A Cage of Bones

by Jeffrey Round

  “What does Jah know? He sells phoney philosophy the way some people sell cheap watches. What’s wrong with you anyway? All I ever get any more is your bullshit anger directed at me because I happen to be closest in line.”

  Joshua’s eyes were averted, smouldering as if they would ignite the floor. After a moment, he spoke again.

  “Do you remember Maurice, the black chap who was here before that big bust up?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s been in touch. I’ve got to go underground for a while.”

  Warden stared uncomprehendingly. He crouched there, becoming aware of the cracks that had appeared—he didn’t know when—disparate ideals, worlds separated by a sea of dissatisfactions. He shook his head, feeling like a fool for not having seen it coming.

  “You want to go away?” he said. “To do what?”

  “There’s a political group Maurice connected with. They work against oppressive regimes in different countries. It’s something I should have been doing already.”

  “And what about me—were you going to ask me to go with you?”

  “It’s dangerous, this work we have planned. You’re not meant to be a target for bullets.”

  “And what makes you so privileged?”

  Joshua’s eyes shone with the cold light of reason Warden had encountered on the train nearly a year before. Whatever else had been there had vanished, like a flame extinguished.

  “Where do you think we’re going together, Warden? Look at us. We have different ideals … different values. We just compromise one another trying to fit into each other’s lives.”

  “Is that what you really think? Is that all I mean to you? What about love, Josh? Or is that just something you experience between you and thirty thousand people at an anti-racism protest? Are you even capable of loving one person at a time? Is that why you can’t raise your own daughter?”

  Joshua’s face was set with a burning agitation against the misappropriated justice of every wrong that had ever happened, that ever could happen. Yet the look was limp instead of rigid, the defiance an absent-minded protest holding itself in place, a pose he’d perfected and didn’t know how to give up.

  “You just don’t get it, do you?” he said.

  “What’s to get? I love you. I try so hard to be someone you can love, to be what you want. I really make an effort to fit into your world.”

  “That’s just it, isn’t it? You can’t be something you’re not. You can’t just put it on like new clothes. It’s all just another pose, another trot down the catwalk for you.”

  “That’s not fair!”

  Joshua averted his gaze.

  “Don’t you love me?” Warden demanded. “Did you ever love me?”

  Joshua turned to look at him. “Love is a selfish emotion, Warden. It wants to own—to possess. You can’t possess another human being.”

  He’s throwing me away, Warden thought, feeling panic and anger melding into one. He grabbed Joshua by the shirt and pulled him violently around.

  “I am talking about us, goddamn it! I don’t want your fucking philosophy!”

  Joshua made no move to release Warden’s grip.

  “What good does love do?” he said. “Can it stop suffering? Does it feed the hungry or help with injustice? How can we hide our heads in the sand and call it love? Do you think you can help solve people’s problems with love?”

  Warden’s face contorted as he curled his hand into a fist and smashed it into the face that had enraged him. “There’s your five fucking senses, you asshole!” Tears appeared in his eyes, surprised children peering over a fence. “Say something, you jerk! Hit me back!”

  Joshua stood there unresponsive. Warden lashed out again, harder. Joshua staggered. He rubbed his cheek where he’d been hit.

  “You think you’re so goddamn noble and above it all, don’t you? You’re just another egotistical asshole preaching that we’re all better off dead while you steal all the joy and pleasure in the world instead of letting others enjoy it.”

  Joshua shook his head. “Give it up, Warden. We can’t spend our lives propping one another up with emotional crutches.”

  “My god! You actually believe this crap…!” Warden began.

  He looked as if he would say more, but the moment passed or else there was nothing further to say. He went outside and sat on the steps. After a moment Joshua came out, his face calm, like a saint free from all desire.

  “You’re right, Ward. You’re a much better person than I am. You’re nobler—purer,” he said, as if it were a light he’d borrowed, returning it casually now, no longer terrified of the dark.

  “I thought you were a true individual, Joshua—you’re just a sheep of another colour.”

  “I never said I was anything but what I am.”

  Warden looked up. It was strange to look on the face he loved and find it unrecognisable. The Joshua he knew was gone. Before him now stood someone consumed by a belief in the ultimate cipher of his own existence.

  “What about your music? Aren’t you doing there what you most want to be doing?”

  It was a desperate stab in the dark. Warden knew it wouldn’t sway him.

  “We’re just preaching to the converted now. What good does that do? And how long does it take to show results?” He held up his fist. “This is all there is, Warden—right here, right now.”

  Warden looked up, as though to find a hole he’d fallen from ages ago. He wondered how he could ever fit back there again.

  “Are you all right?” Joshua asked.

  “Yes. I’m sorry I hit you.”

  “Friends, then?”

  “Friends,” he said nodding, wondering what he would miss first in all the darkness and emptiness surrounding him.

  PART IV

  ALL THE FALLEN SONS

  26

  At the end of August an offer came to work on Ibiza again. Warden accepted, looking forward to leaving London for a respite from the familiar.

  He’d effected a complete separation from Joshua—or rather, Joshua had disappeared from view. He no longer heard about him from friends or saw announcements of the band’s performances. Even the radio seemed to be sparing him the pain of hearing their music. He got his life back on track, avoiding the all-night hangouts and endless parties, tending to his career and spending quiet hours at home.

  The show on Ibiza went quickly. There was a run-through in the afternoon. The other models showed him the polite deference they reserved for colleagues known by reputation only. After the rehearsal he sat alone in a café, feeling removed from it all.

  Following the show, he mingled with the crowds on the boardwalk. Couples strolled by in half-shadow while the moon hovered like a hollow wafer on the horizon. The sky looked alien, as though he’d never seen those particular stars before. While he’d been caught up with something else they’d changed and were still changing, as though unable to settle into a new order.

  At an open café a band plied the air with a fugitive beat as people laughed and danced, restless with the island’s illusory life. The notes splintered, fragmenting the familiar as if to find spontaneity and newness, though old the moment they were born. Along the beach, clubs rained arabesques of light and sound against the black nimbus of the sky. Screams of delight spilled into the warm air. None of it seemed to hold.

  What was it for, all the movement and fury? To overload the head and blind the heart. To grasp at the stars in their mute simplicity, though they remained unmoved, untouched by the baboon wail rebounding from nameless shores. He understood it at last, the baboon dance, the irresistible urge to twist and shout the night away in frenzied contortions like a group howl at the moon designed to keep the light at bay.

  The beach was a restless sliver of sand bordered by a blackened abyss. The whole universe seemed an empty cul-de-sac. Above, stars wheeled aimlessly past, voiceless vagabonds fallen from grace.

  In September, Warden flew to Milan to meet the representatives of a German colo
gne company. They were searching for a face to personify a new men’s fragrance, with an exclusive six-figure contract for the right model. To Warden, both the offer and Italy seemed too distant to merit attention, let alone interest.

  He arrived in the early afternoon. Light streamed from the sky as he made his way to the Albergo Sirtori. It was uncharacteristically quiet. Giancarlo sat on the second landing, still playing with his plastic trucks and looking bored. Irena appeared behind him. Warden set down his bags.

  “Ciao, Irena.”

  Her face flushed with pleasure then settled into something less welcoming. “Ciao, Warden,” she said, pushing a wisp of hair behind her ear.

  “I’m only here for a few days. I was hoping you could put me up,” he said. “If you’re full I’ll go elsewhere.”

  She made a gesture that was half-apologetic, half-something else. “It’s not that.”

  She hadn’t accepted models at the albergo in more than six months, she told him. In the last year, money had been stolen and rooms broken into by someone using keys taken from the desk. She’d threatened to take the whole modelling contingent and report them to the passport agency, jeopardizing their livelihood in Italy. At present, a high school band was staying there.

  “It’s all right,” he said, picking up his bags.

  She looked as if she couldn’t decide then relented, lifting her arms in welcome. She would take him in. He’d always behaved well. She put him in a single room on the top floor next to the rooftop patio.

  At the agency, Calvino looked him over critically and then greeted him with effusiveness. The lobby was filled with curious faces, none of whom he recognized, a whole new crop to replace the ones he’d worked with the summer before.

  The cologne company representatives had already gathered in an adjoining boardroom. Calvino reminded him it was an important contract. It would be the biggest he’d been offered so far. There was only one other model they were seriously considering, a young man with a rival Paris agency.

  Calvino went in first. He introduced Warden then took his seat beside Maura who sat smiling harshly in a corner. Warden shook hands with four men who wore nearly identical brown suits, as though their identities depended somehow on looking similar to one another. He listened as they described their product and the proposed campaign and what they were looking for by way of an image. What appealed to them about Warden was a refreshing wholesomeness that, thanks to proper rest and a stable lifestyle, had returned to his features, none the worse for the wear and tear of his life in the past year.

  Warden sat quietly as they went through his portfolio, asking questions that seemed irrelevant.

  “Have you ever used drugs?” one of the men asked him.

  “Um…” Warden began.

  Calvino intervened. “He does not use drugs. He is a good Canadian boy.”

  The man nodded and smiled. “And have you ever been arrested?”

  Warden shook his head. “No,” he said, remembering the raid on Sanctuary.

  Calvino smiled and relaxed a bit.

  “And nightclubs?” the man asked. “Surely you go to clubs?”

  “I…” he began. “Well, not so much any more, though I’ve been known to dance now and then.”

  “What sort?”

  “Pardon?”

  “What sort of clubs do you go to?”

  “Whatever sort I’m invited to. What sort do you go to?”

  “I don’t have time to go to clubs.” The man smiled benignly. “Do you ever go to gay clubs?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Warden saw Calvino stiffen.

  Warden shrugged. “If I’m invited,” he said. He eyed the man. “I have to live my life, like everyone else.”

  “Yes, of course,” his interrogator assured him. “We wouldn’t want you to do otherwise.”

  As the questions continued, Warden became impatient with their finicky attention. Calvino began to look annoyed. Maura’s face betrayed something like fear. When at last they finished asking questions, Warden thanked them and exited. Calvino rushed out to call him back but he’d already left the agency.

  Warden called Valentino’s home that evening. A trail of letters between them had died out and they hadn’t been in touch since the previous fall. Valentino’s mother answered his call, saying her son was in his second year of military training in the north. Yes, she remembered Warden and would pass his greeting along.

  In the trattoria all the familiar faces were gone, though he received a nod from the old padre behind the bar, his shirt still unpressed. The International Table, its traditions long since forgotten, had been taken over by tourists with expensive cameras mopping their sweating brows.

  Back at the albergo the sun lit up the courtyard, the soft rays falling in a hush. The school band was out performing and the place was empty. Even Irena’s children weren’t around to disturb the quiet.

  He went to bed early, waking occasionally and feeling caught at the edge of an abyss. He sat up, struggling for realization of what was troubling him. Consciousness, returning from the far ends of the universe, answered unequivocally. It was Joshua’s absence, affecting him with the quiet ineluctability of waves rolling up on an empty beach.

  The next day he arrived at Andreo’s studio with an armload of white lilies. The photographer came out immediately, crushing Warden and the lilies in an ecstatic hug. He released him and took the proffered flowers in their tissue like an enveloping halo, holding them in his arms like a baby.

  “So lovely! Such exquisite flowers to eat up all my oxygen.” He laughed, the colours dissolving in the air. “Va bene! How are you, my boy? You look more beautiful than when I last saw you. How do you do it? You must reveal to me your secret and we will make millions together. Even my photographs do not have such lasting power.”

  In the studio Andreo showed him a series of advertisements he’d been working on for the eccentric French designer, Jean Paul Gaultier.

  “I like to work with this man because his imagination is as crazy as mine. There is nothing I can do to shock him,” he said with a smile.

  He brushed a lock of hair from his face, standing over a tabletop covered in the requisite piles of photographs and papers.

  “And now,” he said, when he had put away the proofs and taken Warden by the hand, “you must tell me what is making your bright eyes so dull and unhappy this day.”

  Warden told him of his life in London over the past year and of his eventual parting with Joshua. Andreo sat and listened with compassion. When he spoke, it was neither deferential nor patronizing, but as one who accepted and understood everything.

  “But that is very sad,” he said. “Who knows why God gives us someone for our very own with one hand and then takes them away with another?”

  To Warden, it had been a shock to find himself betrayed, like a boy who expected always to be a child waking one morning to discover silky hairs growing in the secret places of his body.

  “I thought everything was going well. I felt like we were heading in the same direction, but somehow we got separated. And now it’s too late to go back.”

  “Aah! You’re feeling sorry for yourself because things did not work out as you wanted. You must beware of falling in love with the dream, bello. I warned you that what I create—all those pretty pictures, those beautiful clothes and people—must be left inside the pages of books and magazines. Did you think whenever you wanted you could go back to them like you fly off to Paris or London and find that it will always be exactly as it was when you left? Those things can blind you if you let them. It is another existence we pass through for a minute and then we must let it go when we are through.”

  “Then what good is it?”

  Andreo smiled. “Like anything worth having, it is worthwhile only as it gives itself to you. You must let things be what they will. Dreams have a way of becoming a terribly commonplace reality when they come true.”

  Andreo motioned for Warden to sit. He took a seat beside him.


  “Now I will tell you a secret: when I first started taking pictures for the famous fashion designers I was delighted and felt myself to be in Heaven. It was a privilege to photograph all those brave handsome knights and lovely precious maidens. They were beautiful; the clothes were beautiful; my photographs were beautiful. I was so happy!”

  He looked over to make sure his audience of one was enjoying the performance.

  “Then one day I started listening to some of these people and the words coming from their mouths. Madonna mia! I had made a dreadful mistake. They were all beautiful on the outside, but inside they were very silly—like children. Only they were not children! I felt I had fooled myself and everyone else, just like these designers who make up their silly creations and tell the world that everyone must wear them to be beautiful and important this year. That is why now, when I take my pictures, I pretend I am walking through a bean field listening to a lot of beautiful, stupid vegetables. And when I stand still and take my pictures, I pretend I am a scarecrow and if I am in a bad mood I will wave my arms around and shout to startle the beans and keep the crows away.”

  Warden was laughing.

  “Do you think the truth must always be beautiful, Warden? In this world where everywhere we look there is injustice and suffering? The truth can set us free, but it will hurt us first. Perhaps that is what your friend Joshua was trying to tell you.”

  “He believed in one thing, I believe in another. He wants to help people by taking direct action because he doesn’t have faith in anything beyond the here and now. For Joshua, that’s all there is. For some reason I have more patience—or apathy, he would call it.”

  Andreo laughed kindly and put his hand on Warden’s shoulder.

  “A philosophy that condemns the material world yet admits only of a physical existence is the most material one of all, it seems to me. It is hard to believe in anything beyond what we can see and feel. Things stay, love goes. This much we know. It is so difficult to see beyond that. For myself, there are many things I would like to believe in: charity, kindness, generosity. But when I look into the faces around me I see only emptiness mirrored back.”