Private message to my eldest brother

[alt_sinistra]

I write these words in sincere hopes that though their form is broken, their intent will hold.

Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us, now and forever, to the end of time, amen. Blessed are the Gods, always, now and forever, now and to the end of time, amen. To the souls of your departed servant, Antonin Nikolaevich Dolohov, called Antosha, called Tosha, called Toshenka, give rest where there is no pain, no suffering, but life everlasting, abiding there forever without corruption, now and forever, now and to the end of time, amen.

Though bearing the scars of so many transgressions, let his way be opened to the halls of Osiris, let the underworld be opened to him, let him be established as a dweller in the halls of the shining ones. Unclose the ways and open the roads to the souls of Toshenka who has now entered in the house of Osiris. Let him enter boldly and come forth in peace at the house of Osiris, without hindrance and without rejec refu repulse. Let his souls enter at his pleasure and go forth at his will.

Grant him eternal rest and may he rest in peace. May his souls and the souls of all the many beloved departed, through the mercy of the Gods and all the sacred powers, rest in peace.

Toshenka, chosen brother. I remember you with apples and with honey wine, at the dawn of the day and the sight of the first star. I will tell stories about you to the few to those who will listen, and I will remember you, all the days of my life. You have been teacher and brother and most of all, friend. You have saved my life and the life of those I love, and though you are dead and though you have done so many horrible things, I do remember the good you chose. These things I tell to the sky and the land and the lake and the bees.

Comments

[alt_sinistra]

Toshenka,

The comment you cannot see, here, the one to me, those are the prayers for Barty. Because someone needed to say them. And because whatever else he was, he was your son, and he was Raz's friend, and I remember that, even if no one else wants to. People are so very complicated.

For all he killed so many people. Children. Utter innocents.

I will not set you aside from my thoughts, because I cannot. No more than I could set aside the stars. It would be easier, certainly, if I could. You are right I have spent all the influence I might have had on your behalf, and I do not regret that, but - it will not do any good, and I am sorry for that. Still. Always.

As to - as to what you made me, what keeping your promises made me, you are right. You did tell me. Warn me. And I chose. I have wrestled myself to some sort of detente about it in the days since. I can't regret it, because it mattered, in the end.

I'm still thinking about that. Will be, for the rest of my life, I'm sure.

There are a lot of things I'm thinking and can't say, don't have words for. But I will never stop listening to you.

I was rereading the notes I sent you, what feels like decades ago, on Kirkegaard's Fear and Trembling. I have been thinking about Troy, so much, the past two weeks, in the thoughts I can spare from other tasks, about walls and oceans and deaths and how we treat the dead, and how we treat the living, and what's left after a great war. About how you are like Odysseus. The questions of mutuality, of vows, of commitments, even when they turn out to be wrong. I don't have words, or even coherent thoughts, most of the time.

But I would not be here, now, but for you, and I thank you and I love you and you are still my chosen brother.

[alt_antonin]

If you have been thinking of Troy, I have been thinking of Aulis. And Moriyyah. And Shelley's Ozymandias -- the hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed -- and T. S. Eliot, with whom I have been wrestling for longer than you have been alive, and whom I had always intended to lend you, one month when we had nothing more pressing with which to occupy ourselves, for the joy of watching you wrestle with him, too.

Read the Four Quartets, if you have been thinking about the shadows of a great war. You will find East Coker speaks to you most plainly (home is where one starts from; as we grow older, the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated, of dead and living), but as should surprise you not in the least, Little Gidding is the one that speaks to me most clearly, and always has:

And prayer is more
Than an order of words, the conscious occupation
Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voice praying.
And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.
Here, the intersection of the timeless moment
Is England and nowhere. Never and always.

Yes, I will be giving you books until my end.

I will not defend Barty to you -- may his memory be eternal, ныне и присно и во веки веков -- and I would not expect you to listen if I tried, because as near as I can tell he was mad with grief and guilt and pain, and for all that I understand that grief and guilt and pain (O gods do I understand that grief and guilt and pain), madness must be stopped. I comfort myself by thinking even he must have known that, at the end. (There are so many things that must be stopped, and I was the one who set too fucking many of them into motion in the first place, and I suppose now the price I must pay for having done so is to be the one who decides where to begin looking for the end. Which is my beginning.) But I loved him, and I will not stop loving him, and it is good to know that someone wrote the prayers for him immediately, that he was not left entirely to

no, I shall leave it there, I think. Safer. You can comfort yourself, at least, that whatever I do next, it won't be out of madness. Or maybe you won't find that a comfort at all.

If we are to add up the measure of my balance, I am well aware of which direction that balance falls, and I will answer for that when I must. Do not apologise to me for not having been able to convince the company you keep that I am anything other than the monster they name me. You are perhaps the only person left upon these shores who can see at least some measure of what went into my making, and I will not expect you to champion me further. I had not expected you to champion me at all.

I have not ever doubted your love for me, little star, as I hope you have not doubted mine for you. For all that we may be the only people who can recognise it as such, from time to time.