Chapter 49: Moonlight and Mist.

"Thus slowly, one by one,

Its quaint events were hammered out—

And now the tale is done."

-Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

John wasn't quite sure what woke him up.

It could have been some sort of sound, or perhaps it was just the feeling that something wasn't right in the room. He opened his eyes, and blinked a few times. Then he turned his head to one side. Jim was standing at the window, looking out. The moonlight caught his face and made him look pale, even paler than usual. His black-dyed hair was swept back, revealing the sharp line of his jaw. John had let his own hair grow grey, years ago. It made him look old, but that was fine with him.

John stood up and joined Jim at the window, wondering what he was looking at. He stood behind him and embraced him, and Jim put his arms back around John to pull him closer, interlocking his hands behind John's back in the way that only he did. There was a full moon, and it was huge in the sky, floating between faint curtains of cloud.

"The moon was a ghostly galleon, tossed upon cloudy seas," Jim murmured. "It's a beautiful night."

"It is."

The trees had already dropped their leaves in preparation for the cold rains, and the bare branches reached towards the sky, stained silver with moonlight. There was a low mist, too, swirling around the trunks like a living thing.

It was cold. Jim's breath was spreading across the window, slowly obscuring the view.

"Are you going to come sleep?" John asked.

"Not tonight. I'm thinking."

"About what?"

"Death," Jim answered simply.

"It's a good night for that," John admitted.

"A glorious night," Jim said, and then pressed a hand to the window, where his breath had fogged it. After a moment, he took it away, and studied the handprint that he had left. He leaned forwards, breaking John's embrace, and exhaled. The handprint disappeared again, into Jim's breath.

"It isn't long now, is it?" he said, returning to his original position in John's arms. "A few years, maybe a few more."

"You could live a whole life that way," John replied. "Only one year, and another after that, and who knows how many after that. Does it matter?"

"I thought…" Jim turned his face towards him, features becoming shadowed and unreadable. "I thought that things would make sense, sometime. I thought there would be answers." John's eyes flickered to where the handprint used to be, on the windowpane.

"I've seen a lot of people die, Jim. And none of them have had sudden epiphanies on the meaning of life."

"But I've just gone through my whole life, without a big plan. I mean, plots and conspiracies, yes, but never a purpose, never a place I wanted to get to. Is that all there's going to be? Little pieces of life, and no ending? No conclusion, no answer, no… nothing?"

"We aren't done yet. A few years, like you said. We have time to make sure we don't have any regrets. Overthrow the Russian government, maybe? Write a memoir?"

"And then what? We just… die? And then there's nothing? And nothing that we did means anything?"

"Maybe. Maybe not. Some questions might just not have answers, you know."

"So none of us know where anything ends. Isn't that sad? Not to know where your life is going to end, or whether the end is the end, or whether your end is someone else's? And we don't know what it means, or where it's going, or anything important at all, and it's all just a random mess of events in time and even their order stops mattering at some point, even the fact that they happened at all stops mattering, and then where are we? Forgetting, and alone, and unable to even-"

"Jim."

There was a silence after that, a long silence that seemed to come from the night itself, that the two men were only recognizing now. Their breath suddenly became louder and almost blasphemous in its presence, in how it disturbed the absolute quiet.

And then Jim reached out and opened the window, letting the cold air spiral into the room. John tightened his arms around the ex-criminal mastermind, but didn't say anything. The wind rushed in with a faint whistling sound, and somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted as it rushed down towards its prey on the ground below.

"We have lingered in the chambers of the seas by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed, red and brown, till human voices wake us, and we drown." Jim's voice was hushed, as though they were in church.

"The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," John said. "T.S. Eliot." And then the silence stretched again.

"Do you think that it's going to be a happy ending?" Jim asked, pressing back into John's arms, away from the cold.

The mist curled below them, surrounding the house. The wind danced through John's silver-grey hair. Jim was warm against him, and in that moment, John could think of nothing else that he wanted.

"I think it already is," he answered.

THE END

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question. . .
Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions
And for a hundred visions and revisions
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, "Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—
[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—
[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all;
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.

And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep . . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet–and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: "I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all"
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say, "That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all."

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this, and so much more?—
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

-T.S. Eliot.