Inescapable History, Inescapable Fates

1001 Nights

Alex stopped crying and pushed Henry away. Henry didn't know what to do next.

Alex did.

He wiped his face on his shirt, walked into the nearest liquor store and bought bourbon. "Let's go back to Sandhurst. Now." He said to the sidewalk. They bought tickets and caught the next bus. Alex hid his bourbon in his bag, pulled it out the minute the bus started moving. He hadn't looked at Henry since pushing him away after crying. Hadn't met his eyes since he read that headline. Henry made a mental note to look up the ex-president of Peru. But ultimately, that headline could have said anything. The day had been too good and something had to remind them they were soldiers, or soldiers-in-training, on opposite sides of an active war. Or conflict. Or colonialism. Or whatever it was.

Alex was spinning out. Henry predicted another week or so of all night studying and drinking. He didn't know what to do.

But he did. He did because he had watched fifteen hours of patchy drone-filmed news coverage as Mujahideen Terrorists broke into the British embassy in Pakistan. He had watched the final videos of that embassy siege more times than he could count, finding glimpses of his father in the background of cell phone videos and hostage tapes. The terrified moments before they blew it all up. He had watched his mother become a shadow in the loss, watched his sister fall into addiction and climb out. He had missed his father every day for three years. He had learned loss like breathing. Alex was hurt, but Henry knew what to do. He knew it by heart.

"I keep on dying again." Alex looked at him. Through him. In his general direction. Henry just needed him to listen for one more line. 

"Veins collapse, opening like the

 Small fists of sleeping Children."

Alex's eyes met his, still watery and red. But he looked lucid, present, in a way he hadn't been before.

"Memory of old tombs

"Rotting flesh and worms do

Not convince me against

The challenge. The years"

Alex nodded to the stanzas. Listen to me for one more line. Stay here for one more line.

"And cold defeat live deep in

Lines along my face.

They dull my eyes, yet

I keep on dying,"

It was like Alex had disappeared right in front of him, went to a burning, hellish place Henry could never reach to, would never understand. But Henry knew why, he did the same disappearing act. And Alex was here with him now. Angry and off-kilter but here. Just for one more line.

"Because I love to live. Maya Angelou."

For a glass moment, they were silent. It was a held breath, a declaration not yet affirmed. Maybe it was a declaration of love. Even when you think you hate me I am here for you.

And then...

Alex whispered back to him, "Yo vivía en un barrio

de Madrid, con campanas,

con relojes, con árboles,"

Of course, Alex had memorized Pablo Neruda's war poems,

"Federico, te acuerdas

debajo de la tierra,

te acuerdas de mi casa con balcones en donde

la luz de junio ahogaba flores en tu boca?

Hermano, hermano!"

Henry wondered if he read Fredrico Lorca, too. Alex struggled to remember the next lines so Henry picked up in English,

"Everything

loud with big voices, the salt of merchandises,

pile-ups of palpitating bread,

the stalls of my suburb of Argüelles with its statue

Like a drained inkwell in a swirl of hake:

oil flowed into spoons,

a deep baying

of feet and hands swelled in the streets,

metres, litres, the sharp

measure of life,

stacked-up fish,

the texture of roofs with a cold sun in which

the weather vane falters,

the fine, frenzied ivory of potatoes,

wave on wave of tomatoes rolling down to the sea."

Alex remembered the next part because, well, of course he did.

"Y una mañana todo estaba ardiendo"

"And one morning it all was burning," Henry echoed,

"Y una mañana las hogueras"

"one morning the bonfires"

"salian de la tierra"

"leapt out of the earth"

"devorando seres,"

"devouring human beings -" Henry waited a moment for Alex to finish the poem. But he didn't. So Henry did. "And you'll ask: why doesn't his poetry

speak of dreams and leaves

and the great volcanoes of his native land?

Come and see the blood in the streets.

Come and see

The blood in the streets.

Come and see the blood,"

Alex was swallowing hard and Henry wiped a tear from his left eye.

"In the streets"

Alex tore his head from Henry's hands and looked away, so Henry knew he was going to say something mean. "I am sorry about your mother, that she is sad he died."

Henry bit his lip so hard it started to bleed. "And my father?"

Alex looked directly into his eyes, "I only wish he had died in the fire instead of the explosion so that he would have smelled his own flesh burn, like they did."

Henry tasted blood, knew it was dripping down his face, and made no move to stop it. "You don't mean that."

"I do. This war, it is not a video game to me."

Henry's fingers touched Alex's lips, feather-light, like he was a holy artifact, a saint's relic. He wondered if he could kiss away the anger rimming Alex's red eyes. But when Alex surged forward and kissed him, teeth biting against his lips, hands bruising his collar bone, Henry knew the unspoken violence between them could not be fixed. They were born with a promise of bloodshed made for them by people they loved.

Henry kissed Alex back, took no notice of the polite British passengers gawking. He heard a giggle and a tutting mother. 2 pm was not the right time for this, but at least it was a kiss, not a fistfight. Alex sucked the blood from his lip and then squeezed his throat so hard Henry shoved him hard against the window to break the grip. Henry trapped him there and fucked his tongue into Alex's mouth. Alex let him. He scratched hard down Henry's back, letting the last of his hateful energy evaporate. Henry could feel it hang in the air, so thick it made the bus humid. He pulled his tongue out of Alex, and rested their foreheads together.

A fight or a kiss? He could feel Alex's salty tears on his cheeks. Or maybe they were his own.