Call Me by Your Name: A Novel (23 page)

“Want me to teach you?”

And he proceeded to explain the intricacies of a straight-up dry martini. He was okay being a bartender to the bar’s help.

“Where did you learn this?” I asked.

“Mixology 101. Courtesy Harvard. Weekends, I made a living as a bartender all through college. Then I became a chef, then a caterer. But always a poker player.”

His undergraduate years, each time he spoke of them, acquired a limelit, incandescent magic, as if they belonged to another life, a life to which I had no access since it already belonged to the past. Proof of its existence trickled, as it did now, in his ability to mix drinks, or to tell arcane grappas apart, or to speak to all women, or in the mysterious square envelopes addressed to him that arrived at our house from all over the world.

I had never envied him the past, nor felt threatened by it. All these facets of his life had the mysterious character of incidents that had occurred in my father’s life long before my birth but which continued to resonate into the present. I didn’t envy life before me, nor did I ache to travel back to the time when he had been my age.

There were at least fifteen of us now, and we occupied one of the large wooden rustic tables. The waiter announced last call a second time. Within ten minutes, the other customers had left. The waiter had already started lowering the metal gate, on account of because it was the closing hour of the
chiusura
. The jukebox was summarily unplugged. If each of us kept talking, we might be here till daybreak.

“Did I shock you?” asked the poet.

“Me?” I asked, not certain why, of all people at the table, he should have addressed me.

Lucia stared at us. “Alfredo, I’m afraid he knows more than you know about corrupting youth. E un dissoluto assoluto,” she intoned, as always now, her hand to my cheek.

“This poem is about one thing and one thing only,” said Straordinario-fantastico.

“San Clemente is really about four—at the very least!” retorted the poet.

Third last call.

“Listen,” interrupted the owner of the bookstore to the waiter, “why don’t you let us stay? We’ll put the young lady in a cab when we’re done. And we’ll pay. Another round of martinis?”

“Do as you please,” said the waiter, removing his apron. He’d given up on us. “I’m going home.”

Oliver came up to me and asked me to play something on the piano.

“What would you like?” I asked.

“Anything.”

This would be my thanks for the most beautiful evening of my life. I took a sip from my second martini, feeling as decadent as one of those jazz piano players who smoke a lot and drink a lot and are found dead in a gutter at the end of every film.

I wanted to play Brahms. But an instinct told me to play something very quiet and contemplative. So I played one of the Goldberg Variations, which made me quiet and contemplative. There was a sigh among the fifteen or so, which pleased me, since this was my only way of repaying for this magical evening.

When I was asked to play something else, I proposed a capriccio by Brahms. They all agreed it was a wonderful idea, until the devil took hold of me and, after playing the opening bars of the capriccio, out of nowhere I started to play a
stornello
. The contrast caught them all by surprise and all began to sing, though not in unison, for each sang the stornello he or she knew. Each time we came to the refrain, we agreed we’d all sing the same words, which earlier that evening Oliver and I had heard Dante the statue recite. Everyone was ecstatic, and I was asked to play another, then another. Roman
stornelli
are usually bawdy, lilting songs, not the lacerating, heart-wrenching arias from Naples. After the third, I looked over at Oliver and said I wanted to go out to take a breath of fresh air.

“What is it, doesn’t he feel well?” the poet asked Oliver.

“No, just needs some air. Please don’t move.”

The cashier leaned all the way down, and with one arm lifted up the rolling shutter. I got out from under the partly lowered shutter and suddenly felt a fresh gust of wind on the empty alley. “Can we walk a bit?” I asked Oliver.

We sauntered down the dark alley, exactly like two shades in Dante, the younger and the older. It was still very hot and I caught the light from a streetlamp glistening on Oliver’s forehead. We made our way deeper into an extremely quiet alley, then through another, as if drawn through these unreal and sticky goblin lanes that seemed to lead to a different, nether realm you entered in a state of stupor and wonderment. All I heard were the alley cats and the splashing of running water nearby. Either a marble fountain or one of those numberless municipal
fontanelle
found everywhere in Rome. “Water,” I gasped. “I’m not made for martinis. I’m so drunk.”

“You shouldn’t have had any. You had scotch, then wine, grappa, now gin.”

“So much for the evening’s sexual buildup.”

He snickered. “You look pale.”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Best remedy is to make it happen.”

“How?”

“Bend down and stick your finger all the way inside your mouth.”

I shook my head. No way.

We found a garbage bin on the sidewalk. “Do it inside here.”

I normally resisted throwing up. But I was too ashamed to be childish now. I was also uncomfortable puking in front of him. I wasn’t even sure that Amanda had not followed us.

“Here, bend down, I’ll hold your head.”

I was resisting. “It will pass. I’m sure it will.”

“Open your mouth.”

I opened my mouth. Before I knew it I was sick as soon as he touched my uvula.

But what a solace to have my head held, what selfless courage to hold someone’s head while he’s vomiting. Would I have had it in me to do the same for him?

“I think I’m done,” I said.

“Let’s see if more doesn’t come out.”

Sure enough, another heave brought out more of tonight’s food and drink.

“Don’t you chew your peas?” he asked, smiling at me.

How I loved being made fun of that way.

“I just hope I didn’t get your shoes dirty,” I said.

“They’re not shoes, they’re sandals.”

Both of us almost burst out laughing.

When I looked around, I saw that I had vomited right next to the statue of the Pasquino. How like me to vomit right in front of Rome’s most venerable lampoonist.

“I swear, there were peas there that hadn’t even been bitten into and could have fed the children of India.”

More laughter. I washed my face and rinsed my mouth with the water of a fountain we found on our way back.

Right before us we caught sight of the human statue of Dante again. He had removed his cape and his long black hair was all undone. He must have sweated five pounds in that costume. He was now brawling with the statue of Queen Nefertiti, also with her mask off and her long hair matted together by sweat. “I’m picking up my things tonight and good night and good riddance.” “Good riddance to you too, and vaffanculo.” “Fanculo yourself, e poi t’inculo.” And so saying, Nefertiti threw a handful of coins at Dante, who ducked the coins, though one hit him on the face. “Aiiiio,” he yelped. For a moment I thought they were going to come to blows.

We returned by another equally dark, deserted, glistening side alley, then onto via Santa Maria dell’Anima. Above us was a weak square streetlight mounted to the wall of a tiny old corner building. In the old days, they probably had a gas jet in its place. I stopped and he stopped. “The most beautiful day of my life and I end up vomiting.” He wasn’t listening. He pressed me against the wall and started to kiss me, his hips pushing into mine, his arms about to lift me off the ground. My eyes were shut, but I knew he had stopped kissing me to look around him; people could be walking by. I didn’t want to look. Let him be the one to worry. Then we kissed again. And, with my eyes still shut, I think I did hear two voices, old men’s voices, grumbling something about taking a good look at these two, wondering if in the old days you’d ever see such a sight. But I didn’t want to think about them. I didn’t worry. If he wasn’t worried, I wasn’t worried. I could spend the rest of my life like this: with him, at night, in Rome, my eyes totally shut, one leg coiled around his. I thought of coming back here in the weeks or months to come—for this was our spot.

We returned to the bar to find everyone had already left. By then it must have been three in the morning, or even later. Except for a few cars, the city was dead quiet. When, by mistake, we reached the normally crowded Piazza Rotonda around the Pantheon, it too was unusually empty. There were a few tourists lugging huge knapsacks, a few drunks, and the usual drug dealers. Oliver stopped a street vendor and bought me a Lemonsoda. The taste of bitter lemons was refreshing and made me feel better. Oliver bought a bitter orange drink and a slice of watermelon. He offered me a bite, but I said no. How wonderful, to walk half drunk with a Lemonsoda on a muggy night like this around the gleaming slate cobblestones of Rome with someone’s arm around me. We turned left and, heading toward Piazza Febo, suddenly, from nowhere, made out someone strumming a guitar, singing not a rock song, but as we got closer, an old, old Neapolitan tune. “Fenesta ca lucive.” It took me a moment to recognize it. Then I remembered.

Mafalda had taught me that song years ago when I was a boy. It was her lullaby. I hardly knew Naples, and, other than for her and her immediate entourage, and a few casual visits to Naples with my parents, had never had contact with Neapolitans. But the strains of the doleful song stirred such powerful nostalgia for lost loves and for things lost over the course of one’s life and for lives, like my grandfather’s, that had come long before mine that I was suddenly taken back to a poor, disconsolate universe of simple folk like Mafalda’s ancestors, fretting and scurrying in the tiny
vicoli
of an old Naples whose memory I wanted to share word for word with Oliver now, as if he too, like Mafalda and Manfredi and Anchise and me, were a fellow southerner whom I’d met in a foreign port city and who’d instantly understand why the sound of this old song, like an ancient prayer for the dead in the deadest of languages, could bring tears even in those who couldn’t understand a syllable.

The song reminded him of the Israeli national anthem, he said. Or was it inspired by the
Moldau
? On second thought, it might have been an aria from Bellini’s
Sonnambula
. Warm, but still off, I said, though the song has often been attributed to Bellini. We’re
clementizing
, he said.

I translated the words from Neapolitan to Italian to English. It’s about a young man who passes by his beloved’s window only to be told by her sister that Nennélla has died.
From the mouth where flowers once blossomed only worms emerge. Farewell, window, for my Nenna can no longer look out again.

A German tourist, who seemed all alone and quite drunk himself that night, had overheard me translating the song into English and approached us, begging in halting English to know if I could be so kind as to translate the words into German as well. Along the way to our hotel, I taught Oliver and the German how to sing the refrain, which all three of us repeated again and again, our voices reverberating in the narrow, damp alleys of Rome as each mangled his own version of Neapolitan. Finally we said goodbye to the German on Piazza Navona. On our way to our hotel, Oliver and I began to sing the refrain again, softly,

I can, from the distance of years now, still think I’m hearing the voices of two young men singing these words in Neapolitan toward daybreak, neither realizing, as they held each other and kissed again and again on the dark lanes of old Rome, that this was the last night they would ever make love again.

“Tomorrow let’s go to San Clemente,” I said.

“Tomorrow is today,” he replied.

Anchise was waiting for me at the station. I spotted him as soon as the train made its prolonged curve around the bay, slowing down and almost grazing the tall cypresses that I loved so much and through which I always caught an ever-welcoming preview of the glaring midafternoon sea. I lowered the window and let the wind fan my face, catching a glimpse of our lumbering engine car far, far ahead. Arriving in B. always made me happy. It reminded me of arrivals in early June at the end of every school year. The wind, the heat, the glinting gray platform with the ancient stationmaster’s hut permanently shuttered since the First World War, the dead silence, all spelled my favorite season at this deserted and beloved time of day. Summer was just about to start, it seemed, things hadn’t happened yet, my head was still buzzing with last-minute cramming before exams, this was the first time I was sighting the sea this year. Oliver who?

The train stopped for a few seconds, let off about five passengers. There was the usual rumble, followed by the loud hydraulic rattle of the engine. Then, as easily as they had stopped, the cars squeaked out of the station, one by one, and slithered away. Total silence.

I stood for a moment under the dried wooden cantilever. The whole place, including the boarded hut, exuded a strong odor of petrol, tar, chipped paint, and piss.

And as always: blackbirds, pine trees, cicadas.

Summer.

I had seldom thought of the approaching school year. Now I was grateful that, with so much heat and so much summer around me, it still seemed months away.

Within minutes of my arrival, the direttissimo to Rome swished in on the opposite track—always punctual, that train. Three days ago, we had taken the exact same one. I remembered now staring from its windows and thinking: In a few days, you’ll be back, and you’ll be alone, and you’ll hate it, so don’t let anything catch you unprepared. Be warned. I had rehearsed losing him not just to ward off suffering by taking it in small doses beforehand, but, as all superstitious people do, to see if my willingness to accept the very worst might not induce fate to soften its blow. Like soldiers trained to fight by night, I lived in the dark so as not to be blinded when darkness came. Rehearse the pain to dull the pain. Homeopathically.

Once again, then. View of the bay: check.

Scent of the pine trees: check.

Stationmaster’s hut: check.

Sight of the hills in the distance to recall the morning we rode back to B. and came speeding downhill, almost running over a gypsy girl: check.

Smell of piss, petrol, tar, enamel paint: check, check, check, and check.

Anchise grabbed my backpack and offered to carry it for me. I told him not to; backpacks were not made to be carried except by their owners. He didn’t understand why exactly and handed it back to me.

He asked if the Signor Ulliva had left.

Yes, this morning.

“Triste,” he remarked.

“Yes, a bit.”

“
Anche a me duole
, I too am saddened.”

I avoided his eyes. I did not want to encourage him to say anything or even to bring up the subject.

My mother, when I arrived, wanted to know everything about our trip. I told her we had done nothing special, just seen the Capitol and Villa Borghese, San Clemente. Otherwise we’d just walked around a lot. Lots of fountains. Lots of strange places at night. Two dinners. “Dinners?” my mother asked, with an understated triumphant
see-I-was-right-wasn’t-I?
“And with whom?” “People.” “What people?” “Writers, publishers, friends of Oliver’s. We stayed up every night.” “Not even eighteen years old, and already he leads la dolce vita,” came Mafalda’s acid satire. My mother agreed.

“We’ve fixed up your room the way it was. We thought you’d like finally to have it back.”

I was instantly saddened and infuriated. Who had given them the right? They’d clearly been prying, together or separately.

I always knew I’d eventually have my room back. But I had hoped for a slower, more extended transition to the way things used to be before Oliver. I’d pictured lying in bed struggling to work up the courage to make it across to his room. What I had failed to anticipate was that Mafalda would have already changed his sheets—our sheets. Luckily I’d asked him again to give me Billowy that morning, after I’d made sure he wore it all through our stay in Rome. I had put it in a plastic laundry bag in our hotel room and would in all likelihood have to hide it from anyone’s prying reach for the rest of my life. On certain nights, I’d remove Billowy from its bag, make sure it hadn’t acquired the scent of plastic or of my clothes, and hold it next to me, flap its long sleeves around me, and breathe out his name in the dark.
Ulliva, Ulliva, Ulliva
—it was Oliver calling me by his name when he’d imitate its transmogrified sound as spoken by Mafalda and Anchise; but it’d also be me calling him by his name as well, hoping he’d call me back by mine, which I’d speak for him to me, and back to him:
Elio, Elio, Elio.

To avoid entering my bedroom from the balcony and finding him missing, I used the inner stairwell. I opened the door to my room, dropped my backpack on the floor, and threw myself on my warm, sunlit bed. Thank goodness for that. They had not washed the bedspread. Suddenly I was happy to be back. I could have fallen asleep right then and there, forgetting all about Billowy and the smell, and about Oliver himself. Who can resist sleep at two or three in the afternoon in these sunlit parts of the Mediterranean?

In my exhaustion, I resolved to take out my scorebook later in the afternoon and pick up the Haydn exactly where I’d left off. Either this or I’d head over to the tennis courts and sit in the sun on one of those warm benches that were sure to send a shiver of well-being through my body, and see who was available for a game. There was always someone.

I had never welcomed sleep so serenely in my life. There’d be plenty of time for mourning, I thought. It will come, probably on the sly, as I’ve heard these things always do, and there won’t be any getting off lightly, either. Anticipating sorrow to neutralize sorrow—that’s paltry, cowardly stuff, I told myself, knowing I was an ace practitioner of the craft. And what if it came fiercely? What if it came and didn’t let go, a sorrow that had come to stay, and did to me what longing for him had done on those nights when it seemed there was something so essential missing from my life that it might as well have been missing from my body, so that losing him now would be like losing a hand you could spot in every picture of yourself around the house, but without which you couldn’t possibly be you again. You lose it, as you always knew you would, and were even prepared to; but you can’t bring yourself to live with the loss. And hoping not to think of it, like praying not to dream of it, hurts just the same.

Then a strange idea got hold of me: What if my body—just my body, my heart—cried out for his? What to do then?

What if at night I wouldn’t be able to live with myself unless I had him by me, inside me? What then?

Think of the pain before the pain.

I knew what I was doing. Even in my sleep, I knew what I was doing. Trying to immunize yourself, that’s what you’re doing—you’ll end up killing the whole thing this way—sneaky, cunning boy, that’s what you are, sneaky, heartless, cunning boy. I smiled at the voice. The sun was right on me now, and I loved the sun with a near-pagan love for the things of earth. Pagan, that’s what you are. I had never known how much I loved the earth, the sun, the sea—people, things, even art seemed to come second. Or was I fooling myself?

In the middle of the afternoon, I became aware that I was enjoying sleep, and not just seeking refuge in it—sleep within sleep, like dreams within dreams, could anything be better? An access of something as exquisite as pure bliss began to take hold of me. This must be Wednesday, I thought, and indeed it was Wednesday, when the cutlery grinder sets up shop in our courtyard and begins to hone every blade in the household, Mafalda always chatting him up as she stands next to him, holding a glass of lemonade for him while he plies away at the whetstone. The raspy, fricative sound of his wheel crackling and hissing in the midafternoon heat, sending sound waves of bliss up my way to my bedroom. I had never been able to admit to myself how happy Oliver had made me the day he’d swallowed my peach. Of course it had moved me, but it had flattered me as well, as though his gesture had said,
I believe with every cell in my body that every cell in yours must not, must never, die, and if it does have to die, let it die inside my body.
He’d unlatched the partly opened door to the balcony from the outside, stepped in—we weren’t quite on speaking terms that day; he didn’t ask if he could come in. What was I going to do? Say, You can’t come in? This was when I raised my arm to greet him and tell him I was done pouting, no more pouting, ever, and let him lift the sheets and get into my bed. Now, no sooner had I heard the sound of the whetstone amid the cicadas than I knew I’d either wake up or go on sleeping, and both were good, dreaming or sleeping, one and the same, I’d take either or both.

When I awoke it was nearing five o’clock. I no longer wanted to play tennis, just as I had absolutely no desire to work on the Haydn. Time for a swim, I thought. I put on my bathing suit and walked down the stairway. Vimini was sitting on the short wall next to her parents’ house.

“How come you’re going for a swim?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I just felt like it. Want to come?”

“Not today. They’re forcing me to wear this ridiculous hat if I want to stay outside. I look like a Mexican bandit.”

“Pancho Vimini. What will you do if I go swimming?”

“I’ll watch. Unless you can help me get onto one of those rocks, then I’ll sit there, wet my feet, and keep my hat on.”

“Let’s go, then.”

You never needed to ask for Vimini’s hand. It was given naturally, the way blind people automatically take your elbow. “Just don’t walk too fast,” she said.

We went down the stairway and when we reached the rocks I found the one she liked best and sat next to her. This was her favorite spot with Oliver. The rock was warm and I loved the way the sun felt on my skin at this time of the afternoon. “Am I glad I’m back,” I said.

“Did you have a good time in Rome?”

I nodded.

“We missed you.”

“We who?”

“Me. Marzia. She came looking for you the other day.”

“Ah,” I said.

“I told her where you went.”

“Ah,” I repeated.

I could tell the child was scanning my face. “I think she knows you don’t like her very much.”

There was no point debating the issue.

“And?” I asked.

“And nothing. I just felt sorry for her. I said you’d left in a great rush.”

Vimini was obviously quite pleased with her guile.

“Did she believe you?”

“I think so. It wasn’t exactly a lie, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you both left without saying goodbye.”

“You’re right, we did. We didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Oh, with you, I don’t mind. But him I do. Very much.”

“Why?”

“Why, Elio? You must forgive me for saying so, but you’ve never been very intelligent.”

It took me a while to see where she was headed with this. Then it hit me.

“I may never see him again either,” I said.

“No, you still might. But I don’t know about me.”

I could feel my throat tightening, so I left her on the rock and began to edge my way into the water. This was exactly what I’d predicted might happen. I’d stare at the water that evening and for a split second forget that he wasn’t here any longer, that there was no point in turning back and looking up to the balcony, where his image hadn’t quite vanished. And yet, scarcely hours ago, his body and my body…Now he had probably already had his second meal on the plane and was preparing to land at JFK. I knew that he was filled with grief when he finally kissed me one last time in one of the bathroom stalls at Fiumicino Airport and that, even if on the plane the drinks and the movie had distracted him, once alone in his room in New York, he too would be sad again, and I hated thinking of him sad, just as I knew he’d hate to see me sad in our bedroom, which had all too soon become my bedroom.

Someone was coming toward the rocks. I tried to think of something to dispel my sorrow and fell upon the ironic fact that the distance separating Vimini from me was exactly the same that separated me from Oliver. Seven years. In seven years, I began thinking, and suddenly felt something almost burst in my throat. I dove into the water.

It was after dinner when the phone rang. Oliver had arrived safely. Yes, in New York. Yes, same apartment, same people, same noise—unfortunately the same music streaming from outside the window—you could hear it now. He put the receiver out the window and allowed us to get a flavor of the Hispanic rhythms of New York. One Hundred and Fourteenth Street, he said. Going out to a late lunch with friends. My mother and father were both talking to him from separate phones in the living room. I was on the phone in the kitchen. Here? Well, you know. The usual dinner guests. Just left. Yes, very, very hot here too. My father hoped this had been productive. This? Staying with us, explained my father. Best thing in my life. If I could, I’d hop on the same plane and come with the shirt on my back, an extra bathing suit, a toothbrush. Everyone laughed. With open arms,
caro
. Jokes were being bandied back and forth. You know our tradition, explained my mother, you must always come back, even for a few days.
Even for a few days
meant for no more than a few days—but she’d meant what she said, and he knew it. “Allora ciao, Oliver, e a presto,” she said. My father more or less repeated the same words, then added, “Dunque, ti passo Elio—vi lascio.” I heard the clicks of both extension phones signal that no one else was on the line. How tactful of my father. But the all-too-sudden freedom to be alone across what seemed a time barrier froze me. Did he have a good trip? Yes. Did he hate the meal? Yes. Did he think of me? I had run out of questions and should have thought better than to keep pounding him with more. “What do you think?” was his vague answer—as if fearing someone might accidentally pick up the receiver? Vimini sends her love. Very upset. I’ll go out and buy her something tomorrow and send it by express mail. I’ll never forget Rome so long as I live. Me neither. Do you like your room? Sort of. Window facing noisy courtyard, never any sun, hardly any room for anything, didn’t know I owned so many books, bed way too small now. Wish we could start all over in that room, I said. Both leaning out the window in the evening, rubbing shoulders, as we did in Rome—every day of my life, I said. Every day of mine too. Shirt, toothbrush, scorebook, and I’m flying over, so don’t tempt me either. I took something from your room, he said. What? You’ll never guess. What? Find out for yourself. And then I said it, not because it was what I wanted to say to him but because the silence was weighing on us, and this was the easiest thing to smuggle in during a pause—and at least I would have said it: I don’t want to lose you. We would write. I’d call from the post office—more private that way. There was talk of Christmas, of Thanksgiving even. Yes, Christmas. But his world, which until then seemed no more distant from mine than by the thickness of the skin Chiara had once picked from his shoulders, had suddenly drifted light-years away. By Christmas it might not matter. Let me hear the noise from your window one last time. I heard crackle. Let me hear the sound you made when…A faint, timid sound—on account of because there were others in the house, he said. It made us laugh. Besides, they’re waiting for me to go out with them. I wished he had never called. I had wanted to hear him say my name again. I had meant to ask him, now that we were far apart, whatever had happened between him and Chiara. I had also forgotten to ask where he’d put his red bathing suit. Probably he had forgotten and taken it away with him.