Work Text:
Evviva l'arte! A man must die—
Well, one without money is a pariah,
Misery gnaws at the throat and strangles—
To die is just to die, like a dog, and meanwhile
Even if our life is worth nothing
Evviva l'arte!
Evviva l'arte! Gorge yourself,
You wretched philistines! We, the artists;
We, too poor even for stale bread,
We, so autumn leaves alike,
We shall cry: when everything's worth nothing
Evviva l'arte!
Evviva l'arte! Pride is our god,
Fame is the sun to us, kings with no land!
We can starve and die on the doorstep
But like the eagles with broken wings—
Go forth! What is precious if not glory?
Evviva l'arte!
Evviva l'arte! In our chests they burn
Fires that God himself ignited
So we look at the crowd with head held high
No laurels for the gold crown
Even if our life is worth nothing
Evviva l'arte!
The acrid scent of oil paint had been following him since he climbed up the staircase. The pungent turpentine spiced up the air as he passed by Zubayr’s always-bustling place, the wooden stairs creaking underfoot in a way more felt than heard. The safflower oil was the cherry on the top of Kaveh’s artistic cake, his own touch to the Koh-I-Noor’s linseed oil, seeping through the crevice under their door.
The world behind the closed door might stink and rot, but it was quiet in a comforting way. No chaotic sounds he couldn’t quite place, surrounding him and reeking from within him, the cars’ honking, the shopkeepers rudely advertising their products, a young woman throwing a tantrum over the mud spots on her white skirt, a driver shouting back a rapid torrent of slurs. The red of her blood and the black of the mud danced on her skirt in Alhaitham’s mind: the driver would follow her, annoyed by the flapper’s vulgarity, and she would die, another girl saying a word too many. Or the blood would be his—and she would become nothing but a bright flash and freshly printed first page of the local newspaper, her trial broadcast around the country.
And it was light; Alhaitham still remembered the strength of Kaveh’s grip as he held his hand, rambling about the skylights that let his paintings shine, shine and shimmer, and flow like the river of champagne we’ll drink one day.
The champagne didn’t flow—sometimes Kaveh was buying cheap rum from bootleggers, when another piece of coal didn’t turn out to be a diamond, bruising his fingers with shattered hopes.
Alas, the sunny rooms of their attic flat were a nursery for two men’s ambitions and disappointments. Alhaitham’s were stubborn and cold, prompting him to send his novels from publisher to publisher, refusing to change anything in the stories, in which every word and every comma was in the right place.
And Kaveh’s? His disappointment was like the insanity hidden within the walls of a madhouse, his tears the only diamonds in their home, the rough texture of his lips a testimony of his teeth breaking the delicate flesh over and over again.
His disappointment was his bared soul painted on the same canvas over and over again, when he heard the same answer over and over again: the world is gold now, Mr Kaveh. Paint it with smiles, not screams.
“How can I paint it with smiles, if screams are all I hear?” Kaveh asked him one night, waking them both up. His body shivered, covered by the bedsheets, drenched in sweat.
“Paint it however you want,” Alhaitham told him. “But listen to my voice, not to their screams.”
And now, Kaveh was there: the sun rays were dancing on his golden face and reflecting on the fresh paint on the canvas. He used only six red hairpins to contain his hair; a few longer strands were falling on his face anyway. He frowned, a wrinkle of irritation appearing on his nose, but he didn’t move his hand. His world was the canvas, it was the shades of red and black—dancing on his palette and his body. The desert sand of his shirt was scattered with falling sun, a smudge of fingers, trying to brush the hair off his face, hovering over Kaveh’s cheek. Even his bare feet were covered in dots. Kaveh was chaos incarnated: one sleeve rolled up to his elbow, another just slightly over his wrist, one suspender unclasped, his lips red as always when he painted, biting them without noticing.
Interrupting him made no sense. Instead, Alhaitham went to their cramped kitchen, set a kettle on the fire, and prepared his tea.
He spent a peaceful hour drinking it and reading a novel he borrowed from their local library. His huff, commenting on a cheap plot twist, was muffled by the loud sound of something hitting the floor.
“You’re home,” Kaveh reacted with surprise as his tired gaze rested on Alhaitham. “How long?”
“Barely an hour.”
“I’m sorry,” Kaveh sighed, an awkwardness shyly jerking his movements as he scratched his neck.
“Nothing to be sorry about. You were busy.”
“I wasn’t—” Kaveh halted, glancing at the painting.
Alhaitham took it as his cue to do the same.
Kaveh tried to find his place within the twisted norms shaped by geniuses, searching for his own perfect box carved by someone else. This time, he barely used colours other than red and black, depicting a hill at night in autumn, the branches of trees bare and twisted, their roots digging deep into the hill and bleeding into the ground. In the background, a modern city was built, the smog swirling in the sky, transforming human shapes. It might appear disturbing, as eerie and unapologetic, but Alhaitham knew that Kaveh was apologising with every stroke of his brush, every mix of paint giving birth to another twisted shade.
But as nobody else in the world—as nothing else—Kaveh was able to inspire Alhaitham. Kaveh saw his paintings on the walls of museums or enthusiasts’ houses, paying him in praise and enough decency to survive to the next paycheck (Alhaitham’s paycheck). As for Alhaitham… They were covers of books, of stories urgently typed into the outdated typewriter.
“It’s bad,” Kaveh said, nervously, after a long moment of silence. “A failure painted in red and black. A juxtaposition of the city’s stench and the ugliness of the human soul.”
“It isn’t worse than usual,” Alhaitham judged the painting, stinking and shining with novelty. “You’ve ruined your shirt.” His eyes didn’t even twitch in Kaveh’s direction, already knowing what he would see.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Kaveh murmured back and—less in spite, more in desperation—smudged the canvas with the sleeve of his shirt. The fabric, terribly missing its good days, had become a tragicomedy of what Kaveh described: a failure painted in red and black.
“Suit yourself,” Alhaitham sighed, barely shrugging.
It had been months—years, if he counted, which he did, pretending otherwise—since Kaveh truly cared. A seed that was supposed to be nothing but a sprout of creative anguish rotted deep inside his heart. It was a sickness without a cure—because Kaveh had been searching for a panacea, while penicillin was within his reach.
Their flat was quiet and light; it smelled like paint lingering on Kaveh’s skin. Alhaitham stepped closer to the canvas, raising his hand to follow the smudge in the opposite direction. The fog mixed with blood, a crime novel’s cover becoming nothing but a madman’s fantasy.
But Kaveh giggled. It was an odd sound, first a chuckle born deep in his throat, then a chirping light like the bubbles of champagne, promised years ago.
“Hm,” Alhaitham hummed, and it was enough for Kaveh; he leaned over Alhaitham’s back, his dirty hands wrapping him closely. Alhaitham sighed again. “I guess my shirt is ruined as well.”
“You’re not going anywhere, too,” Kaveh panted, his cheek nuzzling Alhaitham’s shoulder.
“A brilliant argument for the university’s administration,” Alhaitham huffed. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, I couldn’t go to work because my roommate said so.” He squeezed Kaveh’s cold hand. In his voice, there was no place for bitterness, nor sourness—but if he one day decided on ignoring Kaveh’s words because of their expected lack of sense, something between them would crack. Just delicate words and silent steps, and nothing else, where the raw honesty once lay.
“Call me a roommate in front of others one more time, and I’ll kill you. Then you won’t have to worry about leaving the building,” Kaveh mumbled, his kisses ghosting Alhaitham’s back.
“Domestic violence,” Alhaitham said with an unnecessary hint of satisfaction.
“I thought that domestic violence doesn’t sell well any more,” Kaveh chuckled, his hands growing warmer and warmer with every slow stroke of Alhaitham’s fingers.
“It will sell well for as long as people will be driven by it.”
“A terrifying concept.”
“The world is terrifying,” Alhaitham responded.
“I know.”
The silence fell between them, a soft cloud hugging them tightly, as two pairs of eyes were fixed on the painting. It screamed in Kaveh’s place because even when his voice got rough and hoarse, it couldn’t go silent.
“How much did you spend on paint?”
“I don’t want to know.”
“But you know. You don’t want to think.”
“Haitham.”
“I don’t ask to criticise you. I ask so we can make plans.”
Kaveh hesitated, but he knew that Alhaitham was telling the truth. What was the point of correcting Kaveh’s behaviour? As long as he wasn’t hurting himself—which he often did, his heart pumping sentimentality instead of blood in his widely open chest—Alhaitham didn’t care about stopping him from doing what he wanted. Not when the alternative was drowning him in the despair of the everyday world. He was an artist—they both were, as Kaveh often said, but Alhaitham searched for his meaning in palpable words, mysteries solved with logic, and caricatured portrayals of humanity’s flaws.
He knew his words as he knew his numbers, he knew the salvation for the next day just as well as he knew his characters’ motivations.
“This one won’t sell, will it?” Kaveh whispered.
“It is difficult for me to think of a buyer interested in a smudge of paint.”
“Have you even seen expressionism?”
Alhaitham scoffed. “Unfortunately.”
It shook Kaveh’s body in a soundless laugh. “You hate dadaism even more.”
“I hate hideous art.”
“A lie.”
“It’s not.”
“It is. Your stories are ugly.”
“Thank you very much, it’s their point.”
This time, a pure sound of joy left Kaveh’s mouth, beautiful and clear, like crisp water gushing from a waterfall. “See?”
Alhaitham grasped Kaveh’s hands and turned to him. The ugly circles under his eyes disappeared beneath a net of laughter lines, a soft flush covered his plump nose, his lower lip was bitten as Kaveh tried to contain the wild smile.
“Now I see,” Alhaitham murmured, taking in the breathtaking marvel of this man.
Kaveh squinted, but his narrowed eyes were twinkling with shy amusement. Sometimes he felt guilty—so guilty—finding joy and escape in banter, in raw compliments, in the beauty of the sunset or the carefree laughter of a child.
Alhaitham heard the questions Kaveh posed to himself: How can I laugh if the demons of my thoughts haunt me? Am I nothing but a counterfeit of pain if I’m able to find relief in the smallest of things?
But then Kaveh couldn’t find a place for himself, restless, frustrated, trying to push himself past his own limits and expectations. Both in art and in life; once, Alhaitham caught him sitting on a windowsill, his eyes and face red from tears.
“I cannot make myself care,” he told Alhaitham in a ragged voice, his eyes fixed on a couple of beggars, a woman and a little kid.
“You care in every minute of your life,” Alhaitham responded to those groundless accusations. “It’s exactly the reason you have no strength to care about yourself.”
Alhaitham couldn’t find a meaning in that, not for himself, at least. But it was fine; they weren’t supposed to be each other’s reflections, and even if, every mirror showed a little different, distorted truth.
Was his truth truer than Kaveh’s?
It was yet another question Alhaitham didn’t see a point in. Searching for some answers could take a lifetime and still leave the blind seeker with nothing.
“I need to take the shirt off,” were the first words to interrupt the lingering, gentle silence between them.
“Oh, right,” Kaveh reacted quickly. Not only did he release Alhaitham’s hands, but he undid the cuff links as well. “The paint?”
Alhaitham nodded, allowing Kaveh to take care of the shirt. The stimuli of wet paint were itching, but the way it had been drying on the fabric was even worse. Alhaitham could feel the hair on his forearms rough with the dry oil paint, and suddenly the shirt was sticking to his back as well, even if not a spot of paint marked it.
Alhaitham couldn’t understand why Kaveh found the smell and feeling of oil paint relaxing, calming, safe.
“You are beautiful,” Kaveh said, a little, sweet gasp leaving his lips as he undressed Alhaitham. Naturally, he was exaggerating—it was difficult to look objectively good when your life wasn’t the land of milk and honey. “I want to paint you,” he shared fiercely, his fingers skimming over Alhaitham’s chest.
“You did it many times.”
“No—yes, but,” Kaveh paused awkwardly, rubbing his face with his hand. “I want to paint you on you.”
Alhaitham took a moment to consider it; he didn’t need more explanation or his own surprised reactions. After all, it was Kaveh; what else could he mean if not using Alhaitham’s body as a canvas? If the feeling of paint on his shirt itched and was unpleasant, it would be even worse on his bare skin.
“I do rather value my life. Have you ever heard about lead poisoning?” Alhaitham questioned Kaveh’s sanity, crossing his arms over his chest.
Kaveh dared to sigh deeply—it was difficult to say whether to comment on the hidden body or Alhaitham’s concerns.
“Yes, yes, but it’s not caused by art supplies, Haitham, but industrial paint,” Kaveh, naturally, had to twist reality to suit his own vision. “And even if!” And then he had to find a counterargument. “You would be dead already, considering all of this.” In an exuberant gesture, Kaveh tried to show everything in the room: the still-drying paintings, the sliding trays, bottles of turpentine and jars of oils.
“Let’s assume this argument makes sense—what about money, Kaveh?” Alhaitham tilted his head, watching Kaveh carefully.
Naturally, the purpose wasn’t to make Kaveh feel bad about himself. It was just a very valid concern, an issue even more important as—as they both agreed—the new painting wouldn’t find a buyer. Perhaps it could find an artistic soul with enough money to cover at least the cost of materials, but two smudges of their hands completely destroyed the painting’s poor odds.
No matter what Alhaitham’s intentions were, a cloud of shame surrounded Kaveh. Money, yes. Money was always a problem, gnawing at them in every aspect of their lives, goading them into bad decisions and drowning them in regrets. A charm of being an artist, as Kaveh once said, bitter that one of his friends took a government gig, swimming in a shiny pool of mora. Kaveh breathed art, Alhaitham admitted that, but he couldn’t sell his soul for the restrictions that came from propaganda art, even for the price of prosperity and picture-perfect happiness.
“So?” Alhaitham raised his brows, waiting for the answer.
They always provoked each other to find a solution.
“I won’t use the fresh paint. Just from the painting.” To show what he meant, Kaveh smeared the paint over the canvas with his own fingers. “But these colours are not enough. Wait!”
In a maddening chaos, Kaveh grinned, reaching for one of the still fresh paintings leaning over the wall. “Here, we have a nice touch of green and grey.”
“Are you really planning to paint me?” Alhaitham couldn’t help but offer a crooked smile, finding it quite amusing.
“Yes. No! Perhaps? Maybe just your soul.” Kaveh shrugged, glancing behind his back as he gathered the canvases.
“I’m surprised you don’t say my soul is black.” Alhaitham smirked, relishing in this half-exasperated, half-amused expression.
“Black like coffee,” Kaveh added, leading Alhaitham to lie on the floor. “Bitter, dark, and reflecting the beauty of his world.”
Alhaitham didn’t feel the need to respond to that. Kaveh perceived the world in his own way, reflected in a cup of coffee, or perhaps not—it didn’t matter. It seemed like an easy way to escape this daily misery, to lie on the cold planks, twitching involuntarily under Kaveh’s slick fingers. The quiet comfort of the room was broken by Kaveh’s calm exhales as his fingers traced shapes on Alhaitham’s chest. Kaveh could say whatever he wished—blinded by this affection that helped him see the world clearly, yet tinged with sentiment—but Alhaitham knew he wasn’t in his best shape.
When the war reshaped the world, everything changed; Kaveh returned with nightmares that haunted his days, Alhaitham came back with grey hair, unable to fit into a role that was no longer his. They settled in the impoverished district, far from the Akademiya for his own comfort, forcing him to travel in crowded trains, squeezed between sweating, noisy people. Losing weight as they were short on mora was quite convenient.
Kaveh touched him with reverence, as if he were still perfect, the masterpiece he had called him in the days gone by, with cheeks burning but eyes soaring as well. Touch after touch, he covered Alhaitham’s skin in the unpleasant oil paint, pushing him deeper into his being, making him less and less present in his body. It was a nightmare of sensations, stimuli, the toxic smell, and off-putting texture.
“You can open your eyes, Haitham,” Kaveh whispered.
Prying his eyelids open meant being present, aware of his body—yet it also meant being aware of Kaveh; of his tender, sheepish smile, of his bright, burning eyes, of his fingers coated in teal and grey, his image of Alhaitham’s soul. They had dipped into it many times before, pushing through all the thorns and traps Alhaitham had set along the way. If someone was stubborn enough to conquer it, it was Kaveh— the Sisyphus of the modern world, rolling the boulder of his dreams and expectations.
Alhaitham leaned on his hands, trying to look down, but Kaveh immediately pressed his hand to Alhaitham’s shoulder. “Not yet. It’s not ready.”
“Your new masterpiece?” Alhaitham mocked him in his distant voice.
“Old and new—renewed.” Kaveh genuinely pondered his words, humming quietly. “It’s not a terrible idea.”
“I fear to ask for details.”
“Oh, shut up, you—” Kaveh swallowed the insult and laughed. “Do we still have film in the camera?” Alhaitham nodded. “Then let me take a picture of you. Art inside art, a truly novel approach.”
“What will come next? Do you plan to sell your roommate’s half-naked pictures?”
“Oh, calm down. You are a model, not a person—just a vivid reflection of all the feelings scattered across the viewer’s mind.”
Alhaitham sighed, no less sceptical. “I have doubts it works like that with photographs, Kaveh.”
“It will,” Kaveh insisted. “One day, the art won’t be seen only as paint on canvas—but now, don’t interrupt the artist.”
It was all he could do—therefore, they both sank into their own worlds: Kaveh—the artist, and Alhaitham—the overwhelmed boy hiding deep inside his adult body. What made Alhaitham twitch and pull him back into the hurtful arms of reality was Kaveh’s fingers unfastening his trousers.
“Kaveh,” Alhaitham scoffed, clenching his jaw. “Do you intend to sell naked photographs of your roommate?”
“No.” Kaveh, in sheer audacity, dared to stare at Alhaitham as if he were out of his mind. “I just want to touch you. Every inch of you.”
“Let me undress myself. It’s enough you’ve ruined my shirt.”
When Kaveh beamed, Alhaitham couldn’t see it as a loss for him.
Kaveh’s warm fingers followed, unstopped. They grazed his hipbones, the Adonis belt, skimmed across his inner thighs. They left goosebumps on the exposed, soft flesh—goosebumps and art, the result of Kaveh’s vivid imagination.
Kaveh’s oiled touch reached closer and closer to his groin.
“Relax,” Kaveh spoke, tracing circles with the pigments of Alhaitham’s soul.
“I’m unable to relax when you plan to give my penis lead poisoning,” Alhaitham retorted matter-of-factly.
“Why is your cock more valuable than the rest of your body?” Kaveh murmured, clearly offended.
“Basic hygiene. I would protest to you painting my lips, too.”
Kaveh looked utterly stunned, a true masterpiece of conflicting emotions carved onto his striking face. His eyes gleamed, his lips parted slightly. Then, a gentle, incredulous chuckle escaped him along with a warm exhale.
No words were spoken; both of them left in the middle of domestic nothingness, alone but never lonely. Kaveh painted him—with fingers and oil paint, with lips and love, reaching where he didn’t dare to touch him with art.
Kaveh said he wished to paint Alhaitham’s soul, but he achieved something different—he replicated his own soul, using Alhaitham’s colours—grey and teal—hidden deep inside Kaveh.
Alongside his naïve dreams, beside the depths of his suffering.
That was the final touch that helped Alhaitham relax.
The click of their old, rented—and never given back—camera brought him to the present, to Kaveh, who was a living being made of flesh and bones, not teal and grey of gentle kisses and lethal empathy.
“Are you satisfied?” Alhaitham asked because—Kaveh and his persuasion be damned—he, too, was an artist and knew that the feeling of completion often meant more than the process.
“Hm. Yes. Surprisingly, considering it’s—” He gestured dramatically. “Well, you.”
“How amusing,” Alhaitham sighed. Kaveh’s smile was art itself. “We need to have a bath.”
“A bath…” Kaveh said, dreaming.
“No, not a bath,” Alhaitham repeated in similar intonation. “A cold bath and a lot of scrubbing. I indulged you. Now I plan to indulge myself in relaxing within my own body.”
“You’re boring.”
“You’re insane.”
“Better than boring.”
“Definitely, according to the staff of madhouses.”
“Take your cold bath, then, I’m going to Nilou. She will let me take a warm bath. Last time, she even gave me padisarah petals.”
“Are you using our neighbour’s lack of strong will for your costly baths?”
“It’s not her good heart,” without a blink, Kaveh translated Alhaitham’s words into Kavehish. “It’s my charm.”
“I highly doubt it. Try it on someone else, then.”
Kaveh froze, debating with himself. “Like you?”
Alhaitham sighed. “I’m certain I just told you that it doesn’t—” Kaveh muffled the words with his lips. It was a sweet, soft kiss. Naturally, it hadn’t changed Alhaitham’s opinion; it simply lost its importance. “Like me,” Alhaitham sighed, as if defeated.
“I won.”
“It wasn’t a—”
But before Alhaitham could finish, Kaveh was gone, cowardly refusing a rematch of wit—or perhaps just stubbornness.