M: Charles! I am surprised
to find you here…asleep. Wake up!
B: I was feeling content to
stay in my room today.
M: Are you drunk!
B: I had been drinking.
M: I thought that; at last,
when I found you; I would find you drunk; not asleep in your room.
B: Did you say womb?
M: I said room.
B: But it feels more like a womb. It is
warm, and dark in here, and cold outside. The streets are full of slush, rivulets of
snowmelt and filth. I was safe in my dreaming; dreaming of temptation, delightful
and promising.
I was too cowardly
to accept a devils’ offer, afraid of losing myself in a bargain for fame, for a
place in the world. Now you are here, with your admiration. I wish you would
go. Do not offer me any part of that world out there; a world that made me
famous, respectable, to spite me.
I never meant for
you to take me seriously. I never knew that time would wound me so.
I think you belong
outside. I will meet your cold-consuming stare from my window. That hungry
gaze, belongs in the frozen world; out there.
Leave me in here,
leave my room.
M: Your room, this cozy room, this
in-between place; that is neither ditch nor palace, though more the former than
the latter.
I would hardly call
it warm, though I can see from the notes on your desk that the ink in your jar
is fluid enough to write with.
B: What do you know of flowing ink? That
ink is my elixir, I would drink it if I could. It is the distillation of my
heart, the liquor of my soul; an intoxicant that flows from me rather than into
me, like wine and wormwood it has poisoned me; made me a wretched hero in the
eyes of the world.
