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Fedya, I watched him ascend from this wretched Earth, a martyr for his blissful world. His sacredness pierced me, and even if for a meager measure of time, I felt uplifted, touched by grace and beauty, alive in my soul, thrilled to my core, wishing, only wishing, that I might live to see the intertwining of our souls in pursuit of our dreams.
But I saw him ignite.
My dear mortal martyr departed and immolated.
He always assured that God stood with him.
But where was God when I held his bloody hand?
In the mellow light of the moonlight, Nikolai extended his hand outwards as if he were endeavoring melancholically to grasp its simple luminosity. He had seen the moon many times. He had gazed upon its soft glow a number of instances beyond estimation. Yet its pale lambency evaded him entirely. He stared at his own fingers; they curled up, gliding to the palm of his hand. He was grasping for something. Nothing. Nothing.
There was nothing.
Fyodor had inflamed like a blazing Saint upon a burning cross; he had offered his wounded body up for God. His fiery farewell, he must have felt the tragicness of it all; he died without ever seeing his promise meet fruition. The dream he drank from. Surely, surely he wished to regard himself as an ideal. Surely, surely he felt betrayed by God. Surely, surely he felt forsaken, reduced to the beggar who comprehends not his plight. Or perhaps, in the final moment, he would have recognized his misdoing, his irredeemable flaw. His inability to trust another, to see the humanness in another, and to let hearts pulsate together. Perhaps he felt his heart beat somewhere else, in a foreign realm where only his glory permitted him to settle.
Nikolai’s cheeks remained unflooded; he shed not a violent tear. For how could he? It was unknown to him what he ought to feel in this most peculiar and most surreal of moments. Happiness? The man who had consumed his thoughts had rewritten his destiny; he who he had oriented all objectives towards, he who he yearned to kill to taste his long desired freedom, lay an ashen corpse right beside him. He was dead. This was what he wanted, yes? Or ought he feel sadness? Grisly, rocking, horrific sadness. Everything ended. Everything came crashing down; his entire life’s purpose dissipated; it burned with the flames of the grievous helicopter.
He wanted to refuse this was the end. Their finale. Their closing of the curtains.
HE HAD TO LIVE! THE FUN WAS JUST BEGINNING! THE FUTURE WAS JUST BEGINNING TO BLOOM! FYODOR HAD JUST COMPLETED THE FIRST OF MANY GAMES HE WISHED TO PLAY WITH HIM!
A voice broke him away from his inner, tumultuous thoughts, “You wanted to kill him, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” he answered blindly, without thinking. “I certainly did.” His eyes stared coldly at the remaining arm of Fyodor, which Dazai had just pulled from the smoldering ashes. Then he felt the thoughts drag him deeper into pondering. “No. I didn’t.” What did he want again? Fyodor. Fyodor needed to be alive so he could race towards his dreams and taste-oh! Lick the scepter of freedom! Wield it!
“No, you’re right,” he said, stretching his fingers out to grasp the imbrued hand. The hand, once a part of someone breathing. Once it gripped, pressed, snatched, held, touched, and stroked things of this world.
A part. A part of Fyodor.
To hold him like this, this miserable hand, was as if an act of betrayal of his self-declared Sainthood. Such holiness had been blemished, diminished, and desecrated. This wasn’t the light unshone upon the world. The world beat those souls who dared to reach towards the sky down on its cruel anvil. Thus, the snears, the bayonets, the horrid drives of daggers into the flesh spit fire, hammered down, and saw the rise—the forging of the ensanguined martyr hung upon the cross of humanity, rising up from the disgraceful swarms of a mendicant Earth, dirtied hands wishing to inundate the world with their inner miseries. Risen! Risen! Risen! High upon the cross, mocked, scorned, and trounced! Seen with the pale clouds and warmth of the sun above! The martyr hangs unforgivingly from where they had just sought their glory!
Nikolai knelt by the conflagrance of the ruins like a devout man kneeling before an altar. His eyes fixed on the heated steel.
Fyodor was burning.
His weak body was being overtaken by the destructive nature of flames. His skin was turning charred. His face would darken under the oppression of fire. His lungs, lungs which once filled with air each second, then exhaled, would dry and blaze. In the scalding hearth he was baking, his flesh was being devoured mercilessly. It would incinerate away the skin, leaving the muscular tissues, then those too would roast like willing kindle. Prisoner to fire. His hair would be enveloped, his heart would flicker as the dancing torch of light would dive into it, his bones would aphotize. His horrific error was going to rip his remains from the sanctity Nikolai felt a man such as him demanded with his mere existence.
Or did he feel that if he were the one to have killed him, he would never have had him perish like this? Was he feeling the acrimony of not being the one to have brought him his end? Did he feel the moment would have been more beautiful, more joyous, the real magnificent bite of freedom if he had done it?
This is what he wanted, right?
Right?
Nikolai lifted the severed hand to his face. Traces of warmth lingered within, yet they were dissipating quickly. His blood, the testament of life, would soon chill.
Anon, this hand shall be cold, and I’ll never feel its warmth again.
His nose scrunched up at the thought of that. That Fyodor had not more time, not more hours, not more days, nothing, nothing more. He was witnessing the rapid decay of a Saintly figure. That soon the warmth of his blood would fade away and glaciate would his life, and glaciate would Nikolai’s memory of him. He didn’t want to lose it, however. He didn’t want to lose anything, but as the warmth slipped away, so did his raison d’être.
Should he kill himself? Take his life? What was there left to do? What was there left to become? He clutched the hand tighter in hopes that the closer proximity of Fyodor would yield him a coveted truth. Yet he was only closer with his own despair. Freedom! Freedom! Now! He mustn’t lose his guiding totem! What was this all about, after all? Freedom. Was he free? Was he liberated?
He continued kneeling, watching the flames ravage further while the acrid smoke flooded his nostrils. If this was freedom, then he surely must have been mistaken about everything. He felt shackled by the weight of life. It crawled towards him like a mad beast, maliciously inquiring if he had anything to awaken for. He leaned his cheek gently against the hand. That was all. That was all he had his mind set on. He had been awakening, sleeping, awakening, sleeping, and awakening again, all for the thrill of a promise twisted up entirely with an enigmatic man. Fyodor. The Martyr.
That wasn’t freedom, then? It never was, was it? Emptiness shot through his being and blinded his consciousness. He clamped his eyes shut, wishing to rid himself of this sorrow. Fyodor’s death had not succeeded in what he had deluded himself all this time in believing it would. Nothing had changed. Fyodor’s death had not torn him away from emotion as he always imagined it would.
Nikolai remembered those wild daydreams of mad grandeur that he visualized even in his darkest hours, for they lifted him back into the dreamy lightness of life. He often imagined it was Fyodor’s hands too that softly gripped his and pulled him up towards his heavenly aura. It was an honor to touch such hands in both fantasy and reality—hands of lethality, hands of inspiration, hands of a zealot. Nikolai always dreamed of his freedom and the glorious day it would be when it would be bestowed upon him! He imagined it as if the sun’s light would stream beautifully down through the clouds and he would develop wings! A miraculous plumage to let him soar high above the green Earth! Free! Free! Free! A choir! A choir would sing to him mellifluous melodies, skalds of his poetic liberation! The people of the world, still shackled, would let their stares follow him with awe. He would be fascinating to them—a revolutionary creature of much intrigue!
In the moment he so believed would grant him his deliverance, he could only clutch what he felt imprisoned him tighter. Why did he yearn for enslavement? No. He yearned for his happiness—to cradle it and watch it bloom. He wanted to feel the exhilaration of his pledge to himself. He had kept himself breathing for dastardly emotion, a dream unreachable, but if all his qualms could be placed upon Fyodor, suddenly his existential agony had a recourse for resolution. In his quest to dispel feeling, he had stitched himself to it like a drug required for survival. Truthfully, passion had birthed his pursuit; hence, he could never break the chains off him.
Once born, forever enslaved.
Suddenly, the emptiness morphed gut-wrenchingly, tearing through his distressed heart, into a semblance of a notion of desirable or lamentable. Lamentable it was. Tears built in his eyes, but he pressed to keep them restrained a little longer. Nikolai felt their release would signify his undoing. But try as he might, he had not any strength to resist his flight away from sentiment any longer. He began to sob madly. His wings of freedom lost their feathers one by one. As he harshly plummeted, the soft feathers drifted upwards towards the unchained heavens.
He fell.
He fell back to hellacious Earth.
Repugnant, grotty, and beastly.
Bloodied hands bloodying everything and everyone else.
Why couldn’t he flee it all? He felt as if he were a child again, laying curled up on the wooden floor, demanding a release from the intolerable weights of clammy human embrace. Yet he was putridly disgusted by his own humanity. Horrid. Fyodor must have been scrambling for an escape as well. Nikolai could not even begin to know if that marvelous man had found his. Fyodor must have felt restrained by his humanity all the same. The plight of a singular existence surely did haunt him, yes? He never did reveal it for it must have revolted him likewise. Dreadful repulsion would have tarnished his ideal and dragged him deeper into the deplorably pitiful flocks of humans who suffered and did not make any sense of it.
Fyodor had made sense of it, right? That is why all others were foolish to him. Covered in their nauseating grime, they cast their gazes of wonderment towards him as he reached for a celestial crown. Their gazes quickly turned to otherment, and soon followed their ignorant disdain. Nikolai was foolish to Fyodor, but he could never despise him for thinking this way. He had always felt that their disagreement was the origin of his enthrallment. Had Fyodor made sense of it? In the moment of his forsaking, had reason vanished in such a way he could not comprehend? Was his hubris so mighty that he felt he could know what was the divine mystery of all things? Nikolai would never know the truths he had possibly unlocked as they blazed away in the melancholic night.
Hubris. They had tried to defy everything but could not defy themselves.
Nikolai moved the hand away from himself. He stared at it with gleaming eyes. In a pull of emotion, which he submitted himself to in this tragic nightfall, he mewled sadly, “I love you! Love transcends death! It is immortal! Fedya, you were right. I am a fool. I am a fool for not believing this!”
Perhaps it could be that he could drown away his love now that its tangibility would fade from his mind with time, but he felt an urge to reject such a proposed reality. He was far too swayed by his love. The thrill of it had altered his life’s path. He was never living for freedom. He was living for that feeling. Was he bound like a lonely beast to roam across the primitive world in search of it evermore?
Nikolai raised the bloody hand to his tear-soaked lips, placing a tender kiss upon the bandaged flesh. He rested his lips there for a long many seconds, letting tears flow freely down his face.
I don’t know anything anymore. He thought with anguish. I only know what I feel. It is my most primal attribute. I cannot break free from it even after our denouement, which I recanted to myself as my proud usurpation against my bestowed humanity. I cannot make sense of anything anymore. I do not know what I want. What I wanted was once craved by every fiber of my being. Now I disavow it. Yet, also now, I want it! All I know is what I feel and what I know with everything inside me is…
Fedya, I know that I love you.
His wailing echoed into the pale moonlight. A lover’s cry freely released. His heart beat with love. His mind sang of love. His spirit was invigorated with love as it rocked his fragile being. He crumpled onto the ground beneath the starry sky, holding the hand of that whom he trekked the Earth for, never wishing to let go.