1) Akin to Love
"All emotions, and that one particularly, were abhorrent to his cold, precise but admirably balanced mind."
I lay on the floor long enough for the cold of the boards to leach into my bones; penance I suppose but insufficient at that. Finally I staggered to my feet and wandered into my bedroom.
I tried to maintain some distance whilst enumerating my problems. They were three, but I felt that -- as was so often the case -- they were linked. I had badly mis-handled the case, I had been very unobservant regarding Watson, and I had compounded the problem by acting abominably. It was inexplicable and I could not imagine what was interfering with my reason. Some insidious emotion, no doubt, but its nature was still obscure to me.
I looked at the mantelpiece, littered with pipes, syringes and loose cartridges. There, I supposed, were three possible solutions. Not a difficult choice given that, taken in the right order, they were not mutually exclusive. I plucked out my favorite clay pipe and went in search of tobacco.
I sat in the corner of the sofa, with my knees pulled up to my chest, and brooded. Gradually the smoke set about it ironic process, of clearing my perceptions. I attacked my problems systematically, so as to better elucidate their patterns and interactions. Chronological order seemed most pertinent in this case.
Had I really not known about Watson's homosexuality? I had certainly been aware of the evidence. Even in the last week there was the ease with which he remembered the list of clubs I would be visiting, because they were already familiar to him, no doubt. There was his freedom in forming opinions about my attire. Most telling, there was the lack of usual middle class disgust about¼ I lost my train of thought.
I had known, really, for a long time, but I had done my best to forget it. It was amazing what can be forced from awareness if you have the fine control of your mind that I am usually capable of. After all, Watson's predilections were irrelevant to me. Even if I was not the rather asexual being I found myself to be, I did not seem to be the object of his attentions. A young man does not go out on the town if he finds the company appealing at home. An older man does not marry if his affections are engaged elsewhere. It has seemed quite safe, and decorous, to ignore the whole issue.
I tapped my pipe out on the table, further ruining its finish. It was not that I really wanted Watson's attentions in that way, I assured myself, but I had resented their absence. An irrational response, but that was the way with strong emotion, it warped and rotted whatever it touched.
There was the crux of the matter. Recent events suggested I had been wrong. Watson was not entirely indifferent to whatever charms the softer emotions could make him see in me. That was my essential error, and undoing. A subjective, secretive and emotional matter -- thin ice that even the best observer might not mark. It still did not entirely explain the steps I took to send myself plunging through into these dangerous waters.
I need to recapture my equilibrium. To banish the emotion that was anathema to my methods. I could not even entertain the notion of the truly romantic attachment to Watson, but neither could I afford to lose him. From this perspective it became clear how shabbily I had treated my old comrade. On my return he had discarded his home and occupation like an old coat, without a hint of reproach. Oh, the care I had taken to achieve that end, but I had still depended upon his co-operation. Watson who assisted my cases at his own very real peril, who made up my household and my only real connection to greater humanity. In return he received nothing except scorn and ridicule. It really only made sense if Watson felt a stronger attachment to me than I could return. That was what allowed me to take such liberties, such unfair advantage of an old friend.
Well if it were merely a matter of the physical I would say the continuance of Watson's comradeship was cheap at the price, but no. He was not a man of that mercenary ilk. What he sought instead was that urbane combination of passionate interlude and prolonged civility that distinguished the best of British households. I was not sure which of these I was less capable of but needless to say neither entered the Elysian realms of possibility.
My Watson, my spirit-level in both senses of the word. The straight horizon and dauntless star that enabled me to seek out the furthest and most tumultuous seas without ever losing sight of home, and upon return he gave me calm; unquestioning regard, unquestionable reliability. I never knew that he would have asked more of me, 'Oh physician heal thyself' I say. Not to he who owns that profession but to myself. I have seen, but I have, most surely, not observed.
To my credit, such as any credit in this incident might be laid at may door, I considered it. I could feel distaste taut upon my face. What succored most men's souls was poison to mine, and reluctantly I concluded the problem insoluble. Not indecipherable - the nature of the knot was clear to me, its ends so deeply hidden that the cleverest fingers would never, in the normal course of events, have won them free. They all lay clear in the severed stands left by my own unkindest cut. Both strands were injured and the knot they formed irreparably broken - all its convolutions laid bare.
With disgust I laid my pipe aside, this was no longer a problem of its provenance. I stood and walked away from my muse and her omniscient veil, into my clearer, colder bedroom. I picked up the syringe case and tincture and carried it back to the living room. I stood at the old bow window, once my favorite place. There I took up my guardian demon, that her soporific shroud might cover over what I had so recently uncovered and wished no more to see.
The blunted syringe bit deep and dispensed it venomous deliverance and I surrendered myself to the sofa, knowing I would not feel any discomfort from its unpadded expanse - nor, for a while, any other kind of pain. I fell to sleep with a bitter smile that blended current comfort with the knowledge of the world I would need to wake to again.
2) Prefers Wearing a Mask
"...and prefers wearing a mask to showing his face."
Morning was a most unwelcome messenger, and try as I might to resist its urgings it brought me to wakefulness again. Existence is truly a tawdry and commonplace affair, and no more so than on that day. The syringe lay next to my arm where it had fallen laxly from the sofa, a thin rivulet of blood marking its length. It was a chill and early time of day but my methodical mind noted I had slumbered through two visitations already.
My coverlet was wrapped around me with the careful precision that spoke of Mrs. Hudson. No man would tuck in the edges so, and a glint to silver suggested she had brought up the breakfast tray as well. The smaller service, so Watson had not returned, which was a mercy I suppose. It occurred to me that some fit of self-destructiveness would draw him back to me, but those were not terms I cared to make - so better he had not seen me thus. Another visitors imprint existed in the scuffed rug and the umbrella stand, set further out from the wall than usual. It looked as if it had fallen and been replaced away from its customary spot. Mrs. Hudson's hand there, ushering out the impertinent visitor, but not tarrying, under the circumstances, to brush the pile of the carpet.
Now my other guest must have been in an impatient and forceful man, Mrs. Hudson would not have willingly let him pass. That it was not Watson was indicated by his clumsiness. Watson was long familiar with the way the furniture stood, and with my own ways. Though they might disappoint him they would not cause him to step back so suddenly in surprise.
Much as I might wish my mind to be silent, it was not its natural state any more than cheerfulness was my habitual mood. So I rose glumly, noting the stiffening in my muscles, which seem more easily provoked with every passing year. The tea was still tepid and the paper still colder than the room. All marking the events I deduced as having played quite recently to their small insensible audience.
The paper derided Lestrade somewhat on having not yet recovered the Widow's Lace diamonds, so recently lost from their former possessor's abode. The society columns painted the victim, a Baronet, as something of a rake, but the newspaper recorded him as recently married. The Who's Who added that the girl was from a family distinguished by is lucre more than its lineage or looks. That and the somewhat fatalistic nature of his comments, as quoted within the article, were suggestive enough. Whilst the tenor of the prose suggested that old Lestrade might be in the mood to ask for assistance.
Always a truculent man he had come only very slowly to admit any regard for me, and at the price of much effort on my part - pro bono and unrecognized in any other way as well. His stormy exit suggested that all that work was easily undone. Well, damn the man, I only ever wanted his civility but he would come from far too low an opinion to far too lofty a one. Now no doubt, rather than moderate his thoughts to some middle ground he would simply return to that glowering disdain that he been such a challenge to me, and ignore all my past favors.
Lacking a better purpose, or one I could face, I determined to reclaim the diamonds. I had resources and hypotheses that the police cannot bring to bear on nobility - a class that rarely lives up to its name these days.
There were hours yet too noon and the idle classes would still be in church, so I gathered together my tools with dispatch. There was a ruddy bruise upon my cheek but it was faint enough for a little wax crayon and powder too hide, and the other marks on my body were easily concealed by clothing. I added several spoons of sugar to my tea and drank it cold; it would not do to become weak or ill at a crucial juncture. Being charged with burglary, or even going equipped, would leave me with no aspect of my life unsullied ¼ there my unruly thoughts were straying again to issues action could not resolve.
I walked the few streets to a corner where the cabs were wont to pass and caught one to a place a short distance from my goal. A short distance geographically but world apart in other ways - no one here would willingly speak of any matter to a Peeler. Better in terms of discretion to walk, but my fingers still did not entirely obey me nor was my head completely clear, I took the risk. Reputation is a great protection, so long as I was not caught in the act I was safe enough.
But caught I was in another way. Strolling nonchalantly down the street I caught a glimpse of Watson's distinctive frame, his way of walking, the way he held himself was so imprinted on my mind that I could pick him at will from any crowd at any distance. At this distance I might avoid him only by most precipitous action, which I refrained from taking, having a better plan.
Instead I strode forward to meet him and pulled him perfunctorily aside.
"Ah Watson, a fine morning is it not?"
I took a firm grip on his coat and drew him into the alley. By long habit he followed my lead, our lives had often depended upon that unquestioning obedience.
"Do give me a hand over this wall," I said in the lower voice. "I am not quite as limber as I might be."
Watson stood frozen, quite unable to respond sensibly. Anything outside of the ettiquettes of peace or war had this effect on him.
"Your hand if you please, and keep an eye out for the constabulary."
With a sharp look that I contrived to ignore, he complied, and I left any conscious thought of him behind. Concentration was required as there might well be some hound or ailing servant still in the house. I entered easily through a kitchen window, levering the latch with nothing more complicated than a silver butter knife. It took some minutes to find the safe, concealed beneath a carpet in the smoke-stained study. It was of an old type and easier to pick than a drunkard's pocket.
Normally I would have a higher state of certainty of what I would find within, but sometimes I chose to ride the tiger and I had not fallen yet. The diamonds were within, a crackman's dream. Smallish stones and easy to hock, but so many of them and all of the finest color and clarity. Even I was mesmerized a little by the way they stole the light from the room, playing upon the eyes with a streaming scintillation that many an alpine stream fell short of.
I grabbed my prize and reversed my course with alacrity, fleeing one peril and approaching another.
Its as well no Bobby had happened by as Watson had nerves and guilt were written all over him, I may as well have posted a notice of my crime. He started as I alighted beside him, annoyed that I staggered slightly which spoils the effect. I turned the stones briefly between my cupped hands.
"Almost enough to make one consider a prosperous retirement overseas," I quipped, and pocketed them.
Watson eyes showed no amusement, but his features were not entirely drawn. I noted that he wore, or course, the same clothes he had left in, but the did not bear the creases of having been worn through the night. Finally the revolver was in his pocket and we were both in the vicinity of the 'Journey's End.' Any man might easily conclude that Watson had been with his erstwhile friend. A battered looking blond chap I recalled vaguely as coming to my rescue and being entrusted with the pistol - before all went dim and the curtain rose one our latest and most painful scene.
I walked and Watson followed beside me.
"I dare say I have murdered our long friendship," I said as we walked, both keeping to our public faces. "And I am not the fool to think my actions can be undone, but I apologize for them."
Watson never thought to dissemble in this or any other moment, though I watched my own actions from a certain calculating remove.
"I do not know that your apology deserves a hearing," he said. "Nor on the other hand am I sure that I deserve to receive it."
Watson words, at time, betrayed his literary streak, but I am no better.
"Sometimes," I said. "A net is so tangled it can only be cut free and left behind, but I am loath to do so if for no other reason than that me profession requires at times the assistance of a man of some wit, much courage and complete trustworthiness. I only know one such man, the last requirement being the one that limits me the most. Forgive me or don't as you wish, but I need to know whether I can call on you when mine or another's safety depend upon it."
It was quite unfair of me, I know, but even with Watson's faith in me shattered he knew the value of my work. I had raised it as a barrier and a bond between us so often in the past, and it was a practice that might serve me still.
"Of course," he said. "But we cannot leave things thus between us."
"Can we not?" I could not keep the sharp edge from my voice though it was fear much more than the scorn it sounded like. "I fancy that what could be salvaged is not worth the ordeal it would require to do so. You may have the rooms as long as you want them, the cost is nothing to me in my current finances."
"Don't be foolish, Holmes," he replied wearily. "You have more call on them, having more possessions, being consulted there, and being the man who located them in the first place all those years ago."
I realized then that I had basically assumed that we would no longer cohabit when better could have been hoped for, but I was always one to prefer honest black to the many half-enlightened shades of gray, so I pressed on.
"I bear the greatest part of the blame, and you have only recently saved my life and not for the first time I might add. So if I choose such a light penance as not disturbing you from our home, I do not see that you should object." I waved away any further words from him, in a panic to be free before I feel to weeping in the street or making some other kind of inexcusable scene. "I have business with Lestrade, and must be away," I said and fled, satisfied that the cut had been quick and clean - but increasingly horrified as to the depth of the wound.
3) Burned
"You would certainly have been burned, had you lived a few centuries ago."
I stood before the offices of the Yard and deliberately stoked the fires of my own indignation before climbing the steps to the floor where Lestrade's office over-looked the street. I needed it to stride through the large space where the typists and various other staff worked and loitered, without showing the slightest hint of my inner turmoil. Somehow amidst the rest of my anguish the fact that Lestrade had barge into my rooms and found me, vulnerable and degraded by my own action, that outraged me the most. It was a safe anger, one I could direct righteously outwards without touching on the roots of my own guilt. I had known the inspector was in by his shadow against the glass, and was pleased to see he was alone.
I closed the office door with exaggerated gentleness, walking on the eggshells of my own mood, and turned to Lestrade. The diamonds spilled from my hand onto the chipped wood of the old table in the middle of the small room. Lestrade kicked back from the table and stood, startled by my sudden appearance. He looked from the stones to me and back several times. This was obviously not how he thought his next conversation with me would begin. "The Widow's Lace," he said in a grim, defeated tone of voice. "That you could indulge and any kind of perversion and still make me look like a fool at the end of the day."
I placed my hands on his desk and leaned forward towards him. "It is not yet noon, Lestrade. If it ever takes me till the end of the day to best you, I'll take in my shingle and become a bee-keeper."
Lestrade sat again and wove the strands of glinting gems between his fingers, then looked up at Holmes with well-practiced resignation. "I do hope you'll tell me where you got them?"
I toyed with the idea of walking out and leaving Lestrade to explain things to his superiors and the press, but my contempt for both of these agencies was even greater than my disapproval of the inspector. I lowered into the creaky wooden chair provided for Lestrade's visitors, not quite concealed a grimace as my body protested the abuses it had suffered over the last day or so. Then I proceeded to explain to Lestrade what was too me, completely obvious, but so often astounded others.
"A rake with a pile of diamonds seems rather blase when his wife reports them missing from the safe. For God's sake Lestrade, he went and got them back off his trollop and has spent the last few days trying to think of a lie big enough to save his dignity. I only regret I won't be there when you contrive to *find* them..."
I was no more comfortable sitting than standing, and so I levered myself to my feet again. My feelings broke and dulled and all I wanted was to crawl back to Baker Street before the melancholic undertow claimed me. "As for this mornings debacle," I concluded coolly. "When you barge into my abode uninvited I do not hold myself responsible for what you discover."
I fully intended to turn on my heel and leave it at that, but it occurred to me that I needed to know whether I still had Lestrade's co-operation, even under sufferance. It was an important variable in planning my more risky endeavors and the main reason that I let the yard take the credit for my occasional assistance on their stalled cases.
Lestrade looked on calmly, wearing his conventional morality like shining armor. "I had every right to call on you last night when I first had reason to, but I waited till morning. Not to speak with you as it happens, but the doctor. A ...* citizen* helped us apprehend the man responsible for the dock area rollings. However, he could not explain how he came to have in his possession an ex-service revolver whose serial number would place it as being Doctor Watson's."
I knew damn well that Lestrade hadn't had the time to match the revolver number to the service records, so either he was guessing or he had taken down the number some other time when he was at Baker Street. It would be easily plausible that the weapon had been stolen, but if Lestrade had taken the latter course ... and Watson was a hopeless liar anyway. That and the fact that Lestrade had not retained the weapon suggested another approach. Surely Lestrade would rather believe the worst of myself than think that Watson was involved in such practices. In either case he was unlikely to apply the full weight of the law.
I thrust my hands into my pockets and gave Lestrade a supercilious smile.
"I am sure you are aware that those are not the circles in which the good doctor moves, nor was he entirely pleased that I had so cavalierly loaned out his weapon." I shrugged. "But it was the least I could to help in helping to apprehend Mr. Shrivener. I hardly though it an effort requiring my personal involvement. Merely some basis for getting the police into that house to discover the evidence that was bound to be within. Something like a local vigilante breaking in and subduing the suspect with the help of an old revolver. I did not account for you methodical weighs, perhaps retirement amongst the hives is not so very far away." My attempt at humor was a little flat, for I am not easily amiable for any stakes.
Lestrade looked doubtful. "...And Watson's involvement?"
"Watson's involvement? Ha! Watson's involvement was to go down there this morning and retrieve his revolver."
"Interesting," Lestrade said with some satisfaction. "I have long suspected that you could lie as coolly as any criminal, but this is the first time I've known for sure.... You see, I know that Watson went down to the Oak *last night*, and stayed there *till the morning*, and a most disquieting revelation it was too. Only to be followed by learning more than I wished to know about the extent of your vices. I begin to wonder if there are any real English gentlemen left, for I would previously have thought you and he were prime examples."
Lestrade seemed more smugly satisfied than dismayed to discover our feet of clay; I gave no further thought to cultivating his good favor.
"Whatever you imagine you know about Watson..."
"Your own lies," Lestrade snapped. "Told me more than my surveillance, but do not trouble yourself I have no interest in pursuing crime ... of that nature."
I felt enraged at Lestrade's casual condemnation of Watson, his judgmental disgust. The fog of my outrage returned in full force, almost paralyzing my thoughts but giving me new impetuous.
"Before you contrive to condescend in the slightest towards Watson you might want to consider whether you would want me for an enemy." I spoke with a quiet sincerity, awaiting the whisper of spite that would release the full avalanche of my malice.
Lestrade flushed and stood. "And you might consider that I could always decide to have an interest in investigating such crimes!"
I smiled thinly, thinking immediately of three difference schemes that would achieve my threat whilst defusing Lestrade's, and that was without descending to unsubtle considerations such as just doing away with him. An act I felt, at that moment, quite capable of doing. Lestrade froze, as he accurately interpreted my expression. The longer we stood, the more confidence I felt both in my ability to defend Watson and my desire to do so. How often had I casually drawn Watson into mortal danger? But all the while there was never a time when I wouldn't have given my life for him, it was just that on most occasions I would put the case above either of our safeties. Strange priorities I know, but I am as I am and have long since given up apologizing for it. I calmly considered the implications of my own thoughts as I watched Lestrade become more and more uncertain.
Lestrade glanced down. "Please disregard what I just said," he retracted with as much dignity as he could manage. "I have only the greatest respect for the doctor, and at least in the professional sense, for yourself. Though you do not make it easy."
He held out his hand in a conciliatory gesture, which I ignored as I left. I put him from my thoughts as the least of my worries.
4) Drawing the Veil
"He never spoke of the softer passions, save with a gibe and a sneer. They were admirable things for the observer -- excellent for drawing the veil from men's motives and actions. But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw doubt upon all his mental results."
I opened the door to our rooms feeling like a battered ship fleeing from a storm into a sheltered harbor, only to find myself under fire from a shore battery. Which is to say that I have taken up Watson's habit of over blown metaphor. A sure sign of disintegrating objectivity.
Others might have said they felt another presence in the house, but what I detected was a little damp sand upon the stair, no more than a few grains, and slightly higher ambient light, suggesting that the door to Watson's room was open - it had been closed when I had left. There was no sound of movement, I could imagine Watson standing frozen, having heard my key in the front door. We both stood, out of sight of each other, as I steeled my courage. Then I heard him sit upon the edge of his old iron-framed bed, awaiting me.
As I ascended the stairs, my thoughts formed and dissolved like wind harried clouds with each footstep, then deserted me entirely at the top. Watson sat upon a bare bed, and in the center of the chamber sat his large travelling chest. I noted that all of his possessions fitted neatly back within the chest that bore them hence. It looked as if I might lose my long accustomed companion within a few more minutes. His expression was drawn, but resolute; mine, I could only imagine.
I shut the door behind me, and pretended to turn the key in the lock before drawing it out. Watson looked on with incomprehension as I took three steps, opened the window and tossed it out into the back yard.
"It is fickle of me," I added blandly. "But I find I am not able to let you go so easily."
Truly I had no idea of what I was going to say or do from one moment to the next. Others' motivations have so often been revealed to me by the broad bands of their passions, the crooked threads of their reasoning - but I was nothing but loose ends and desperation. My last ploy was haphazard and poorly thought out. I backed away again to stand just before the door. I could not let him desert me.
"You let me go ... years ago," Watson said solemnly. "I just did not have the sense to leave."
"I *need* you Watson. I would be lost..." I had not the words for such things. I understood what I said only as I heard it emerge, like some archeologist brushing away the dust and sand to find what had lain, long undisturbed within. "I beg you, Watson. Do not go."
Watson looked up at me solemnly. "You have done without me for years at a time and should not suffer too much by it now. I will still be in the city, the address of my new rooms is written on a card which I left on the mantelpiece. As you said, should you need assistance in your work I shall still be available."
Watson looked out the window, and I could not help but note his calm demeanor - truly he lost much less then me by dissolving our partnership. He turned his gaze to me, a piercing and honest as any gaze I had ever met. "So I suggest you behave reasonably and open that door," he concluded. He believed it locked as I had intended, I needed to keep him here, long enough at least to try and work out what it was I wanted - let alone how to achieve it. Strangely I was unwilling to actually lock the door, to use the brute presence of the door rather than the more subtle manipulation of his perceptions of it.
"What if," I said. "For once in my life I do not chose to be reasonable."
Watson stood and stepped towards me. "Shall I convince you?" he said. "It should not be hard, merely to remind you of what disgusts you so greatly."
He put his hands on me and for a moment an irrational part of my heart thought he would resort to violence; I should have known better. He kissed me. No doubt it is something he had long wished to do. It was a sad and bitter gesture intended to provoke in me, nothing more than distaste - sufficient distaste to make me open the door - most locks being little barrier to my skills. My response ... was no response. I did not know what I felt; I don't know to this day exactly what I felt. Nothing, I suppose. The ground seemed to sway a little beneath my feet and all I could do was wonder what had happened the world I thought I lived in and the person I though I had been.
Watson's right hand fell quite incidentally on the door handle, and it turned under that weight. The door fell open. Watson stepped back from me. "Oh, Holmes," he said with strange humor and despair. And he left me.
5) I am Lost
"I think I had better go, Holmes."
"Not a bit, Doctor. Stay where you are. I am lost without my Boswell."
Mrs. Hudson found me sitting on Watson's bed with my head in my hands. To admit to all that I wanted was to undermine and betray all that I had. I couldn't survive on either and I saw no way to have both.
"It's a pity," she said.
Which struck me as a vast understatement.
I went back down to the living room and stood looking out the bow window. Through the closed door I heard a man come for the chest and leave again. I went over to the mantle and picked up the card that sat there and without even reading it I threw it in the fire.
Then I thought about what I had just done and felt sick, ill to my soul.
Watson was right, I had been years without him in my travels and travails, but never without the *possibility* of him. I always knew that there was a Watson to return to, through wars, wives and royal espionage - his absence was as inconceivable as the disappearance of London overnight. Not the physical presence of his person, though I always found that comforting, but the presence of his regard, his ... love. Of that which was now gone. I had lost nothing that I had thought I needed, nothing that I had striven to protect, and all that gave my life meaning.
I had never wanted public acclaim, media attention, respect from my family, my peers or the police. Sometimes it pleased me to amaze them, simple pride. But what I wanted, was lost. To try and recover it I would have to betray my methods, possibly destroy the basis of my profession and perhaps my very sanity. Never a secure prospect, as I well knew. And even then, who was to say he would take me? Or whatever creature I became after betraying every tenant by which I lived and probably became incapable of the very achievements he admired in me.
I was lost.
I wandered into my bedroom and looked upon the mantle there. I looked to where the syringe sat upon its surface. The maid must have picked it up from the floor during the course of her sweeping and brought it back to its usual haunt. But there could not be sufficient solace in a sea of cocaine, in all the worlds' fields of poppies or any man-made balm. The thought of tobacco was merely laughable, the thought of cartridges less so.
I looked at that scattering of bullets. I picked up a single bullet, my hair-trigger pistol and went to sit before the glowering fire. I loaded the pistol. I sat. I sat in an echoing and almost timeless emptiness for a period that I can not now estimate the length of.
Then some simulacrum of reasoned return and I unloaded the pretty pistol.
I dressed in a suit of my sturdiest and most non-descript clothes. I put the bullets in one pocket and the little pistol in the other. I put ever piece of cash money that I had in my shoes and I left. I knew that my bank would continue to pay my rent well into the next century without any further intervention from me. But to live there was as ludicrous an idea as to act out a play when no audience attended. I was sound and fury. I signified nothing. A strange realization to come to so late in life.
If I were to put my intentions at that time into word I would have to say I went to lose my physical self as thoroughly as I lost the man within. A characteristically melodramatic solution but one I came very close to achieving.