We arrived at Stazione Termini around 7 p. m. on a Wednesday evening. The air was thick and muggy, as if Rome had been awash in a rainstorm that had come and gone and relieved none of the dampness. With dusk scarcely an hour away, the streetlights glistened through dense halos, while the lighted storefronts seemed doused in gleaming colors of their own invention. Dampness clung to every forehead and every face. I wanted to caress his face. I couldn't wait to get to our hotel and shower and throw myself on the bed, knowing all the while that, unless we had good air-conditioning, I'd be no better off after the shower. But I also loved the languor that sat upon the city, like a lover's tired, unsteady arm resting on your shoulders.
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Maybe we'd have a balcony. I could use a balcony. Sit on its cool marble steps and watch the sun set over Rome. Mineral water. Or beer. And tiny snacks to munch on. My father had booked us one of the most luxurious hotels in Rome.
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Oliver wanted to take the first taxi. I wanted to take a bus instead. I longed for crowded buses. I wanted to go into a bus, wedge my way into the sweating mass of people, with him pushing his way behind me. But seconds after hopping on the bus, we decided to get out. This was too real, we joked. I backed out through the incoming press of infuriated home-goers who couldn't understand what we were doing. I managed to step on a woman's foot. "E non cbiede manco scusa, doesn't even say he's sorry," she hissed to those around her who had just jostled their way into the bus and were not letting us squeeze out.
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To our delight the larger of our adjoining bedrooms had both a balcony and a window, and when we opened the French windows, the glistening domes of numberless churches reflected the setting sun in the vast, unencumbered vista below us. Someone had sent us a bunch of flowers and a bowl filled with fruit. The note came from Oliver's Italian publisher: "Come to the bookstore around eight-thirty. Bring your manuscript. There's a party for one of our authors. Ti aspettiamo, we're awaiting you."
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Finally, we hailed a cab. Noting the name of our hotel and hearing us speak English, the cabby proceeded to make several unexplained turns. "Inutile prendere tante scorciatoie, no need for so many shortcuts. We're in no rush!" I said in Roman dialect.
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We picked at the bowl of fruit sitting by the television cabinet and peeled figs for each other.
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We had not planned on doing anything except go for dinner and wander the streets afterward. "Am I invited, though?" I asked, feeling a tad uncomfortable. "You are now," he replied.
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These words, spoken from a height of bliss it seemed no one could steal from us, would take me back to this hotel room and to this damp ferragosto evening as both of us leaned stark-naked with our arms on the windowsill, overlooking an unbearably hot Roman late-late afternoon, both of us still smelling of the stuffy compartment on the southbound train that was probably nearing Naples by now and on which we'd slept, my head resting on his in full view of the other passengers. Leaning out into the evening air, I knew that this might never be given to us again, and yet I couldn't bring^ myself to believe it. He too must have had the same thought as we surveyed the magnificent cityscape, smoking and eating fresh figs, shoulder to shoulder, each wanting to do something to mark the moment, which was why, yielding to an impulse that couldn't have felt more natural at the time, I let my left hand rub his buttocks and then began to stick my middle finger into him as he replied, "You keep doing this, and there's definitely no party." I told him to do me a favor and keep staring out the window but to lean forward a bit, until I had a brainstorm once my entire finger was inside him: we might start but under no condition would we finish. Then we'd shower and go out and feel like two exposed, live wires giving off sparks each time they so much as flicked each other. Look at old houses and want to hug each one, spot a lamppost on a street corner and, like a dog, want to spray it, pass an art gallery and look for the hole in the nude, cross a face that did no more than smile our way and already initiate moves to undress the whole person and ask her, or him, or both, if they were more than one, to join us first for drinks, for dinner, anything. Find Cupid everywhere in Rome because we'd clipped one of his wings and he was forced to fly in circles.
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He said he was going to take a shower. When I saw him naked I immediately got undressed as well. "Just for a second," I said as our bodies touched, for I loved the dampness that clung all over his. "I wish you didn't have to wash." His smell reminded me of Marzia's, and how she too always seemed to exude that brine of the seashore on those days when there isn't a breeze on the beaches and all you smell is the raw, ashen scent of scalding sand. I loved the salt of his arms, of his shoulders, along the ridges of his spine. They were still new to me. "If we lie down now, there'll be no book party," he said.
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I wanted no secrets, no screens, nothing between us. Little did I know that if I relished the gust of candor that bound us tighter each time we swore my body is your body, it was also because I enjoyed rekindling the tiny lantern of unsuspected shame. It cast a spare glow precisely where part of me would have preferred the dark. Shame trailed instant intimacy. Could intimacy endure once indecency was spent and our bodies had run out of tricks?
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We had never taken a shower together. We had never even been in the same bathroom together. "Don't flush," I'd said, "I want to look." What I saw brought out strains of compassion, for him, for his body, for his life, which suddenly seemed so frail and vulnerable. "Our bodies won't have secrets now," I said as I took my turn and sat down. He had hopped into the bathtub and was just about to turn on the shower. "I want you to see mine," I said. He did more. He stepped out, kissed me on the mouth, and, pressing and massaging my tummy with the flat of his palm, watched the whole thing happen.
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All I knew was that I had nothing left to hide from him. I had never felt freer or safer in my life.
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Or is intimacy the desired product no matter where you find it, how you acquire it, what you pay for it -- black market, gray market, taxed, untaxed, under the table, over the counter?
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I don't know that I asked the question, just as I am not sure I am able to answer it today. Was our intimacy paid for in the wrong currency?
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We were alone together for three days, we knew no one in the city, I could be anyone, say anything, do anything. I felt like a war prisoner who's suddenly been released by an invading army and told that he can start heading home now, no forms to fill out, no debriefing, no questions asked, no buses, no gate passes, no clean clothes to stand in line for -- just start walking.
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We showered. We wore each other's clothes. We wore each other's underwear. It was my idea.
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Perhaps all this gave him a second wind of silliness, of youth.
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Perhaps he had already been "there" years earlier and was stopping for a short stay on his return journey home.
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Perhaps he had never done it with anyone and I'd showed up in the nick of time.
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Perhaps he was playing along, watching me.
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He took his manuscript, his sunglasses, and we shut the door to our hotel room. Like two live wires. We stepped outside the elevator door. Broad smiles for everyone. To the hotel personnel. To the flower vendor in the street. To the girl in the newspaper kiosk.
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He looked at me in wonderment. "You're just horny."
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Smile, and the world smiles back. "Oliver, I'm happy," I said.
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Along the way we caught sight of a human statue of Dante cloaked in red with an exaggerated aquiline nose and the most scornful frown limned on all his features. The red toga and the red bell cap and the thick-rimmed wooden spectacles gave his already stern face the wizened look of an implacable father confessor. A crowd had gathered around the great bard, who stood motionless on the pavement, his arms crossed defiantly, the whole body standing erect, like a man waiting for Virgil or for an overdue bus. As soon as a tourist threw a coin into a hollowed-out, antique book, he simulated the besotted air of a Dante who's just spied his Beatrice ambling across the Ponte Vecchio and, craning his cobralike neck, would right away moan out, like a street performer spitting fire,
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"No, happy."
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e chinando la mano a la sua faccia, (And to his face my hand inclining down,)
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rispuosi: "Siete voi qui, ser Brunetto?" (I answered, "Ser Brunetto, are you here?")
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per mare andasse a voter vostro e mio. (With winds at will, where'er our thoughts might wend.)
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si che 'i viso abbrusciato non difese (Fixed them, until beneath the mask of hurt)
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fossimo presi per incantamento, (Led by some strong enchantment, might ascend)
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How very true, I thought. Oliver, I wish that you and I and all those we've held dear might live forever in one house…
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la conoscenza sua al mio 'ntelletto; (Did the remembered lineaments appear.)
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Guido, vorrei che tu e Lapo ed io (Guido, I would that Lapo, thou, and I)
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E io, quando 'i suo braccio a me distese, (Soon as he touched me, I could no more avert)
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ficcai li occhi -per lo cotto aspetto, (Mine eyes, but on his visage scorched and sered)
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Having muttered his sotto voce verses, he would slowly resume his glaring, misanthropic stance until another tourist tossed him a coin.
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e messi ad un vascel, cb'ad ogni vento (A magic ship, whose charmed sails should fly)
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se I'oste ar vino cia messo I'acqua: (If the innkeeper watered down our wine.)
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Ma che ciarifrega, che ciarimporta, (What do we care, why do we give a damn)
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e noi je dimo, e noi je famo, (We'll just tell him, and we'll just say:)
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I told him I'd show him a shortcut to the bookstore. He didn't mind the long way. Maybe we should take the long way, what's the rush? he said. Mine was better. Oliver seemed on edge and insisted. "Is there something I should know?" I finally asked. I thought it was a tactful way of giving him a chance to voice whatever was bothering him. Something he was uncomfortable with? Something having to do with his publisher? Someone else? My presence, perhaps? I can take perfectly good care of myself if you prefer to go alone. It suddenly hit me what was bothering him. I'll be the professor's son tagging along.
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Same scornful look. Same rictus. The crowd dispersed. No one seemed to recognize the passage from the Fifteenth Canto of the Inferno where Dante meets his former teacher, Brunetto Latini. Two Americans, who had finally managed to fish out a few coins from their knapsack, tossed Dante a hail of tiny coins. Same glowering, pissed-off stare:
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Oliver couldn't understand why everyone had burst out laughing at the hapless tourists. Because he's reciting a Roman drinking song, and, unless you know it, it's not funny.
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"ciai messo I'acqua e nun te pagamo." ("You've added water, and we won't pay.")
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As we walked he put an arm around my waist.
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"Who's the goose?"
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We decided to proceed my way, crossing over from Piazza Montecitorio to the Corso. Then up via Belsiana. "This is around where it started," I said.
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"That's why you wanted to come by here?"
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"It."
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"Then what is it?"
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He took a long look at me.
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"What?"
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"That's not it at all, you goose."
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"With you."
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I had already told him the story. A young man on a bicycle three years ago, probably a grocer's helper or errand boy, riding down a narrow path with his apron on, staring me straight in the face, as I stared back, no smile, just a troubled look, till he passed me by. And then I did what I always hope others might do in such cases. I waited a few seconds, then turned around. He-had done the exact same thing. I don't come from a family where you speak to strangers. He clearly did. He whisked the bicycle around and pedaled until he caught up with me. A few insignificant words uttered to make light conversation. How easily it came to him. Questions, questions, questions -- just to keep the words flowing -- while I didn't even have breath to utter "yes" or "no." He shook my hand but clearly as an excuse to hold it. Then put his arm around me and pressed me to him, as if we were sharing a joke that had made us laugh and drawn us closer. Did I want to get together in a nearby movie house, perhaps? I shook my head. Did I want to follow him to the store -- boss was most likely gone by this time in the evening. Shook my head again. Are you shy? I nodded. All this without letting go of my hand, squeezing my hand, squeezing my shoulder, rubbing the nape of my neck with a patronizing and forgiving smile, as if he'd already given up but wasn't willing to call it quits just yet. Why not? he kept asking. I could have -- easily -- I didn't.
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"I don't want anything to change or to come between us tonight."
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"You went after me."
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"I turned down so many. Never went after anyone."
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Via Frattina, via Borgognona, via Condotti, via delle Car-rozze, della Croce, via Vittoria. Suddenly I loved them all. As we approached the bookstore, Oliver said I should go along, he'd just make a quick local phone call. He could have called from the hotel. Or perhaps he needed privacy. So I kept walking, stopping at a local bar to buy cigarettes. When I reached the bookstore with its large glass door and two clay Roman busts sitting on two seemingly antique stumps, I suddenly got nervous. The place was packed, and through the thick glass door, with spare bronze trimming around it, you could make out a throng of adults, all of them eating what appeared to be petits fours. Someone inside saw me peering into the store and signaled me to come in. I shook my head, indicating with a hesitant index finger that I was waiting for someone who was just coming up this road here. But the owner, or his assistant, like a club manager, without stepping down on the sidewalk, pushed the glass door wide open with his arm totally extended and held it there, almost ordering me to come in. "Venga, su, venga!" he said, the sleeves of his shirt rakishly rolled up to his shoulders. The reading had not started yet but the bookstore was filled to capacity, everyone smoking, chatting loudly, leafing through new books, each holding a tiny plastic cup with what looked like scotch whiskey. Even the upstairs gallery, whose banister was lined with the bare elbows and forearms of women, was tightly packed. I recognized the author right away. He was the same man who had signed both Marzia's and my copy of his book of poems, Se l'amore, He was shaking several hands.
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"You let me."
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When he walked by me, I couldn't help but extend my hand and shake his and tell him how much I had enjoyed reading his poems. How could I have read his poems, if the book wasn't even out yet? Someone else overheard his question -- were they going to throw me out of the store like an impostor?
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"I purchased it in the bookstore in B. a few weeks ago, and you were kind enough to sign it for me."
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He remembered the evening, so he said. "Un veto fan, a real fan, then," he added loudly, so that the others within hearing distance might hear. In fact, they all turned around. "Maybe not a fan -- at his age they're more likely to be called groupies," added an elderly woman with a goiter and loud colors that made her look like a toucan.
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"Alfredo, you're behaving like a teacher at an oral exam," jibed a thirty-something woman.
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"Which poem did you like best?"
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"I just wanted to know which poem he liked best. There's no harm in asking, is there?" he whined with quivering mock exasperation in his voice.
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For a moment I believed that the woman who had stood up for me had gotten me off the hook. I was mistaken.
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"So tell me," he resumed, "which one."
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"The one comparing love to San Clemente," he corrected, as though meditating the profundity of both our statements. "The San Clemente Syndrome.'" The poet stared at me. "And why?"
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"A pauper's feet. Walked barefoot all his life, and still buys shoes a size bigger, in case he grows before next Christmas when the family stocks up for the holidays!" Playing the embittered or forsaken shrew.
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"They. Are. Too. Big. Don't they look huge?" she was asking me. "Poets can't have such big feet."
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"My shoes? What's wrong with my shoes?" asked the poet.
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"The one comparing life to San Clemente."
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"My God, just leave the poor boy alone, will you? Here," interrupted another woman who had overheard my other advocate. She grabbed hold of my hand. "I'll lead you to the food so that you can get away from this monster with an ego the size of his feet -- have you seen how big his shoes are? Alfredo, you should really do something about your shoes," she said from across the crowded bookstore.
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Someone else took pity on the poet. "Don't mock his feet, Lucia. There's nothing wrong with his feet."
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"Leave my feet alone."
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But I did not let go of her hand. Nor she of mine. City camaraderie. How nice to hold a woman's hand, especially when you don't know a thing about her. Se l'amore, I thought. And all these tanned arms and elbows that belonged to all these women looking down from the gallery. Se l'amore.
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The bookstore owner interrupted what could just as easily have been a staged tiff between husband and wife. "Se l'amore," he shouted. Everyone laughed. It was not clear whether laughter was a sign of relief in having the marital spat broken up or because the use of the words Se l'amore implied, If this is love, then…
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But people understood that this was also a signal for the reading to start and everyone found a comfortable corner or a wall against which to lean. Our corner was the best, right on the spiral staircase, each of us sitting on a tread. Still holding hands. The publisher was about to introduce the poet when the door squeaked open. Oliver was trying to squeeze his way in accompanied by two stunning girls who were either flashy models or movie actresses. It felt as though he had snatched them along the way to the bookstore and was bringing one for him and one for me. Se l'amore.
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Everyone turned around.
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The poet agreed. His wife turned to me and whispered, "Such babes, aren't they?" The publisher came down the little stepladder and hugged Oliver. He took hold of the large X-ray envelope in which Oliver had stuffed his pages. "Manuscript?"
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"Manuscript," replied Oliver. In exchange, the publisher handed him tonight's book. "You gave me one already."
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"That's right." But Oliver politely admired the cover, then looked around and finally spotted me sitting next to Lucia. He walked up to me, put an arm around my shoulder, and leaned over to kiss her. She looked at me again, looked at Oliver, sized up the situation: "Oliver, sei un dissoluto, you're debauched."
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"Oliver! Finally!" shouted the publisher, holding up his glass of scotch. "Welcome, welcome."
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"One of the youngest, most talented American philosophers," he said, "accompanied by my lovely daughters, without whom Se l'amore would never have seen the light of day."
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"Se l'amore," he replied, displaying a copy of the book, as if to say that whatever he did in life was already in her husband's book, and therefore quite permissible.
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"Se l'amore yourself."
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I couldn't tell whether he was being called dissolute because of the two babes he had wandered in with or because of me. Or both.
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Oliver introduced me to both girls. Obviously he knew them well, and both cared for him. "Set l'amico di Oliver, vero? You're Oliver's friend, right?" one of them asked. "He spoke about you."
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"Saying?"
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"Good things."
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She leaned against the wall next to where I was now standing by the poet's wife. "He's never going to let go of my hand, is he?" said Lucia, as though speaking to an absent third party. Perhaps she wanted the two babes to notice.
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"Se l'amore," she said, all the while shaking her head to simulate a reprimand. "No less dissolute than the other, just sweeter. I leave him to you."
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I did not want to let go of her hand immediately but knew that I must. So I held it in both hands, brought it to my lips, kissed its edge close to the palm, then let it go. It was, I felt, as though I'd had her for an entire afternoon and was now releasing her to her husband as one releases a bird whose broken wing had taken forever to mend.
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Drinks were being passed around.
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"Get on with it, Alfredo," said the goitered toucan.
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One of the daughters gave a forced giggle. "We'll see what we can do with him."
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Laughter.
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I was in heaven.
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"There."
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The poet cleared his throat. The usual words of thanks to everyone. Last but not least, to the light of his eyes, Lucia. Why she puts up with him? Why ever does she? hissed the wife with a loving smile aimed at the poet.
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"Se l'amore. Se l'amore is a collection of poems based on a season in Thailand teaching Dante. As many of you know, I loved Thailand before going and hated it as soon as I arrived. Let me rephrase: I hated it once I was there and loved it as soon as I left."
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"Because of his shoes," he said.
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"In Bangkok I kept thinking of Rome -- what else?-- of this little roadside shop here, and of the surrounding streets just before sunset, and of the sound of church bells on Easter Sunday, and on rainy days, which last forever in Bangkok, I could almost cry. Lucia, Lucia, Lucia, why didn't you ever say no when you knew how much I'd miss you on these days that made me feel more hollow than Ovid when they sent him to that misbegotten outpost where he died? I left a fool and came back no wiser. The people of Thailand are beautiful -- so loneliness can be a cruel thing when you've had a bit to drink and are on the verge of touching the first stranger that comes your way -- they're all beautiful there, but you pay for a smile by the shot glass." He stopped as though to collect his thoughts. "I called these poems 'Tristia.'"
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She knew my name. Hers was Amanda. Her sister's Adele. "There's a third one too," said Amanda, making light of their number. "She should already be around here somewhere."
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"Tristia" took up the better part of twenty minutes. Then came the applause. The word one of the two girls used was forte. Molto forte. The goitered toucan turned to another woman who had never stopped nodding at almost every syllable spoken by the poet and who now kept repeating, Straordinario-fantastico. The poet stepped down, took a glass of water, and held his breath for a while -- to get rid of a bad case of hiccups. I had mistaken his hiccups for suppressed sobs. The poet, looking into all the pockets of his sports jacket and coming out empty, joined his index and middle fingers tightly together and, waving both fingers next to his mouth, signaled to the bookstore owner that he wanted to smoke and maybe mingle for a couple of minutes. Straordinario-fantastico, who intercepted his signal, instantly produced her cigarette case. "Stasera non dormo, tonight I won't be able to sleep, the wages of poetry," she said, blaming his poetry for what was sure to be a night of throbbing insomnia.
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By now everyone was sweating, and the greenhouse atmosphere both inside and outside the bookstore had become unbearably sticky.
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"No. But at least we know the door is open."
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"Better?" he asked deferentially.
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"For the love of God, open the door," cried the poet to the owner of the bookstore. "We're suffocating in here." Mr. Venga took out a tiny wedge of wood, opened the door, and prodded it in between the wall and the bronze frame.
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Perhaps what I liked far more was the evening. Everything about it thrilled me. Every glance that crossed my own came like a compliment, or like an asking and a promise that simply lingered in midair between me and the world around me. I was electrified -- by the chaffing, the irony, the glances, the smiles that seemed pleased I existed, by the buoyant air in the shop that graced everything from the glass door to the petits fours, to the golden ochre spell of plastic glasses filled with scotch whiskey, to Mr. Venga's rolled-up sleeves, to the poet himself, down to the spiral staircase where we had congregated with the babe sisters -- all seemed to glow with a luster at once spellbound and aroused.
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Oliver looked at me, meaning, Did you like it? I shrugged my shoulders, like someone reserving judgment for later. But I was not being sincere; I liked it a lot.
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"For me?"
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An older man with a scraggly large beard and Falstaff's paunch brought me a glass of scotch.
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"In a few years I promise you there won't be much youth left," I said, trying to assume the resigned irony of men who've been around and know themselves.
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I envied these lives and thought back to the thoroughly delibidinized lives of my parents with their stultifying lunches and dinner drudges, our dollhouse lives in our dollhouse home, and of my senior year looming ahead. Everything appeared like child's play compared to this. Why go away to America in a year when I could just as easily spend the rest of my four years away coming to readings like this and sit and talk as some were already doing right now? There was more to learn in this tiny crammed bookstore than in any of the mighty institutions across the Atlantic.
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"Of course for you. Did you like the poems?"
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"Very much," I said, trying to look ironic and insincere, I don't know why.
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"Ecco."
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"I'm his godfather and I respect your opinion," he said, as though he'd seen through my first bluff and gone no further. "But I respect your youth more."
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"You're speaking volumes, my friend, and tonight we're doing short poems only."
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"What's missing in my life?" I was going to say Everything, but corrected myself. "Friends -- the way everyone seems to be fast friends in this place -- I wish 1 had friends like yours, like you."
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Was he hitting on me?
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She kept looking at me. "I feel for you." She brought her palm in a sad and lingering caress to my face, as if I had suddenly become her child.
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"There'll be plenty of time for these friendships. Would friends save you from being dissoluto?"
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"I wish I were dissolute," I said, turning to her and ignoring Falstaff.
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Lucia, who had caught the exchange, said: "Tanto, one scotch more or less won't make you any less dissolute than you already are."
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She looked at me with a pensive smile.
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The word kept coming back like an accusation of a deep and ugly fault in my character.
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"Why, what's missing in your life?"
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"So take it," he said, offering me the plastic cup. I hesitated before accepting. It was the same brand of scotch my father drank at home.
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"Yes, but by then I won't be around to notice."
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"I wish I had one friend I wasn't destined to lose."
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I loved that too.
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"You're too young to know what I'm saying -- but one day soon, I hope we'll speak again, and then we'll see if I'm big enough to take back the word I used tonight. Scherzavo, I was only joking." A kiss to my cheek.
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What a world this was. She was more than twice my age but I could have made love to her this minute and wept with her.
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"Are we toasting or what?" shouted someone in another corner of the shop.
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There was a melee of sounds.
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"And I'm Ada," someone said almost by way of apology, as though aware she'd taken far too long to work her way to our end of the store and was now making it up to us by letting everyone in our corner know that she was the Ada everyone had surely been speaking about. Something raucous and rakish in her voice, or in the way she took her time saying Ada, or in the way she seemed to make light of everything -- book parties, introductions, even friendship -- suddenly told me that, without a doubt, this evening I'd stepped into a spellbound world indeed.
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And then it came. A hand on my shoulder. It was Amanda's. And another on my waist. Oh, I knew that other hand so well. May it never let go of me tonight. I worship every finger on that hand, every nail you bite on every one of your fingers, my dear, dear Oliver -- don't let go of me yet, for I need that hand there. A shudder ran down my spine.
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The poet spoke. "I was not going to read this poem tonight, but because someone"
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"here," he altered his voice.
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The bookstore owner chimed a bell by the cash register and everyone was quiet.
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Everyone was available, lived availably -- like the city -- and assumed everyone else wished to be so as well. I longed to be like them.
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I'd never traveled in this world. But I loved this world. And I would love it even more once I learned how to speak its language -- for it was my language, a form of address where our deepest longings are smuggled in banter, not because it is safer to put a smile on what we fear may shock, but because the inflections of desire, of all desire in this new world I'd stepped into, could only be conveyed in play.
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"someone mentioned it, I could not resist. It's entitled 'The San Clemente Syndrome.' It is, I must admit, i. e., if a versifier is allowed to say this about his own work, my favorite." (I later found out that he never referred to himself as a poet.) "Because it was the most difficult, because it made me terribly, terribly homesick, because it saved me in Thailand, because it explained my entire life to me. I counted my days, my nights, with San Clemente in mind. The idea of coming back to Rome without finishing this long poem scared me more than being stranded at Bangkok's airport for another week. And yet, it was in Rome, where we live not two hundred meters away from the Basilica of San Clemente, that I put the finishing touches to a poem which, ironically enough, I had started eons ago in Bangkok precisely because Rome felt galaxies away."
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As he read the long poem, I began thinking that, unlike him, I had always found a way to avoid counting the days. We were leaving in three days -- and then whatever I had with Oliver was destined to go up in thin air. We had talked about meeting in the States, and we had talked of writing and speaking by phone-but the whole thing had a mysteriously surreal quality kept intentionally opaque by both of us -- not because we wanted to allow events to catch us unprepared so that we might blame circumstances and not ourselves, but because by not planning to keep things alive, we were avoiding the prospect that they might ever die. We had come to Rome in the same spirit of avoidance: Rome was a final bash before school and travel took us away, just a way of putting things off and extending the party long past closing time. Perhaps, without thinking, we had taken more than a brief vacation; we were eloping together with return-trip tickets to separate destinations.
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Perhaps it was his gift to me.
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Perhaps it was my father's gift to the two of us.
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There would be others, of course, and others after others, but calling them by my name in a moment of passion would feel like a derived thrill, an affectation.
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Would I be able to live without his hand on my tummy or around my hips? Without kissing and licking a wound on his hip that would take weeks to heal, but away from me now? Whom else would I ever be able to call by my name?
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I remembered the emptied closet and the packed suitcase next to his bed. Soon I'd sleep in Oliver's room. I'd sleep with his shirt, lie with it next to me, wear it in my sleep.
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After the reading, more applause, more conviviality, more drinks. Soon it was time to close the store. I remembered Marzia when the bookstore in B. was closing. How far, how different. How thoroughly unreal she'd become.
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Someone said we should all head out to dinner together. There were about thirty of us. Someone else suggested a restaurant on Lake Albano. A restaurant overlooking a starlit night sprang to my imagination like something out of an illuminated manuscript from the late Middle Ages. No, too far, someone said. Yes, but the lights on the lake at night… The lights on the lake at night will have to wait for another time. Why not some- where on via Cassia? Yes, but that didn't solve the problem of the cars: there weren't enough of them. Sure there were enough cars. And if we had to sit on top of each other for a little while, would anyone mind? Of course not. Especially if I get to sit in between these two beauties. Yes, but what if Falstaff were to sit on the beauties?
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We arrived more than forty-five minutes later -- more than the time needed to reach distant Albano, where the lights on the lake at night… The place was a large al fresco trattoria with checkered tablecloths and mosquito candles spread out sparely among the diners. By now it must have been eleven o'clock. The air was still very damp. You could see it on our faces, and on our clothes, we looked limp and soggy. Even the tablecloths felt limp and soggy. But the restaurant was on a hill and occasionally a breathless draft would sough through the trees, signifying that tomorrow it would rain again but that the mugginess would remain unchanged.
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There were only five cars, and all were parked in different tiny side alleys not far from the bookstore. Because we could not depart en masse, we were to reconvene somewhere by Ponte Milvio. From there up via Cassia to the trattoria whose precise whereabouts someone, but no one else, knew.
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The waitress, a woman nearing her sixties, made a quick count of how many we were and asked the help to set the tables in a double-sided horseshoe, which was instantly done. Then she told us what we were going to eat and drink. Thank God we don't have to decide, because with him deciding what to eat -- said the poet's wife -- we'd be here for another hour and by then they'd be out of food in the kitchen. She ran down a long list of antipasti, which materialized no sooner than invoked, followed by bread, wine, mineral water, frizzante and naturale. Simple fare, she explained. Simple is what we want, echoed the publisher. "This year, we're in the red again."
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Once again a toast to the poet. To the publisher. To the store owner. To the wife, the daughters, who else?
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Then cheeses.
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Laughter and good fellowship. Ada made a small improvised speech -- well, not so improvised, she conceded. Falstaff and Toucan admitted having had a hand in it.
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Second course much later: Pot roast, peas. Salad.
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The tortellini in cream sauce arrived more than half an hour later. By then I had decided not to drink wine because the two scotch whiskeys gulped down in a rush were only now starting to have their full effect. The three sisters were sitting between us and everyone on our bench was sitting pressed together. Heaven.
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One thing led to another, and we began speaking of Bangkok. "Everyone is beautiful, but beautiful in an exceptionally hybrid, crossbred manner, which is why I wanted to go there," said the poet. "They're not Asiatic, not Caucasian, and Eurasian is too simple a term. They're exotic in the purest sense of the word, and yet not alien. We instantly recognize them though we've never seen them before, and have no words either for what they stir in us or for what they seem to want from us.
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"At first I thought that they thought differently. Then I realized they felt things differently. Then that they were unspeakably sweet, sweet as you can't imagine anyone being sweet here. Oh, we can be kind and we can be caring and we can be very, very warm in our sunny, passionate Mediterranean way, but they were sweet, selflessly sweet, sweet in their hearts, sweet in their bodies, sweet without a touch of sorrow or malice, sweet like children, without irony or shame. I was ashamed of what I felt for them. This could be paradise, just as I'd fantasized. The twenty-four-year-old night clerk of my rinky-dink hotel, who's wearing a visorless cap and has seen all types come and go, stares and I stare back. His features are a girl's. But he looks like a girl who looks like a boy. The girl at the American Express desk stares and I stare back. She looks like a boy who looks like a girl and who's therefore just a boy. The younger ones, men and women, always giggle when I give them the look. Even the girl at the consulate who speaks fluent Milanese, and the undergraduates who wait at the same hour of each and every morning for the same bus to pick us up, stare at me and I stare back -- does all this staring add up to what I think it means, because, like it or not, when it comes to the senses all humans speak the same beastly tongue."
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"I wanted to sleep with all of Thailand. And all of Thailand, it turns out, was flirting with me. You couldn't take a step without almost lurching into someone."
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He watched me down part of the glass. "Do you feel it?"
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"Here, take a sip of this grappa and tell me it's not the work of a witch," interrupted the bookstore owner. The poet allowed the waiter to pour another glass. This time he sipped it slowly. Falstaff downed it in one gulp. Straordinario-fantastico growled it down her gullet. Oliver smacked his lips. The poet said it made you young again. "I like grappa at night, it reinvigorates me. But you"-- he was looking to me now --"wouldn't understand. At your age, God knows, invigoration is the last thing you need."
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"The invigoration."
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"Feel what?" I asked.
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I swilled the drink again. "Not really."
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A second round of grappa and sambuca.
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"That's because, at his age, it's already there, the invigoration," added Lucia.
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"Not really," he repeated with a puzzled, disappointed look.
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"True," said someone, "your 'invigoration' works only on those who no longer have it."
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The poet: "Invigoration is not hard to come by in Bangkok. One warm night in my hotel room I thought I would go out of my mind. It was either loneliness, or the sounds of people outside, or the work of the devil. But this is when I began to think of San Clemente. It came to me like an undefined, nebulous feeling, part arousal, part homeisickness, part metaphor. You travel to a place because you have this picture of it and you want to couple with the whole country. Then you find that you and its natives haven't a thing in common. You don't understand the basic signals which you'd always assumed all humanity shared. You decide it was all a mistake, that it was all in your head. Then you dig a bit deeper and you find that, despite your reasonable suspicions, you still desire them all, but you don't know what it is exactly you want from them, or what they seem to want from you, because they too, it turns out, are all looking at you with what could only be one thing on their mind. But you tell yourself you're imagining things. And you're ready to pack up and go back to Rome because all of these touch-and-go signals are driving you mad. But then something suddenly clicks, like a secret underground passageway, and you realize that, just like you, they are desperate and aching for you as well. And the worst thing is that, with all your experience and your sense of irony and your ability to overcome shyness wherever it threatens to crop up, you feel totally stranded. I didn't know their language, didn't know the language of their hearts, didn't even know my own. I saw veils everywhere: what I wanted, what I didn't know I wanted, what I didn't want to know I wanted, what I'd always known I wanted. This is either a miracle. Or it is hell.
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"Like every experience that marks us for a lifetime, I found myself turned inside out, drawn and quartered. This was the sum of everything I'd been in my life -- and more: who I am when I sing and stir-fry vegetables for my family and friends on Sunday afternoons; who I am when I wake up on freezing nights and want nothing more than to throw on a sweater, rush to my desk, and write about the person I know no one knows I am; who I am when I crave to be naked with another naked body, or when I crave to be alone in the world; who I am when every part of me seems miles and centuries apart and each swears it bears my name.
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"I called it the San Clemente Syndrome. Today's Basilica of San Clemente is built on the site of what once was a refuge for persecuted Christians. The home of the Roman consul Titus Flavius Clemens, it was burnt down during Emperor Nero's reign. Next to its charred remains, in what must have been a large, cavernous vault, the Romans built an underground pagan temple dedicated to Mithras, God of the Morning, Light of the World, over whose temple the early Christians built another church, dedicated -- coincidentally or not, this is a matter to be further excavated -- to another Clement, Pope St. Clement, on top of which came yet another church that burnt down and on the site of which stands today's basilica. And the digging could go on and on. Like the subconscious, like love, like memory, like time itself, like every single one of us, the church is built on the ruins of subsequent restorations, there is no rock bottom, there is no first anything, no last anything, just layers and secret passageways and interlocking chambers, like the Christian Catacombs, and right along these, even a Jewish Catacomb.
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"I stare at him. And he stares at me.
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By then the management of the restaurant had figured that we weren't about to leave yet, and so, once again, served grappa and sambuca for everyone.
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"Alfredo, my love, please, make it brief."
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"So on that warm night when I thought I was losing my mind, I'm sitting in the rinky-dink bar of my rinky-dink hotel, and who should be seated at the table right next to mine but our night clerk, wearing that strange visorless cap. Off duty? I ask. Off duty, he replies. Why don't you head home, then? I live here. Just having a drink before turning in.
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"Without letting another moment go by, he picks up his drink with one hand, the decanter with the other -- I thought I'd intruded and offended him and that he wanted to be alone and was moving to a table farther away from mine -- when lo and behold, he comes right to my table and sits right in front of me. Want to try some of this? he asks. Sure, why not, I think, when in Rome, when in Thailand… Of course, I've heard all manner of stories, so I figure there's something fishy and unsavory in all this, but let's play along.
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"But, as Nietzsche says, my friends, I have given you the moral before the tale."
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"Have one anyway." He pours some for me and some for him.
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"He snaps his fingers and peremptorily orders a tiny cup for me. No sooner said than done.
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"I may not like it, I say.
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"Look --, I begin."
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"Have another sip -- just to make sure."
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"Have a sip.
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"I down this one as well. No question about it. It's a little like grappa, only stronger but less tart."
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"Why are you staring?"
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"You're staring at me, I finally say."
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"Let me put it this way: I'm not --" But he won't let me finish.
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"I know.
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"Meanwhile, the night clerk keeps staring at me. I don't like being stared at so intensely. His glance is almost unbearable. I can almost detect the beginnings of a giggle."
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"The brew is quite delicious. The glass is scarcely bigger than my grandmother's thimble, with which she used to darn socks."
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"He leans over to my side of the table: Because I like you."
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"Have another. Pours himself one, one for me."
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"My mind is flashing red signals all over the place. They get you drunk, they take you somewhere, they rob you clean, and when you complain to the police, who are no less corrupt than the thieves themselves, they make all manner of allegations about you, and have pictures to prove it. Another worry sweeps over me: the bill from the bar could turn out to be astronomical while the one doing the ordering downs dyed tea and pretends to get drunk. Oldest trick in the book -- what am I, born yesterday?
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"All the more reason why you should have another."
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"I'm not sleeping with you."
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"Little bourgeois me has finally spoken out. I know all about these mincing niceties that always, always end up taking advantage of foreigners."
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"Ironically, he is not offended. He must have known this was coming. Must have done it a million times -- comes with the job, probably."
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"I'm about to repeat my tired protestation, but I can already hear him say, Have another. I'm almost on the point of laughing."
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"Look, amigo, I hope you don't think I'm paying for these drinks."
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"You have nothing to fear from me."
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"Here, have another -- in the name of friendship."
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"I don't think I'm really interested. Please, let's just --"
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"Maybe you won't. Maybe you will. The night is young. And I haven't given up."
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"Friendship?"
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"I didn't ask you to pay for the drinks. Or, for that matter, to pay me."
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"He sees my laugh, doesn't care where it's coming from, all he cares is I'm smiling. Now he's pouring himself one."
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"Have another. Smiles."
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"At which point he removes his cap and lets down so much hair that I couldn't understand how such a huge tumble could have been wrapped and tucked under so small a bonnet. He was a woman."
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"No, on the contrary."
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"Disappointed?
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"The tiny wrists, the bashful air, the softest skin under the sun, tenderness that seemed to spill out of her eyes, not with the smirking boldness of those who've been around but with the most heartrending promises of utter sweetness and chastity in bed. Was I disappointed? Perhaps -- because the sting of the situation had been dispelled."
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"I nodded."
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"I asked her why she purposely misled people into thinking she was a man. I was expecting, It's safer for business -- or something a bit more rakish, like: For moments such as these."
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"Then came the giggle, this time for real, as if she had committed a naughty prank but was not in the least bit displeased or surprised by the result. But I am a man, she said."
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"Out came a hand that touched my cheek and stayed there, as if to soothe away the shock and surprise. Better now?"
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"You need another."
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"She was nodding away at my disbelief, as if the nod itself were part of the same prank."
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"And you do too, I said, pouring her a drink this time."
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"I stared at him, at her, who knows. Let's have another, I said."
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"I was going to suggest it, said my impish friend."
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"You're a man? I asked, no less disappointed than when I discovered she was a woman."
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"Do you want me man or woman? she/he asked, as if one could scale one's way back up our phylogenetic tree."
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"I'm afraid so."
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"With both elbows on the table he leaned forward and al most touched my nose with the tip of his and said: I like you very, very much, Signor Alfredo. And you like me too, very, very much -- and the beautiful thing is we both know it."
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"I didn't know what answer to give. I wanted to say, I want you as intermezzo. So I said, I want you as both, or as in between."
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"He seemed taken aback."
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"Naughty, naughty, he said, as though for the first time that night I'd actually managed to shock him with something thoroughly debauched."
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"When he stood up to go to the bathroom, I noticed she was indeed a woman wearing a dress and high-heeled shoes. I couldn't help staring at the most lovely skin on her most lovely ankles."
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"This, in a nutshell, is what I call the San Clemente Syndrome."
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"She knew she had caught me yet once more and started to giggle in earnest."
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There was applause, and it was affectionate applause. We not only liked the story but the man telling the story.
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"Evviva il sindromo di San Clemente," said Straordinario-fantastico.
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"Will you watch my purse? she asked. She must have sensed that if she hadn't asked me to watch something of hers, I would probably have paid the bill and left the bar."
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"Sindromo is not masculine, it's feminine, la sindrome" corrected someone sitting next to her.
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"Evviva la sindrome di San Clemente," hailed someone who was clearly aching to shout something. He, along with a few others, had arrived very late for dinner, crying in good Roman dialect Lassatece passà, let us through, to the restaurant owners as a way of announcing his arrival to the company. Everyone had long since started eating. His car had taken a wrong turn around Ponte Milvio. Then he couldn't find the restaurant, etc. As a result he missed the first two courses. He was now sitting at the very end of the table and he as well as those he had brought with him from the bookstore had been given the last of the cheeses remaining in the house. This plus two flans for each, because this was all that was left. He made up for the missing food with too much wine. He had heard most of the poet's speech on San Clemente.
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"Evviva!" everyone else toasted.
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"Evviva!" interrupted Amanda, toasting to the latecomer, in a desperate effort to shut him up.
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"I think that all this clementizing" he said, "is quite charming, though I've no idea how your metaphor will help us see who we are, what we want, where we're headed, any more than the wine we've been drinking. But if the job of poetry, like that of wine, is to help us see double, then I propose another toast until we've drunk enough to see the world with four eyes -- and, if we're not careful, with eight."
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"Better write another book of poems -- and soon," said Straordinario-fantastico.
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In the car, I was happy. But I kept thinking of the basilica and how similar to our evening, one thing leading to the next, to the next, to something totally unforeseen, and just when you thought the cycle had ended, something new cropped up and after it something else as well, until you realized you could easily be back where you started, in the center of old Rome. A day ago we had gone swimming by the light of the moon. Now we were here. In a few days he'd be gone. If only he'd be back exactly a year from now. I slipped my arm around Oliver's and leaned against Ada. I fell asleep.
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Someone suggested an ice cream place not far from the restaurant. No, skip the ice cream, let's go for coffee. We all massed into cars and headed along the Lungotevere, toward the Pantheon.
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It was well past one in the morning when the party arrived at Caffè Sant'Eustachio. We ordered coffees for everyone. I thought I understood why everyone swears by Sant'Eustachio's coffee; or perhaps I wanted to think I understood, but I wasn't sure. I wasn't even sure I liked it. Perhaps no one else did but felt obliged to fall in with the general opinion and claimed that they too couldn't live without it. There was a large crowd of coffee drinkers standing and sitting around the famed Roman coffeehouse. I loved watching all these lightly dressed people standing so close to me, all of them sharing the same basic thing: love for the night, love for the city, love for its people, and an ardent desire to couple -- with anyone. Love for anything that would prevent the tiny groups of people who had come together here from disbanding. After coffee, when the group considered separating, someone said, "No, we can't say goodbye yet." Someone suggested a pub nearby. Best beer in Rome. Why not? So we headed down a long and narrow side alley leading in the direction of Campo de' Fiori. Lucia walked between me and the poet. Oliver, talking with two of the sisters, was behind us. The old man had made friends with Straordinario-fantastico and they were both confabulating about San Clemente. "What a metaphor for life!" said Straordinario-fantastico. "Please! No need to overdo things either with clementification this and clementization that. It was just a figure of speech, you know," said Falstaff, who probably had had his fill of his godson's glory for the night. Noticing that Ada was walking by herself, I walked back and held her by the hand. She was dressed in white and her tanned skin had a sheen that made me want to touch every pore in her body. We did not speak. I could hear her high heels tapping the slate pavement. In the dark she seemed an apparition.
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As we ambled down an emptied labyrinth of sparely lit streets, I began to wonder what all this talk of San Clemente had to do with us -- how we move through time, how time moves through us, how we change and keep changing and come back to the same. One could even grow old and not learn a thing but this. That was the poet's lesson, I presume. In a month or so from now, when I'd revisit Rome, being here tonight with Oliver would seem totally unreal, as though it had happened to an entirely different me. And the wish born three years ago here when an errand boy offered to take me to a cheap movie theater known for what went on there would seem no less unfulfilled to me three months from now than it was three years ago. He came. He left. Nothing else had changed. I had not changed. The world hadn't changed. Yet nothing would be the same. All that remains is dreammaking and strange remembrance.
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I wanted this walk never to end. The silent and deserted alley was altogether murky and its ancient, pockmarked cobblestones glistened in the damp air, as though an ancient carrier had spilled the viscous contents of his amphora before disappearing underground in the ancient city. Everyone had left Rome. And the emptied city, which had seen too many and seen them all, now belonged to us alone and to the poet who had cast it, if only for one night, in his own image. The mugginess was not going to break tonight. We could, if we wished, have walked in circles and no one would have known and none would have minded.
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The bar was closing when we arrived. "We close at two."
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"Well, we still have time for drinks." Oliver wanted a martini, an American martini. What a beautiful idea, said the poet. "Me too," chimed in someone else. On the large jukebox you could hear the same summer hit we'd heard during the entire month of July. On hearing the word "martini," the old man and the publisher also dittoed the order. "Ehi! Taverniere!" shouted Falstaff. The waiter told us that we could either have wine or beer; the bartender had left earlier that evening, on account of because his mother was taken gravely ill to the hospital where she had to be taken. Everyone smothered a laugh at the waiter's garbled speech. Oliver asked what they charged for martinis. The waiter yelled the question to the girl at the cash register. She told him how much. "Well, what if I make the drinks and you charge us your price on account of because we can mix the drinks we are mixing?"
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There was hesitation on the part of the waiter and of the cashier. The owner had long since left. "Why not?" said the girl. "If you know how to make them, faccia pure, go right ahead."
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"Maybe I could entice you to accept a martini from us," he said. "This has been a crazy evening. A drink could not possibly make it any crazier. Make it a small one."
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Round of applause for Oliver, who sauntered his way behind the bar and, in a matter of seconds, after adding ice to the gin and a bit of vermouth, was vigorously shaking the cocktail mixer. Olives couldn't be found in the tiny refrigerator by the bar. The cashier came and checked and produced a bowl. "Olives," she said, staring Oliver straight in the face, as if to mean, It was under your very nose -- had you looked? And what else?
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"Where did you learn this?" I asked.
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"Want me to teach you?"
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And he proceeded to explain the intricacies of a straight-up dry martini. He was okay being a bartender to the bar's help.
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"Mixology 101. Courtesy Harvard. Weekends, I made a living as a bartender all through college. Then I became a chef, then a caterer. But always a poker player."
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His undergraduate years, each time he spoke of them, acquired a limelit, incandescent magic, as if they belonged to another life, a life^te which I had no access since it already belonged to the past. Proof of its existence trickled, as it did now, in his ability to mix drinks, or to tell arcane grappas apart, or to speak to all women, or in the mysterious square envelopes addressed to him that arrived at our house from all over the world.
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I had never envied him the past, nor felt threatened by it. All these facets of his life had the mysterious character of incidents that had occurred in my father's life long before my birth but which continued to resonate into the present. I didn't envy life before me, nor did I ache to travel back to the time when he had been my age.
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"Did I shock you?" asked the poet.
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"Me?" I asked, not certain why, of all people at the table, he should have addressed me.
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There were at least fifteen of us now, and we occupied one of the large wooden rustic tables. The waiter announced last call a second time. Within ten minutes, the other customers had left. The waiter had already started lowering the metal gate, on account of because it was the closing hour of the chiusura. The jukebox was summarily unplugged. If each of us kept talking, we might be here till daybreak.
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Lucia stared at us. "Alfredo, I'm afraid he knows more than you know about corrupting youth. E un dissoluto assoluto," she intoned, as always now, her hand to my cheek.
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Third last call.
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"This poem is about one thing and one thing only," said Straordinario-fantastico.
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"Listen," interrupted the owner of the bookstore to the waiter, "why don't you let us stay? "We'll put the young lady in a cab when we're done. And we'll pay. Another round of martinis?"
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"Do as you please," said the waiter, removing his apron. He'd given up on us. "I'm going home."
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"San Clemente is really about four -- at the very least!" retorted the poet.
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Oliver came up to me and asked me to play something on the piano.
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"What would you like?" I asked.
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"Anything."
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This would be my thanks for the most beautiful evening of my life. I took a sip from my second martini, feeling as decadent as one of those jazz piano players who smoke a lot and drink a lot and are found dead in a gutter at the end of every film.
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I wanted to play Brahms. But an instinct told me to play something very quiet and contemplative. So I played one of the Goldberg Variations, which made me quiet and contemplative. There was a sigh among the fifteen or so, which pleased me, since this was my only way of repaying for this magical evening.
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When I was asked to play something else, I proposed a capriccio by Brahms. They all agreed it was a wonderful idea, until the devil took hold of me and, after playing the opening bars of the capriccio, out of nowhere I started to play a stornello. The contrast caught them all by surprise and all began to sing, though not in unison, for each sang the stornello he or she knew. Each time we came to the refrain, we agreed we'd all sing the same words, which earlier that evening Oliver and I had heard Dante the statue recite. Everyone was ecstatic, and I was asked to play another, then another. Roman stornelli are usually bawdy, lilting songs, not the lacerating, heart-wrenching arias from Naples. After the third, I looked over at Oliver and said I wanted to go out to take a breath of fresh air.
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"What is it, doesn't he feel well?" the poet asked Oliver.
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"No, just needs some air. Please don't move."
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The cashier leaned all the way down, and with one arm lifted up the rolling shutter. I got out from under the partly lowered shutter and suddenly felt a fresh gust of wind on the empty alley. "Can we walk a bit?" I asked Oliver.
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"Bend down and stick your finger all the way inside your mouth."
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"How?"
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We sauntered down the dark alley, exactly like two shades in Dante, the younger and the older. It was still very hot and I caught the light from a streetlamp glistening on Oliver's forehead. We made our way deeper into an extremely quiet alley, then through another, as if drawn through these unreal and sticky goblin lanes that seemed to lead to a different, nether realm you entered in a state of stupor and wonderment. All I heard were the alley cats and the splashing of running water nearby. Either a marble fountain or one of those numberless municipal fontanelle found everywhere in Rome.
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"Water," I gasped. "I'm not made for martinis. I'm so drunk."
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He snickered. "You look pale."
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We found a garbage bin on the sidewalk. "Do it inside here."
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I shook my head. No way.
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"Best remedy is to make it happen."
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"I think I'm going to be sick."
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"So much for the evening's sexual buildup."
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"You shouldn't have had any. You had scotch, then wine, grappa, now gin."
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"They're not shoes, they're sandals."
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When I looked around, I saw that I had vomited right next to the statue of the Pasquino. How like me to vomit right in front of Rome's most venerable lampoonist.
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I normally resisted throwing up. But I was too ashamed to be childish now. I was also uncomfortable puking in front of him. I wasn't even sure that Amanda had not followed us.
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But what a solace to have my head held, what selfless courage to hold someone's head while he's vomiting. Would I have had it in me to do the same for him?
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Both of us almost burst out laughing.
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"I think I'm done," I said.
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I was resisting. "It will pass. I'm sure it will."
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"Don't you chew your peas?" he asked, smiling at me.
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"Let's see if more doesn't come out."
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How I loved being made fun of that way.
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"I just hope I didn't get your shoes dirty," I said.
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Sure enough, another heave brought out more of tonight's food and drink.
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I opened my mouth. Before I knew it I was sick as soon as he touched my uvula.
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"Here, bend down, I'll hold your head."
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"Open your mouth."
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We returned by another equally dark, deserted, glistening side alley, then onto via Santa Maria dell'Anima. Above us was a weak square streetlight mounted to the wall of a tiny old corner building. In the old days, they probably had a gas jet in its place. I stopped and he stopped.
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More laughter. I washed my face and rinsed my mouth with the water of a fountain we found on our way back.
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Right before us we caught sight of the human statue of Dante again. He had removed his cape and his long black hair was all undone. He must have sweated five pounds in that costume. He was now brawling with the statue of Queen Nefertiti, also with her mask off and her long hair matted together by sweat. "I'm picking up my things tonight and good night and good riddance."
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"I swear, there were peas there that hadn't even been bitten into and could have fed the children of India."
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"Fanculo yourself, e poi t'inculo." And so saying, Nefertiti threw a handful of coins at Dante, who ducked the coins, though one hit him on the face. "Aiiiio," he yelped. For a moment I thought they were going to come to blows.
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"Good riddance to you too, and vaffanculo."
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"The most beautiful day of my life and I end up throwing up." He wasn't listening. He pressed me against the wall and started to kiss me, his hips pushing into mine, his arms about to lift me off the ground. My eyes were shut, but I knew he had stopped kissing me to look around him; people could be walking by. I didn't want to look. Let him be the one to worry. Then we kissed again. And, with my eyes still shut, I think I did hear two voices, old men's voices, grumbling something about taking a good look at these two, wondering if in the old days you'd ever see such a sight. But I didn't want to think about them. I didn't worry. If he wasn't worried, I wasn't worried. I could spend the rest of my life like this: with him, at night, in Rome, my eyes totally shut, one leg coiled around his. I thought of coming back here in the weeks or months to come -- for this was our spot.
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We returned to the bar to find everyone had already left. By then it must have been three in the morning, or even later. Except for a few cars, the city was dead quiet. When, by mistake, we reached the normally crowded Piazza Rotonda around the Pantheon, it too was unusually empty. There were a few tourists lugging huge knapsacks, a few drunks, and the usual drug dealers. Oliver stopped a street vendor and bought me a Lemonsoda. The taste of bitter lemons was refreshing and made me feel better. Oliver bought a bitter orange drink and a slice of watermelon. He offered me a bite, but I said no. How wonderful, to walk half drunk with a Lemonsoda on a muggy night like this around the gleaming slate cobblestones of Rome with someone's arm around me. We turned left and, heading toward Piazza Febo, suddenly, from nowhere, made out someone strumming a guitar, singing not a rock song, but as we got closer, an old, old Neapolitan tune. "Fenesta ca lucive." It took me a moment to recognize it. Then I remembered.
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The song reminded him of the Israeli national anthem, he said. Or was it inspired by the Moldau? On second thought, it might have been an aria from Bellini's Sonnambula. Warm, but still off, I said, though the song has often been attributed to Bellini. We're clementizing, he said.
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Mafalda had taught me that song years ago when I was a boy. It was her lullaby. I hardly knew Naples, and, other than for her and her immediate entourage, and a few casual visits to Naples with my parents, had never had contact with Neapolitans. But the strains of the doleful song stirred such powerful nostalgia for lost loves and for things lost over the course of one's life and for lives, like my grandfather's, that had come long before mine that I was suddenly taken back to a poor, disconsolate universe of simple folk like Mafalda's ancestors, fretting and scurrying in the tiny vi-coli of an old Naples whose memory I wanted to share word for word with Oliver now, as if he too, like Mafalda and Manfredi and Anchise and me, were a fellow southerner whom I'd met in a foreign port city and who'd instantly understand why the sound of this old song, like an ancient prayer for the dead in the deadest of languages, could bring tears even in those who couldn't understand a syllable.
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I translated the words from Neapolitan to Italian to English. It's about a young man who passes by his beloved's window only to be told by her sister that Nennella has died. From the mouth where flowers once blossomed only worms emerge. Farewell, window, for my Nenna can no longer look out again.
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A German tourist, who seemed all alone and quite drunk himself that night, had overheard me translating the song into English and approached us, begging in halting English to know if I could be so kind as to translate the words into German as well. Along the way to our hotel, I taught Oliver and the German how to sing the refrain, which all three of us repeated again and again, our voices reverberating in the narrow, damp alleys of Rome as each mangled his own version of Neapolitan. Finally we said goodbye to the German on Piazza Navona. On our way to our hotel, Oliver and I began to sing the refrain again, softly,
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She always wept because she slept alone,
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I can, from the distance of years now, still think I'm hearing the voices of two young men singing these words in Neapolitan toward daybreak, neither realizing, as they held each other and kissed again and again on the dark lanes of old Rome, that this was the last night they would ever make love again.
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"Tomorrow let's go to San Clemente," I said.
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"Tomorrow is today," he replied.
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Now she sleeps among the dead.
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