Emmaus (9 page)

Afterward we went to the dressing rooms. Bobby seemed happy. He embraced us all.

Good? he asked.

Strange, said Luca. But he had barely finished saying it when he had taken Bobby's head in his hands, and leaned his forehead against his, rubbing it a little—we don't make gestures like that, usually, don't bring in bodies between males, when we yield to tenderness, to emotion.

And the Saint, what does the Saint say? asked Bobby.

The Saint was a step behind. He smiled beautifully, and began to shake his head. You're great, he said, between his teeth.

Come here, you shit, said Bobby, and went to embrace him.

I don't know, it was all strange—we were better.

Andre came over then, she came to us, she had made up her mind to. My friends, said Bobby, vaguely. She halted a step away, nodded yes with her head. She was enveloped in a bathrobe, her feet bare. The band, she said, but without disdain—she was noting something. Bobby introduced me first, then Luca, finally the Saint. She stood looking at the Saint, and he didn't look away. They seemed on the point of saying something, both of them. But someone passing by embraced Andre from behind, it was one of those others, all smiles. He told her how beautiful she had been, took her away. Andre said to us one more thing like, Are you really staying? Then she left.

Staying—that was something Bobby had trapped us into. We didn't dare say no, in that period, and he had invited us to go with him, after the performance, to a house of Andre's, a big country house, to sleep—there was a party, and then a bed to sleep in. We don't go readily to others' houses overnight, we don't like the intimacy with others' things—the smells, the used toothbrushes in the bathroom. We don't even go willingly to parties, which aren't very suitable for our singular form of heroism. But we had said yes—we would surely find a way out, this is what we thought.

But people were streaming toward that house, a few kilometers away, in a procession of cars, many of them sports cars. So we couldn't find a loophole to escape through. A polite loophole. We found ourselves at the party, where we didn't really know how to behave. The Saint silently began to drink, and it seemed to us a good solution. Then it became easier. There were some people we knew. I, for example, ran into a friend of my girlfriend. She asked about her, why she wasn't there: We're not much together anymore, I said. Then let's dance, she said, as if it were a natural consequence, the only one. I pulled Luca along, not the Saint, who was talking intently to an old man with long hair—they kept leaning toward each other to pierce the music, which was very loud. In that music we started to dance. Bobby saw us, and seemed content, as if with a problem solved. I, at every passing song, thought it was the last, but then I kept going—Luca came close and shouted in my ear that we were making people laugh, but he meant to convey the opposite, that we were wonderful, and maybe he was right. I don't know how, but I found myself sitting down at the end, next to the friend of my girlfriend. All sweaty, watching the dancing, beating time with our heads. There was no way to talk, we didn't talk. She turned, put her arms around my neck, and kissed me. She had lovely soft lips, she kissed as if she were thirsty. She kept on for a while, and I liked it. Then she went back to looking at people, maybe holding my hand, I don't remember. I was thinking of that kiss, I didn't even know what it was. She got up and started dancing again.

We went to bed when the drugs began to circulate a little too much: either you took drugs or you were really out of place. So we left, because that was not something for us. We had to look for Bobby, to find out where there was a bed, but he was already pretty far gone with weed. We didn't like seeing him like that, and he didn't like spoiling everything because of it. As if she had understood, Andre appeared and led us off, her tone gentle, her gestures controlled—emerging from who knows where; she hadn't been at the party. She led us to a room in the other part of the house.

At a certain point she said, I know, I also get sick of dancing after a while.

It seemed the beginning of a conversation, and so Luca said that he never danced, but that to tell the truth when he did it seemed to him very cool, and he laughed.

Yes, it is, Andre said, looking at him. Then she added, You don't know it, but you are wonderful, you three. Bobby is, too. She walked away, because it wasn't the beginning of a conversation, it was a thing she wanted to say, and that was all.

Maybe it was that phrase, maybe the alcohol and the dancing, but then, left alone, we went on talking for a while, the three of us, as if continuing something. Luca and I lying in a big bed, the Saint settled on a sofa, on the other side of the room. We were talking as if we had a future before us, just discovered. Also about Bobby, and about how we had to bring him back to us. And many of our stories, especially unconfessable ones, but in a different light, without
regrets—we felt capable of anything, which happens to the young. Our ears were buzzing, and when we closed our eyes we felt nauseous—but we went on talking, while through the blinds the light filtered in from the garden, to appear in stripes on the ceiling. We stared at them, still talking, without looking at each other. We asked the Saint where he went when he disappeared. He told us. We had no fear of anything. And Luca talked about his father, to the Saint for the first time, to me stories I didn't know. But we seemed capable of anything, and we uttered words that we seemed to understand. Not once did anyone say God. Often we remained silent for a while, because we weren't in a hurry, and wanted this not to end.

But the Saint was talking when we heard a sound, close by—then the door opening. We stopped talking, pulled the sheet up—the usual modesty. It might have been anyone, but it was Andre. She entered the room and closed the door, she was wearing a white T-shirt and nothing else. She looked around, then got into our bed, between Luca and me, as if it had been understood. She did it all quietly, without saying a word. She rested her head on Luca's chest, stayed there without moving for a while, on one side. One leg over his. Luca at first did nothing, then he began to caress her hair, you could still hear the music from the party, in the distance. Then they moved closer and so I sat up in the bed, with the idea of leaving, the only idea that occurred to me. But Andre turned slightly and said Come here, taking my hand. So I lay down behind her, my heart attached
to her back, keeping my legs away slightly, at first, but then getting closer, my sex against her smooth skin, which began to move, slowly. I kissed her on the neck, while she brushed Luca's eyes with her lips, slowly. So I heard Luca's breath, and his half-open mouth, from so close. But where I slid my hands, he withdrew his—we touched Andre without touching each other, immediately in agreement that we would not. While she held us, slowly, always silent and looking at us.

She was the secret—this we had known for some time, and now the secret was there, and only one step was missing. We had never wanted anything else. For that reason we let her guide us, and everything was simple, including the things which never had been, for me. I knew nothing like this, but obscurity had disappeared so completely that already I knew what I would see when, at a certain point, I turned toward the Saint, to see him sitting on the sofa, his feet on the floor, staring at us, without expression—a figure from a Spanish painting. He wasn't moving. He was barely breathing. I should have been frightened, because his gaze was close to the one I knew, but I wasn't. Everything was simple, as I said. He didn't make a sign to me, there was nothing he wanted to tell me. Besides his being there, without lowering his gaze. I thought then that everything was true, if he saw it—true and without guilt, if he was silent.

So I looked again at Andre—lying on her back she pulled Luca and pushed him away, between her open legs. We had trained ourselves for so long to have sex without
intercourse that for us the truly exciting things are different, certainly not being male inside female—or the animal movement. But looking someone in the eyes who is making love, that I had never imagined—it seemed to me the greatest intimacy possible, like ultimate possession. So I had the sensation that I was truly carrying away the secret. I stared at Andre's eyes, which looked at me, rocking with Luca's thrusts. I knew what was missing, so I leaned over to kiss her on the mouth, I had never done that, I had wanted to forever—she turned her face, offered me her cheek, placed a hand on my shoulders, to push me slightly away. I continued to kiss her, searching for her mouth—she smiled, continuing to escape. She must have understood that I would never stop, so she slid away from Luca, like a game, she bent over me, took my sex in her mouth, her mouth far from mine, as she wanted. My gaze met Luca's, it was the only time, his hair was sticky on his forehead, and there was nothing to do, it was wonderful. I fell back. I thought that now I would look at Andre while she sucked my sex, I would see her like that, once and for all. But instead I placed my hand in her hair and squeezed my fingers, bending my arm and pulling her head toward me. I knew, somewhere, that if I couldn't kiss her everything would be pointless. She let herself be pulled, smiling, she came within a hairsbreadth of my lips, but she was laughing. She climbed on top of me to keep my shoulders pinned to the bed, she laughed a hairsbreadth from my lips, a game. I took her head from behind, and pushed her toward me, first she stiffened, then she was no
longer laughing, then I moved my hips in a way that was new to me, she let me enter inside her, and I surrendered, because it was the first time I had had sex in my life. Not even with our whores, never.

We fell asleep when the morning light was on the blinds, the sofa deserted, the Saint vanished who knows where. We slept for hours. When we woke up Andre wasn't there anymore. We looked at each other for a moment, Luca and I. He said Shit. He said it over and over, beating his head against the pillow.

Not long afterward the news spread that Andre was expecting a baby—the girls said it, as of something that was supposed to happen, and had happened.

Luca was terrorized. It was impossible to reason with him, I talked till I was blue in the face that we didn't know anything, that likely it wasn't true. And then who could say it was really ours, that child. I said it like that,
ours
.

We tried to remember how it had happened. That things had functioned in a certain way we knew, but little more. It seemed to us important to know where we had scattered our seed, a very Biblical expression that the priests use in place of
come
. The problem was that we didn't remember exactly—it might seem odd, but it was so. As I've already had occasion to say, we seldom come, and when we do it's by mistake. We have sex in a different way—so, even
with Andre, that didn't seem to us the heart of the matter. Yet we concluded that in fact it was inside her that we had come,
also
—and that also was the only thing that made Luca laugh, but just for an instant.

It could be ours, we understood.

The idea was deadly, there was nothing to say. Scarcely born to the art of being sons, we became fathers, victims of an illogical precipitation of events. Beyond the huge complex of guilt, and a shameful, sexual guilt—how would we ever explain, to mothers, fathers, and at school? It was natural to think of particular circumstances, when we would speak and describe it, the details, the absence of reasons, the silences. The tears. Or our parents would discover it first—every time we came home and, pushing open the door, broke that silence, to apprehend if it was the usual mild sadness, or a void signifying disaster. That wasn't living. And without even pressing ahead to think of the aftermath, a real child, its life, in what house, with what fathers and mothers, what money. We didn't get that far, I never saw that child, even once in imagination, I never got that far in those days.

More secretly, I thought back still further, where I saw us exiled in a landscape that wasn't ours, sucked into that vocation for tragedy that belonged to the wealthy—it was a crack, and I could hear the sound of it. We had pushed on too far, following Andre, and for the first time I thought that we would no longer be capable of finding the way back. Apart from the other fears, this was my real terror, but
I never said it to Luca—the rest of our adventure was enough to freeze him.

We lived it by ourselves, it should also be said, keeping everything hidden inside us. We didn't want to talk to Bobby about it, the Saint had disappeared into a void. We had stopped going to visit the larvae, at Mass we were a duo playing and singing, a punishment. I tried it, talking to the Saint, but he escaped, coldly. I managed to stop him once on the way out of school, and nothing came of it. We understood that he needed time. There was no one else around. No priest for matters of that sort. Thus we were so alone—in that solitude that breeds disasters.

And we were so young.

To talk about it with Andre didn't even cross our minds. Nor would she ever come to us, we knew. So we asked around, without putting emphasis in the words, hands in our pockets. People knew that she was expecting a baby, she had said it, to someone, always denying the name of the father. It seemed a fact. Yet I never really believed it until the day I happened to meet Andre's father on the street—he was at the wheel of a red sports car. We had been introduced at the show, just introduced, oddly he remembered me. He drove up to the sidewalk and stopped where I was. Those were days when, if anyone spoke to us, we feared disaster, Luca and I.