Asphodel

❝
– А я действительно похож на галлюцинацию. Обратите внимание на мой профиль в лунном свете, – кот полез в лунный столб и хотел еще что-то говорить, но его попросили замолчать, и он, ответив: – Хорошо, хорошо, готов молчать. Я буду молчаливой галлюцинацией... ❞

-Кот Бегемот

My dear Hadrian,

Forgive me for leaving your side at such short notice.

It was not a suicide, despite what your counselors and historians will tell you; neither was it a murder, and I ask you to refrain from passing judgement on the court which crowded your throne since you first set eyes on me in Tibur. No, I was not killed by a jealous knife driven to my heart, nor by a cup of poisoned wine. I can only describe it as an immediate annihilation, after which I opened my eyes to four marble columns and a desert of empty space.

I stood in the middle of them, and above me was a white sky, absolutely silent and indifferent to my presence. I did not feel panic or fear. The vast sands around me were barren, save for the shrubs of a pallid, ghostly flower, grey and empty in color; I believe it is an asphodel.

I recalled the stories you told me of Elysium and Hell, lands of legendary warriors and heroes, or cloistered caverns where King Pluto reigns over weak men. Only in passing you once mentioned to me that there exists a third, unexplored realm, home to ghosts and meandering souls, in which night and day transform into permanent twilight or dusk. The sun does not rise and it does not set, but dimly glows from somewhere beyond the horizon. The stars do not guide me, and the Zodiacs you once taught me to recognise are nowhere to be seen. There is no wind, and it is neither warm nor cold. The earth under my feet seems indifferent to my presence, and the footsteps I leave in my wake quickly change under shifting sands. My own shadow is invisible in this light, and I cannot distinguish it from the landscapes of dunes. I do not know why I am here; I do not know how long I have spent in this strange world.

There are no hourglasses here and no time, nor the shifting seasons I had come to love from our hunts in Iberia. Only asphodels and shadows of my soul.

My soul; yes, that is all I have left.

I once believed, during the first year with you, that this soul must be seated in the body, because through my body I understood the world. Through my tongue and my stomach I felt the warmth of wine and bread, and thus my body initiated me into the divine mysteries of soil and its hidden riches. Through my fingers I touched water in the well and in the sea, and from my palms I drank the rain of the heavens. In Judea my hands first touched the rough texture of a pomegranate, and in Judea I first experienced the ecstasy of your touch on my skin.

The Major Priests warned me of indulgence in Earthly delights, but through my body I have come to understand that the act of Love is unique in its sacrality and power. The pleasure of food and drink is consumed in solitude, but sensual love places one directly in the presence of another’s command, and invokes a naked vulnerability. I remember being nervous of your rough hands when you first stroked my legs, and the liquid flush in my spine as you stroked my face with your knuckle. Through your love I came to see the deep wisdom of the flesh, a kind of knowledge more ancient than any of the scrolls you read to me in the baths. I was entwined to your beautiful form like a serpent around her prey; this conscious surrender to your strength taught me the lightness of being, away from thought and worry and everything else except you.

Your consuls will say that I laid by your side to steal your laurel wreath, that I loved nothing of you but your power and your wealth, that I poisoned Emperors and Priests alike. In truth I loved nothing but you, Hadrian, and my body, fading now into a shadow, remains because it remembers your touch.

My body learnt slowly, gradually, under the guidance of your smile, and one day would follow the next; but now my memory has collapsed into a spiral, and I feel my mind twisting from an arrow to a circle, melting into the deserts I walk through every day.

The anatomy you once loved and brought to life now feels hollow, and I know that it has begun to turn to ashes as it rots in the depths of your memory. For you, I will be alive as long as you remember my voice and the sound of my heart, but I fear that the outline of my profile and the texture of my hair have now transformed into a vague mirage; my corpse decays in a tomb, and my soul transforms into a wraith.

As my being fades into the asphodels, I try with all my strength to summon back into my mind all that remains of it, all that was real; although my physique is now frail and gaunt, my heart continues beating at the thought of you.

Indeed, perhaps the true seat of the soul is not in the body but the mind, for the mind is a faithful guardian of memory. In my memory you have not aged, have not yet felt the shiver of disappointment and pain, and have not crouched over my tombstone with tears on your cheeks and on your palms. Neither have I yet left your villa, your palace, your shoulder, your hair still runs through my fingers and your eyes still put me to sleep while my head rests in your lap.

It was you who introduced me to philosophy, and good Epictetus was a friend. Your library was filled with the works of Plato, who spoke of Forms and Eternity; Aristotle, who spoke of Beauty and Virtue; Epicurus, who spoke of Joy. But I must admit that I did not understand these things when you read them out; I understood them only through our love.

Although I now recede into oblivion, I do so with tremendous gratitude, because even after my body and mind evaporate, you have given me something eternally true, and I know that this gift will remain with me. I rejoin the graying fields and turn into a memory. But I have loved you and therefore I have lived.

Thank you, Hadrian, for blessing me with such wonderful, sacral joy.

I will wait for you, here, amongst the asphodels.