Call Me by Your Name: A Novel (22 page)

“But, as Nietzsche says, my friends, I have given you the moral before the tale.”

“Alfredo, my love, please, make it brief.”

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.

“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.

“I stare at him. And he stares at me.

“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.

“He snaps his fingers and peremptorily orders a tiny cup for me. No sooner said than done.

“Have a sip.

“I may not like it, I say.

“Have one anyway. He pours some for me and some for him.

“The brew is quite delicious. The glass is scarcely bigger than my grandmother’s thimble, with which she used to darn socks.

“Have another sip—just to make sure.

“I down this one as well. No question about it. It’s a little like grappa, only stronger but less tart.

“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.

“You’re staring at me, I finally say.

“I know.

“Why are you staring?

“He leans over to my side of the table: Because I like you.

“Look—, I begin.

“Have another. Pours himself one, one for me.

“Let me put it this way: I’m not—

“But he won’t let me finish.

“All the more reason why you should have another.

“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?

“I don’t think I’m really interested. Please, let’s just—

“Have another.

“Smiles.

“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.

“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.

“Look, amigo, I hope you don’t think I’m paying for these drinks.

“Little bourgeois me has finally spoken out. I know all about these mincing niceties that always, always end up taking advantage of foreigners.

“I didn’t ask you to pay for the drinks. Or, for that matter, to pay me.

“Ironically, he is not offended. He must have known this was coming. Must have done it a million times—comes with the job, probably.

“Here, have another—in the name of friendship.

“Friendship?

“You have nothing to fear from me.

“I’m not sleeping with you.

“Maybe you won’t. Maybe you will. The night is young. And I haven’t given up.

“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.

“Disappointed?

“No, on the contrary.

“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.

“Out came a hand that touched my cheek and stayed there, as if to soothe away the shock and surprise. Better now?

“I nodded.

“You need another.

“And you do too, I said, pouring her a drink this time.

“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
.

“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.

“She was nodding away at my disbelief, as if the nod itself were part of the same prank.

“You’re a man? I asked, no less disappointed than when I discovered she was a woman.

“I’m afraid so.

“With both elbows on the table he leaned forward and almost 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.

“I stared at him, at her, who knows. Let’s have another, I said.

“I was going to suggest it, said my impish friend.

“Do you want me man or woman? she/he asked, as if one could scale one’s way back up our phylogenetic tree.

“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.

“He seemed taken aback.

“Naughty, naughty, he said, as though for the first time that night I’d actually managed to shock him with something thoroughly debauched.

“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.

“She knew she had caught me yet once more and started to giggle in earnest.

“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.

“This, in a nutshell, is what I call the San Clemente Syndrome.”

There was applause, and it was affectionate applause. We not only liked the story but the man telling the story.

“Evviva il sindromo di San Clemente,” said Straordinario-fantastico.

“
Sindromo
is not masculine, it’s feminine,
la sindrome
,” corrected someone sitting next to her.

“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.

“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.”

“Evviva!”
interrupted Amanda, toasting to the latecomer, in a desperate effort to shut him up.

“Evviva!”
everyone else toasted.

“Better write another book of poems—and soon,” said Straordinario-fantastico.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The bar was closing when we arrived. “We close at two.” “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?”

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.”

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?
“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.”