Call Me by Your Name

by André Aciman

  At dinner not a word. After dinner he disappeared upstairs.

  I could have sworn that sometime around ten or so he’d make a quiet getaway and head to town. But I could see the light drifting from his end of the balcony. It cast a faint, oblique orange band toward the landing by my door. From time to time, I heard him moving.

  I decided to call a friend to ask if he was headed to town. His mother replied that he’d already left, and yes, had probably gone to the same place as well. I called another. He too had already left. My father said, “Why don’t you call Marzia? Are you avoiding her?” Not avoiding—but she seemed full of complications. “As if you aren’t!” he added. When I called she said she wasn’t going anywhere tonight. There was a dusky chill in her voice. I was calling to apologize. “I heard you were sick.” It was nothing, I replied. I could come and pick her up by bike, and together we’d ride to B. She said she’d join me.

  My parents were watching TV when I walked out of the house. I could hear my steps on the gravel. I didn’t mind the noise. It kept me company. He’d hear it too, I thought.

  Marzia met me in her garden. She was seated on an old, wrought-iron chair, her legs extended in front of her, with just her heels touching the ground. Her bike was leaning against another chair, its handlebar almost touching the ground. She was wearing a sweater. You made me wait a lot, she said. We left her house via a shortcut that was steeper but that brought us to town in no time. The light and the sound of bustling nightlife from the piazzetta were brimming over into the side alleys. One of the restaurants was in the habit of taking out tiny wooden tables and putting them on the sidewalk whenever its clientele overflowed the allotted space on the square. When we entered the piazza the bustle and commotion filled me with the usual sense of anxiety and inadequacy. Marzia would run into friends, others were bound to tease. Even being with her would challenge me in one way or another. I didn’t want to be challenged.

  Rather than join some of the people we knew at a table in the caffès, we stood in line to buy two ice creams. She asked me to buy her cigarettes as well.

  Then, with our ice-cream cones, we began to walk casually through the crowded piazzetta, threading our way along one street, then another, and still another. I liked it when cobblestones glistened in the dark, liked the way she and I ambled about lazily as we walked our bikes through town, listening to the muffled chatter of TV stations coming from behind open windows. The bookstore was still open, and I asked her if she minded. No, she didn’t mind, she’d come in with me. We leaned our bikes against the wall. The beaded fly curtain gave way to a smoky, musty room littered with overbrimming ashtrays. The owner was thinking of closing soon, but the Schubert quartet was still playing and a couple in their mid-twenties, tourists, were thumbing through books in the English-language section, probably looking for a novel with local color. How different from that morning when there hadn’t been a soul about and blinding sunlight and the smell of fresh coffee had filled the shop. Marzia looked over my shoulder while I picked up a book of poetry on the table and began to read one of the poems. I was about to turn the page when she said she hadn’t finished reading yet. I liked this. Seeing the couple next to us about to purchase an Italian novel in translation, I interrupted their conversation and advised against it. “This is much, much better. It’s set in Sicily, not here, but it’s probably the best Italian novel written this century.” “We’ve seen the movie,” said the girl. “Is it as good as Calvino, though?” I shrugged my shoulders. Marzia was still interested in the same poem and was actually rereading it. “Calvino is nothing in comparison—lint and tinsel. But I’m just a kid, and what do I know?”

  Two other young adults, wearing stylish summer sports jackets, without ties, were discussing literature with the owner, all three of them smoking. On the table next to the cashier stood a clutter of mostly emptied wine glasses, and next to them one large bottle of port. The tourists, I noticed, were holding emptied glasses. Obviously, they’d been offered wine during the book party. The owner looked over to us and with a silent glance that wished to apologize for interrupting asked if we wanted some port as well. I looked at Marzia and shrugged back, meaning, She doesn’t seem to want to. The owner, still silent, pointed to the bottle and shook his head in mock disapproval, to suggest it was a pity to throw away such good port tonight, so why not help him finish it before closing the shop. I finally accepted, as did Marzia. Out of politeness, I asked what was the book being celebrated tonight. Another man, whom I hadn’t noticed because he’d been reading something in the tiny alcove, named the book: Se l’amore. If Love. “Is it good?” I asked. “Pure junk,” he replied. “I should know. I wrote it.”

  I envied him. I envied him the book reading, the party, the friends and aficionados who had come in from the surrounding areas to congratulate him in the little bookstore off our little piazzetta in this little town. They had left more than fifty emptied glasses behind. I envied him the privilege of putting himself down.

  “Would you inscribe a copy for me?”

  “Con piacere,” he replied, and before the owner had handed him a felt-tip pen, the author had already taken out his Pelikan. “I’m not sure this book is for you, but…” He let the sentence trail into silence with a mix of utter humility tinted with the faintest suggestion of affected swagger, which translated into, You asked me to sign and I’m only too happy to play the part of the famous poet which we both know I’m not.

  I decided to buy Marzia a copy as well, and begged him to inscribe it for her, which he did, adding an endless doodle next to his name. “I don’t think it’s for you either, signorina, but…”

  Then, once again, I asked the bookseller to put both books on my father’s bill.

  As we stood by the cashier, watching the bookseller take forever to wrap each copy in glossy yellow paper, to which he added a ribbon and, on the ribbon, the store’s silver seal-sticker, I sidled up to her and, maybe because she simply stood there so close to me, kissed her behind the ear.

  She seemed to shudder, but did not move. I kissed her again. Then, catching myself, I whispered, “Did it bother you?” “Of course not,” she whispered back.

  Outside, she couldn’t help herself. “Why did you buy me this book?”

  For a moment I thought she was going to ask me why I’d kissed her.

  “Perché mi andava, because I felt like it.”

  “Yes, but why did you buy it for me—why buy me a book?”

  “I don’t understand why you’re asking.”

  “Any idiot would understand why I’m asking. But you don’t. Figures!”

  “I still don’t follow.”

  “You’re hopeless.”

  I gazed at her, looking totally startled by the flutters of anger and vexation in her voice.

  “If you don’t tell me, I’ll imagine all sorts of things—and I’ll just feel terrible.”

  “You’re an ass. Give me a cigarette.”

  It’s not that I didn’t suspect where she was headed, but that I couldn’t believe that she had seen through me so clearly. Perhaps I didn’t want to believe what she was implying for fear of having to answer for my behavior. Had I been purposely disingenuous? Could I continue to misconstrue what she was saying without feeling entirely dishonest?

  Then I had a brilliant insight. Perhaps I’d been ignoring every one of her signals on purpose: to draw her out. This the shy and ineffectual call strategy.

  Only then, by a ricochet mechanism that totally surprised me, did it hit me. Had Oliver been doing the same with me? Intentionally ignoring me all the time, the better to draw me in?

  Wasn’t this what he’d implied when he said he’d seen through my own attempts to ignore him?

  We left the bookstore and lit two cigarettes. A minute later we heard a loud metallic rattle. The owner was lowering the steel shutter. “Do you really like to read that much?” she asked as we ambled our way casually in the dark toward the piazzetta.

  I looked at her as if
she had asked me if I loved music, or bread and salted butter, or ripe fruit in the summertime. “Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “I like to read too. But I don’t tell anyone.” At last, I thought, someone who speaks the truth. I asked her why she didn’t tell anyone. “I don’t know…” This was more her way of asking for time to think or to hedge before answering, “People who read are hiders. They hide who they are. People who hide don’t always like who they are.”

  “Do you hide who you are?”

  “Sometimes. Don’t you?”

  “Do I? I suppose.” And then, contrary to my every impulse, I found myself stumbling into a question I might otherwise never have dared ask. “Do you hide from me?”

  “No, not from you. Or maybe, yes, a bit.”

  “Like what?”

  “You know exactly like what.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Why? Because I think you can hurt me and I don’t want to be hurt.” Then she thought for a moment. “Not that you mean to hurt anyone, but because you’re always changing your mind, always slipping, so no one knows where to find you. You scare me.”

  We were both walking so slowly that when we stopped our bicycles, neither took note. I leaned over and kissed her lightly on the lips. She took her bike, placed it against the door of a closed shop, and, leaning against a wall, said, “Kiss me again?” Using my kickstand, I stood the bike in the middle of the alley and, once we were close, I held her face with both hands, then leaned into her as we began to kiss, my hands under her shirt, hers in my hair. I loved her simplicity, her candor. It was in every word she’d spoken to me that night—untrammeled, frank, human—and in the way her hips responded to mine now, without inhibition, without exaggeration, as though the connection between lips and hips in her body was fluid and instantaneous. A kiss on the mouth was not a prelude to a more comprehensive contact, it was already contact in its totality. There was nothing between our bodies but our clothes, which was why I was not caught by surprise when she slipped a hand between us and down into my trousers, and said, “Sei duro, duro, you’re so hard.” And it was her frankness, unfettered and unstrained, that made me harder yet now.

  I wanted to look at her, stare in her eyes as she held me in her hand, tell her how long I’d wanted to kiss her, say something to show that the person who’d called her tonight and picked her up at her house was no longer the same cold, lifeless boy—but she cut me short: “Baciami ancora, kiss me again.”

  I kissed her again, but my mind was racing ahead to the berm. Should I propose it? We would have to ride our bikes for five minutes, especially if we took her shortcut and made our way directly through the olive groves. I knew we’d run into other lovers around there. Otherwise there was the beach. I’d used the spot before. Everyone did. I might propose my room, no one at home would have known or for that matter cared.

  An image flitted through my mind: she and I sitting in the garden every morning after breakfast, she wearing her bikini, always urging me to walk downstairs and join her for a swim.

  “Ma tu mi vuoi veramente bene, do you really care for me?” she asked. Did it come from nowhere—or was this the same wounded look in need of soothing which had been shadowing our steps ever since we’d left the bookstore?

  I couldn’t understand how boldness and sorrow, how you’re so hard and do you really care for me? could be so thoroughly bound together. Nor could I begin to fathom how someone so seemingly vulnerable, hesitant, and eager to confide so many uncertainties about herself could, with one and the same gesture, reach into my pants with unabashed recklessness and hold on to my cock and squeeze it.

  While kissing her more passionately now, and with our hands straying all over each other’s bodies, I found myself composing the note I resolved to slip under his door that night: Can’t stand the silence. I need to speak to you.

  By the time I was ready to slip the note under his door it was already dawn. Marzia and I had made love in a deserted spot on the beach, a place nicknamed the Aquarium, where the night’s condoms would unavoidably gather and be seen floating among the rocks like returning salmon in trapped water. We planned to meet later in the day.

  Now, as I made my way home, I loved her smell on my body, on my hands. I would do nothing to wash it away. I’d keep it on me till we met in the evening. Part of me still enjoyed luxuriating in this newfound, beneficent wave of indifference, verging on distaste, for Oliver that both pleased me and told me how fickle I ultimately was. Perhaps he sensed that all I’d wanted from him was to sleep with him to be done with him and had instinctively resolved to have nothing to do with me. To think that a few nights ago I had felt so strong an urge to host his body in mine that I’d nearly jumped out of bed to seek him out in his room. Now the idea couldn’t possibly arouse me. Perhaps this whole thing with Oliver had been canicular rut, and I was well rid of it. By contrast, all I had to do was smell Marzia on my hand and I loved the all-woman in every woman.

  I knew the feeling wouldn’t last long and that, as with all addicts, it was easy to forswear an addiction immediately after a fix.

  Scarcely an hour later, and Oliver came back to me au galop. To sit in bed with him and offer him my palm and say, Here, smell this, and then to watch him sniff at my hand, holding it ever so gently in both of his, finally placing my middle finger to his lips and then suddenly all the way into his mouth.

  I tore out a sheet of paper from a school notebook.

  Please don’t avoid me.

  Then I rewrote it:

  Please don’t avoid me. It kills me.

  Which I rewrote:

  Your silence is killing me.

  Way over the top.

  Can’t stand thinking you hate me.

  Too plangent. No, make it less lachrymose, but keep the trite death speech.

  I’d sooner die than know you hate me.

  At the last minute I came back to the original.

  Can’t stand the silence. I need to speak to you.

  I folded the piece of lined paper and slipped it under his door with the resigned apprehension of Caesar crossing the Rubicon. There was no turning back now. Iacta alea est, Caesar had said, the die is cast. It amused me to think that the verb “to throw,” iacere in Latin, has the same root as the verb “to ejaculate.” No sooner had I thought this than I realized that what I wanted was to bring him not just her scent on my fingers but, dried on my hand, the imprint of my semen.

  Fifteen minutes later I was prey to two countervailing emotions: regret that I had sent the message, and regret that there wasn’t a drop of irony in it.

  At breakfast, when he finally showed up after his jog, all he asked without raising his head was whether I had enjoyed myself last night, the implication being I had gone to bed very late. “Insomma, so-so,” I replied, trying to keep my answer as vague as possible, which was also my way of suggesting I was minimizing a report that would have been too long otherwise. “Must be tired, then,” was my father’s ironic contribution to the conversation. “Or was it poker that you were playing too?” “I don’t play poker.” My father and Oliver exchanged significant glances. Then they began discussing the day’s workload. And I lost him. Another day of torture.

  When I went back upstairs to fetch my books, I saw the same folded piece of lined notebook paper on my desk. He must have stepped into my room using the balcony door and placed it where I’d spot it. If I read it now it would ruin my day. But if I put off reading it, the whole day would become meaningless, and I wouldn’t be able to think of anything else. In all likelihood, he was tossing it back to me without adding anything on it, as though to mean: I found this on the floor. It’s probably yours. Later! Or it might mean something far more blunted: No reply.

  Grow up. I’ll see you at midnight.

  That’s what he had added under my words.

  He had delivered it before breakfast.

  This realization came with a few minutes’ delay but it filled me with instant yearning and dismay. Did I want
this, now that something was being offered? And was it in fact being offered? And if I wanted or didn’t want it, how would I live out the day till midnight? It was barely ten in the morning: fourteen hours to go…The last time I had waited so long for something was for my report card. Or on the Saturday two years ago when a girl had promised we’d meet at the movies and I wasn’t sure she hadn’t forgotten. Half a day watching my entire life being put on hold. How I hated waiting and depending on the whim of others.

  Should I answer his note?

  You can’t answer an answer!

  As for the note: was its tone intentionally light, or was it meant to look like an afterthought scribbled away minutes after jogging and seconds before breakfast? I didn’t miss the little jab at my operatic sentimentalism, followed by the self-confident, let’s-get-down-to-basics see you at midnight. Did either bode well, and which would win the day, the swat of irony, or the jaunty Let’s get together tonight and see what comes of it? Were we going to talk—just talk? Was this an order or a consent to see me at the hour specified in every novel and every play? And where were we going to meet at midnight? Would he find a moment during the day to tell me where? Or, being aware that I had fretted all night long the other night and that the trip wire dividing our respective ends of the balcony was entirely artificial, did he assume that one of us would eventually cross the unspoken Maginot Line that had never stopped anyone?

  And what did this do to our near-ritual morning bike rides? Would “midnight” supersede the morning ride? Or would we go on as before, as though nothing had changed, except that now we had a “midnight” to look forward to? When I run into him now, do I flash him a significant smile, or do I go on as before, and offer, instead, a cold, glazed, discreet American gaze?