En Bon Desir

Long streaks of blood paint Gibson’s skin, and set him off to good effect. It was Gibson who taught him how to tie these knots, the very same knots that bind him now – he had shown Hickey every loop and twist with the exasperated patience of a veteran sailor, and he’d shown him how to cinch the rope fast so that it would not slip from its place or wrench loose. So bound, he is perfectly helpless, and Hickey’s hands can run all over him and go roving through his white shirt, his unbuttoned trousers, his darkly gilded hair. The blade of Hickey’s knife can travel all over him too, nipping and scratching where it will.

Gibson is waiting for him, stark and bound, like a whale’s tooth or a slat of wood waits for its carver to make handicraft of it – he has pleaded for this, or if not for this then for some greater discipline, so that things may be equal between them once again. Cut me, beat me, put me under the lash, he has said, but Hickey will do none of these things – he will bind him tight until the flesh shines white between the ropes and the red raw marks of his struggle are tender to the touch. To this Gibson gives his assent.

It was another man who taught Hickey how to heat the needle over the flame, how to blot away the scant blood and to press in the India ink with the ball of his thumb – he must have been a sailor, from his knowledge of a sailor’s craft, and he spoke of the queer ways of the South Seas, of handsome men and merry women marked in ink by way of pagan decoration. It was only by luck that Hickey came away from that prison cell unmarked and unbuggered, but his body is blank as a fresh leaf and he is vain of it.

Gibson’s assent has turned to fear now, but his fear is sweetened with exhilaration, in the rise and fall of his thin chest and the pricking hardness of his freckle-brown nipples. His shirt is open as far as its slit will allow, hanging off one shoulder, and the ring Hickey gave him hangs like a pretty toy around his throat.

The needle is from Gibson’s packet – it might have stitched a lieutenant’s split seam or fixed a button to a cuff. A sailmaker’s needle would do better, but he’s found none of those. The ink belonged to some lieutenant or purser, but it has found its usefulness now.

Hickey’s hand makes steady jabs with the needle against Gibson’s chest. The prickings are intermingled with long scratches to draw the blood and make it run. They will make an uglier mark, but the mark will stay; it will not be blotted out. Upon Gibson’s breast, he marks out a crooked heart pricked with two initial letters, and a slogan in steady block script – he can write long sentences only with difficulty, but this saying is succinct: REMEMBER ME.

The man who is Hickey had once been a servant in a respectable house. His master had been a great strong man, free with kicks and blows, and in his house, there was no fine cloth nor rich dye to be worn for anyone save the mistress of the house. His master’s wife wore a golden ring – she only took it off to have her hair dressed or to paint her face, but the inside of the band half-rubbed with wear was scratched with tiny letters. A FREINDES GIFT, it read, and the servant-boy who had learned his letters stumbling over Bible verses and gallows broadsheets had discerned the meaning of those words with childish certainty. That was a token of true love.

Hickey has never had a friend before. Gibson will be his first and last, he will be his only companion. This mark will last as long as Gibson himself lives, it will not be effaced by anything except the grave – he may lie and say how he came by it was through chance or bad luck, but he will know that Hickey’s hands have known his body and that Hickey’s blade has pierced him.

It is not luck that brought them together. It is not luck that brings a man from England to Africa and to China and back, alive – and is it chance that has wedded him so closely with the very pattern of imperial achievement, to a sailor and a soldier and a servant all in one man? Billy is his very own hero, come from distant wars, and he is handy with a needle in his own way. If Hickey were a jealous man, he would deface him – it is not a hard thing to slit a nose or to take an eye, or to pare away those nipples that no one else will ever touch and tweak but him. No one else knows the terrain of Gibson’s body as he does, no one has known it in the utter dark of a polar winter as good as a blindfold. Cut him, gouge him, blind him, maim him, see to it that his body’s grace will never shine forth again from under such sober livery and that no other man will fall for the tricks of his grave solemn face – but Hickey is not a jealous man. He only wishes to make his mark.

Gibson says that he loves him, and Hickey presses the ruddy gash in his shoulder with the ball of his thumb until he yelps. Gibson is weeping, whether from fear or exhilaration, Hickey does not know and cannot tell. Hickey kisses the tears from his scarleted face, and the taste of salt makes his prick stir.

“You belong to me,” Hickey says. “I’ll be with you always.”

His cramped hand makes a fist in the back of Gibson’s curls – the sweat has darkened his golden hair, and the fine stubble of beard in the crease of his throat stands out incongruously red. Gibson looks on him with his remarkable heroic eyes shining like jewels, and it is a look of such exquisite pained purity that he feels a pang of what in other men must be Christian feeling. There are only two spiritual considerations for him now, the thing on the ice and this, his painted idol. Hickey kisses him and tastes ink.