can see my Achilles Fallen...

Ludzie pragną czasami się rozstawać, żeby móc tęsknić, czekać i cieszyć się z powrotem.

"
A very dry chuckle halted them.
"Who is there?" he inquired, cautiously.
No reply. They stood in the Glory of Rome, and the stone
senators were still.
"_Someone_ laughed," she observed.
"We are not alone," he stated, shrugging. "There've been
other indications of such, but whoever they are, they're as
talkative as Trappists--which is good.
Remember, though art but stone," he called gaily, and they
continued on to the cafeteria.
One night they sat together at dinner in the Modern Period.
"Had you a name, in life?" he asked.
"Gloria," she whispered. "And yours?"
"Smith, Jay."
"What prompted you to become a statue, Smith--if it is not
too bold of me to ask?"
"Not at all," he smiled, invisibly. "Some are born to
obscurity and others only achieve it through diligent effort. I
am one of the latter. Being an artistic failure, and broke, I
decided to become my own monument. It's warm in here, and
there's food below. The environment is congenial, and I'll
never be found out because no one ever looks at anything
standing around museums."
"No one?"
"Not a soul, as you must have noticed. Children come here
against their wills, young people come to flirt with one
another, and when one develops sufficient sensibility to look
at anything," he lectured bitterly, "he is either myopic or
subject to hallucinations. In the former case he would not
notice, in the latter he would not talk. The parade passes."
"Then what good are museums?"
"My dear girl! That the former affianced of a true artist
should speak in such a manner indicates that your relationship
was but brief--"
"Really!" she interrupted. "The proper word is
'companionship'."
"Very well," he amended, "'companionship'. But museums
mirror the past, which is dead, the present, which never
notices, and transmit the race's cultural heritage to the
future, which is not yet born. In this, they are near to being
temples of religion."
"I never thought of it that way," she mused. "Rather a
beautiful thought, too. You should really be a teacher."
"It doesn't pay well enough, but the thought consoles me.
Come, let us raid the icebox again."
They nibbled their final ice cream bars and discussed
Achilles Fallen, seated beneath the great mobile which
resembled a starved octopus. He told her of his other great
projects and of the nasty reviewers, crabbed and bloodless, who
lurked in Sunday editions and hated life. She, in turn, told
him of her parents, who knew Art and also knew why she
shouldn't like him, and of her parents' vast fortunes, equally
distributed in timber, real estate, and petroleum. He, in turn,
patted her arm and she, in turn, blinked heavily and smiled
Hellenically.
"You know," he said, finally, "as I sat upon my pedestal,
day after day, I often thought to myself: Perhaps I should
return and make one more effort to pierce the cataract in the
eye of the public--perhaps if I were as secure and at ease in
all things material--perhaps if I could find the proper
woman--but nay! There is no such a one!"
"Continue! Pray continue!" cried she. "I, too, have, over
the past days, thought that, perhaps, another artist could
remove the sting. Perhaps the poison of loneliness could be
drawn by a creator of beauty--If we--"
At this point a small and ugly man in a toga cleared his throat.
"It is as I feared," he announced.
Lean, wrinkled, and grubby was he; a man of ulcerous bowel
and much spleen. He pointed an accusing finger.
"It is as I feared," he repeated.
"Wh-who are you?" asked Gloria.
"Cassius," he replied, "Cassius Fitzmullen--art critic,
retired, for the Dalton _Times_. You are planning to defect."
"And what concern is it of yours if we leave?" asked
Smith, flexing his Beaten Gladiator halfback muscles.
Cassius shook his head.
"Concern? It would threaten a way of life for you to leave
now. If you go, you will doubtless become an artist or a
teacher of art--and sooner or later, by word or by gesture, by
sign of by unconscious indication, you will communicate what
you have suspected all along. I have listened to your
conversations over the past weeks. You know, for certain now,
that this is where all art critics finally come, to spend their
remaining days mocking the things they have hated. It accounts
for the increase of Roman Senators in recent years."
"I have often suspected it, but never was certain."
"The suspicion is enough. It is lethal. You must be
judged."
He clapped his hands.
"Judgment!" he called.
Other ancient Romans entered slowly, a procession of bent
candles. They encircled the two lovers. Smelling of dust and