5

Which was when I decided to convey without budging,

without moving a single muscle in my body, that I’d be willing to yield if

you pushed, that I’d already yielded, was yours, all yours, except that you

were suddenly gone and though it seemed too true to be a dream, yet I was

convinced that all I wanted from that day onward was for you to do the

exact same thing you’d done in my sleep.

The next day we were playing doubles, and during a break, as we were

drinking Mafalda’s lemonades, he put his free arm around me and then

gently squeezed his thumb and forefingers into my shoulder in imitation of

a friendly hug-massage—the whole thing very chummy-chummy. But I was

so spellbound that I wrenched myself free from his touch, because a

moment longer and I would have slackened like one of those tiny wooden

toys whose gimp-legged body collapses as soon as the mainsprings are

touched. Taken aback, he apologized and asked if he had pressed a “nerve

or something”—he hadn’t meant to hurt me. He must have felt thoroughly

mortified if he suspected he had either hurt me or touched me the wrong

way. The last thing I wanted was to discourage him. Still, I blurted

something like, “It didn’t hurt,” and would have dropped the matter there.

But I sensed that if it wasn’t pain that had prompted such a reaction, what

other explanation could account for my shrugging him off so brusquely in

front of my friends? So I mimicked the face of someone trying very hard,

but failing, to smother a grimace of pain.

It never occurred to me that what had totally panicked me when he

touched me was exactly what startles virgins on being touched for the first

time by the person they desire: he stirs nerves in them they never knew

existed and that produce far, far more disturbing pleasures than they are

used to on their own.

He still seemed surprised by my reaction but gave every sign of

believing in, as I of concealing, the pain around my shoulder. It was his way

of letting me off the hook and of pretending he wasn’t in the least bit aware

of any nuance in my reaction. Knowing, as I later came to learn, how

thoroughly trenchant was his ability to sort contradictory signals, I have no

doubt that he must have already suspected something. “Here, let me make it

better.” He was testing me and proceeded to massage my shoulder. “Relax,”

he said in front of the others. “But I am relaxing.” “You’re as stiff as this

bench. Feel this,” he said to Marzia, one of the girls closest to us. “It’s all

knots.” I felt her hands on my back. “Here,” he ordered, pressing her

flattened palm hard against my back. “Feel it? He should relax more,” he

said. “You should relax more,” she repeated.

Perhaps, in this, as with everything else, because I didn’t know how to

speak in code, I didn’t know how to speak at all. I felt like a deaf and dumb

person who can’t even use sign language. I stammered all manner of things.

so as not to speak my mind. That was the extent of my code. So long as I

had breath to put words in my mouth, I could more or less carry it off.

Otherwise, the silence between us would probably give me away—which

was why anything, even the most spluttered nonsense, was preferable to

silence. Silence would expose me. But what was certain to expose me even

more was my struggle to overcome it in front of others.

The despair aimed at myself must have given my features something

bordering on impatience and unspoken rage. That he might have mistaken

these as aimed at him never crossed my mind.

Maybe it was for similar reasons that I would look away each time he

looked at me: to conceal the strain on my timidity. That he might have

found my avoidance offensive and retaliated with a hostile glance from time

to time never crossed my mind either.

What I hoped he hadn’t noticed in my overreaction to his grip was

something else. Before shirking off his arm, I knew I had yielded to his

hand and had almost leaned into it, as if to say—as I’d heard adults so often

say when someone happened to massage their shoulders while passing

behind them—Don’t stop. Had he noticed I was ready not just to yield but

to mold into his body?

This was the feeling I took to my diary that night as well: I called it the

“swoon.” Why had I swooned? And could it happen so easily—just let him

touch me somewhere and I’d totally go limp and will-less? Was this what

people meant by butter melting?

And why wouldn’t I show him how like butter I was? Because I was

afraid of what might happen then? Or was I afraid he would have laughed at

me, told everyone, or ignored the whole thing on the pretext I was too

young to know what I was doing? Or was it because if he so much as

suspected—and anyone who suspected would of necessity be on the same

wavelength—he might be tempted to act on it? Did I want him to act? Or

would I prefer a lifetime of longing provided we both kept this little Ping￾Pong game going: not knowing, not-not knowing, not-not-not knowing?

Just be quiet, say nothing, and if you can’t say “yes,” don’t say “no,” say

“later.” Is this why people say “maybe” when they mean “yes,” but hope

you’ll think it’s “no” when all they really mean is, Please, just ask me once

more, and once more after that?

to be continued

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