I woke to find Rifat sitting in a straight chair next to the bed, holding a mug and a plate with slices of bread, some goat cheese and a mound of fruit preserves, looking directly at me and crying in complete silence. I sat up sharply and reached for him. "Oh, God, sweet boy, what's the matter now?"

"Your coffee's cold," he sobbed.

"I like it cold. No, it's something else. Tell me. Why are you crying like that? Let me help."

He set the cup down, handed me the plate and moved to the bed to sit beside me. He buried his face in my neck as I stroked his back and for at least a minute he said nothing. "Mitya, I've been sitting there looking at you. You are not too hairy. You are supremely beautiful, and I can't understand why your Ivo ever left you."

"That's nothing to cry about. It turned out all right for me. I found you."

"I was crying because I didn't tell you the truth this morning."

"About what?"

"I said I am a believer. I'm not, not anymore." I started to interrupt him and say how unimportant that was. "No, I have to tell you. Watching your face, so calm and handsome, and your body, so … so perfect, I started to think of Alif. And how beautiful he was and how they killed him." The sobbing returned.

"And how you will die," the boy plunged on through his tears, "and I will die and how, even if we live to get old, we will never again be as beautiful for each other as we are now. I don't know, maybe your hair will fall out. Or you'll get a tic. Or I'll grow a belly. And anyway, we'll die. So it doesn't make any sense to believe in a God who lets all of that happen. And I don't believe. I don't," he wailed and gave himself over completely to a terrible existential grief.

I was stunned. I held him as tightly to me as I could and pushed up the back of his blouse so my hand could go under it and caress his warm, naked back while my mind searched for a way to calm him, to reassure him, to overcome the horrors he had witnessed and the specter of the inevitable that, like Medusa, could turn him to stone. Kisses wouldn't drive the vision away. Love might hold it at bay. In addition, I wanted to try philosophy.

"Rifat, will you let me talk to you?" I asked when I thought his laments were ebbing.

"It won't do any good," he moaned.

"But let me try, sweetheart," I beseeched him. "I can't let you be so sad all by yourself when I love you the way I do."

"How do you love me?"

"Enough to hope you do grow a belly so that you won't be too perfect and make the world jealous of you."

"I'm not perfect."

"You are for me. I even love your zig-zaggy little appendix scar."

"You do?" He lifted his head from my shoulder and gave a flicker of a smile. "Do you know what I call it?"

"No. What?"

"Zeus' footprint. Did you know that we Albanians worshipped Zeus when we were Illyrians and the masters of ancient Greece?"

"No. Before my time. Look how much you have to teach me."

This time it was a full grin. I'd forgotten how fast an adolescent's moods could swing. "Have you been eating my honey?" I asked.

"Guilty, your honor. It's very good. Can you smell it on my breath?"

"No. But I can see a piece of the comb stuck between your teeth." I put a finger into his mouth and dislodged the bit of wax. He closed his lips on my finger and pulled it far enough in so that his tongue could wash it. I had an instant erection and betrayed myself with a moan.

He released my digit, looked into my lap and actually giggled. "What do you call that, your manliness, Zeus' thunderbolt?"

"No," I replied. "Rifat's flying buttress. My love, can we be serious, please? About God. About believing. About love and life."

"I can't think about all that when I see you naked. Put on your clothes first. They're all clean and dry and ironed." He pointed to a neat stack at the foot of the bed. "And then you can eat the food I brought you and drink the fresh cup of coffee I'm going to make you." He got up and retrieved the mug from the floor, but as he bent to get it, he put his lips on the tip of my penis and kissed it. "I don't know what a flying buttress is," he said, "but if that's mine, it's an example to all the other buttresses in the world."

"Don't go, Rifat, please. I can drink the coffee cold. And I can talk while I dress."

"It's instant coffee," he answered. "The water's hot. I'll just be gone an instant, and the way you are," he stroked my cock, "you won't be able to dress very fast anyway." Then he was out the door. I tried to prove him wrong by setting a speed record for dressing, but although he had done a wonderful job with the laundry, he had used a lot of starch. There was a knife-edge crease not only to my trousers, but also to my undershorts. Their stiffness reminded me of the one time I had seen my father put on a tailcoat and white tie and had watched him struggle, wincing and cursing, into his boiled shirt and prickly collar. As I was trying to arrange my testicles so that the unbending fabric of the drawers did not make me a eunuch, Rifat reappeared with a steaming cup.

"Those are mine," he slapped my hand lightly away from my groin. "They are indispensable parts of my buttress, and you may not play with them without my permission."

"Yes, your worship." I took the drink from him and sipped it. It was as sugary as the morning's tea. Sometime soon I would have to tell him I didn't really care for sugar. But not yet. He had my socks in his hand and, pushing me to sit on the bed, he stretched them over my feet. Then the undershirt went over my bent head, the trousers up my legs and the shirt onto my torso. As he buttoned it and tucked it under my waistband, he kissed me.

"What's that for?" I asked.

"For holding me whenever I cry. I'm sorry. I cry a lot. I'll get tougher."

"Don't." I kissed him back.

"What's that for?"

"I've never kissed a laundress before, and it may be a long time before I get to do it again. Thank you, Rifat. You're a wonder worker. I feel almost presentable." I stood up. "How do I look?"

"Like Alexander the Great in camouflage. He was an Illyrian, too."

"You do have a lot to teach me." I handed him the cup, pulled a second chair close to his by the side of the bed and sat down opposite him so that our knees touched. I spread cheese and preserves on a slice of bread and offered it to him.

He shook his head. "I've eaten. This is for you."

I chewed and swallowed, prepared another portion, drank some more coffee and tried to fathom the intelligence, the fears and, I was sure, the love in his amazing, storm-cloud eyes. "Rifat, about God. I am a believer. I believe we wouldn't exist without a creating spirit of some sort, but I also believe that since the creation, that spirit hasn't bothered to pay us much attention. That's why we do such awful things to each other. God is there but he or she or it is looking the other way."

He gazed thoughtfully back at me. "Mitya, do you know 'King Lear' by Shakespeare?"

"Yes. Not well."

"We were reading it in literature class. We have a teacher who treats us like grown-ups. I didn't understand it all, but I remember some of the lines. There's one place where a noble who has had his eyes put out says, 'As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.' I'm sorry, but I think that's really the way things are."

My mouth dropped open in astonishment and admiration. The boy had spoken the lines in perfect English and clearly understood them just as perfectly. He misunderstood my reaction.

"Did I say it wrong?"

I shook my head. "No, Rifat," I took one of his hands. "You just amazed me that's all. I never studied 'King Lear' in high school."

"I go… I went to a special school. Our people organized them so we could study in Albanian. We don't have enough books or desks, but we have some very good teachers." He paused. He took his hand away and wiped at his eyes. "Had. Had some very good teachers. They shot the man who taught English. In front of his door. I saw the body when I ran away.

"'Wanton boys.'" He used the English words. "I can't believe in gods who kill for sport."

"You don't have to," I reached for his hand again. "You shouldn't. I don't think belief has much to do with dying and nothing to do with killing. Mine only helps me to make sense, sometimes, of living."

"Your god isn't interested in the way we live or whether we live," the boy came back at me. "Not paying attention. That's what you just said."

"But what if I was able to do something that did catch the god's eye? Or the deity happened to take a passing look and noticed me. Either way, I would want to be doing something good, something fine, something that might get that god to take a healthy, helpful interest in me and in human beings in general."

"Lots of people have tried to live that way, and it hasn't done any good that I can see."

"But someday it might. You never know. It just seems to me better somehow to act as if good could come of it." I spread another hunk of cheese on my bread. Rifat watched me, but said nothing. I imagined that he was trying to phrase a rebuttal.

"Dearest one," I said. "Have you ever heard of Andrei Sakharov?"

"No. Who is he?"

"Was. A great physicist. A Russian. He invented their hydrogen bomb, but then he became an opponent of the Communists, a peaceful, powerful opponent and a great moral thinker."

"Did he become religious, a believer?"

"I don't think so. When he won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Soviets wouldn't let him go to receive it. But he sent his lecture to Norway, and his wife read it for him. He ended it by speculating that the universe could easily be full of other, better civilizations than ours but that even so, even with lives as short as ours, we had to do our very best."

I groped in my memory for the exact words, and they came. "'We must make good the demands of reason,' he said, 'and create a life worthy of ourselves and of the goals we only dimly perceive.'"

"That's wonderful," the boy breathed. "But very hard."

"Yes. Very hard, especially in the middle of madness."

"What about the demands of love?"

"Maybe even harder. I can't bring myself to love the sergeant."

Rifat snorted. "Not even god could do that." We heard loud voices downstairs. "Speak of the Serb devil," the boy said. "I'll go give him a kiss."

"Not yet," I answered. "First," I got up, "why don't you see if these fit?" I handed him the parcel of clothes. "I'd like to see you dressed as a man for a change."

He hefted the package and smiled broadly. "How about undressed as a man?" Rifat stepped out of the skirt and put my hand on the bulge in his panties. "Can I give you a kiss, your munificence?" He tilted his face up and I kissed him.

"One kiss now. Lots later," I said. "I love you, my love. We're going to have all our lives for kissing."