by André Aciman
But going back to Phaedo: it seemed to him, as he’d already said, nothing more than worthless blather. And yet, there was one theory in it that, while probably a load of rubbish, nevertheless had somewhat convinced him.
“I’ll bet that was the theory of metempsychosis,” Cattolica interposed.
“How did you guess?”
Cattolica replied that if there was one thing in Phaedo which he himself could give no credence to, it was precisely the theory of the transmigration of souls from men to animals and vice versa. To believe in that, you’d have to dispose of the whole Catholic religion. And he, as a good Catholic, believed in hell, purgatory and heaven.
“I wouldn’t argue with that,” Luciano replied contritely, “even though I feel there’s an element of truth in metempsychosis.”
Listen—he went on—take Guzzo, for example: most likely before being born with two legs and arms, he had been a poisonous snake—an adder or a cobra, take your pick—and would revert to that as soon as, God willing, he breathes his last. And Krauss, who, perched up there in her cupboard among her retorts and alembics, gives herself the grand air of being a wise owl, maybe she used to be a duck instead. You just had to look at her backside. Old Half-pint, who knows, perhaps he used to be an earthworm, the kind you find by the bucket load when you’re out in the country and give a clod of mud a kick; tiny, it’s true, but lovely and fat and pink.
And moving down the scale to our classmates, it’s more than probable that Mazzanti was a rat, only you’d have to decide whether he was a country rat, a cellar rat or a sewer rat; Chieregatti, a pack mule; Lattuga, a pig, obviously, and perhaps a hyena as well, since hyenas feed on corpses, corpses dug up in cemeteries, and they stink even worse than pigs; Donadio, a guinea pig, Camurri, a blind mole; Droghetti, with that nose of his, a camel; Selmi a horse—more of a carthorse, though; Veronesi and Danieli, poor things, two donkeys, with their dicks always dangling, and so on. So, just supposing for the moment that metempsychosis isn’t the nonsense it may well be, all of them would in time revert to their original forms, with the exception of Lattuga, who, retaining his identity, would be reborn as a worm, of the sort that squirms about in the intestines; here, he broke into dialect: “dèinter in la mérda a mèza gamba”†† and also excepting Mazzanti, who instead of being reborn as a rat, even if it was a sewer rat, there’s every reason to suppose that he’ll find himself turned into a louse trudging his way through someone’s pubes.
“You’ve forgotten the girls,” Cattolica observed.
“They don’t count. Haven’t you seen them? Where d’you think they all come from? Obviously, all of them were geese or hens.”
I heard him snigger. He sounded all fired up and very pleased with himself.
“And me?” Cattolica persisted. “What might I have descended from, in your opinion? Go on, don’t be shy.”
“I dunno, perhaps from a bird: a falcon of the alpine variety, or a sparrowhawk, or even an eagle. That ‘over the others’ ”—he recited Dante through his nose—“ ‘ like an eagle, flies . . . ’ ” ‡‡
“Oh yeah! And Boldini?”
“Give me a moment. He could have been a jaguar, or an elephant seal. While you, Grassi, d’you know what you used to be? You were a beaver, one of those beasts with two big front teeth, always paddling around constructing dams . . . ”
Anyway—he went on—he was of the same opinion as Plato, that there were very few men and women indeed, whom, when they were reborn, would manage not to regress. He himself had perhaps been a dog. And would always return as a dog, unless, like Mazzanti and Lattuga, he had to descend a great deal lower. For some moments, they remained perfectly silent.
“So, to sum up,” Cattolica finally responded. “Lattuga’s a tapeworm, Mazzanti’s a pubic louse, and you?”
“Hmm. We’ll have to wait and see.”
He then said if he had to choose what type of parasite he’d be reincarnated as, he’d almost prefer to descend to the very lowest point, and rather than be a flea or a tick, to be reborn as a microbe. That would be a reincarnation with real privileges! No worries as far as food and drink went, guaranteed invisibility . . . a real godsend, all considered. Responsibilities? Nothing apart from making modest claims, avoiding the behavior of certain microbes, like those of typhoid, rabies, tetanus, pneumonia and so on, those that gloat because in a few days they’ve ruined everything. Rather than that, it was much more sensible to model one’s behavior on those microbes of a better character, who, once they found a quiet little dwelling, stay there happily eating away, for twenty, thirty, forty years, and, at the final reckoning, don’t really annoy anyone. The syphilis bacillus or those of certain kinds of tuberculosis: those are the proper gents with brains, able to live and let live! His father always said the same.
He sniggered again. The others didn’t breathe a word.
And it was just at this point that Cattolica pronounced my name. It was as if it didn’t belong to me, as if it belonged to some unknown person.
“Fair enough,” he added. “Let’s suppose that you’re a dog. How about him?”
“Another dog,” he replied without hesitation. “No doubt about it.”
With this difference—he went on—that while he himself had once been, he’d bet on it, one of those small worthless mongrels, always trotting about the streets in search of questionable matter to “sniff”—turds, dog piss, etc.,—I, by contrast, must have been one of those “big dogs,” far from thoroughbred, but still quite a fine cross breed, one it’s always fairly easy to find a good home for. That’s it, a big dog, but not one of the very biggest, good looking but not a beauty, strong but not that strong: one of those dogs that when they meet a mongrel of the “Pulga type,” weighing a mere couple of kilos and only a palm or so high, often, it falls out that it’s the mongrel who drags the other dog along with him wherever he wants to go. And it’s not by any means always the case that “the fine big dog” isn’t the one sniffing the other’s arse. Quite the contrary!
12.
WHEN THEY’D finished laughing—all four of them had burst out laughing, Cattolica included—the conversation continued. Now it was about me that they spoke and, as before, it was the voices of Luciano and Cattolica that were heard above the others.
What were they saying?
Cattolica was asking Luciano how he’d managed to get rid of me. And Luciano replied to him that everything had been as easy as pie, as it was I who had announced that I was busy that afternoon. I had a very sore throat, I’d said—though perhaps that was a fib—and had to go for an appointment with my uncle who was a doctor.
“A fib?” Cattolica asked quietly. “And why would that be?”
“Who can say. He’s not that easy to figure out. He seems naive and yet he’s so complicated and suspicious! He takes offence over trifles!”
Unfortunately—he continued—between the three of them and me there wasn’t the best of relations, and no one knew that better than him, who, caught between enemy lines, had had to work so hard at reconciliation. But on this subject, what had actually happened between us to justify my rancor toward them? What had they actually done to me? He knew, all too well, what weird quirks of character to expect from a Jew. But that much anger!
“That really surprises me,” Cattolica replied. “I’ve never had anything against him. And nor have those two.”
“D’you know what I think?”
“Tell us.”
“I think,” Luciano resumed, lowering his voice, “that he’s irked most of all by the fact that he’d like to be your friend, to come round here as well, while instead”—and here he sniggered—“he’s been left in the lurch.”
“I think you’re wrong about that,” said Cattolica, with a flicker of impatience. “First of all, we’re the best of friends, otherwise I’d like to know why on earth we would have kept on sharing the same desk for so many months. And secondly, if, as you say, he was so keen to come round to study at my house, why has he neve
r asked me? He could very well ask me, don’t you think?”
“Of course he could!” Luciano exclaimed. “Only, if you’ll let me explain, if it was him that had to ask you, what pleasure would he have got from that? Don’t you see?—and I know him well enough to know what I’m saying—he wanted above all for you to invite him. And since you weren’t ever inclined to . . . ”
From the sound of a chair being shifted I gathered that Cattolica had stood up. Muffled by the carpet, his footsteps suddenly resounded on the bare wood of the “ring,” then once more became deadened. Perhaps he’d gone to sit on the bed at the far end of the room, or even stretched out on it.
“But what has he done to you,” he said at last from down there, “that you always speak so ill of him?”
Luciano, too, got up from his seat. Most likely he’d felt the need to be nearer Cattolica and, to confirm it, when he spoke, his voice sounded farther off, different.
He said that it was true, that basically he couldn’t stand me, but not so much because he found me disagreeable, or because I’d behaved badly toward him. If he criticized me, he did so for much more serious reasons than merely because we were incompatible characters, or out of any trivial, childish, hysterical spite. He was mature enough to suppress any reaction of that kind. But for this very reason, because he was above any such pettiness, not even a sense of gratitude would stop him saying, with objectivity, whatever he thought was right and useful to say about me.
For example, to start off with: my vanity, my incredible, absurd vanity, that of a child in kindergarten.
He’d perceived this straightaway, right from the start.
“Have you ever been to his house?” he asked.
“No,” Cattolica replied. “I never go round to other people’s houses. It’s a principle of mine.”
Well—Luciano went on—it’s a real palatial spread, as big as four or five normal houses stuck together, and endowed with a magnificent garden besides. My family, on its own, had reserved the whole second floor for itself, an apartment of some twenty or so rooms—who knows the cost of heating it! We were basically made of money, and you could see it. But a gentleman is a gentleman, and a profiteer is something else. Our wealth didn’t date back to an earlier era than that of my paternal grandfather, a wholesale textile merchant—that was something I’d confirmed for him on the first day, when, without giving him time to catch his breath, I’d taken him on a room-by room tour of the whole place. I had immediately shown him everything: the salon for parties, the three drawing rooms, the two dining rooms, the seven bedrooms, the four bathrooms, the so-called “office,” and even the toilets, one for the owners and one for the servants; and all the time I looked smug and complaisant, disgustingly pleased with myself. On every door frame, my grandfather, who, as I’d told him, was very religious, had had attached certain small rods made of nickel, about the size of a fifty centesimo piece, each of which had a little piece of paper with writing in Hebrew rolled up inside it. He’d asked me for some explanation about this, and you should have seen my face as I expounded on the minutiae of the meaning and function of those gadgets. I was blushing with pleasure! What was written inside those rods? Nothing. The name of God the father, and that’s it. Such was my vanity that I even transformed our religion into a personal or a family achievement. Our God—I’d used these very words—is the Eternal God, the one and only—in my opinion Christianity should be seen as a more modern version of Judaism. And so it may be. But as I went on about Him, my “Old Man with a Beard,” I assumed the same triumphal air with which I might swank about that good old salt, my grandpa, the canny wholesale cloth merchant . . .
We had started studying every day in tandem. But even here, I revealed a conspicuous desire to show off, to be in the lead—everything became a spur to competition for me—at home, as much as at school, I behaved as if I was perpetually in a soccer match, which was enough to induce anyone close to me to let me forge ahead and win, and be done with it. It was quite true that “scholastically speaking” for months he had lived in my shadow, transformed by me into a kind of parasite, a hermit crab. But hold on! The hermit crab is a poor crustacean about whom it’s fair to say it “gratefully proffers its backside,” but a classmate, even if from a less well-off family, even if less intelligent and knowledgeable, even if in the end not at all unhappy to have found someone prepared to do the work for him, is still always a classmate, which is to say, a human being! I had never considered him either a human being or a friend, and that was the truth. His only purpose had been as a machine for doling out praise, worked with the same detachment as turning on a tap.
He’d barely even seen my brother and sister. The brother was still in the second form of the ginnasio and the girl, the youngest, was only in the third form of primary school. But he’d certainly had a chance to see my parents up close. Particularly my mother.
“Have you ever had a look at her?”
“Who?”
“His mother.”
“No.”
“That’s a shame, because as women go she’s certainly worth the effort.”
She was a lady of around thirty three—he went on—maybe a bit “brassy” as Jewesses always are, but with a stunning mouth, with big, brown eyes, which send out some very particular looks . . .
Although she was dark-eyed and dark-haired, it was mainly her that I looked like. And in the same way that I, vain and in constant need of praise, made use of him as a vaulting horse to measure the strength of my muscles, his mother, too, had made use of him as the best means to ensure that her nice little boy stayed safely home till supper-time. She’d be capable of any sly tricks, that gracious dame, just to achieve this worthy end! She would turn up with huge trays that would have kept hunger at bay for a whole family for two days. Coffee and milk, tea, hot chocolate, whipped cream, pastry, little cakes, petits fours, chocolate sweets: every afternoon a complete panoply. But this was nothing, because apart from that air she always had, “the hussy,” while filling your cup or putting cakes under your nose—“Go on, don’t be polite,” she presses you in her insinuating way, “sweets are nourishing, they build up the muscles and the mind!”—she never failed, afterward, taking her leave, to cast back through the half-closed door a look that was “half maternal and half femme fatale .” And the kisses that, so close up, she would often plant on the cheeks of her good little son, all beaming with joy to see he was there, within the warm glow of the radiators, so hard-working, so handsome and clever, what kisses!
One evening last winter, when there was a storm, she went a bit further. To persuade him to stay for supper and perhaps even to sleep there overnight, she suddenly began to stare at him, looking into his eyes so intensely that it would have put the frighteners, not just on him, whom it didn’t take much to scare, but the very devil. What was she promising with that look? That’s enough, he’d better stop there. One thing for sure was that the summer at the seaside—we’d be going to Cesanatico next summer, take note!—a woman like that, what wouldn’t she get up to during the week when her feeble old husband would have to return to the city to sort out his affairs, leaving her in the rented villa with no other company than the servants and the children! With those big fleshy lips, with those languid eyes, half hidden by her hair—her breasts had sagged a bit, true, but the “undercarriage” was perhaps worth a visit all on its own—there was no way that, given the chance, he’d let her escape.
But, going back to me, could they believe that I didn’t even know what “jacking off” was?
To tell the truth, he’d always suspected it. And yet, on the occasion when, cornered, I’d had the courage to admit that I’d never done it, he was gobsmacked. At sixteen! And giving himself such airs, as well!
Let’s start with having a look at it, he’d said.
After much prevarication, he’d got me to show him my dick—which although a “Roundhead” from circumcision, had seemed to him utterly normal and average. Yet there had been another event w
hich had seemed to him “pretty symptomatic,” and that was my reaction when, a bit before, to convince me to unbutton, he’d had the idea of unbuttoning himself.
Well, I went so pale at seeing his, his dick, and then, in the following days, my manner of behaving was so changed—I became surly and rude all at once, my eyes were shifty, as if he had disgusted me or, I don’t know, made me angry—that he couldn’t but think the worst. Indeed. I was undoubtedly a “pansy,” though perhaps in a latent state: only waiting for the “bell to ring” before “I crossed over,” and as yet still ignorant—this being the tragic thing—of the lovely career that would inevitably open before me . . .
13.
ON TIPTOE, slowly leaving the shadow for the light, I moved toward the large glass door that separated the sitting room from the dining room.
My family was having supper. Seated with her back to me, my mother was wearing a light dress of white linen that left her neck, back and arms bare. Around the table were my father, my brother Ernesto, my sister Fanny.
I looked at each of them, one after the other, as if they were strangers—an odd memory block hindered me from remembering my mother’s face, which was hidden from me. Was he my father, I wondered, that poor old man in slippers and pyjama top, who was just finishing up his bowl of soup? Were they my siblings, those two little children with such a grave and solemn air who, within seconds, would burst out laughing? And the lady with her back to me, the beautiful woman with dark hair haloed with light, her left hand glinting with rings when she lifted it to wave it about, was she really my mother? And was it possible that I myself was the son of that mediocrity of a man, both bored and boring, unable to contain himself, especially at home, to act in a dignified fashion, and of that woman who seemed so common, and that, precisely to that union, that physical union, I owed my existence?
The maid arrived carrying the plates of meat and vegetables, and suddenly, from the expression, between surprise and fear, which her face assumed, I realized that my presence had been registered.
