Don Juan started undressing and Samuel kept sitting on the bed, smoking his cigarette. It did not strike him as particularly odd and he made no effort to look away. His notions of a normal distance had been done away with when Don Juan fell against him in the Orchid. From that moment on he had held him up, carried him and pushed him under a table, had known the feeling of his hands in Don Juan's hair and his spit on his fingers — things that would be considered intimate in any other context, but between them, only Sam was aware of it in a meaningful way. Physical distance had only been reestablished after Don Juan had been made to sober up. The perception of their closeness was asymmetrical — it had been so, perhaps, ever since Samuel had forced himself into his head at the dinner party. Perhaps it had been so since their first run-in in Montparnasse, almost ten years ago, that Don Juan did not remember at all.
It might have been due to this strange circumstance that Samuel answered his question willingly and without hesitation. "Let's see; I had my first brush with it at 25 when I lived as an apprentice alchemist in Prague, for medicinal purposes," he recounted and leaned back on his elbows. At 25 he and Kazimir had begun their work on the transmutational scar etchings that still covered a significant portion of his body. Kaz had become fascinated and then corrupted by opium and other substances very quickly. Samuel had been more cautious; He was always the one of them meant to keep things under control. "But I went with and without it for many years. I cut back dozens of times, only to start again. It did not seem that serious. It only started really destroying me at 32. The Alchemist I worked for in Paris dismissed me because I could not keep up with the demands of the work anymore. I was quickly running out of funds. I used all my coherent time to come up with this—" he absentmindedly took out the vial from his pocket. It spun languidly on the silver thread. "It was not easy to get right. I knew it had to leave me able to walk and work, but it needed to be as intense as the opium — it needed to be stronger, or…" I would not have been able to stay away from other things, in the state of mind I was in, he silently finished his sentence.
Sam frowned. He was telling this man an awful lot. He thought about the chimera-plant he had painstakenly created to source the most important compound of the substance. It lived in his office now. He had not been able to destroy it, could not go trough with it. He put away the vial and sat up on the bed.
It might have been due to this strange circumstance that Samuel answered his question willingly and without hesitation. "Let's see; I had my first brush with it at 25 when I lived as an apprentice alchemist in Prague, for medicinal purposes," he recounted and leaned back on his elbows. At 25 he and Kazimir had begun their work on the transmutational scar etchings that still covered a significant portion of his body. Kaz had become fascinated and then corrupted by opium and other substances very quickly. Samuel had been more cautious; He was always the one of them meant to keep things under control. "But I went with and without it for many years. I cut back dozens of times, only to start again. It did not seem that serious. It only started really destroying me at 32. The Alchemist I worked for in Paris dismissed me because I could not keep up with the demands of the work anymore. I was quickly running out of funds. I used all my coherent time to come up with this—" he absentmindedly took out the vial from his pocket. It spun languidly on the silver thread. "It was not easy to get right. I knew it had to leave me able to walk and work, but it needed to be as intense as the opium — it needed to be stronger, or…" I would not have been able to stay away from other things, in the state of mind I was in, he silently finished his sentence.
Sam frowned. He was telling this man an awful lot. He thought about the chimera-plant he had painstakenly created to source the most important compound of the substance. It lived in his office now. He had not been able to destroy it, could not go trough with it. He put away the vial and sat up on the bed.
