#milenko

They arrived speaking yiddish, having left their Shtetl for reasons they only half-said, therefore only half-existed to the rest of the world that weren’t them. Nor the Cassano nor the Tesfaye needed them to say them out loud: they already knew that the details might change but the stories of displacement were always the same. Besides, their contact had given them all the information they needed that the Olenevs couldn’t provide themselves. 

They were a family of bright, determined people, and Galen and Evalina themselves had said “a little sun from the south might as well do wanders” in broken, accented venetian. They had heard what the Cassano did for Jews seeking to escape Spain and Portugal, that was auspicious enough for them. 

The only reason Anatole was there was his habit of tagging along to whatever Milenko was doing, as long as he didn’t have his own responsibilities to attend to or something more pressing urging for his attention. It was a day like any other, years before his first real contracts, before he became the accountant of Andrico’s Solanaise II, during the eve of the year he would defend theses and finally become a Doctor of Philosophy.

Perhaps there had been a reason for him to be there, after all. It was one of the days where he looked perfectly fine, but the toil of everything that had come with his choice of formal education weighed him down. Stared him down until he felt like he would sink into the claws of something which would harm him; stared him down with the unfeeling eyes of Gods and Saints and Priests which looked nothing like him or the hatred of cultures that despised him just because he existed. 

So before bitterness could poison him (he would not take it, he would not be fed the insidious poison of the Conquistador. No, he would be better), he followed his cousin, searching for something to remind him why they, his family, did what they did, why he did what he must. 

To some of these people the Cassano meant protection and kinship. Offering to help the Tesfaye with the new family that had just arrived to their community was a good way to take his mind off that day, when he felt his own head working against him and like his knees would falter. 

When breathing in the sun didn’t help dispersing the simmering hatred he didn’t want to have inside him, when nothing he did could disperse ghosts of European tongues speaking behind his back, he followed Milenko.

They met the Olenevs in one of the parlours of Amar and Zipporah Tesfaye’s small printing business. Evalina, the mother, a chemist; Galen, the father, a jewish convert and a doctor; Zelda, his apprentice, and Him. Standing there, next to a window, tracing his fingers over a sculpture on a shelf next to it.

First there was his face: fair but with life to it, housing two bright blue eyes like some stolen, precious stone or a new brand of royal blue he wished became fashionable so he could see his eyes everywhere. Anatole had never found blue eyes interesting, most of them were pale and limpid, as if the men and women from Europe were all one pink blob of flesh and fair hair. 

Not his. Him who turned towards the sound of his voice, towering over him and had delicate, embroidered flowers on his clothes. His blonde curls like the sunlight over water, crowning his beautiful face like honey dripping from the sun itself. His hands were soft and shook his own with a gentle squeeze. 

This was the earth itself turning on Anatole for almost succumbing to hating it.

“This is Tamryn, he’s our eldest,” Evalina said.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said in a deep voice that was polite and pleasant and hopeful like the sun-rays at dawn. 

Zelda noticed how Anatole’s hand lingered. 

“He was also the prettiest boy in our Shtetl,” she said, with a cheek that reminded Anatole of his cousin Amparo. “At the age of 18 there were families lining up to ask for his hand in marriage for their daughters, but-”

“Zelda!”

Anatole felt his cheeks warm. A true feat of character for he rarely did so. Even if he suspected she might become the death of him, because of the way she seemed to see right through him, he liked Zelda already. Still, part of him that was always alert, always vigilant frantically wondered why she would say something like that. Was it recognition or was it a threat? 

“What? It’s true! Men were always his type, especially, if they’re as pretty as our new friend and I was more than content with entertaining the daughters—”

“A week, Zelda, couldn’t you have waited a week before you made declarations like that?”

She looked unrepentant and Anatole laughed. He had nothing to worry about, and even if he did, he was in Venice, after all: nowhere in the world he was freer than here, under the protection of his family, where he felt like he could be nothing but a sun-kissed, perfumed boy with a bright future ahead of him. 

Perhaps that was all he needed to be that day, to remember.

“Then I will do my best to live up to expectation, as long as Tamryn and your parents allow it.” 

Framed by his furious blush, Tamryn’s eyes looked even prettier.

* * *

Tamryn was a soft, gentle man. Inventive, ingenious and with a hunger for knowledge and learning that Anatole felt outdid his own. Unassuming, like the winter winds announcing new life, he had crept into his heart just as easily as his sister did; but where friendship had grown for Zelda, love was growing for Tamryn. He couldn’t say when it happened: one day he just knew he wanted to make a home inside him. One day he just knew no one was as dear to him as Tamryn.  

Yet sometimes, fear hounded him like a war-dog. Fearing the loving relationship he had always wanted for himself to find would skip him, slip away from his fingers entirely. That there was always going to be something preventing it. He had loved other men before: there had been Navneet, who had come and had gone, there had been fucking Andrico, whom he had pursued for two years with no indication that he was opposed to it until the night Anatole had gone to kiss him and Andrico said he had always thought of him like a younger brother. 

He understood they had grown up together, but Anatole did not know in what world putting a flower on the ear of a man, while being yourself a man, was not an obvious sign of romance. Granted, Andrico’s forte was being pretty, it wasn’t being smart. 

(You’re missing Decimo, a sabotaging voice in his head said. He said he loved you. 

That wasn’t love, Anatole told himself. I was made to be worshipped.

Something in him had sharpened after that. Something in him had changed. Something in him had become like the very sun above his head, sizzling and burning, giving life no longer.

A misplaced Greek Chorus, re-imagined by modern ópera sang: Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta.) (1)

It was the festering bitterness that told him men who learnt to speak like him, and therefore learnt him existed only in his imagination. 

Then, one day, unprompted, Tamryn said: “My sister tells me you sign all your letters as Inti Ankuwilla, Aelius Anatole Radosevic-Cassano. What does Inti Ankuwilla mean? I am butchering the language like a gruesome steak hanging in some store, am I? We do dual names too, I am Tamryn, but in shul I answer to Feivel ben Chaim v’Elisheva-”

He went on talking and asking questions, connecting them with other things Anatole had said about him, as if everything that was confessed to him was a gift of its own, but finding himself in want of more of it, he sheepishly came to ask if he could have some more. Yet his voice quieted as he noticed Anatole wasn’t replying. 

He was too busy looking at him  in stunned silence. 

“I was asking too much wasn’t I? I’ve heard about your family, about what you do, and every chance I have to talk to you, you're always so interesting and always care about what I have to say. I— I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry-”

“No!” Anatole said, snapping back to his present circumstance as if the earth had zapped him with lightning, “don’t apologise. I, I love your questions. I just didn’t expect you to care about that.”

Tamryn sat up to his full sitting height, brow furrowed. He slouched again, eyes darting everywhere but towards Anatole as his tell-tale blush began to show up against his skin. He bounced his leg and squeezed the back of his neck with his hand.

Finally he found his words, which came out in a confused wisp of his voice: “Have I done something to make you think I don’t care? Please let me apologise.” 

Oh no, Anatole thought. This was almost as mortifying as Andrico calling him “little brother”, but definitely worse overall. The last thing Anatole wanted was Tamryn to think he had caused him offence when he brought him so much joy.

“No, no, never,” he said, giddy and apologetic as he fidgeted with his hands. He took a deep breath, exhaling with a huff. Before he could convince himself otherwise, he pushed himself to sit next to Tamryn, gently shoving his elbow against him in what he hoped came out as comfort. 

He dared not touch him more, but he noticed the neck of his shirt was crooked. 

“Here,” he said, reaching out to fix it, “let me help. You have done nothing to cause me offence, and I realise how mean that sounded. I’m sorry, even if I’m surprised, I’m glad you asked. It’s just complicated, at times. To find people who care, that is. Actually care.”

“I do care.”

“Well, as long as you know I also care about you.”

Tamryn blushed again, shifting uncomfortably in his own clothes. “Why?”

“Seriously? After what you just said, are you seriously asking me—”

“Well, I don’t know! I guess I am. I never claimed to be very smart!”

“Oh, that’s some bullshit.”

“Anatole!”

“It is what it is! Do you want me to answer your question or not?”

“Yes please, sorry.”

Anatole rolled his eyes affectionately. “That is the name my mother gave me. ‘Inti’ is the Sun, our God of the Sun; ‘Ankuwilla’ means he who sacredly resists. Dual name, for a man who transited into being one. She— when she was taken from her community, I don’t want to go into how, a couple from Spain gave her another name, Luisa. She learnt it comes from German, something along the lines of ‘‘great battle’. Well, she decided it would be quite ironic to name me Ankuwilla. 

“Everyone called me ‘Lilu’ while growing up, when they weren’t calling me Inti. Because as you can obviously tell, despite what I may project, I am not particularly tall. My father is almost as tall as you, and everyone else I grew up with was taller than me. 

“My parents didn’t want me to go through anyone, here or in what they call the Indies, to choose my name for me. So I chose Aelius Anatole so it kept the meaning: my mother named me after the Sun, so I named myself after the Sunrise. It’s happened to a lot of us after the fucking Spanish decided to come in uninvited. One thing is what we call each other, and another is, well— I’m more than sure that you get it.”

“Is that why you didn’t introduce yourself like that outright?”

“Besides the fact most Europeans refuse to acknowledge my name?”

“Well, yes.”

“Most people I’ve met pronounce Runasimi horrendously.”

Tamryn laughed, and Anatole found himself laughing with him.

“Your father speaks it, though, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah, he learned from my mother. Actually, most of my family whom you’ve met speak it too, and when I wasn’t in Venice, the commune we stayed in also had a couple of Runasimi speakers. Like, my mother’s best friend, Zia Solange speaks Yoruba, so I speak a little Yoruba as well. We managed.”

“If I ever asked, would you teach me?”

“What, Yoruba? I don’t think I know enough to teach you—”

“No, I mean, Runasimi.”

Anatole was doomed.

* * *

From then on, every time he was in Venice, he would show up every second day at the doorstep of the Olenevs, around the same time, with the same question:

“Evalina, Galen, I wanted to know if I could take a walk with your son.”

Zelda teased them both, uncaring for either of their teasing about Amparo Cassano’s clear predilection for her, or how she would be asked why didn’t she have a Patron, as an actress and dancer, and Amparo wittily replying why have one when so many adored her performances, while her sea-glass green eyes stopped for Zelda and Zelda alone. 

“One day,” she told her cousin, “I will relocate with Zelda to the Caribbean, and I’ll dance with my sword only, to the song of Freedom alone. Me and Zelda.”

She paused. “You should ask the same of Tamryn.”

Anatole hardened against his own desires. “I couldn’t. I can’t deprive his family of him and vice versa.”

“Have you ever thought they could be of great help?”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“Zio Vlad isn’t in the frontlines.”

“But we are.”

“This isn’t like you.”

“I’m sure he thinks I’m too young.”

“That’s a lie and the worst excuse I’ve ever heard.”

“He despises violence.”

“You don’t like it that much either. Since when are you synonymous with it?”

“He’s not the one who’s signing our Contracts of Accountancy. His life shouldn’t be one of our collaborators. He deserves soft mornings, fluttering kisses. Someone who can spoil him rotten. Someone who won’t might-not-come-home one day.”

“You’re being impossible. You’re being so deliberately obtuse, you’re starting to sound like someone who knows nothing of Hebrew peoples. What on earth would make them different from Zia Aurora or Zia Zipporah? Of Zio Amar, Sisay Lior or Tafari? What makes him different from Milan himself?” 

(In his mind, Anatole can see his cousin, his soft, joyful cousin, trying to soothe the surviving people who from a Slave Ship. 

Through the sound of the lapping water of the Venetian canals, he could hear his voice:

Piénsalo, Milan voice echoed, desha ke se vayan. Tú tienes tu alforría, pa’ que kyerría la nuestra.

The guard was crying inconsolably. How his cousin could do that, Anatole didn’t know. ¡Dejádme! ¡O he de llamar al Almirante y él verá qué hacer con vosotros!

Desha ke se marchan—

His voice was soft, but the guard’s was not. ¡Cállate, hereje hijep—!

Anatole kicked the guard behind his knees, covered his mouth with his hand and pressed his pistol against the guard’s temple. Vuelve a hablarle así y te vuelo la cabeza.

Later, Milan would tell him that wasn’t necessary. Anatole knew he was teasing him because he said he wouldn’t forgive him if he bloodied his good shoes, and Anatole knew that was a lie. Milenko never lied so he knew he was teasing. Anatole didn’t laugh, Milan worried.

Ke pasa? His cousin asked.)

“I would never forgive myself if something happened to him because of me.”

Amparo looked at his cousin with tenderness and understanding. There were four of them that worked together, all of them too young to do what they did, but this was the life they had. Lives which were worth fighting for, tooth and nail, all the wit and irreverence in the world. Theirs was a family of Others, and with Others they had made their life ever since the times of Arianamenzi. Artemisia, Amparo’s younger sister and Milenko weren’t similar at all but in one thing: they were sensitive beings, of hearts that beat like birds or wells.

Amparo knew that Anatole and Milenko went together, the sun and the moon of their family, just like she and Artemisia always would —a tie like a string, like hands which would not unlink themselves no matter what— Anatole and her were the same in the same way Artemisia and Milenko were. While Milan and Artemisia’s lives were about finding themselves, Amparo and Anatole were beings of excellence. 

They defied expectations, they found a way to achieve the impossible and they did things twice as well. They lived with passions burning like a thousand suns, like a bubbling volcano. Like the earth shaking its core or like life which was reborn in winter and came to die in spring. They both were excellent: no one danced like Amparo, no one sang like Amparo, no one acted like Amparo, and white girls who had their sex handed to them, instead of having to make it for themselves hated her for it. 

Anatole spoke 11 languages, he played the harp and the piano. He had been the best qualified and the most competent person within his studies, and yet it was never recognised, as a “lesson in humility and Christian values” from pasty, powdery white monks and academics that knew nothing of him and saw in him whatever they wanted to see. They had no problem using him as a tale of exceptionalism while leaving him in the open field for wolves to bite. No one thought like him, no one found a way to connect people like he did, no one wrote as well as he did. No one knew the classics and the poets from Asia like he did.

In another world, a world which didn’t hate them, he would’ve been the greatest politician of his century. Instead, they paid him with a knife to his back. 

They both were forces to be reckoned with, and if these people didn’t acknowledge it, they’d make themselves impossible to ignore, like the feeling of Death luring in the corner, breathing your same breaths because every breath people took was a breath closer to their last one. They were that. Cunning, young and full of edges.

Efficiency and excellence had made them ruthless, yet inside them there was softness. Amparo was all soul. Deep down, a quiet girl who enjoyed thinking about ghosts and chasing stories. A girl who danced because her heart was too big, beat too loud inside her chest, heavy with her sorrows. Anatole was the sun. Inti Ankuwilla. He was hopeful dawns, wells full of ideas, Atlas triumphant, Atlas loving, Atlas unwavering. A polite man who just wanted to help people and took only what he needed for himself. A lover of art and soft fabrics, who liked singing and playing the pianoforte and the harp. 

Amparo thought he deserved better than his own doubts. 

“Listen. I know better than trying to convince that stubborn head of yours, but I think we deserve our happiness. I think, or I want to think, that we deserve to be chosen like we choose our fights. With bravery, with rebelliousness, with inventive might of the little chances we might have of having a life of our own.”

“Our lives are our own.”

“They are. You know better than I that we don’t do what we do because we’re bitter, but because we dare not have a life and not live it at all. As long as we’re loved, I want to think we cannot die in any way that matters.”

She kissed her cousin’s crown. “Don’t deny yourself that chance.”

* * *

In the sunset, Tamryn looked as if gold had had a love affair with roses.

They were talking to each other in an empty alleyway, adjacent streets seemingly just as empty, and there were no boats in sight. The sounds of the sestieri were muffled and distant as they reached them. They were standing close enough for their hands to brush as they spoke, close enough for Anatole to be able to see Tamryn’s eyelashes bat against his skin.

Their alleyway felt like it was a Kingdom of their own. 

That day was the second anniversary of their meeting. Tamryn knew Anatole now, he knew his thoughts, he got letters from him. He knew some of his fears, he knew his perfume and the scent of his hair oil. He knew his favourite flower and all the dreams he tried to fulfil despite living in a world insisting he shouldn’t. If that could be said of Tamryn, the same could be said of Anatole.

He would recognise Tamryn anywhere and noted all of his absences. He knew his preferences and his fears, he knew the warmth he radiated when we walked into a room. He knew he wanted to ask his opinion on things, even when it wasn’t necessary, just to have an excuse to talk to him. He saw him in the Caribbean sea when he was away, he saw him with closed eyes when he was sleeping in his own bed in Venice, wishing he was there beside him.

If Anatole’s strength were ever to run out and Death were to come to his doorstep he hoped Death had the mercy of wearing Tamryn’s face. He had no intention of dying —his hopes were set on living— but if he were to die before he wanted to, he would follow Death gladly if it wore the face of his Dearest Friend, because his Dearest Friend was the most beautiful man he’d ever known. 

Tamryn’s hand rested in the crook of Anatole’s arm. His lips looked pink and soft as they smiled at him. He licked his lips before speaking, and Anatole could see just a flash of his pink tongue against him. He wondered how it tasted. Would it be warm against his own? Would their lips fit each other like he often daydreamed of?

Anatole wanted to kiss him.

Perhaps it was because he would have to leave for the Caribbean. He had a new contract to sign, he had work to do, and all the work he could get done in Europe was done with. Perhaps it was how Tamryn let him press him against the wall when they heard footsteps go by, even if they were a false alarm and no one came. Perhaps it was how he looked. Perhaps it was his own heart. Perhaps it was Amparo’s words finally getting to him. 

He wanted to kiss him, so he did. 

He kissed him as if Odysseus had given into the Sirens, letting the creatures and Homer’s wine-dark sea devour him in fantasies. He kissed him as if either one of them was Venus sprung from the seafoam. He kissed him like Milenko’s Sufi poets spoke of how love must be. He kissed him like the sun kissed the Andes every morning, and the rain the valleys where harvest used to grow. He kissed him as if he was the sole centre of the world. 

As if Kepler and Copernicus knew nothing and the world orbited around him, only if Tamryn was like a dipped in honey sunray, then perhaps they did understand something after all. 

Tamryn had never been kissed so indecently. By the time they pulled apart, he was breathless and had completely forgotten where they were. Never before had he wanted to be kissed again by someone so badly. 

“You kissed me.”

“I’m— oh, no, Tamryn I’m so sorry, I wasn’t thinking I— I’m so sorry.”

“No, where- why are you moving back? No, no I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.” Tamryn looked like he might cry.

“Just please let me explain-”

“Please tell me you don’t regret it. Please kiss me again.”

“I— What? You want me to kiss you?”

“Since the first month we met.”

“But I’m—”

“So am I.”

“That’s not what I—”

“Changes nothing.”

“But—”

“With Elohim as my witness, please kiss me again, please.”

He was doomed, this man would be the death of him. This man would drive him crazy; maybe he had already, because as surely as the Sun rises and Wiraquchan gave his people life force, he kissed him again.

* * *

When they arrived back at Olenev’s home, Anatole’s uncles, Valeriy and Atanasie, were waiting for him.

No, Anatole thought, I haven’t told him I love him yet.

His uncle Valeriy, his father’s brother, cupped his cheek. “Inti, mana chaniyuq kaqtinqa manan kaypichu kayman.” (2)

“Moram mu reći da ga volim.” (3)

Anatansie squeezed his shoulder. “Let us explain.”

Untangling his fingers from Tamryn’s was the hardest thing he had ever done, but the moment both of them explained why they had come, Anatole knew he would’ve had to let go of Tamryn’s hand regardless, that his feelings would have to wait. 

Not because they didn’t matter but because not only was there a lead on someone trying to capture his new Contract. He was to take over his Zia  Solange’s, Captain of the Solanaise, accounts. She had passed her title to none other than Andrico himself who, for some reason, had taken uncommonly long in talking accounts with the Cassano.  Solange, her husband  Mustafa (both of them former pirates) and their family weren’t just friends and collaborators of the Cassano, they were their most important clients when it came to sabotaging both Imperial supply chains and Slave ships. 

The lead pointed to someone Anatole had sworn to chase out of the world if he ever had the chance: Decimo Lemione. 

Anatole had to leave. All he could do was promise Tamryn he’d come back.

* * *

FOOTNOTES

(*) The Venas link leads to the whole book in PDF in its original Spanish. I believe this is what Galeano himself would’ve wanted.

(1) “ Ccollanan Pachacamac ricuy auccacunac yahuarniy hichascancuta”: Meaning ‘Pacha Kamaq, witness how my enemies shed my blood’, according to several sources these were the last words of Tupac Amaru I before his execution. Anatole, as half-quechua man, would keep track of the several attempts of rebellion in what was formerly the Inca Suyus and from Spanish colonies in general. 

My decision to quote him was based on having better access to account of his and Tupac Amaru II’s lives. However, Anatole predates the latter for a couple of decades, and he would be well into his middle age or older for his rebellion and execution.

(2) The conversation between Milenko, the Sailor he reduced to tears and Anatole translates to:

[Milenko] “Think about it. Let them go, you already have your freedom, why do you want ours as well?”

“Shut up! Shut up or I’ll go get the Admiral and he’ll know what to do with you!”

[Milenko] “Let them go”

“Shut up, son of a--”

[Anatole] “Talk to him like that once more and I’ll blow your brains out”

Milan here is speaking Ladino. 

(3) “Inti, mana chaniyuq kaqtinqa manan kaypichu kayman”: “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important”