times I know this, Master, that you can do it, and yet I wonder if I know it only because you know it, and you are lonely to do it to me."
"Ah!" He put his hands to his face, as though I had displeased him totally.
I was at a loss.
"Master, if I offended, hit me, beat me, do anything to me but don't turn away. Don't cover your eyes that would look on me, Master, because I can't live without your gaze. Explain it to me. Master, take away what divides us; if it be only ignorance then take away that."
"Oh, I will, I will," he said. "You are so clever and deceiving, Amadeo. You would be the fool for God all right, as you were told a long time ago that a saint should be."
"You lose me, Sir. I am no saint, and a fool, yes, because I conjecture it's a form of wisdom and I want it because you prize wisdom."
"I mean that you appear simple, and out of your simplicity comes a clever grasp. I am lonely. Oh, yes, I am lonely, and lonely to tell my woes if nothing else. But who would burden one so young as you with my woes? Amadeo, what age do you think I am? Gauge my age with your simplicity."
"You have none, Sir. You neither eat nor drink, nor change with time. You need no water to wash you clean. You are smooth and resistant to all things of nature. Master, we all know this. You are a clean and fine and whole thing."
He shook his head. I was distressing him when I wanted just the opposite.
"I have done it already," he whispered.
"What, my Lord, what have you done?"
"Oh, brought you to me, Amadeo, for now-." He stopped. He frowned, and his face was so soft and wondering that it made me ache. "Ah, but these are just self-serving delusions. I could take you, with a heap of gold, and plant you down in a distant city where-."
"Master, kill me. Kill me before you do this, or make sure your city is beyond the compass of the known world, because I will journey back! I will spend the last ducat of your heap of gold to journey here and beat on your doors."
He looked wretched, more a man than I'd ever seen him, in pain and trembling as he looked off, deep into the endless dark divide that separated us.
I clung to his shoulder and kissed him. There was a stronger, more virile intimacy due to my crude act of hours ago.
"No, no time for such comforts," he said. "I have to be gone. Duty calls me. Ancient things call to me, things which have been my burden for so very long. I am so weary!"
"Don't go tonight. When the morning comes, take me with you, Master, take me to where you conceal yourself from the sun. It is from the sun that you must hide, isn't it, Master, you who paint blue skies and the light of Phoebus more brilliantly than those who see it, you never see it-."
"Stop," he begged me, pressing his fingers about my hand. "Stop your kisses and your reason, and do as I say."
He took a deep breath, and for the first time in all my life with him, I saw him take a handkerchief from his coat and pat the moisture on his own forehead and his lips. The cloth was faintly red. He looked at it.
"I want to show you something before I go," he said. "Dress yourself, quickly. Here, I'll help you."
I was fully dressed for the cold winter night in less than a few minutes. He put a black cape over my shoulders, and gave me gloves trimmed in miniver, and put a black velvet cap on my head. The shoes he chose were black leather boots, which he never wanted me to wear before. To him the ankles of the boys were beautiful, and he did not favor boots, though he did not mind if we wore them by day when he could not see.
He was so troubled, so distressed, and all his face, despite its blanched cleanliness, was so infused with it, that I couldn't keep from embracing him and kissing him, just to make his lips part, just to feel his mouth locking onto mine.
I closed my eyes. I felt his hand cover up my face and cover my eyelids.