by Umberto Saba
“So where do you want us to be alone?” whispered Ernesto, though his daring had begun to fade.
“Tonight, out in the country. I know a place.”
“I can’t,” said the boy.
“Why, you go to bed early?”
“I wish! I’m practically asleep on my feet by the time I get home, but I’ve got to go to night school.”
“You can’t skip once?”
“I can’t, my mother walks me there.”
“She’s afraid you won’t go?”
“Not that. She knows I don’t lie to her. It’s an excuse for her to get out and get some exercise. She wants me to take stenography and German. She’s always saying you can’t go far in the world if you don’t know German. Anyway, I’d be a little scared to be out in the country.”
“Scared of me?”
“No, not you.”
“Then what? My clothes? If you’d be ashamed I could wear my Sunday stuff.”
“Someone could come by and see us.”
“No way in the place I know.”
“Well, I’d be scared anyway. Why not here in the warehouse?”
“There’s always people around. It won’t work,” he said (though he knew that Ernesto had keys to the warehouse). “If the two of us came out of here together after closing, it would look real suspicious. Worse, the boss lives right across the street. And you know that wife of his is worse than him. She’s always looking out the window.”
“Can’t we fake an excuse? Make believe we forgot something? When I’ve got a lot of work to do, I come back in at two, right after lunch. I don’t wait for the boss to come in at three. That’s why he gave me the key. Sometimes I’m alone for more than an hour. And you can always say—Hey, here comes the cart!”
First the heads, then the bodies of two sturdy draft horses appeared in the open doorway. The cart followed, then the carter standing up with the reins and whip in his hands. But even before the horses obeyed his order to stop, a large, heavy man who was to help with the unloading leaped down from the sacks upon which he had been seated cross-legged like a Turk and called out drunkenly to Ernesto’s friend.
“We’ll talk later,” the man said hurriedly and gruffly. Replacing the kerchief he had removed from his head while talking to Ernesto, he headed toward the exhausting task awaiting him. His legs trembled slightly as he walked.
After the two men had unloaded the sacks (not without the fat man’s curses and insults), and after Ernesto had completed the work of listing and marking every one of them, Cesco (the fat one), who with all his beggary and bitching must have drunk more than usual that day, started a furious argument with the boss. Ernesto’s friend, however, wasn’t in the mood to argue with anyone. There was only one thing he wanted to do: get to a fry house, gulp down everything they put on his plate, then go home, get into bed, and think. What had happened, or, rather, what was going to happen with Ernesto, was something he’d been dreaming of for months (from the first moment he’d seen him) and he was (if one can ever make such a claim) happy. But his happiness was not untinged by fear—that the boy might have regrets beforehand, feel insulted afterward, or be dumb enough to go around talking about it. But he always accepted whatever payment the boss offered without batting an eye when Ernesto had come looking for him in the piazza. In fact, to his mind, that little bit of money had become much more, because it was Ernesto who was relaying (not setting) the amount. But the fat man didn’t have any such reason not to gripe about money. Moreover he was drunk. The boss, a Hungarian Jew—much enamored of Germany, where he said he had studied and lived for a number of years—was defending himself in dreadful Italian, which gave away his foreign birth. It was an Italian that didn’t merely offend Ernesto, who in addition to being a Socialist was staunchly pro-Italian; it downright pained him. As a child he had read biographies of Garibaldi and of Victor Emmanuel II, the only books in his home, forgotten there by his uncle. What irritated Ernesto most was the word “Germany,” which the boss mispronounced as “Chermany” and which he used frequently (in fact, as often as possible) in order to praise the (unique) virtues of its people. However, Cesco’s violent threats, which the man, as co-worker, was obligated to support, finally prevailed over the boss’s miserliness, which I can’t say had violated any law (there were no laws in those days to protect workers, much less day laborers), although it did violate the accepted practices of the piazza. Grudgingly, he agreed to an increase. That day and from then on, instead of being paid three florins, the two men would be paid four florins to be divided equally between them. It was the amount Ernesto’s friend had wanted, and he immediately turned to leave when the boss called him back to tell him that he needed him to work the next day. He hired him for the entire afternoon. In fact, because it wasn’t possible to deliver the sacks to their destination before three o’clock and many were leaking and required repair, he told him to come in an hour before opening time. He would pay him, he added (though through clenched teeth), for the extra time. Then the very distrustful Signor Wilder, who never assigned a laborer to work in the warehouse without Ernesto’s supervision, turned to the boy to tell him that he too would have to be at work earlier the following day. It was fate speaking (in Signor Wilder’s voice) in a way that was as unexpected as it was peremptory. The man and boy turned away immediately, not daring to look at each other. But something flashed in the man’s eyes and one could see him swallow softly. He left quickly, barely saying goodbye. The boy turned back to his correspondence. But his thoughts too were elsewhere.
“We’re alone today,” the man said, when he realized that Ernesto wasn’t going to say anything. He had taken the needle and thread he used for his work out of a bag he always had with him, but rather than concentrating on his work, he’d been awaiting encouragement from the boy—some word about their conversation of the previous day. However, as we noted, Ernesto had remained silent. He was standing nearby (perhaps closer than usual) with his head lowered, twisting the tag attached to the top of a sack. He twisted it so tightly that it broke off and ended up in his hands, whereupon he tore it into tiny pieces and tossed them aside.
“Alone,” he said, finally. “Alone for an hour.”
“There’s a lot of things you can do in an hour,” the man said urgently.
“And what do you want to do?”
“Don’t you remember what we were talking about yesterday? That you almost promised to do. Don’t you know what I’d like to do with you?”
“Yeah, put it up my ass,” Ernesto replied with quiet innocence.
The man was somewhat shocked by the crude expression which, more than anything else, surprised him coming from a boy like Ernesto. Shocked, and even frightened. He was sure that the lousy kid, already regretting his halfhearted consent, was taunting him. Worse, that he’d told someone about it or, beyond the worst, that he’d told his mother.
But that wasn’t the case. With that brief, precise utterance, the boy unwittingly revealed what many years later, after many experiences and much suffering, would become his “style”; his going to the heart of things; to the red-hot center of life, overriding resistance and inhibitions, foregoing circumlocutions and useless word twistings. He dealt with matters considered coarse, vulgar (even forbidden) and those considered “exalted” just as Nature does—placing them all on the same level. Of course, he wasn’t thinking of any of that now. He had blurted the sentence (which practically had a laborer blushing) because the circumstances warranted it. He wanted to please his friend, to serve his pleasure, and to experience a new sensation, wanted it precisely for its novelty and strangeness. At the same time, he feared it might be painful. That’s what was troubling him at the moment.
“Is it really that good?” he asked.
“The best in the whole world.”
“For you maybe, but for me. . . .”
“For you, too. Didn’t you ever do it with a man?”
“Me? Never! Did you with other boys?”
“Lots of them. But n
o one as good-looking as you.” He reached out to touch the boy’s cheek, but Ernesto turned his face away, escaping the caress.
“And what did they say?”
“They didn’t say anything. They were happy. Some of them even asked me for it.”
Ernesto looked down at the part of the man’s body that was visibly excited.
“Let me see it,” he said.
“Sure,” said the man. But as he was preparing to satisfy both Ernesto and himself, the boy stopped him.
“I’d like to take it out. Can I?”
“Absolutely.”
Ernesto would have liked to act out this whim on his own, but his objective was so enveloped in the folds of the man’s shirt, that the man had to help him.
“It’s big,” he said, both frightened and amused. “It’s twice the size of mine.”
“That’s because you’re young. Wait until you’re as old as me. Then—” The boy had just put out his hand when the man stopped him. “No, not with your hand,” he said, “or you’ll make me come.”
“Isn’t that what you want?”
“Yeah, but not with your hand.”
“Oh.” Ernesto withdrew his hand, as if from a forbidden thing. The man was slowly moving closer to him.
“I’m scared,” Ernesto said.
“Of what? Don’t you know I love you?”
“I believe you, otherwise. . . . But I’m afraid that you’ll hurt me just the same.”
“Me hurt you?” The man smiled. “I know how to take care of a boy who’s doing it for the first time. You especially.”
“You’re not going to put the whole thing in?”
“You crazy?” The man smiled. “It’s gonna be a nothing, just the tip.”
“Sure, you say that now. But later when you get carried away. . . .”
“You’re so adorable,” the man thought, and vowed to himself not to hurt the boy in the slightest, even at the price of his own pleasure. “I’d cut it off myself, rather than hurt you,” he said, and tried once again to kiss Ernesto, who as before escaped the embrace.
“So bend over now,” he pleaded. “If you don’t, our time will be up and we won’t have gotten anything done.”
“So you want to get something done?” Ernesto laughed.
“You want to, too. Aren’t we here for that? As long as,” he added in a hurried whisper, “you’re not sorry afterward.”
“I already told you I won’t be. But how about a deal?”
“What kind of deal?” asked the man, who had no idea what Ernesto could want. If he weren’t a poor man and the boy weren’t (as least, to his mind) wealthy, he would have feared he wanted money, which would have ruined everything.
“You have to swear that if I stay stop, you’ll stop. And right then, at that moment.”
“I’m sure you won’t have to say stop. But I promise just the same.”
“It’s not enough to promise. You have to swear!”
The man laughed. “On what do you want me to swear?”
“Don’t laugh. Then you’ve got to give me your word of honor.” And the boy extended his hand as if to seal a contract.
The man shook it.
“No matter when, and immediately?”
“No matter when, and immediately,” the man repeated.
Ernesto looked calmer. “Then,” he hesitated, “okay, if you really want to. . . .”
“God bless you. And now take off your jacket”—the man had already removed his—“then drop your pants.”
“You too,” said Ernesto.
“Sure.” And as the man began to do so, Ernesto had another idea.
“You take mine off,” he said, “and I’ll take yours off. Okay?”
The man agreed.
“And now,” asked Ernesto, “where do you want me to go?”
“There,” the man said, and pointed to a low pile of sacks, at the top of which was the one whose label Ernesto, in his consternation, had ripped off and torn to pieces. They were medium-size sacks containing flour marked with a double zero, the whitest and finest in commercial use, and so expensive that few bakers purchased them. The sacks were piled to almost Ernesto’s height under an arch in an out-of-the-way section of the warehouse where no eyes, except perhaps God’s, could see them.
Ernesto did as his friend asked. He bent his upper body forward over the sacks. The man leaned forward over him and slowly lifted the shirt, which the boy, perhaps with unconscious coquetry, more likely because of the confusion of emotions overwhelming him, had forgotten to remove. (It was the last protection, the last curtain between himself and the irrevocable.) Both the man and the boy were trembling.
The man caressed the part of Ernesto’s body that he had slowly exposed, but just briefly, fearing the boy’s impatience. Similarly, he withheld the words of tenderness, admiration, and gratitude that were rising from his heart, words that Ernesto would have difficulty understanding, that he might not even hear. Instead, he said something vulgar, almost a response to the boy’s earlier remark that had caused him to blush.
Ernesto didn’t answer. Filled with curiosity and fear, he couldn’t have spoken even if he’d wanted to. And then, what was there to say? He heard the man asking him to change his position a bit, and obeyed the request, as if it were an order. “I’m a goner,” he suddenly thought, yet without regret or desire to turn back. Then he felt a strange, indescribable sensation of heat (not at first without pleasure) as the man found and established contact. Neither of them uttered a word, except for an “Angel” which escaped the man just before coming, and a precautionary “Ow” emitted by the boy when he felt the man pressing a bit too hard. But the man kept his promise. He didn’t (or tried not to) hurt him. For the most part, it all went more easily and lasted less time than Ernesto had imagined. When the man had withdrawn, he asked the boy to remain still for another moment. “What else can he want to do with me,” Ernesto wondered, but felt relieved when he saw the man take a handkerchief from his pocket. All he wanted to do (either as a courtesy, or to remove any traces) was to wipe him clean. At that moment Ernesto felt like a child—a confused, disoriented child.
“You were good, good as gold,” said the man when he and the boy had dressed again and dusted the flour off themselves.
Though Ernesto frowned, he enjoyed the praise.
“Was it good for you?” he asked.
“I was in paradise. But you liked it, too, say so.”
“Not that much! A little at the beginning, then it began to hurt. I even shouted.”
“You shouted?”
“Didn’t you hear when I said ‘Ow’? And why did you call me an angel?”
“What else should I call you?”
“Angels don’t do that kind of thing,” Ernesto replied sternly. “They don’t even have bodies.”
“We came at the same time,” the man said.
“How do you know?”
“I felt you coming, you can always feel that kind of thing. Anyway, look over there.”
“Where?” Ernesto asked, frightened.
The man pointed to a stain on the double-zero flour sack, the very one whose tag Ernesto had ripped off, and over which he had bent.
Ernesto looked, and felt sickened.
“It shows,” he said. “We’ll have to turn it over. Want to do it now?”
“Who’s gonna know what it is?” the man said. “But if you really want me to, I’ll do it later.”
There was a silence, a fairly long uncomfortable silence. The man seemed to be thoughtful, almost worried.
“What are you thinking?” Ernesto asked, disturbed.
“That I’ve got to say something I don’t really want to say. Maybe I should have said it before. You won’t tell anyone what we’ve done?”
“Who do you think I’d tell? I’m not that dumb. I know what you can and what you can’t tell.”
The man seemed relieved. But the worst was still unsaid.
“It’s a risky business, you know
. People don’t understand, and you can—you can even go to jail.”
“I know that, too,” Ernesto replied triumphantly. “I read in the paper about two guys like us, a man and kid, they got caught in a bathhouse. The headline was ‘Aftermath of a Swim.’ The kid got four months, the man got six. Wotten!” he concluded, slurring the r for some unknown reason.
“And when that happens,” the man blurted, laying it on thicker, “there’s nothing to do but drown yourself for the shame.” Then he felt sorry for tormenting the boy.
“Don’t worry,” the boy reassured him. “As long as we don’t get caught like those two idiots. It was the attendant—he thought they’d left, but when he opened the door he found them in the act. Instead of keeping his mouth shut, the dimwit screamed like hell. You didn’t notice, but I made damn sure you bolted the door.”
Ernesto smiled, but the man remained thoughtful, almost sad.
“Anyway,” said Ernesto, “it’s something else that’s bothering me.”
“What?” the man asked anxiously.
“How am I going to look at my mother tonight?”
“Like you do every night,” the man answered, hiding his agitation. “If she doesn’t know anything, it’s as if nothing happened.”
“But I know it did,” Ernesto replied seriously. “And I have to go to school. On the way she’ll ask me about everything that happened during the day. My mother’s real nosy—she always wants to know everything.”
“Women are nosy,” the man replied. “But you can’t say a word, and I mean not one word about what happened between us. Maybe she’d forgive you, but never me. . . . And don’t think you’re the only kid who did what you did today. But I asked you to, for love, because I really love you. You’re not the same kind of boy like the ones you take on once and then dump. I think of you like you’re an angel. That’s another reason I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”
“Okay,” Ernesto replied. Then after a brief silence, he asked, “How many boys do you think have done what I did today?”
“What do you mean how many boys?”
“Well, take a hundred, how many of them would’ve done it?”