Work Text:
letter sent on 18th of May, 1830
To the Caun Count of Montecristo,
I hope this letter finds you. Francesca says that is how letters begin. She is my teacher. She teaches me letters and words. I tell her I want to learn, so I can write to a friend. She said it is a good reason and will help me prak practice.
My hand moves slow. The letters do not stay in my head. Francesca says I must not be angry. She laughs and says, you can hold a knife, but not a pen? I tell her a knife does not slip. She laughs again.
The sea in Talamone is the same, the air is warm. I wake, I help Edoardo with the nets, we go to sea. I missed the smell, I missed the beach. I drink with the men at night. It’s the same, but different. I can’t explain.
I hope your well. Forgive my poor hand. I write soon.
Sins Sincrel Sincerely,
Jacopo
*
letter sent on 13th of July, 1830
To the Count of Montecristo,
I write again, as I said I would. Francesca says my hand is getting steadier. I still make mistakes, but not as many. She says I must have patience.
The money you gave to my family changed everything. I did not see it before. I had no time. I was with you already in Paris. But now, my sister wears new dresses, my mother has bought cloth for the house, and we have enough food to last the winter.
When I go to the market, I buy what I need without question. The merchants speak to me different. They offer their goods with respect; some still recon recognize me, so the prices are fair. They ask me where I’ve been all this time, of my boats, but I do not say much. It is strange; to be looked at with respect I had not before.
Even after six years, I still thank you, my friend.
Sincerely,
Jacopo
*
letter sent on 4th of September, 1830
To the Count of Montecristo,
My sister is to be married. Do you remember her? She was just a girl when you met her, and now I return and she has long hair and speaks as if she knows more than I. I told her the carpenter wants to marry only for the money, now that we have enough for another life, but she said I know nothing of love. Maybe she is right.
I have been in Firenze with her and my mother. They chose fabric and lace for the wedding, and I stood outside, speaking with local sellers. The men here take me for a nobleman, perhaps because I still dress as I did in Marseille, so they do not question my offers. If they think me rich, they will pay me as if I am. So I let them.
Firenze is loud. It smells of bread and flowers. It is a place for men of means, men who sit in cafés and speak of the world. I think you would like it here. They say Santa Maria del Fiore is most beautiful in spring. Perhaps I could take you there, when the time comes.
Italy is always waiting for you. And I, as well.
Sincerely,
Jacopo
*
letter sent on 24th of January, 1831
Count,
It has been some time since I last wrote to you. Life, it seems, has not been kind in these recent months. My mother fell ill in December; a pneumonia, said the doctor, that took her on the twenty-first, when she passed. My sister, as you can imagine, is distraught with grief, and she has no desire to marry anymore. The wedding is put off, perhaps forever.
I wish I had brighter news to send you. At last, the new year has come and with it, I pray, better days. I’m sure Marseille remains as delightful in winter as I once remember it.
Sincerely,
Jacopo
*
letter sent on 17th of February, 1831
Count,
Sleep is so hard to find these days. My thoughts race ceaselessly, and my heart feels heavy. It is as if there is someone lingering at my door, ever watching. At night, I take to the shore, letting the waves lull me to sleep; it works, sometimes. Yet on other nights, I sit on damp sand, and watch the sun break upon the horizon. I try to convince myself that if I stare long enough, I will see the coast of France—perhaps even see you. But the sea is vast, and land always seems far away.
I cannot lie—I miss Marseille. I miss Paris. The streets there, the noise of carriages, the clatter of hooves against cobblestones. I miss the familiar sights, the crowds, the smoke rising from the chimneys, how life moved swiftly and with purpose. And I miss our evenings at the opera, our time in the ballrooms, with myself standing in the corner and witnessing the workings of your plan unfold so precisely before my eyes, ever in awe. I yearn for that certainty again, more than I can bring myself to say.
Apologies for such a display of thoughts. Perhaps I shall come to visit you, if you’ll have me. With my mother gone, there is little to keep me here.
I still await your reply with eagerness.
Yours,
Jacopo
*
letter unsent
To Edmond,
I do not know why I persist in writing to you. Perhaps it is some kind of foolishness, born of a stubborn hope long since worn thin; or perhaps it is desperation all together, the last vestige of something within me that refuses to let go.
The days are starting to blend together, and I feel myself slipping deeper into the fog of a nameless sadness, with no beginning and no end. I cannot bear to sleep anymore; the nights stretch long and taut, pulling at me with an insistent grip
. I lie awake, watching the shadows on the walls shifting and bending themselves into the shape of your form—your broad shoulders, the strong line of your jaw, the curve of your hands resting on your lap. You stare at me, sharp and unblinking like an owl, and then vanish with the first light of dawn.
I cannot rid myself of the feeling that I have failed you somehow.
Yours,
Jacopo
*
letter unsent
To Edmond,
They say in Italy that when one dreams of another, it is because they are missed. If there is truth to such superstition, then you must haunt my every thought.
Last night, I saw you again, as vivid as any waking moment. You were seated at your table by the window, as you drank your tear with the glow of candlelight flickering against the walls. I watched you from the tangled sheets of your bed, my heart pulsing at the base of my throat. And then your hands were upon me—steady, insistent—curling at my waist, pressing me back against the headboard. I remember nothing but the ghost impression of your fingers searching for my skin, your lips gently tracing the shape of my collarbone, as though you were discovering me anew.
I awoke to find my pillow dampened with tears. I do not know what is taking hold of me. I cannot seem to escape you, no matter how I try.
Jacopo
*
letter unsent
I stumble through my waking hours and hear the rustle of your nightgown in the lapping of the waves, your sharp Jacopo when a dog barks in the distance, your scent lingering in the streets of Talamone when the city is adorned wtih feasts and flowers.
I have lost count of how many times I have dreamt of you now, your lips upon mine. How I wish you were here beside me, sleeping on the same cot. I think, perhaps, that I could rest, too.
Jacopo
*
letter sent on 3rd of April, 1831
Count,
I know not whether this letter shall ever reach your hands, but I feel compelled to write, if only to remind myself of the life I’ve abandoned for some time now. Italy is in utter turmoil— though you’ve surely read it in the papers— and people are finally waking to the call of revolution, rising against the rulers who have drained us of our sweat and blood, who have governed from their thrones with no care for our hunger, our suffering, or our lives.
It has been three months since I have seen the sea, since I last bid farewell to the shores of Talamone; the streets are no longer a welcoming place for men such as I. I move from one refuge to another, sheltered by the kindness of comrades who have dared to join me in this endless venture.
I have sworn myself to the cause, and there is no turning back now, no way to unmake the choices that have led me to this moment. Strangely, I do not find within myself the desire to retreat. Instead, I embrace this new life with a fervor I had not thought myself capable of feeling again. There is a kind of exhilaration in this constant urgency, in the certainty that my hands are no longer idle, that I am once more striving toward something far greater than myself.
Perhaps that is why I think of you—why, even now, I cannot rid myself of your memory. The flame that burns in my veins is the same that once burned in Paris, in Marseille, when I lived only to fulfill your every command, when I truly belonged to you . I hope you understand this; I hope you are aware that I have never once resented my choice. If your silence is borne of guilt, if you have refrained from writing only because you believe you have made me into something unworthy of salvation, then let me ease your conscience; there is not a single ounce of regret in my whole heart. I would make the same choice again and again, if it meant I could stand beside you once more, in this world or the next.
I suspect this will be my last letter for some time. The days ahead promise to be uncertain, and I do not know where fate shall lead me next. Until we'll meet again.
Yours truly,
Jacopo
*
letter sent on 26th of June, 1831
To Edmond Dantès, Count of Montecristo.
I would not have written were it not a matter of dire necessity, knowing well how unwelcome my words must be to you by now.
Three nights past, I was caught in the streets of Bologna and cast into a cell without charge. They will not grant me the dignity of a hearing and my sentence, I fear, is already decided.
If you still believe you owe me a debt for all that you have wrought upon my life these past six years—then I beg of you to lend your word, your name, and spare me from the fate that awaits me.
I am held in cell 4017.
My life rests in your hands, as it always has.
Yours, now and always,
Jacopo
*
letter sent on 1st of July, 1831
To the Count of Montecristo,
I do not yet know when the execution will be carried out. Guards tell us nothing, but I can only assume the King is still fighting to smother the uprisings in the cities; new prisoners are dragged in and led away every hour of the day.
You, of all men, must be aware what it is to be left in a cell. Time stretches agonizingly slow, and it rots as surely as the bread they throw at my feet. The dampness of stone seeps into my skin, into the very marrow of my bones, and no matter how brightly the July sun might burn beyond these walls, chills never seem to leave my body. I have faced death before, but this is something far crueler; I feel as if the weight of my own seclusion aged me beyond my years, and I am becoming lesser than a man.
I do not know whether my first letter ever reached you, nor if this one shall fare any better. But if it has, assure me I have not been forgotten.
Yours,
Jacopo
*
letter sent on 9th of July, 1831
To Edmond,
I fear that time has made us both strangers to one another, and I loathe you terribly for it. You gave me a life and then had the audacity to wretch it from my hands, cast me aside like all those who have crumbled beneath the weight of your mercy.
Do not tell me you are unaware of my condition. Do not tell me that my letters have been lost, that you have not read my pleas. You are the Count of Montecristo ; there is nothing in this world that escapes your notice, no prison whose walls you cannot breach, no man whose fate you cannot change.
Perhaps this silence is the worst punishment you could ever devised upon me. Is your regret so vast, your conscience so tormented, that you dare not face the consequences of your own making? To recoil, even, from the truth that it was your deliberate hand that set me onto this path, that shaped me into what I have ultimately become.
I wonder, if this is some grand design of yours planned to make me crawl through the wreckage of my own devotion, to force me to discover, at last, that I was once nothing more than a tool in your hand, a fool that simply mistook your favor for something otherworldly. Tell me, I beg you—how much lower must I sink before your wish is to be satisfied. Shall I scrape my knees upon the stones, press my forehead into the dirt, weep and wail for forgiveness like some forsaken wretch?
I have worn my soul thin against the walls of this cell, but I must not yield under the consumption that comes with waiting for salvation. If you mean to forsake me, then let it be a clean wound. If I am nothing to you now, then at least grant me the mercy of knowing it, so I may go to my death without hope.
Jacopo
*
letter unsent
To Edmond,
My mind is rippled with fever, my body trembles with exhaustion, and now you’ve grown into an unbidden presence in the dim recesses of my cell, just as you once haunted me in Talamone, when despair first took root into my soul. I call for you, I cry out, I curse you, I hurl my meagre bowl of snails and worms against the wall, but you keep still, unblinking.
Some nights, when the pain in my back is so sharp I cannot draw breath, my imagination betrays me enough to allow you to reach me. I feel your hand upon my brow, your fingers brushing against my hair, with the same grave tenderness that I longed for so many years. I close my eyes and yield to the illusion, let myself believe—just for a moment—that you have come at last, stretched beside me upon the same cold stone I use for a bed.
You say nothing; perhaps because I can no longer summon the sound of your voice, nor the way your tongue once shaped the syllables of my name into something firm and certain. It has slipped, faded like a threadbare tapestry left too long into the sun.
You have become a mere phantom of my mind; still, I find no solace in the hollow of your absence.
Jacopo
*
letter unsent
Another dream—again. I was in the square in Marseille, as I knelt before the guillotine, the air thick with the mingled stench of salt and the heavy, copper tang of crusted blood. And you were there, seated in the foremost row, gaze fixed upon me. I sought your eyes in a last act of desperation, to hold them—frantically—in my last breath upon this wretched earth; but your face was cast in long shadows, a veil, thick and suffocating, of unreachable nothingness. I am beginning to forget your eyes, just as I have forgotten your voice, as I have forgotten your face.
Then came the whistle of the blade, and I awoke, at last, with bile burning against my throat and choking. I vomited into the farthest corner of my cell, my body trembling with sickness, and you were there, again, still woven into the moth-eaten fabric of my fading memory.
I shall die, with you watching me from above.
J.
*
letter sent on 21st of July, 1831
[on the far left corner of the page] Ed-mond. Ed-mond. E-d-m-o-n-d. Edmond. E-d-m-o-n-d. Edmond. Edmond. Edmond. Edmond.
Forgive me for the bitterness of the words that stained my last letter. My mind is fraying at the edges, and despair makes a cruel poet out of every man.
I do not know how much time remains to me, still.
Jacopo
*
letter sent on 11st of August, 1831
To Edmond Dantès, Count of Montecristo.
I have been granted one final letter before my hanging at dawn tomorrow. If these words shall ever find you, then know that by the time they reach your hands, I will be long gone. Do not trouble yourself with sorrow—I have made my peace with the silence between us a long time before this day, and I bear no resentment. Whatever weight you believe you have placed upon me, whatever sense of guilt lingers in your fearless heart, absolution is what I offer you, if it is absolution that you seek.
If nothing else, allow me this—to speak freely, at last, without the weight of shame pressing its hand upon my throat. I love you, Edmond. With all that remains of myself, with all that I have ever been. I loved you from the moment I swore my loyalty to you in the streets of Marseille, when I was too young and incredibly foolish to understand the depth of such devotion. I longed to tell you then; a hundred times, a thousand, in the quiet hours of our companionship, in the hours when I watched you waste away beneath the crushing weight of your own sorrows. And yet, the word always withered upon my tongue, stifled by the dreadful certainty that to speak it would have meant to ruin it.
May God let this love be the only thing I am permitted to take with me into eternity, endure where flesh and bone cannot reach, where even death itself shall have no claim. Let it be the one truth that survives all earth and realms.
The night is still, and I am no longer afraid.
Always yours and only yours,
Jacopo