by Lorena
The world seemed to have shifted off its course—subtly and not by much, but the changes were easily felt all the same. It was, as Treize noted, the kind of disquieting sensation elicited by a picture hanging tilted ever so slightly on the wall. While on the whole, the off-centering of perspective didn’t really make itself visibly known, the feeling of disproportion touched the viewer’s deeper sense of balance, which would continue to stay on till he discovered the cause and moved the painting back to its proper position by the barest tilt of a corner.
Treize took the vaporetto from his hotel in Lido to Venice, ignoring (with some effort) the stench of decay that seemed to emanate from the murky waters of the lagoon as the boat plowed through it. He disembarked at San Marco, where he lost himself doing what tourists did best, breaking up his sightseeing with coffee at the Piazza.
But that sense of imbalance and disquiet made itself known even more as Treize tried to continue his tour of the city, and the deeper into the intricate maze of alleyways he plunged, the more palpable this feeling grew.
There was a heavy, oppressive stagnation in the atmosphere that he never before experienced—almost as though an invisible canvas sheet had been placed above the city, trapping everything inside. All sorts of smells—from the aroma of fried dishes wafting from the windows and chimneys of restaurants and houses everywhere to the stench of commingling perfume and cologne to cigarette smoke—seemed to collect in the air rather than dissipate and allow the traveler some manner of easier breathing. Treize felt himself choking from the heaviness, which was made even more oppressive by the thickness of the summer crowds. There seemed to be no room in which to maneuver, and Treize felt himself drowning in a writhing sea of humanity that seemed to stretch on and on, and he was perspiring heavily and gasping for air within minutes.
He felt feverish and hot, his vision fading in and out as he stumbled through the crowd, and he was forced to turn into unplanned areas, where the air wasn’t so malignant and the crowd wasn’t too dense. In one of the quieter alleys he stayed, leaning weakly against a wall, wiping his damp brow as he tried desperately to pull himself together.
There was something wrong. He could sense it. He’d been in hot, balmy areas before, and he’d never been affected this much by the environment. The sickly heaviness that pervaded Venice at the moment was unnatural, and Treize decided that he’d had enough of this, holiday be damned. He could always flee inland—perhaps find a better, quieter town in the Italian countryside somewhere.
So he cut short his planned excursion and hurried back to Lido in hopes of packing quickly and taking the first boat back to the mainland.
The feverishness that overpowered him remained throughout his boat trip back to Lido, and as much as he desired to leave the island for calmer, gentler shores, Treize was forced to go to bed, where he spent the rest of his day, drifting in and out of fuzzy consciousness.
He did force himself to go down to the dining room for a brief and light dinner. Guests were still walking in when he’d done with his meal, and as he was making his way out, he encountered Quatre, who was lingering a little behind his family as they wove their way through tables toward their assigned corner.
They passed by each other, with Treize unable to keep his eyes off the boy, watching with that familiar odd thrill the way the boy this time met his gaze with a look of unabashed curiosity, his eyes resting on him for a couple of seconds—wondering, inquiring—before tearing themselves away with a self-conscious blink and the tiniest hint of a mortified frown. He walked on, his hands clasped almost thoughtfully behind his back, his attitude echoing that of a pensive philosopher, which gave Treize cause to smile to himself.
“I’m afraid, Quatre, that our time was too short,” he said as he made his way to the elevator, feeling his spirits sink with every step. “Wherever our fortunes fall, may the gods bless you.”
He returned to his room and went straight to bed, a sense of unease preventing him from sleeping right away. Vague, elusive thoughts came and went, disturbing all efforts at coherent reflection. Something didn’t feel quite right, and he couldn’t pinpoint what it was right away. He turned from side to side, cursing the night, cursing himself, mentally purging himself of those restless, shadowy phantoms, but all to no avail. He felt regret—a deep, lingering awareness of the immensity of the error that he was about to make, and yet he couldn’t understand why. It would take a while before the young writer finally succumbed to the call of sleep.
He felt a great deal better the following morning, even forgiving the gray skies and the hot, stifling weather. A small, quiet voice at the back of his mind urged him to leave, reminding him of his indisposition the previous day, but he chose to ignore it. A deeper, more insistent call from the depths of his very soul (as he’d later describe it) told him to stay, and for the first part of the morning, Treize had to walk to the beach to rid himself of the two warring voices in his head.
There were a few visitors out, and he was pleasantly surprised at finding Quatre idly strolling the sands, his head bent, his eyes fixed on his feet. The boy would pause in his tracks whenever a wave would wash over him, surrounding his ankles with clear, salty water and making his bare feet sink a little in the sand that shifted along with the tide. Quatre would chuckle, rocking on his toes and heels as he dug further down, burying himself some more in the gritty, wet surface, tugging a little at his rolled-up trousers as another small wave struck. Then he’d move forward, stumbling a little as he extricated himself from the sand, laughing lightly at himself. Every so often, the boy would stop and stoop down to pick up a shell or a rock that caught his attention, turning it over and over in his hand as he gazed at it in some wonder. His brows would furrow as though in deep thought, and his lips would pucker before parting and shaping words under his breath, no doubt in a quiet conversation with himself as he pondered the mysteries of every glistening conch or every marbleized rock he picked up. Then he’d replace the object in the sand with a care that seemed reverential to the observer, and Treize felt as though he understood.
“It’s for you,” he breathed, a small smile of awareness tugging at the corners of his lips as he watched the boy continue his exploration. “It’s for you, Quatre, that I choose to stay—for you and only for you.”
He felt his heart leap in his chest as the boy wandered off, laughing lightly as a wave struck him a little higher, soaking his trousers to the knees. Treize took in the sound of that tingling, youthful burst of joy, allowing it to infuse his stiff and cramped spirits with a warmth that he’d never before known, and he stood in the sun, throwing his head back to stare at the sky as he spread his arms out in welcome of whatever it was that would now come to him.
Treize was slated to remain at Lido for at least a month, and life at the hotel fell into an easy, comfortable rhythm for him. No longer conscious of the stifling heat and the graying skies and the occasional stench that assailed his senses as he rode the boat toward Venice or any of the other islands, he’d now found himself living a completely different and, until now, foreign life—one that was free of the oppressive burden of focused, intense work as well as sacrifice after sacrifice of even his most basic needs. The hours seemed to slow down to a languid, decadent pace, allowing him to immerse himself in virtually every second of every minute of every hour, feeling the world around him, experiencing the vibrance of life as it slowly unfolded itself before him.
Everything he did was at a leisurely pace, and while he didn’t feel his body completely respond to the change, he at least felt his spirits rejuvenate themselves.
He saw Quatre regularly. The scope of their world being confined pretty much to the hotel, the beach, and Venice, chance had blessed Treize with ample opportunity for being within sight (and certainly within close proximity) of the young charmer.
He saw the boy in the hotel’s many salons, the beach, the boat rides either to or from (and sometimes both) Venice, the Piazza, and a host of other places as chance would allow. With every new opportunity, Treize would be treated with a new angle or a new bit of insight regarding the boy’s character, and piece by piece, a puzzle would fall into place, creating the most tantalizing picture of youth and beauty he’d ever imagined. It was a puzzle he chose to keep to himself, holding it close to his heart with as much guardedness as a jealous lover would harbor toward his most precious possession. And there he’d nurture it, watching it grow with a degree of wistfulness not untinged with regret.
He could never have the boy—of that he understood all too well. What he felt for Quatre was, as society dictated, a direct violation of everything natural and morally acceptable. He felt himself justified in his attraction and thought it a cruel irony that his success in life had hinged largely on a complete, utter denial of his nature, that his repression had sustained him for so long—only to destroy his world when he’d transferred all his energy to his work, plunging him deeper into those constraints and effectively shutting out the woman he thought he’d loved and tearing the rest of his life apart with the gradual decline of his health.
He could never be anything to Quatre, but Quatre could certainly be something to him.
The morning hours at the beach were his most precious moments, and Treize had quickly learned to rise early and to bring his journal to the beach with him. There he’d take his place, lying in wait for his idol, whose appearance would immediately give rise to a new creative energy in Treize.
>From his vantage point, the writer would spend the morning hours watching his muse go about his business in indolent pleasure, whiling away the time in idle play, wading along the shore and inspecting shells or sitting on the sand to toy with the pale, gritty surface with a stick. His mother would sometimes call to him from the veranda, and Quatre would respond readily, stumbling to his feet and running up the sands with the biggest, brightest smile, waving a newly-discovered treasure aloft while calling out in a tongue that was completely unknown to his admirer. But even so, there was no mistaking Quatre’s pleasure, his joy in having chanced upon something he believed to be a stupendous find and even greater joy in being given the opportunity to share it with his family.
There was a sweet simplicity in Quatre’s moments of leisure that touched Treize in ways that he’d never before felt, and he sought to channel those sensations through the pen. Every day, therefore, found him writing extensively in his journal, allowing his thoughts, his feelings for the charming young boy to take shape in words he’d never read from his own hands. The language was familiar, yes, but its tone had taken on a lighter sound as it elevated sensations that were, up to this point, completely foreign due to their lifelong latency and suppression.
The liberation that Treize felt as he wrote was unsurpassed, and he sought to drown himself in it day after day.
He saw himself, he once chuckled, as Socrates, lost in his admiration of Phaedrus, lost as the lover would be in the presence of the beloved. And he lifted his thoughts to the great man, reveling in words that he’d long known but not until now understood.
“The lover,” he murmured into the breeze as his eyes followed Quatre’s pale, youthful figure, “is nearer the divine than the beloved, for a god, my beautiful Quatre, is in one and not the other.” He watched the boy stand on the edge of the shore, his feet swallowed by the water, gazing thoughtfully out into the horizon. There was a dreamy, faraway look on his face that gave it a distinctly golden glow, prompting Treize to add, “And I can see the divine in you.”
Then he’d feel the need, the longing, the desire to be loved back, and he’d feel his inadequacy and the hopelessness of the moment. It would take some time, but he’d eventually learn to ignore the quiet breaking of his heart and pour out its contents on white paper instead, watching them take shape in the form of graceful, flowing script from a pale, trembling hand.
He found himself once in a position to speak with the boy. He was on his way toward the beach and suddenly found Quatre walking directly before him, having woken up unusually early for the first time. He was walking at a very slow, very leisurely pace, which would allow Treize ample opportunity to catch up and strike up an easy and casual conversation with him, hoping for a response from one who, without knowing it, had given rise to some of the most sublime sensations and thoughts in the lonely artist. He wanted to hear Quatre’s voice—that familiar light tone addressing him in friendship even if in nothing else.
Quatre ambled along, humming to himself. His pace was temptingly slow, and it didn’t take long for Treize to be walking directly behind him as they followed the boardwalk that led them to the beach. All he needed to do was reach out and place a hand on a thin shoulder.
“Quatre!”
The boy paused in his tracks and whipped around, and Treize stumbled along, hurrying past Quatre with quick, agitated steps as his ears were suddenly filled with the light, joyful voices of other boys and girls hurrying up the boardwalk toward the lad. He listened, with a wildly pounding heart, to his beloved return his friends’ calls with a cheerful greeting punctuated with light laughter. Treize felt his cheeks burn, the mortification of the moment hanging above his head in a heavy black cloud, the closeness of being caught hanging on behind a boy ripping through his mind with a voice of bitter remonstration.
“You fool,” it hissed through his muddled mind, “what the hell did you think you were doing?”
“I don’t know,” he gasped, his confusion mounting. “I didn’t think that…”
“That’s just it—you didn’t think! You never think! You idiot! Just look at yourself! Look at what you’re reduced to!”
Treize hurried off, placing himself far away from Quatre’s usual haunts, horrified of the possibilities of what could’ve happened had he had his way—the risks he could’ve incurred, the exposure that he could’ve given himself, the danger in which he could’ve placed both himself and Quatre.
He stood alone for several seconds, wide, unseeing eyes staring fixedly at the distant horizon as he felt his heart slow down and his agitation lessen.
“Keep your distance,” the voice continued to whisper, its words slowly fading in spite of their hold on the young man’s mind and heart. “Keep your illusions sacred. That’s all you have.”
And so Treize, feeling chastised and fearing the dissolution of whatever odd, flimsy connection he’d already established with Quatre, withdrew and kept his distance. The boy would remain unmolested by his unwanted attentions, and Quatre’s family would be spared the humiliation.
But as it so happened, a new and vaguely uplifting bond seemed to have developed between the two. It was of the kind in which two people in constant contact (however fleeting or distant) would develop a certain instinctive awareness of each other—where their eyes would meet in silent greeting and acknowledgement, and yet they’d feel constrained in openly expressing any degree of regard or friendliness. A self-consciousness, perhaps, of social mores or other such hindrances, would keep this awareness unspoken, placing both in an awkward though not necessarily unpleasant situation.
And so it was with Quatre and Treize. The boy, it seemed, had grown increasingly aware of the older man’s regard for him. In their daily encounters, the writer began to notice that Quatre tended to move closer and closer past him—more often unnecessarily close, placing himself at such a distance that all Treize needed to do was lift an arm and touch a thin, pale hand with a worshipful finger—perhaps even enclose it protectively in his larger, firmer grip. Treize couldn’t help but wonder if the boy, being the object of his constant admiration, somehow felt himself drawn to him solely on the power of his admirer’s regard. At the beach, Treize would, on glancing up from his work, find himself staring into a pair of bright sky-blue eyes that were fixed thoughtfully on him. Their exchange would be serious—a casual, careless look from the more experienced older man (and hence hiding the swirl of emotion that Quatre’s glance would elicit in him) and a questioning, curious one from the younger boy, who’d tear his gaze away with an attitude of youthful restraint—as though good breeding alone had kept him from venturing further and opening up communications with his admirer.
It came to a head once, when Treize noticed that, for the first time, the young aristocratic family had not shown up for dinner. Puzzled, he found himself restlessly sauntering through the various salons in hopes of catching a glimpse of them somewhere in order to quell his suddenly agitated spirits.
His anxiety overpowering him, he planted himself outside the hotel, pacing about as he eased himself with his cigarettes and the slightly cooler night air. And there, from out of nowhere, he saw the young people appear with their ascetic governess, walking back to the hotel from an evening out.
The sight was altogether unexpected, and the teenagers passed him quite closely that Treize didn’t have time to gather his thoughts and move away. As it was, he found himself treated to the sight of Quatre staring him squarely in the face as the boy walked by, blessing him with a wide, effervescent smile—the kind that lit up his face with a brightness that made him glow, the gentle parting of his lips exposing his teeth in an expression of unabashed, captivating, youthful joy. There was an air of flirtatiousness in that smile, of curiosity and a degree of disquiet—of him spellbinding and being spellbound.
Caught off guard, Treize felt himself shattered by that glance, and he immediately turned and hurried off, plunging himself into one of the darker alleyways where he leaned against a grimy, crumbling wall and held himself tightly, his confusion and despair spiraling beyond all means of control. He tasted the bitter mockery of injustice on his tongue, felt its jaggedness tear its way down his throat as he swallowed. It was all too much. Too much.
“I love you,” he spat out into the darkness, where he finally shed his first tears. “I love you.”
And he let loose his despair in the cover of the night, where he remained alone and unheard.
It was his third week in Lido when Treize noticed the sudden dwindling down of German tourists in the area. In spite of the fact that it was the height of the tourist season, he became gradually aware that he could no longer hear his native tongue spoken anywhere compared to when he’d first arrived. He thought it peculiar but said nothing.
One day, he’d taken it on himself to go to the Piazza, where he could gather further observations inspired by Quatre’s presence about the area (having discovered, by chance, that the boy and his sisters were to spend much of the day in Venice). He’d reached a critical point in his manuscript and was determined to explore this particular juncture from a completely different perspective brought about by a new environment.
On his way there, he felt himself melt from the stifling calm and the burning sun that pummeled the entire area. The heat and the lack of moving air weighed heavily down on him, and he silently cursed the abnormal summer clime this year.
He sat himself at the Piazza, where he immersed himself in his work, his eyes catching a fleeting sight of Quatre and the girls as they wandered in and out of the crowds, providing Treize with a charming picture of light-hearted youth amidst the heavier weight of history and culture that seemed to bear down on them. It was several moments after when the writer paused in his writing and glanced up.
He frowned and looked around, frowning his puzzlement.
There was an odd scent lingering in the air that he’d never before noticed. It was a sweet, medicinal odor that one usually associated with the suspicious kind of cleanliness linked to outbreaks of disease. He finished his tea and got up to wander through one of the nearby alleyways, where the stench was most forceful. And there, hanging on one of the walls, was a placard, on which was written a warning, urging people to be cautious and avoid eating shellfish as well as to avoid using the canal-water in order to keep themselves from falling ill from gastric diseases associated with hot climates. Treize watched small clusters of people stand quietly around the signs, reading the warnings in a somber hush. He walked away.
As he went along, he stopped on occasion to ask a shopkeeper about the signs, and he received largely hesitant, awkward reassurances that they were merely precautionary measures put out during unusually hot seasons like this one.
“We have these sometimes, signore,” one replied. “The air is too hot and humid—it is just a precaution, you understand. It might not be necessary.”
Accounts in the German newspapers were wildly contradictory, throwing Treize into further confusion. He found rumors and denials, and upon looking at other foreign-language periodicals, he found nothing. He sat back in his seat and considered. He hadn’t heard of accounts anywhere involving outbreaks of any kind—no reports of disease-related deaths. He saw nothing out of the ordinary save for the placards. Surely the shopkeepers were right in their estimation. The season being too hot, it was only prudent for the entire area to take on precautionary—maybe even unnecessary—measures.
His mind eased itself further at the receipt of a letter from his friend and editor, lauding in the most colorful terms the manuscript fragment he’d recently forwarded to him.
“It’s a brilliant piece of writing!” the man said, the unevenness of his handwriting indicative of the extreme excitement under which he’d likely composed his letter. “It’s so unlike all your other books, Treize! Do you mean to continue this, or is it simply a bit of mischief on your part to tease me with a masterpiece that wouldn’t happen?” Treize smiled, his pale and sunken-eyed countenance creasing into a rare, softening grin as he read the letter’s concluding passage. “This is inspired by the gods!”
“Yes, it is,” he murmured, his mind suddenly awhirl with all sorts of ideas as snatches of memory burnt themselves into his mind, and images of Quatre lost in the streets of Venice impressed themselves on him, rousing triumphant and bittersweet sensations as new ideas formed. “And I’ll be done with the first draft by the time I return to Germany, my friend.”
The lingering unease of illness was now pushed completely out of his mind as he sought the comfortable shade of the veranda, where he let loose his creative fire, which had been burning in him for some time now. He felt the return of that drive, that legendary focus that fixed his mind irrevocably on his work. This time around, the near fanaticism with which he’d tackled his writing was tempered by the sweeter remembrances of his muse, enabling him to lose himself in his task without the usual accompanying pain in spite of the deprivation of his body’s needs.
Fueled by his editor’s encouragement and Quatre’s uninterrupted presence day in and day out, Treize was able to write page after page of his new novel, feeling his spirit renewed every single time in spite of his body’s slow deterioration.
The creative fire had taken firm hold of him—so much so that he found himself occasionally shadowing Quatre as they landed on Venice, trailing behind the boy and watching in both wonder and excitement the sight of adolescent freshness let loose in the streets of the ailing and decaying city, the specter of Quatre’s unstable health hovering above the young charmer as an insistent reminder of the transience of his existence.
There was something romantically tragic at the thought, Treize mused, as he wove his way through the crowd, not once feeling any sense of discomfort or mortification whenever Quatre would glance over his shoulder on occasion to lock eyes with him through the crowd, offering that slight, teasing smile that led his admirer along, lost and hopelessly under his spell. Before him walked the epitome of youth and beauty, destined to be cut down before his time. And yet, in a crueler irony, there was also that man—that old, foppish clown, who mocked old age with his disgusting caricature of himself as he cavorted around with men a third his age, gamboling about with pitiful attempts at youthful manners and conversation—drunk and rouged and ridiculously dressed in the most unflattering clothes imaginable.
The relief that Treize at first felt upon discovering Quatre’s ill-health was now clear. It had returned to him again and again, whenever he’d catch the boy pause in what he was doing in order to take a deep, shuddering breath (a symptom of his illness in Treize’s eyes), but it wasn’t until now that the meaning had made itself known.
“Better for divine beauty to be stopped and preserved at the height of its youth,” he whispered to himself as his glance once again, for the hundredth time, it seemed, met Quatre’s as they walked through the crowded streets of Venice. “Than to be allowed to dwindle into a parody of itself, with death still unwilling to step in and deliver the final merciful blow.”
When Quatre and his sisters went off for a gondola ride, Treize followed them, himself entranced by the sight of his beloved in one of those crafts, comfortably tucked inside the black, coffin-like boat and surrounded by black lacquer and soft, black upholstery. The tragic charm of pale, golden beauty being carried off over black waters in a black gondola into the inky blackness of the evening sent Treize’s mind swirling in a host of the most fantastic ideas, which he’d feverishly scribble into his journal the moment he reached his room. And there, by the dim light of his lamp, he’d remain, all energy and attention bent on that single task of committing to paper the wonderful, painfully sublime images and sensations produced by Quatre’s mere existence.
It would become a common sight for Treize to stay up till the early hours of the morning, writing himself ragged—to be forced to relinquish the task only when his body demanded it, and he’d collapse in his bed—only to awaken a few hours afterwards in order to take his place at the beach and to renew his creative energy with the sight and the sound of his beloved losing himself in yet another moment of idle play among the sands.
He now barely ate and often found himself leaning against a nearby wall, dizzy and light-headed. But he was sustained, if not physically then in spirit, by the intoxicating feeling of liberation that one often drowned in at the moment of self-discovery. A lifetime of suppression and self-denial now at an end, Treize was simply awash in the giddy, sublime pleasure of feeling himself—his real self—take shape in spirit if not in life.
He now loved once again—as he’d hoped when he first set out to Venice—in spite of its violation of what everyone else thought to be natural laws. It was nowhere near that which he’d felt for his wife, and as each minute passed, and the world slowly, imperceptibly faded before his dimming eyes, he rejoiced at his resolution not to look back. He loved Quatre. He admitted it to himself day after day. He admitted it in his journal with every stroke of a pen. He admitted it to the gods as he turned his eyes up to scan the infinity above him, offering prayers of bittersweet thanks for what little opportunity was allowed him to feel this alive.
There wasn’t a moment he regretted. No, not even the fateful hour when he found himself at an English travel office, where he managed to prod the reluctant British clerk for more information about the daily disinfecting in and around Venice that filled the sultry air with its medicated stench.
“A cholera epidemic, sir,” the young man said, lowering his voice to a nervous whisper after exchanging Treize’s money at the desk. “It had come to us from Asia, and the hot season had done nothing but exacerbate it. An Austrian tourist just lately visiting Venice had gone home, where he died with the symptoms of the disease, and the German papers began to write about it. Venetian authorities denied everything, however, and now we have unconfirmed reports of death stalking the smaller alleyways throughout the city. I daresay that all the food supplies have likely been contaminated by now.”
Treize thanked the clerk and went back to the hotel, intent on warning Quatre’s family of the plague. But he was much too tired, much too weakened by the heat to do much more than crawl into bed, where he remained throughout the evening, not rising till the usual hour the following morning.
He rose with an oppression of spirits that he couldn’t quell and yet one into whose spectral hands he resigned himself without even understanding why. Picking up his journal and pen, he made his way down to the lobby in order to reach the beach. As he walked past the desk, he noticed a pile of luggage sitting in the middle of the polished floors, and he, with a deeper understanding, asked the porter to whom it belonged.
Quatre’s family was to leave that morning. Treize smiled and thanked the man, grateful at the thought that there was no need to warn the boy’s mother. His beloved would be spared, would be kept as safe as possible in spite of the risks of any early exposure to the disease.
“The sunrise—I need to see the sunrise,” Treize murmured, blinking away the heaviness that weighed on his eyelids as he walked toward his usual spot on the beach.
He took his place on the chair, his eyes wandering as before and settling on the figure of the boy who’d been his unexpected salvation.
He smiled as he watched Quatre, dressed up for travel, stand near the water, again lost in thought as he stared out into the distant horizon. The boy was beautiful, Treize repeated to himself again and again. He was a blessing in more ways than he would ever know, no matter how long he’d live.
“Ah, my dear Quatre,” he murmured into the warm morning breeze, allowing it to carry his words to distances unknown. “Wherever your paths would lie, may the gods guide you safely there. I would, if I could, finish my book, but I’m afraid I don’t have the strength to do so now. I’m so tired.”
He paused to look down at his work, his hazy vision taking in the sight of that familiarly strong yet graceful script, in whose flourishes and curves lay the secrets of his soul. He smiled ruefully and tore out two pieces of paper. On one he wrote instructions to his editor, and on the other he wrote instructions to the hotel manager. Then he carefully tucked them both inside the journal, making sure to label each and to let them jut out from between the pages in order to be easily seen.
Treize sighed as he shifted in his chair, raising his eyes once again to watch the boy, feeling contentment wash over him.
“Let this book be our elegy, Quatre.”
Almost as though on cue, Quatre turned around and espied him, breaking out in a bright smile as they locked gazes. From where Treize sat, it seemed as thought the rising sun was enveloping the boy with its golden radiance. His eyes drooped heavily, and his beloved’s figure penetrated the darkness behind his lids as a gentle specter, his slender, radiant form hovering before him, entrancing him with its twilight power. He struggled to keep Quatre’s soft, lovely smile and sky-blue gaze in his darkened vision, and he thought that the boy was beckoning him to come, raising his arm to point at the sun. Treize smiled back, and he rose to follow.
“Yes, my love, I will come.”
It would be a few hours later when the hotel staff would be frantically attempting to revive him, raising their voices in horror at all their failed attempts. It would be a mere day later when Treize’s friend and editor would be sitting at his desk, silently weeping, as he held his friend’s journal close.
It would be years and years in which the world would be awed by the last singular masterpiece that came out of Treize Khushrenada’s pen, the only work of his that remained unfinished—cut off at the height of its brilliance and honest exploration of love found and denied.
Notes:
Counting several details, the novella and the fic diverge in so many different areas here. Aschenbach in Mann’s work becomes obsessed with Tadzio, and he pretty much gets reduced to the demented stalker. Mann’s purpose in the story is to show the dangers of two extremes: extreme repression (with Aschenbach at the beginning and the way he went about his writing) and extreme sensuality (with his worship of Tadzio’s beauty). That’s a bit of a lofty goal for me, so I stuck with the theme of self-discovery made tragic by circumstances beyond one’s control. I didn’t—and couldn’t—give Treize the same kind of humiliating degradation that Aschenbach experiences. I prefer honoring him with a more human (and therefore more elevated because of its poignancy) kind of tragedy. It suits him, I think, with him being a tragic hero in the GW series to begin with.