Nothing Is as It Was
“I don’t want to eat.”
Annette protested, but Heiner cleared the empty papers from the side table without a word.
“I said I don’t want to.”
“Are you planning to starve yourself to death?”
“Whether I starve or not is none of your concern.”
“If you’re going to die, at least choose a more elegant method.”
Heiner turned from the now-cleared table and looked at her with cold eyes.
“You are the Rosenberg princess, after all.”
Annette’s expression hardened in an instant. She pressed her lips tightly together and lowered her gaze. Looking at that wounded face, Heiner felt a filthy sort of self-disgust for the very jab he had delivered.
The Rosenberg princess. That was what people had once called Annette.
She had been the lady every man in the capital coveted—the only daughter of the lofty Rosenberg house, blessed with beauty and a gentle heart, and a promising pianist besides. No one had dared treat her carelessly. Merely looking at her had been enough to make one feel the full weight of her nobility.
To call her by that name now was nothing short of mockery.
They sat wrapped in uncomfortable silence until a servant entered with the food. Heiner had it set on the table, then said,
“Eat.”
“Leave. I’ll eat on my own.”
“And then send it all back untouched, is that it?”
“And if I do, what exactly are you going to do about it?”
Annette’s voice was sharp. Heiner’s eyes widened slightly.
“…That doesn’t sound like you.”
“What is ‘like me,’ then? How much do you even know about me?”
She let out a short, scornful laugh. That, too, was unlike her.
In all the time Heiner had known her, Annette had never once spoken with that kind of sneer. Even when angry, she had always expressed her fury honestly. When she had discovered his calculated approach and demanded a divorce, she had remained quiet and fragile to the end.
But the woman before him now seemed markedly on edge.
Is it because I took the medicine?
What in the world was that drug? Heiner reined in the nerves that had drawn taut and spoke in a flat voice.
“At the very least, I know more about you than you know about me.”
“Of course you do. You had to learn everything about me so you could act the part and win my heart.”
For a moment Heiner asked himself silently.
“But Heiner.”
Am I still inside your heart even now?
“Nothing is the same as it was.”
Do you still love me?
“Everything has changed.”
Why do I want to ask such things?
“I’m no longer the ‘Rosenberg princess.’ I’m not your lover. I’m not some naive girl who knew nothing of the world. The me you knew and the me standing here are completely different people.”
“…I wouldn’t know.”
“Then it’s time you learned.”
Heiner looked down at her with an expressionless face. He truly did not know. Annette was right, of course. She was nothing now.
That proud birth had been reduced to scrap paper. All the love she had once been showered with had vanished. She could no longer even play the piano she adored. She was nothing. And yet…
Heiner’s lips moved soundlessly.
And yet.
Why are you still so beautiful and noble?
Why, the moment I stand before you, must I still feel this wretched inferiority and misery?
He truly did not know.
“…Just eat. Before I force-feed you.”
His voice was slightly hoarse as he settled onto the chair opposite her. Up close, her features looked even more delicate.
“Go on.”
At his urging, Annette reluctantly began to spoon the soup. She ate so quietly and so slowly that not even the clink of cutlery could be heard.
Heiner watched her with a faintly unsettled expression—something he could only do because she refused to glance his way at all.
A small, pale face. Golden hair and blue eyes that were practically the emblem of Padanian beauty. Long lashes casting shadows beneath her eyes, and a flawless bridge of the nose.
She was exactly as she had been as a child—only far more mature.
Heiner recalled the first moment he had ever seen Annette.
A doll-like little girl.
Small white hands moving over the keys.
A face so pure he had wondered whether they could truly have been born under the same sky, breathing the same air.
Back then he had felt so low, so utterly base.
He forced the memory away. With heavy, sunken eyes he looked at the embroidery lying on the table. The threads were tangled everywhere.
Annette, still slowly stirring her soup, suddenly spoke.
“I want to go somewhere alone for a while. Somewhere a little far.”
“Alone? Where, exactly?”
“I haven’t decided yet, but anywhere…”
“Do you really think I’ll allow that? Knowing where you might go?”
“Come to think of it.”
The spoon circling through the soup came to a stop.
“When did I ever start needing your permission for every little thing?”
Her lowered eyes were not looking at him. She murmured quietly,
“I already know what you think.”
With that, Annette asked nothing more. Heiner, too, fell silent. Silence settled between them once again.
She forced down mouthful after mouthful until she had managed barely a third of the bowl, then set her spoon aside.
“I can’t eat any more.”
“Someone who’d gone days without food would still manage better than that.”
“How am I supposed to get anything down with you watching me like a jailer? I’m going to choke.”
Heiner let out a low sigh and rose. Halfway to the door his steps halted. He turned only his head and spoke in a tone of warning.
“…If I hear one more word about you refusing a meal, I’ll have you committed for a psychiatric eating disorder.”
No answer came. Annette simply stared down at the soup with a face that had grown markedly gaunt.
Heiner clenched his fist, then opened it, and wrenched the door open with rough force.
Long legs crossed the room. Once inside his own chamber, Heiner set the medicine bottle on the desk and spun the dial of the telephone exchange.
Before long the other end answered.
“Yes, this is Arnold Burkel.”
“Heiner Valdemar. Sorry to call at this hour, Dr. Arnold. Do you have a moment?”
“Ah, Your Excellency. Of course. What can I do for you?”
“There’s a medicine whose name I’d like to know. It was prescribed to my wife. Small, round, white, with S, Z, and 5 stamped in the center.”
“S, Z… Ah. That would be Sinagel.”
“A sedative?”
“Yes. It’s usually prescribed as a sleeping aid. I prescribed it to Madame as a sleep medication as well.”
“…I see. Thank you. Until next time.”
“Yes, Your Excellency. Have a peaceful night.”
Heiner set the receiver down and stood with his hands braced on the desk for a long while, steadying his breath. Deathly silence filled the dark room.
In the dim light the medicine bottle gleamed with a white so bright it hurt the eyes. Its surface seemed to overlap with Annette’s pale face.
Heiner snatched the bottle from the desk and flung it into the wastebasket.
“Ridiculous.”
He muttered the word darkly and turned toward the wardrobe. Heiner hung his gray overcoat on a hanger and began undoing the buttons of his shirt one by one.
Hoarding pills was a behavioral sign of people contemplating death. Yet Heiner did not for a moment believe Annette was truly considering suicide. It was merely a habit for psychological comfort, nothing more.
Annette was a timid, frail woman—without even the courage to choose death. That was why she trembled so at newspaper opinion and at the mere thought of the piano.
She knew nothing of military drills, of beatings, of torture, of starvation, of the sensation of killing. Of course something so trivial would feel like absolute misery to her.
He kept fumbling with the buttons the whole time, but paid it no mind. With a blank face he stared into the full-length mirror before him.
A man with gloomy gray eyes was trapped inside the glass.
“The more I look at you, the more I think you have such beautiful eyes.”
“My eyes? I’ve never heard that before.”
“Really? How could that be, when they’re this lovely? Of your whole face, I love your eyes the most.”
“And the rest of me is nothing special, I take it?”
“Of course not! I have high standards, you know. I would never take an unattractive man as my lover.”
“How unfortunate. I would have loved you even if you weren’t beautiful.”
“That just means I am beautiful, doesn’t it?”
“You’re the most beautiful person in the world.”
Eyes full of love curved softly. The blue irises sank so deep they nearly vanished.
A spring breeze drifted from somewhere far away. Radiant golden hair fluttered. Clear laughter scattered like flower petals.
Where the vision had been, only a desolate gray waste remained. He closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them. Reality again.
If you are unhappy, so much the better, Heiner murmured inwardly.
You should despair as thoroughly as I once despaired. You should lose as much as I lost. You were present for every miserable moment of my life, so I should be present for every miserable moment of yours.
My life was dark for far too long. Yours should be the same.
Heiner stripped off his shirt. In the stillness only the rustle of cloth filled the air. Half-sunk in darkness, the mirror reflected broad shoulders and a chest tightly packed with muscle.
Across the upper chest, in a messy hand, a phrase in the common tongue had been branded. The red, knotted marks were the remains of the stigma.
IM A RENT BOY OF PADANIA
(I am a male prostitute of Padania.)