Vercingtorix
—
H
e is shy, or courtly proper. I’m not sure which. Perhaps it is that he has been raised a prince, and I to one day be a general—his eyes are glancing blows, butterfly brushes. Mine are unabashed; devouring. He should not have asked me here if he did not want my eyes to take in all that he is, all that he could be, as if one wholesome meal. I smile as he disengages, quite politely, from the other holding his attention. I can tell he is disinterested—I can tell it is an act to keep his eyes from my flesh, and this delights me.I regret very little, Vercingtorix, and certainly not you. As way of answer, I offer one of the two drinks. He feigns, I think, polite indifference—or at least composure—before turning to face me.
We are almost alone. This faux privacy is dangerous; the faux privacy seems, in and of itself, a type of seal as surely as a handshake, or a promise. There is a sort of intimacy to it—I, Vercingtorix, foreigner, soldier, have the eldest son of the Ieshans of myself.
(I like to think it is because of something unique in me; that I, perhaps, am special. The larger, looming thought is that I am one of many, that there is nothing intimate about this).
Nevertheless, I smile. “I think we’ll have to wait and see.”
There is a moment, however, when the brazen innuendo breaks. When the flirtation, bold and ingenuine, flits away to expose something more honest. I cannot help but remember how, during our last encounter, he had broken—he had said, I am growing tired. Not of your company. Just—tired.
It seems, I think, an extraordinarily cruel thing to make him attend to these visitors, play host, observe a hall. I walk so as to force him to face me fully; and for a moment, I am not the man war and betrayal changed. For a moment—
“Adonai, the night is young—but… if it is too much.” I shrug one shoulders growing, already, uncomfortable with the earnestness. “Well, I know of quieter ways to spend the evening.”
He can take it how he wishes; a further flirtation, or what I mean it as. An escape, shared between two boys who might find a party less enjoyable than one another’s company.
I break the tension with a laugh. “By the way, is that guy really your brother? With the snakes for hair? “ More conspiratorially, I add: “They can’t be real.”
And I remember:
Cursed princes, and cursed towers. Martyrdom, or revenge? Those are my elements. Not this. Not the smile on my face, the emptiness blossoming in my chest to remind me you will never be full again.
True it never was, Yet because they loved, it was a pure creature.
They left it room enough. And in that space, clear and un-peopled,
it raised its head lightly and scarcely needed being.
They didn’t nourish it with food, but only with the possibility of being.
And that gave the creature so much power.
