The Book of Hidden Things

by Francesco Dimitri

  That’s how I found myself a stone’s throw away from the main scene, dressed in a black suit, a white shirt, and a skinny black tie, when Mauro slipped a golden ring on Anna’s finger and kissed her. Anna’s white dress was a simple thing, with flowers embroidered on the top, a long skirt, and no veil. It was indisputably chaste, but it wrapped around her body in a way which set my imagination on fire. Graphic images kept rushing to my mind of all the things I would like to do to the bride, on the altar. I’ve had sex in a church once (I was shooting a catalogue in a picturesque village in Tuscany, where I met a witless, talentless, good-looking twenty-year-old student of photography, whose mother happened to have the keys to the local church), and it was delightful. But with Anna? Nothing would beat sex on an altar with Anna. Even though she was getting married to a guy who chose me over his brother as his best man.

  And I found myself there, in my black suit and my Wayfarer sunglasses, when the newlyweds came out of the church, under a shower of rice thrown by their friends and family. I threw especially hard, whether to show enthusiasm or to vent my frustration I don’t know. After the service, I shepherded the guests to the cars, and sat in Tony’s with Art and two teenage cousins of Mauro who spent the entire trip glued to their phones. Somewhere between the church and the restaurant I managed to stop thinking about me, Anna and the feeling of a marble altar on a naked ass.

  Anna and Mauro had chosen a beach restaurant, The Acacia – one of the many new places that were opening on the coast. It was a comparatively cool July afternoon, blessed by a tramontana breeze. With the waves barely moving, the sea looked like a glass showcase for the treasures of sand, rocks and fish beneath. The tables were laid out partly on the sand, partly on wooden platforms under pergolas. Everything was painted white – the tables, the chairs, the platforms, the pergolas. Surrounding the restaurant on all sides except the one facing the sea were the acacias that gave the restaurant its name, as well as juniper bushes and intensely coloured bougainvillea.

  We arrived late afternoon, with the sun already giving an orange hue to the water, the sky and the white furniture. The men were dressed more or less the same as me – black suit, white shirt; most still had their sunglasses on. The women showed a little more imagination, though I missed the forest of hats I had come to expect from British weddings. I was thinking that it was the sort of setting that would inspire a hack photographer to bag some cheesy snap, when the hired photographer started doing just that, urging guests to stand with their shoulders to the sea, or to look at the sky with a raptured expression, as if they’d seen the bearded face of God blessing the marriage. Thus dies beauty, I thought.

  ‘You need a drink,’ Art said. He’d gotten hold of two glasses of white wine, and was offering me one. An intact roll-up dangled down from his lips.

  I took the glass. ‘I need drinks, plural.’

  Art put his wine down on the white tablecloth of a white table, and produced a box of matches. He lit his roll-up, then waved the match to extinguish it. ‘How’re you doing?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘No reason.’

  ‘Bored. And happy.’

  ‘Teenage sweethearts getting married. Oh my, that is lovely!’

  ‘I detect cynicism.’

  ‘Anna is cool.’

  ‘But?’

  Art took a drag. ‘But Mauro will fucking hate being married. Anna too.’

  ‘You always have an opinion, don’t you?’

  ‘You know that.’

  I took out a cigarette. My financial situation wasn’t as grim then as it is today, but it was on a quickly descending slope, and I was already pondering whether to switch to roll-ups or quit smoking altogether (I did neither). ‘You think Mauro made a wrong turn way before this.’

  ‘He shouldn’t have gone into law. It’s not him.’

  ‘You know better than him about his life?’

  Before Art could reply, Tony plunged into our conversation, wrapping his arms around our shoulders with a Joker-sized grin. ‘The antipasti are out. And Lordy, do they look good.’

  Art had been right. Italian weddings are all about the food. Yes, there’s the Mass; yes, there are long-forgotten friends and rarely seen relatives; there might be some dancing too, and wine flows liberally. But really, it’s all about food. I have been to receptions which were binge-eating orgies lasting six, seven hours. The dishes follow one by one, and after a while they merge into each other, and you are too high on nutrients to distinguish between them, to actually taste their flavour. This one wasn’t quite so bad, thanks to Anna’s touch. She had agreed to get married in the south, but in exchange she took a stand on the reception: abundant, yes, but not coma-inducing.

  Maybe it is because of that, or perhaps because of my state of mind, but I can remember every dish on the menu that day, and the order they came in. To drink we had water, Primitivo wine, and Pinot Grigio. For antipasti we had Parma ham, white melon, aubergine roulades, a whole Parmesan cheese with a knife to carve it, raw anchovies in a marinade, beef carpaccio with chilli, a salad of octopus, prawns and celery, and a never-ending supply of ’mpepata, that is, mussels sautéed with black pepper. Then we tucked into a beautiful homemade pasta with scampi, a fish soup, lemon sorbet (the secret ingredient of weddings, since it cleans your belly and allows you to keep eating), a choice of grilled tuna or grilled prawns, deep-fried seafood (squid, baby cuttlefish, shrimps), and grilled vegetables (aubergines, peppers and courgettes, seasoned with olive oil, salt and mint). Finally, the dessert: a self-service selection of locally made almond sweets, gelato – and the wedding cake. A restrained event, like I said.

  Mauro and Anna had placed the three of us on a table with a gay male cousin of Anna’s and two of her friends. We had met the month before, for the Pact, but even so, we had a lot of catching up to do, we always did, so we were barely civil to the strangers and spent all the time talking amongst ourselves. In June I’d learnt that Art was living in Paris, working as a dish-washer in a strip club (not a fancy one: Titty Twister, not Moulin Rouge). He had joined a commune led by a self-styled punk poet, loosely inspired by the works of a French socialist mystic of the nineteenth century, Éliphas Lévi. When I’d asked why, he’d answered, Why not. Now, in typical Art fashion, he had grown bored with it, and he was thinking of coming back to Italy, to Naples, a city where he’d never lived. A friend of a friend could (probably, possibly) get him a job as a bookseller. His career choices, or lack thereof, had been a source of equal parts amazement and worry for us for the first few years, until it, too, became just another fact of life.

  The cake was a three-tiered sponge affair soaked in rum and coffee, glazed in white icing. On top was a small statue of a woman reading an old tome, and a man in a lawyer-esque black robe. The real Anna and the real Mauro took their place behind the cake. She put her hand over his. He cut the first slice, the audience whooped, and Anna and Mauro kissed again.

  ‘Now,’ Tony said.

  Art stood up. ‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ he called.

  Anna and Mauro, still entangled, turned to him. The crowd fell silent.

  Art opened his arms wide, as if to give a blessing. ‘Our friend here, Mauro, is getting married today, which is what mates do when they hit a certain age. All well and good.’ He lifted a glass. ‘Also, that lucky bastard landed a girl way out of his league.’ The crowd laughed. ‘And we rightly toast him, them, and their future together. But. Splendid as their future might be, we should never, ever forget the past. Because the future starts here and now, but it’s the past that led us to here and now. It’s the past that makes the future possible; the past is our map to the future.’

  On cue, two waiters stepped closer to Mauro and Anna, bringing a box wrapped in black paper with a giant red ribbon.

  ‘So this is our gift to our friend. Anna, we’re not leaving you out; I’m sure you’ll enjoy it too.’ He paused as the waiters put the box on the table in front of Mauro. ‘It’s your past. And, we all wish, a part
of your future.’

  Mauro smiled, mumbled, and opened the box.

  It was an electric guitar, a red and white Stratocaster. The idea had been Art’s, and Tony and I had put in most of the cash (I couldn’t really afford it, but they didn’t know that). You wouldn’t think it, seeing Mauro now, but he used to be quite a guitarist in his day.

  He took the guitar in his hands, stunned. ‘Guys…’

  ‘Play it!’ Tony said.

  ‘I haven’t touched a guitar in…’

  ‘Play it, darling!’ a drunk aunt shouted.

  ‘Play it!’ I joined. And the crowd started chanting: Play it, play it, play it.

  With a shrug, Mauro put the strap across his shoulder and picked up the plectrum. Leisurely, theatrically, he walked to the small stage set for the band he and Anna had hired, connected the guitar to the band’s amp, and tried one note. He adjusted the guitar, tried again, adjusted again.

  A half-hour later he was playing with the band. People were dancing on the beach, in the moonlight, all drunk and happy. Tony was in a corner, telling tales to a young male relative of Anna’s. Art danced with ungainly jerks, as if unsure of what to do with his hips, his arms, but not giving a shit about it. I sat at a table, alone, smoking, sipping Fernet and watching the scene.

  ‘That was a wonderful present,’ Anna said. She’d managed to untangle herself from the attentions of her guests, mostly because at that point said guests were more interested in music and spirits than in complimenting the bride. She sat down at my table.

  ‘Art’s brainchild,’ I said.

  ‘Of course. Is it true that he’s leaving Paris?’

  ‘That’s what it looks like.’

  ‘Why aren’t you dancing?’

  I flicked ash from my cigarette into one of the half coconut shells they’d given us as ashtrays. ‘I’m not a joiner.’

  She took me by the hand and stood up. ‘Come.’

  ‘Where?’

  Anna laughed and repeated, ‘Come.’

  We moved away from the madding crowd, towards the seashore. Anna was barefoot. I took off my Church’s shoes and Paul Smith socks, memories of better financial places, and rolled up the legs of my trousers. We walked on the shore, leaving The Acacia behind. The water was pleasantly warm. The music carried in the night, but now I could hear, beneath it, the repetitive sound of surf. There were no waves to speak of; the sea was as calm as the starry moonlit sky. Anna let herself fall on the damp sand, and I sat beside her. ‘God, I needed some silence,’ she said.

  ‘Married life is tougher than you thought?’

  She laughed. ‘Noisier.’

  I extracted a bag of weed from my pocket. ‘Art’s supply. He says that the weed he grows in Paris has a Pastis aftertaste.’

  She pointed her chin to the distant restaurant. ‘My husband gets the rock ’n’ roll, I get the drugs.’

  ‘But you both miss the sex,’ I said, and immediately regretted it.

  ‘We’ll get that later,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I’m not smoking tonight.’

  I rolled a joint with shivering fingers. A wiser man would stand up, find an excuse and leave. I wasn’t shaking with cold or drunkenness; my shaking was due to the struggle going on in my body, between sexual excitement and the necessity to contain it.

  ‘We didn’t have time to talk much, you and I,’ Anna said, as I smoked.

  ‘That comes with a wedding.’

  ‘How’s life in Fabio’s world?’

  ‘I found myself a new girlfriend.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘She’s Indian. Well, born in London, actually. Her name’s Ruhi.’ That was before Lara. Ruhi was a model I’d worked with; relationships between models and snappers happen often, and rarely last.

  ‘Good for you.’

  I smiled and held out the joint. ‘For her too.’

  Anna gave me a light push. ‘I said no, thanks.’

  I took the joint back to my lips. ‘Except for that, there’s nothing new.’ Nothing that I cared to tell. Nothing that would make me look accomplished, and important, and worthy.

  ‘I do have news.’

  ‘You got married?’

  ‘I’ve got more news.’

  ‘You’re pregnant,’ I said.

  She was taken aback. ‘How…?’

  I shook the joint. ‘Never seen you refusing a drag of Art’s produce,’ I said, with a lightness I didn’t feel. ‘And you only drank a glass of Prosecco tonight, that I could see.’

  ‘Were you watching me the whole evening?’

  ‘I had my eyes pinned on both the stars of the show. How did Mauro take it?’

  ‘He doesn’t know yet.’

  ‘You think he’ll freak out?’

  ‘Oh, no, no. We were planning this. It’s going to be my surprise for the after-party. Though he’ll probably have noticed I wasn’t drinking, so, it’s a surprise only in name.’

  ‘Happy?’

  ‘A little scared too.’

  ‘You’ll be great. The ultimate Yummy Mummy.’

  ‘It’s not going to be easy to juggle a career and a baby.’

  ‘For you and Mauro? A piece of cake.’

  Anna stood up. ‘I want to swim. This sea is just too perfect. Help me out.’

  I walked to her back, and pushed down the zip of her dress. It was like a perfectly made ribbon. Once the zip was down the dress came undone at once, slipping down Anna’s shoulders, arms, bum and thighs. She wasn’t wearing a bra, only white knickers. Anna didn’t have qualms with being naked. She’d spent the first twelve years of her life in Germany, where her dad worked in an engineering firm, and grew up considering nudity completely normal. She had started sunbathing topless at eighteen. We all had seen her boobs; this wasn’t the first time for me, or the tenth.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, and ran into the sea.

  I stood there, transfixed, watching her enter the water and dive in.

  Then I brought my hands to my buckle. I knew that if I gave my brain any time, my brain would stop me, and I didn’t want that to happen. In a rush, I got rid of my black suit, skinny tie, my white shirt and my boxers. Buck naked, I dived into the sea.

  The water was warm as soup. I went with my head down, to let the sea embrace the whole of me, and swam towards Anna. She was in up to her chin, but still in her depth, her feet on soft sand.

  ‘Welcome,’ she said.

  I grabbed her by her hips, and pulled her to me. Not for a moment did she try to draw back; she offered me her lips wide open and welcomed my tongue. I touched her teeth, and felt her tongue searching for a place inside my mouth. She placed her palms on my shoulders, and leaned on them, lifting both her legs underwater, to wrap them around my hips. The pressure of the soft tissue of her knickers on my erection was everything I ever wanted from a woman, from life. Using two fingers, I pushed her knickers to one side. I thrust my middle finger inside her, curving it into a hook. I could detect the different kind of wetness inside her.

  ‘Ah,’ she moaned.

  I fucked her with my fingers until I couldn’t anymore, and then, when my fingers were too exhausted to move one more time, I let her go. She held me tight, her perfect ass propped on my hands, as I brought the tip of my dick to the side of her knickers.

  She nodded.

  I entered her, pushing my hips towards her, and using my hands to pull her to me. She was weightless, suspended in water. I was fucking Anna and that was magnificent, but it wasn’t enough. I wanted to fuck her more, I wanted to fuck her as much as possible, I wanted to bring this one chance to its utmost limits. I slipped a finger down her ass, to her anus, and I traced little circles with the tip of the finger. Then I pushed it inside. Anna bit my shoulder not to cry aloud, and I pushed the finger further in, while thrusting with my hips, while sucking her earlobe. She tasted of sweat, skin, and salty water.

  I refused to come until she came; or she pretended to.

  And when I came, I was sad, because I knew that was the end, and I
wished I could start immediately all over again, and fuck her until the first light of the day, and see the sun rise while her naked body was one with mine.

  When we went back to the reception, our hair was wet, and we confessed we’d been swimming. Nobody suspected a thing, not even the older, drunker aunts. They all knew I was like a brother to Mauro.

  That was six years ago. It was the last time Anna and I were alone. Today, because Art disappeared, it’s happening again.

  ‘Is this remote enough?’ she asks.

  She jolts me awake from my reverie. Here I am, in the sun-dried countryside of Casalfranco, with that woman – that extraordinary, mind-blowing woman – who is ready to get naked for me once again.

  ‘Yep,’ I reply. ‘Yep, it is.’

  2

  This harsh light of midday is more than I could wish for. Our ancestors from classical times believed in the danger of demoni meridiani, the midday demons – when the sun is this strong, the middle of the day can be as scary as the dark of the night.

  The sky is stark blue, the earth stark red. We pull over in the dirt, at the border of an empty road, to enter a red field. We both wear sunglasses and hats – mine is a battered baseball cap I found at my father’s home, where I decided to stay after learning of his Alzheimer’s, Anna’s a large-brimmed hat that gives her the air of a diva from a Fellini film. There are sparse olive and carob trees, and occasional prickly pears, but apart from these, the vegetation in this field is just low bushes and brambles. There are no barriers between us and the photons exploding from the sun, smashing into Spaceship Earth with the weight of cannonballs.

  ‘Photo shoot first, or picnic?’ Anna asks.

  ‘Shoot, if that’s okay with you.’

  ‘Sure.’

  The land slopes slightly – very slightly – but in this flatness it is enough to make a difference. When Anna walks towards the top of the slope, I recognise the perfect frame: the contrast between earth and sky, and Anna creating a bond between them, in a light which caresses her body and makes it redolent with a deeper shade of reality. She is a goddess of the land.