by André Aciman
“I can’t wait to see it, Nanni.”
I wanted to come back on the morrow and work with him, sit face-to-face with him as we’d done today, and occasionally draw closer to him to get a whiff of his underarms, which smelled like mine but much, much stronger. I liked that he wasn’t wearing a shirt, just an apron, with his chest ever so visible. I could look at the rest of him all I wanted now without worrying about his eyes or not being able to hold his gaze. I just didn’t want him to know I was staring.
Neither of us stopped working until it got dark that day. His eyes were tired, the two of us had worked really well, he said. Let me see your hands, he added. Tentatively, I put out my two hands, palms up. He held both my hands and, squinting, inspected them. Did it burn? he asked, wondering if the light coat of acid had touched my hand. “I don’t think so,” I said, almost breathless from knowing that at this very moment my two hands were now resting in both of his, exactly as I’d wished a few weeks before. Maybe here, I said, pointing to two fingers on my left hand, but I knew I was making it up. He held the fingers to the poor light in the shop, inspected them, and said it was nothing, just dirt. Here, use this, he said, producing a rag which he dunked in some paint thinner. I looked at the rag. What was I to do with it, I motioned, as though I had no idea what one did with a rag dunked in paint thinner.
“You scrub the stain off with it, for God’s sake. You patricians are all alike! Here, let me show you.” He took the rag in his right hand and grabbed my two hands in his left hand as a grown-up would do with a child’s, and scrubbed them clean. I loved the smell. From now on I would smell of my friend’s shop, of his world, of his body, of his life.
“Now, go home.”
I rushed downhill and watched the town grow dark after sunset. I was happy. It was the first time that I watched the view without my father, and I loved it both for itself and for being alone so late. It was on one of those early evenings that I discovered my “shortcut” by the abandoned Norman chapel and the lime shrubs. The chapel had no roof, no altar, nothing, just a plinth sitting on wild, abundant yellow growth. Here, I decided, I’d sit every evening and think of Nanni and me.
When I got home, I did not tell my mother where I’d been, nor did she ask. I took off my clothes and washed my hands and my arms with Mother’s scented soap to remove or, at best, cover up the smell of turpentine.
But in case my parents asked, I had already rehearsed an excuse: I’d spent the afternoon with another student I’d met at my tutor’s. No, not bright at all, I’d add, trying to look bored by the subject. The only thing we had in common was failing our Latin and Greek exam. But should they bring up the desk, the frames, the living room, the inhabitants of the island, or Nanni himself, I’d mention something about him that might throw them off the scent. “What was that?” asked my father, when indeed the three of us were having dinner and the conversation drifted to Nanni’s work on the desk. “Has either of you noticed how his hand shakes?” And to push the point, I made light of the tremor by mimicking the way he’d pointed at the keyhole with a trembling forefinger the first time I’d met him. “Maybe he drinks too much coffee or smokes a lot, or just drinks,” added my mother. “Who knows what his sort does.”
“Who, Tarzan? Never,” threw in my father.
“How about alcohol?”
“Of course he drinks, but he is no alcoholic.”
I could easily have told my parents that I’d never seen him drink coffee or touch a cigarette, but they’d ask how I could possibly know, and then I’d have to spill everything. The irony is that Nanni’s hands did not tremble at all; I had made the whole thing up. Perhaps I had spoken about his hands, hoping Mother would have something good to say about him, because when it came to him, I had run out of new things to think about.
* * *
I RETURNED TO his shop two days later, and rather than wait for him to tell me what to do, I placed my books under the table, put on the apron, and helped myself to some lemonade. He asked me to take a good look at the frame we’d cleaned the other day. I saw, once he lifted it from the wall and brought it to the light, that it was a masterpiece. “Nanni!” I gasped.
“It’s not finished,” meaning, no need to get too excited yet.
He was going to add another layer of oil, he said. I thought he’d do it with a brush. He shook his head. If I wanted, he said, I could help. He knew I’d ask for nothing better. He took out a rag, folded it into a thick wad, dunked it in a thick, clear liquid, and proceeded to dab it lightly on the frame and then to daub the wood with long, measured, fluid sweeps. Here, you try, he said, handing me the cloth. But my gestures were too jerky and brusque. “Look at me.” He extended his arm in slow, deliberate, confident motions, putting his whole heart in each sweep no differently and no less devotedly than if he were sliding a long, slow bow across violin strings or washing the back of a wounded soldier lying on a gurney, washing and scrubbing, gently and softly. His hand followed the grain in the wood, and the smell of his shop and of his underarms was, like incense, wholesome and good, because one had to be selfless and unsparing in one’s work, he said, and there was piety in his gesture, and everything about him told you he was honest, humble, and good. We could not oil the wood sitting down. Instead, the two of us stood around the frame, I dabbing then sliding the cloth at one end, as he had shown me, he at the other. When he caught me working too hastily, he asked me to slow down. Con calma, calmly. It was hot in the shop, we sweated. I was happy.
“Let’s let it dry for now,” he said afterward.
He said he would show me how to work on the desk. Meanwhile, I would be the one to work on the box, he said, tutto da solo, all by yourself.
As some point, a fly landed on my face and was crawling on my cheek. It itched and I wanted to scratch the spot, but then in an effort to flick it away I ended up damping my cheek with the rag dunked in linseed oil. Not to worry, he said. He folded another rag, added the slightest drop of thinner on it, brought it to my face, and with one finger pressing under the rag itself, dabbed the spot on my cheek with cautious, tentative, timid taps that told me he was trying not to let the thinner burn. I loved how he touched my face, cared for my face; there was far more friendship and kindness in this man’s tiny gesture than in anyone related to me by blood. I wished it had been his whole palm that had touched my face and had made the burning go away. “Don’t move,” he said as he dabbed the spot again. “I said don’t move.” I didn’t move. I could now feel his breath, he was going to kiss me. He brought his finger to his mouth, put some spit on its tip, and applied it to the spot of my cheek. I would have done anything he asked at that moment. “Just another touch, be patient, it won’t burn,” he had said, and I trusted him, and I liked trusting him, and my mother’s warning didn’t for a second matter to me, because what coursed through my mind at that very moment was that instead of rubbing my cheek with that rag he should have rubbed my cock ever so gently with it, and if it burned, as I knew it would, so be it, so long as I let him hold it in the palm of his hand as he’d done with both my hands the other day. I could feel the burning begin to spread on my cheek and intensify, and it hurt, but I didn’t mind, because he had said it wouldn’t hurt, and I wanted him to know that I trusted him, trusted everything, that I didn’t mind when he dabbed his spit again on my face, because I didn’t mind, didn’t mind, because it was my fault if it burned, not his, not ever his. When he patted my cheek with the palm of his hand, without thinking I leaned into it and let the side of my face rest on it. But I did it discreetly. He didn’t notice.
“Wasn’t so bad now, was it?” he said, tapping my cheek again and smiling. An old pockmarked mirror with multiple tain stains revealed a reddish blotch on my cheek.
“Back to work,” he said.
Nearing sundown, he threw me a rag to clean my hands with. He threw it the way our swimming instructor at school used to fling towels at each of us as soon as we got out of the pool.
There was peace and such l
ongevity in those afternoon hours after my tutorial. Pastry, lemonade, and the small box, which had become my project and mine only, while he looked over my shoulders and kept an eye on my progress. You could keep doing this as his forefathers had done, day in and day out, hour after hour, year after year. We make assumptions about how our lives are being charted without knowing that we’re even making these assumptions—which is the beauty of assumptions: they anchor us without the slightest clue that what we’re doing is trusting that nothing changes. We believe that the street we live on will remain the same and bear its name forever. We believe that our friends will stay our friends, and that those we love we’ll love forever. We trust and, by dint of trusting, forget we trusted.
A few days later, I almost ran into my mother as she was walking down Sant’Eusebio. I immediately ducked into the tiny bookstore, hoping that if she walked in, she’d see me trying to decide what novel to purchase. No sooner had I made certain that she was farther down the street than I headed to Nanni’s. He was busy putting back our desk in its corner. She had dropped in for another one of her spot inspections.
He told me right away to come in. “Oggi non si scherza, no joking today,” he said. I put on my dirty apron as I was in the habit of doing and waited for my orders. But then I saw that the small box, which I’d thought was entirely mine to work on, had been resanded, presumably by his younger brother. Obviously he didn’t like the way I’d primed it and had asked his brother to undo my work. But I was wrong. “Today you’ll watch what I do with the desk. Then you’ll do exactly the same with the box. First we need to find some stain. I like to start with the corner, so you’ll start with a corner too.”
I did everything he asked and copied every move he performed on the desk, using the same products.
I stained and kept staining as he showed me, slowly, smoothly, sedulously. We seldom talked when we worked, although occasionally we’d discuss soccer teams. I don’t think we even thought about anything while working. We just worked. When we were finished for the day, he had me stand facing him, placed a hand on my shoulder, and inspected my face. I was fine. No blotches anywhere. “You worked well.”
“And you too worked well,” I said, sensing that this was something said among workers after a long day’s work.
He nodded. A moment of silence followed. “So, tell me, was my hand shaking today?”
I must have given him the most petrified look while attempting a blank, baffled, uncomprehending stare. I’m sure he noticed.
“Paolo, scherzavo, I was joking,” he said, obviously trying to remedy my shock. I believed him. But the ground had shaken under me.
On my way home, I stopped by the Norman chapel and sat on my plinth and looked out to the sea toward the lights on the mainland as I liked to do just before twilight after work. Except that this time I felt as though I’d been carved open in one of those old anatomical theaters while my heart was still pounding and my lungs still breathing and every organ in my abdomen laid bare to a multitude of snickering young medical students.
I had filched a piece of a damp rag from Nanni’s shop and had snuck it into the paper bag I’d brought from the baker’s that day. I took it out and then unbuttoned and pulled down my shorts. I liked being stripped and exposed, as though this is what I’d been meaning to do for hours. I wanted him to see me naked. With the rag in one hand I dabbed my cock once with it. But feeling nothing save a mild tingling, I dabbed it a second time. Then I began to feel it. It was hot at first, and it thrilled me, because I felt as though something other than my hand was touching me, but then it began to burn, and to burn more and, without relenting, even more. I began to panic, because it hurt, and though part of me wanted it to hurt and liked that it hurt, I feared that the burning might never go away, that my cock would always burn, in my sleep, or when I bathed, or when I sat in our dining room with my parents, or when I dropped into Nanni’s shop. I began to be horrified by what I had done to myself. Perché, ma perché, I groaned out, thinking that this was his voice speaking to me and that if he knew what I’d just done to myself, he would have shown up in this vacant little chapel within seconds and held me in the palm of his hand to make the burning go away. And I thought of his spit, and how the spit had eased the burning, and, because I didn’t know anything else, all I could do was break down and say, Ma che cosa ti sei fatto? What did you do to yourself? And just hearing his voice say these words as I spoke them out loud tightened my throat and made it impossible to breathe until I burst out sobbing. I had never felt so sorry for myself.
I thought I was crying because of the pain or because I was starting to panic. But I knew that there was another reason, though I couldn’t fathom the reason or why it had brought me to tears. There was sorrow in the chapel and in my heart and across the water toward the mainland and more sorrow in my body, because I didn’t know my body and the very simple thing I needed at the moment. And I thought of the years ahead of me and knew that this was never going to go away, that even if the burning subsided and wore itself off, I would never live down the shame or ever forgive myself or him for making me do this. I would sit on this very same spot in the years to come and remember that never in my life had I known the sort of loneliness that you can actually touch on your body. I threw the rag on the ground and before entering the house made sure to wash my hand, arms, and knees, using the gardener’s faucet and his dirty bar of soap.
* * *
AFTER MY TUTORIAL a few days later, I went to his shop and for the first time found the door shut. When I knocked, all I heard was the glass panels rattling against the old wooden door. He was never not there, I thought, so he had to be inside. I began to pull the bell. Its hollow chime told me that it was pointless to insist, but I pulled and made more noise, heedless of what those in the vicinity might say, totally persuaded that he’d materialize at some point. It was Alessi, the barber, who finally stepped out of his shop, and standing on the lane, he shouted, “Can’t you see no one’s there?” I was angry, crushed, humiliated. I could still hear the tinnitus of the bell in my head as I stomped down the cobbled lane on my way home. Why had he let me down, why had I trusted, why had I even gone there in the first place? I had no idea what had happened to him, or where he was, or why he wouldn’t open the door. I should never have allowed myself to take his friendship for granted—what friendship?
I fell prey to the same paralyzing sense of panic I had known earlier that year on parents’ day at school when I knew that my teachers’ report was not going to go over well. I should never have trusted him so blindly. He wasn’t my friend, was never going to be. I should have known, should have found friends my age.
To make matters worse, it started to rain, the water pelting my head as I saw the lights of our home in the distance and knew that by the time I reached our porch, I would be soaking. No Norman chapel today. Serves me right. I must never trust anyone, won’t ever seek anyone out again, never. I had only one friend on this planet, my father, and even then, I wouldn’t know what to tell him. Tell him what? That I felt totally awkward, that I was hurt, that I wished to hate Nanni, that we should never hire him again, that Nanni was no better than the ruffians who hung outside Caffè dell’Ulivo at night and talked dirty or made obscene sounds when a woman passed by?
But before pushing open our door all the way, I spotted our cylinder desk sitting in the entrance and next to it the two picture frames leaning half wrapped against the wall. Then I heard Nanni’s voice. I was in heaven. He was standing with my mother, trying to help her find an appropriate spot for the desk. They had turned on the lights, which made it seem far later in the day than it actually was. He was discussing the damage done to furniture by sunlight, which is why, he said, she should keep the desk away from the large balcony window. She listened, quietly and softly caressing the wood as though she needed to touch it to believe it but also feared she’d disturb it. I too was startled by the desk’s brilliance. What made me happier yet was the thought that while I was pul
ling his bell ever so feverishly that afternoon, all he was doing was standing in our living room talking to my parents, showing off his work.
I told them that I was running upstairs to change, took everything off, left all my wet clothes on the floor, and came right downstairs in my bathrobe and stood in the doorway, thinking, I worship this man.
“I also took the liberty of using a new product on the bronze to bring out its gloss,” he explained. He had never told me that he’d done this. My mother said she hadn’t noticed the bronze, but, yes, he was right, even the bronze keyholes he had tinkered with that very first time had acquired an unmistakable gloss. He explained how he had replaced the keyhole on one of the drawers, because at some point, who knows when, someone had replaced it with one that did not match the design, which meant he had to replace the key as well. “Probably my crazy great-uncle Federico,” he said. Then he described the design on the keyhole on the desk and pointed at its quatrefoil pattern. I saw his hands as I’d seen them the first time weeks earlier in this very room. They hadn’t changed. Even with sandpaper and who knows how many years of resin, paint thinner, lacquer, and acid, they were kind and ever so smooth to the touch, as I’d felt when he helped remove the stain from my cheek, when he rubbed my hair with his palm when I said I didn’t need an apron, when he held both my hands in one of his and began to clean them. I remembered his bare chest under the apron.
Then my mother asked, “And the small box?”
“The small box,” repeated Nanni, suddenly taking his time. “That’s a real gem.” He removed the drawers as he’d done that first day, but this time the drawers slipped out smoothly, without friction or sound. He reached into the desk and pulled out the box. I hadn’t seen it in days and had no idea it would look so finished, so radiant.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked.
“You’re a miracle worker.”