"How was it working with Mr Sherlock Holmes?" If I have been
asked this question once, I have been asked it a thousand times since
Meiringen; each time it makes my heart bleed anew.
I hold
claim to being a man of letters, but which words can paint a hollow
heart or sculpt a man the likes of whom has never been known on this
poor earth before?
I would speak of the thousand nuances of his smile decipherable only to
me, his unflagging devotion to justice in the human condition that so
often put me to shame, or the way he moved around our rooms with a
sensual grace which I only later realised for the deliberate seduction
that it was. I would describe a mind that could see
and
know everything about me, and yet--miracle of miracles--still cherish
me above all others and a heart too untouched and vulnerable to be
exposed to the hard, cold world at large. I would
describe
a man who could be at turns churlish, arrogant, selfish, and
thoughtless even to the point of being cruel. If I could, I
would
describe that about him which more than compensates for these few flaws
that serve to reassure me that he is indeed man and not the god I am so
often wont to revere him as.
But I never can. I can no more describe Sherlock Holmes to
one
who has not known and loved him than I could a sunset to a blind man,
the climax of intercourse to a celibate, or grief to one who has never
borne a loss.
I could never explain the depths of loyalty that bound me to follow his
footsteps through the greatest perils when I could only trust in--but
never hope to follow--the exactness of his
thoughts. To do
so one would have to know him as I did in those golden moments after
our couplings when he was utterly free and easy with his affections as
like to a man who had never yet been hurt.
"He was a remarkable man," say I. My inquisitor nods in
unknowing
miscomprehension and lets the matter slide, leaving me alone with my
memories, my ghosts and the vast, roaring, incomparable magnitude of my
loss.