VIII. Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you!

[epigrammatical]

[AUDIO, public. The morning after the event ends and Tu Vishan starts moving again.]

I am not alone, I gather, in detecting a change in the air here. It is rather like waking on the very first day of the Season, with all the possibility that lies ahead—or waking the morning after the last day, with the happy knowledge that one need not be at home to anyone that day. We have, I suppose, escaped the fate of Des Esseintes's tortoise.

---

[AUDIO, private to Dorian Gray.]

I have finished Mr Findley's novel, Dorian. A most marvellous book; quite gorgeous and affecting.

But I must ask you, dear boy—is what he writes about Oscar true?

[He's already guessed that it is. This is less a real question than the confirmation of a sense of creeping dread.]

Comments

audio; private

[depicted]

[Ah. That's easy to connect. Dorian shifts at the console—Harry might hear the rustle of clothes—so he can rest on an arm. He lets himself sound airy and light, but there is weight to it. Dorian knows where this is going.] Indeed she can. I've heard the other discuss it, though I can't see the appeal myself. At this age, I have so few surprises left to me, I have to at least keep the hope that there will be a few more.

audio; private

[epigrammatical]

You are borrowing from my script, my dear boy. [It's jocular enough, but Henry is genuinely discomfited by such sentiments coming from Dorian. He sighs quietly, and there is the sound of a striking match and a breath as he lights a cigarette.]

Perhaps it is foolish of me and you are right, but nevertheless ... It is quite one thing for you, Dorian, for you have not merely decades, but centuries ahead of you, and Time and History cannot be so miserly as to be completely without surprises for one such as you.

I, however— [A pause.] I think, dear boy, I should rather know what there is to know.

audio; private

[depicted]

[Dorian is entirely silent for a moment.

Eventually, he speaks again.] Why ask her when I can tell you?

audio; private

[epigrammatical]

[His tone is gentle, even sad.]

Would you have me put you through that?

[Thought, but unsaid: Do you hate me so much, Dorian?]

audio; private

[depicted]

[He is quiet again, a head that Harry can't see bowed, hands that Harry can't know are clasped before Dorian as if in prayer. But it isn't any kind of invocation. He is only tired.]

I wouldn't have you pay too high a price for it.

[Some wryness slips back into his voice.] But I suppose hearing it second-hand is like reading about a play in the papers. A box seat will give a more thorough showing.

audio; private

[epigrammatical]

[A soft laugh.]

Indeed. I have been pondering the price of admission, in fact. I have juulan to offer, but that seems a mean and miserly thing.

[A pause, another drag on the cigarette.]

Your cigarette case, Dorian. I promised you that I would not give it to anyone else. But with your leave, it seems that it might in this way be kept safe, and you may be assured that it will not trouble you, nor anyone else, again.

You have only to say no and I shall obey, of course.

[He says this the way he says all things—casually, musically, as if he hasn't spent hours considering how to put this proposition to Dorian. But there's a minor chord in his voice—a sound that Dorian will remember from a conversation Henry only knows from Oscar's book, when he asked Dorian to play a Chopin nocturne.]

audio; private

[depicted]

['Play me a nocturne.' Dorian covers his ears with his hands. He can hear it so perfectly. 'But a chance tone of colour in a room or a morning sky, a particular perfume that you had once loved and that brings subtle memories with it, a line from a forgotten poem that you had come across again, a cadence from a piece of music that you had ceased to play' . . . Harry's voice is so beautiful, so like a song, and these melancholy notes are never going to get out of his head.]

Yes. [Eyes shut, Dorian swallows as quietly as he can.] It's finely crafted, I'm sure she'll accept it. Anyone would.

['We must always be friends.']

[Dorian exhales. Though his voice is light and pretty now, where Harry's is deep and rich, when Dorian speaks, there is an echo of the song that Harry is playing.] Come to me before you do. We'll have dinner. I have a piano—let me play you something first.

audio; private

[epigrammatical]

[It is a fine piece of silverwork, but Henry knows—as Dorian surely does—that it isn't simply the intrinsic value that matters in such things. There is an elegance and symmetry in trading a piece of the past for a glimpse of the future. Dorian can't see Henry's sweet, melancholy smile, but perhaps he can hear something of it in his voice.]

Thank you, my dear fellow.

And I should like that very much.

audio; private

[depicted]

[Yes, for Lord Henry, it's the past traded off for the future. For Dorian, it's all the past. Harry's presence here is just a lie. An illusion sustained by Harry's own ignorance. And when Lord Henry catches up with his future, Dorian wonders: will the illusion break?]

Then . . . whenever it pleases you, Harry.

audio; private

[epigrammatical]

[It is possible that Henry is slowly coming to grasp the extent of that which he does not know—and more importantly, does not understand. This desire to know his own future, then, is an attempt to learn these things. It may prove disastrous. But it seems the least thorny path that his examinations of himself have revealed to him, and so he shall proceed.]

Later this week, perhaps?

audio; private

[depicted]

I'll see you then.