Essays of Flesh and Bone

First posted July 2023.

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Author's Note

A friend of mine posted a translation of a Montaigne essay including the phrase "essays of flesh and bone," and said that would be a great title for something, to which another friend of mine responded that it sounded like a great title for something that I'd write, so I was in essence bullied into this. But! Because I am nothing if not contrary, when the story that fit this title came to me, it was an alternate ending to the 1921 film, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which is obviously a timeless classic that everyone is super familiar with and loves. Let this be a lesson to all, that I can, in fact, be bullied into writing things, but I'm gonna be as obtuse as possible about it.

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I. Julio

His last thought was not of Marguerite. It would’ve been more poetic if it was, and if he’d had the time to realise it was the moment to settle on a last thought, he would’ve chosen her. But he didn’t.

As a matter of fact, he couldn’t remember what his last thought was. He could think of several things it might’ve been — something about his family, something about the cruelty of war, things that would’ve made sense. That was conjecture, though. Not memory.

He remembered what it wasn’t only because, for a brief moment, he thought that mattered. As the bright light of the exploding shell faded into cold, howling darkness, he felt himself falling through the debris of all the important things in life: nobility, patriotism, family, duty, first words, last thoughts, etiquette, heroism, hard work, integrity. He reached for the mangled, battered scraps, and watched all the earthly remains disappear with his own.

Mist filled the space where his body ought to have been. It pulsed, somehow, with the beat of a heart that was not there. The more he tried to fix his mind on the loss, the less it seemed to matter.

He was not aware that his eyes had been closed until he opened them. Standing on the doorstep of a house he knew he should recognise, he wondered whether he was in Heaven or Hell, and almost laughed at the thought. Neither hope nor fear were emotions he yet possessed, and in their absence, either destination seemed equally trivial.

Without opening it, he stepped through the door, and knew in a moment it was Heaven after all, for there was Marguerite. And suddenly, Julio understood life — an easier thing, now that he was not living it. Of all the troubles and joys and miseries and triumphs, none of it mattered except love. The sorrow welling in Marguerite’s eyes, the nervous bite of her guilty lip, the weary ache curving her spine: all were products of human invention, the effects of cages the living constructed for themselves. The propriety that kept the two of them apart, the striving for glory that ended his life, and the weight of duty and obligation which kept Marguerite where she was had all seemed so heavy when he was alive, and now they drifted away, as light as burned scraps of paper on the wind.

For Julio, there was no longer a sense of what must be done, what must be upheld. He knew what stayed in the soul after the body was gone.

II. Etienne

Marguerite thought he didn’t know. It seemed ungrateful to be insulted; she was, after all, doing what she was supposed to do. But that was the problem.

It was somehow both the best and the worst part that nothing had really changed. The motivation, maybe, but not the result. There had never been a moment between them that was not obligated. There had never been a moment in which she chose him because she wanted to — because she liked him. And it had never really bothered him before, to have a wife that didn’t love him; that is, it wasn’t supposed to bother him, and so he wasn’t bothered by it.

Julio was a distraction. Marguerite was better without distractions; it was easier to pretend she was merely bored rather than truly unhappy. When she didn’t have distractions, she had duty. And Etienne knew it was only ever a performance — of course he knew. He always knew. But it simply wasn’t done to let others know you knew. It was a duty in itself: to be unobtrusive to others, to allow everyone to hold fast to their own duty.

Being blinded did not make Etienne a better person. He was the same person he always had been, though now he was at least spared the pity and guilt in Marguerite’s eyes, if not her touch, her words, her sighs. As much as she was captive to the blind man for whose care she was responsible, he was captive to her unhidden misery, her embarrassing self-sacrifice, her martyred mien — visible even without the use of sight.

A bitter, petty part of him still wanted to grant her the divorce. To stop letting her play the hero for feigning tenderness for him. The accident didn’t make him a better person, but it didn’t make him a worse one, either. Marguerite’s failures didn’t absolve him of the responsibility for his own. He would do right by her, for his own sake. She would not thank him for performing his obligations, but he would sleep well at night. That was all a man could ask for.

In another world, he wondered if they all might have been happy. In this world, however, Etienne knew all humans were victims of duty: in war, in family, in love. It did not do to strain against the confines of existence, wishing it to be something other than what it was.

III. Marguerite

None of it was fair. It wasn’t fair that Julio came into her life, and it wasn’t fair that he couldn’t be hers. It wasn’t fair that she’d had to marry Etienne, and it wasn’t fair of her to pretend to love him out of guilt. It wasn’t fair that soldiers had to fight and die and carry wounds all their lives for arguments their leaders had. It wasn’t fair to Etienne for her to leave, and it wasn’t fair to him for her to stay.

A misty haze clouded her mind as she sat down at her desk. Every fear that gripped her heart loosed; every scolding edict rattling around her brain quieted. She felt herself blink as if the movement was done by someone else, and looked around the room without seeing anything. Every day for four years she had struggled with what was right and what was necessary, and somehow, in the space of a single second, she knew the answer. Her pen flew across the page writing words that came not from her head, but from her heart. She had never been so sure of anything in her life.

As quickly as the confidence had found her, it fled. Reading over the letter she’d just written, she clapped a hand over her mouth in horror. She couldn’t go through with it. Or, worse, actually — she could. It would be so easy.

The room was cold, and smelled of antiseptic. She felt it in her teeth. She wanted to run out the door, and she was terrified of what would happen if she did. Life, she thought with a despairing chuckle. Once she had trusted that somewhere ahead of her was a life full of friends and laughter, love and dancing, freedom and joy. Now, she knew it was all a big joke. Lies they told to children to keep them moving towards a future of nothing but death, if you were lucky, and decay, if you weren’t. Nothing got better; it only changed. There wasn’t any point to anything at all.

So why not run, then? If it wouldn’t matter either way. To be a good person or a happy one — neither would save or condemn her. Folding the letter in half, she placed it on the desk, pressing one finger thoughtfully into the centre of it. She sighed, pushing the letter further away from her, then pulling it back.

“Darling.”

“Yes, Etienne, I’m here,” she said, wiping tears from her face. When had she started crying? “What is it?”

“I am not Etienne.”

The chair clattered on the floor behind her as she bolted up from her seat, turning towards Julio’s voice over her shoulder. No one was there. She had imagined him. Of course she had. Just to be certain, she quickly walked to the window and peered outside.

A familiar rumbling laugh, low and inviting, sounded over her shoulder. “No, darling. I’m here.”

Slowly, she looked at the space behind her, and felt a current run through her spine as Julio took shape out of thin air.

“No,” she whispered.

He took her hands in his, so cold they burned her skin. Dizzily, she swayed on her feet. He was dead. Julio was dead. He was there with her, but he was dead. If she left Etienne now, she’d have nowhere to go, no one to go to. And yet, she couldn’t stay.

She wondered how far back she would have had to go to fix this life. If, somehow, she could have prevented Julio from dying, or Etienne from being blinded, or the war from happening in the first place, or herself from meeting Julio, or her father from forcing her to marry Etienne. If there was a moment, somewhere in the past, that she took a right turn when she should’ve taken a left, and if only she’d done that, everything now would be fine. The dream of a life filled with champagne and tango and Julio — she knew it was a lie, that it had always been a lie.

And yet, she dreamed. That letter on the desk was proof of it. Somewhere in her, some part of her still believed that if she walked out the door and into Julio’s arms, that they would build that life together from nothing but each other. Instead, she held hands with a ghost, standing in a room littered with the detritus of nursing a man she didn’t love, in a world on fire with bombs and gunfire and hatred.

Her gaze rested on the letter on the desk. Thinking of the future brought nothing to mind but a gaping black abyss. The war would never end and Julio would never come back and Etienne would never let her go and she would never laugh again.

Julio brushed a stray curl out of her face. “It isn’t what you wanted, I know. But there is a life of love for you, if you want it.”

Love. Somehow she’d forgotten to think of it. It did not change the nothing that overwhelmed her vision; she could see no visions of what a life of love would look like. But she knew what it felt like, and that feeling filled the nothingness with light.

She expected his lips to be cold, but he was warm as she always remembered him. With her eyes closed, nothing felt different: not the shiver his breath on her skin sent through her, not the strength of his arms wrapped around her, not the softness of his lips on hers. Her fingers in his hair, the sound of his shirt rustling as she pressed herself against him, the beat of his heart impossibly pulsing through him — none of it made sense, but she was exhausted by the world that made sense. If her life was nothing but this, it would be enough.

Julio’s hand slipped around her waist as she stepped out the front door. For the first time she could remember since the war began, the wind blew fresh and clear, free of ashes and cinders from fires burning far away.