by André Aciman
“Why, have you got anything better to do?”
“No.”
“So let’s go.” He put some pages in his frayed green backpack and slung it over his shoulders.
Since our last bike ride to B., he had never asked me to go anywhere with him.
I put down my fountain pen, closed my scorebook, placed a half-full glass of lemonade on top of my pages, and was ready to go.
On our way to the shed, we passed the garage.
As usual, Manfredi, Mafalda’s husband, was arguing with Anchise. This time he was accusing him of dousing the tomatoes with too much water, and that it was all wrong, because they were growing too fast. “They’ll be mealy,” he complained.
“Listen. I do the tomatoes, you do the driving, and we’re all happy.”
“You don’t understand. In my day you moved the tomatoes at some point, from one place to another, from one place to the other”—he insisted—“and you planted basil nearby. But of course you people who’ve been in the army know everything.”
“That’s right.” Anchise was ignoring him.
“Of course I’m right. No wonder they didn’t keep you in the army.”
“That’s right. They didn’t keep me in the army.”
Both of them greeted us. The gardener handed Oliver his bicycle. “I straightened the wheel last night, it took some doing. I also put some air in the tires.”
Manfredi couldn’t have been more peeved.
“From now on, I fix the wheels, you grow the tomatoes,” said the piqued driver.
Anchise gave a wry smile. Oliver smiled back.
Once we had reached the cypress lane that led onto the main road to town, I asked Oliver, “Doesn’t he give you the creeps?”
“Who?”
“Anchise.”
“No, why? I fell the other day on my way back and scraped myself pretty badly. Anchise insisted on applying some sort of witch’s brew. He also fixed the bike for me.”
With one hand on the handlebar he lifted his shirt and exposed a huge scrape and bruise on his left hip.
“Still gives me the creeps,” I said, repeating my aunt’s verdict.
“Just a lost soul, really.”
I would have touched, caressed, worshipped that scrape.
On our way, I noticed that Oliver was taking his time. He wasn’t in his usual rush, no speeding, no scaling the hill with his usual athletic zeal. Nor did he seem in a rush to go back to his paperwork, or join his friends on the beach, or, as was usually the case, ditch me. Perhaps he had nothing better to do. This was my moment in heaven and, young as I was, I knew it wouldn’t last and that I should at least enjoy it for what it was rather than ruin it with my oft-cranked resolution to firm up our friendship or take it to another plane. There’ll never be a friendship, I thought, this is nothing, just a minute of grace. Zwischen Immer und Nie. Zwischen Immer und Nie. Between always and never. Celan.
When we arrived at the piazzetta overlooking the sea, Oliver stopped to buy cigarettes. He had started smoking Gauloises. I had never tried Gauloises and asked if I could. He took out a cerino from the box, cupped his hands very near my face, and lit my cigarette. “Not bad, right?” “Not bad at all.” They’d remind me of him, of this day, I thought, realizing that in less than a month he’d be totally gone, without a trace.
This was probably the first time I allowed myself to count down his remaining days in B.
“Just take a look at this,” he said as we ambled with our bikes in the midmorning sun toward the edge of the piazzetta overlooking the rolling hills below.
Farther out and way below was a magnificent view of the sea with scarcely a few stripes of foam streaking the bay like giant dolphins breaking the surf. A tiny bus was working its way uphill, while three uniformed bikers straggled behind it, obviously complaining of the fumes. “You do know who is said to have drowned near here,” he said.
“Shelley.”
“And do you know what his wife Mary and friends did when they found his body?”
“Cor cordium, heart of hearts,” I replied, referring to the moment when a friend had seized Shelley’s heart before the flames had totally engulfed his swollen body as it was being cremated on the shore. Why was he quizzing me?
“Is there anything you don’t know?”
I looked at him. This was my moment. I could seize it or I could lose it, but either way I knew I would never live it down. Or I could gloat over his compliment—but live to regret everything else. This was probably the first time in my life that I spoke to an adult without planning some of what I was going to say. I was too nervous to plan anything.
“I know nothing, Oliver. Nothing, just nothing.”
“You know more than anyone around here.”
Why was he returning my near-tragic tone with bland ego-boosting?
“If you only knew how little I know about the things that really matter.”
I was treading water, trying neither to drown nor to swim to safety, just staying in place, because here was the truth—even if I couldn’t speak the truth, or even hint at it, yet I could swear it lay around us, the way we say of a necklace we’ve just lost while swimming: I know it’s down there somewhere. If he knew, if he only knew that I was giving him every chance to put two and two together and come up with a number bigger than infinity.
But if he understood, then he must have suspected, and if he suspected he would have been there himself, watching me from across a parallel lane with his steely, hostile, glass-eyed, trenchant, all-knowing gaze.
He must have hit on something, though God knows what. Perhaps he was trying not to seem taken aback.
“What things that matter?”
Was he being disingenuous?
“You know what things. By now you of all people should know.”
Silence.
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because I thought you should know.”
“Because you thought I should know.” He repeated my words slowly, trying to take in their full meaning, all the while sorting them out, playing for time by repeating the words. The iron, I knew, was burning hot.
“Because I want you to know,” I blurted out. “Because there is no one else I can say it to but you.”
There, I had said it.
Was I making any sense?
I was about to interrupt and sidetrack the conversation by saying something about the sea and the weather tomorrow and whether it might be a good idea to sail out to E. as my father kept promising this time every year.
But to his credit he didn’t let me loose.
“Do you know what you’re saying?”
This time I looked out to the sea and, with a vague and weary tone that was my last diversion, my last cover, my last getaway, said, “Yes, I know what I’m saying and you’re not mistaking any of it. I’m just not very good at speaking. But you’re welcome never to speak to me again.”
“Wait. Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
“Ye-es.” Now that I had spilled the beans I could take on the laid-back, mildly exasperated air with which a felon, who’s surrendered to the police, confesses yet once more to yet one more police officer how he robbed the store.
“Wait for me here, I have to run upstairs and get some papers. Don’t go away.”
I looked at him with a confiding smile.
“You know very well I’m not going anywhere.”
If that’s not another admission, then what is? I thought.
As I waited, I took both our bikes and walked them toward the war memorial dedicated to the youth of the town who’d perished in the Battle of the Piave during the First World War. Every small town in Italy has a similar memorial. Two small buses had just stopped nearby and were unloading passengers—older women arriving from the adjoining villages to shop in town. Around the small piazza, the old folk, men mostly, sat on small, rickety, straw-backed chairs or on park benches wearing drab, old, dun-colored suits. I wondered how ma
ny people here still remembered the young men they’d lost on the Piave River. You’d have to be at least eighty years old today to have known them. And at least one hundred, if not more, to have been older than they were then. At one hundred, surely you learn to overcome loss and grief—or do they hound you till the bitter end? At one hundred, siblings forget, sons forget, loved ones forget, no one remembers anything, even the most devastated forget to remember. Mothers and fathers have long since died. Does anyone remember?
A thought raced through my mind: Would my descendants know what was spoken on this very piazzetta today? Would anyone? Or would it dissolve into thin air, as I found part of me wishing it would? Would they know how close to the brink their fate stood on this day on this piazzetta? The thought amused me and gave me the necessary distance to face the remainder of this day.
In thirty, forty years, I’ll come back here and think back on a conversation I knew I’d never forget, much as I might want to someday. I’d come here with my wife, my children, show them the sights, point to the bay, the local caffès, Le Danzing, the Grand Hotel. Then I’d stand here and ask the statue and the straw-backed chairs and shaky wooden tables to remind me of someone called Oliver.
When he returned, the first thing he blurted out was, “That idiot Milani mixed the pages and has to retype the whole thing. So I have nothing to work on this afternoon, which sets me back a whole day.”
It was his turn to look for excuses to dodge the subject. I could easily let him off the hook if he wanted. We could talk about the sea, the Piave, or fragments of Heraclitus, such as “Nature loves to hide” or “I went in search of myself.” And if not these, there was the trip to E. we’d been discussing for days now. There was also the chamber music ensemble due to arrive any day.
On our way we passed a shop where my mother always ordered flowers. As a child I liked to watch the large storefront window awash in a perpetual curtain of water which came sliding down ever so gently, giving the shop an enchanted, mysterious aura that reminded me of how in many films the screen would blur to announce that a flashback was about to occur.
“I wish I hadn’t spoken,” I finally said.
I knew as soon as I’d said it that I’d broken the exiguous spell between us.
“I’m going to pretend you never did.”
Well, that was an approach I’d never expected from a man who was so okay with the world. I’d never heard such a sentence used in our house.
“Does this mean we’re on speaking terms—but not really?”
He thought about it.
“Look, we can’t talk about such things. We really can’t.”
He slung his bag around him and we were off downhill.
Fifteen minutes ago, I was in total agony, every nerve ending, every emotion bruised, trampled, crushed as in Mafalda’s mortar, all of it pulverized till you couldn’t tell fear from anger from the merest trickle of desire. But at that time there was something to look forward to. Now that we had laid our cards on the table, the secrecy, the shame were gone, but with them so was that dash of unspoken hope that had kept everything alive these weeks.
Only the scenery and the weather could buoy my spirits now. As would the ride together on the empty country road, which was entirely ours at this time of day and where the sun started pounding exposed patches along the route. I told him to follow me, I’d show him a spot most tourists and strangers had never seen.
“If you have time,” I added, not wishing to be pushy this time.
“I have time.” It was spoken with a noncommittal lilt in his voice, as though he had found the overplayed tact in my words slightly comical. But perhaps this was a small concession to make up for not discussing the matter at hand.
We veered off the main road and headed toward the edge of the cliff.
“This,” I said by way of a preface meant to keep his interest alive, “is the spot where Monet came to paint.”
Tiny, stunted palm trees and gnarled olive trees studded the copse. Then through the trees, on an incline leading toward the very edge of the cliff, was a knoll partly shaded by tall marine pines. I leaned my bike against one of the trees, he did the same, and I showed him the way up to the berm. “Now take a look,” I said, extremely pleased, as if revealing something more eloquent than anything I might say in my favor.
A soundless, quiet cove stood straight below us. Not a sign of civilization anywhere, no home, no jetty, no fishing boats. Farther out, as always, was the belfry of San Giacomo, and, if you strained your eyes, the outline of N., and farther still was something that looked like our house and the adjoining villas, the one where Vimini lived, and the Moreschi family’s, with their two daughters whom Oliver had probably slept with, alone or together, who knew, who cared at this point.
“This is my spot. All mine. I come here to read. I can’t tell you the number of books I’ve read here.”
“Do you like being alone?” he asked.
“No. No one likes being alone. But I’ve learned how to live with it.”
“Are you always so very wise?” he asked. Was he about to adopt a condescending, pre-lecture tone before joining everyone else on my needing to get out more, make more friends, and, having made friends, not to be so selfish with them? Or was this a preamble to his role as shrink/part-time-friend-of-the-family? Or was I yet again misreading him completely?
“I’m not wise at all. I told you, I know nothing. I know books, and I know how to string words together—it doesn’t mean I know how to speak about the things that matter most to me.”
“But you’re doing it now—in a way.”
“Yes, in a way—that’s how I always say things: in a way.”
Staring out at the offing so as not to look at him, I sat down on the grass and noticed he was crouching a few yards away from me on the tips of his toes, as though he would any moment now spring to his feet and go back to where we’d left our bicycles.
It never occurred to me that I had brought him here not just to show him my little world, but to ask my little world to let him in, so that the place where I came to be alone on summer afternoons would get to know him, judge him, see if he fitted in, take him in, so that I might come back here and remember. Here I would come to escape the known world and seek another of my own invention; I was basically introducing him to my launchpad. All I had to do was list the works I’d read here and he’d know all the places I’d traveled to.
“I like the way you say things. Why are you always putting yourself down?”
I shrugged my shoulders. Was he criticizing me for criticizing myself?
“I don’t know. So you won’t, I suppose.”
“Are you so scared of what others think?”
I shook my head. But I didn’t know the answer. Or perhaps the answer was so obvious that I didn’t have to answer. It was moments such as these that left me feeling so vulnerable, so naked. Push me, make me nervous, and, unless I push you back, you’ve already found me out. No, I had nothing to say in reply. But I wasn’t moving either. My impulse was to let him ride home by himself. I’d be home in time for lunch.
He was waiting for me to say something. He was staring at me.
This, I think, is the first time I dared myself to stare back at him. Usually, I’d cast a glance and then look away—look away because I didn’t want to swim in the lovely, clear pool of his eyes unless I’d been invited to—and I never waited long enough to know whether I was even wanted there; look away because I was too scared to stare anyone back; look away because I didn’t want to give anything away; look away because I couldn’t acknowledge how much he mattered. Look away because that steely gaze of his always reminded me of how tall he stood and how far below him I ranked. Now, in the silence of the moment, I stared back, not to defy him, or to show I wasn’t shy any longer, but to surrender, to tell him this is who I am, this is who you are, this is what I want, there is nothing but truth between us now, and where there’s truth there are no barriers, no shifty glances, and if not
hing comes of this, let it never be said that either of us was unaware of what might happen. I hadn’t a hope left. And maybe I stared back because there wasn’t a thing to lose now. I stared back with the all-knowing, I-dare-you-to-kiss-me gaze of someone who both challenges and flees with one and the same gesture.
“You’re making things very difficult for me.”
Was he by any chance referring to our staring?
I didn’t back down. Neither did he. Yes, he was referring to our staring.
“Why am I making things difficult?”
My heart was beating too fast for me to speak coherently. I wasn’t even ashamed of showing how flushed I was. So let him know, let him.
“Because it would be very wrong.”
“Would?” I asked.
Was there a ray of hope, then?
He sat down on the grass, then lay down on his back, his arms under his head, as he stared at the sky.
“Yes, would. I’m not going to pretend this hasn’t crossed my mind.”
“I’d be the last to know.”
“Well, it has. There! What did you think was going on?”
“Going on?” I fumbled by way of a question. “Nothing.” I thought about it some more. “Nothing,” I repeated, as if what I was vaguely beginning to get a hint of was so amorphous that it could just as easily be shoved away by my repeated “nothing” and thereby fill the unbearable gaps of silence. “Nothing.”
“I see,” he finally said. “You’ve got it wrong, my friend”—chiding condescension in his voice. “If it makes you feel any better, I have to hold back. It’s time you learned too.”
“The best I can do is pretend I don’t care.”
“That much we’ve known for a while already,” he snapped right away.
I was crushed. All these times when I thought I was slighting him by showing how easy it was to ignore him in the garden, on the balcony, at the beach, he had been seeing right through me and taken my move for the peevish, textbook gambit it was.
His admission, which seemed to open up all the sluiceways between us, was precisely what drowned my budding hopes. Where would we go from here? What was there to add? And what would happen the next time we pretended not to speak but were no longer sure the frost between us was still sham?