The black boy snickered contentedly. Saro, huddled over, was busy turning the ears of corn on the fire. The others were snickering. Berto was the most derisive of all, shoving Agostino into the black boy so hard that for a moment they were on top of each other, one snickering at his abasement as if it were flattery, the other uncomprehending and filled with repulsion. “I don’t understand you guys,” Agostino blurted out, “I went for a boat ride. What’s wrong with that?”
“Oh, what’s wrong with that? He went for a boat ride. What’s wrong with that?” many voices repeated, ironically. Some of the boys were holding their bellies from laughter.
“Yeah, what’s wrong with it?” Berto repeated in the same tone of voice. “Nothing at all. On the contrary, Homs thinks everything’s right about it. Don’t you, Homs?”
The black boy agreed, jubilantly. The truth finally began to dawn on Agostino, however vaguely. He couldn’t help but establish a connection between the teasing and Saro’s strange behavior during the trip. “I don’t know what you mean,” he declared. “I didn’t do anything wrong during the boat ride. Saro made me recite some poetry, that’s all.”
“Oh, oh, poetry,” he heard the cries from all around.
“Saro, tell them I’m not lying,” Agostino cried, turning red in the face.
Saro said neither yes nor no, settling for a smile and sneaking what one might call a curious glance in his direction. The boys interpreted his seemingly indifferent but in fact treacherous and self-serving behavior as a contradiction of Agostino. “Of course,” many voices repeated, “ask the innkeeper if the wine is good, right, Saro? Nice try. Oh, Pisa, Pisa.”
The vindictive black boy seemed to be enjoying this more than anyone. Agostino turned to him and, trembling with rage, abruptly asked, “What’s so funny?”
“Why nothing,” said Homs, stepping aside.
“Hey, don’t fight, Saro will make peace between you,” Berto said. But the boys were already talking about something else, as if what they had been alluding to was moot and no longer worth mentioning. They talked about how they had snuck into a field and stolen the corn and fruit. About how they had seen the farmer chase after them, armed and furious. About how they had fled and the farmer had fired his gun at them without striking anyone. The ears of corn were ready, browned and roasted on the embers. Saro removed them from the grate and, with his usual paternal complacency, distributed them to everyone. Agostino took advantage of a moment when everyone was intent on eating, and with a somersault made his way to Sandro, who off to one side was nibbling at his corn.
“I don’t understand,” he started. The other boy gave him a knowing look, and Agostino realized there was no need to say more. “Homs came on the streetcar,” Sandro uttered slowly, “and he said you and Saro had gone for a boat ride.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Keep me out of it,” replied Sandro with his eyes to the ground, “it’s between you two, you and the black boy. But as for Saro . . .” He let the sentence drift off and stared at Agostino.
“As for Saro?”
“Well, let’s just say that I wouldn’t go on a boat ride with Saro.”
“Why not?”
Sandro looked around them and then, lowering his voice, he gave Agostino the explanation he had almost intuited without fully understanding. “Oh,” said Agostino. And without being able to say more, he returned to the group.
Squatting among the boys, with his cold good-natured head leaning on one shoulder, Saro was the very picture of a good father surrounded by his children. But now Agostino couldn’t look at him without a deep and even stronger hatred than he felt toward the black boy. What was particularly despicable about Saro was his silence in the face of Agostino’s protests, as if to insinuate that the things the boys had accused him of really had taken place. Yet he couldn’t help but perceive the contempt and derision that separated him from the others. The same distance, now that he noticed, between the gang and the black boy. Except that the black boy, rather than feel humiliated and offended like Agostino, seemed to be amused by it. More than once he tried to talk about the subject burning inside him, but he was met with ridicule and apathy. Besides, although Sandro’s explanation couldn’t have been clearer, Agostino still couldn’t fully understand what had happened. Everything was obscure both in and around him, as if rather than the sunlit beach, sky, and sea, there were only shadows, fog, and vague menacing shapes.
In the meantime the boys had finished devouring the roasted corn and thrown the cobs away in the sand. “Should we go for a swim in Rio?” one of them proposed, and the proposal was instantly accepted. Even Saro, who was supposed to bring them all back to the Vespucci beach in his boat later, stood up and came with them.
Walking along the beach, Sandro broke away from the group and joined Agostino. “You’re mad at the black kid,” he whispered, “so scare him a little.”
“How?” asked Agostino, downcast.
“Beat him up.”
“He’s stronger than me,” said Agostino, remembering their arm wrestling, “but if you help me—”
“What’s it got to do with me? This is between you and him.” Sandro said these words with a special tone, as if to insinuate that his thoughts as to why Agostino despised Homs were no different than everyone else’s. Agostino felt his heart pierced by a profound bitterness. Even Sandro— the only one who had shown him any friendship so far— also participated in and believed the slander. Having offered this advice, Sandro walked away from Agostino and joined the others, as if he were afraid of being near him. From the beach they now passed through the undergrowth of young pines. Then they crossed a sandy path and entered into the canebrake. The reeds were dense, and many of them had feathery white plumes on top. The boys appeared and disappeared between the tall green stalks, slipping on the cane sap and shaking the canes with a dry rustling of the stiff fibrous leaves. They finally found a point where the canebrake opened up to a small muddy riverbank. When the boys appeared, big frogs leapt from all around into the glassy compact water. And here, one leaning against the other, they started undressing before the narrowed eyes of Saro who, sitting on a rock close to the reeds, seemed intent on smoking but was spying on them. Agostino was embarrassed, but fearing more teasing, he, too, began to loosen his trousers, as slowly as possible, casting furtive glances at the others. But the boys seemed overjoyed to get naked and tore off their clothes, bumping into one another and joking around. Against the green background of the cane, their bodies were brown and white, a miserable, hairy white from their groins to their bellies. This whiteness revealed something strangely deformed, ungainly, and overly muscular about their bodies, typical of manual laborers. The only one who didn’t actually seem naked was Sandro, blond in the groin and on the head, graceful and well proportioned, perhaps because his whole body was evenly tanned. Not naked, that is, in the foul manner of kids at a public swimming pool. The boys, getting ready to dive in, acted out hundreds of obscene gestures, tripping, pushing, and touching each other with brashness and an unrestrained promiscuity that shocked Agostino, who was new to this type of thing. He too was naked, his feet bare and caked with cold mud, but he would have preferred to hide behind the cane, if only to escape the looks cast his way through the half-closed eyes of Saro, crouching and motionless, like a giant toad who dwelled in the canebrake. Except, as usual, Agostino’s repulsion was weaker than the murky attraction that drew him to the gang. So thoroughly intermingled were the two that he couldn’t tell how much pleasure was actually concealed by his loathing. The boys measured each other up, boasting of their virility and physique. Tortima was the most vain and at the same time the most brawny, the most deformed, the most plebeian and sordid of the group. He got so excited that he shouted to Agostino, “What if I were to show up one nice morning at your mother’s, naked as the day, what do you think she’d say? Would she come with me?”
“No,” Agostino said.
“And I say she would, immediately
,” said Tortima. “She’d look me up and down, just to size me up, and then she’d say, ’Come on, Tortima, let’s have some fun.’”
All this horseplay made everyone laugh. At the sound of, “Come on, Tortima, let’s have some fun,” they all jumped into the stream, one after the other, diving in headfirst like the frogs who had been disturbed by their arrival a short while earlier.
The bank was surrounded by reeds so tall they could only see one stretch of the river. But from the middle of the current, they could see the whole stream which, with the imperceptible movement of its dark dense waters, flowed into the sea farther downstream, between the sandbanks. Upstream the river flowed between two rows of short fat silvery bushes that cast fluttering shadows over the reflecting water. In the distance a small iron bridge against a background of cane and poplar trees, dense and pressed tightly together, completed the landscape. A red house, half hidden between the trees, seemed to stand watch over the bridge.
For a moment Agostino felt happy as he swam while the cold powerful stream tugged at his legs, and he forgot every hurt and every wrong. The boys were swimming in all directions, their heads and arms breaking through the smooth green surface. Their voices echoed clearly in the still air. Through the glassy transparency of the water, their bodies looked like white offshoots of plants that, rising to the surface from the darkness below, moved whichever way the current took them. He swam up to Berto, who was nearby, and asked, “Are there a lot of fish in this river?”
Berto looked at him and said, “What are you doing here? Why don’t you keep Saro company?”
“I like swimming,” Agostino replied, feeling hurt, and turned and swam away.
But he wasn’t as strong and experienced as the others. Tiring quickly, he let the current carry him toward the mouth of the stream. Soon the boys with their shouting and splashing were far behind him. The canebrake thinned, and the water turned clearer and colorless, revealing the sandy bottom covered with wavy gray ripples. After passing a deeper pool, a kind of green eye in the diaphanous current, he placed his feet on the sand and, struggling against the force of the water, climbed out on the bank. The stream flowed into the sea, swirling and forming almost an upswell of water. Losing its compactness, the current fanned out, thinning, becoming little more than a liquid veil over the smooth sands. The sea flowed into the river in light foam-tipped ripples. Here and there pools forgotten by the current reflected the bright sky in the squishy untrodden sand. Completely naked, Agostino walked for a while on the soft gleaming sand, amusing himself by pressing his feet down hard and watching the water instantly rise up to flood his footprints. He was feeling a vague, desperate desire to cross the river and disappear down the shore, leaving behind the boys, Saro, his mother, and his whole former life. Who knows if by walking straight ahead, along the sea, on the soft white sand, he wouldn’t reach a land where none of these awful things existed. A land where he would be welcomed as his heart desired and be able to forget everything he had learned, and then relearn it without shame or offense, in the sweet and natural way that had to exist and of which he had a dark presentiment. He looked at the haze on the horizon enveloping the ends of the sea, the beach, and the woods, and he felt drawn to that immensity as if it were the only thing that could release him from his servitude. The shouts of the boys, heading across the beach toward the boat, awakened him from these sad imaginings. One boy was shaking Agostino’s clothes in the air. Berto shouted, “Pisa, we’re leaving.” He shook himself and, walking along the shore, reached the gang.
All the boys crowded together in the shallow water. Saro was busy warning them paternally that the boat was too small to hold everyone, but he was obviously joking. Like madmen, they threw themselves at the boat, shouting, twenty hands grabbing at the sides, and in the blink of an eye the boat was crammed with their gesticulating bodies. Some lay down on the floor. Others piled up in the stern near the tiller. Others took the bow, and yet others took the seats. Lastly some sat on the edges, letting their legs dangle in the water. The boat really was too small for so many people and the water came almost all the way up the sides.
“So everybody’s here,” said Saro, filled with good humor. Standing up, he unfurled the sail, and the boat glided out to sea. The boys saluted the departure with applause.
But Agostino didn’t share their good humor. He thought he spied an opportunity to clear his name and be exonerated from the slander weighing on him. He took advantage of a moment when the boys were arguing to approach Homs, who was alone, perched in the bow, looking in his blackness like a new style of figurehead. Squeezing his arm tightly he asked, “Listen here, what did you go around telling everyone about me?”
He had chosen the wrong moment, but it was the first opportunity Agostino had found to approach the black boy who, aware of Agostino’s hostility, had kept his distance the whole time they were on land. “I told the truth,” Homs said, without looking at him.
“What do you mean?”
The black boy uttered a sentence that frightened Agostino. “Don’t press me, I only told the truth, but if you keep pitting Saro against me, I’m going to go tell your mother everything. Watch out, Pisa.”
“What?” exclaimed Agostino, feeling the abyss opening beneath his feet. “What are you talking about? Are you crazy? I . . . I . . .” he stuttered, unable to put into words the lurid image that had suddenly materialized before him. But he didn’t have time to continue. The whole boat had erupted in laughter.
“Look at the two of them, one next to the other,” repeated Berto, laughing. “We should have a camera to take a picture of the two of them together, Homs and Pisa. Stay where you are, lovebirds.” His face burning with shame, Agostino turned and saw everybody laughing. Even Saro was snickering beneath his mustache, his eyes half closed behind the smoke from his cigar. Recoiling as if he had touched a reptile, Agostino broke away from the black boy, pulled his knees to his chest, and stared at the sea through eyes brimming with tears.
It was late and the sun had set, cloudy and red on the horizon above a violet sea riddled with sharp glassy lights. The boat was moving as best it could in the gusts that had suddenly risen, and all the boys on board made it tilt dangerously to one side. The bow was turned toward the open sea and seemed to be headed not for land but for the faint outlines of faraway islands that rose from the swollen sea, like mountains above a plateau. Holding between his legs the watermelon stolen by the boys, Saro split it with his sailor’s knife and cut it into thick slices that he distributed to the gang paternally. The boys passed them around and ate greedily, taking big bites, digging their teeth in or breaking off big chunks of the flesh with their fingers. Then, one after the other, the white-and-green rinds were tossed overboard into the sea. After the watermelon, out came the flask of wine, which Saro pulled solemnly from below deck. The flask made the rounds, and Agostino also had to take a swig. The wine was strong and warm and went right to his head. Once the empty flask had been stowed, Tortima started singing an obscene song, and everyone joined in on the refrain. Between the stanzas, the boys urged Agostino to sing along. Everyone could tell he was miserable, but no one spoke with him except to tease and make fun of him. Agostino’s sense of oppression and silent pain was made more bitter and unbearable by the fresh wind on the sea and the magnificent blazing of the sunset over the violet waters. He found it utterly unjust that on such a sea, beneath such a sky, a boat like theirs should be so full of spite, cruelty, and malicious corruption. A boat overflowing with boys acting like monkeys, gesticulating and obscene, helmed by the blissful and bloated Saro, created between the sea and sky a sad unbelievable vision. There were moments he hoped it would sink. He thought he would gladly die, so infected did he feel by their impurity and so ruined. Distant was the morning hour when he had first seen the red tarp on Vespucci beach; distant and belonging, it seemed, to an age gone by. Every time the boat climbed a big wave, the gang gave a shout that made him jump. Every time the black boy spoke to him with his rep
ellent, deceitful, and servile deference, he retreated farther into the bow to avoid hearing him. The dark realization came to him that a difficult and miserable age had begun for him, and he couldn’t imagine when it would end. The boat drifted for a while in the sea, making it almost to the harbor and then turning back. As soon as they came ashore, Agostino raced away without saying goodbye to anyone. But then he slowed his step. Turning back, he could see in the distance, on the darkening beach, the boys helping Saro pull the boat onto dry land.
* G.L. Bickersteth, Carducci: A Selection of His Poems, with Verse Translations, Notes, and Three Introductory Essays (London, New York, Bombay and Calcutta: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1913).
3
AFTER that day a dark and tormented period began for Agostino. On that day his eyes had been forced open, but what he learned was far more than he could bear. What oppressed and embittered him was not so much the novelty as the quality of the things he had come to know, their massive and undigested importance. He had thought, for example, that after those revelations, his relations with his mother would have been settled, and the unease, irritation, and repulsion that her caresses provoked in him, especially in recent days, would be almost magically resolved and appeased by a new and serene awareness. But this did not happen. His irritation, unease, and repulsion persisted. While before they were signs of a son’s affection, tainted and troubled by the dark awareness of his mother’s womanhood, now, after the morning spent under Saro’s tarp, they stemmed from an acrid, impure curiosity that his continued respect for family made intolerable. While before he had struggled in the dark to free that affection from an unjustified repulsion, now he felt almost obliged to separate his rational new knowledge from the promiscuous, visceral sense that he was born of a person he wanted to see only as a woman. He felt as if all his unhappiness would vanish on the day he could see in his mother the same beautiful creature perceived by Saro and the boys. And he searched doggedly for occasions that would confirm this conviction, only to find that he had replaced his former reverence with cruelty and his affection with sensuality.
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