Call me by your name by Andre Aciman

Author:Andre Aciman
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2008-06-17T17:53:52+00:00

at the stroke of midnight. What had I been

thinking this morning when I'd slipped him my note?

And yet another part of me knew that if

he showed up tonight and I disliked the start

of whatever was in store for me, I'd still go

through with it, go with it all the way, because

better to find out once and for all than to

spend the rest of the summer, or my life

perhaps, arguing with my body.

I'd make a decision in cold blood. And if

he asked, I'd tell him. I'm not sure I want to

go ahead with this, but I need to know, and

better with you than anyone else. I want to

know your body, I want to know how you feel,

I want to know you, and through you, me.

Marzia left just before dinnertime. She

had promised to go to the movies. There'd be

friends, she said. Why didn't I come? I made a

face when I heard their names. I'd stay home

and practice, I said. I thought you practiced

every morning. This morning I started late, remember? She intercepted my meaning and

smiled.

Three hours to go.

There'd been a mournful silence between

us all afternoon. If I hadn't had his word that

we were going to talk later, I don't know how

I'd have survived another day like this.

At dinner, our guests were a

semi-employed adjunct professor of music and

a gay couple from Chicago who insisted on

speaking terrible Italian. The two men sat

next to each other, facing my mother and me.

One of them decided to recite some verses by

Pascoli, to which Mafalda, catching my look,

made her usual smorfia meant to elicit a giggle from me. My father had warned me not to

misbehave in the presence of the scholars from

Chicago. I said I would wear the purple shirt

given me by a distant cousin from Uruguay.

My father laughed it off, saying I was too old not to accept people as they were. But there

was a glint in his eyes when both showed up

wearing purple shirts. They had both stepped

out from either side of the cab at the same time

and each carried a bunch of white flowers in

his hand. They looked, as my father must have

realized, like a flowery, gussied-up version of

Tintin's Thomson and Thompson twins.

I wondered what their life together was

like.

It seemed strange to be counting the

minutes during supper, shadowed by the

thought that tonight I had more in common

with Tintin's twins than with my parents or

anyone else in my world.

I looked at them, wondering who was top

and who was bottom, Tweedle-Dee or

Tweedle-Dum.

It was almost eleven when I said I was

going to sleep and said goodnight to my parents and the guests. "What about Marzia?"

asked my father, that unmistakable lambent

look in his eyes. Tomorrow, I replied.

I wanted to be alone. Shower. A book. A

diary entry, perhaps. Stay focused on midnight

yet keep my mind off every aspect of it.

On my way up the staircase, I tried to

imagine myself coming down this very same

staircase tomorrow morning. By then I might

be someone else. Did I even like this someone

else whom I didn't yet know and who might

not want to say good

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