“Tell me”.
“What’s in it for you? It’s all just small talk” – Orel said, lighting a cigarette.
“You think outside the box, and I’m curious”.
Orel laughed: “Is this a complement? Did you just praise a ‘silly pretty prince’?”
“Think whatever you want! I’ve always considered you rather sharp, just somewhat crass. As for your smarts, you have to agree, Arel, you never even really learned how to read, or wright, or count. You’re not silly, of course, but you are uneducated and illiterate”.
“I know all that stuff” – Orel shook his hair.
“You’re a child! It’s ridicules! You are almost thirty years old! Even if a miracle occurs, and you die a natural death, in your own bed, even though it’s unlikely, even in the very best case it will happen within fifteen years tops! And the “blacks” usually live till hundred years easily! You understand that?”
“Yes”.
“Did you already catch the liver infection?”
“Yes…”
“What were you thinking?! Are you still going to claim you’re not stupid?”
Orel was silent.
“How much time did you spend in prison?”
“Two”.
“Two and a half, to be accurate. Best years of your youth! Only fools, like you and Squint-Eye, serve time in prison! Or even get there!”
Once again, Orel didn’t answer.
“Do you know why I like you, Arel? You never make excuses, you take all my mockery quietly. And I mock you in a mean way, it hurts me that such an interesting thoughts come into your head instead of mine. Even though I am the one who always kept searching for the answers, and still do”.
“But I told you, you were the one who gave me the basic idea. You were the one who said, ‘He is a nobody. He actually doesn’t exist! And you get from him whatever you bring in”.
“Well, you’re basically right, I said something like this, but I wasn’t the one who gave it the final shape, it was you”.
“You suppose my theory is final? It’s only one of the ideas”.
“There’s more?!”
“Yes.”
“?!”
“There is the feedback. The feedback we get from him”.
“Your slave girl? Shela, whom he supposedly killed to get back at me. I got you”.
“The black-braided. Yes, it’s possible. Shit, why do I keep forgetting her name!”
“Never mind. You also got something? You love him, after all!”
“I got some. Big time! I got no less than Enriki, and definitely no less than you! I’m almost ruined!”
“But what for? And wait, what does Rik have to do with it?”
“Squint-Eye and Enriki, the two miserable ones, they really do resemble each other. Only Squint-Eye doesn’t deny his own nature, and Enriki would give up his hands, just not to touch the abomination that lives inside him. Eventually, it all ended up the same for both of them, they have both punished themselves. Only one of them cuts his own veins and mutilates himself almost consciously. And the other doesn’t. I had beaten Nikto for that, I was sure it was him…” – and, upon seeing the misunderstanding in Lis’s eyes, Orel shook his head violently.
“Try to understand! I’m trying to convey this to you now the best I can”.
“I’m trying,” – Lis nodded, extinguishing his finished cigarette, but only after lighting a new one from it, that was probably the fifth time he did it: “Let’s go through this. Why did you decide all Enriki’s troubles were Nikto’s fault?”
“If we go through this, first I’ve realized he was punishing me, or at least that’s what I thought. I’m going to tell you first now, I never told this to anybody. He has actually knocked my eye out”.
“What?!”
“Yep. He’s knocked out my eye back then. I have a crooked eye. I was the first one to catch it in the head, even before Enriki, and that’s despite all my love towards him. Well, you received a warning in a shape of a killed slave, and I felt it all on my own flesh. By the way, Lis, it’s all about the womans with you, I wonder why? There, now Carina is torturing you”.
“Don’t get destructed, keep talking”.
“He knocked my eye out, irretrievably, intentionally or not – I don’t know. I recalled all our conversations, looking for a reason, why would he treat me this way. And I remembered how I reproached him for changing his eyes. He adjusted them for the ‘unclean’ and almost turned blind. Or at least that’s what I thought back then. I used to say: ’What an idiot you must be to change your own eyes! Not to see anything during the day! The world in all its’ splendor!’ I was probably wrong, after all, I have no idea how he really sees everything, maybe it’s not all grey and white, maybe it’s not that bad. He told me the world wasn’t any worse at night. I didn’t believe him. And now I know it’s
actually true. Because he has planted an eye of the “unclean” in me, and I see in the dark with it”.
“Are you kidding me right now?! Please tell me it was just a joke!”
“No. What jokes, the jokes ended long time ago. I’m telling you, he altered me! I have his black tattoos on my arms and legs, and his jewelry in my ears and on my chest!”
“And what about Enriki?” – Lis said hardly, slowly.
“Enriki, Enriki always smack-talked and despised him, once he was braze enough to drop that it’s better not to have fingers at all, than such an embarrassing hands like Nikto’s. And then it dawned to me. I’ve decided that it was Nik punishing him for these words, letting him feel what it’s like to have no fingers. But Nikto tells me it was not his fault, on the contrary, he was trying to help Enriki however he could. He employed all his knowledge, everything the witch and his sister taught him about doctoring. And they are both great healers. And it was just the same with me. After all, my eye was impossible to return, and he didn’t want to leave me mutilated”.
“Whatever he says, you don’t even have to tell me! So at first, he punished and mutilated you. And then graciously helped you, but altered everything his way”.
“That’s what I thought, but he denies it. He says he has nothing to do with it, that we are punishing ourselves. Just like Squint-Eye, when he cuts his veins. That’s what I told you about in the beginning.
