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"Won't you even smile now as you say farewell?" I asked. "If this bitter coldness now is all you feel, and you would let me die of this rampant fever? I'm sick unto death, you know it. You know the nausea that I feel, you know the hurt inside my head, you know the ache in all my joints and how these cuts burn in my skin with their indisputable poison. Why are you so very far away, yet here, come home, to sit beside me and feel nothing?"
"I feel the love I've always felt when I look at you," he said, "my child, my son, my sweet enduring one. I feel it. It's walled up inside where it should stay, perhaps, and let you die, for yes, you will, and then perhaps your priests will take you, for how can they not when there is no returning?"
"Ah, but what if there are many lands? What if on the second fall, I find myself on yet another shore, and sulfur rises from the boiling earth and not the beauty first revealed to me? I hurt. These tears are scalding. So much is lost. I can't remember. It seems I say those same words so much. I can't remember!"
I reached out. He didn't move. My hand grew heavy and dropped on the forgotten prayer book. I felt the stiff vellum pages beneath my fingers.
"What's killed your love? Was it the things I did? That I brought the man here who slew my brothers? Or that I died and saw such wonders? Answer me. "
"I love you still. I will all my nights and all my slumbering days, forever. Your face is as a jewel given me, which I can never forget, though I may foolishly lose it. Its glister will torture me forever. Amadeo, think on these things again, open your mind as if it were a shell, and let me see the pearl of all they taught you. "
"Can you, Master? Can you understand how love and love alone could mean so very much, and all the world be made of it? The very blades of grass, the leaves of trees, the fingers of this hand that reaches for you? Love, Master. Love. And who will believe such simple and immense things when there are dexterous and labyrinthian creeds and philosophies of manmade and ever seductive complexity? Love. I heard the sound of it. I saw it. Were these the delusions of a feverish mind, a mind afraid of death?"
"Perhaps," he said, his face still feelingless and motionless. His eyes were narrow, prisoners of their own shrinking from what they saw. "Ah, yes," he said. "You die and I let you, and I think there might be for you but one shore, and there you'll find again your priests, your city. "
"It's not my time," I said. "I know it. And such a statement cannot be undone by a mere handful of hours. Smash the ticking clock. They meant, by a soul's incarnate life, it wasn't time. Some destiny carved in my infant hand will not be so soon fulfilled or easily defeated. "
"I can tip the odds, my child," he said. This time his lips moved. The pale sweet coral brightened in his face, and his eyes grew wide and unguarded, the old self I knew and cherished. "I can so easily take the la
st strength left in you. " He leant over me. I saw the tiny variegations in the pupils of his eyes, the bright deep-pointed stars behind the darkening irises. His lips, so wondrously decorated with all the tiny lines of human lips, were rosy as if a human kiss resided there. "I can so easily take one last fatal drink of your child's blood, one last quaff of all the freshness I so love, and in my arms I'll hold a corpse so rich in beauty that all who see it will weep, and that corpse will tell me nothing. You are gone, that much I'll know, and no more. "
"Do you say these things to torture me? Master, if I cannot go there, I want to be with you!"
His lip worked in plain desperation. He seemed a man, and only that, the red blood of fatigue and sadness hovering on the borders of his eyes. His hand, out now to touch my hair, was trembling.
I caught it as if it were the high waving branch of a tree above me. I fathered his fingers to my lips like so many leaves and kissed them.
Turning my head I laid them on my wounded cheek. I felt the throb of the venomous cut beneath them. But more keenly still, I felt a strong tremor within them.
I blinked my eyes. "How many died tonight to feed you?" I whispered. "And how can this be, and love be the very thing the world is made of? You are too beautiful to be overlooked. I'm lost. I cannot understand it. But could I, if I were to live from this moment on, a simple mortal boy, could I forget it?"
"You cannot live, Amadeo," he said sadly. "You cannot live!" His voice broke. "The poison's traveled in you too deep, too far and wide, and little draughts of my blood cannot overtake it. " His face was filled with anguish. "Child, I can't save you. Close your eyes. Take my farewell kiss. There is no friendship between me and those on the far shore, but they must take what dies so naturally. "
"Master, no! Master, I cannot try it alone. Master, they sent me back, and you are here, and were bound to be, and how could they not have known it?"
"Amadeo, they didn't care. The guardians of the dead are powerfully indifferent. They speak of love, but not of centuries of blundering ignorance. What stars are these that sing so beautifully when all the world is languishing in dissonance? I would you would force their hand, Amadeo. " His voice all but broke in his pain. "Amadeo, what right have they to charge me with your fortune?"
I laughed a weak sad little laugh.
My fever shook me. A great wave of sickness overcame me. If I moved or spoke I would suffer a dread dry nausea that would shake me to no advantage. I'd rather die than feel this.
"Master, I knew you would give it some powerful analysis," I said. I tried not to make a bitter or sarcastic smile, but to seek the simple truth. My breath was now so hard for me. It seemed I could leave off breathing with no hardship at all. All Bianca's stern encouragements came back to me. "Master," I said, "there is no horror in this world that is without final redemption. "
"Yes, but for some," he pressed, "What is the price of such salvation? Amadeo, how dare they requisition me to their obscure designs! I pray they were illusions. Don't speak anymore about their marvelous light. Don't think on it. "
"No, Sir? And for whose comfort do I sweep my mind so clean? Who is dying here!"
He shook his head.
"Go ahead, wring the blood tears from your eyes," I said. "And for what death do you hope yourself, Sir, for you told me that it wasn't impossible for even you to die? Explain to me, that is, if there's time left before all the light I shall ever know winks out on me, and the Earth devours the incarnate jewel that you found wanting!"
"Never wanting," he whispered.
"Come now, where will you go, Sir? More comfort, please. How many minutes do I have?"
"I don't know," he whispered. He turned away from me and bowed his head. I had never seen him so forlorn.
"Let me see your hand," I said weakly. "There are closeted witches who in the shadows of the taverns of Venice have taught me how to read the lines in it. I'll tell you when you are like to die. Give it to me. " I could scarcely see. A haze had come down over all things. But I meant my words.
