Dear D,
I find it my burden to write to you now, and so shall I do it without preamble. I have had this letter written through my other half in order that you shall see that we are united in its writing, and so that you may be apprised of the seriousness of this matter. Know that the language that you read is both of us, for of this matter are we both aggrieved, and cannot let old wounds dictate response.
We have been now these few days with Laurent in South Carolina and I am afraid that he is going mad, truly mad. So please our feelings step aside to say that your presence is judged most necessary here. Dasius, let us step away from formality to speak.
I, Leis, found myself this past week in California to visit with Laurent in his master's house. When I arrived, he kissed me and he told me that he had gone there for a little peace, because he had been fighting with Bellamy awhile. This fight was not so active of a kind, but rather passive, a desire to rouse Bellamy from gloominess and set upon him cheer. The man in question greeted me himself. Bellamy did not look strange at all, from what little I know of the man. He seemed healthy to me, and as tranquil as ever. Really, he seemed not unlike my Q in some ways, and so I felt glad for the seeming good feeling between them. I settled in for a weekend, committed to peace.
I do not know what ever went on between them, do you? I have never known any other of Laurent's lovers but you. I do not know any of them, so I do not know what he would consider propriety. Perhaps there were other matters at hand he thought too private to share with me. Perhaps they had been in conflict much more deep than I could know. But perhaps it was only as Laurent told me, which is that there was no warning at all.
I only climbed the stairs to find him because it had been quiet for so long. His master and his others, they give me wide berth and I them, and so I felt lonesome. I had lit a cigarette, which I knew the smell his master does not favor, and so when I could not find Laurent in his room I went up into the attic to look there and to smoke underneath the skylight. There was no eeriness, no sense of what I would find at all, and so I opened the door to walk in unannounced.
There was no mistaking what I was seeing. It was clear to me in an instant.
Laurent could only say to me, "He asked me to," begging me to listen. "Damn you, listen," he begged me, "he asked me to. He asked me to and he meant for me to do it. Look, he asked me to," his hand shaking so hard that when I put my cigarette between his fingers I had to guide the end to his lips.
"I know, my darling, I know it," I told him, but he could not stop repeating it. He had curled himself up on the settee up there, and Bellamy on the hardwood facedown where he had fallen. There was a little blood coming from the bite on Bellamy's neck, and I knew Laurent's version for the truth because the bite itself was so clean, where we know that if there were a struggle it would have been very rough. There was not a single drop of blood on Bellamy's clothing, or on Laurent himself, only a little on the collar that had been left after passing. This speaks of intimacy, doesn't it? More than words can say. When I touched the poor thing on the neck, Laurent began to cry, and soon inconsolable.
The boy had told him, "For all the love we have had in the world, I want it to be you," and that had been the end. Bellamy had never taken to the blood, or to this life, and had grown disturbed by the passage of time, and never had yielded from that disturbance. This is what I may understand from what Laurent has since told me. I think that to say so is high-minded, but the real answer is probably so simple that I cannot see it, or understand it, and Laurent, if he does understand this death, cannot speak two words without sounding madness.
He says, "Come home, little boat," and, "Sing, little bird," and I do not understand what it means, or what he wants me to do.
He seems so frail to me, and I have brought him home with me to South Carolina because he could not stand parting.
You know how deeply he cares for us. You understand how closely he has kept us to his heart?
A small piece of him has blackened and fallen away, and his grasp when he touches my arm is so weak. I know that sometimes he plays at frailty, but in my gut I know that this is not playing. He complains of his liver.
Do you remember in Paris, when you came into my room and you talked with me? Laurent talks to me about it. I am nervous when I think of those days, but I remember. I think that I remember more as the years go on. You came in and you sat down at the desk, facing me, and you said, "Can I teach you letters?" and I refused. I regret it. I did not really understand that with reading, with writing, come privacy. Even now, my writing is very cramped and not very well, and must be looked over and corrected. So that I wish we might speak face to face someday about those things, and understand each other. I am thinking about those sorts of things lately. I do not know if I can reconcile us, for I naturally tremble, but for the sake of Beloved, should we try? Do you think that it would make him feel a little better? I just want to help him somehow. I cannot think of anything.
When he speaks of Bellamy, he confuses the dead and the living, telling me that he is sorry that he murdered me. He will not listen when entreated, that Bellamy's death is not a murder. He says that I don't understand. Maybe I don't.
There will always be so much that I do not understand. I do not do much well. I cannot even comfort him at all. I cannot provide comfort for any of those men I love. I grieve for the fear that there is nothing to be done, that perhaps even if I were as smart as you, there is no secret cure for our suffering. I want to believe that if I could understand God, if I had wisdom, I could touch Laurent and make him see that things are not so bad. Oh but what am I saying, that any man could ever understand the wisdom of his Father? You see the only boon of the longsuffering is heresy. Of course to be alive is to suffer. For that is why we must live. I am only saying this because I love him. Does he not tolerate the worst of us because he loves us, too?
I brush his hair. I bathe him. These are ways that we have been intimate in the past, to be near. But there is strain in my household. Quinn of course is no stranger to such a wound, and yet Laurent has been unkind to him in the past. We are capable of overcoming that with time, and yet a pall falls over the house. D, he asks for you in his sleep. He tells me he longs for your belly, and I see that in his eyes there is yet something of the child about you. You are his child, and I am not. I am only a lover. There is not more I can do but love him. It is you who is part of his spirit, and you the lover, too. You may nurse him well.
Perhaps he needs to be vicious, and he has never been good at it with me. With me, with the lover, he can only be sad, and there is no healing or strength in sadness. But I am only a fool. Do you think that any part of what I have said is right? I look to you, sir. I beg your response. I am utterly afraid. What is there for us, if he is not here? I cannot imagine that abyss. To even think of it sends me into a tremor I cannot escape. But here it is that in his current state, the unspeakable seems possible.
I beg you come. I beg you for frailty's sake. I will say any lie to see you come to him, but here there is only the truth. He asks for you, and I ask you now. Sir, pity us. We are trading fears for other fears.
With regard,
Leis, and his other.