Work Text:
གཅིག
ཁོང་གི་མིག་ཟུང་ནི་ཆུ་རྒྱུན་ལྟར་དྭངས་ཤིང་།ཡིན་ནའང་ངས་ཁོང་ཚོའི་ནང་ལ་ལམ་བརླག་སྲིད་པ་རེད།
His eyes are as clear as streams of water and yet I could lose my way in them.
I met the man who said these words to me nearly a year into my self-imposed exile. It was in the mountainous regions of Tibet, where I had set up a living in a little village of less than a hundred inhabitants, far remote from all those things I needed, or wanted, to hide away from. He and his lover tended a small farm that sustained them, and on occasion me, but mainly he was a musician, singing and playing traditional songs and those of his own creation at celebrations and meetings and in the evenings when people would flock to their little abode for conversation and conviviality. The prejudice and cruelty of the British law seemed worlds away here and more often than not I was among those people, drawn as if by magic to those enchanting notes and that easy peace, the likeness of which I had never experienced before.
I had known a little of the language before, but during the little over a year I spent in the country, I rapidly improved and soon could hold broken but meaningful conversations with my new acquaintances. I was weary from my travels, or my flight, as it should be more accurately named, and beaten by loneliness and despair. They were kind and it was the first time I could rest, finally safe, at least for a time, from my pursuers, so I spilled my broken heart to them, as best I could, and I told them of you.
The man laughed often and told me stories of his own, as his lover was very similar to you. He wrote stories, sometimes, too, his laugh was the delight of the village and his kindness a balm on their hearts. His eyes were blue too, but they didn’t remind me of yours until I heard them described in those words. It took me a few seconds to grasp their meaning but when I did, I nodded emphatically. I knew the feeling, I tried to say, because I did.
It is Monday morning and nearly half a year has passed since my return. As I come down the stairs, late as usual, for breakfast I see you sitting there, your face buried in the morning paper. You are waiting for me, at our table, in our home and the revelation of having you back hasn’t quite lost its dizzying power yet. I stop in the doorway and allow myself to look, to believe, before I greet you. You lower your newspaper and I see you smile before your head turns in my direction. Then our eyes meet.
ཁྱེད་ཀྱི་མིག་ཟུང་ནི་ཆུ་རྒྱུན་ལྟར་དྭངས་ཤིང་།ཡིན་ནའང་ངས་ཁོང་ཚོའི་ནང་ལ་ལམ་བརླག་སྲིད་པ་རེད།
Khyed kyi mig zung ni chu rgyun Itar dwangs shing / yin n'ng ngas khong tsho'i nang la lam brlag srid pa red.
Without thinking I mutter the words under my breath because what I told my confessor in the mountains is true. I know the feeling, intimately. If you need to know, I learned it that very first day in the laboratory.
You looked different then, younger, your face less lined by the hardships I have brought onto you, but more so by other hardships that came before me. You were emaciated by illness and haunted by memories, just as you are now haunted by the flesh and blood of my ghost, come back to life before your eyes. Still, I think I prefer you like this, if only because this is the version of you I am lucky enough to lay eyes on each day.
But you have asked me something, and it wasn’t this. I apologise, I have lost myself in you. It happens so often. You want to know what I said. I smile, easily, and wave the remark away with my hand.
“Just a memory”, I say and sit down opposite to you for my breakfast. You don’t press me for more information. You never do.
How grateful I am for you. I’m sure my erstwhile friend would find the words to express it, in his beautiful flowing language that I don’t command nearly as well as I would like to, but I cannot. Though I suppose that is beside the point. After all, you’d hardly understand me anyways.
__________
δυο
This day has been decidedly less peaceful. We have been rushing back and fro all throughout London, asking our way from one false address to the next, but we have found the correct one, finally, and I am confident that we will bring this case to a successful conclusion.
The alleyway is dark but it affords us a perfect view of the house across the street, where a shadow is faintly moving behind the drawn blinds. That will be our man, stashing away his takings in order to come back to them in a few days time, this time with the help of an accomplice and, rather unusually, a mule-drawn cart, if I’m not mistaken.
A light flickers out and leaves two of the windows dark.
“He’ll be out any minute now”, I whisper and you nod.
“We’ll be ready for him.” Demonstratively, you cock your pistol and grin at me and the aching thing in my chest skips a beat or two. Your smile is dangerous and confident and your eyes are fairly glinting with the thrill of danger. The adrenaline is making you nearly giddy, just as it is making me careless. The fact that you have missed this, the fact that I can see in your face that you live for this as much as I do makes me feel lightheaded.
“Το να σε αγαπώ θα με πεθάνει.”
To na se agapó tha me pethánei.
You look at me in askance and I shake my head.
“A turn of phrase”, I explain and before you can prod me further, the door opens and you nudge my arm before charging ahead with all the bravery of the soldier.
The man goes willingly, your revolver as good an argument as any, and after we have delivered our prey to the constabulary you call a cab to drive us home. The ‘turn of phrase’ is long forgotten, or at least you don’t think to ask me again, but I for myself cannot stop turning it over in my mind. To think I was so absorbed in you that I missed the very event we had been waiting for for nearly an hour, and the event being a door opening in clear view and a man stepping out onto an empty street! Perhaps there is more truth in my flight of fancy than I would care to admit.
Το να σε αγαπώ θα με πεθάνει.
Loving you will kill me.
__________
三
This is what I think of when I consider the word ‘home’.
Early evening, a days’ work well done, the remnants of our supper still on the table. The fire, crackling quietly, gently glowing, its warmth seeping into our bones and further into our very hearts. You, in the chair opposite me, absorbed in a novel I would probably scoff at, did I know its contents, your lips pursed slightly as they always appear when you are concentrating. Some infinitely engaging book or scroll, as typically found in obscure antique shops, in my hands, for me to study when I am not studying you.
It is Han Dynasty folk poetry today. My Mandarin is certainly not the best of my languages but I can generally understand the written word just fine. I turn a page and when I have deciphered the words, I have to smile. They are ridiculously sentimental, and yet I naturally thought of you as I read it.
“山无陵，江水为竭。”, I say and look up at you. You meet my eyes, a question in yours.
“冬雷震震夏雨雪，天地合，乃敢与君绝。”, I finish the poem. The words are beautiful, short and intentional. I sometimes think we citizens of the Great British Empire have the misfortune of possessing the ugliest language known to man. What I admit so easily to you with these few lines I could certainly never express using our own native tongue.
Till mountains crumble / Till rivers run dry / Till thunder rumbles in winter / Till snow falls in summer / And the earth mingles with the sky / Not till then will my love die.
I have returned to my little volume but I can still feel you staring at me. You want to know what I said to you, of course. But I do this often now and you have learned that you will not get an answer. I suppose I shouldn’t toy with you like this. I am sorry, truly. But it thrills me to say these things and to have you hear them. One day, perhaps, your curiosity will get the better of your tact, and you will insist on an answer. You would be well within your rights to demand it. And I… Well, we shall see how my talent for words and language will serve me, if, not when, it comes to that.
For now, you content yourself with shaking your head at my typically peculiar conduct and return to your novel, the words, to you, no more than an amalgamation of meaningless syllables.
Shãn wú ling, jiangshui wei jié. Dong léizhèn zhèn xiàyũxue, tiandi hé, nãi găn yũ jún jué.
That is all you have heard me say.
__________
Vier
Cases like this one are the best and the worst of the lot. They are the ones in which the existence of my little business is by far the most important, as I am required not only to supply the intellectual deficiencies of our great city’s police force but also their moral shortcomings. My existence is a great fortune to many of Her Majesty’s less favoured subjects, an observation I am able to make without a hint of arrogance on my part but rather with a barely controlled fury at an ignorant government and its unjust laws that necessitate my acting in cases like this one.
He has come by the midnight train and arrives at Baker Street early in the morning, before we have even sat down to breakfast.
“You are being blackmailed”, I observe after he has carefully closed the door behind him. Our visitor is too shaken by his misfortune to be taken aback.
“Yes, that is true”, he replies, a strong accent colouring his consonants. I have, of course, determined his origins for myself as soon as he has entered our sitting room, but I needn’t have bothered. The German introduces himself as Herr Mährle and shakes both of us by the hand, before running his fingers for the dozenth time through his already disheveled hair and finally sitting down on the settee.
“What do they have?” I ask. “Are you both implicated or just yourself?”
At that he looks up sharply. “I guess I will not ask how you knew. They have my letters. I believe it is only me they have threatened. But I have not seen him for five years so I do not know.” He buries his face in his hands. “I know it is careless but-“
I cut him off. A look from you commands me to be gentle.
“You have done no wrong”, I remind him. A quiet fury rages inside me because the reminder is needed. “Tell us everything and we will see if we cannot not do something to help you.”
The case is comparatively easy to solve. The wretched snake and its stolen secrets being hidden somewhere in the south-west of the Reich complicates matters a little but I have my contacts in all parts of the continent and they carry out their instructions admirably. It is barely a day later that I can send the last of many telegrams to a cheap hotel on the outskirts of London and barely an hour after that that our client comes in answer to it.
“You have done it?” he demands of me and I nod. He sinks onto the settee, his knees evidently giving out from relief. I can see you smile, compassionate and proud at the same time. It does feel good, doesn’t it? The illusion that we are holding our heads up underneath the crushing weight of this monumental unfairness, that we are doing something, anything, to lift it, even if it is only an illusion.
“How can I thank you? You have given me back my life. How can I ever repay you?” Mährle wrings his hands, his head sinks upon his breast in shame. “I have no fortune to speak of, it has all gone to that blood-sucking devil.”
I wave my hand dismissively. “There is no need for that, Herr Mährle, I assure you.”
“Are you certain?” There is a pause in which I can see his eyes grow thoughtful and then drop downwards to rake over my body. I nearly laugh out loud and at the same time groan inwardly. He is almost ridiculously transparent, but so, I suppose, am I if he has immediately recognised me as another of his kind. I only hope he will not say his piece before you.
Mährle drops his voice conspiratorially and continues, mercifully in German. “Ich vermute, dass ich doch etwas habe, womit ich Ihnen danken könnte. Falls Sie interessiert sind…?”
I shake my head firmly but smile at him nonetheless. There are innumerable much less polite ways in which he could have made his offer.
“Ich fürchte, mein Herz ist bereits vergeben”, I reply quietly. He immediately looks at you and I inwardly curse him for his astounding lack of sensitivity and then myself for not predicting it.
“Ihr Freund?” Mährle asks and I nod, aware of the pained quality of my smile. He inclines his head in understanding.
“Wie sagt es der Dichter? ‘Mein ganzes Sein ist nur ein stilles Trachten / Und leise pocht das Herz mir, weil es blutet.’” My own sentimentality surprises me. I could not say why I have felt the need to explain myself further, or why I am so anxious for him to understand.
“Ich verstehe”, he tells me, in a soft voice that almost convinces me that he does, and then the moment is past. Mährle returns briskly back to business, and with it to the English language, while I am still reeling from the exchange, considerably alarmed by my lapse of control.
“I can not thank you both enough, you have saved my life. May God be with you and reward you for the good you have done today. Happiness will come to you, I am sure of it.” The last sentence is directed at me and his faint smile reminds me of the man in the little Tibetan village. “‘Und so sei denn hoffnungsmut’ger Glaube / Nun mein Trost, bis jener Tag erblüht.’”
I bow politely instead of answering because he has seen my heart’s secret and I cannot meet his eyes anymore.
I can feel your curious gaze burning on my back as I close the door behind our visitor. You noticed, of course, that we were talking about you. You want an explanation. I’m not sure I can offer you one. It takes me a few seconds too many to let go of the door handle and turn back to you.
“What did he say to you?” you demand immediately. You have not divined my heart’s secret, yet, but I find I cannot meet your eyes either. I shake my head. You open your lips to protest but the perturbed, far-away look on my face gives you pause.
“Are you alright? Did he say something untoward to you?” Your whole body tenses and your eyes become hard and alert when you worry about me. Ever the doctor, ever the soldier. I love you, I think and on any other day the thought would have made me smile, would have softened my eyes and the set of my shoulders, but today I shake my head in answer to either of your questions and flee into my bedroom.
I am sorry. It isn’t fair, I know. You deserve much better than a man who can sing you poems in every language but your own.
__________
Cinque
I miscalculated. I did not think he would attack us. I did not think he would have a pistol.
The gunshot is deafening and the vision of your collapsing form has its icy grip on my heart as I fly towards the man, unthinking. The weapon clatters onto the floor as my stick comes down hard on his wrist and he shouts in pain, the sound eliciting a horrible satisfaction in me. A well aimed kick sends him sprawling to the ground and he snarls at me, livid, a stream of colourful Italian curses flowing from his lips. The ice in my blood has been replaced by burning hot fury and I barely register your reassuring me of your wellbeing. You offer me your revolver and I take it and point it at the cowering scoundrel.
“Dovresti sentirti fortunato, mascalzone”, I spit out, my hands trembling with rage. “Credimi, ti avrei ucciso.” If my voice and my shaking hands have not convinced him that I am telling the truth, the look in my eyes has.
He holds his tongue for the rest of the time, until the moment Lestrade and his colleagues take him away and he hurls a last insult my way that makes me smile as it is the only accurate one of the bunch.
__________
Six
“Holmes, please!” It is the dozenth time that I have heard those words this evening and I press my lips together stubbornly.
You are worried, I know. You are worried because I have not spoken since we have come back from the Yard, because you can see the tremor in my hands as clearly as you can read the reason for it in my eyes, darting wildly around the room and avoiding yours at all costs. It is terrifying to have so little control over myself and you can see that I am terrified.
I nearly flinch at the sudden sensation of your hand on my shoulder.
“It is alright”, you say and the gentleness of your voice acts as a balm on my agitation, at least for a moment. “I am here. I am alive.” With an effort, I nod. You don’t let go of me. “Holmes, why won’t you look at me?”
I turn my head further away from you.
“I should’ve known. I should’ve calculated the danger better.“ I pause as the crux of the matter forces itself to the forefront of my mind, making it impossible to ignore it any longer. “I should never have taken you with me.”
You sigh. “We are not going over this again. You know I would not have allowed you to go alone, especially if you had known the danger. You might’ve been killed.”
I shrug my shoulders. So what?
It is perhaps too honest a gesture because your hand falls away from me and you cross your arms. When you speak, your voice is sharper.
“I do not understand how you can be so careless with your life. You must know by now, with your great, incomparable intellect, that it means something to people other than yourself.”
I let out a bark of laughter. Oh, my dear boy. I am being deliberately cruel, I know. You deserve to be loved by a much better man than me.
“It does. To me, for instance.” Your voice is much gentler than I expect. It catches me off guard and I look up for a moment, directly into your eyes.
“But you know that”, you continue. “And I know you’re being deliberately irritating because you are scared. I understand. But nothing serious has happened and we are both still here and I don’t want to spend my time arguing with you.” What a curious observation. Why are you still here? What on earth is keeping you? “It wasn’t your fault and it will happen again and we will both get out of it alive the next time too.”
“It will not happen again.”
You sigh, again. “You can’t promise that. You are only human, Holmes, whether you approve of the fact or not.”
I shake my head. “That is not what I meant. It will not happen again because you will not be coming.”
For a second, you are stunned into silence. I don’t dare look up. I know I have hurt you but it is necessary. I wish you’d understand just how absolutely necessary it is. How absolutely necessary you are.
“Forgive me if I disagree.” Your voice is tense again. You said you didn’t want to fight but I have left you no choice.
“You cannot disagree. I will not take you. I will not tell you where I am going. It is better this way.”
I can hear you grappling for words, speechless in your indignation. You never shout at me but I have sorely tried your patience today and I can tell you are very near it.
“And what about you? You would go up against your violent criminals alone? As soon as there is a pair of them, they will have you outnumbered. Please, tell me exactly how that is better.”
The last sentence is almost a sneer and I can feel irritation flare up in my stomach. I hate to be angry with you but I can hardly believe that you genuinely do not understand this.
“Because you would be safe!” I don’t mean to shout at you and I’m sorry, I am sorry, truly, but I usually do not have to explain such obvious things to you.
“Why does that matter more than your life?”
A silence.
That is the question, isn’t it? The one thing that I, in all my infinite wisdom, as you would write, cannot explain. The only thing I know is that it does. That is, perhaps, the only thing that I am really sure of at all.
I am already halfway to the door when you call out to me again.
“Holmes?” I stop, reluctantly, but do not turn around.
“Yes?”
“What did you say to him after…”
“After he shot at you?” I can feel my blood heating up again with rage. Slowly, I repeat myself. “‘Dovresti sentirti fortunato, mascalzone. Credimi, ti avrei ucciso.’“
I take a breath, then translate.
“‘You should consider yourself lucky, blackguard. Believe me, I would have killed you.’”
For a moment, you are silent. Then I hear your careful footsteps approaching behind me. This time your hand on my shoulder does not startle me, but I am wary of it nonetheless.
I don‘t want to turn around. I don’t want to face you. But you tug insistently and who would I be if I didn’t grant you every one of your wishes.
“Holmes. Look at me.” Even if you are asking a lot of me. Who would I be, indeed.
“Answer my question, please. Why am I more important than your life?”
There is a look in your eyes that I have never seen there before. I press my lips together.
“Can’t you guess?”
“I need you to tell me. Please.”
I have held your gaze valiantly until this moment but now I fail and look down in shame.
“I cannot. I’m sorry.”
“Why not? You must know that I…” You break off because I am shaking my head vehemently.
“I cannot explain.“
You open your mouth and close it again. There are two forces at war within you and I can see them fighting in the quick, minute movements of your eyes. I wait with bated breath. Finally, your eyes still and I know that, for better or for worse, the battle has been decided.
“Can’t you try?“
I close my eyes. You are asking too much of me, far too much.
Phrases, poems and pieces of songs in twenty different languages flit through my mind, winged and lighter than air, but in English they are like lead, weighing me down, sticking to my tongue and my throat, obstructing my breathing.
“Je t’adore”, I whisper finally, with the full knowledge that I have failed you again. And yet I have to continue.
“Tu es plus important que ma vie, car t’es ma vie. J’ai besoin de toi comme je n’ai jamais eu besoin de rien. Est-ce que tu me comprends? Je t’aime. Tu comprends?” My voice has grown desperate towards the end and when you lift up my face with your hands I barely find it in me to resist.
“Je comprends.”
Your eyes are a clear blue and they are endless, but before I can lose my way in them you kiss me.
You kiss me, and I kiss you back because I have realised that this, too, is a language and because I need to tell you everything, every one of those things I cannot find expression for even with all the words in the world at my disposal.
I can only pray that you understand me.
__________
Fin