Her birthday took careful planning and quiet, unannounced arrangement that had to be kept secret despite its intricateness. Though Celeste and my nights are largely spent in each other’s company, we do from time to time venture out alone. Some nights she wishes my company, some nights she wants to wander Venice on her own while I enjoy a moment of privacy; only occasionally do I too wander Venice. Celeste herself is an interesting mix of social and solitary; her nature is hard for me to determine, but that is part of the reason that she keeps me captivated and under her spell. I cannot predict her. I cannot measure my words and plan them properly in her presence. Her temperament draws me out of myself and into a state of wonderful, dizzying confusion.
For Celeste’s birthday, certainly an important night that should not pass without event, I wanted to go beyond material presents and romantic words. It did not seem appropriate to gift her with expensive jewelry, flowers, and the typical romantic fare that women adore but have become part of tradition so much that it loses its deeper sentiment and becomes no more special than every day exchange.
When inspiration for her gift finally came to me, everything else followed in quick secession. I knew what I wanted to give to her, present to her, and make her feel. Quick work is quick indeed when inspiration is at its height. I stole my moments of preparation during her solitary respites; I worked vigilantly while at the same time eagerly awaiting her soft steps and warmed lips. I would hide my work away and press fingers to her cheeks, her arms, stealing from her what she would allow me of the heat that I so often deny to myself as a matter of purity. She did not suspect a thing, and if she did, she allowed me the illusion of secrecy under which to work confidently.
On the night of her birthday, I told her that I had something very special for her. Something very unique. Something that she could not find or experience anywhere else. I did not tell her, though, that all I wanted was to see her enraptured and captivated because the look on her face is incomparably beautiful to me. I like to watch her watching other things, especially when she is unguarded. To admit this would seem selfish, I thought then.
Celeste dressed splendidly for me, and warmly for the cold night. I kissed her hair that looked like tendrils of streaming black ink against pure marble before I allowed us to leave the house. We took a gondola in comfortable silence, neither one of us feeling the need to fill the quiet with empty small-talk. We’ve gone beyond that now, past the tension of drawn out stillness. Only now and then did she make a comment in her sensuous voice, a voice as confusing as she is with its mixture of grace and keenness, that always brings a smile to my face; I leisurely replied to her every question or statement, watching her watch Venice at night.
The theater I took her to is old with the smell of damp wood thick in the air. The dampness crept into every corner of Venice and hung in the air like cool unstifling but pungent humidity. I never forget the smell, never step out of my door without noticing it. There are even times far away when I miss it. The smell is deeply connected with memories, some sweet and some bitter, but all sacred. This theater was no exception and was seeped with moisture.
The theater was empty as I had requested. In attendance were only Celeste and I and one usher who smiled courteously and gave us the slightest of bows, which I returned with a bow little more than a nod of my head. The room was lit only by old fashioned lanterns, which had been my request because I had a particular affinity for fire light above electric lighting. Our seats were in the very first row, center, where nothing would obscure our sight towards the low stage. Besides the sound of feet and voices, I could tell that people shuffled along behind the curtain in last minute prop preparation by the way the thick blue velvet curtain swayed with the air that quick moving bodies upset.
When the hush descended and I could feel the stillness all around, the low intonations of monk chanting began as a hum first and grew in volume until it bounced from the decaying walls and surrounded us. Slowly, building anticipation, the curtains spread from the center and slid outward to expose a stage in two sections, carved into equal portions two rooms of a medieval monastery: above ground and underground. Two beautiful Italian actors, young men, populated the stage. On the right side of the stage, the lights were low and a disarrayed, dirty young man lay crumpled on the floor. He was imprisoned below the monastery. He looked pathetically around him with dull and uninspired eyes. On the other side, under the brightness of lights, a young monk swept the floor. Only a flight of stairs and a door separated the monk from the sad young man. The monk too looked desolate and sad, his motions more idle than motivated to complete his task. Every few seconds, his eyes wandered to the still, pure white statue of a cherub, vicious but youthful and lovely. Carved in stone were curled robes that draped and flowed with invisible flight. It would have seemed that he was in the act of ascension if not for the way his eyes were cast downward, frozen and dead eyes which the young monk was drawn to.
Those were the two main characters. The story, I felt, was simple but involved and emotional. Above all, it was not a warm hearted story of love and of love conquering all.
As the story developed, the young monk grew increasingly enamored with the angel statue. Late at night, he began to sneak down to where the statue stood to talk to it, to tell it sweet things, to make promises of an eternity that they would share together in Heaven where love was truly valued. Together, they could transcend their earthly prison. The monk shook to touch the angel, always reaching but never quite placing his fingers on the cold stone, perhaps fearful that to touch it would confirm its inanimateness. From the distance of but a few inches, he could convince himself that the marble was breathing flesh. At the same time, it was revealed through interaction that the young boy languishing underneath the floors of the monastery was the hidden, illegitimate bastard son of the top ordered monk. The woman who had mothered the child had been killed, drowned, to keep her silent though she was a nun in an adjoining convent. Death was so common that no one questioned what had happened. The father kept the young boy down beneath the monastery, caging his sin and hiding his shame from the others as if he could hide it from God himself. The boy suffered where he lay, barely clinging to life and miserable for the crime of his father’s corruption.
Every night, the youth would lament and whisper for deliverance. The beautiful boy on the soiled floor would beg that God kill him and take him for in his world he knew only his father, God, and suffering. The young monk above became convinced that this whispered voice carried from a distance came from the angel statue itself, which fired his devotion and lust. Soon, the monk abandoned his holy decency and approached the stone, quite heated as he caressed the face and rubbed his palms over cold stone. His cheeks, too, traced smooth marble as if it had life and pet him back. A life time of self-denial sent him into an erotic frenzy of devotion that was now both carnal and religious in its expression. His caresses became his new prayer, the kisses he pressed to stone his new communion. The monk spoke back to the hopeless voice, calling out to the angelic voice that he imaged came from the statue he was so infatuated with. This young monk could not believe that God in his goodness did not create the love that he felt which was so beautiful to him. This was not sin, this was love. God gave him this.
The cries of the imprisoned boy grew more intense as the passion for the statue escalated, especially now that he had a voice returning his pleas. The voice praying to be saved sent the monk into a desperate and confused fervor as he contemplated shattering the stone to rescue the angel that was locked inside calling out to him. Seconds before he was to strike at the stone with a chair, which certainly would have broken over the hard stone rather than mar the carved surface, the voice called out again. It was in that moment that the monk realized that he was not hearing the voice of the statue but a voice coming from beyond the locked and secured door way. Tentatively putting down the chair, the monk crept to the door. The swell of the constant chanting of prayers became a low whisper. Quietly, the monk pressed his ear and listened. Seconds passed in silence, minutes. The boy on the other end fluttered, weaker by the moment. Finally, the youth made one noise, one whispered cry for peace. As soon as the monk heard the faint sound through the wood he gasped in shock. At first, it seemed that he did not know what to do until he finally came to his senses and pried the lock off of the ancient door. After seconds of intense struggle, the door jerked open. At the same time the youth looked up, roused by the sound of commotion.
Unfortunately for the young monk and the young man, all of the monk’s earlier commotion had roused the attention of the monk in charge, the father, the pitiless man whose son lay neglected underground, the son whom the monk was now trying to save because he believed him to be the animate form of his beloved angel.
The young monk crept into the dungeon, limited by the parameters of the stage, which had him walk off one side and return on the other as if having just descended steps with a single candle to light his way. When the young and imprisoned man saw the monk, he started as if at first seeing the clothing and thinking it was his father. He had, after all, never seen another person other than his father and the old image of Christ that hung above him. Even in the young boy’s state of filth, the young monk was still taken aback at his incomparable beauty. Slowly, the monk knelt on the ground as if in prayer and reached to touch the boy, a touch of warmth that they had both been longing for. Unfortunately for the two of them, this touch was never to come to be. With just an inch left to span, the father came down in a hurry, alerted of the commotion by a frightened nun. With a cry, the father and chief monk grabbed his apprentice in faith and threw him backwards away from his son. There was a struggle, but the father was larger and more fueled by anger, by fear. In the end, he won and the young monk lay on the ground bleeding from a stab wound to the side.
And for his crimes, the young man had his tongue cut off in the next moment by his very father who then tossed the flesh on the ground next to the monk who weakly bled. The monk wanted to save the boy whom he had come to love but could not. All he could do was reach out, trying to satisfy the love that had consumed him before he would lose all chance to experience this in life. The singing had stopped and there was just silence in those last moments.
The monk called to the boy in his last moment, the boy called for death that was not granted because he knew no kind God that would deliver him. The evil father, the man supposedly devout, was the only one who cried out for God. It was in God’s name that he committed his deed, and for God whom he feared and used to fuel and justify his acts of cruelty.
The evil man won, got away without consequence or punishment while the two men, the good men who suffered were not rewarded for their suffering or their goodness, one for his faith in God and the other for his hardship. All of their prayers were for nothing, part of an empty tradition that, in the end, could provide no salvation or any promise of peace. There was no Heaven full of love, just the desperate hope that there was such a place after death awaiting us all.
I had written it for Celeste with her in my mind. Celeste was not the sort who liked or needed happy endings. She was not the type of woman who liked to see virtue always rewarded and vice inevitably punished. Celeste lived on the edge of decency, always delicate but decadent. I was enthralled by the way that she balanced elegance with darkness so much so that she left me bemused with just a look or a smile. The darkness of the play, I thought, would appeal to her. I knew her to be an intelligent woman and that she would understand the implications I made. She would understand that, in the end, the virtuous man, for all his faults, did not pray to God, did not call out to the God he served. He called out to the boy whose love made him feel what God never could. In serving God, there was a prevailing loneliness that only the love for the angel had begun to fill. God could serve both good and evil, as well, because the father invoked God in his reasoning.
It called into question what purity and goodness was. What was the nature of love?
How utterly hopeless it all was in the end. What had happened to the confidence of the young monk that love would be found in Heaven if it was not found on earth? What happened to his confidence in God?
Afterwards, I presented Celeste with a tiny picture, roses with a twisted vine that seemed to bleed from their centers as if they suffered from the stigmata. But even the blood was beautiful, part of what made the roses. Beauty and suffering were very much a part of each other, which I knew Celeste was familiar with.
I wanted to please her. The desire to leave her with a sense that I understood her is powerful within me.
Still, I wonder if this is more for me than for her. I cannot bind her to me. In that way, I relate to the young monk who was only so close to getting what he desired.
Perhaps she would know more about that than I know.
This play was for her and only her. Apart from the actors involved, she and I will be the only two living people who know of its existence and its content. These papers, my writings and the script, will join the collection of other such hidden documents, chronicles of my inspiration. In that way, this play is something that we share, that only we share.
Marius de Romanus
ante diem V Ides November MMDCCLX
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