It was too late, really, to take it back or try to deny it. And some part of him, some confused, destructive, utterly infatuated part, did not wish to. He would fling his wretched fragments of love into the teeth of the world. Let it flinch. “I’m in love with Thomas.”
There was an even longer silence. Esther’s face had gone completely still around her wide eyes. “But he’s your cousin.”
Not the first potential objection Micha would have raised, but he supposed it was human nature, sometimes, to take refuge ininconsequentialities. “He’s not my cousin, all right?” he said shakily, still clinging to the solid, slightly wriggling warmth that was Ruff. “We’re just ... friends, I suppose.”
“And,” Esther asked slowly, “you ... you love him?”
“Yes.” His voice steadied. As much as he had shocked himself with his own confession, there was a kind of liberty to it too. “Yes. As a wife loves a husband. As a husband loves a wife.”
“But he’s a ... you’re a ... oh, you poor boy.”
He had expected disgust. He was not sure he preferred pity. “Why would you say that?”
She frowned but in thought, not in distaste. It might have been comical, had it not been his life she was trying desperately to understand. “Well, it cannot be comfortable for you to entertain such feelings for another man.”
“It’s just the same,” he said. “Just the same as loving anybody. Uncomfortable and terrible and, you know, wonderful.”
She nodded, something of her customary manner creeping back into her tone. “Yes, that does sound like love.”
The bitter-edged wind swept between the trees, making the bare branches twitch like severed fingers.
“Can something not be done?” Esther asked, into the silence.
Micha glanced up, startled. “What?”
“Can it be put right?”
“Oh, you mean me. Can I be put right.”
“I didn’t quite—”
“Right or wrong, I don’t think I can change it.” He paused. “I’m not sure I would, even if I could.”
“Even for a wife and a home and a family of your own? Even for a normal life?”
“I want those things desperately. But not at the cost of”—he had no other word for it—“my soul.”
Assuming he had any soul left. He had bartered it piece by piece, year by year. He looked up at Esther, half-wishing he had not spoken but knowing he would not have been able to hold his silence any longer.The worst of it was liking her. She had been kind to him, when he had only just begun to remember what kindness was. She had reminded him what it was like to be human. And to have a friend. One he had thrown away in a single moment of excessive honesty. “Say something.” His voice rang harshly, even in his own ears. “Call me unnatural. Scorn me. Turn away in revulsion. Tell the village.”
“Oh, Michael, I’m an old woman, my back would play up something chronic. I can’t turn away in revulsion like I used to.”
He stared at her, too disbelieving to yet dare to be hopeful.
“I confess, I cannot begin to understand,” she went on. “And perhaps it is best I don’t try, but if you truly believe this is who you are and what you wish, then so be it.”
“‘So be it’?” he repeated, incredulously.
She shrugged. “So be it.”
The breath rushed out of him, bringing with it, to his mortified horror, another flood of tears. He tried to hide them in the dog, but the whole experience was far too reminiscent of a bath for even Ruff’s loyalty to withstand, and he pulled out of Micha’s arms with a betrayed whine.
“Fuck,” said Micha, shielding himself with his hands. “Fuck. Sorry. Fuck.”
“Um.” Esther patted his shoulder. “There there?”
He half-laughed, half-hiccoughed. “‘There there’? Is that the best you can do?”
“I suppose I could give you a hug, if you’ll stop crying.”
