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breakfastofchampionsMore Scaffold & Throne-ness! Yes, it is exciting, I know. My goodness, these interpersonal relationships are complicated.
James Bryant/Kathleen Bryant/Percival Meredith.
A short piece, related to the last piece posted here, "The Same Coin".
Twined.
Why is it that sometimes one's life becomes twined with another's, irreparably, through no fault or will of one's own? I cannot say. I can say that if i hadn't met you, my life would not bear the slightest resemblance to the life I know today. Was our meeting for good or ill? Would my life without having met you be a finer one or a more trifling one? I know it is ridiculous to consider those questions, so I will not, for any longer than the moment it takes me to push them from my mind. My life is what it is, and you were in it. You are in it still, for how could you ever leave it? We are permanently twined, you and I-- should we never speak again, never see each other again, we will still be one.
James Bryant. There's a good name: solid, simple. It sounds like a name for a dependable young man. My own name, Percival Meredith, strikes me as more florid; it weighs on me sometimes. Perhaps we neither of us fit our names. Would it have been different for us, with different names? Again, there is no merit in considering such a question for any sizable amount of time, so I will not.
We met through our parents, who had been close companions when they were children. You came to London for the summer to see the city, a place so unlike the Ireland that was your home. My parents said they would be overjoyed to take you in, the least they could do for the scion of their dearest friends of childhood. It was only reasonable that we, the children of such friends, would be expected to be friends, two boys of an age, together for the summer.
We were young, then, both of us still in school. I was more than a little impressed by you, a dark-eyed, wild-haired, startling boy from faraway Ireland, a place I considered exotic, with all the tales of rebels and wretchedness I'd heard concerning it. You seemed so strange to me, and so interesting, with your white-pale skin like a statue's, contrasted so sharply with the black or your hair and eyes. The way you would sit brooding silently by a window for hours, while I watched you, unnoticed, I hoped, over the pages of my book. Then you would jump up suddenly, ranting about something, or maybe laughing at me. Light and shadow. Stillness and motion.
It is no wonder to me that I submitted to your kisses when you chose to kiss me. It was meaningless; something two boys do together when their approaching adulthood drives them somewhat mad with lust. I thought you were fascinating. I could barely believe you had taken an interest in me, a frail and timid boy. I was unremarkable in my own eyes, whereas you warranted many a remark. It wasn't that I loved you, or conceived a passion for you. I was overawed, flattered-- and more than a little hungry for what you had to offer. The summer passed briefly, as summers too often do, a riot of sunshine interspersed with showers and walks through the city and nights in your arms. You went home. I didn't expect you to write me; you'd already confessed to being a failure as a correspondent, and I couldn't even imagine you sitting down at a desk with a pen in hand, your lips pursed as you composed a series of coherent paragraphs.
That was why I was so startled to receive a letter in the mail from Ireland, bearing the familiar name Bryant. The hand, however, did not seem like it could have come from you. Small and neat, each letter careful-- pretty, if handwriting can be said to be such. A lovely hand. When I opened it, I found, to my further surprise, that it was from your sister.
You had mentioned her to me: a twin sister. Your sentiments concerning her had seemed confused to me. One moment you would praise her, the next revile her. That was in keeping with your sentiments concerning everything, however, so I had not put too much stock in either the praise or the revulsion, and I had only the vaguest idea of what she could be like.
At first I thought you might have dictated a letter to her for me, but no. The letter was directly from her to me. She wrote of how highly you'd spoken of me, and how she would like to know me herself, but she could not do anything so grand as travel to London as you had. So, she wondered, would I be adverse to corresponding with her? She had, she said, long hoped for someone to exchange letters with. She would, however, understand if the prospect did not appeal to me, or if I was too busy, but she begged for at least one letter, to tell her whether or no I was interested in her proposal. The overall tone of the letter was so wryly self-mocking and lively and kind and altogether engaging that I could not resist writing her back to say that I should be delighted to exchange missives with her.
That was my first introduction to Kathleen. Would I still have written her if I'd have known how things would end? This is not one of those questions that do not bear contemplation, if only because I know the answer: yes. There is no possible world in which I would have refused to write Kathleen. My dearest friend.
Perhaps you couldn't understand why I grew to prefer your sister's company to yours. Perhaps you didn't care. It is hard to say with you, James. So hard to say understand why you do the things you do, what thoughts within you move you, or fail to move you though they are there nevertheless. Regardless, Kathleen and I began to write each other, and with each letter, we liked each other more, until the flow of our letters was a rush of letters and ink, often crossing each other in the post. Often I received a letter the very day I wrote her one, and our friendship seemed so immediate, I half expected her to reply to things in the letter I had just written her, though she had not received it yet. Did you ever read my letters to her? I don't know. You never wrote me a line, did not so much as tell your sister to send me your regards.
It was for Kathleen, then, and not for you that I convinced my parents to arrange for me to travel to Ireland over the next summer holiday. I found the whole trip grand and exciting, even the miseries of the boat and the ceaseless rattling over bad roads which made my back ache and my teeth hurt from shaking so hard. I found Kathleen as lovely as I'd imagined. She looked so like you, only with that more feminine softness, with a higher voice. She was shy with me at first, seeing the man from her letters made life, but before too long, the easy intimacy of our letters had translated into ease in each other's physical presence.
You, James, I did not find at all. Or rather, I found you so changed in the course of that one year, during which I had neither seen you nor heard from you, as to be unrecognizable. You had been light and shadow, stillness and motion. During the year, the light had all leaked out of you, as had the stillness. What was left was only unfamiliar darkness, unpredictable movement. You appeared scarcely interested in me at all, hardly aware that I was there, and you were content to leave me with your sister. I was content to leave you to yourself, and to the rough friends you preferred to me. Though I did not understand what had happened to you, I did not censure you for it. That summer it was your sister I kissed instead of you, and if I had grown more fond of her than I was of you, it did not mean I was not fond of you.
Sometimes I hear a person say of someone who has done something dreadful: But I knew them. They'd never have done that. Whenever I hear these words, or any like them, I think of you, James. I knew you. You would never have none that, not when I first knew you. It was only that you became someone else. Someone capable of doing such things. Or do I misjudge the human heart? Perhaps the human heart, every human heart, is capable of anything-- it is only that it requires a certain impetus to act in a certain way? I would not like to think myself capable of doing what you have done, but perhaps I am, at that. I should not put myself too far above you. That would not be fair to you.
It is true, I can still speak of fairness to you, however much that may surprise you. How can I know what changed you into the person you became, the man capable of rape and murder? Our lives are twined. We are connected. I became your brother when I married your sister, and I raised the children you gave her as though they were my own. They are my own children. So in a way, I am your brother. In a way, James, I am you. I know, those words would sound ridiculous to you if you could hear them. What I mean by them, even I don't know. Perhaps it is that we are twins of a sort, as surely as you and your sister are twins, as surely as your two dark-eyed children, the children you don't know are yours, are twins. We are a family of twins. Perhaps, James, we were meant to be together-- though not in the way people are meant to be together in books. No, our connection is something altogether different, but no less vital.
James. Is it wrong that I don't hate you? Is it wrong that I almost understand you? It is wrong that I want to put the light back into your body, to suffuse you with it? That I want that stillness to settle back into your limbs where it once was, making you calm, making you whole? These are questions I cannot push from my head so easily. I ask them often, but there is no one to reply to them. Is it wrong to remember you as the boy I once knew? I find it hard to believe he is gone. He must be living somewhere still inside you. Or inside me.
James. Tell me it is so.
James Bryant/Kathleen Bryant/Percival Meredith.
A short piece, related to the last piece posted here, "The Same Coin".
Twined.
Why is it that sometimes one's life becomes twined with another's, irreparably, through no fault or will of one's own? I cannot say. I can say that if i hadn't met you, my life would not bear the slightest resemblance to the life I know today. Was our meeting for good or ill? Would my life without having met you be a finer one or a more trifling one? I know it is ridiculous to consider those questions, so I will not, for any longer than the moment it takes me to push them from my mind. My life is what it is, and you were in it. You are in it still, for how could you ever leave it? We are permanently twined, you and I-- should we never speak again, never see each other again, we will still be one.
James Bryant. There's a good name: solid, simple. It sounds like a name for a dependable young man. My own name, Percival Meredith, strikes me as more florid; it weighs on me sometimes. Perhaps we neither of us fit our names. Would it have been different for us, with different names? Again, there is no merit in considering such a question for any sizable amount of time, so I will not.
We met through our parents, who had been close companions when they were children. You came to London for the summer to see the city, a place so unlike the Ireland that was your home. My parents said they would be overjoyed to take you in, the least they could do for the scion of their dearest friends of childhood. It was only reasonable that we, the children of such friends, would be expected to be friends, two boys of an age, together for the summer.
We were young, then, both of us still in school. I was more than a little impressed by you, a dark-eyed, wild-haired, startling boy from faraway Ireland, a place I considered exotic, with all the tales of rebels and wretchedness I'd heard concerning it. You seemed so strange to me, and so interesting, with your white-pale skin like a statue's, contrasted so sharply with the black or your hair and eyes. The way you would sit brooding silently by a window for hours, while I watched you, unnoticed, I hoped, over the pages of my book. Then you would jump up suddenly, ranting about something, or maybe laughing at me. Light and shadow. Stillness and motion.
It is no wonder to me that I submitted to your kisses when you chose to kiss me. It was meaningless; something two boys do together when their approaching adulthood drives them somewhat mad with lust. I thought you were fascinating. I could barely believe you had taken an interest in me, a frail and timid boy. I was unremarkable in my own eyes, whereas you warranted many a remark. It wasn't that I loved you, or conceived a passion for you. I was overawed, flattered-- and more than a little hungry for what you had to offer. The summer passed briefly, as summers too often do, a riot of sunshine interspersed with showers and walks through the city and nights in your arms. You went home. I didn't expect you to write me; you'd already confessed to being a failure as a correspondent, and I couldn't even imagine you sitting down at a desk with a pen in hand, your lips pursed as you composed a series of coherent paragraphs.
That was why I was so startled to receive a letter in the mail from Ireland, bearing the familiar name Bryant. The hand, however, did not seem like it could have come from you. Small and neat, each letter careful-- pretty, if handwriting can be said to be such. A lovely hand. When I opened it, I found, to my further surprise, that it was from your sister.
You had mentioned her to me: a twin sister. Your sentiments concerning her had seemed confused to me. One moment you would praise her, the next revile her. That was in keeping with your sentiments concerning everything, however, so I had not put too much stock in either the praise or the revulsion, and I had only the vaguest idea of what she could be like.
At first I thought you might have dictated a letter to her for me, but no. The letter was directly from her to me. She wrote of how highly you'd spoken of me, and how she would like to know me herself, but she could not do anything so grand as travel to London as you had. So, she wondered, would I be adverse to corresponding with her? She had, she said, long hoped for someone to exchange letters with. She would, however, understand if the prospect did not appeal to me, or if I was too busy, but she begged for at least one letter, to tell her whether or no I was interested in her proposal. The overall tone of the letter was so wryly self-mocking and lively and kind and altogether engaging that I could not resist writing her back to say that I should be delighted to exchange missives with her.
That was my first introduction to Kathleen. Would I still have written her if I'd have known how things would end? This is not one of those questions that do not bear contemplation, if only because I know the answer: yes. There is no possible world in which I would have refused to write Kathleen. My dearest friend.
Perhaps you couldn't understand why I grew to prefer your sister's company to yours. Perhaps you didn't care. It is hard to say with you, James. So hard to say understand why you do the things you do, what thoughts within you move you, or fail to move you though they are there nevertheless. Regardless, Kathleen and I began to write each other, and with each letter, we liked each other more, until the flow of our letters was a rush of letters and ink, often crossing each other in the post. Often I received a letter the very day I wrote her one, and our friendship seemed so immediate, I half expected her to reply to things in the letter I had just written her, though she had not received it yet. Did you ever read my letters to her? I don't know. You never wrote me a line, did not so much as tell your sister to send me your regards.
It was for Kathleen, then, and not for you that I convinced my parents to arrange for me to travel to Ireland over the next summer holiday. I found the whole trip grand and exciting, even the miseries of the boat and the ceaseless rattling over bad roads which made my back ache and my teeth hurt from shaking so hard. I found Kathleen as lovely as I'd imagined. She looked so like you, only with that more feminine softness, with a higher voice. She was shy with me at first, seeing the man from her letters made life, but before too long, the easy intimacy of our letters had translated into ease in each other's physical presence.
You, James, I did not find at all. Or rather, I found you so changed in the course of that one year, during which I had neither seen you nor heard from you, as to be unrecognizable. You had been light and shadow, stillness and motion. During the year, the light had all leaked out of you, as had the stillness. What was left was only unfamiliar darkness, unpredictable movement. You appeared scarcely interested in me at all, hardly aware that I was there, and you were content to leave me with your sister. I was content to leave you to yourself, and to the rough friends you preferred to me. Though I did not understand what had happened to you, I did not censure you for it. That summer it was your sister I kissed instead of you, and if I had grown more fond of her than I was of you, it did not mean I was not fond of you.
Sometimes I hear a person say of someone who has done something dreadful: But I knew them. They'd never have done that. Whenever I hear these words, or any like them, I think of you, James. I knew you. You would never have none that, not when I first knew you. It was only that you became someone else. Someone capable of doing such things. Or do I misjudge the human heart? Perhaps the human heart, every human heart, is capable of anything-- it is only that it requires a certain impetus to act in a certain way? I would not like to think myself capable of doing what you have done, but perhaps I am, at that. I should not put myself too far above you. That would not be fair to you.
It is true, I can still speak of fairness to you, however much that may surprise you. How can I know what changed you into the person you became, the man capable of rape and murder? Our lives are twined. We are connected. I became your brother when I married your sister, and I raised the children you gave her as though they were my own. They are my own children. So in a way, I am your brother. In a way, James, I am you. I know, those words would sound ridiculous to you if you could hear them. What I mean by them, even I don't know. Perhaps it is that we are twins of a sort, as surely as you and your sister are twins, as surely as your two dark-eyed children, the children you don't know are yours, are twins. We are a family of twins. Perhaps, James, we were meant to be together-- though not in the way people are meant to be together in books. No, our connection is something altogether different, but no less vital.
James. Is it wrong that I don't hate you? Is it wrong that I almost understand you? It is wrong that I want to put the light back into your body, to suffuse you with it? That I want that stillness to settle back into your limbs where it once was, making you calm, making you whole? These are questions I cannot push from my head so easily. I ask them often, but there is no one to reply to them. Is it wrong to remember you as the boy I once knew? I find it hard to believe he is gone. He must be living somewhere still inside you. Or inside me.
James. Tell me it is so.
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(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-27 10:46 pm (UTC)I find the subject matter disturbing, but that was your intention? It almost sound like it will turn into a Jacobean Tragedy.
I'm very intrigued.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-01-28 08:47 am (UTC)i didn't intend it to be disturbing, exactly? it was just the story that came to me. but yes, i do think it is disturbing.
it's all part of a much larger story. with many twined plots and characters. i don't know what will become of it, but i have been working on it a great deal lately.
thanks again! that made my day.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-19 06:39 am (UTC)I find it interesting Kathleen and Percy have a very similar voice?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-04-19 08:46 am (UTC)aw, i'm glad earnest is growing on you... he grew on me too!
and yes, percy and kathleen are very similar in some ways, now that you mention it. i hadn't actually consciously sat down and thought about it before this, but it's true. haha, of course, it could be a question of me being bad at altering my voice in the first person. ^_____^
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-18 05:57 pm (UTC)I know I've made like fourteen comments already today, on various pieces you've posted, and will be making more as I read more. Please don't feel the need to respond to them all if you don't have time or inclination -- I just wanted to give you comments and feedback :)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-18 06:03 pm (UTC)It's interesting to hear which of the S &T things stand alone and which don't. It's something that I think I'll write longer, more "complete" pieces about in the future, but some of the pieces do stand on their own already.
I actually went back and archived a few more things that I'd neglected to add to the memories-- mainly for your benefit!
Thanks again! :)