,” he said. “He’s afraid for you. I’m afraid. We just went out for a walk—”
“I know, I heard you crying. I’m sorry for whatever I did to scare you.”
“I calmed myself, we talked. We decided that we need to get you some help beyond our own, that we need a consultation of experts. There’s a sanatorium in the Adirondacks with a heart expert whom Moses trusts—”
“No, I don’t need a hospital and a heart expert! I need…an expert in the emotions. I can’t go away. It’s been bad enough as it is,” said Simion, groping around in the language for words to express what had to be said. “If the mess that’s right here doesn’t get straightened up, there’s no use sending me anywhere. It’ll go with me, and I’ll die of it, because I can’t stand it anymore. I thought I wanted to die, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to lose you…it’s like having a mother. I need…you…to help us. Dori and me. We’ve botched things up so badly.” He paused, trying to get control of his breathing. “We love each other, do you see? That probably doesn’t make any sense, what with the way we’ve been acting. But it’s true, and we’re in an incredible amount of trouble, and you’re the only one I know who understands uncommon sense as well as common sense. Can you help us, please?”
Helmut nodded. His expression was grave, profoundly tired, and comprehending. “Yes, I do,” he said simply. “Yes, I will. I’ll have to figure out some things, but yes.”
Doriskos woke up at dawn not on the divan or spare bed but in the bed with Simion. He’d slept in all his clothes, and he was sore all over from some terrible protracted tension. He had a headache like the Anvil Chorus and most of Wagner. He got up immediately, though, lest Karseth find him in the bed, and looked at Simion. The boy had clung to him, until he went to sleep, in a fierce anxiety that Doriskos didn’t mistake for affection. Now he woke with a groan upon feeling himself being put down. “I’ll be right back,” said Doriskos. He sighted a cup of yesterday’s coffee and took a couple of swallows, then held a towel to his mouth. He gagged and fought his gorge, hoping the stimulant would pinch up the veins in his head and back the pain off.
“Don’t,” rasped Simion. “You’ll get me started.”
“Sorry,” said Doriskos, eyes watering. He pressed his brow against the cold window glass. “Another headache.”
“Next thing, you’ll be saying I gave it to you.”
“No, I won’t. I think it was the red wine I drank yesterday.”
“We’re talking to each other again,” said Simion, hand to forehead. Doriskos saw that he’d wakened disconnected from the events of yesterday and needed to orient himself. “What happened?”
“You overheard something between Karseth and Helmut. You were quite upset, but you look better today than you have since before all this.”
“I feel better too,” said Simion. “Almost like myself.” Later, he would be able to say how absolutely panicked he had been; to decide that you wanted to die and to hear someone else say you probably would were two different things entirely. One you controlled, the other you did not. And that realization had snapped him him around three hundred and sixty degrees. He felt phenomenally depleted, unstrung, and raw, and yet better, on the safer side of the dark border—as if his body had listened to his mind and decided to live, whatever the pain. Almost timidly, he asked, “Dori, how’s that headache?”
“It’ll ease off in a few moments, I think.”
Helmut brought in Simion’s breakfast, with a careful lack of allusion to his decision to resume taking food. Likewise without comment, Simion ate as much of it as he could stand. Then, alone with Doriskos, he smoked four cigarettes.
“You don’t mind lighting them for me?” he couldn’t resist asking.
“I don’t mind anything that makes you happy. I’d smoke the things myself if you wanted me to,” said Dori. (“Ah’d drink yo’ bathwatah an’ letchew beat me with a riding crop if it’d make yew happy” surfaced, in most unseemly fashion, in his thoughts.)
“That’s quite all right,” Simion told him. He reviewed briefly bits of the recent, distant-seeming past: snow seen through lace, drinks set lightly in his hands, and other small blessed pleasures companionably shared. And he imagined for the first time in God knew how long the future. In his mind’s eye, he saw himself, older, in riding clothes, sitting on the college fence with Gray tethered to a post. In his little reverie, he sat there in the sun and smoked, the pleasures of the afternoon before him. It was a modest vision, but it presupposed him well, sane, and capable of pleasure. He let his mind drift further, beyond the pleasures of the afternoon to those of the evening, and it insisted on conjuring for him little pictures of the man before him, part of the wound and flower of Eros
: Doriskos’s small sipping kisses, shyer and more inciting than those of any practiced libertine. The way he’d kissed Simion’s fingertips when they’d almost made love: He’d opened his mouth and sucked them—gently, avidly, loving him even to the taste of his skin. The first sight of his nakedness had been a shock of wonder. And how I like to touch him, I’ll never like to touch anyone else like that, thought the boy. He’d loved traversing Doriskos with his hands, delighted by the silky black hair that thickened on his lower belly. He remembered the little skin fold that appeared just above Dori’s navel when he sat Turk-style and leaned forward. It was not loose flesh—he was hard and resilient to the touch there. He had delighted in slipping the tips of his fingers gently into this shallow fold, lined with silken shadow. He thought about it now; moisture sweetened his dry mouth.
A few moments later, Helmut came and removed the tray, then washed Simion’s face and brought him a basin and glass and his toothbrush and powder.
“Why so early?” asked Simion, as though he hadn’t been refusing these rites for the past week.
“To humor me,” said Helmut, determinedly smiling. “Because your mouth will taste nicer after you clean your teeth.” Simion shrugged and brushed his teeth, spitting out the foamy grit of mint and bicarbonate. Helmut brushed Simion’s mussed hair smooth and parted it. Then he brought him the Chinese robe and got him into it.
“Goddamn, I bet I look like a tubercular whore,” thought Simion. “You look tired,” he told Helmut. “I’m sorry—I know I’m a torment.”
“I am tired,” Helmut told him. “But I’m not half as tired as the two of you have made each other. Can you listen? Because we’re going to have a talk. And when we’ve finished it, this dreadful business will be over, God willing; then we’ll all be able to take some real rest. None of us can endure this siege for one more moment. Moses and I spent half the night discussing the situation. He was in favor of the psychological amputation method, two different and widely separated sanatoria for you two and a long vacation abroad for us, and I was in favor of reconciling you, even though it’s by far the most dangerous approach for him and me. I’ve prevailed for your sakes…at least I hope that what I want for you is right. Perhaps everything is up for renegotiation. And the thing I must ask of you now is that you help us to help you. That you be both honest and gentle with one another, because you’re both fragile enough to snap at a rough touch. That you act as if you love each other. Which you do, though few would have known it these last few weeks. Will you help me, then…and each other?”