13

Perhaps even the others nursed an extra something for him, which each

concealed and displayed in his or her own way. Unlike the others, though, I

was the first to spot him when he came into the garden from the beach or

when the flimsy silhouette of his bicycle, blurred in the midafternoon mist,

would appear out of the alley of pines leading to our house. I was the first to

recognize his steps when he arrived late at the movie theater one night and

stood there looking for the rest of us, not uttering a sound until I turned

around knowing he’d be overjoyed I’d spotted him. I recognized him by the inflection of his footfalls up the stairway to our balcony or on the landing

outside my bedroom door. I knew when he stopped outside my French

windows, as if debating whether to knock and then thinking twice, and

continued walking. I knew it was he riding a bicycle by the way the bike

skidded ever so mischievously on the deep gravel path and still kept going

when it was obvious there couldn’t be any traction left, only to come to a

sudden, bold, determined stop, with something of a declarative voilà in the

way he jumped off.

I always tried to keep him within my field of vision. I never let him drift

away from me except when he wasn’t with me. And when he wasn’t with

me, I didn’t much care what he did so long as he remained the exact same

person with others as he was with me. Don’t let him be someone else when

he’s away. Don’t let him be someone I’ve never seen before. Don’t let him

have a life other than the life I know he has with us, with me.

Don’t let me lose him.

I knew I had no hold on him, nothing to offer, nothing to lure him by.

I was nothing.

Just a kid.

He simply doled out his attention when the occasion suited him. When

he came to my assistance to help me understand a fragment by Heraclitus,

because I was determined to read “his” author, the words that sprang to me

were not “gentleness” or “generosity” but “patience” and “forbearance,”

which ranked higher. Moments later, when he asked if I liked a book I was

reading, his question was prompted less by curiosity than by an opportunity

for casual chitchat. Everything was casual.

He was okay with casual.

How come you’re not at the beach with the others?

Go back to your plunking.

Later!

Yours!

Just making conversation.

Casual chitchat.

Nothing.

Oliver was receiving many invitations to other houses. This had become

something of a tradition with our other summer residents as well. My father

always wanted them to feel free to “talk” their books and expertise around

town. He also believed that scholars should learn how to speak to the

layman, which was why he always had lawyers, doctors, businessmen over

for meals. Everyone in Italy has read Dante, Homer, and Virgil, he’d say.

Doesn’t matter whom you’re talking to, so long as you Dante-and-Homer

them first. Virgil is a must, Leopardi comes next, and then feel free to

dazzle them with everything you’ve got, Celan, celery, salami, who cares.

This also had the advantage of allowing all of our summer residents to

perfect their Italian, one of the requirements of the residency. Having them

on the dinner circuit around B. also had another benefit: it relieved us from

having them at our table every single night of the week.

But Oliver’s invitations had become vertiginous. Chiara and her sister

wanted him at least twice a week. A cartoonist from Brussels, who rented a

villa all summer long, wanted him for his exclusive Sunday soupers to

which writers and scholars from the environs were always invited. Then the

Moreschis, from three villas down, the Malaspinas from N., and the

occasional acquaintance struck up at one of the bars on the piazzetta, or at

Le Danzing. All this to say nothing of his poker and bridge playing at night,

which flourished by means totally unknown to us.

His life, like his papers, even when it gave every impression of being

chaotic, was always meticulously compartmentalized. Sometimes he

skipped dinner altogether and would simply tell Mafalda, “Esco, I’m going

out.”

His Esco, I realized soon enough, was just another version of Later! A

summary and unconditional goodbye, spoken not as you were leaving, but

after you were out the door. You said it with your back to those you were

leaving behind. I felt sorry for those on the receiving end who wished to

appeal, to plead.

Not knowing whether he’d show up at the dinner table was torture. But

bearable. Not daring to ask whether he’d be there was the real ordeal.

Having my heart jump when I suddenly heard his voice or saw him seated

at his seat when I’d almost given up hoping he’d be among us tonight

eventually blossomed like a poisoned flower. Seeing him and thinking he’d join us for dinner tonight only to hear his peremptory Esco taught me there

are certain wishes that must be clipped like wings off a thriving butterfly.

I wanted him gone from our home so as to be done with him.

I wanted him dead too, so that if I couldn’t stop thinking about him and

worrying about when would be the next time I’d see him, at least his death

would put an end to it.

I wanted to kill him myself, even, so as to let him

know how much his mere existence had come to bother me, how

unbearable his ease with everything and everyone, taking all things in

stride, his tireless I’m-okay-with-this-and-that, his springing across the gate

to the beach when everyone else opened the latch first, to say nothing of his

bathing suits, his spot in paradise, his cheeky Later!, his lip-smacking love

for apricot juice. If I didn’t kill him, then I’d cripple him for life, so that

he’d be with us in a wheelchair and never go back to the States. If he were

in a wheelchair, I would always know where he was, and he’d be easy to

find. I would feel superior to him and become his master, now that he was

crippled.

to be continued

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