Fantasie-Impromptu

VII. The Unreachable

What do you mean by "love"?

To love in a means where your world may be devoured, colours taken apart and replaced by that of grey; your thoughts of a beautiful painting - gone, swept, and fallen pale, all in comparison to the beautiful image that is this man. To love in the mercy of his eyes, his skin, his music.

To love as nothing but love itself - with no meanings holding you back, no gazes and opinions stopping you from anything; stopping you from loving. To love as if nothing had mattered. No looks, no truths, no lies, no anything. To love with no qualms of apologizing.

To love just as to love.

On one fine day, Franz takes it upon himself to confide about this idea. In the young of the night, café shift just finished, and the two friends basking sweetly in the tacet of each other's presence in Chopin's living room, Franz throws the question about like a coin to a fountain, hoping something good might come out, and he throws it a bit hard to the unsuspecting receiver.

"What do you mean by 'love'?" he asks out of the blue.

And Fryderyk, who is seated at the piano, just telling Franz about the news of his last week's Fantasie-Impromptu finally being put under review before actually getting published (just a little more to what might be Chopin's successful comeback to the music scene) - a piece he'd never tell was actually about his unexpected adventures and hopes with Franz - looks at him, tilts his head, and knits his brows together in confusion, why the sudden query? - he would ask to himself.

Silence would first gather until Franz would follow up in real life with, yet another question - "How do you know you're in love?" he says loud and clear, voice laced with pure sincerity, looking straight into Fryderyk's brown eyes, and there it was, a certain face.

Fryderyk would have recognized that look from a mile away. The look of self-suppressed longing. The desire to be in somebody else's arms. The look of fear, thinking that perhaps he was in love with someone he feels he isn't allowed to be with.

A look so familiar, because Fryderyk had seen it on his own for far too many times. Whenever he'd be reminded of the cursed love he had conceived from within: for he as a man, to fall in love with yet another man - this was the only dilemma Fryderyk would hate to think about for himself. And though the look was soft and almost unnoticeable, Fryderyk could still tell, that look was undoubtedly there. Right there in Franz' troubled eyes and sad lips.

But thoughts of him aside, my, is Franz in love? And if so, who in the world could have succeeded in taking hold of Franz' heart, the same way Chopin would have wanted to take hold of it first? What a sorrow! But what chance could have Fryderyk had before then? If Franz had ever found out about Fryderyk's homosexuality, who knows how Franz might've reacted? To hurt him in ways Fryderyk would never even begin to imagine.

Franz had always been too good of a man, and Fryderyk had always been too afraid to say anything to profess his love. So now, when Franz comes to confide in him for words about this matter, when all Franz does is ask for nothing but humble guidance, who is Fryderyk to turn him down? If anything, he ought to let the man love the woman he can never live up to! If by Franz' side, Fryderyk can stay as a good friend, then he'd like to hold on to what he can have. After all, beggars can never be choosers, and at Franz' feet, Fryderyk is nothing but a beggar for his unreachable love.

So he answers most sincerely, "Love is a complicated concept, it is the most difficult yet simplest thing you can encounter." Fryderyk says. "Are you in love, my friend? Who is this lucky woman of tonight's voice?" he asks, in hopes to conceal the sounds of his breaking heart, every word equating to a tiny piece shattering upon collision with the cold hard ground, and Fryderyk would have to wear that bitter and painful smile - the kind he had almost gotten used to by now.