Archive of Our Own

Peter had disappeared, embarrassed, after one too many drinks had prompted him to share much too much. That wasn't like him and, if he was honest with himself, he might have panicked as soon as the words left his lips. How ensnared had he really found himself if he was opening up, letting himself be so vulnerable, and blurting everything out to Simon of all people? It wasn't as though they were close. He wasn't close to anyone. Why would he be? He hadn't stayed long enough to allow for the subtle pinch of confusion on the older man's face to give way to the amusement and mocking he was absolutely certain would follow.

As for Simon... Well, of course it was a little comedic to him. He thought, too, that it was a petty little thing to be upset over. Probably most things seemed petty and little to him, but it wasn't as if Peter and Jonah making one another miserable was anything new. Peter had simply gotten a bit more creative in setting himself up for inevitable failure in getting wrapped up with Elias Bouchard. More than anything Simon had plans for the Lukas'--or, their money, at least--and if old Halley and himself were going to work with them it wouldn't do to let something so insignificant get in the way.

P. Lukas,

I trust you to take as much precaution with our correspondence as I have, especially since it will have perhaps more to say about yourself under a particularly discerning gaze.

I’m not ignorant of your disdain for intimacy, so I also trust you won’t mistake this as some clumsy grasp for that. Instead, dear Captain, I invite you to see this for what it is: an effort to balance the books. It seems I have little these days to offer in the way of vulnerability, and even less patience, but I hope you’ll appreciate the effort all the same. This is no olive branch—now, that would be silly, wouldn’t it?—but more of an attempt to mend a bridge we both benefit in maintaining.

You know how important perspective is to me. Along the same vein, I know you appreciate the value of space, even if it’s mainly in keeping the distance between people that draws your focus. In physics there’s a phenomenon called Rayleigh scattering. Essentially it’s the scattering of sunlight that makes the sky the color that it is. In painting, the effect thereof is called aerial perspective. The perspective of disappearance. Specifically, the way that objects appear more blue, lose contrast, shrink into the distance the further away they are, until, at last, they disappear.

I’ve heard memory described in just such a way, but the mind doesn’t obey the same sort of logic as physics, and even physics has a way of bending to emotional whims.

It was centuries ago now, but no time at all in the grand scheme of things.

I’d had my fall by then, months back, but I was still fresh from it, bristling with new experiences, sensations, yearning. I reveled in my new and secret passion, my private devotion. I was a quick study. Less than a week after, curious, I’d invited a colleague up my ladder to check my work, and then nudged it just enough to see what would happen when he fell. My painted sky had not welcomed him into it, but he’d survived his crash to the floor with enough sense to be suspicious of me. It took me weeks before I was able to find him alone, on the highest landing of the building we were working in. He shook so violently when our eyes met; I think he knew what was coming before even I did.

That’s hardly a confession between us, though, is it? Not even worth bragging over. The concession I am offering, though, I also met in a church. I couldn’t tell you which one, I spent so much time in them back then. Skyscrapers are a new love, but I’ll always be fond of the strong vertical lines of soaring Gothic influence, the vacuous internal space and looming archways of the Romanesque. You might even call it nostalgia.

I was up a tower of scaffolding, laying on my back and lovingly adding layers of cerulean to a patch of painted abyss. I felt his eyes on me before anything else, that familiar prickle of being observed. It wasn’t unusual for this or that patron or curious spectator to stare. I tended to hate the distraction, feigned ignorance and pawned any questions off on my master when I could.

I was ready to do so again, but when I’d ignored the onlooker for as long as I could stand I found his gaze was not focused on the bodies of the saints etched into the ceiling, but on me instead.

I think I knew his intention before he did. He couldn’t see the look on his own face, after all, but I’d seen it before. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I couldn’t always be painting. As for my partners, I think there was a certain appeal to an apprentice who would inevitably be moving on to assist on the next great fresco somewhere else. It was a nice story to tell, sometimes we kept in touch, and it suited me. I’d never liked being tied down, always made excuses against marriage when the topic arose, but then, I’m not writing to thrill you with my youthful exploits.

He said he’d like to talk to me about my work—a delightful lie—and I told him when I would be free. We walked the streets in the chill of the evening, winding down back alleys, lingering at the river’s edge here and there. The banal pleasantries we exchanged almost had me regretting the decision to come before they gave way to a stretch of pleasant silence. We paused, our fingers brushed together as if by accident. When he spoke again I listened to the anxious timbre of his voice and watched his silhouette ripple in the water.

“Does it make you feel closer to God?” He’d asked me, dangerously close. I think I must have scoffed or laughed reflexively.

“Does all your studying and prayer?” I returned and met his eyes sharply, eager to see his reaction. The hair on the back of my neck prickled as if from static, like the anticipation of a coming storm. He faltered. Maybe he couldn’t find the words. Maybe he was having second thoughts. But, when I pulled him into a kiss, our lips didn’t part until he had to gasp for breath.

He was a deacon, well into his training. Orphaned and grown up in the church, it was all he’d known. I was curious about a life so different and yet so parallel to my own. The circles I ran in, when I did, were humanists at the time. Mostly faux intellectuals aspiring to or clutching at the edges of aristocracy. I thought of the deacon as a change of pace. I found him amusing and endearing and surprisingly quick-witted even as he bristled with a hesitating, nervous kind of energy. He was curiously unassuming, too, utterly lacking in the kind of ambition I’d seen in other supposedly pious men.

He was wrapped up in the poetry of the words he studied and I liked to watch him speak, pausing and getting lost searching for just the right phrase. Something else lay just beneath the surface, something I could barely catch a glimpse of in the way he would wince and avert his gaze, the crinkle at the corner of his eyes that spoke of a deep suffering. Suffering I instinctively wanted to draw out of him, though I couldn’t have said if it was with the intention of mending or deepening it.

Between our respective work we found plenty of creative excuses to be together. I think he told someone he was teaching me Latin at some point. I learned a few little prayers to keep up the show, though I did get a good ribbing for it by the few who knew me better.

I liked the dizzy exhilaration of it, getting swept up in all those intense emotions, drowning out racing thoughts with crushing waves of sensation. And, while I might have prodded him to be more reckless, it didn’t take much. After all, how many years had he spent being quiet and obedient and pinned to the ground by would-be mentors and so-called guardians? All for the service of some petty little god that was less than nothing in broad view of things.

Slowly at first, then, all at once, he discovered the tethers that held him to the church were all but imaginary. I would drag my nails over his skin and he would gasp heresy, breath hot against my ear. I doubt I have to tell you what a thrill it is to be the reason someone is swayed from their faith.

I would watch his mind turn over novel concepts behind the sparkling grey of his eyes, push my fingers through his dark hair and find a strand or two of silver he was still too young for. I liked to tease him, still fumbling at obvious insecurities then, no real understanding for the way I grasped clumsily at his trepidation beyond the fact that it felt natural, felt right. He would look at me, so puzzled, and I would laugh. As caught off balance as he was, he would laugh too.

We don’t deal in happiness, but we’re not ignorant to the negative space around the substance of our work. Maybe that kind of contrast is important, more for context than anything. Is the sharp, instinctual solipsism of terror not all the more biting for the knowledge that there could be softer times? Are the depths of despair not all the deeper for a glimpse of fleeting hope, however small and inconsequential? I know you loathe that kind of talk, but I like to think it’s all part of a bigger picture.

I’m not sure when I realized that wasn’t what I wanted. Or, not all that I wanted. That his love alone was not enough. I wanted him to share my vision, to know the heights and depths I had discovered, to find peace and rapture, clarity and purpose in the endless blue oblivion as I had. Affection is such a trivial thing, Peter, but how could it matter even that most miniscule amount if you can’t share what is the most singular truth of your existence? I thought I could accomplish that, that it would be a simple thing. Hubris has always given me trouble.

I do remember exactly when I realized I would have to show him. My back was achingly cold against the stone of the balustrade. I had goaded him into staying out late with me, and then late had begun to turn into early. My head tipped back, staring up at the blessedly clear sky above the balcony, his teeth at my collarbone. I could see the first blush of dawn washing into the void, Polaris twinkling defiantly as the first rays of sunlight bled in. I felt a wave of vertigo wash over me, a falling sensation, and he must have felt it too because he pulled back in shock. It was gone as quickly as it had come, but I savored the way my heart raced in its aftermath.

The look of stunned terror on his face, eyes wide, mouth agape, skin blanched with fear: it was enough that I was utterly enraptured. I tried not to look amused, or hungry. At the time it was new enough that I was surprised by it, but the hunger was there. It took him a moment to catch his breath and calm his shaking enough to come to his senses and insist we go back inside.

I made it my commitment to edify him after that. For his part, he was a devoted student. He’d had practice at that. He listened, rapt, enamored, hanging on my every word. I was a fool then, of course, and enough of a novice that I hardly understood the beginning of it myself. I thought I could explain it that way, in soaring metaphor and a flourish of description. I imagined that with enough charisma, with the right cadence, with a perfectly balanced rhetoric, I would be able to convey that singular perspective to him that I was so impassioned to share.

It would be an ambitious undertaking now, centuries of understanding behind me, lifetimes of honing the fine instrument of language. There wasn’t much hope for success then.

I watched his face closely, searched for a spark of understanding behind his eyes, eager to see tense concern and concentration give way to the bliss of realization. Brimming with desperate affection, he entirely missed the point. He kept insisting on my significance, that I was his sun and moon and stars. Eventually, I snapped at him.

I didn’t have the sympathy to see him for what he was—a fool in love—and in the heat of the moment I didn’t have the patience to be flattered by his words either. My exact reply is lost to me now, but it was something cruel and biting and he crumpled at it in a way that made me feel like I could crush him so easily. I think that frightened me at first, and there was knowledge, too, mixed with that fear. Knowledge that it was something beyond myself, beyond my meager realm of control. I hadn’t had much experience with that sort of conflict then, and I stormed off, confused and irritable. I poured myself back into my work and the soothing indifference of each azure brushstroke.

I felt so comforted by the assurance of my own insignificance. I was so small and my troubles were so small and the universe at large not only didn’t care, but couldn’t even possibly acknowledge such a tiny, infinitesimal, speck. For a brief moment I thought that would be the end of it, that I’d learned my lesson, that I would know better in the future.

He came to me days later, sleepless and distraught and promising all of the things that a young lover will promise when they are as hopeless as he was. My interest was piqued enough at his wretchedness that I accepted it. I think part of me knew then that there had been a shift toward that corrupted type of love. A few years on and I might have known better, might have even cut things off there in one way or another, but I’m sure I’m being too generous in hindsight. Curiosity’s a hard one to resist, but regret is a young man’s folly, and I simply wasn’t ready to let go. I was still sentimental and naive and deeply fascinated by this boy who looked at me with the same sublime devotion that I gave the heavens.

As unlike me as it was, I made an effort to slow down for him after that, to give him the time and space to reach his own conclusions. I was ignorant, but I had some sense that these things could not be managed with brute force.

I also did my best to put out of my mind the fact that, regardless of my intentions, our little tryst would come to an end eventually. I wasn’t as aware as I am now of how truly fleeting a human life can be, but I knew the nature of our circumstances. I would be joining Tentoretto back up north in Venice when we were finished with our work. Alessandro would go wherever the church sent him when he was ordained. As illusory as choice and control always were, I found myself feeling resentful of that helplessness in a way I hadn’t since I had been a child.

I could say my work suffered, or that I was distracted from my service, but that wouldn’t be quite true. I hid a few of the uglier details from Alessandro, of course. I didn’t tell him about the time I spent lingering around bridges and construction sites hoping for accidents. I didn’t share with him about whispering into the ears of parishioners as they stared up in awe at the peaked archways and graceful buttresses of the church, about the hunger.

But, even as entangled as we became, there was always an acute awareness in me of how insignificant all of those burning feelings were, a soft melody playing at the back of my mind as if I knew on some level just how temporary it all was. A great confluence of dread and anticipation sat cold and heavy in my stomach: something was coming that was inevitable, unstoppable, and beyond me in every sense. The real feat was probably how short sighted I managed to be in spite of it all.

It wasn’t terribly out of the ordinary when he said he had a surprise for me. We’d built a fair portion of our relationship, what of it there was, on thrill seeking and risk and chasing a horizon of new experience. I had every expectation to be delighted when he led me down a few unfamiliar alleyways, insisted that I close my eyes as he pulled me into a cramped little entrance, and then up stairs and stairs and stairs. I was secretly impressed when I asked and he refused to tell me what he was up to. He’d become more assertive, and I took pride in the fact as an effect of my influence.

When I felt the cool wind whip around us and Alessandro told me to open my eyes, we were at the top of Brunelleschi's dome. His arms were around me as I looked out over the sprawling city, the comforting stretch of horizon, the faded blue of the distant mountains. I felt like we were so close, that he must understand. He was busy being anxious, asking how I liked it, but I just smiled as I pulled away. I told him I had something to show him in return. He looked so worried as I pulled myself over the railing to the ledge beyond, but took my hand to follow anyway. He was all trembling nerves and rightfully terrified that a stiff gust of wind could come at any moment and sweep us off the precipice.

I told him to trust me, and his eyes stayed locked on mine as I stepped back into the waiting arms of the vast, unfeeling, oblivion. It must have been a fraction of a second, but it felt endless, watching the horror twist onto his face, feeling his fingers pulled away from mine, the air ripped from his lungs in a shriek of panic.

I’m not sure how long I fell then, but even speculating would be nonsensical. That’s never how any of it really works. When I woke up in my bed, alone, and half stumbled to the window, I felt the most curious mixture of satisfaction and that same lingering dread, like a familiar, comforting dizziness. I pressed my palms into the cold, rough, stone of the sill and tried to will away the ache in my chest that swelled, and churned, but wouldn’t break into a sob on my lips.

It had been raining for a week and a half. Our painting had been stalled and they hadn’t even noticed my absence. Eventually, someone from the church did come around asking if I’d seen Alessandro. We had been so close after all. It wasn’t until weeks later that they found his body, mangled and twisted, but recognizable. I’m still unsure whether it’s a blessing that they ruled it an accident rather than a suicide. A pleasant funeral isn’t something I’ve ever considered much of a recompense.

If anything it helped my work, though. I had a great deal to think about, and the painting allowed for that. Then, when I eventually felt like it was time to move on, I found even that was easy to let go of. As much as I had traveled for my work, Italy had begun to feel so small, and I wanted to see for myself just how big the world might be.

There’s always work on a boat for an unfettered young man with a strong back, as you know, and I took to the sea as well as you might expect. Maybe you would have liked one of those stories better. I know I would have, but this is less about pandering and more about equity, isn’t it?

Resentment is as petty and small as any other feeling, Peter, and I don’t think it benefits me to linger on it, but let’s not let this happen again.

Do dispose of this properly.

Regards,
S. Fairchild