Post by Arctura on Jul 15, 2014 17:01:13 GMT
If There Is Only One Thing I Remember
We are old men now. Young men, they cannot understand us. Our words seem to mean something different to them than they mean to us. I do not care if this was true for the old men we knew when we were young; I care now, because I am the old one. Do not expect more from me.
That said, I have changed more than I would have predicted.
They’re all about smoke and mirrors; terror for terror’s sake nowadays. They bring me the Prophet, you see. I used to read the other papers – I grow sick of English, and I’d love to see a word in a friendly language. But I still read the Prophet.
Interestingly, it is impossible to get good British news in the mother tongue.
Your ginger hair, my friend. The story of our life runs perpetually in my mind, but it always catches on your ginger hair. The light in Aunt Bathilda’s house, the way it caught. How willing you were, back then. Such a small chance, a tiny opening I could have squirmed into, a chink in your otherwise lifelong armor.
We are old men now. Young men, they cannot understand us.
I was never about terror for terror’s sake. For control’s sake, more likely. For the sake of other things I’ve already talked to death. I cannot say “good” in English anymore. I chatter with myself quite extensively, of course, in all those many languages I know. Too many, I should think. You learned so many you were always tripping up. There was one time you flew straight from French to Mermish – now that was a day.
Your hair was ginger that day, my friend, and we were very young.
It is your fault, you relentless old fool, that I cannot say our words in English anymore. Our beloved phrase. I can see it at my bare feet, cast away. Oh the state of me! I am glad they don’t feel the need to photograph me here. I can see enough of our age in you, my friend. Did I mention I get the Prophet sent in? Just the Prophet. I think they let it through because I could feel taunted by it. Oh, these young men. They just don’t understand us.
Your hair was ginger. I remember, and it’s with a puzzling clarity that the memory comes, I really don’t understand it, but you threw it back, so red in the sunlight, and Albus, you laughed.
It is unreal that we were young, isn’t it, and at the same time unreal that we are old. Isn’t that what every old man says? We’re hardly every old man. A strange pair, are we not? Ah, it saddens me that you are left out there to face this world of young things that doesn’t understand one iota of your mind. You should have just come to prison with me. It is a good place to go to die. We could hardly hang around the pubs could we, my friend? No, better together in these cold walls.
It’s strange. I remember a time when your hair was ginger.
