Kostya

Sorry about the length...


He placed the envelope carefully at the foot of the stairs, where its pristine white surface leapt off the dark mahogany of the floorboards. She would pass this way in a few hours, on her way to the kitchen to make breakfast. The coolness of the night leaned over his shoulder as he silently reread the single word marring the purity of the clean paper: Carmen. His handwriting, violent peaks and hard edged lines, murdered the simple grace of the name...

'Carmen?'

'Si.'

'Unusual name.'

'I suppose.'

'I like it.' Xavier gazed across the ebony pond of coffee in the cup, still raised to his lips on its aborted journey, at her bashful, lowered eyes. His gaze slid away to the paper receptacle that he pensively rotated in his hand. Carmen flicked a stray piece of paper off the scarred tabletop with her slender finger as she tried to hide her embarrassment.

'Hmm?'

'Huh?'

'Did you say something?'

'No...'

Xavier grinned crookedly at her confusion. 'Sorry, I thought you said something.' She smiled, despite herself and shook her head, her eyes moving to the tabletop again. Around them, the dining area remained static, grey, almost offended by their relative animation.

'So you're studying religion eh?'

'Yes.'

'It's strange isn't it.'

'Religion?'

'Oh sorry, no, er.' Xavier chortled into his espresso as he downed the last potent drops from the bottom, his breath resounding hollowly in the cardboard cylinder. He calmed suddenly, and slowly, deliberately placed the cup down on the table, reaching across the table to place it on the patch over which Carmen's eyes were maintaining a silent vigil. Her eyes snapped up, momentarily, then fled back to the cup. Xavier gestured towards it with a dancing fingers, 'I meant that.'

'How do you mean.'

'Well, call me strange, heh most people do, but I always imagined that I'd have profound conversations with mysterious women over coffee in porcelain, not paper. We like to think we'll meet exotic and intensely interesting people in exotic and intensely interesting locales, Venetian canals, Tuscan Villas, the lawns of Oxford and all the rest of it, but instead here we are at the...’ he craned his head to read the sign above the doorway 'At the 'Railway Cafe', drinking sub-par coffee out of paper cups.' His sigh leapt into a gentle laugh, Carmen grinned...

He sighed, without sound, restraining his breath so as not to disturb the delicate artefact he had so carefully laid out. A tiny, sad little smile cracked across his solemn countenance. That tiny little chit of paper, that he was so afraid of sweeping away with his gentle breaths, that insignificant paper bouquet, was the most violent thing his mind has ever brought into the world, a frail notepaper mine, bursting with crystalline death.

He tugged nervously at his upper lip with his square digits as he rose and strode, carefully across the hall into the living room. His bare feet, stowing away at the bottom of his immaculate suit, silently padded on the timber, soaking up the coolness that seeped from its worn, smooth boards. The soft glow of his desk lamp cast garish shadows across the room as he entered, furtively sidling around the leather couch to the formidable, monolithic bookcase opposite the door. Xavier leaned jauntily to one side, to allow the light past his wide shoulders as he scanned the dimly lit spines of the eclectic ramparts of books. He swiftly located his quarry and with a powerful finger pried it loose from its thick companions. The book was thick and bound in dark, austere leather, David Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding. Xavier deftly slipped his nail under the cover and flipped it back with a flourish, the sickly light leapt across the title page inside, gleaming on the alien ink of the bold pen strokes emblazoned on its crisp cream surface.

Zah Zah,

This weighty tome is the beginning of your career as a philosophical prodigy!
My gift to you, on your twentieth birthday.

Jeremiah.

23/2/1992

Jeremiah’s handwriting sliced itself in broad, angular lines, intersecting at deep, violent angles. Xavier slid his thumb over the ghostly impressions the message had left in the page, his soft skin catching the dry paper, the phantom scent of literature drifted into his nostrils. The faint lines in his cheeks came to shadowy life as his smile burnt behind his glazed irises. He softly snapped the book shut and buried in the battered leather satchel on his desk chair. He removed a more modern looking book from the case, a sleek, shiny paperback embossed with a stylish art-deco cover ‘The Absurdity of Utopia’ and in the corner, unobtrusively, the author’s name was printed in matter of fact font: Xavier J. Bresson. Xavier caressed the book open, and read the dedication on the first page.

For Carmen,
Te amo.

He inhaled sharply and slid the book onto the desk, destroying the intricate arrangement of pens and paper with callous cruelty, she was in everything. He steadied a gently rocking wine glass at the edge of the desk, the maudlin remnants of merlot stirred moodily in the bottom as he set it back in place next to the exquisite Italian espresso cup…

‘Zah-vee-er’ Carmen’s slender hand slid into she caught up with him. ‘Seville in the evening, is, beautiful, no?’ Xavier grinned at her dark eyes as she gazed up at him, clinging to his waist as they strolled through the gentle glow of the street.

‘The coffee’s good.’ He whispered, smiling as he drew her closer to him. She moved instinctually, slowing him to a stop with her embrace, her lips collided with him in the shadows. They searched him, interrogating his soul with their touch, her lithe arms encircled his broad frame and clasped his being to her, her grip bit into his flesh, and her kiss dragged a tear from his heart. He felt the breath of her spirit on his in the warm night as she seeped into him, questioning his depths with her caresses. Her arms sank away, and she looked up at him from a pool of tears, her eyes pierced with terror and despair.

‘Xavier, I…’ the words crushed her, and she gripped him like a drowning girl. Her body trembled with beautiful terror, and the pale gleam of streetlights in her tears unveiled the splendour of her humanity. Human to human, they clung to each other in the frozen void in naked frailty, for one perfect night in Seville…

Dead tears flowed over Xavier’s rigid features as he knelt beside the desk and drew from the small basket a pile of mangled paper. The rejected beginnings of his letter trembled in his hands, mutilated, embryonic corpses, his monstrous offspring. His shaking hands stuffed them deep into the basket again, and he turned away from the paper blossoms of betrayal to open the top drawer of the desk. He reached inside and removed an unsealed yellow envelope, and shuffled through the thick deck of Polaroids inside. Shards of time flickered in his hands, her eyes had bled into the past, and they peeked out at him, pierced through with that beautiful, sad, fear…

‘You are me.’ Her eyes burnt in the night.

Near the bottom of the pack, Xavier deftly extracted three images, the first two had short notations in his young hand. From the first, a young man stared austerely into the lens, thick blond curls crowding his blue eyes, his resolute, thin lips curled imperceptibly at the corners.

Lucas, 18/4/91

The second photograph was of a blurred, face, eerily peering out from nondescript features with glowing red irises.

Jeremiah? Poortrait of the artist as a young man… 1990.

The third was of himself, his young face laughed into its future with mocking eyes and a mischievous smirk. The notation was in the same wild calligraphy of Jeremiah’s birthday salutation.

Xavier, happy. 91

He tossed the pile onto the desktop, it collided with his book and burst into a constellation of him and her. Her turned away from her loving gaze in terror, scooping up the tickets and shoving them into the bag with the Polaroids. He darted out of the room, suffering and loathing spilling down his face.

She followed him like perfume, haunting his craven, limping figure as it moved through the night. She had seeped deep into him, flooding the hollows of his existence, throttling his betrayer’s heart with pure love, and as he felt her tearing his ragged soul as he moved away in the darkness. He seated himself on the step in front of the door, pulling on his socks, sobs scorched his lungs and tears sliced his cheeks as he doubled over in panic to grab his shoes. He forced his feet into them as he wept; the world shimmered in sadness and rolled away in grotesque distortions.

Xavier rose resolutely, wiping his face, exhaling grief and shame, pulled the handle of the door, and stepped through into the frozen street beyond. He paused for a second with death in his eyes, and pulled the door closed, eclipsing a life.

His phantom shell disappeared into the darkness.