Chapter Text
In my mind I have been writing this letter for many years, but a simple thought has always kept me away from the writing desk: I wouldn’t have been able to finish it. My Wife will notice for sure that I’m writing something with a pen on paper, that is rather unusual for me, and children could pry into it by chance. And if I used the laptop… call me paranoid, but as there is a rising star in the world of ‘advanced programmers’ (that’s what he calls it) as well as cool hackers in my family – I mean my older nephew – I mistrust these devices something I really want to hide.
“People know next to nothing about what they use every day”, he said when I complained to him that I had erased the text of my future article by mistake. “Give me your laptop. There’s no erased information when a profi takes the matter into his hands”, and he instantly proved that to me in the most obvious way.
By the way, I guess I should apologize to Elio, because I was not honest with him – or rather, I was not fully honest with him. I said that I was going from Rome to Mentona but did not specify precisely when I had to arrive there, however he never asked. I’m supposed to stay for one night only; I’m spending it in the same room I did in 1983. Little has changed here since then. Now there is a writing table by the window (I write sitting at that very table now); instead of the memorable night lamp Elio has brought from Oxford, there is a thin-legged lamp with the Tiffany shade sitting comfortably on the bedside table; posters from the walls have disappeared somewhere, and more photos have been added instead of beautiful places, views of cities familiar and not and a large Professor’s portrait.
It looks like a photo near the portrait has been removed – there is a rectangular spot on the wallpaper distempered with the ivory cream that is a bit brighter. And it does not belong to the postcard I took away twenty years ago… And if you go out onto the balcony, the same old view will appear before your eyes: a large bay with capes vanishing in the mist, parts of the quaintly indented coastline, cozy sandy coves.
Today I have already walked along the seafront stretching from the very B., and the year when I used to see it every day is coming to life in front of me. It comes back to me; that was life, the rest is but a dream. The sea licks dark boulders covered in seaweed and seashells; the fields painted in all shades of grassy, from the bright green of sunflowers to seemingly frosty color of crooked olive trees, run up the slopes to the hills. Yellow petals of sunflowers and lilac-blue lavender flowers add diversity to this green sea.
I have probably spent too much time for these descriptions, but this is what anyone would have done, speaking of the place that has become dear to him due to its cherished memories.
I wish I were consistent and exact narrating of the distant summer of 1983, but I’m afraid it won’t work. My reminiscence of those six weeks is like a flip-flop calendar with notes on its pages I made along the way. Some days are remembered only via their spirits; while others I remember almost to the last minute. There were both a few key scenes, and, otherwise, there were the "repeat" moments. The morning ritual before and after breakfast: I lying on the grass, or by the pool, Elio sitting at my table. Then the swim or the jog. Then I grabbing a bicycle and riding to see the translator in town. Lunch at the large, shaded dining table in the other garden, or lunch indoors, always a guest or two for lunch drudgery. The siesta, splendid idleness, and lush with abundant sun and silence.
For reason I might mention later I always chose carefully the place where I planned to spend my vacation or holidays. So, I decided in favor of Professor Perlman after considering everything thoughtfully and getting certain that there were neither our relatives, family friends nor father’s customers in Professor’s milieu, in the nearest town or among his neighbours. Although I declined to take over our family’s investment company, my father did not lose hope and often introduced me to those he dealt with. I did not mind while watching over my interests. I don’t know another family where rumors would spread so fast.
I knew that the professor had a seventeen-year-old son, but thought nothing of it. After all, seven years difference was a big gap in our age. I did not ponder much of him, but subtly I was expecting to see a shy teen obsessed with how to get rid of acne and the Problem of the First Coitus, and hoped I wouldn’t have to share my own experience in these fields with him. Moreover, there could be more than one First Coitus, as in my case, while fate kept me from acne. Now I’m smiling, recalling those thoughts.
I remember the first time we met well. How did Elio seem to me? Woven of many contradictions. He was shorter than me with curly dark hair and rather inspired features, thin hands and legs, heart-shaped face, clear contour of bright lips the color of a pulp of ripe fig. If he was a girl, she wouldn’t even need a lipstick. Still the glance of strangely light hazelnut eyes with a rare (for males) green shade appeared to be surprisingly clever and peering, and his handshake was strong. There was something… androgynous about him. It was like Elio hadn’t yet decided who to become – he could be imagined as Apollo with a kithara in his hands or as a formidable Artemis with a bow and arrows. That alone should have alerted me, but I misunderstood the hint, just like I did not understand much more until a certain moment.
He was boyishly awkward and impulsive, a bit naive and a bit vulnerable, and timid. Also proud, I noted, when he unexpectedly pulled his hand out of mine, as if he burnt himself. “What else would he be?” I thought, noting restraint of completely non-Italian manners of his father and a calm grace of his mother.
At twenty-four, as I understand now, I was notable for jolly arrogance and seriously considered myself to be a guru in knowing people. I liked watching and studying them. I liked to unravel the motives of their actions. Hasty generalizations are typical for young people, and they often come to a conclusion that they have known and understood everything simply because they have learned some particular things. This made it even funnier how quickly my impression of Elio was changing. I barely managed to decide that I had found him out fully, but soon he ruined my conclusions completely. Was he a teenager? This very teenager knew something I, as it turned out, had no idea about! Timid? You don't say! Proud he was, for sure, but was he timid? I could not fail more. Was he naïve? Was he vulnerable? Here I was partly right, but, frankly speaking, by his age some extraordinary circumstances crushed my naivety and I had already learned to conceal my vulnerability.
So, we had lunch with him sitting by my side, and had an ordinary small-talk: where I had already been, what I had already seen, if I had found an interpreter. Elio would show you his room that would become yours for the time… At these words I looked at him – I had not been told that my appearance would force someone to give up something, even for some time. I wouldn’t have liked it, but Elio just shrugged and I got that he was used to it. I wasn’t the first, I wouldn’t be the last. As a rule he spoke very little at the table, but emptied his plate quickly. I smiled seeing this healthy appetite in someone growing by the hour. Meanwhile, the conversation went on and on. You know, there was an abandoned narrow-gauge railway and old train cars bearing the insignia of the royal House of Savoy, they were older than us, did you want Elio to walk you there? I looked at him doubtfully once again, and asked myself what he might think of playing a cicerone’s part. And suddenly something flashed in his bright eyes, as if a sunbeam broke in the drops of water.
“Sure! Let’s go after lunch.”
Suddenly and completely charmed, I agreed. As it turned out later, I did not take the burning sun into consideration, but there was nowhere to retreat. After all, how could I show less endurance than a teenager!
After lunch I followed him up a two-span wooden staircase to the second floor. From a short corridor to the right, into which the doors of two rooms led, Elio led me into a large light-filled room where my suitcase was already standing. Shutters were not closed, and the French window stood wide open. A gentle breeze swayed tulle curtains, the rings attaching them to the cornice tinkled gently. Like nothing on earth iodine smell blended with heavy aroma of heated earth and a slight coniferous shade. I remember breathing in this enchanting cocktail and thinking what delight it was to drink as much of it as you wanted, although such a bliss could not last for the whole year. Nonetheless a small town of New England where I grew up could not, just like New York, brag about anything except for the smell of dust and car exhausts, and the green-gray Atlantic was nothing like the deep blue of the Mediterranean. And the sun! There is no such sun in New England. Blinding, scorching, and filling you up to the very fingertips. It was reflected from all the white surfaces, cut them with colored rays, drowned you in its radiance…
While I was standing there, either dreaming or anticipating something, Elio walked past me onto the balcony, slightly touching me with his shoulder.
“Here’s the second exit, leads straight to the pool. And there,” he waved his hand invitingly, “is the path to the beach and to the road to B. I often take a shortcut here when I come back late.”
The tone of his voice pulled me out of my dreams. Elio was standing on the balcony with his back pressed against the railing, and some very significant smile was dancing on his lips. I went out to him and understood immediately what he was hinting at. We looked at each other knowingly.
“So what are you going to do now?” I asked. He smiled wider and pointed at the second French window leading to the same balcony.
“The same.”
Therefore, his room was next door to mine. Something nice and hot fluttered in my chest, but without letting the heat go up, I walked past that closed window to the staircase.
“Someone promised me a tour of the roundabouts!”
Elio ran after me stomping on the steps and rattling the banister mercilessly. Brat. A boy of a breed completely different from the one I was used to. Moreover, he had no acne, just rare birthmarks on the smooth sun-kissed skin. I liked what I saw, and I wanted to see more.
We walked shoulder to shoulder, trying to stay in the shade of trees, and the incessant crackling of cicadas was choking the quiet rustle of fallen pine needles under soles of our sneakers. He was mostly silent, only occasionally glancing at me sideways from behind his sunglasses. I saw it, although pretended I did not. He was clearly waiting for me to ask something. And I did, after looking right and left at the sight of the rusty rails.
“There is a train station too?” I asked.
This simple question led to a ten-minute lecture on local history. The charm was gone, as if it had never been; I wished I had been right about his timidity. “He can become insolent”, I told myself and subconsciously pulled away from him. I had enough insolence and control in my own family. While studying in New York, I felt the invisible custody and gritted my teeth waiting for some holidays. Only where no rumors could come from I had freedom, although even here, in Italy, they regularly tried to control me.
Elio once asked me when I realized that he liked me, and I answered that I knew about a week after we had fun toying with Leopardi’s poems. But he never asked when I was drawn to him. And that minute was etched in my memory so clearly that there would be no “about”.
I liked him from the very first day.
We rode to B. on bicycles, as I had to open an account in the bank, and we stopped by some bar on our way there. We were hoping to have a rest and refresh ourselves, but we had to go with buying a bottle of water, which furthermore was unpleasantly warm. Elio unscrewed the cap in a wink and greedily swallowed a mouthful.
“Want some?” He handed me the bottle. I took a sip and gave the bottle back to him, and he drank again. It was as if we shared a secret kiss, a thought flashed. ”It is hot”, Elio added, as if he hadn’t noticed my bewilderment, or maybe he hadn’t actually noted anything weird. He took off his sunglasses, poured water into his cupped hand, splashed it in his face, on the forehead, squinting like a kitten, and then combed his wet hair back with his hand. Then he looked up at me.
The second heat attack in the pit of my stomach I could not confuse with anything else. It was something more than just affection.
Don’t think that it was сoup de foudre, no, nothing like that. Just a completely relatable understanding of physical attractiveness, a simple ‘what if’ thought. I can’t say I never had anything like that, I was used to dealing with unwelcomed desires. There are a lot of ways to fend them off - you can find common ground and turn everything into friendship, or take the opposite way, step back. Then you literally increase the distance between us, do not watch, do not smell, and do not fall for the tempting aura. Or you can remember that there is a teenager in front of you, and remind yourself of the age difference. Tell yourself strictly that seducing your host's children, whatever their gender may be, is not the way to pay for their hospitality.
These thoughts swept through my head faster than it took to put them on paper. I struggled to tear my eyes away from the wet curls and the throat on which the transparent drops were running down, took a quiet step back and concentrated on the feeling of warmish water that failed to quench my thirst. It helped, but Elio was still looking, his eyes sparkling with gold and green.
“What did one do around here?”
It was an easy, friendly question. It could have been asked by a bagman or a tourist. And the answer was just as touristic. He shrugged his shoulders indifferently.
“Nothing. Waited for the summer to end.”
“Well, maybe everyone is waiting, but what do you do?”
“Me? I like reading. Swimming or jogging in the morning. I also enjoy playing tennis if I manage to find a partner.”
“You also walk at night…”
Corners of his mouth twitched in the same meaningful grin.
“Everyone walks at night here. And I have my music. I” he said pointedly “never get bored.”
This is how pride manifested itself in him when he felt the condescending tone adults use to talk to children - by detachment.
“What do you play?”
“Guitar, piano. A little violin.”
“I envy you” I did envy him actually. “Well, let’s move on?”
After I left the bank our conversation resumed suddenly.
“You don’t play anything at all?” Elio asked out of the blue.
“They tried to teach me, but nothing came out of it. I took classes for a couple of years. Then I gave up.” I left aside the fact that music for my parents was a means to an end, not a goal, because their displeasure was fueled by the thought of wasted money. “I play a little guitar now, just for myself.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you give up?”
I mulled it over. How do I explain that on the scales when choosing between books and piano, between piano and guitar, freedom was a greater force than skill? And do I even have to be that frank? I avoided a direct answer.
“Music shall be taken seriously or not at all, it seems to me. Isn’t it so? By the way, where did one jog around here?
I changed the subject for a purpose, as I didn’t like his look. It was as if he read something between the lines that I didn’t want to say.
“Along the promenade, mostly. I could show you if you want.”
“Not now!” I thought and then added out loud: “Later, maybe”.
Elio immediately took shelter behind solid dark shades. He kept silent, but I somehow knew that he was stung.
We later appeared to know quite a lot about each other overall, God knows from what sources. It was as if we grew up on the same books, citing and catching unfinished quotes. Each of us used to guess what words the other would choose to play with. On the very first evening when Elio sat down at the piano and started playing, I froze: Gluck’s gentle “Melody” suited my mood like nothing else would…
I never believed in providence or intuition, I was far too reasonable for that. But I remembered that day six weeks later, sitting in a plane and picking in my treasury of impressions for the last time, I thought that the surprisingly generous Atropos showed me a page of the book of life, where she had already written down our destiny; we followed it later without knowing. We obeyed the pendulum that was swinging from attraction to affection through misunderstanding to cooling when the vague disquieting foreboding took over, advising me to keep my distance from Elio. Too dangerous, too unpredictable and just plain stupid, it warned me. I wish someone had warned me that the swings of this pendulum would grow wider day by day; it would sink lower and lower until it razed what I used to be to the ground.
*****
That's how it went for some time. After discussing questions about my help for the professor, I inwardly sealed off Elio with a red line and let myself go with the flow and enjoy life. In the evenings people played poker, danced and spent time over a glass of wine or something stronger in B.; I had no doubt I only had to do the same, and shortly I would find friends, a girlfriend, or, as it would turn out sometimes, a boyfriend. I liked girls as well as boys, but I could date the former all year round, while the latter were for the time spent away from home.
It soon appeared that I couldn’t have picked a better house and a better family. I realized soon enough that the relations between the Perlmans were totally opposite to the marriage between my parents. Openness, warmth and love instead of external coldness that always goes hand in hand with the lack of communication and true understanding. Who knows if mother and father ever loved each other, but not even once did I catch glimpse of any tenderness or hear them speak about anything other than family matters, - books, movies or some other interests that they possibly shared.
The professor and the signora constantly dragged me into their conversations, but such details as where I was going or when I was to come back were of no interest to anyone, except for the sole purpose of setting the table. I walked around the whole villa, did whatever I wanted, came and left whenever I deemed necessary; and the other habitants of the house, constant and temporary, did the same. Friends and closer neighbors often came to visit late in the morning. Perlman’s house was the nearest one to the sea, and all you needed was to open the tiny gate by the balustrade, take the narrow stairway down the bluff, and you were on the rocks. Everyone would gather in the garden and then head out together to the beach below. And at lunch or dinner, I was regularly introduced to some people, young and old, who felt like one of the family at the table and turned out to be cousins, neighbors, aunts, colleagues of the professor dropping by on their way to somewhere, or even the tourists passing by. And all these people drank, ate, lounged around by the pool, played tennis in the evenings, spoke all kinds of languages (mostly Italian, with quite a dense admixture of English, French and German) and argued about everything in raised voices. Italians can't let things well enough alone, can't play down, must exclaim, proclaim, declaim…
In Sicily, in the house of my friends where I had stayed before, their manners were more reserved, and there was no such mawkish atmosphere, but I got used to it quickly. It even started to amuse me, especially when I realized that the professor was agreeing with me and sincerely enjoying it. That was because of what Elio so aptly called the dinner drudgery which was a kind of payment for the permissiveness. It was easier to handle if you shared this burden with someone.
Three or four days after my arrival the professor’s colleague who came to visit him rose from the table earlier. I’ve already mentioned the ease of local customs. He approached the piano littered with notes. Out of politeness, perhaps, he leaned over to pick up the sheets lying on the floor. Elio jumped up immediately.
“Don’t touch it!” he cried out.
The stunned man froze as he was, kneeling on his knee, and the cause of the turmoil stood mortified in the crossfire of everyone’s stares.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know…”
“That’s nothing,” Elio interrupted him. “It’s just… you see, those are failed versions. Otherwise I will get confused.”
“Transcription?” The guest looked through the sheets, put them back on the floor and got up. “Haydn’s ‘Seven Last Words of Christ’, well, well. Boldly. May I inquire what is wrong with the classical arrangement for the piano?”
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” Elio came closer. “But I wanted to rearrange it for four hands. And I changed the harmony a little, it would add depth and… formidableness, I guess.” He was becoming more and more inspired, seeing that everybody was listening to him very closely. “To make the darkness fall upon the city long before the curtain in the temple is torn apart before ‘Il terremoto’…”
I watched him, amazed to the very depths of my being. The choice of the work and what he was aiming for… I have learned to think of him as a teenager, and before that moment that was how he generally behaved - like a youngster, whose opinion hardly concerned anyone in the discussion of serious professional subjects. I had never thought of asking him what he was doing next to me, at the table by the pool. When we gathered at the lunch, he was mostly silent. If he entered into a conversation, he talked in short phrases at the speed of light, muffling words self-consciously. This habit of his created the impression that he was always flustered, not wanting to embarrass himself and blurt out some nonsense. But now, talking about something that really interested him, something he was good at, his behavior changed beyond recognition. He was explaining his transcription; his eyes were shining, and his speech was flowing freely, even though he would think it over sometimes; by the face of the professor’s colleague I could tell that he was impressed just as greatly.
“Boldly,” he said again. “May I take a look at the final result?”
“You can trust Signor Vicenzo,” professor interrupted; he was listening to the conversation, looking as if he couldn’t understand half of what his son was saying. “He’s an excellent musician.”
“You’re flattering me, Sammy. Anyway, my strong side is the cello, but I have my eye on two piano players. They often perform as a duo. Do you want me to talk to them?”
Elio blushed slightly, and he nodded.
He could be just seventeen, but his mind and soul were clearly older. I felt a dim alarm; red line I had used to fence the enclosure of desire razed out right before my eyes.
They say we tend to fall in love with those who are complete opposites of us in terms of appearance but resemble us in mind and character. I’m a perfect example of it, blond and dare I say, far from stupid. And though I had nothing against the momentary satisfaction of sexual desire, even if I didn’t bother to ask my partner’s name before all our clothes were gone, but intellectual brunettes of both sexes always attracted me like magnets.
It should be noted that light hair and blue eyes are not actually typical for our family. My appearance did not come from my parents or even grandfathers. I’m as much a copy of my grandmother, my father’s mother, as a man can be a copy of a woman. I don’t quite remember her; she died before I turned five. Only blurred memories remain of the knees covered with a slippery dress, from which I was sliding down all the time, of the hands with long fingers holding me, of the golden locks smelling so deliciously that I tried to chew them, of her quiet laughter. I also know that she used to take a large oval medallion on a thick twisted chain with an insert of lapis lazuli, the celestial stone, and give it to me to play with, as I remember touching the intricate notch around the stone with my finger. She was a purebred Norwegian, an actress of theater and cinema. My grandfather has a lot of photographs in his album, where she is depicted in the roles Magda, Nora from the “Doll House”, Gedda Gabler and Edwarda in the screen adaptation of “Pan”. She was just like Edwarda in her real life, capable of long and strong love, but never completely dissolving in it, as being a Lutheran believer, she refused point blank to accept the faith of my grandfather even formally. Of all four children and nine grandchildren I was the only one who looked like her; this is why my grandfather called me Viking and nothing else, often took my side in conflicts with father and even hinted that my appearance was a direct way to acting, not science. Well, that’s just for the record.
The premonition that was warning me against getting closer with Elio resurfaced with renewed vigor. It evoked fear in me, and this fear in its turn pushed me towards violence. I’m confessing that because I intend neither to spare myself nor lie. We almost didn't talk for next two days. He noticed my polite indifference and saw it as animosity so paid me back accordingly. He did not wait for me in shorts and trainers on our bedrooms' long balcony, or by the pool with a blanket hanging over his shoulder. I preferred swimming in the pool to the morning jogging, and after breakfast I worked in my room; if we met, we avoided each other to the maximum extent: nothing but “hello”, “good morning”, and “nice weather”. After the siesta I escaped to the city and spent one night playing poker, and the other for hot sex in a quiet place on the beach with some girl I picked up in a bar.
This was probably what set the record straight and made me think logically. What was I afraid of? Well, Elio’s development was ahead of his age, but this can be considered an advantage if we would just become friends. I didn’t see any reasons for us not to. Everything else stayed the same. When I arrived, he was seventeen; when I leave, he will still be of the same age. Moreover, he is still the host’s son, and not remotely interested in me as a potential lover. “Excellent, just keep reminding yourself about it more often,” I told myself. The following morning I waited for Elio on the balcony.
Elio jumped out of his room so quickly that he almost threw me over the railings. I had to grab him by his shoulders.
“Hey, don’t spend all this rush on me. Want to go for a run?”
“No,” he wasn’t expecting that and even tried to free himself. “Not much”.
“Well, let’s go to the sea and swim then.”
I didn’t offer choice; I didn’t give him a chance to say no.
He was standing as close to me as never before. I could feel the heat of his body with my palms through the T-shirt, the smell coming from his hair (top of his head was right at the level of my nose), even see the hazy leftover dreams still floating in the depth of his pupils when he gazed at me. I saw him hesitating, unable to understand, not knowing what to think about my mood swings, but I smiled, and he smiled back.
“I need a towel.”
And everything became as good as it was before, even slightly better. As if he casually grew a little older, and I became a little younger.
The next ten or twelve days imprinted on my mind with gradual rapprochement, recognition and almost serene friendly consent.
We used to get up not later than six, and through the open French windows I could hear the vague noise of Elio waking up. After splashing my face with cold water, I would run down the stairs to the garden and often find him there, already descended, with a score or a book. We went swimming or running, and breakfast was awaiting us upon our arrival.
Elio made his working place under the balcony by the pool at the round table with an umbrella, the edges of which were trembling in the wind and casting such a changing shadow on our notebooks. In the first days I sat there too, but I had always lacked self-discipline. Just like the air itself, I occupied all the available space. My shameful inability (or rather unwillingness) to organize the necessary objects and my inherent laziness led to the fact that I was always surrounded by messed up pages of my future book, pencils or colored pens of all sorts, glasses with or without lemonade, fruits, sun-protection cream, books, sunglasses and other stuff. The same thing was happening in my room, where I no longer stayed during the day. Eventually I started to just spread a large blanket on the grass and work there, surrounded by my clutter.
The tinkling of ice cubes in the glasses of lemonade, the noise of a rather close surf softly stroking the giant coastal rocks, popular melodies coming from somewhere, walking round and round like patrolmen, the frantic screeching of cicadas, the singing of blackbirds – these summer songs were playing in the background, never becoming too troublesome. When my eyes were getting tired, or it was too hot or I just became lazy, and the air was getting heavy with the smell of rosemary and pines, I often moved closer to the water, to the high edge of the pool. I covered my face with straw hat, switched on the player, selecting something calming and light, and shook my leg in the water. Sometimes I spent the whole siesta in such heavenly bliss, and in then Elio would not go to his place, instead lying in the shadow on the deckchair with a book or his guitar.
Sometimes the weather would surprise us. On windy days it was impossible to work or have breakfast outside, and when the dishes were removed from the table, we took the living room. I lay on my back or stomach, hanging myself over the low armrest of the sofa and spreading the translation sheets over the floor; Elio would sit right on the carpet, crossing his legs and surrounding himself with books or music sheets.
“Now we see that to understand means to comprehend, to rise above time, moreover, raise the cognized, however transient it may be, above the supra-temporal height. I wrote it three months ago. Did you understand anything?” I asked.
Elio raised his head from the music notebook and listened to me with attention; then he took the page from me and re-read the marked phrase slowly.
“Not much, to be honest. But it made sense for you when you were writing it. Try to put yourself in the place of the past you: what if you’ll remember?”
I tried.
“I think I wanted to say that Heraclitus’s followers blend the fact and its meaning. On this basis they make an erroneous conclusion that the changing nature of the fact excludes immutability of its meaning. Or the immutability of the truth about this fact."
“The famous paradox that when we bring objects too close to our eyes we lose the ability to conceive them as a whole?”
“Something like that.”
“But it’s probably three times shorter than your self-quote. Why don’t you use this instead?”
“Have you ever seen a scientific monograph on philosophy written in the language of journalism? However, I’ll think about it.”
In the evenings, on rainy or windy days we had another thing to do: Elio taught me to play along. I sat down on the banquette to hos left and held his waist or shoulders with my right hand in order not to fall down. At first not much was coming out of it, but I quickly remembered my music lessons, we adjusted to each other, and Elio was leaving me the right to play some melodic pattern, hold the theme, in other words, while he was improvising.
“I wouldn’t be able to play Haydn in four-hands”, I used to say, laughing and waving my hand. “See, only in three! I’m a disabled man, not a pianist.”
“But you can tell bad playing from good. That’s already something!” he insisted.
I played poker couple of times a week, and one evening we went to the cinema. It was a professor’s idea, and no one wanted to come with us, whether accidentally or not.
The film we came to see was “Nostalgia” by Andrey Tarkovski. The Italy of voluntary exile, a place of true mental crisis where one can only feel bad. The state of suffocating, depressive melancholy filling the screen space of this movie made it truly dark. Not the best choice for pleasant leisure, perhaps; I wouldn’t take a girlfriend to see this film, that’s for sure. But Elio, who was apparently on cloud nine, looked as if he would even agree to see “Friday the 13th”. After the movie we walked along the coastline for a long time, talking about Verdi’s Requiem and Beethoven’s Symphony No.9 that played in the film. We were discussing how true the director’s idea was that you cannot be an intermediary, an interpreter or a connoisseur of pieces of art if you are not part of the culture from which they come from; about why it is often so difficult to simply walk from one end of a dried pool to the other with a lighted candle; finally, about whether it is true that only the love that has no expression is absolute.
“Well, this is true from a certain point of view; there is no one better than the one you actually know almost nothing about,” Elio noted. "Remember this song? You can never win or lose, if you don't run the race.”
I immediately remembered a hit song “Love my way”, to which we danced at the discotheque in B. I was often surprised by Elio’s ability to instantly find something to express feelings with, the same way as I would express them, and understand them as I would understand them. This comprehension in our case was probably purely intuitive; he hardly had love tragedies in his life.
This doesn’t mean that there were no dark clouds on our interaction's horizon. Sometimes I was the one to blame for that. I played the part of an open, loving person with my eyes closed, but it hampered me occasionally, and I strove unconsciously to change from my spiritual tuxedo to a loose shirt. Sometimes, Elio touched a certain string in me by an unexpected action or a reaction to something, and I had to remind myself of the red line that I almost didn’t notice at other times.
For example, I realized that I had the power to make him embarrassed or blush; if I were a bit more self-confident or if I didn’t look so stubbornly past the obvious, I would have decided that it was for a reason by the end of my first week at the villa. But I ignored the prophetic inscriptions and bluffed like a poker player, believing that something didn't exist until I called a spade a spade. And I failed to realize until a certain moment that my inner world had already consumed Elio, his music, his books, his image, like a desert can consume a lake of clean, cool water; that I had been long learning to call him by the name, uttering it to myself with various intonations, savoring and turning it at different angles. And I got used to it too quickly; it sounded too pleasant in my thoughts, and I wouldn’t have been able to abandon it.
Once we went swimming very early; and while the breakfast was being made under an old lime tree, we started talking about poetry translations. Word by word – and we are already twisting Leopardi’s lines, testing them like an electronic calculator. Everyone knows if you divide, say, two by three, and then multiply the result by three, you won’t get exactly two. Instead of a beautiful figure, there will be something scarily decimal on the screen, as if a part of the final number got lost somewhere on the way. We translated one quatrain from “To the Moon” into English, then – from English into ancient Greek, then – into some other language, German or something; then we reversed the chain. As a result, instead of “How pleasant is it, in the days of youth, when hope a long career before it hath,
and memories are few, upon the past to dwell, though sad, and though the sadness last!” we got something suspiciously resembling “Waste not your Hour, my friend, nor in the vain pursuit of This and That endeavour and dispute…”
“Better be short-sided with the fruitful Grape than sadden after none, or bitter, Fruit!” Elio finished his quasi-transcribing Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam with pathos. We burst into laughter, and then, exhausted, fell silent as one man.
“Have you read Khayyam?”
Elio looked up at me, and his cheeks blushed suddenly. His skin was very pale, lighter than mine, and his inherent internal fire broke through it easily. I kept on staring at him; I was interested whether he was embarrassed because of knowing such specific lyrics or of uncovering his tastes for me.
He looked away. “He looks at life like a dog on an empty can tied to his tail… as they say – if you can’t untie, at least fill it in the next bar. Funny, don’t you think?” he mumbled.
I came closer and put my hands on the back of his chair, leaning closer and catching his eye. “Funny”. This definition suited Khayyam perfectly, who observed his life as if from the top of a hill.
“Do you like Leopardi?” he asked.
“Yes, very much.”
“I like him very much too."
“You’ve read so much. I'm almost a decade older than you are and until a few days ago had never heard of Giuseppe Belli or Paul Celan. I don't get it.”
Elio seemed to try and look at me but failed in doing so.
“What's not to get?” there was an obvious challenge in his joking words. “Dad's a university professor. I grew up without TV. Get it now?”
I wanted to punish him for this insolence. I pulled off the towel that was still hanging around my neck, crumpled it and threw it into his face.
"Go back to your plunking, will you!"
*****
So the summer was passing – slowly, as if with laziness, or rushing and foaming like a mountain stream. And then that fateful July day came and literally everything changed.
The night before it had been storming, and by morning the weather didn’t recover yet. A fairly strong wind was blowing; the site of the sea didn’t evoke any desire to swim. Moreover, the high waves were crashing against the rocks, demonstrating what they would do to anyone who dared to enter the water. But after breakfast the weather broke through; the sun was shining brightly, and one could expect that by noon I would be drawn to orle of paradise again. So it happened and after having worked with the professor for an hour or two, I lounged on the edge of the pool on a folded towel.
Elio lifted his head from his music sheets, into which he buried his head hastily after seeing me. He was obviously daydreaming instead of working. I smiled; I myself often found myself driven away to somewhere from the pre-Heraclitean philosophy. Did the long morning hours, drowsy and predisposing to a simple contemplation of beauty, cause it, or was it the fact that our talks became much more interesting, and our joint silence cozier?
“Oliver, are you sleeping?” Elio often asked, as if uncertain whether I would let him wake me up. The numbness binding my brain immersed me in a kind of nirvana, where I was rocking on the waves tasting and smelling of honey.
“I was.”
“Sorry.” I hoped that the hat on my face was covering my smirk.
Or another way – as it happened on that day.
“Elio.”
“Yes?”
“What are you doing?”
“Reading.”
“No, you’re not.” He did not realize how often he rustled the pages when he read.
“Thinking, then.”
"About?"
And there is a long pause.
"Private."
"So you won't tell me?"
"So I won't tell you."
“Which means I’m not worthy of his trust,” I translated melancholically to the universe, making Elio excuse himself. “I’m hurt.”
“I won’t tell you anyway,” he said again, more confident this time. I heard a sly smile in his voice, indicating that he had noticed my trap.
“Then I’m going back to sleep,” I answered humbly and half-opened my eye, intending to watch him covertly from under the brim of my hat.
Elio was looking at me, and there was no doubt as to WHERE and HOW he was looking.
My body reacted as if it was whipped. Under this look, I got aroused so quickly that in a moment I would not be able to hide what was happening. I couldn’t let him notice that and did the only thing that I could have done in this situation. Without thinking or hesitating, I rolled over and dove into the water as deep as I could. From under the water I saw that Elio jumped up and ran up to the edge. The reflection of his frightened face leaning over the water was trembling and shaking in the waves caused by me. I waited several seconds for the cool water to take its effect and surfaced suddenly, sending a massive spray at him. With a cry of surprise, he shielded himself with his hand and leaned over, trying to splash at me. In return, I dragged Elio down into the pool as he was, in his T-shirt and shorts.
“Unfa-!” The greenish water swallowed his scream. He surfaced, snorting. We frolicked in the pool like dolphins, chased each other with laughter, and finally grabbed the edge with our hands. Elio threw his wet hair from the forehead, finger-combing it back. This hairdo, as I had noticed before, made him look older and… damn, so seductive that my knees were trembling. “What if…” was rapidly turning into “why not?” I could have pulled him close, chest to chest, kiss him… the one who looked at my cock THAT way wouldn’t have protested… I shook my head, throwing the delusion away. “Later,” I said to myself. “I will think about it later.” This was my way of dealing with questions that I had no answers for – or had no answers for yet.
While changing in my room, I was reflecting upon my impressions from this swimming and everything that preceded it. Could it be that Elio was drawn to me in the same way I was drawn to him? There were sunny and green sparks flickering in his light eyes that were both promising and not. I was asking myself again and again whether I really saw them. He was always looking away, as if hiding something from me; is it a plain shyness or an unwillingness to show the awakened interest? The tip of a pink tongue touching his lips, the shape of which would have been labeled “Cupid’s Bow” by old busybodies – was it because of excitement, or did Elio just licked lemonade drops? Was the flutter of another's heart I heard just an echo of my own heartbeat? A second’s pause when I gave him my hand, helping him out of the pool – did he actually lean towards me?
At that moment I realized that if I had a chance to win Elio’s heart, I would use it. What once was just a figment of my imagination could turn true. My blood started burning from the thought that this reality could lead us to one bed, and I had to stand under the cold shower immediately. But I, putting it together, refused to take the seemingly obvious answer; I couldn’t let this flame ignite based solely on my assumptions that probably had nothing to do with reality. I wanted to understand whether I had that chance.
Sunny summer Italy, youth, strong health, plenty of spare time, wonderful music, exquisite food and a good company – one can’t hide from the all-around sensuality and romantic atmosphere. Isn’t it silly to think that it won’t go to Elio’s head, make him feel like any other young man would feel in his place?
Later, instead of siesta, everyone went to the sea, making up for the day lost before. The house suddenly became empty; we were left alone in it. He was in his room; I was in his room too, which was mine now. There can’t be a better moment to “understand”.
I came in without knocking, right from the balcony. Elio was lying on the bed, dressed up, with a book. I caught the rapid movement with which he pulled his knees to his chest at the sight of me.
“Why didn’t you go to the beach with everyone else?” I asked as casually as I could.
He hesitated and looked away again; I saw clearly that he was stalling as if he did not want to reveal the answer he had. My heart started beating faster.
“Bad allergy,” he shrugged his shoulders. “Why didn’t you go?”
Now I was in the same predicament. I couldn’t say it directly. “To stay with you, Elio. To know your wishes. To make my naked skin feel yours. To taste your mouth, your shoulder if you don’t mind.”
“Me too,” I answered. “We probably have the same one.”
He shrugged his shoulders again. I came closer.
“What's wrong? What upset you so much? Want to go for a swim?”
“Later, maybe,” he said. My preferred evasiveness used against me!
“Let’s go now,” I persistently stretched my hand to help him get up.
He took my hand. “Must we?” he asked quietly.
The blush covering his neck and the unambiguous lump in his groin, which I saw clearly now, told me everything. I understood why he was so confused. Not only because he had an erection, but also because he failed to hide it from me. It could only mean one thing. I let go of his hand and stepped back.
“I’ll change and wait for you downstairs.”
It seems that I wasn’t wrong. Elio was not unaware of the bodily desires, and apparently, I was one of the sources of these desires. However, during those two weeks, I have been acting in such a way that I could be taken for anyone – everyone’s favorite, friend, guest, but not the… Suddenly I realized that we had been flirting for a decent time, and the fact that Elio avoided looking into my eyes confirmed that he understood that too.
Come to think of it, we found so many reasons for flirting!
Take peaches and apricots, for example.
“Yours,” I said, throwing the juiciest and ripest fruit of those I had just collected; he plunged white even teeth into the fragrant succulent pulp, wiped the juice drops away from his face with a finger and licked it, fully covering said finger with his lips. In response, I invented a Little Something about ice cream in cones. I didn’t lick or bite it – I sucked it.
When I arrived he didn’t have a chain with the Star of David on his neck, but it appeared after a few days. The same as mine.
Or let us take my manner of an unknown origin – when going up the stairs to our balcony, freeze against his French window or stand down for a moment in the hall near the door to his room, as if asking myself whether I shall come in.
And then there’s music. When I asked him to play something, I never knew what would come out of it.
“I can’t believe it,” I used to say. “You’ve changed everything again.”
“Just a little bit. This is just how Busoni would have played it if he had altered Liszt's version.”
“Can't you just play the Bach the way Bach wrote it?!”
"But Bach never wrote anything for guitar. He may not even have written it for the harpsichord. In fact, we're not even sure it's by Bach at all!"
“All right, forget I asked,” I conceded. It was my turn to feign grudging acquiescence.
“Fine, fine. Don’t be so tense,” he answered, following me like a partner in tango. “This is a very young Bach as transcribed by me. Don’t worry; there would be no Busoni or Liszt.”
And then he'd finally play the fragment the way I wanted. The way it sounded in the garden for the first time. And it was like a small present for me every time he played it.
Elio could play me Ravel as if it was Wagner and spoil all the pleasure, or he could play Wagner as if it was Ravel. Not a single person of his age of those that I’d heard of could use notes so freely – like an experienced sharper with a cold deck. I liked his combinations of two, three or even four composers chiming in the same piece and then transcribed by him. I could listen to him play the magnificent Nino Rota from memory for hours. Once, Chiara, one of our neighbors, was humming a hit-parade tune and suddenly (as it was another windy day, and no one went to the beach or was willing to leave the house) our friends gathered around the piano in the living room as Elio improvised a Brahms variation on a Mozart rendition of that very same song.
“How do you do this?” I asked him later, when the wind stopped and everyone started wandering around the garden, and I folded myself a towel in heaven as usual.
“Sometimes the only way to understand the artist is to wear his shoes, to get inside him. Then everything else flows naturally,” he answered.
Also considering our sitting on the same banquette, with our heads together, while we were, as busy as bees, torturing the ears of our folks with musical exercises.
And the family TV-watching on rainy days? It got cold, and we sat in the living room with a blanket around us, and my outstretched hand lay on the back of the sofa above his shoulders. And we felt so snug and warm being together, while we were listening to the raindrops drumming on the stone patio tiles.
These were actions without other actions behind them, roundabout ways instead of a straight road. If it was not flirting, then what was it?
It is strange to find someone a thousand miles away from home in my immediate world; someone else who might like what I liked … and want what I wanted.
Hence, Elio realized what he wanted. Did he have any experience? I could swear he hadn’t; therefore, I couldn’t rely on sincerity and straightforwardness.
The next day I decided to let him understand my intentions and make sure that my touch wasn’t unpleasant to him. We were playing doubles, and during the break, as we came to the table with refreshments prepared by Mafalda (I have to admit, she’s a genius in terms of cooking), I put my hand on Elio’s naked shoulder, as if I was going to knead his stiff muscles. The gesture was rather friendly – half-hug, half-massage of a kind. Italians are natural and inclined to tactile contact; that is why it could not have alarmed anyone - the whole thing was very chummy-chummy. He could have chosen any way to response, but I was surprised, or, to be honest, unpleasantly struck when he slid out of my touch immediately. As if I grabbed his ass openly instead of putting my hand on his shoulder.
“Did I touch the nerve? Scratched you? Sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
“No, I’m not hurt,” he mumbled, but he had the face of someone trying very hard, but failing, to smother a grimace of pain. I pretended to believe it. “I don’t know what actor I would be, but you would be truly bad, Elio,” I thought. It was not pain; it was aversion, bordering with unspoken anger and irritation. And suddenly what seemed to be natural and permitted started to look like a dirty harassment.
“Do yourself an honor and keep your cool,” I told myself. “Don’t disclose the real reason of your mixed feelings to anyone. It will turn out to be funny or ridiculous, or evoke pity.”
Having gone to my room as soon as I could, I lay on the bed for a long time, staring at the ceiling. My sight is jaundiced - I have seen wrong. My mind is warped - I have judged wrong. Only my tongue didn’t betray me – I said the right thing. I could easily deal with the fact that I had been mistaken. It was harder to accept the fact that I, as it turned out, got used to Elio, forgot the age gap and the fact that he was the son of my host. As if my mind was turned off I let my thoughts wander, imagining with interest and pleasure how it could have been between us.
Considering Elio’s reaction, there was nothing left to do but keep the longest possible distance, tear the treads of the forming intimacy at once. I was somehow sure that I would be able to come back to my old life as if nothing had happened, and that my ability to turn the pages of life without regret or remorse, which had served me flawlessly in the past, would serve me once again just as well. “Who’s Elio?” someone would ask me. “Wait a minute, I think that was the name of an… Italian? Yes, something fleeting, it seems, in Sicily… right?” I would answer.
However, I was haunted by vague disquiet. This task could turn out to be much harder than before; that is what my inner voice was whispering to me. My heart craved for his heart; my body was longing to entwine with his.
Like everyone, I’ve made mistakes in my life, both small and big, but I’m not actually ashamed of many things. I’ve never broken a word, never promised the gardens of Eden to anyone, never stolen anything, killed anyone or made others to kill. But I’m still ashamed of the way I chose that time.
I’m talking about Chiara.
And it’s not even that I slept with her. For that matter, I sincerely tried to give and take pleasure without doing anything she didn’t like. The thing was that I started a romance with her almost for show for the sole purpose to avoid embarrassment and make Elio believe he had got me wrong.
It seems Pierpont Morgan once said that a man generally has two reasons for doing a thing; one that sounds good, and a real one. I could attempt to justify myself by trying to get back on the right track, even say that I was helping Elio do the same, but it would be just a beautiful wrapper for the ugly truth. Even worse than just ugly: deep down, I wanted to avenge my ludicrous hopes. And though neither Chiara nor Elio knew it, I did.
There are many reasons why we, Americans, are little known as lovers; undoubtedly, the fearsome scarecrow of our traditionally Puritan upbringing takes the top spot. It spoils everyone, men and women alike. It makes our girls not sexual, but sexy. However, it has nothing to do with enjoying one’s own sensuality. Being sexy means making a man crave your body so much that he would want to marry you.
Chiara was not like that. She took whatever she wanted and saw no problem with that. She didn’t treat her body as a precious gem that cannot be spoiled by anything, even one’s own eroticism.
I came across Chiara the next morning. She dropped by the professor’s house with her younger sister, picked up my shirt from the grass and threw it at me.
“Enough working. We’re going to the beach, and you’re coming with us,” she said.
And I was willing to oblige.
“Let me just put away these papers. Otherwise his father will skin me alive,” I pointed at Elio casually.
“Talking about skin… Come here,” she said, and with her fingernails gently and slowly tried to pull a sliver of peeling skin from my shoulder. Despite the time spent in Sicily I still got sunburns occasionally.
“Tell him it was me who crumbled the papers. Let’s see what he would say.”
Charming, isn’t it?
I asked the professor to give us the twin-hulled rowboat if the sea was calm, while Chiara was standing by my side; this left little doubt about what we were going to do. I saw later that Elio watched us hugging, and laughed to myself. Sometimes in the afternoon, I said intentionally that I was going to the shed by the garage where Anchise kept tools and garden stuff to pick up one of the bikes and head to town.
“Need to see the translator,” I explained, pretending to be embarrassed. “I’ll be back in an hour and a half.”
“The translator, as if,” I heard the professor muttering behind my back.
“Traduttrice, indeed,” Mafalda repeated after him in a singing voice.
Elio, of course, heard all of it.
Thanks to my affair with Chiara, I expanded my circle of acquaintances significantly and almost stopped dining at the professor’s house; I entered the circle of serious bridge players. As is well known, a game of bridge lasts for several hours, and you cannot just interrupt it, unlike poker. I always had someone who would accompany me in the bars on the piazzetta or visit “Le Danzing”. In addition to my improved Italian, it had another advantage: I stopped my close communication with Elio without getting involved in excuses and explanations that would have looked petty, to be fair.
I made sure it was evident that he was just a kid for me, the one everyone talks to for not showing lack of politeness towards the hosts. My mood skyrocketed when I managed to intercept his angry look, when I warned him that I wouldn’t come to dinner, or replied to his invitation to go swimming with “I’ve already gone”.
However, I failed to foresee a counterattack: he started telling me some nice or provocatively exciting things about Chiara, describing the beauty of her body. Whether he was trying to make me speak frankly or let me understand that he obviously preferred females – this humiliation enraged me completely; I started to hate Elio. Who did he think he was to uncover my secret desires so easily, just to see how I would react to a rejection?! Nevertheless, I’d known the game of “like-minded males” for a longer time.
“Why do you care, anyway?” I asked, thus refusing to play it. “Are you trying to make me like her?”
“What would the harm be in that?”
“No harm. Except I like to go it alone, if you don’t mind.”
And it was me – me! – who hunkered down while trying to put him in his place. But I achieved what I wanted: our friendship ran dry. Even when we worked side by side in the mornings, our talk was all empty remarks at best. It couldn’t have even been called idle talk. But my heart nearly jumped out of my chest when I saw him in the usual place in the garden, and I froze, realizing that my tactics turned against me. I wanted to make him jealous, which means I still wanted him. From there it was as far to the necessary indifference as to the Moon, and I rushed away, saying only “Later!” just to interrupt Elio’s stream of thought, as I was afraid to be uncovered by his inquiring look.
Sometimes at night, we bumped into each other in "Le Danzing". He used to come there with Marcia and her friends, me – with Chiara; if she couldn’t come, I picked someone up right there. Eventually, some people told Chiara about it, and she started a pure scandalo Italiano. I didn’t know how to raise hell properly, and under other circumstances, I would have even been pleased and tried to end it as such scandals between lovers usually end, by dragging her into bed, but instead I grabbed at it as a reason for a proper quarrel. This affair had served its purpose by then.
“We almost did it”, Elio said during breakfast one morning. Signora Annella was cutting the roses; the professor was looking through the morning newspaper; I was enjoying my coffee. After hearing those words, I almost choked. Elio was learning too quickly. Or, perhaps, he saw right through me.
“Almost? Marcia? Why didn’t you?” the professor asked, emerging from behind the newspaper.
“Dunno.”
“You know what they say? It’s better to regret what you’ve done…” I was trying to speak facetiously, hoping that Elio wouldn’t notice my momentary bewilderment or quickened heartbeat.
“I only needed to find courage, and she would have said yes,” he replied.
I think he was showing off.
“Try again later,” I advised cunningly.
“Later, just like tomorrow, never comes.”
“I'd definitely try again. And again after that. It’s got to be ‘now’ sometimes!”
“If not now, when?” the professor joined the conversation amicably. “I like that more.”
This mutual grudge appeared to be hard to bear, and we started softening it with something impersonal – music, the pre-Socratic philosophy, colleges in the U.S. Elio still sat down at the piano in the afternoons or in the evenings, or played the guitar occasionally when I asked him. And I found another distraction – Vimini.
She first intruded on our morning before the fateful game of doubles. Once a girl too serious for her age came and asked Elio, who was playing Brahms’s variation of Handel:
“What are you doing?”
I’d never seen her before, but I felt immediately that it was a special territory, and that it had its own special rules. I turned to Elio, and he understood everything correctly.
“Oliver, meet Vimini, literally our next-door neighbor.” She offered me her hand, and I shook it. “Vimini and I have the same birthday, but she is ten years old. She is also a genius. Isn't it true you're a genius, Vimini?”
“So they say. But I don’t think I am.”
“Why?” I asked, kneeling down right on the grass and trying not to sound too patronizing.
“It would be in rather bad taste for nature to have made me a genius.”
I was shocked.
“Come again?”
“He doesn’t know, does he?”
Elio shook his head.
“They say I won’t live long. I have leukemia.”
If someone had told me earlier that I would be happy to speak to a ten-year-old girl who knew such a thing about herself, I would have thought that this someone had a wild imagination. But the fact remains that nothing comforted my soul and clarified my thoughts like the time spent with Vimini. She needed to be spared, like people spare children, but it was never necessary to play a part, to pretend with her. She needed help, but never hanged on anyone, unlike Chiara or Marcia, and it was a pleasure, not a duty, to lend her a willing hand on the stairway leading to the sea, walk her home or read for her. We read and discussed “Little Women”, “Jane Eyre”, “Barchester Towers”, “The Woman in White”. Vimini had an old head on young shoulders – she judged everything simply, but with a wisdom that is often absent in people who are three or four times older. It seemed like she had already lived her life, understood its essence and was calmly and quietly waiting for it to end. She also gave herself to sadness completely, like only adults do; even the wrinkled face of a Russian immigrant yearning for his homeland didn’t bear such evident signs of nostalgia as her childish face did. And frankly, I believed once and for all my sincerity wouldn't harm me if I'm brave enough for it. Vimini possessed something I would call the instinctive understanding of the personal and the inherent tact.
Sure, I wasn’t going to explore its limits practically and didn’t touch upon some subjects, but I failed to hide my attraction towards Elio. I understood it when Vimini said with all her seriousness: “You are at odds with Elio, that`s wrong.”
“It happens,” I tried to explain the unexplainable. “People fall out sometimes. Then they forget about it.”
“People do, but you don’t. He likes you very much, and you’re hurting him.”
“He didn’t tell me,” I burst out accidentally. I truly hoped that the sexual aspect of this liking escaped Vimini. “Did he tell you himself?”
“No,” she shook her head. “But I see it. And I see that you like him too and that you are hurt as well.”
Hurt? I couldn’t have used that word to describe what I was feeling at the moment. Imagine the fear of a man calmly stepping on a bridge and suddenly realizing that the bridge is made of glass, and that there is the abyss underneath it. Did I jump to conclusions and made a mistake again? Was I wrong punishing Elio for the way he recoiled from me? Was it not aversion? Until then, I hadn’t thought that it was a kind of a protective need to lock down, especially because earlier Elio had opened himself too much; that he was probably inclined to perceive his own actions too difficult and the actions of other people too simple. That moment I regretted my rationality, my inability to act without thinking about consequences. “I’ll think about later.” Well, if later never comes, then it is not worth regretting. Who knows, probably I could’ve already enjoyed warmth and intimacy if I hadn’t destroyed the trust. It could be broken with a single wrong movement that I apparently did.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked after a moment of silence.
Vimini looked at me as if I was ten years old.
“Make peace with him. Please. I don’t like it when my friends are unhappy.”
What could I say? “Not that it is as easy as ABC,” I thought. We couldn't just make a pinky promise and say "Cross my heart".
A convenient opportunity presented itself a couple of days later, when, as usual, we interrupted our work for a while for the sake of lazy chatter. I lit a cigarette; Elio started chewing an apple.
“Chiara had dropped by today,” he said unexpectedly. “When you went to see Signora Milani. She asked to tell you.” I nodded. “You’re a beautiful couple,” he added.
Instead of putting him in his place, as I had done before, I tried to get rid of the reason for the coldness between us.
“We’re not a couple. You’re on the wrong track.”
Elio slowly put the half-eaten apple aside.
“What do you mean, wrong track?”
“I’m not interested.”
Making excuses was not among my habits, and I was feeling quite awkward. Probably, for this reason, my voice sounded dry and irked.
“But I saw you two…”
“It’s not what you think. Anyway, the game is over.”
I blew out a smoke cloud and looked knowingly into Elio’s eyes.
He shook his shoulders.
“Okay, sorry.” And he returned to his books, hiding in them like a shellfish inside the shell. Didn’t he believe me? Was he afraid? Did he decide to take revenge? I suddenly got excited; I had to get him out of his shell at any cost.
“Maybe you should try,” I said.
I was playing it on the verge of decency, and I knew it.
“She wouldn’t want it.”
“Would you?”
I was pushing him towards the edge of the abyss. Whatever he answered, this would give me the key.
“No.”
It sounded… tense, even aggressive. He clearly didn’t understand what I was hinting at, and walked wide, expecting a trick. What a contrast with the first weeks of our friendship, still not invaded by mistrust, jealousy and forbidden feelings! No wonder they say that an angel starts flying on a broom if you cut off his wings.
“Are you sure? I know…”
“What would you know?” Elio interrupted me defiantly.
“I know you like her.”
“You have no idea whom or what I like!” He almost exploded, throwing the pencil away. “No idea at all!”
I finally made him lose the mask and could triumph, but I just looked at him. And I couldn’t recognize him. His eyes were sparkling with unshed tears and deep hopeless longing. And everything went away in a moment. My irritation, the all-devouring anger evaporated, as if these emotions that had been eating me from the inside only needed to see him suffer. Well, I saw it. And before the next stroke of my heart I swore to myself - whatever Elio does, I will never hate him again.
*****
Our relations seemingly improved, but from that moment on they were as if we tied our eyes voluntarily and balanced on a rope waiting for the first of us to fall down.
As before, we worked alongside each other, and our picking and teasing slowly turned into casual lazy conversations. We discussed fragments from Heraclitus, the trip to E., which the professor was planning to undertake, tried to guess what will be in the program of chamber music ensemble that was about to come to B. On windy days, I was lying on the sofa with a manuscript or a book taken randomly from the professor’s extensive library, but Elio stopped sitting down on the carpet next to the sofa and settled at the table instead. Our lessons of three-hand piano playing stopped as well.
On the other hand… I noticed with remarkable frequency the familiar silhouette with a crown of dark curls. The bank, the trattoria where we used to play poker, the piazzetta. At the lunch, in the living room, in the professor’s study, I almost constantly felt his stubborn stare, and intercepted it, turning around, thus making Elio blush deeply.
This was getting surreal – I felt him near when I could swear there was no one around. After my affair with Chiara, having no clear excuse for my absence every evening and every night, except for poker two or three times a week, I got used to sitting in a secluded place I discovered accidentally by the sea; the even whisper of waves and the sky full of stars above my head plunged me into a kind of meditative trance. But even this proven means began to fail more and more often. I saw Elio’s look even there, and I used to turn around inadvertently and gaze into the darkness of the night, as if someone was calling me by the name. The road through the field, the balcony that shielded our small world, my room, even my bed – nothing could guarantee safety to me anymore.
The smell of his skin, his hair invaded my dreams mercilessly, bringing the scary reality into them, and I jumped up in the middle of the night, my heart rushing, in unpleasantly sticky trunks. I asked Mafalda several times to change the bed sheets, saying that I was sweating too much because of the night stuffiness, but it didn’t help much. This went on until I realized that the pillows in which I used to bury my face, the mattress and the blanket absorbed his scent deeply. It could be that even walls and curtains on the window were to blame. It was the aroma of summer Italy itself, with its red ground, dizzying night flowers, pines, sea and citronella candles. Since then, I was destined to inevitable capitulation.
The instinct of self-preservation at times can cast a shadow upon the most pleasant moments and put an end to unseemly intentions. Elio slept in the next room, and the glass balcony door was always open. I could have enjoyed contemplating him a thousand times, watching him spread on the bed right in his shorts, or abuse the trust slightly, stoking the tousled top of his head, touching his cheek, his chest…
However, whom was I trying to deceive? I wasn’t attracted by such manifestations of sympathy. I would prefer to undress him, seeing my act only as caring; it is uncomfortable to sleep dressed. I wouldn’t have risked anything; he wouldn’t mind, I knew it for sure from now on. I could have embraced him, covered the line along his collarbones with kisses from the neck to the shoulder, caressed his flexible back, made him moan and beg me silently for more, until he gave up and gave himself to me.
Did I only want to possess him? I already couldn’t answer confidently, as I was perfectly aware that I was drowning deeper and deeper every day. I was fighting the irrational fear, gathering all my resources, searching and finding multiple reasons why we couldn’t be together, starting with the anger of the professor or signora Annella and ending with the fact that he would turn away from me after trying and realizing that the reality is way too far from the imagination.
What did Elio actually know about men who wanted each other? Was he really ready to touch another man’s penis with his hand or lips? Was he able to imagine what could follow? Did he know how hurtful could be the rude word that people might call him?
Maybe he simply had not yet understood that to test one’s own desires in such a way meant to go for a trick, to try and get what you wanted without admitting to yourself that you wanted exactly that. I wasn’t thrilled by the idea of becoming a training field for experiments with someone else’s sexuality.
The need to watch myself wore me down more and more each day. I felt that I was saved by his indecision, that he would rather die than call spade a spade. I flattered myself that the things would stay as they were till I left the villa.