Conversations
I don’t remember all the conversations we had with Leverk, but I do recall most of them. In a particularly memorable one of them, he called me out on something long-forgotten.“So I was talking to Nehmen here,” he showed me a mouthful of sharp teeth as I was sitting down, “and it seems to me that you’re a fake!”
“Excuse me?” I bristled at the accusation. “I always stay true to myself. You know that.”
“Not really, you don’t,” Leverk shook his head. “The Nike that was born in Quater’s mansion at the end of space and time was a different person than you. You’re just an impostor, a substitute to the brother I… allegedly… lost.”
I rubbed my forehead. Starting off with a difficult topic, I see. I had to keep my head level for as long as possible. “Are you talking about what happened when I was four?”
“Of course,” Leverk rolled his eyes.
“I’m not fake then. I am Nike. I was always Nike.”
“That’s true,” Nehmen agreed. “I would have recognised if he was swapped for an impostor. The only thing that changed about him was that he stopped being afraid of tight spaces.” He rubbed his cheek. “To be honest I always thought Hoborg had a part in that. He started the talks because of you, didn’t he?”
“He started the talks because other Hoodians were jealous that I got so much of his attention,” I corrected him. “But yeah, pretty much.”
“Nehmen,” Leverk said with a certain levity. I knew by then that this tone spelled impending doom. “What’s your greatest fear?”
My brother stared at Leverk. After a moment the deformed Hoodian motioned him to get it on, smirking lightly. “Oh, you really want an answer? Jeez.” Nehmen sighed. “Okay, just because you’re my brother.” (“I’m not,” Leverk said immediately.) “My greatest fear… is probably being alone.”
“Not alone,” Leverk wagged a claw. “Abandoned. You’re afraid that everyone you thought loved you will leave you, aren’t you?”
Nehmen took a breath, expression breaking into a grimace. He held the air in for a moment. I reached out and patted his hand. He breathed out. “Yeah, I guess so. That everyone will leave me is… about the worst thing I can imagine to happening.”
Leverk nodded. “Now that Krevel has turned against you, it must be like your worst fear come true.” He studied Nehmen’s face for a response.
Nehmen only stared at him. I had never seen him so quiet and subdued as in conversations with Leverk. The evil one’s voice carried knives for anyone who cared to listen. I was torn to shreds by his words. I wondered every day how much more of this I could take, when and how I would snap under the weight of Leverk’s insults. But I had not thought of how they made Nehmen feel. When someone offended him or tried to hurt him, Nehmen would usually respond with anger and swiftly return the offence. Sometimes he got angry at Leverk, too, as we both did. (And, like a child, Leverk took delight in every time he managed it.) But it didn’t happen nearly as often as with others. His way of listening to Leverk was quiet and introverted, feeling the knives stab his heart in silence.
“You may be evil,” I interrupted the stare-off. I would not let Nehmen wallow in self-pity any more. “But we have not lost you. You are still here.”
“Oh but that will not last long, will it? Anyway,” Leverk rubbed his claws together, “that’s beside the point. What I wanted to say was – Nehmen, do you think that you’d change as a person if your worst fear was taken away?”
Nehmen thought about this for a second, then nodded. “Definitely.”
“Do you think you’d be like a whole new person?”
Nehmen puckered his lips. “If I wasn’t afraid of people leaving me at all? Yeah, that would probably leave a big mark.”
“There you have it,” Leverk spread his arms out, a victorious smile spreading across his face. He had got us once again. I realised what he was about to say a moment before he said it. “Nike got rid of his worst fear. Therefore, he isn’t the same person anymore. He may inhabit the same body, but he is not the same brother Krevel and Nehmen had in the beginning. He’s someone else. The real brother… well.” He looked at both of us in turn. Nehmen’s brow was furrowed. And I knew exactly what he was going to say. “You both know what happened to him. He’s long dead. Nike is long dead. All we have left is this impostor, who looks like him but is not him,” he gestured toward me.
I chewed on my lip.
“That’s not true,” Nehmen objected unhelpfully. “I would have noticed if he changed that much. It’s just claustrophobia. And it didn’t even disappear completely, Nike’s still got some problems.”
Leverk shook his head as if disregarding this defence completely. Instead, he caught my gaze and twitched his chin up and down lightly, beckoning me to speak. I took the bait. I had an idea in mind. Leverk like to catch us on our own words and we wanted to do the same to him.
“It wasn’t just that,” I admitted. “I can’t really put a finger on it, but I think other things about me changed as well.”
“Such as?” Leverk prompted me.
“Uhh. It’s hard to recall. You don’t spend your life analysing your psyche.”
“You spend yours analysing mine,” Leverk pointed out.
“I suppose. Um… I know that I used to be afraid that I would be one of many. That I’d become part of the crowd. That I’d lose everything that defines me.” I shrugged. “That got better after I was nursed back to health after the breakdown. I didn’t need to be so… different from everyone. I knew that as far as I was myself, I was free.”
Leverk’s toothy grin at this point was so wide that it was unnerving. “Oh boy. Do you even realise what you’ve just said?”
“What?”
“Well for starters, you lost the primary thing that defined you. You became like everyone else. And you don’t even care! The real Nike would be disgusted with you. You’re a liar pretending to be someone else. You’re a fake given to us by Hoborg. You remind people of Nike, but the real Nike died and you are his substitute. Just like Nehmen lost Caline and created Alan as a substitute.”
Before Nehmen started to object (he did get angry every time his son was brought up), I jumped in. “And how can you tell? Even if I was a fake, you’ve never met the real Nike. You can’t tell the difference.”
Leverk snorted. “Nehmen gave me a pretty good picture of what Nike was like before the breakdown.”
I shook my head. “Nehmen has said it himself – he doesn’t think that the breakdown changed me all that much. You don’t have any basis for saying that the real Nike died. Except…” It was my turn to smile devilishly. Two could play the game of catching your opponent’s fallacies. “Except if you did remember it. Except if you really were Krevel, and had his memories, and you were just lying to us about it.”
Leverk stared at me, the smile falling off his face. “I am not him,” he said simply. “I know this. I was born two months ago. I’m not responsible for any inborn knowledge I might have.”
“Your inborn knowledge is Krevel’s memory and subconsciousness,” I pressed. “We all know it! Our brother is under the surface aching to break free. And we are all waiting for him!”
“I am not Krevel!” Leverk bellowed, jumping up from his chair. He swaggered as the clear stone in his chest pulled him off balance. He steadied himself and grabbed me by the collar. “Do you know how I know this? Because after Krevel put the crown on, he changed. He changed, just like you changed, Nike, and what came out was too different to be called Krevel anymore!”
I held his wild gaze. His violence did not scare me. I spoke slowly. “Do you know that this is the only way I can upset you at all? By finding a proof that you are Krevel. And you always have been.”
Leverk’s eyes widened in anger. “Dead man speaking!” he screeched and yanked with my collar sideways, losing his grip on it. I grinned victoriously. Leverk paced across the room, arms crossed.
“It’s not the same,” he repeated after a minute. “Krevel and I are not the same. Nike and you are not the same. Krevel is dead just like Nike is dead, too. All that’s left is the two of us, and we are stuck here being called by their names!”
“That’s not true,” Nehmen objected. “People can change. Why don’t you say that I’m not the same either? I only knew one language when I was born, after all. Now I know two. Things are very different because of that. So why isn’t the real Nehmen dead, too?”
Leverk glared at him but I spoke first.
“Exactly. By your logic, isn’t the Leverk of yesterday dead, too? You know things he didn’t, and they make you different from him.” I strained my imagination. These talks took out a lot of me. “Maybe you’re dying every minute, and a new person is born instead of you. People change. You can’t get hung up on it and regret that they’re gone forever. I am your brother. Nehmen is your brother. Even if our past selves aren’t here anymore, we are. We are here for you, right here and right now.”
Leverk looked down at the clear stone in his torso, teeth clenched. And then, for the first time since the transformation, tears appeared in his eyes.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said quietly. “I’m going to die. You’re going to lose both me and Krevel and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.” He looked up into the ceiling. “I have a feeling that Krevel would regret his wish now. Yep, he definitely would. He’d want to take it all back. He wouldn’t want what the crown’s given to him. But he can’t do anything anymore. He’s gone. He’s dead. All you have is me, and I’ll disappear soon.”
Nehmen scurried to his feet and went for a hug. Leverk didn’t push him away. “Don’t touch me,” he said quietly. Seeing this, my hopes flared up. My brother was pushing through, out of this evil person’s shell. He was reaching out to us. I got up as well and hugged Leverk from the other side.
“We’re here,” Nehmen said.
“I said…” Leverk growled. “Don’t touch me!!” With a surprising force he pushed us both away and sprung to his feet. “You are not my brothers and I am not yours!” he yelled, pointing a claw at us. “I can’t stand your filthy hands on me! You’re both weak and Krevel was the weakest of you three!” He was breathing hard. All signs of tears had disappeared. He gasped and cradled the stone in his chest. “I want my lungs back,” he whispered and fell back into his seat. “It’s getting hard to talk.”
Nehmen and I looked at each other. There was no doubt that, for a moment, the Krevel we knew had shone through. But that moment was gone. And there was no use in pushing it. We sat back down.
“So,” I piped up, “you think that the original Nike died three hundred years ago.”
Leverk gave me a weary look. “Shut up.”
“I don’t disagree with you,” I shrugged. “It did feel like dying.”
“You have no idea what dying’s like.”
I shook my head. “I felt very close to death. Closer than any time before and any time after. And if what you say is true, then… I guess? Yeah? You can say that the original Nike had his wish granted. You can say that he died. Just like hope dies in people who are denied freedom for long enough. Just like confidence dies in people who are hurt for long enough. It’s…” I shrugged, searching for words. “It’s a suitable rhetoric, I suppose. Death and rebirth.”
“Quater, you are just boring me now,” Leverk rolled his eyes. “Let’s talk about something else already.”
Back in the day, I was convinced that Leverk only foresaw death for himself. He was walking down a tunnel, his heart icy, and he knew that one day he would lose everything.
As smart as he was, as much as he liked to think and philosophise, I don’t think it ever occurred to him that he could be reborn as well.
And I still think that just how Leverk claimed that he did not remember ever being Krevel, Krevel did not remember Leverk. But something substantial connected them.
And even though I remember everything that happened before I was four, I also feel a sense of disconnection from the guy was before. Who was he? What did he want?
Well.
Do you remember who you were and what you wanted when you were four?
I didn’t think so.
