DIOGEN WAS SHIVERING. His mouth tasted of brandy and vomit. And yet, as luck would sometimes have it in the midst of misfortune, he now had what he’d been dreaming of for months—Ivan’s arm under his. Though he was, admittedly, hanging off it in the most unbecoming way.
“Sorry, man,” he slurred.
“It’s okay.”
They walked. Diogen noted they were walking toward Ivan’s house. He said nothing, let himself be led by Ivan, who soon took the keys out of his pocket, unlocked the door with his beautiful long fingers.
“I’ll make you some coffee,” he said, pushing the door open. “Your brother is pretty pissed off. I don’t think you should go back until you’re sober.”
Diogen nodded.
They entered the empty house. Ivan opened the door to his room, turned on the light, and took off his shoes.
“Wait here.”
Diogen lay down, nodding, obedient. Ivan went to the kitchen, put the water to boil, and took out the coffee. Diogen struggled to keep his eyes open, his head pounding, thinking, Ivan’s bed! I’m in Ivan’s bed! He let out a gurgle of delight and fell asleep. He dreamed of Lament. Lament came to him as he rested on the floor in the bushes and said, “Wake up, here’s coffee,” and Diogen opened his eyes; Lament’s face had never been more beautiful. There was sunlight in his eyes, and he smiled warmly, and Diogen closed his eyes again and felt Lament’s lips upon his, soft and strong, and Diogen returned the kiss and felt his chest fill with light. He sunk again into the womb of sleep.
Ivan sat by the bed and read, waiting for Diogen to stir. He could not focus on the text. He watched Diogen’s surrendered body, his face flushed and serene with that unique trust in the world when one is asleep. What beauty, he thought, in this man. And at that moment Diogen seemed to be having a nightmare, and in fact he was, he was being chased down a green field, where Diogen had been dancing freely, passing by Ruben, the President, and the commander, all dressed in military uniforms, and each had a set of cutlery in his hands and they were coming after him. Nikolai’s dogs had turned up from somewhere too, and Diogen was convinced they were all chasing him to eat him up. He ran and ran, panting, struggling for his life, and the men and the dogs were coming closer, and just as the commander was about to stick his fork into him, he heard Ivan’s voice—Ivan’s voice!—Ivan’s voice?—saying, “Wake up, you’re dreaming.”
Diogen opened his eyes and took several eternal moments to understand where he was; a room, unfamiliar, pictures on walls, night, and Ivan sitting by the bed, his hand on Diogen’s shoulder. How on earth? He blinked, felt Ivan’s hand withdraw, and grasped it. It was warm, Diogen’s freezing; Diogen said something to that effect. He did not let the hand go, he could not.
“Thank you,” he said.
Ivan nodded, said, “I made you some coffee,” and liberated his hand from Diogen’s. “Are you feeling any better?”
“I had a terrible nightmare. Some cannibals wanted to eat me.”
Ivan laughed.
“What happened at the party?” He had a vague recollection of the statue, Ruben’s speech, the dogs.
“Your brother announced that you were going to the army, that he was going on The Blue Dolphin, and then you vomited.”
Diogen put his head down on the pillow. “I had better go back.”
“Have your coffee,” said Ivan. “You can sleep here, if you want. I can put a mattress on the floor for you.” He said this last bit without intending to, surprising himself. “I mean, if you want, if you don’t want to face your brother just yet.” He felt his face go hot and tried to cool it down with the power of his rational brain.
Diogen was taken aback. Sleep on Ivan’s floor? What had happened? Had the gods decided to simultaneously humiliate him, before annihilating him in the military service, but before that, had the gods decided to gift him the realization of his one, his greatest, desire—this man right here, who seemed to want Diogen to stay on his floor—was this what was going on? Was getting furiously drunk and making an unpleasant scene at the President Shop the way into heaven? Surprise, desire, joy, panic, shame—everything was happening to him at the same time and all he could produce in response to Ivan’s offer was a small giggle. He sat up on the bed and took the coffee cup, his hands quite unsteady. What he really wanted to do was sit in Ivan’s lap, like a little child, and be cradled, and he wondered about this impulse. Was it a regression to a mother he had never really had the chance to meet?
“You know, my brother raised me,” he started, not knowing where he was going or why. “He was my mother and my father, he was everything. When I was a baby, he saved my life. He carried me across a freezing mountain to the town doctor. You’ve probably heard the story, everyone here knows it.”
Ivan nodded. “I know something.”
“But he himself had nobody to raise him. He was fifteen and started working and entered the orphan program to honor the President’s life and work. And so the President raised him, the image of the President, his speeches, coming off a fucking record. And there he is, still serving. He built a life for all of us.” He stopped and looked at Ivan. He was beautiful. “But I don’t want that life.” He saw Ivan’s uniform, hanging up like a flat headless corpse. “I don’t want the army. I don’t want any of it. He loves the President, but he does not know the President. He knows me, and he knows I won’t survive the army, a whole year there, I’ll go mad.”
Diogen began to cry, his head in his hands. Ivan, not knowing what to do, sat next to Diogen and put his arm over his shoulder, and Diogen wept on Ivan’s chest. He felt pathetic, but at least he was pathetic on Ivan’s chest, he thought.
When he calmed down, he said, “Can you play me something? Your favorite piece?”
Ivan, relieved to be able to take some action, got up, took the cello out of its case, and played. Diogen lay down again, closed his eyes, listened, opened them again, and watched Ivan play; in a kind of trance, Ivan played, his eyes closed, at times opening them and seeing Diogen on the bed watching him.
Diogen, feeling that the world’s burdens were exclusively his, felt the world’s burdens disappear when Ivan suddenly stopped playing, dropped the bow and followed an urge in his hands, which was of course the urge of his body. He took Diogen in his arms, cradling him like a child and kissing his hair. Diogen was sobbing again, and he thought that Ivan was too, though he did not know why, had no idea that Ivan had proposed to Milena that day, regretting it even before he had done it, although Milena was a lovely girl, but that there were no two ways about it, that his mother was expecting it, that she depended on this, on the possibility of a grandchild or two, she had said to him, that he was all she had, that her life otherwise had no meaning and that Ivan was in charge of providing that meaning. That the army, in his case, was a welcome escape from the marital duty he was expected to fulfill, that he could not wait to go back to the routine and the mindlessness of it, that the love letters he occasionally wrote to Milena were copied out of a book he’d found, mostly, the romantic parts, and that he had thought of Diogen while he was writing those letters, and was always trying to silence those thoughts and ignore them, thinking that perhaps the marriage to Milena would finally help him eventually, possibly, get over his thoughts of men instead of women, but here he was, with Diogen in his arms, and he wondered if he was taking advantage of the situation while Diogen was sick with a hangover in order to feel his body, for once, just once, and the sensation was so powerful he could not stop himself from weeping too, and he felt Diogen sit up on the bed and Ivan opened his eyes, thinking, Whatever happens, happens. Mother has gone to stay the night with Grandmother in the village.