Usually they took a path that led straight to the beach, but that day they chased after a sparrow that kept taunting them, flitting between the lowest branches of the pine trees and constantly fooling them into thinking it would be an easy target. So they ended up crossing the full length of the grove whose easternmost tip encroached on an area almost abutting the houses of the town. It was growing dark by the time they emerged from the last pine trees into the piazza of a neighborhood on the outskirts of town. The immense unpaved piazza was covered with sand, scattered piles of debris, and tufts of thistle and scrub through which rocky, uncertain paths twisted and turned. Stunted oleanders grew here and there in no particular pattern on the edges of the piazza. There were no sidewalks. A handful of houses had dusty gardens alternating with large open spaces enclosed by chain-link fences. The houses looked tiny as they skirted the square, and the gaping sky over the immense rectangle only amplified the sense of abandonment and misery.
The boys crossed the piazza diagonally, walking two by two like monks. The last in line were Agostino and Tortima. Agostino was carrying two long skewers of mushrooms, and Tortima, in his big hands, a pair of sparrows with bleeding dangling heads.
As they reached the far side of the piazza, Tortima poked his elbow into Agostino’s side. Pointing to one of the houses, he remarked cheerily, “Do you see that? Do you know what it is?”
Agostino took a look. It was a house very similar to the others. Maybe a little bigger, three stories high with a pitched roof covered by slate tiles. The front was painted a sad smoky gray with tightly closed white shutters, and it was almost completely hidden by the trees in the overgrown garden. The garden didn’t appear to be very big. The perimeter wall was covered with ivy, and through the gate you could see a short driveway between two rows of bushes. Beneath an old awning was a door with closed shutters. “There’s nobody home,” said Agostino, pausing to get a better look.
“Nobody?” the other boy said, laughing. In a few words he explained to Agostino who exactly did live there. On previous occasions Agostino had heard the boys talking about such houses, inhabited by women who stayed indoors all day and all night, ready and willing to welcome anyone for a price, but this was the first time he had actually seen one. Tortima’s words reawakened in him all the strangeness and astonishment he had felt the first time he had heard them mentioned. Back then he had hardly been able to believe the existence of such a singular community, the generous and indiscriminate dispenser of the love that to him appeared so difficult. Now the same disbelief made him turn his eyes toward that house as if to detect traces in its outside walls of the incredible life they guarded. By contrast to the fantastic image he had of its rooms, each illuminated by a female nude, the house looked singularly old and grim. “Really?” he said, feigning indifference, but his heart had started beating faster.
“Yes,” said Tortima, “it’s the most expensive one in town.” He added the particulars of the prices, the number of women, the people who went there, and the amount of time you could stay. The information almost displeased Agostino, since it substituted mundane details for the vague barbaric image of these forbidden places he had formed earlier. Still, feigning a nonchalant tone of idle curiosity, he asked his companion many questions. Now that his initial surprise and agitation had passed, an idea with a stubborn and singular vitality formed in his mind. Tortima, who seemed well informed, provided all the clarification he wanted. And so, since night had fallen, the group broke apart amid the small talk. Agostino handed the mushrooms over to Tortima and headed home.
The idea had come to him, clear and simple, although its sources were complicated and obscure. That very evening, he would go to the house and know one of those women. It was not a desire or a yearning but rather a firm and almost desperate resolution.
Only in this way, he felt, would he finally succeed in freeing himself from the obsessions that had so tormented him during these summer days. Knowing one of those women, he thought vaguely, would forever discredit the boys’ false accusations, and at the same time, sever once and for all the subtle bond of deviant and murky sensuality that had formed between the mother and himself. He couldn’t admit it, but to feel finally released from that bond seemed the most urgent goal to be achieved. And he persuaded himself of its urgency no later than that same day through a very simple but significant development.
He and the mother had been sleeping in separate rooms, but that night a woman whom she had invited to spend a few weeks with them was supposed to arrive. Since the house was small, it had been decided that the guest would take Agostino’s room while a cot would be set up for him in the mother’s room. That same morning, before his displeased, scornful eyes, his cot had been placed next to the mother’s bed, on which the sheets were heaped, still unmade and smelling of sleep. Along with the cot, his clothes, toiletries, and books had also been moved.
To see his already painful proximity to his mother increased by shared sleep filled Agostino with uncontrollable repulsion. All the things he had barely suspected till then, he thought, would suddenly be irremediably exposed to his eyes by virtue of this new and greater intimacy. As an antidote, he had to quickly, very quickly, insert between himself and his mother the image of another woman toward whom he could direct if not his gaze then at least his thoughts. This image—which would shield him from the mother’s nudity and, in a way, strip her of all femininity, giving her back the motherly significance she had once held—could only be provided by one of the women in that house.
So how would he manage to penetrate and gain admission to that house? How should he behave in choosing the woman and retiring with her? None of this mattered to Agostino. Even if it had, he couldn’t envision it. Because despite Tortima’s accounts, the house, its inhabitants, and the things that happened inside it were still enveloped in a dense, improbable air, as if they involved not so much concrete realities as a series of hazardous guesses that, at the last minute, might even prove to be wrong. The success of his endeavor was thus confided to a logical calculation: If there was a house, there were also women; and if there were women, there was also the possibility of getting close to one of them. But he wasn’t sure the house and the women really existed, and if they did, whether they resembled the image he had formed. It was not that he did not trust Tortima but rather that he had absolutely no terms of comparison. He had never done anything, never seen anything that had a thing in common, remotely or imperfectly, with what he was about to attempt. Like a poor savage who hears about the palaces of Europe and can only envision larger versions of his own hut, the only way he could imagine those women and their caresses was to think of his mother, so different and unimportant. The rest was daydreaming, fantasy, desire.
But as can happen, inexperience led him to dwell mainly on the practical aspects of the matter, as if, by settling them, he would also be able to solve the problem of how unrealistic the whole enterprise was. He was particularly worried by the question of money. Tortima had explained to him very carefully how much he would have to pay and to whom, but Agostino still could not wrap his mind around it. What was the relationship between money—which is generally needed to acquire clearly definable objects and verifiable quantities—and caresses, naked flesh, and the female body? How could a price be set on them, and how could such a price be calculated accurately and not vary each time? The idea of the money he would pay in exchange for that shameful, forbidden sweetness seemed strange and cruel, like an insult, which might be pleasurable to the person who delivers it but is painful to the one who receives it. Did he really have to pay the money directly to the woman or at least to someone in her presence? He felt it would be more appropriate for him to conceal the transaction from her, and leave her the illusion of a less interested relation. Finally, wasn’t the sum indicated by Tortima too small? No amount of money, he thought, could pay for an experience such as the one he expected to conclude one period of his life and inaugurate another.
In the face of thes
e doubts, he decided in the end to stick closely to Tortima’s information. Even if untrue, it was nevertheless the only thing on which he could base a plan of action. He had persuaded a companion to tell him the price of a visit to the house, and the sum had seemed larger than the savings he had long been setting aside and keeping in a clay piggy bank. Between coins and small bills he must have scraped together the right amount and maybe even surpassed it. Maybe he could take the money from the piggy bank, wait until his mother had left to pick up her friend from the train station, go out himself, run to find Tortima, and then proceed to the house with him. Then the money would have to be enough for him and Tortima, whom he knew was poor as well as unwilling to do him any favors without receiving a personal benefit in return. This was the plan, and although he continued to see it as hopelessly remote and improbable, he decided to act on it with the same accuracy and certainty as a boat trip or a raid of the pine grove.
Excited, anxious, and for the first time free of the venom of guilt and impotence, he ran almost the whole way, crossing the town from the piazza to his house. When he arrived the door was locked, but the shutters of the living-room window on the ground floor were open. Through the window he could hear piano music. He went in. His mother was sitting in front of the keyboard. The two soft lamps on the piano illuminated her face, leaving most of the room in darkness. She was sitting upright on a stool, playing the piano. Next to her, on another stool, was the young boatman. It was the first time Agostino had seen him in their house, and a sudden premonition took his breath away. His mother seemed to have noticed Agostino’s presence, since she turned her head toward him with a calm and unconsciously flirtatious gesture. A flirtatiousness—to his mind, at least —directed more at the young man than at him, its supposed object. At the sight of him, she immediately stopped playing and asked him to draw nearer. “Agostino, is this any hour to return home? Come to me.”
He slowly approached her, filled with repulsion and awkwardness. The mother pulled him close, wrapping an arm around his body. In her eyes Agostino could see an extraordinary brightness, a sparkling youthful fire. Her mouth seemed to be restraining a nervous laughter that coated her teeth with saliva. And in the act of wrapping her arm around him and pulling him to her side, he felt an impetuous violence and a trembling joyousness that almost frightened him. They were effusions, he could not help but think, that had nothing to do with him. Strangely they made him think of his own excitement a little earlier when he was running through the streets of the city, thrilled at the idea of taking his savings, going to the house with Tortima, and possessing a woman.
“Where have you been?” the mother continued in a tender, cruel, but cheerful voice. “Where have you been all this time? You’re such a naughty boy.” Agostino said nothing, in part because he had the impression his mother was not awaiting an answer. The same way, he thought to himself, she sometimes spoke to the cat. The young man looked at him and smiled, leaning forward, his hands clasped between his knees, a cigarette between two fingers, and his eyes sparkling just like the mother’s. “Where have you been?” she repeated. “Naughty boy . . . you little rascal.” With her big, long, warm hand, she ruffled his hair with a caress of tender and irresistible violence, and then smoothed it back down on his forehead. “He’s such a handsome boy, isn’t he?” she added proudly, turning toward the young man.
“Handsome like his mother,” the young man replied. The mother laughed pathetically at this simple compliment. Agitated and filled with embarrassment, Agostino started to pull away. “Now go wash up,” the mother told him, “and don’t take all day. We’re having dinner soon.” Agostino said goodbye to the young man and left the room. From behind him, the musical notes resumed immediately, picking up where they had been interrupted by his entrance.
Once he was in the hall, he stopped and lingered to listen to the sounds the mother’s fingers were releasing from the keyboard. The hall was dark and stuffy. At one end you could see, through the open door, the illuminated kitchen and the cook dressed in white busying herself slowly between the table and the stove. In the meantime the mother was playing, and to Agostino the music sounded lively, tumultuous, sparkling, in every way similar to the expression in her eyes when she was holding him close to her side. Maybe it was the type of music, or maybe again it was the mother adding the tumult, the sparkle, and the liveliness. The whole house echoed with it, and Agostino found himself wondering whether outside in the street there might be clusters of people stopping to listen in amazement to the scandalous indiscretion resounding in each of those notes.
Then, all at once, midway through a chord, the sounds came to a stop. Agostino had a dark certainty that the force ringing through the music had suddenly found a more appropriate outlet. He took two steps back and set foot on the threshold of the living room.
What he saw did not greatly surprise him. The young man was standing up and kissing the woman on the mouth. Bent over backward on the low, narrow piano stool, which her body overflowed on every side, she still had one hand on the keyboard and the other wrapped around the young man’s neck. In the dim light you could see her body twisted back, her palpitating breast exposed, one leg bent and the other extended to touch the pedal. In contrast to her violent devotion, the young man seemed to maintain his customary distance and composure. From his upright position, he had one arm under the woman’s neck, more out of fear that she would fall, you might say, than out of violent passion. The other arm dangled to his side, the hand still holding a cigarette. His legs were clothed in white, sturdy and open, one on either side of her, expressing both self-possession and determination.
The kiss was long, and it seemed to Agostino that every time the young man wanted to break away, the mother would begin again with unsated greed. The truth was, he could not help thinking, she seemed starved for that kiss, like someone who has gone without for too long. Then, in a movement she made with her hand, one, two, three low and sweet notes were played in the living room. Instantly the two of them broke apart. Agostino took a step into the living room and said, “Mamma.”
The young man turned around quickly and went to position himself, hands in his pockets, legs spread wide, by the window, as if he had been absorbed in looking out at the street. “Agostino,” the mother said.
Agostino walked toward her. She was breathing with such violence he could clearly see her breasts rise and fall beneath the silk fabric of her dress. Her eyes were shining even more brightly than before. Her mouth was half open and her hair in disarray. A soft, pointed lock of hair, alive as a snake, cascaded down her cheek. “What is it, Agostino?” she repeated in a hoarse low voice, fixing her hair as best she could.
Agostino suddenly felt pity mixed with repulsion pressing down on his heart. “Get a hold of yourself,” he wanted to shout at the mother, “calm down. Don’t breathe like that. Then you can speak to me, but don’t speak to me in that voice.” Instead, quickly and almost deliberately exaggerating his childish voice and eagerness, he asked, “Mamma, can I break my piggy bank? I want to buy a book.”
“Of course you can, dear,” she said, and she reached out a hand as if to pat him on the forehead. As soon as her hand touched him, Agostino could not help but recoil, slightly and almost imperceptibly, but enough for it to seem violent and very noticeable to him. “OK, so I’ll go ahead and break it,” he repeated. And walking away quickly, without awaiting her reply, he left the room.
Running up steps that were squeaky with sand, he went to his room. The idea of the piggy bank hadn’t been an excuse. He really hadn’t known what to say at the sight of his overwrought mother. The piggy bank was on the desk at the far end of the dark room. Light from the streetlamp entered through the open window, illuminating its pink belly and wide black smile. Agostino switched on the light, grabbed the piggy bank, and with an almost hysterical violence threw it on the floor. The piggy bank broke and through a wide crack spewed a pile of coins of every type. Strewn in with the coins were several small bills
. Squatting on the ground, Agostino counted the money in a fury. His fingers trembled, and although he was counting he couldn’t help but see, mixed in with the coins scattered on the floor, the superimposed image of the two people in the living room, the mother tilted back on the stool and the young man leaning over her. He counted and sometimes he had to start over because of the confusion the image wrought in his mind. Once he had finished counting the money, he found he still didn’t have the amount he required.
He wondered what he should do, and for a moment he thought of stealing the money from the mother. He knew where she kept it. Nothing would be easier, but the idea repelled him and he finally decided simply to ask her. What excuse should he use? Suddenly he thought he had found one. At the same time he heard the dinner bell tinkle. He quickly put his treasure in a drawer and went downstairs.
The mother was already seated at the dinner table. The window was open and from the courtyard big hairy brown moths came in and fluttered their wings against the white glass lampshade. The young man was gone, and the mother had regained her customary serene dignity. Agostino looked at her and once again, like the first time she had gone out to sea with the young boatman, he was surprised not to see on her mouth any trace of the kiss that just a few minutes earlier had pressed her lips together and then separated them. He couldn’t say what he was feeling. A sense of compassion for his mother, to whom that kiss must have felt precious and overwhelming. And at the same time, a strong repulsion not at what he had seen but rather at the memory it had left. He would have preferred to reject the memory, to forget it. How could something so disturbing, so radical, enter through his eyes? He had a premonition the image would be impressed on his memory forever.
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