It was hot, almost uncomfortably warm but the way that the ocean smelled was clean. Salty and clean. With such heat and warmth it usually smelt a bit like the decay of sealife and seaweed but it was not so distinct and instead brought about the aromatic waves of grains and the smell of the pre-fruit flowers of grapevines and hyacinths. We were somewhere along the coast but not on the sand but along the grassy inclines that lead to the boundary between warm sands and the sea. In waving patches that crested and receded in lovely quilting of the hyacinths. There was a broad and beautiful blanket with a few pillows thrown down flatly to the earth beneath the shade of the bowing and leaning trees that bounced pleasantly in the cooling breeze - much needed in the heat that blanketed everything.
There was a mule there named Pleiades (after the cluster of speckles on his rump) and he had been the company on the way to this spot, I know. Carried the baskets and the jugs. Like a bit of a picnic, almost, we were set up beneath the trees with plum juice which was thick and red and slightly fermented. But it was not kept in a decanter that one normally would with wines. But perhaps that’s because there were no cups or anything. There was a jam made of a mixture of things but mostly figs and a ruddy berry to go with a flat bread-like pastry that was a mixture of grains. There were also whole figs as well as apples and pears that were pale yellow but very sweet and messily juicy.
It was me and Virgil. Though, I did not call him that. I called him Maro. It felt better. It felt right. But it also was what I always called him when alone. Like it was more personal, somehow despite it not actually being personal. It felt more informal. Like it was treated like a nickname more than anything. He was as I always had sort of seen or viewed him in a similar manner to how the bust looks outside of Parco Vergiliano a Piedigrotta (of which I have been to twice). Not quite tall but not short - somewhere average but still yet taller than I - and built like an old willow tree but somehow still sturdy enough to be filled out in a healthy way. He wore a cinnamon coloured cloth, loose and lazy like he hardly wanted to be dressed but still threw something on to be decent. More like a tunic than a toga of any sort. It was somewhat short and exposed a lot of leg. Though he had discarded his sandals and was lounging openly and relaxed much like a cat in the sun. His hair was ruddy brown and his eyes were like honey squeezed from a honeycomb as it leaked between your fingers.
He was lounging, sprawled on his back and I was opposite, laying across my stomach watching the water. He had been speaking about how the seasons changing always leaves him feeling rough around the lungs. That the weather had been just cold enough to be uncomfortable not a few days prior but yet there was warmth now that was almost suffocating - that the chill of the wind was the only thing remaining from the cold he previously had to suffer through. That the people and their moods were just as fickle and it reflected poorly on their tastes and manners. That there were people he regretting speaking to the last week for they were hideously more full of themselves and prudent than normal which made entertaining them a chore.
“It’s a funny idea,” I had replied back, rolling onto my back to stare up through the filtering light in the leaves. “That you have an idea of suffering.”
“Do you not think I suffer?” He seemed teasing at this. Playful in tone, the even and low tenor that betrayed how relaxed he was.
“For a dream, yes.” I am almost always lucid.
“You can think of this as whatever you wish it is. If you wish to believe it a dream, that is,” was the challenging retort. It made my insides knot and twist. I sat up a little and stared at him. He did not move but his eyes flickered down and locked on mine, challenging, still. “Do not look so skittish. You should be enjoying yourself,” he half adjusted to be more comfortable. “A simple pleasure is not to be fled from. There is already enough of humanity that flees from their nature simply because they hesitate with the bestial nature of them self.”
I had asked what he meant by this. And we got into a long and casual discussion about how humanity is desperate to separate itself from nature. Even briefly discussing hate sex. How emotions that invoke a sense of threat or anger are similar veins to desire. The desire to consume or to experience something in its fullest. Either through submission or dominance or neither or both or everything in between. Eventually he propped himself onto his side as he talked. He was verbal with his hands and liked to wriggle his fingers as if articulating notes on something. We eventually ate a little, and he took one of the figs, cut apart with its juices running down its hand, unbothered. The brilliant purple skin, pale flesh and red insides reminded me of viscera. “People forget,” he noted, holding the fruit in his hand, the meat of his fingers pressing deeper into the fruit of it, maiming it and causing it to leak more across his skin, slicked and sticky. “There’s no difference; putting the flesh of a simple fruit or your friend into your mouth. Flesh is flesh,” he licked the length of his hand to his fingers and used both teeth and tongue to eat out the tissue of the fig. It was a mess.
I did not have an argument. Nor did I really want to. “I think it’s strange,” I had added, “The avoidance. I think, really, there is not of course a distinction between anyone of humanity or animals and their basic needs or desires. But the distinction comes in how we can articulate it differently or embellish it. To be able to derive more pleasure out of something. Especially things like sex,” I had commented, watching him as he cleaned his hand and prepared to violate another fig.
“Ah. Yes, this is indeed one of the best qualities of us,” he agreed, his fingers digging into and peeling at the fig with his blunt nails. “It’s not mindlessly needing. There’s a deep and insatiable hungering urge to replicate the mind’s fantasy.”
“Like dreaming of eating figs near the sea?” I had asked, hinting at breaking the proverbial fourth wall.
“Did you dream of eating figs near the sea?” He asked, curious as he obscenely ate the fruit again, though watched me with such a casual interest that I half wondered if he was oblivious to his mannerisms.
I had moved to argue but paused, opening and closing my mouth as he waited, expecting. He lifted his eyebrows as if encouragement for me to go on, but I found myself struggling to make the implications as if I were not supposed to know some grand cosmic secret. “Or is this much like a dream to you in the sense that pleasures are often made scarce to you; your only narrative being able to compare this to a dream?” He asked, sucking at his fingers. I had to look away. “I think that is understandable, yes. It’s not often you’re afforded a luxury.”
“I’m not?” I asked. Confused. I fiddled with my clothes, a similar outfit to his but not dyed really and a naturally tanned brown. Plain and unbleached, organic, almost. But mine were more well worn in the sense that I must have put myself together with more care and less looseness. More prudence.
He rolled so he was partially on his back, propped on his elbows. “Unless you like being cooped up, at least. It is more difficult to get you out here with me every few moons.” His knees fell open, splayed in such a manner that I tried not to stare at the frame of his body draped in that loose fitting cloth. I focused on the way he seemed to be watching and observing me, digging into me and my insides - picking apart everything like he was trying to figure something out without making it too obvious. “I am filled with pleasure that I found you so available. I cannot imagine how you suffer so much labour. Must be aching on your body,” he shifted a little and finally looked towards the sea, “At least there are less ships out on the waters right now. I do not think they do my spirit good to see them right now. If it is not letters they carry it is soldiers,” he glanced at me once but then looked back at the water.
“Maro, what is it that I do that you believe it so laborious?” I had asked, realising that I was lucid but not sure what he was referencing. I was trying to pick apart what that was hinting at.
“Well, you will be thirty this year. Your work is always so lovely to look at and to touch. I cannot imagine your hands stay so smooth nor your back so straight with such tasks. Looms are no laughing matter no matter what the (word that referred to social elites) may think. It is easy for think a task is simple if you are not the hands that work for it.” He smiled in a way that looked fond, a softness there in his eyes that I was surprised by. “I do not make too many habits of watching. But I do find the rhythm of your movements quite nice. You should think more of saving some so you may settle quietly and enjoy yourself. Perhaps. I have some experience in such matters.”
“You mean as a lawyer?” I had asked, “If Dostoevsky has taught me anything through Raskinikov it is that you should never become a lawyer.” I laughed, “Crime and Punishment may be dry but I think being a lawyer and resorting to murder is not too much of a stretch. Hold on. What shall you be this year?”
He frowned a little at this, brow furrowing, “Thirty three.” His expression shifted a little then and his head canted to the side slowly. “I cannot say any of those names are familiar. However, there is an allure to what you call Crime and Punishment. Where did you hear those words?”
A small part of my insides went uneasy. In my mind, I figured that any logic or knowledge I would possess is shared. It’s a fabrication of my mind. Everything is accessible. “Must just be outside of your time a little,” I laughed again. But nervously. “It is a story of a poor lawyer,” I began, trying to figure out how to word it.
“Not inaccurate thus far. Poor and a Lawyer.”
“He eventually loses his mind and kills his neighbour,” I could only muster that. Feeling a wash of embarrassment and unease.
“I have my deepest sympathies though I really fear to ask of you what it is that you are reading and from who,” he huffed out a sound that resembled a pained exhale of a laugh and danced a motion with his hands. “Regrettably, I cannot say I am familiar in any way with anything that resembles that. Not immediately off of my mind. Strange names, I must say.”
“Perhaps.” He did not inquire any further.
“Though,” he ran a hand down his front, mindlessly stroking his own body length leisurely. “Such a prospect worries me in that territory. If I were to show you to be wise with your wealth and resources, am I to go mad as a lawyer and gut my fellow neighbour? I do not think you could be so intolerable as to invoke such a madness from me,” he was grinning widely. “No. Not a madness,” he added as a second though. “What say you? Would you enjoy that? We can come back here if you would much rather. Or my own home. I would much like to get you out more. I enjoy these discussions.”
“It is good to put such matters into a perspective that feels well understood. It’s strange, to me, Maro. I think I sometimes fabricate you because I imagine I would like to know what you would think about my troubles,” I had mused, sitting upright and choosing to lay down beside him.
“You fabricate me?” He pivoted his body so he was more towards me, this movement was sharp and heavy with interest, “How so?”
I held back speaking words that insinuated that this was a dream. So of course I fabricated him. What on earth would he be talking about? “Yes, sometimes,” I half lied. Though this was not the first dream I had experienced with him. He never picked up on the dream part. “I suppose in a way I…” I struggled to find the words, “Suppose I sort of have discussions with you. Mostly in dreams, I… Speak to you, I guess,” I was inwardly shrugging. What else was I to say? That is indeed what had just happened. An in depth conversation about primal aspects of humanity as animals and the desire to shroud the reality of those desires in society.
“Am I as I am now?” He inquired, seeming intrigued.
I had laid back fully, resting my hands over my middle as I settled and furrowed my brow, thinking of how to explain it. “I… Do not know.”
He was suddenly over top of me, his arms framing either side of my shoulders as he stared, intrigued and focused. “Perhaps you ought to nap. See if such a dream comes. And when you wake you should tell me of it.” He adjusted my clothes a little, some of the cloth loose and unsettled leaving me a bit bare. “It is a good hour for a nap. I will write in the meantime.” He had seemed to decide for me.
I had chosen to nap after he got off of me, blinking at him as I watched him prepare a stylus with some ink and some loose and thick parchments, using the surface of one of the baskets like a desk. He watched me for a moment or so, seeming somewhat pleased with the situation.