Give Me That Body (Oneshots)

(2010) Nataniellus Is Jealous and Sings Softly of Love

Note: If you need a refresher or want to avoid SoVL spoilers, too late, but also the present times events of SoVL occur between 2011-2013. The big death happened in 2003. Leechtin calls Cuca Saumana which means "blooming". Nerva is Nataniellus's former name.

"What are you doing? Don't do that."

He stops.

"That won't be a nice sandwich. You can't put those things together." 

It looked like tuna fish. Avocado. Something red.

"You have not tasted it, Nataniellus. You have not eaten it."

"I can smell it."

He pauses. He is wearing green silk belted at the waist with an elaborately embroidered sash I made for him from England. Underneath, what? Black linen? His hair is so black against his skin. I don't like him in the natural light. 

"Tell us what to do, Nataniellus."

"Throw it away."

"Nataniellus is so disturbed. What will Saumana eat?"

"He is in his 30s. Let him make his own food."

"So were you in your 30s, and so much older than Saumana is at that age, and dying."

"Stop talking."

"He could not take care of himself, our Nataniellus. He was so thin. He ate only fruit and dried fish, and he thinks he can tell us about food. He does not know about things that are nice. Come back."

Leechtin, when he is being serious, does not talk at all. If Leechtin is talking, he is typically trying to be funny. Walking away is speaking his language. 

"I won't do it. Come to bed."

"Do what? What is he doing, our Iellus?" 

He is purposefully confusing me with his strange Englishes.

He follows me out of the kitchen and up the stairs, grabbing the sash of my dressing gown so that he cannot lose me. 

"Don't walk away from us, Iellus."

I know very well where his ward is -- eating a chicken sandwich out of a bag in his car in the driveway. I know it because I avoid him, and as a consequence, I know where he is at all times. 

"What if our pet gets hungry?"

Sure, I was not so well at the boy's age, before my death, but in my time, one could not speak into an electric box and be given a chicken sandwich for small money, and one certainly could not eat anything in secret in a whorehouse when there were children starving there whom you loved. But if one thinks about the injustices of the modern world, one runs out of time to think about anything else. 

"What will we do upstairs?"

"Cut it out."

"Cut?"

He is so happy these days. 

I take him into my bedroom, so that no one will be able to find him, and shut the curtains. 

"Oh it is very scary with the lights off."

"Will you stop chattering at me? It isn't funny."

"What does he want with us?"

"Sit on the bed."

He sits down and I am on my knees without thinking about it. When he is feeling old, and tired, he wears these transparent stockings, to the thighs, made of silk, because he cannot stand to feel anything rub against his skin. I sit on my knees and roll them down, turning them over and over gently.