May 2006.
There is a letter that Andriy is not writing in the back of his head. He is not apologizing. He is not sorry. He is not writing, thinking, wanting to say: If I had my way, I would stay with you, next to you, in your flat with my hands on you forever - but I don't, I've never been in control of my life, not the way you thought I was, and this is something I have to do.
He is not writing --
*
A cream envelope. Nice, heavy paper. To K. Andriy leaves it wedged in his seat after that Roma game, carefully hidden, secured. In the back of his mind, this should be a fairytale - two princes, once boys but no longer so.
One dressed in silver, from a cold land. His footsteps turn the grass to ash and everything and everyone he touches is both blessed and cursed; he's been looking, looking his entire life, traveling the world and searching for revenge or redemption (he doesn't quite know which; maybe they're the same thing in different words, semantics is all). The other in gold, warm all over, steady and sparking. And what he brings is love. He believes in it, is drenched in it. Love for humanity, which is ultimately good, love for summer days and green trees and blue waves, love for beautiful words and ideas and people, love because a person can't live without it.
So. Picture this. These two princes meet one day, in a country neither as warm nor as cold as their homes. They meet, and the gold prince thinks, but does not say: You are beautiful, but some part of you has frozen forever. And the silver prince thinks, but does not say: I will ruin you if you love me.
Maybe they should've said what they were thinking.
Still, the story, as all old stories go, is one of bad timing, missed moments, coincidence. They fall in love, or something like it, something at once trite, even cheap, and terribly, terribly perfect. Even then, they are years filled with awkward pauses and strange disconnects, of old memories and older history, of too many things implied and not enough said. So, in the end, the silver prince says, I have to leave. He says, I'm a wind coming from the east, except I'm not carrying anything good with me, not spring rains for the crops or warm air or the smell of blooming wild flowers, just toxic dust and crumbled bones and so, so much evil. I'm a wind, and winds don't stop for anyone, but I stopped for you when I was supposed to be moving on, and I have to pay for that now so you won't have to. Do you understand? I'm leaving to save you.
The gold prince (who just wouldn't stop shining) does not smile. He says, I've never needed saving, and I never will. You might be the hero for thousands of people, some kind of god even, but you're not mine; that's not who I want. That's not what I want.
The silver prince does not speak. At last, he says, voice quiet and cracking and dangerous around the edges like ice on black, black water: I'm leaving. You'll find me with the masses; I'm nothing but one of them in the end, just a person, not a prince, not a savior, not who you thought I was. You'll find me with the people, quiet and brittle amidst that heaving mass of humanity screaming and yelling and wanting to own you, devour you. We are not good by nature. We can't be.
Goodbye.
And thus the silver prince left, leaving behind a small part of himself for the gold prince to find, should he ever look, should he ever try, should he ever miss him badly enough to. And thus he left, to make a life for himself in a new country. And thus he left, hands cold to the bone and feet weary.
He left.
Emotion is not enough to make a man stay, not when he's always been running from broken buildings and broken people. Love has never been enough.
*
I'll die if I stay here.
You would laugh if I told you that, call me melodramatic and far too serious, bump your shoulder into mine jokingly. But I believe it. It's killing me, staying, this stagnant, static disease of running in circles and getting nowhere. I've already been here too long. Sometimes I wish I had met you earlier in life. Maybe by some strange stroke of luck I could've gone to Brazil for a summer, on vacation, and watched you play all those years ago. Or maybe we wouldn't have been footballers at all. I don't know.
Look. You asked me why, and you keep on asking me why, even when you're not here, even then you're this stupid, stupid voice in my ear wanting to know the goddamned reasons. They're neither as glamorous or mundane as the newspapers will tell you, later. I got a phone call one morning. That's all. I got a phone call, a voice on the other end of the line, a new place to go. And I kept on thinking about my childhood, about that morning when my father got a phone call. How we forgot about breakfast, how I helped my father pack his suitcase, the weight of his gun in my hands. You've never held a gun, have you? You told me once you hated hunting. I remember that. He told me we were going on a vacation, but he wasn't smiling. My mother's hands shook. She dropped a glass. My sister stepped on a piece and got blood all over the carpet, but that wasn't important anymore. We drove and drove and drove, and I wondered how the river looked so blue that it was almost black. It was so silent that day, an entire row of cars just emptying the street of my neighborhood. Dozens and dozens of cars, with mattresses tied onto the roofs and chairs sticking out of the trunks. So many of them but nobody spoke. We just drove, a winding line of battered metal. I never looked back. I have that suitcase now, did I ever tell you? I didn't tell you a lot of things. He gave it to me the first time I left home, and still. I still have it. I should have thrown it away.
But the sea was so beautiful. Oh god, it was beautiful like you wouldn't believe. It felt like infinity. I can't go back. There was that one night, remember, at dinner? You asked me what I was running from, and I thought you were kidding at first because it was like something from a bad movie, but you weren't. I didn't answer you that night. But I've never been running from. I've been running to, and surely you understand that. It's not escape from, it's escape to. I was happy with you, I think. The real kind. I've always been bad with happiness, though, I don't keep it well. And you - you're just a man. That's what I tell myself. You're just a person, one person. Please don't be sad; I'm not worth that much, you'll be better without me.
Sometimes I wish I had never met you at all, because then I could've at least fooled myself into happiness, into the lowering of defenses and self-deception that comes with regular contentment. I read too much philosophy, you told me once. Stop thinking so much about morality, it's not as if you'll find them in the pages of a book, you had said. So where will I find it?, I asked you. In God, you told me. And if not God, then in faith. Faith in something, someone.
I believed in God when I was a little kid. I believed in God and he died before I was ten. I killed him.
But you --
*
He almost looks back. He almost says: I loved you, but not as much as my I love my son, and I shouldn't have to apologize for that. He almost does a lot of things, but a thousand almost's don't even come close to a did. What does happen is this:
Andriy leaves at 7:22 in the morning.
Notes: Sheva watched Milan play Roma as a supporter, in the stands, in May. The fans begged him not to leave. He signed a contract with Chelsea by the end of that month.
And that, everyone, is the end. Thank you to anyone and everyone who read even one part of this; niche and I have been a bit obsessed with these two, and it would mean a lot to us if you left a comment, anything at all, if you've been reading. I think I can speak for the both of us when I say that we hope you enjoyed reading this as much as we loved writing it, inevitable tragedy and all. ♥!