[Diary Entry — March 7, 1939 | Naples, 03:17 A.M.]

They say opposites attract, but that’s a child’s way of understanding gravity. He and I — we never opposed. Not really. He wore white gloves; I wore black boots. He smiled like a priest. I grinned like a wolf. They called us opposites, but the truth is: we were only dressed for different theaters of the same war.

Two chessmen, they used to joke — black and white, striding through marble corridors with our polished insignia and sharpened etiquette. The dandy and the dog. But what they never saw — what they refused to see — is that under the fabric, beneath the manners and medals, we were both carved from the same obsidian stone. Two sides of the same game, yes, but black to the core.

He would speak in riddles. Softly. Like velvet over a dagger. I’d speak plainly, because I never believed in hiding the teeth. He delighted in subtlety, I in execution. But that didn’t make him clean — only quieter. We’ve both watched the same cities burn. We’ve both seen what men look like when the cause eats the soul. The difference is he still calls it art.

People mistake restraint for mercy. I never made that error. Nor did he. When he poured poison into their wine, it was poetry. When I broke their teeth on the curb, it was brutality. But the dead don’t care for style. And neither did we.

Sometimes I wonder if he envies me — my honesty, my lack of performance. Other times, I think I envy him. He still dreams in operas. I dream in gunpowder.

But even now, when we pass each other in the corridor — a flick of the eye, the faintest nod — there’s something in it. A recognition. A pact older than uniforms or flags. It says: I see you. I know what you are. I am it, too.

Let the world call us black and white. Let them believe in contrast. We’ll keep wearing the uniforms, playing our parts, moving across the board. But the truth never needed color to be cruel.

And when the board is cleared, when all the pawns have bled and the bishops have lied, it will be him and me, still standing.

Black and black. And nothing left to confess.

— M.