In the royal decree that Alexios Komninos

because it was so long ago, in my early adolescent years.A skin as though of jasmines…that August evening— was it August?—I can still just recall the eyes: blue, I think they were…Ah yes, blue: a sapphire blue.

Hurriedly sketched, on the ship’s deck,the afternoon magical,the Ionian Sea around us.It’s like him. But I remember him as better looking.He was almost pathologically sensitive,and this highlighted his expression.He appears to me better lookingnow that my soul brings him back, out of Time.Out Of Time. All these things are very old-the sketch, the ship, the…

the peddler arrives. And ‘Incense!’ ‘Gum!’‘The best olive oil!’ ‘Perfume for your hair!’he hawks through the streets. But with all the hubbub,the music, the parades, who can hear him?The crowd shoves him, drags him along, knocks him around.And when he asks, now totally confused, ‘What the hell’sgoing on here?’one of them tosses him the huge…

bought at least eighty years ago.A good-looking boy, a tailor’s assistant(on Sundays an amateur athlete),stood there with a package. He gave it to one of the householdwho took it in to get the receipt.The tailor’s assistant,left alone as he waited,went up to the mirror, looked at himself,and adjusted his tie. Five minutes laterthey brought him…

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with a first-class education, a rare knowledge of Greekis seriously ill. He caught the feverthat reaped a harvest this year in Alexandria.The fever found him already worn out morallyby the pain of knowing that his friend, a young actor,had stopped loving and wanting him.He’s seriously ill, and his parents are terribly worried.An old servant who…