“Yes, my mother holds receptions,” Agostino replied.
“There must be a lot of beautiful ladies,” said Tortima, as if talking to himself. “How many people come?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many?”
“Twenty or thirty,” replied Agostino, who was now feeling reassured and a little bit cocky about this success.
“Twenty or thirty . . . and what do they do?”
“What do you think they do,” said Berto ironically. “They probably dance, have fun. They’re rich, not poor slobs like us. They probably make love—”
“No, they don’t make love,” said Agostino earnestly, also to show that at this point he knew perfectly what the expression meant.
Tortima seemed to be struggling with an obscure idea he couldn’t quite formulate. He finally said, “But if out of the blue, I were to show up at one of those receptions and say, ’Here I am,’ what would you do?”
As he said this he got to his feet and went through the motions of someone introducing himself with a swagger, chest swelling, hands on his hips. The boys all burst out laughing.
“I would ask you to leave,” said Agostino plainly, encouraged by the boys’ laughter.
“And if I refused to leave?”
“I would have the waiters show you the door.”
“You have waiters?” someone asked.
“No, but when we have receptions my mother hires them.”
“Huh, just like your father.” One of the boys must have been a waiter’s son.
“And if I were to resist the waiters, punch them in the face and make my way to the middle of the room and shout, ’You’re a bunch of crooks and bitches,’ what would you say then?” Tortima insisted menacingly, walking up to Agostino and poking his fist under his nose, as if to make him smell it. But now everyone turned against Tortima, not to take Agostino’s side so much as to hear more details about his fabulous wealth.
“Leave him alone. They’d kick you out and they’d be right,” were the protests all around. With disdain Berto said, “Keep out of it. Your father’s a sailor, and you’re going to end up a sailor, too. And if you show up at Pisa’s house you wouldn’t be shouting a thing. I can almost see you,” he added, jumping to his feet and mimicking Tortima’s imagined deference at Agostino’s house: “ ’Begging your pardon, is this the home of Master Pisa? Begging your pardon . . . I’ve come . . . it doesn’t matter, my apologies . . . my apologies for the disturbance, I’ll come back later.’ I can almost see you. You’d be bowing all the way down the stairs.”
All the boys laughed. Tortima, as stupid as he was brutal, didn’t dare attack them for laughing, but still itching for retaliation he asked Agostino, “Do you know how to arm wrestle?”
“Arm wrestle?” Agostino repeated.
“He doesn’t know what arm wrestling is,” several derisive voices called out. Sandro took Agostino’s arm, and bent it back, forcing his hand in the air and his elbow into the sand. Meanwhile Tortima had reclined on the sand, belly-down, and positioned his arm in the same manner. “You have to push in one direction,” Sandro said, “while Tortima pushes in the other.”
Agostino took Tortima’s hand. With a single shove, Tortima had his arm flat on the ground and stood up triumphantly.
“My turn,” said Berto, and with the same ease as Tortima he nailed Agostino’s arm to the ground. “Me, me,” shouted his pals. One after the other they each had a try and each one of them beat Agostino. The last to come forward was the black boy, and a voice said, “If you let Homs beat you, well, then your arms must be made out of rubber.” Agostino decided that at least the black boy wouldn’t beat him.
Homs had skinny arms the color of roast coffee. Agostino thought his own looked stronger. “Let’s do it, Pisa,” the boy said, boasting stupidly, laying down in front of him. He had a listless, almost feminine voice, and as soon as his face was only a foot away, Agostino could see that his nose wasn’t flat, as he had imagined, but aquiline, small and turning in on itself like an oily black urchin, with a kind of clear, yellowish mole on one of his nostrils. His lips weren’t as big as other black people’s, but thin and purple. His eyes were round and white, oppressed by a swollen forehead from which a sooty mop of hair rose. “Let’s do it, Pisa. I won’t hurt you,” he added, slipping into Agostino’s palm a delicate hand with thin black fingers and pink fingernails. Agostino realized that if he pulled his upper arm a little closer, without appearing to do anything, he could put his whole weight behind his hand. At first this simple realization allowed him to resist and check Homs’s exertions. For a long while they were in a standoff, surrounded by the attentive boys. Agostino’s face was tense but firm. His whole body was straining while the black boy was grimacing, gritting his white teeth and squinting. “Pisa’s winning,” a voice said suddenly, amazed. But at that moment a terrible pain shot through Agostino from his shoulder and down his entire arm. Exhausted, he loosened his grip saying, “No, he’s stronger than me.” “The next time you’ll beat me,” said the black boy as he stood up, with his unpleasant, smarmy courtesy. “Even Homs beat you. You’re really worthless,” said Tortima scornfully. But now the boys seemed to have grown tired of teasing Agostino. “Let’s jump in the water,” one of them proposed. “Yes, yes, to the water,” they all shouted. Skipping and tumbling, they ran across the beach, over the burning sand, toward the sea. Watching them from a distance, Agostino saw them jumping into the shallow water one after the other, headfirst like fish, with big splashes and shouts of joy. When he reached the shore, Tortima emerged from the water like an animal, first with his back and then with his head, shouting, “Jump in, Pisa. What are you doing over there?”
“I have my clothes on,” Agostino said.
“Now I’m going to tear them off of you,” replied Tortima mischievously. Agostino tried to run away but wasn’t fast enough. Tortima grabbed hold of him, dragged him despite his efforts, and pulling him into the sea, held his head underwater, almost drowning him. Then he shouted, “See you later, Pisa,” and swam off at a sprint. Not much farther away he saw Sandro standing on a pattino, maneuvering elegantly between the boys who clamored around him, trying to climb into the boat. Soaking wet and breathing heavily, Agostino returned to shore and for a moment looked back at the pattino crammed with boys on their way out to the deserted sea under a blinding sun. Then, walking quickly over the glassy sand lining the shore, he headed back to Speranza beach.
2
IT WASN’T as late as he had feared. Once he’d reached the beach, he found that his mother wasn’t back yet. The beach was emptying. A few scattered swimmers still lingered in the dazzling sea. Everyone else, languid and overheated, was lined up beneath the midday sky, leaving by the boardwalk that led to the street. Agostino sat under the beach umbrella and waited. His mother’s ride seemed to be lasting longer than usual. Forgetting that the young man had arrived late and that it hadn’t been his mother who wanted to go alone but he who had disappeared, he told himself that the mother and the young man must have taken advantage of his absence to do the very things that Saro and the boys had talked about. The thought did not make him jealous; instead, it sent a shudder through him that was new and filled with complicity, curiosity, and smug, glum approval. It was right that his mother should behave in such a way with the young man, that she should go with him on the boat every day, and that at this very moment, far from prying eyes, between the sea and the sky, she should lose herself in his arms. It was right, and now he was perfectly capable of understanding it. While mulling over these thoughts, he scanned the horizon for the two lovers.
Finally the pattino appeared, no more than a white speck on the deserted sea, approaching rapidly. He saw his mother sitting and the young man rowing. The oars lifted and lowered, and every stroke was accompanied by a splash of glittering water. Agostino stood up and went to the water. He wanted to see his mother getting off the boat, to observe carefully any traces of the intimacy in which he had parti
cipated unknowingly for so long, and which now, after the revelations of Saro and the boys, he thought would appear to him in a completely new light filled with indecent telltale clues. From the pattino, even before it came to shore, his mother gave him a big wave. Then she jumped into the water cheerfully and in a few strides was by her son. “Are you hungry? We’re going to go have something to eat right away. Goodbye, goodbye, see you tomorrow,” she added in a melodious voice, turning around and waving to the young man. To Agostino she seemed happier than usual, and as he followed behind her on the beach, he couldn’t help but think that her goodbyes to the young man conveyed an elated pathetic joy, as if something the son’s presence had impeded so far had really happened that day. But his observations and suspicions stopped there. Besides, except for that ungainly joyousness so unlike her customary dignity, he couldn’t understand what exactly had happened during the ride and whether they had engaged in amorous relations. Face, neck, hands, body: no matter how closely he studied them with his cruel new awareness, they showed no sign of the kisses and caresses they had received. The more Agostino looked at his mother, the more disgruntled he felt.
“The two of you were alone today, without me,” he tried to say while they headed toward the cabin, almost hoping she would answer, “Yes, and we were finally able to make love.” But his mother seemed to interpret his words as an allusion to the slap and his subsequent running away. “Let’s not speak about what happened anymore,” she said, stopping for a moment, squeezing him by the shoulders and staring him in the face with her smiling excited eyes. “Agreed? I know that you love me. Give me a kiss, and not another word about it.” Agostino suddenly found himself with his face against her neck, once so sweet with the perfume and warmth that enveloped her chastely. But beneath her lips he seemed to sense a new yet faint throbbing, like the last surge of the bitter lingering feeling the young man’s mouth must have awakened in her flesh. The mother quickly climbed the stairs to the cabin. With his face blushing from a shame he could not understand, he lay down in the sand.
Later, on their way home, he ruminated at length, in the depths of his troubled heart, on these new and still-obscure sentiments. How strange it was that earlier, when he was still unaware of good and evil, his mother’s mysterious relations with the young man had seemed ridden with guilt. Now that the revelations of Saro and his young acolytes had opened his eyes and confirmed those first painful suspicions of sensuality, he was filled with doubt and unsatisfied curiosity. Earlier, his spirit had been aroused by filial affection, jealous and naive; now, in this cruel new light, his still undiminished affection had been replaced in part by an acrid disenchanted curiosity that found those first minor stirrings inconsequential. Earlier, every seemingly discordant word or gesture had offended him without enlightening him, and he had almost preferred to ignore them. Now that his eyes were always on her, the gaffes and missteps that used to upset him seemed insignificant, and he almost hoped to surprise her in one of the naked, shameless, natural poses he had just learned about from Saro and the boys.
The truth is, he might not have been seized by a desire to spy on his mother and to destroy the aura of dignity and respect with which he had viewed her if, on that same day, chance had not set him so violently on this path. At home, mother and son ate almost without speaking. The mother appeared distracted, and Agostino, lost in his new and—to him—incredible thoughts, was unusually quiet. But later, after lunch, he was suddenly filled with an irresistible desire to go and spend time with the gang of boys. They had told him they would meet at Vespucci beach in the early afternoon to plan the day’s excursions and exploits. After his initial feelings of repulsion and fear had passed, the brutal and humiliating company of the boys reasserted its dark appeal. He was in his room, lying on the bed, in the warm mottled shade of the lowered blinds. As was his habit, he was playing with the wooden pull switch of the electric light. From outside only a few noises entered: the turning wheels of a solitary carriage, dishes and glasses clattering in the street-side rooms of the pensione across the way. By contrast to the silence of the summer afternoon, the noises at home sounded sharper and more isolated. He could hear her enter the next room, her loud heels crossing the floor tiles. She walked back and forth, opening and shutting drawers, moving chairs around, touching objects. “Now she’s going to take a nap,” he thought for a moment, shaking himself from the torpor that had slowly come over him, “and then I won’t be able to tell her I want to go to the beach.” Worried, he got up from bed and left the room. His room opened onto the balcony facing the stairs. The mother’s door was next to his. He walked up to it, but finding it slightly ajar, rather than knock as usual, he pushed the door softly until it was half open, guided perhaps unconsciously by his new desire to surprise his mother in her intimacy. In the mother’s bedroom, much larger than his own, the bed was near the door, and facing the door was a chest of drawers topped by a wide mirror. The first thing he saw was his mother standing in front of the chest of drawers.
She wasn’t naked, as he had almost sensed and hoped while entering, but rather partly undressed and in the act of removing her necklace and earrings in front of the mirror. She was wearing a sheer negligee that barely covered her hips. Beneath the two uneven and unbalanced swellings of her loins, one higher and contracted, the other lower and extended and relaxed, her elegant legs tapered in a listless pose from her long sturdy thighs all the way down to her calves and narrow heels. Her arms were raised to unhook the clasp of the necklace, lending her back a movement that could be seen through the transparent fabric, making the furrow that divided her expanse of tanned flesh blur and fade into two different backs, one lower and beneath the kidneys, the other higher and beneath the nape of the neck. Her armpits opened to the air like the jaws of two snakes, the soft long hairs like thin black tongues protruding as if eager to escape the heavy, sweaty constriction of her arms. Her whole large and splendid body seemed in Agostino’s dazed eyes to sway and palpitate in the shadows of the room and, as if to leaven her nakedness, to expand immoderately, reabsorbing into the dilated, cloven roundness of her hips the legs along with the torso and head, and then to balloon, stretching and tapering upward, one extremity touching the floor and the other the ceiling. But in the mirror, in the mysterious shadow of a blackened painting, the pale and distant face seemed to look at him with inviting eyes and the mouth seemed to smile at him seductively.
Agostino’s first impulse was to withdraw quickly, but a new thought, “She’s a woman,” immediately stopped him, his hand still on the door handle, his eyes wide open. He could feel the whole of his former filial spirit rebel against this paralysis and pull him away; but the new, timid yet strong spirit ruthlessly forced him to fix his reluctant eyes on a spot he would never have dared to set them the day before. So in the battle between repulsion and attraction, astonishment and pleasure, the details of the picture he was contemplating appeared more firm and sharp: the pose of the legs, the listlessness of the back, the profile of the armpits. They seemed to respond fully to the new feeling that required only this confirmation to overwhelm his imagination completely. Descending suddenly from respect and reverence to the opposite sentiments, he almost hoped that before his eyes her clumsiness would turn to vulgarity, her nudity to provocation, her innocence to naked guilt. His eyes shifted from astonishment to curiosity, filled with a scrutiny he considered almost scientific but whose false objectivity was related instead to the cruelty of their guiding sentiment. And while the blood rushed to his head, he kept repeating to himself, “She’s a woman, nothing more than a woman,” in words that seemed simultaneously to strike, disdain, and insult her back and legs.
The mother, having removed her necklace and set it on the marble top of the chest of drawers, brought her hands together at her earlobe in a graceful gesture to unscrew one of the earrings. Throughout this motion, she kept her head tilted to one side and turned toward the room. Agostino feared she would see him in the cheval glass situated near the win
dow, in which he could see his whole body, upright and lurking, between the double doors. Forcing himself to remove his hand, he knocked lightly on the doorpost, asking, “May I?”
“Just a minute, dear,” his mother said calmly. Agostino saw her move and disappear from sight. Then, after a quiet rustling, she reappeared in a long blue silk dressing gown.
“Mamma,” said Agostino, without looking up, “I’m going to the beach.”
“At this hour?” she said, distractedly. “But it’s hot outside. Wouldn’t it be better to take a short nap?” One hand reached out and caressed him on the cheek. With the other she smoothed a loose lock of his straight black hair from behind his neck.
Agostino said nothing, reverting to childhood for the occasion, and stood in stubborn silence, as he used to do whenever a request was not granted, eyes on the floor, chin lowered to his chest. This pose was well known to his mother, who interpreted it in her usual manner. “All right, then, if it matters to you so much,” and added, “go ahead. But first go to the kitchen and have them give you a snack, but don’t eat it right away, put it in the cabin, and above all don’t go in the water before five. I should be there by then, and we can go for a swim together.” These were her usual words of advice.
Agostino said nothing in reply and ran barefoot down the stone steps of the staircase. Behind him, he heard the door to her bedroom closing softly.
He raced down the stairs, slipped on his sandals in the entryway, opened the door, and went out into the street. He was immediately struck by a wall of torrid air, the silent ardor of the scorching August sun. At one end of the street, the sea glittered, motionless, beneath the distant, tremulous air. At the opposite end the red tree trunks of the pine grove tilted beneath the sultry green mass of their rounded foliage.
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