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For a brief space of time that could be a heartbeat and could be an eternity, Ludo entertains an uncomfortable thought of his own - one that can't quite be chipped away from his mind, or sanded down to smooth usefulness.
What if there's nothing he can do to help?
There is something he has never confronted before, a uselessness of himself. How a strong back and a sound mind and firm hands might not, in this limited and gutting instance, be of any use. How all the devotion in the world might not be able to summon Daud back from the precipice. What then? Would he follow this man into chaos the way he once followed better men than himself into war, and is it the same thing?
He struggles at that thought, worrying it like a sore tooth.
The answer, what's the answer, how does this knotty problem get worked into something functional? Daud doesn't want the dreadful potential ending that comes from following this path, but the thought remains. (What we so often want is not what we get, and that worries Ludo, too.)
But more focus is required for another question: if Daud isn't asking for his help, if he isn't asking for a solution, what is he seeking tonight? Ludo turns the problem over and over until the light catches it in just the right way, gives sense to its shape. This isn't about solutions. This is a confession, a baring of self. Can you accept this mess I made?
It's such a loaded conversation suddenly. Ludo thought, assumed (feared) that this would be the conversation about eccentricities that ended a sharing of them. The conversation that would be preempted by 'I found a wife', 'my father says-', 'this feels wrong', 'God doesn't allow'. Instead, instead, his chest is tight and his hands have clenched and things are both hopeful and despairing at once. The shape of the problem is not whether Daud will reject, but whether he will reject.
And he doesn't know the solution. The answer to an unspoken question. Does he want, and if he does want, can he accept?
His drink has gone untouched, and he doesn't want it. He doesn't want much right now, except maybe to scrap this project, this work of anti-art, to make it not. To burn it with failed carvings, broken spoons. He wants, he wants -
The way he stands isn't abrupt, or rather it's abrupt for him, not a slow withdrawal from the table but nothing is overturned, nothing jostled. He can't keep sitting, feels too ill at ease, too aware that all I ever wanted is dragging murderer, assassin, killer on its heels. He needs something for his hands, something to help carve and sand and build and create, but isn't looking for anything in particular, not seeing.
Only feeling the heaviness of his own hand and the firmness of the place where it's settled, what kind of tool did he reach for, how many steps away from the other man did he take to find it? Looks down and sees it came to rest on Daud's shoulder, and he didn't move so far away at all, did he?
And the words that follow, there's something in them, none of this has the solidity of craftsmanship. It's all a little adrift, a little too uncertain. But love's not much for tangibility. "If it isn't what you want, that's enough." For now. For me. "Thoughts are only thoughts until you make them more."
He isn't strong enough to turn his back on someone whose strange nature so closely, comfortingly echoes is own. Calls his own. Or maybe it's that he thinks - he could be strong enough to take the bad with the good.
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For a brief space of time that could be a heartbeat and could be an eternity, Ludo entertains an uncomfortable thought of his own - one that can't quite be chipped away from his mind, or sanded down to smooth usefulness.
What if there's nothing he can do to help?
There is something he has never confronted before, a uselessness of himself. How a strong back and a sound mind and firm hands might not, in this limited and gutting instance, be of any use. How all the devotion in the world might not be able to summon Daud back from the precipice. What then? Would he follow this man into chaos the way he once followed better men than himself into war, and is it the same thing?
He struggles at that thought, worrying it like a sore tooth.
The answer, what's the answer, how does this knotty problem get worked into something functional? Daud doesn't want the dreadful potential ending that comes from following this path, but the thought remains. (What we so often want is not what we get, and that worries Ludo, too.)
But more focus is required for another question: if Daud isn't asking for his help, if he isn't asking for a solution, what is he seeking tonight? Ludo turns the problem over and over until the light catches it in just the right way, gives sense to its shape. This isn't about solutions. This is a confession, a baring of self. Can you accept this mess I made?
It's such a loaded conversation suddenly. Ludo thought, assumed (feared) that this would be the conversation about eccentricities that ended a sharing of them. The conversation that would be preempted by 'I found a wife', 'my father says-', 'this feels wrong', 'God doesn't allow'. Instead, instead, his chest is tight and his hands have clenched and things are both hopeful and despairing at once. The shape of the problem is not whether Daud will reject, but whether he will reject.
And he doesn't know the solution. The answer to an unspoken question. Does he want, and if he does want, can he accept?
His drink has gone untouched, and he doesn't want it. He doesn't want much right now, except maybe to scrap this project, this work of anti-art, to make it not. To burn it with failed carvings, broken spoons. He wants, he wants -
The way he stands isn't abrupt, or rather it's abrupt for him, not a slow withdrawal from the table but nothing is overturned, nothing jostled. He can't keep sitting, feels too ill at ease, too aware that all I ever wanted is dragging murderer, assassin, killer on its heels. He needs something for his hands, something to help carve and sand and build and create, but isn't looking for anything in particular, not seeing.
Only feeling the heaviness of his own hand and the firmness of the place where it's settled, what kind of tool did he reach for, how many steps away from the other man did he take to find it? Looks down and sees it came to rest on Daud's shoulder, and he didn't move so far away at all, did he?
And the words that follow, there's something in them, none of this has the solidity of craftsmanship. It's all a little adrift, a little too uncertain. But love's not much for tangibility. "If it isn't what you want, that's enough." For now. For me. "Thoughts are only thoughts until you make them more."
He isn't strong enough to turn his back on someone whose strange nature so closely, comfortingly echoes is own. Calls his own. Or maybe it's that he thinks - he could be strong enough to take the bad with the good.