by Andrés Barba
It started to rain, as if even the sky were trying to make his crime more obvious, and he dialed the number again.
“Yes?”
“Hello, I was calling because . . . I read your ad.”
“Did you call a minute ago?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I was afraid.”
He woke up that morning and went into the living room. There was the glass that Roberto had drunk from, the butts of the cigarettes he had smoked, the indentation his weight had left on the sofa. He smiled, recalling how enthusiastically he had tasted that fine, old cognac that was reserved for special occasions, his shock at learning how much a bottle of it cost.
“That’s more than I earn in four days,” Roberto said, looking through the glass at the ochre liquid, and he sniffed it again, and tasted it again, barely moistening his lips, and smiled again with that mixture of nervousness and strange happiness that shone in his eyes all night.
While they were on the phone, after his admission of fear, Roberto had asked him how old he was and he had said fifty. He could pass for fifty. People always said he didn’t look his age.
“I’m twenty-one,” Roberto had said, almost apologetic.
The silence that followed almost made him hang up because he assumed Roberto was disappointed by his age, that he was looking for a younger man, that it wouldn’t be long before he found an excuse to reject him. But Roberto didn’t reject him.
“Do you still want to meet up?”
“Of course,” he replied. “But . . . now?”
“Why not?”
They met in a plaza that Roberto said was close to his house. He drove there before the appointed time and waited in the car, with the lights out. He saw the boy arrive, light a cigarette, button the top button of his jacket when it started to rain again, take refuge under one of the plaza’s arcades. His slenderness, the straight hair falling over his ears, held a strange beauty. He wasn’t handsome, but he was definitely attractive and he thought that he would like to dress like that, like Roberto, and to be twenty and to walk up from behind and scare him, walk down the street holding hands with him. The few people who were still out at that time of night had something in common in their coats, their shoes, the color of their eyes. He was the only one who seemed different. By the way he was dressed one might have guessed he was homeless, and yet he thought he looked like the whole world belonged to him: the street, the cars, even the people passing by. He got out of the car and walked towards him. Roberto had been staring at him since he closed the car door.
“Hi,” he said, with something approaching a smile.
“Hi. Disappointed?” he asked.
“No. Are you?”
“No.”
On the way back to the apartment Roberto stared at him from the passenger’s seat, grinning the whole way. Their excitement was contagious, and neither of them could sit still. Roberto rolled down the window and he did the same. He felt the fresh air on his face, like a lovely awakening. What would come next? What was it about that street, within it, that gave it a strange, different life, one that went beyond just being there, leading somewhere? The night filled with trees when they held hands after getting out of the car, and when they rode up in the elevator, and when they walked into the apartment.
“I love your house,” said Roberto.
“Thank you.”
Roberto seemed encouraged by his good mood and laughter, which was actually just a nervous reaction. What was he supposed to do now? Kiss him? Offer him a drink? While he was getting the cognac, Roberto told him that he worked in a Laundromat during the day and then at a bar until ten. The money wasn’t great, but it was enough to rent his own apartment. He handed him the cognac, sat down beside him on the sofa and stroked his hair. Roberto looked down, picked up his glass, and moistened his lips. He was so seduced by that artless discomfort that he waited patiently for Roberto to look up at him again as he stroked his hair, tucking it back behind his ears. When he did, Roberto’s eyes were riveted and serious, concentrated on not missing a single movement of his pupils. He leaned in towards him slowly. They kissed. Roberto’s lips were thin and tasted vaguely of cognac. He closed his eyes and put a hand on his back, simulating an embrace he didn’t quite dare to carry out. He couldn’t recall ever having kissed anyone so carefully. When he looked at him again, the boy raised his eyes once more, smiling. The hand that had been on his back now reached for the glass, brought it to his lips. Roberto took it out of his hand and set it on the table and kissed him again. His lips were half-parted, his tongue ventured tentatively, and he held him and stroked his hair as he let himself be kissed. He thought the next step was logical: he reached for Roberto’s zipper to undo it and noted the boy’s excitement as he did. Immediately, Roberto stopped him.
“Not so soon . . . We just met. Remember?”
He didn’t know what to say.
“If we do it tonight I’m going to feel very bad about myself in the morning. You don’t want me to feel bad about myself, do you?”
The question had a childish, almost virginal, tone.
“No.”
“I’m sure you understand.”
“Of course I do, that’s fine, I’m sorry,” he said, pulling away a little.
“Once I did it with a guy the first night and he never called me again.”
That twenty-one-year-old boy’s body, without having been seen, took on a more powerful intensity and what had seemed a ridiculous, juvenile modesty less than five minutes ago suddenly squared in his mind with mathematical clarity and precision; the wait was essential, and pleasant, and just.
“I like the way you touch me, though.”
Roberto curled up in his arms, tucking his feet beneath him on the sofa, and leaned on his shoulder. His hair was still wet from the rain; his thinness, his little nose, the arm around his waist gave him the appearance of a wet, shivering cat. He felt surprisingly justified in protecting him.
The Coca-Cola sign flashed on and off, as did the Christmas lights, but at twelve o’clock that night, when he headed towards his usual bar, the light lent the memory of Roberto the unreal quality typical of all things nocturnal. Nevertheless, when he had gotten up that morning, the glass Roberto had drunk from was still on the table, next to a pack of cigarettes he had left behind and a lighter that said Laundromat; the imprint of his body on the cushions had not yet been erased.
They saw each other again that night, and the next, and the next. The third time Roberto came over, he gave him a copy of his apartment key. They just sat and talked about anything. He had bought some modern music that he thought Roberto might like and he put it on when the boy arrived, pretending that it was what he listened to all the time.
“You don’t like this music,” Roberto said, after three songs.
“How do you know?”
“It’s written all over your face.”
“But don’t you like it?”
“I do, yeah, but there’s no reason you have to like everything I like.”
Without saying anything, he felt ashamed at some of their recent conversations. The fear of upsetting Roberto had led him to feign enthusiasm for childish things a couple of times and when he did, he had feared that Roberto would be able to tell.
“Put on the music you listen to when you’re alone,” Roberto proposed.
“When I’m alone I listen to Chopin.”
“Then put that on.”
The nocturnes flowed through the house like an exquisite lie over dinner.
“Isn’t it beautiful?”
“Very. I’ve never listened to Chopin. What is this called?”
“These are the nocturnes.”
It wasn’t hard to impress Roberto, talking about the bank and the stock market, but he soon stopped doing it because he feared the admiration would turn into some sort of perpetual self-praise. What he most loved about those nights was the way they yielded to silence, the way he would co
me up and kiss him in the middle of a conversation, his silent, slender, almost domestic character, walking to the bathroom or coming back from the kitchen after going to get another beer. He lacked initiative when it came to love games and yet, he would always win by loving whoever loved him. All of Roberto’s affective sensibilities lay dormant and depended upon his own activity, so when he lightly touched his hand or chin or hair, he had the impression that some instinctual jolt forced him to return twice the kisses and cuddles received. It wasn’t a nervous thing, but a visceral need to be appreciated. If a lull came over the conversation, Roberto would come up to him and rest a head on his shoulder and play with his fingers. That wasn’t nerves, either, just an exploratory kind of tenderness, a means of sounding things out, trying to find the right way. His life, like the lives of compassionate, empathetic people, took the joys and pains of others and made them his own: he felt everything.
“Last night I dreamed you didn’t want to see me anymore, that I came over and your house was full of people and you acted like you didn’t even know me.”
He realized, on those evenings, that what made Roberto have those nightmares wasn’t very different from what made him not want to let the boy go home at night. The speed with which it had all come about, the strange way that they had met, left them naked in a space that had to be invented, one whose laws were the fruit not of deliberation—which did not exist—or normal patterns of behavior, but pure conduct; stroking Roberto’s hair, holding his hand, kissing him, these were not things he did out of convention, or even desire—even if desire was what drove them most urgently—it was the anxiousness to create a habitable space, a hermetic language that couldn’t be understood by anyone else. That feeling, together with Roberto’s habitual silence, tinged those afternoons with a solemn languor.
The fourth night he came over they hardly talked. Roberto sat down beside him without even taking off his coat, undid the button and zipper of his pants and started to stroke him. He didn’t say anything. Roberto moved slowly, looking into his eyes the whole time. He thought there was something deeply sad in the figure of that boy who he was growing to love, like a strange and distant part of himself, and he was afraid he would stop loving him, but he was also afraid that he would stop being loved by him. He caressed Roberto’s cheek and the boy closed his eyes but did not stop masturbating him. Behind his eyelids there must have shone the pleasure of someone who has consciously decided to do something just to make someone else happy. When Roberto had finished, he reciprocated, except that the boy became somewhat tense once he got his belt unbuckled.
“Do you want me to?”
“Yes.”
He convulsed a couple of times and his stomach contracted almost imperceptibly and he came quickly, with almost no stimulation. Then the boy buried his face in his shoulder and it suddenly felt wet.
“Are you crying?”
He tilted his head up, placing a finger under his chin so he could look at him straight on.
“Why are you crying?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, clasping onto his neck, still shaking, like a happy child, impenetrable.
He liked hearing stories about Roberto’s life and when he could tell he was getting ready to tell one (crossing his legs on the sofa, taking a sip from his glass, fanning out his fingers in an explanatory gesture), he felt the pleasure of someone ready to be seduced by a tale normally no more eventful than falling off a bicycle, or an episode of comic embarrassment, or some family anecdote that was made up, the way all family anecdotes are made up. After a week he realized, in shock, that except for having feigned juvenile enthusiasm a couple of times, he had not told a single lie, and if he hadn’t told any lies it was because the whole thing seemed like a lie; from Roberto’s hands to the way his hair fell, from his pants to his recollections of his mother; a lie that the walls of the apartment, the enclosure, made possible.
“I love your house,” Roberto had said the first time he’d walked in the door.
The keepsakes had accumulated within those four walls like a chorus line on a stage, and what at first had been no more than a shabby, unfurnished house had slowly evolved, since he’d bought it twenty years ago, into something functional, and then comfortable. But now, for the first time, he didn’t just feel comfortable among his things, he felt proud of them, because Roberto had admired them. That’s why part of the game of the first few evenings together had been Roberto asking him about where everything around him had come from. The carefulness with which he approached each object, with which he stroked it when he picked it up and asked “What about this one?” was part of the ritual that, from the start, they had both understood was vital. Roberto was naming the elements of paradise, giving them features and contours, and the boy was happy in his role as Adam, whereas he, whom this twenty-one-year-old had slowly yet ceaselessly begun to hurt, understood that after the euphoria of discovery Roberto would soon realize that their Eden, like all Edens, was a cloistered place, and that what now seemed dazzling would end up stifling him.
Those nights he dreamed repeatedly of lakes and huge expanses of grass where naked boys lay kissing each other in slow motion. They were silent dreams, leisurely dreams, and all the boys in them did was touch each other and laugh. There was something definitively tender and simple about them, old although they were young, and he recalled himself in the dream taking shelter behind the reeds. It seemed strange to him to note that he, whose erotic imagery in fantasies tended to be violent, woke up content and to recall that in the dream he had not even approached the boys, but had been happy just to watch them.
Whenever Roberto went home, things would take another tack. While it seemed reasonable that someone like him would lose his head over a twenty-one-year-old boy, the inverse struck him as perverse. To love an old man like him (though he wasn’t an old man yet, not really), to love an old man the way Roberto loved him, you had to either be lying or wicked. Maybe Roberto was lying, maybe he was just trying to get money out of him (but what money?), maybe it was just morbid curiosity, maybe he was laughing at him right now (why would he do that?), in front of a group of boys his age; that was the most natural explanation, the most reasonable explanation (but what did those words mean? natural, reasonable). Maybe he was saying, “The old man is all alone, he’s sad. It’s pitiful,” (but why would he say that?) maybe he was already over him and that’s why he was so silent, or maybe he was just stupid (but Roberto wasn’t stupid), or he was lying (but someone who lies wouldn’t have written that personal ad) or he was lonely.
The sound of his steps when he arrived, the bell in the elevator, wiping his shoes on the mat—he was waiting on the sofa, that’s why he could always hear him—and then the sound of the key in the door, jangling against other keys for other doors that he didn’t know, that maybe he’d never know, and then his breathless, smiling figure walking in.
“You have no idea how cold it is out there.”
And again, searching the depths of his fear, waiting for the boy to approach when he didn’t want to wait but to run to him and kiss him, like some newly married shop girl, and Roberto taking off his coat and tossing it onto the sofa and coming up to him, smiling, “I’m serious, you have no idea how cold it is,” Roberto’s moist lips, his hair, his cheeks slightly flushed from the heating.
“What? You don’t believe me? Feel my hands, they’re freezing.”
That boy who he would no longer be able to surprise, because in barely a week he’d already gotten over his astonished admiration of the house, the stories about the bank, the cognac.
They decided to watch a video that night. He had rented it that afternoon and Roberto admitted, when he saw the cover, that he’d never even heard of it. He would never remember the title but he remembered that the story was about a fourteen-year-old boy who is traumatized by the death of his father. The boy oscillates between pain and cynicism; the accident that ended his father’s life suddenly had shaken him so badly, brought him to the very limi
ts of what a person could endure, that it had provoked a different self, one that looked on the suffering of others, and even his own suffering, with a Mephistophelic irony. So at the funeral, when he saw his mother cry and flail her arms around grotesquely, the boy thought with a coldness that distressed even himself, “Good acting, Mother, that would be great on stage.”
He recognized a little of himself in the movie. He, too, had made fun of others’ pain, and of his own, with that sort of coldness, and if he’d done it, it was because most of the time he couldn’t find any compelling reason to love the people who surrounded him. Any show of love he considered an act of voluntary blindness that, when undertaken, was done only out of a physical need for protection, or affection, and always with the expectation that it would be returned, if not immediately, then in the near future. With Roberto it was different. While others were judged and sentenced almost a priori, Roberto walked on water. Others tried to save themselves, to be accepted, to appear pleasant. Roberto was silent, naked, complete. How could he be cynical about him?
When he turned to look at him he saw that he had been hugging his knees since he turned off the television.
“Roberto.”
“What?”
“Did you like the movie?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that the world is ugly and people are all unhappy.”
He leaned over to kiss him.
“Even me?”