André Aciman - Call Me by Your Name

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.