ARMAND, uncharacteristically leaning against the wall casually.
“Over five hundred years I’ve been alive, David, and never have I ever stopped to acknowledge all that I have done during my years until tonight. But that doesn’t mean that I am not aware of my age, of the years that I have spent on this earth. I told you my story, how I began and what happened after. You know practically all that I have done─the condensed version, at least. Born in ancient Kiev, kidnapped by Tartars, taken from my land of Russia and down to Italy by my captors, sold as a sex slave because I was a boy as beautiful as a girl─something that was desired during the Renaissance. Marius bought me, thinking me to be beautiful and he had to have me because he was a man of aesthetics and was practically his own slave to it, my beauty driving him to buy me and care for me along with others he had taken as his own and given them better lives. I was the only one who came
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He thought he was clever, going from place to place in hopes that I wouldn’t find him, but his thoughts were far too loud, far too frantic. I let him believe I was planning to kill him in the end, I let him fear me and hate me and love me all at the same time. It wasn’t until I actually grew bored of this game of cat and mouse that I finally decided that there were many things that I could learn from him. I had many questions and they needed to be answered in order for me to assimilate into these very strange times. But some questions were asked simply because I did not understand, like the pleasures of men: why do men love fighting? Why is war so revered by them? And their aggression, why do they feel it so intensely? I never reached manhood, you see, so I do not know what it is like to love and respect war and the desire to fight in it; I do not feel this testosterone fuelled rage and belligerence. I know this now because Daniel and I had a four-hour long discussion on this