by André Aciman
But I was not jealous. I was happy. And happy not just for them. I saw that, even at such an early age, I had zeroed in on the right person and read the truth about me and about him as well. I wanted him, and he would have wanted me, not when I was twelve, but later. I even drew pleasure in thinking that my passion was inherited, that it was passed on, and therefore fated. Fate always leaves a mark, and those of us who are truly lucky know the signs and how to read them. He would have taught me everything, and most likely given me everything. Instead, years after, I sought out the wrong people, learned from the wrong teachers, took from those who had less to give and almost nothing I wanted. As I walked after dropping off my tutor in the early afternoon, I imagined the two of them on the very evening after our departure, having a quick meal together in the kitchen. A feast on leftovers. By then my father would have sent away all the help, and he and Nanni would be alone in the house, possibly listening to Beethoven as they sat on the veranda without candles or kerosene lamps, to avoid mosquitoes and prying eyes. Their days, their hours were numbered, and they knew it. San Giustiniano would not stand them much longer. Surely there’d been signs, threats, who knows.
I pictured them sitting face-to-face over dinner with a glass of wine each, my father spreading his elbows on the table as he did with me to watch the young man drink from his glass. After the meal, Nanni says, “I’ll clear the dishes,” and knowing my father, he gets up and says, “No, let me. You sit.”
It was at moments such as these, at the beach in the morning or in the caffè at night, that my father would discover I’d worked on the frames and the small box. “The boy works well.” “I am so happy he’s taken an interest,” says my father. “He does. Every day. But I have to tell you, I think he has a crush on me.” The man sitting with his elbows outstretched, watching the young man sip his wine, would not be shocked, nor would he mind hearing this. He might even be a touch amused—like father, like son, he says. “He’s been courting me for weeks,” says Nanni, “and the strange thing is that he probably has no idea. I don’t think he knows anything.”
Nanni stands up now and helps my father with the dishes. “One day he’s bound to find out,” Nanni says.
“With someone like you, Nanni, just like you.”
Nanni was right about one thing. I knew nothing at all.
But had I not eventually learned about the ways of physical love through gossip, hearsay, and foul words, God only knows what I would have invented once seized by the urge to touch another human being.
* * *
I MISSED THE ferry and had an hour and a half to kill before the next one. I’d go up to the castle, I thought, and later tell my father that I’d made memories the way we had pledged to do years before. But instead I walked up vicolo Sant’Eusebio and stopped there for the last time, not sure what I was doing or why, yet sensing that he would have wanted me to do just that, because he would have done it for me, or for my father, it didn’t matter whom. Nothing had changed. I remembered the baker and began heading his way, remembered the bruises on his arms that had made my father and me laugh, and then, as if it were the sound track to this whole place, I remembered Beethoven’s thirty-first variation. Where was Nanni now? I bought two pastries. One for me, one …
Part of me wanted to keep walking around town at this hour of the afternoon and pretend that eventually I’d find the shop open. I had forgotten nothing; this could easily have been ten years ago. My mother was still alive, I hadn’t met Chloe, hadn’t met Raúl, and, for that brief spell one winter during senior year in college, hadn’t run into a chemistry student, whose name I never bothered to ask and whose voice I can’t even recall because we’d hardly ever spoken on the nights we sought each other’s bodies in the dark.
But there was no time, and I could already hear the traghetto sounding its horn. With any luck, tomorrow I’d be in Rome.
Would I have the courage to speak to my father about Nanni—and not only about his Nanni but also about mine?
What I wanted was to spot my father sitting at a small table at his favorite caffè, arrive late as he always complained I did, and before ordering anything, take a seat and say to him, “I think he’s alive.”
“Who?”
“The man you and I loved. He lives in Canada.”
And then it hit me for the first time in my life. My father must have always known what had happened to Nanni, and that if I’d wanted to know, all I needed was to ask him. A blockhead indeed, I thought, almost laughing at my old tutor’s word.
But my father never spoke to me about Nanni. Nor did I broach the subject with him. I never found out what Nanni ended up doing for a living, or what kind of life he led, married, unmarried, partnered or not. But I do know that letters arrived from Canada. I saw an envelope with Canadian stamps lying on Father’s dining table once when I dropped in to see him. But when I came back from the kitchen after making a sandwich, the envelope had disappeared. He didn’t want me to know they corresponded. But I was happy they did.
Years later, while emptying my parents’ home, I found a small sealed package the size of a shoe box addressed to my father. Judging from the postmark, it must have lain there for three years among so many things that had piled up after his death. “Sciusciù,” read the note when I unwrapped and opened the package, “I kept this after you left San Giustiniano. I told you I was sending it back. Please accept it and don’t argue. I’ve known love only once in my life, and it was you.”
I had heard the name Sciusciù used once but had completely failed to pay attention. Nanni had muttered it before leaving our house, probably on the evening when he came to deliver the desk. It was a French word that my father had picked up during his student days in France and used as an endearment with everyone: chouchou. They must have used it with each other.
I replied two years later. “Dear Nanni,” I wrote. “We received your package about five years ago. But it is only now that I’m writing to you. I don’t know why it took so long to write back. My father died six years ago. We never spoke about you. But I knew. Perhaps you never knew this, but I was more like my father with you than you suspected. Or perhaps you knew. Yes, I’m sure you knew. You’ve been with me all my life.”
I didn’t expect a reply.
An envelope arrived a few weeks later. “Maybe you’ll like this picture. I had it copied and wanted you to have it.”
In the picture Nanni and my father are standing in bathing suits with the sea behind them. Nanni’s right arm is resting on my father’s shoulders, while his other hand is holding my father’s left shoulder. My father, his arms crossed, is smiling broadly, and so is Nanni, both trim and athletic. Only then did I realize that though my father was at least twenty years older than Nanni, in the picture they look so much alike that they could be brothers. I had never thought of my father as a handsome man, and yet, in this new light, he was more than just handsome. It had taken me years to see how much alike the two of them were.
SPRING FEVER
As soon as I see them inside the restaurant I avert my eyes and pretend to be staring at the menu posted by the entrance. If they see me, they’ll think I’ve just breezed in and out after hastily scanning the day’s offerings. To avoid being caught fleeing, I stay put a fraction of a second longer, performing a seeming double take at the menu. I put on my glasses, bring my face close to the daily specials in typical French script on the tiny elementary-school slate board by the door, and seem to be totally engrossed, realizing all along that nothing, not one word I’m reading, is registering. Finally, with an imperceptible shake of the head, which she’ll recognize as my usual nah, I remove my glasses, put them back in my breast pocket, pivot, and walk out, determined to disappear as fast as I can from the block, from the avenue, from the city itself. My little performance must have taken no more than five seconds.
It is only as I am rushing up Madison Avenue and putting as much distance between Renzo & Lucia’s and me that I notice I’m trembling. From shock, I
think. No, from jealousy. Or anger. Then I correct myself: From fear. Actually, from shame.
I, the wronged party, am ashamed of being caught by them, while they, the guilty, couldn’t care less: no rush of adrenaline, no rattled frown on her face. From where she was seated in the middle of the restaurant, she would have stared me down, meaning, So now you know.
I could let myself think that I immediately slipped out of the restaurant to spare her the stress and agitation of being caught. But my heart is racing too fast for me to think I’ve done it just for her. I hate not only my sheepish, hangdog, tail-between-my-legs getaway; I hate being so visibly shaken. If I run into people I know, they’ll take a quick look at me and ask, What’s the matter? You look terrible. Do I look terrible? As terrible as the day I got a phone call telling me my father had fallen while crossing the street and was lying unconscious in the emergency room and I raced to the hospital forgetting keys, wallet, and the photo ID identifying me as someone bearing his last name? I don’t care if I look terrible.
But I do care.
Yet before walking out of the restaurant, I stayed long enough to prevent them from thinking that I’d skipped away immediately after seeing them. Smart thinking, that.
The thought makes me feel good about myself, and feeling good gives my gait a lively sprint. Maud would think I was in a terrific mood and taking the afternoon off and was most likely headed to the very tennis courts where she and I had met less than a year ago.
I seldom play tennis after 8:00 a.m., but taking time off to play on such a glorious Friday early afternoon feels like a wonderful idea, particularly on this faux-spring day that really happens to be in late winter. I call Harlan, my morning partner. He’s a schoolteacher and usually heads back to the courts after school. As always, his voice mail picks up. I leave him a message. Meanwhile, I see a crosstown bus on 67th and Madison and decide to head west just as its doors are about to close. It’s the long way to the courts, but I like walking up Central Park West early in the afternoon. I can call her on her cell from the West Side in twenty minutes to see how she’ll respond. Then, for future reference, I’ll register the chill blitheness of her Busy, busy, busy, call you later.
On the bus, I try to list a few things. The sound of Maud’s voice when she’s happy to hear my voice even if she’s at a business lunch and can’t really talk right now. Her distracted vioce when she’s surrounded by noise in a crowded restaurant. And yet the way she looked at him while he was speaking to her—listening so keenly, so engrossed, poring over every inflection in his broad, dimpled smile, her head tilted toward his, his almost touching hers, both heads almost resting against the large mirror right behind them, in what every art student would call a definite Canova moment. Of course she won’t pick up the phone when I call. Lucky the man whose companion listens to him, hangs on his every word, asks him to tell her more, and please don’t stop talking, she says, I love when you talk to me, her left arm reclining on the back of the banquette, touching his neck, rubbing the curls above his neck—she is staring, gazing, worshiping. I’ll do everything, her eyes say.
Her right hand rests on the table, fondling the salt shaker, doing nothing, waiting. I know that gesture. She wants him to hold her hand.
They’re talking, but they’re staring. They’re making love, for Christ’s sake.
A woman who lets her hand rub the back of a man’s neck that way is obviously not having a platonic thing. A woman who hasn’t been naked with you doesn’t look so confiding, so eager to touch. She can’t have enough of him. They’re past holding back, past awkward admissions, past the restless unease of people who are irresistibly drawn to each other but haven’t made love yet. These are people who’ve just started sleeping together and can’t hold off touching, everything is about touching. They’re playing at residual flirtation long after courtship has served its purpose. And yet that hand resting so doleful and guileless on the table, still fondling the salt shaker—can’t he tell she’s waiting, waiting for him to put his hand on hers?
When had they started sleeping together? Just recently? Last week? Last month? Will it last? Who is he? How does she know him? Were there others? Was there a clear and tangible moment when she decided to cross the bridge and go over to the other side? Or, as the saying goes, did it all just happen? You head out to a business lunch one day, he stares at you, you let your gaze linger on his, and suddenly, after just a half glass of wine, you catch your breath and the words slip out of your mouth, and you can’t believe what you’ve said, and the strange thing is he’s no less rapt than you are, until one of you breaks down and finally asks, Is this really happening? and the other replies, I think it is. I can just hear them: What happens at Renzo & Lucia’s stays at Renzo & Lucia’s.
I envy them. They’re sleeping together. And yet I am not jealous. Because I fear jealousy more than the loss of love.
Why wasn’t I aware that something like this was going on in her life? In most cases you’re not even aware that you’ve been suspecting, which is why you never bothered culling the scraps of evidence that kept falling your way every day, every hour, and that you now regret failing to intercept, to examine, to log away in the ledger of heartbreak, resentment, and guile. The eternal yoga classes on weekday evenings; the phone she almost never picks up at the office when she knows I’m the one calling; the drinks after work that always get shuffled around so you can’t quite tell when they’ve morphed into an impromptu dinner; the reading group that never gathers in the same place twice; the meetings at work that happen at the last minute; the laptop she shuts a bit too hastily the moment you walk into the room; and always those cryptic yes-no conversations she says are with her boss calling late from Westchester.
In the evening, she smokes a cigarette and stares into space, listens to music and stares into space, stares into space to be with him, not me. She reminds me of infatuated women in 1940s movies who travel by ship and lounge alone on deck and cannot read and all they want is to stroll about at night until the man they love shows up again and offers to light their cigarette.
Was she thinking of him when we sat and watched TV together, or when I massaged her toes because she said her feet hurt, or when we rubbed against each other in the kitchen and I held her from behind and wanted to make love to her? New doubts flit through my mind, but before I can seize them, they fizzle away. Better this way. There are things I may not want to know or think about. Do my friends know? Have they tried to tell me but backed off when they saw I wasn’t picking up the hint?
In the elevator to his place, she fixes his tie, as she did once with my lapel seconds before we rang someone’s bell, knowing already that, as soon as they shut the door behind them, she’ll tear off his tie, unbutton his shirt, undo his belt, yank him out of his clothes. I like the thought that she’ll volunteer to help him with his cuff links, because she assumes all men need help putting them on and taking them off. I want him to fear she’s thinking of the men she’s known when she removes his cuff links with an expert hand.
* * *
I AM ON Central Park West and the sun is beaming on this spectacular clear day. With any luck, Harlan and I will be playing tennis as soon as his school lets out. I’ll sweat it out and put all this behind me. Harlan likes to hit, backhand and forehand, and we’ll play like savages, as he likes to say, because we are taking it out on those poor yellow balls. Backhand and forehand, crosscourt against crosscourt, and, when one of us least expects it, we’ll hit one of those down-the-line beauties to jostle every last pout out of our system.
On this budding, premature summer day it will be heaven. I could take a cab to 93rd. But I want to walk in the sun. At the entrance to the park on 67th Street, I spot a hot dog stand. This is exactly what I’ve been aching for: a frankfurter. I ask for sauerkraut, lots of it, and onion sauce too. You’ve suffered a great shock and need to be good to yourself, says an inside voice. This is the new normal. I need to learn to live with it. Millions have been hurt before, millions m
ore will continue to be. I should find someone to speak to, but—and the thought jolts me because I wasn’t careful to nip it—the only one who’d understand is the very one I wish to lash out against. I’m like those seeking comfort or, better yet, advice, from the very person who abuses them.
The hot dog vendor looks at me, meaning Did I want something to drink?
Yes, a Diet Coke as well. With a straw, please. The man looks up at the sky and comments on the weather. “Beach weather,” he says, “beach weather, like in my country.” He obviously wants me to ask which country that is, but from how he pronounces his consonants, I’ve already guessed. How did I know? he asks. From the accent, I said. How did I know the accent, then? An ex-girlfriend was Greek. From where she was? From 181st Street. And before that? Chios, I say. Have I been to Chios? No, never, has he? Never, nor would he, he snickers, hoping I’d ask why—which I decide not to. By the time we’ve exchanged bits of nothings, I’ve finished my hot dog without actually tasting it, much less savoring it. So I order another. Same like before? Same as before. This, my last year here, he says as he adds mustard to the already-bulging bun. I don’t want to hear why he’s leaving. But seeing him standing silent and still before me as he is handing me my hot dog, I can’t help but ask him why. Because his wife is not well. What’s wrong with her? I ask, figuring homesickness, depression, maybe menopause. Cancer, he replies. “She don’t want to go back. But I cannot stay in America if she is not here no more.” I reach out and touch his shoulder. “Difficult,” I say, imitating my version of Mediterranean compassion in pidgin English. “And how.” Two ruddy-cheeked adolescents who look as though they’ve just tussled in gym class and then slipped on their school uniforms approach the vendor, and after greeting him in Greek, they ask for hot dogs. He’s probably seen them grow up and taught them the small Greek they know. A third joins them; all three, I notice, are wearing loosened neckties and smoking unfiltered cigarettes. This is my moment to slink away. I bid the man goodbye. He nods back with a sullen, crestfallen look meaning, They’re too young to know about wives, cancer, and homeland. I don’t know why, but as I struggle with my hot dog, briefcase, and Diet Coke, I wish I had stopped, sat on a bench, and told the Greek that I too was losing someone. He would have understood.
