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“You dropped this.”
Artem turned, book still in hand. Standing behind him was a teenage boy, almost as tall as he was, holding out a piece of paper. Artem recognised it as a note he had slipped into the pocket of his coat earlier—or so he had thought. It contained a list of places he had planned to visit today.
“Thank you,” Artem said awkwardly, accepting the paper. His English was serviceable and his vocabulary a credit to his diligent study and extensive reading, and yet he remained conscious of his accent.
His reply, however, made the boy’s face light up. “Are you from Stellis?”
“…yes?”
“Me too.” The language switch was done rapidly and with so much ease than Artem almost missed it. Now that he was listening more closely, he could hear it in the boy’s voice, the way he shaped his vowels and carried his sibilants. Traces of home. “Here for sightseeing?”
“Ah… yes.” He managed a tentative smile. “More or less.”
“You’re in for a real treat. At least that’s what I think. Hey, why don’t you let me show you around?”
“Thank you, but it’s alright,” Artem declined politely and turned around to resume his perusal of the old tomes on the shelves in front of him, intent to put an end to the conversation.
“A lone tourist is often a target for crime, don’t you know?” Instead of taking the hint, the stranger came closer, now standing beside him. “There are bad people everywhere.”
“How do I know that you’re not one of them?”
The boy laid a hand on his own chest, feigning hurt. “Do I look like a bad guy? Really? Me?”
Artem couldn't help a twitch of a smile. “I’m sure you don’t want to spend your day showing a random tourist around.”
“But you’re not a random tourist,” came the quick rejoinder. “You’re from Stellis and… and I’d love to talk to you. If you don’t mind.”
Artem hesitated. He had heard enough cautionary tales about the many ways a lone tourist could end up in an unpleasant situation merely from talking to strangers in a foreign country. That said, something in him could not help but feel sorry for this boy, alone in a country not his own. He obviously came from money. His outfit, though casual, was of the finest quality, and so was the bag slung over his back. Most likely he was a student who simply wished for the company of someone from home.
Artem made his decision. “Alright, if you insist.”
A blinding smile greeted his acceptance. “So what’s your name?” the boy asked, falling in step next to him as they made their way down the aisle between rows of old volumes.
There was a pause as Artem considered the pros and cons of sharing his actual name to someone who was, for all intents and purposes, a stranger. “Artem,” he finally said, seeing no real harm in it. “And yours?”
“Uh… Vincent?”
Artem narrowed his eyes. “Is that your real name?”
“No,” ‘Vincent’ admitted rather guiltily. “But my favourite painter is Van Gogh, so… maybe I just wanna be him for one day. Humour me?”
“Didn’t Van Gogh commit suicide?”
A pout. “You’re not gonna ruin this for me.”
Artem suppressed a smile. “I wasn’t trying to.”
“He’s a great painter, though,” Vincent continued with a regretful sigh. “His style is really something else.”
“Are you here to study art?”
“That obvious?”
“You’re carrying a sketchbook,” Artem replied, looking pointedly at the boy’s bag and the tip of a sketchbook peeking out of the zipper’s gap.
“Right.” Vincent shot him a sheepish smile. “But to answer your question, not exactly. Let’s just say that I’m still trying to decide if I should study art. An aunt of mine lives here in Florence, so I’ve been spending the summer here. Visiting schools and looking at paintings, sculptures, that kind of stuff.”
“Ah.” The offer to show him around began to make more sense. “Then you must have some knowledge on the subject.”
Vincent grinned. “We’ll see. Shall we get going?”
–
They spent the better part of the morning going from museum to museum, most of which Artem had never even heard of. Vincent was determined to stay away from famous tourist spots, leading the way, instead, via less trodden paths, toward less celebrated destinations. Smaller though they might be, he explained along the way, they housed no less charming collections than their more famous brethren.
Whatever hesitation Artem might have felt at the start of this adventure disappeared once he stepped into their first stop: not much bigger than a private residence but with walls full of paintings and drawings, the rooms filled with antique furniture, beautiful porcelain, and suits of armour. The next hosted a different array of collection but no less fascinating. And the next.
Artem found himself immersed in colours and lights, outlines and designs. Sometimes Vincent would drop a titbit or two in his ear about this or that work of art. His range of knowledge was impressive, especially considering his age, and Artem found himself listening with a blend of amusement and admiration. He recognised passion when he saw one. It lent the boy’s face a different kind of liveliness, as if it were lit up from within.
At noon, Vincent dragged him to an early lunch in a trattoria. The place was a bit on the small side but bright and cheerful, more than half of the tables filled with locals instead of tourists. The proprietor knew Vincent by sight and soon they were talking comfortably in Italian. She smiled at Artem and ushered them to an empty table by a window looking out on the street, an array of flower pots sitting on the sill.
Some time later, between plates of pasta, arugula salad, and slices of prosciutto, Vincent asked, “Can I draw you?”
Artem looked up from his plate, surprised. “You want to draw me?”
“Very much, but only if you don’t mind.”
“Draw as in… you mean as a practice?”
Vincent waved his fork. “Sure, as a practice. I won’t show it to other people, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Artem frowned. “But why would you want to draw me?”
“Why?” Vincent raised an eyebrow. “You mean, other than the fact that you’re one of the most beautiful human beings I’ve ever met?”
Heat rose to Artem’s face as easily as it always had when a compliment caught him off-guard. “I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Excuse me, but I’m the one with the artistic eye between the two of us, so I think we’ll have to go with my opinion.”
Artem couldn’t help a laugh at that. “I admit my ignorance. Still.”
Vincent sighed. “Isn’t it enough if I say I just want to draw you? I really don’t have any ulterior motive. Do I look that suspicious?”
“It’s not that.” Artem bit his lip. Perhaps it did seem absurd to hesitate over such a small favour, but as someone who put the highest value in privacy, he couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable. That said, he couldn’t see any real harm in the request either.
“Only as a practice?” he finally asked after mulling over the idea some more.
“Promise. Heart crossed and all that.”
“Alright, then,” Artem agreed with a nod. “If that’s what you want.”
“Great.” Vincent clapped his hands together, clearly pleased. “And don’t worry, you don’t have to do anything. We’ll just continue with our tour and I’ll whip out my sketchbook every now and then. When inspiration strikes.”
“Spoken like a true artist.”
Vincent grinned. “If you say so.”
–
The afternoon progressed much in the same way, albeit in a slower pace. Instead of paintings, however, they found themselves focusing more on architecture, visiting cathedrals and chapels, admiring their vaulted ceilings and walls of frescoes, columns and statues, gilt and varnished.
Somewhere along the way, Vincent began to talk about himself. The first time he had visited Florence, back when he had been a kid. The moment he had fallen in love with art, through the works of the masters. The first time he had tried his hand on drawing, sketches at first, graphite, then charcoal. His experiments with colours.
There were also vague mentions of his family, scattered in the background, never with names. His rigid, highly structured childhood. His brother, ten years older and nothing short of faultless, and what a shadow that kind of perfection was to live under. Then his aunt—not exactly an aunt, more like a cousin three times removed or something, but we’re pretty close—her bohemian life in Florence, her freedom of thought, of mind set, of way of life.
Artem found himself looking at his new friend nearly as much as he did the beauty and history around them. Despite his youth, there was ease and confidence in everything Vincent did. Here was someone who knew that the world belonged to him. Every inch of him bespoke privilege, and the more time they spent together, the more obvious it became.
But then there was also the artist, who made his intermittent appearance throughout the tour. Every now and then, Vincent would stop in front of an object—a building, a statue, a fountain—and then he would reach for his sketchbook and start drawing. There was nothing such as finesse in what he did. He drew frantically, in sharp, quick strokes and hasty curves, as if his hands could barely keep up with what his eyes were seeing. During those moments, he would forget Artem’s presence entirely.
Other times, Artem would find the artist’s piercing gaze on him. Once, they took refuge in the dim interior of a small chapel from a spell of spring rain outside. He sat quietly in the cool quietness, surrounded by ancient stones and wispy echoes of chanted prayer. Vincent sat at the other end of the pew, watching him, pencil moving over paper.
“There can’t be enough light in here,” Artem heard himself speak softly.
“Hm? You mean to draw?” Vincent shot him a quick grin. “Maybe, but drawing is not always about light. Sometimes shadows can tell us more. Speaking of, has anyone ever told you how beautiful your bone structures are?”
Artem raised his eyebrows. “No, no one has ever commented on the beauty of my bones before,” he said dryly.
Vincent laughed, the sound startlingly loud in the vaulted space. “Good, I’m glad I’m the first.”
“Bone structures.” Artem shook his head, torn between wonder and amusement. “I suppose artists do see things differently.”
Vincent scoffed. “Believe me,” he declared, the expression on his face turning impish, “no one, artist or no, will have any difficulty seeing your beauty. Unless they don’t have eyes.”
Really, Artem had nothing to say to that.
–
They ended their tour in a café, at one corner of the many piazzas spread across the city. The sun was angling low in the sky, easing from daylight to evening, and the passing rain had left the air with a hint of coolness.
“You said you’re a lawyer,” Vincent spoke as they sat enjoying espresso and macchiato, with a plate of biscotti on the side. He still had his sketchbook open on his lap, propped on crossed legs, and every so often he would add a few strokes, now slow and careful instead of frenzied. “Does that mean you’ve always wanted to study law?”
The question caught Artem off guard. “I’m not sure,” he replied after a lengthy pause. “I guess it’s more a family tradition than anything else. It never really occurred to me to study anything else but law.”
Vincent glanced at him, eyes deep and penetrating. “Is tradition so important to you?”
“I honestly never thought about it.” Artem subsided into another stretch of pensive silence, deliberating his answer. “But I suppose, yes, it’s important to me.”
“You do look like one of them,” Vincent said with a sigh. “You know, the good sons.”
“And you are not?”
“I’m the prodigal one.” This admission came with a crooked smile and a wink. “My big brother is the good son. The perfect son, actually. Never disappoints my dad. Always lives up to the family expectations. Class president. School president. Graduated cum laude from the best university in the country.”
“The story sounds familiar.”
The smile turned into a laugh. “I’m sure. Yeah, it’s an absolute cliché, isn’t it? I bet that’s the story of your life too. But it’s true. He’s the eldest and heir to the family fortune—and all its responsibility too, of course. Uneasy the head that wears the crown, or something. But to be honest I’m glad that he is one of them, I mean the perfect sons. Because it means I won’t have to be one, to don the family mantle and all that.”
There was obviously more that Vincent had left unspoken, but Artem knew better than to pry. “Have you always wanted to be an artist?” he asked instead.
“Let’s see. Maybe since I was four?”
“Then it’s a childhood dream.”
That earned him a pout. “You make it sound so juvenile. Why not say a lifelong aspiration instead?”
Artem allowed himself a small smile in return. “Of course, my apologies. A lifelong aspiration, it is.”
There was an interval of silence, interrupted only by the sound of graphite on paper. Artem took a sip of his espresso. It’s strong, intense in a way that almost made him regret not choosing a less robust drink so late in the day.
“It’s not strictly true, you know,” Vincent spoke again a moment later. “They say I’ll still have to get into the family business, no matter how great and successful my brother is.”
Artem slanted him a look, unsure. Vincent was frowning, pencil poised above his sketchbook. “Besides, my family isn’t exactly the kind who’ll allow their sons to be artists,” he continued in a more subdued tone, as if speaking to himself.
“What does that mean?” Artem asked cautiously. “That you won’t be able to study art?”
“Study, maybe, but what’s the point of studying something if in the end I’ll still have to throw it away and join the business?”
Artem took a moment to consider his response. “Still. You know what you want to do and you have the means to do it. I’ll say you’re one of the lucky ones.”
“That doesn’t mean that I’m free to choose what I want to do.”
“Do you have to?”
Vincent looked at him, confused. “What do you mean?”
“Choose. Do you have to choose?”
“I’m not… Don’t I?”
Artem made no reply. He let the notion take root instead, watching as Vincent looked down at his drawing and frowned, clearly deep in thought.
“I’ve never thought about it like that,” he said slowly. “You mean, I can choose both?”
“Can’t you?”
Vincent shot him a wry smile. “You make it sound so easy.”
Artem cleared his throat. “I apologise, it wasn’t my intention. Of course juggling several things in life is hard, no matter who or what. But if you have the opportunity and the means, then maybe to give it a try is not the worst option.”
“Because at least I’ve tried,” Vincent mused, staring into the distance.
Artem bit his lip. Offering an advice always made him feel uncomfortable, and this to a stranger to boot. He knew practically nothing about Vincent other than what his eyes could observe in the past six hours or so—surely inadequate for the task.
Before he could apologise for his presumption, however, Vincent had emerged from his reverie. “You’re really a lawyer, aren’t you?” he said with a grin. “Always know what to say.”
“That doesn’t sound like a compliment,” Artem pointed out.
“But it can be one.” Vincent tapped the end of his drawing pencil on the table between them. “Alright, let me ask you something. Promise me you’ll answer honestly. What is your opinion of me?”
Artem stared, both surprised at the question and no little daunted. “I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer that. I don’t know you at all.”
“But that’s exactly why. The people around me, they already have their own preconceptions just because they know who I am—or at least they think they do. You don’t. That makes you unbiased.”
“I’m also a complete stranger who knows nothing about your situation or your mind set–”
“Doesn’t matter,” Vincent interrupted him with a careless wave of his hand. “I only ask for your general impression. Something that strikes you about me. But don’t say things like I’m nice or kind because those are totally non-answers.”
Artem gave him a wry look. “But what if I do think that you’re nice? Or kind?”
“Except you don’t,” Vincent shot back easily. “Because I’m neither. Trust me, no one will ever use the word ‘nice’ or ‘kind’ to describe me.”
Artem frowned. To hear Vincent speak about himself in that manner made him uneasy. That, more than anything else, finally convinced him to go along with Vincent’s whim and give him an answer, this unusual teenage boy with a pair of equally unusual violet eyes and such startling intensity in them.
“Just something that strikes me about you?”
“Anything.”
“Well, I think…” Artem paused, taking a deep breath. “I think you are made for this.”
“This?”
“This, here.” Artem cast his gaze around at the open space of the piazza, at the vast expanse of the blazing sky above. “It’s like you are made for this city. This place with all its history and beauty in its veins.”
Vincent blinked. Then an unexpected laugh came to his lips. “That’s funny.”
“What is?”
“Your saying that. Because my real name is a Roman name.”
“Really?” Artem found himself smiling in return. “That’s interesting. Almost like it’s meant to be.”
“Care to give it a guess?”
“Is it Julius?”
“No.”
“Cesare?”
“Wha– do I look like a poisoner to you?”
“Brutus?”
“Or a backstabber?”
“You don’t look like a Marcus Aurelius.”
“…well, for one, I don’t have a beard.”
“Quintus? Pompeius? Senecio Sosius Priscus?”
“Now you’re just making fun of me.”
Artem laughed; he couldn’t help it. The laughter simply bubbled up his throat and found flight once he had surrendered to the urge. It took him a moment to notice the expression on Vincent’s face.
“You’re so beautiful when you laugh, do you know that?” He sounded almost reverent.
Artem simply had to sigh at that. “You already got my permission to draw me,” he said in his driest voice. “There’s no need for more flatteries.”
“Haven’t you heard? It’s not flattery if it’s true.”
This time, he could no longer ignore the heat climbing to his cheeks. Incredible. He, the future star attorney of Stellis, made tongue-tied by a seventeen-year-old boy.
–
They were about to part ways when Vincent suddenly asked, face alight with hope, “May I kiss you?”
Artem shot him a look of pure disbelief. “No.”
“Why??”
“I don’t think I want to be arrested.”
“Come on, nobody will know.”
“I will know.”
Vincent sighed, a loud, exaggerated sound. “Why do you have to be so… ugh, whatever.” He opened his sketchbook and tore a page from it. “Will you accept this, then?”
Artem did, though not without some trepidation. As soon as he saw what Vincent had just given him, however, every other thought flew out of his head. It was a sketch of his profile seen from a right angle, of peace and contentment arrested in time. There was a half-smile on his face, a faint suggestion more than anything else, and yet just enough to convey the idea that it might break into a genuine smile soon.
Scribbled at the top left corner were two words: My Artemis.
Artem couldn’t even find it in him to protest about the nickname. “You really should pursue art,” he said instead, eyes tracing the confident strokes and softer lines, blending together to define the shape of his face.
“It’s just a sketch.” Vincent looked embarrassed but pleased. “Do you like it?”
“Very much. Thank you.”
“No, thank you,” Vincent corrected and made a small theatrical bow in his direction. “And I’ll show you my proper painting one day. I promise.”
Artem smiled. “I look forward to it.”
He did not expect Vincent to take a step closer, or to lean up, brushing a kiss on Artem’s cheek.
“Wait for me,” he grinned, eyes alight with purpose. “I’ll come and find you.”
End