Rotten
La Grenouillère, 1869 - Pierre-Auguste Renoir
There is a boy who does not mind—much—if strangers find some solace at the sight of him spewing sewage from his mouth. He assumes it was what he was born to do: have clerks and butchers and mothers pull away from the sewer he pours into, their lips stretched thin in a grimace they can't help. Shame runs in the blood from the womb he nearly drowned in, so he barely flinches when he is spit upon. Still, when children see him choking up the rotting water into a drain on the street—eyes wide, mouth gaping, fingers pointing—his blood burns in his cheeks, and it appears that shame can still color his face.
The people murmur their condolences, pat him on the back once or even twice, if they feel generous, and leave him gasping like a fish out of water. This repulsive display allows strangers to look back on the remnants of their lives and say, well, it is not so bad. Or, looking at their own sick on their wooden floors after a rotten day, say, well, there is a boy out on the street whose nose is raw and peeling from wiping away the scent of vomit.
Meanwhile, the boy outside is defined only by his polluted organs and his grotesque show, not by his quick and nimble fingers that could whittle something clever, or his occasional, wobbly smile. But he does not mind. His very heart throws a tantrum for a drop of pity.
There is another boy, across town, whose tongue has never touched upon anything as vile as dust. He places his palm into the surface of toxic, muddy water from the neighborhood river, and watches it turn brilliant and clear—though of course, this purity is quickly washed away by the current.
He does not mind. After all, if all was pure, how could he bring miracles upon the earth he strode across? He ponders if there is an evil within him, if this is all he wishes—to be extraordinary. But in the end, he is just a boy.
Both boys wander a little farther than they had before—the rotten one, in tripping and sprawling over unevenly placed manholes, and the pure one, in search of clarity—and come across one another with wary caution. Rotten water drips incessantly from the rotten boy's mouth, and he turns away, embarrassed at the curious look the other boy throws him.
The pure boy places his palm, slowly, on the rotten boy's chest, and the boy gasps, clean air flooding in, salty tears pouring down, as he breathes, in, in, out for the first time, without a stench of sewage clogging his lungs.
He looks at the other boy, whose palm is still resting on his chest, and abruptly feels a sharp emotion nearly buckle his knees. The rotten boy clasps his own hands over the hand on his chest, and the pure boy recoils, trying to tug his hand away, but the rotten boy's grip is iron.
The pure boy's feeble attempts slow, as a hunger begins to gnaw its way through his bones. The rotten boy is staring at him, as if he stands upon an altar—as if the pure boy is a god. Curiously, the pure boy moves his hand and intertwines his fingers with the other boy's. His breaths stutter and the rotten boy's cheeks flare red. Fascinating.
The pure boy continues down the road, still holding the rotten boy's hand. One's racing heart and aching lungs tell him that his torturous dependence is something as fickle as love. The other’s hand is holding tight—not with excitement, but with the hunger of a hero with no epic, a god with no worship. In the end, who is rotten, and who is pure?
This is not a story of love, though neither was too young to know.