Les Noyades

16: The Second Coming

Rumi sat in with his father that evening. He wanted only to see Yves but he did not know that he would be welcome. It hardly made sense that he had acted so stupidly but when he looked back to his arm each time it reminded him of the anger he had built up. It was expended now, as if all of it had been burned away along with his skin.

Declan was curiously expansive; he asked Rumi about the time he was spending with Yves— what did they do, really, besides the line of sorting through papers and talking poetry? Rumi knew instinctively what he was being asked to say— that he and Yves talked about girls, in the possessive way that young men did, comparing worlds of women and their bodies which they had begun to worship. Declan was longing to discuss this too with his son, talk to him about being the gentleman, and not getting any trouble, all because he had a notion that this was what fathers did. Likely after Sédar had stitched his poor injured son up for him he felt the need to cement his status as a vaguely fatherly figure in Rumi's life once more. And Rumi, anxious to justify his newfound interest in Yves, was compliant.

"Sometimes we talk about more than poetry," Rumi told him, quite truthfully, as he scanned a page for a certain name.

"More than poetry, hmm?"

This worked for them; this looking over papers to feign distraction as they spoke like a real father and son might do, as if they were not entirely individual people with a curious relationship of codependency. They could avoid eyes like this. They could look away and pretend it was only the voice of their own consciousness echoing back— but Rumi was far too clever to be taken off his guard like that. He fixed his father in his line of sight.

"Girls." he forced himself to say; he didn't like lying, didn't really do it often or even speak to to his father enough to invest it in, but he want to preserve at least some part of their ragged affection. If it took a lie, so be it. "We talk a lot about girls. When we're not talking about his thesis, or poetry."

Declan was quiet. One small psychological trick he had always bragged about using in lectures— silence demands to be filled, and people will rush in to fill it with every last bit of their brain matter. Rumi was prepared for it.

"Because he's older. It's more interesting. He knows things I don't."

"About girls?"

"About girls. About life, the outside world."

"The outside world?"

Rumi paused. He must have said something wrong, and he knew soon that the mention of an outside world— something beyond Doha and their pottering life of studies and mild starvation— had hacked away at his father's insecurities. It placed discord in their tacit agreement that neither of them would leave for the vast, whirligig outside world that had sucked away his mother. He had to amend himself.

"I mean beyond here— France, that is."

Declan looked reassured. "Do you remember the time we went to Provence?"

Rumi smiled fondly; he had hated every minute of it, but there was a balance to be struck between being aloof with his father and stroking his insecure self-awareness. He had been fourteen— fifteen?— and his parents had been arguing bitterly for months before, and then suddenly when they arrived at the little chateaux they had all gone silent and been a picturesque little family, which Rumi might have enjoyed had he not been maturing and wising up to the falsities of his parents' marriage and his father's shortcomings.

"You were so excited by the house we stayed in," Declan recalled. "You called it Paradise."

"I had my own room," Rumi said softly. "My own space."

They fell silent and began passing papers back and forth with different annotations pointing out relevant information and corrections and references explained. Rumi could feel his father hesitating to say something and he waited patiently.

"I feel I've been terribly insufficient," Declan did finally say. "As a father, as your father. Aren't I lucky to have you, hmm? You're so independent."

Rumi did not mention that his independence had grown out of necessity rather than nature.

"You haven't been insufficient," he lied again. "Just preoccupied."

"Preoccupied, yes. It's the job. Your mother always said it was the job."

Rumi was surprised that Declan would mention his mother– they never spoke of her, not since Declan had haltingly attempted to explain to his son that his mother had gone away and would not be coming back.

"But we get along alright, don't we?" Declan pressed. He needed to be soothed.

"Yes. I think so."

"Tell you what, tomorrow we'll go and get lunch in the town. Just us, eh?"

"Sure." Rumi could see no way out of it. He would have preferred to take a long walk with Henry as he had taken to doing when Yves and Sédar took a long lunch and talked in their incomprehensible mother tongue.

Declan patted his knee, reassured that he was doing a good job.

§§§§§

It was Yves who unintentionally came to Rumi. Declan eventually left for bed, and thus Rumi was alone in the kitchen for an hour or so until he heard footsteps padding down the hall towards him. He thought it might be Sédar coming down to turn the lights off, but it was Yves, wearing nothing but a large woollen sweater. At first Rumi did not move, expecting that Yves must have come down to speak to him, but then Yves poured himself a glass of water and turned back towards the door. It was, after all, only a half-lit room and it was a distinct possibility that he had not noticed Rumi, stooped as he was over the papers in front of him.

Rumi saw this is as a chance for redemption of some sort. He rose and crossed the room to pull his arms tightly around Yves' chest from behind. The wool of his sweater was pilled and immediately made his eyes itch and his nose wrinkle up. It smelled of old houses and something inseparably and fundamentally Yves. Yves sighed and crossed his arms over Rumi's.

"How's your arm?" His voice was quiet, so quiet even in the darkness of the room.

"It's okay. I'm okay. And I'm— I'm really sorry."

"That's okay. You scared me a lot." He turned around and tucked Rumi back into his arms. "I didn't mean to get angry."

"Friends?"

"Friends. Lovers. What difference does it make?"