four

The clock in the tower of San Michele la Croce gonged twelve times as I made my way home, having crossed from one side of the island to the other by taxi. By now, I recognized many faces in the piazzetta, a mix of resident foreigners and locals who could be found, in some combination, on any night of the summer under one of the colorful awnings, a glass of grappa or espresso on the table before them, a cigarette in hand. Capri came alive at night, and even small children (always dressed to the nines) were allowed to parade with their parents, fare un giro, making “a circle” in society at late hours that, to an American, reeked of child abuse. I caught sight of Patrice, transfixed in conversation with Giovanni at the opposite end of the square. To avoid them, I ducked into a side alley, hurrying along the Tragara, back to the Villa Clio.

Moonlight bathed the grounds, turning the lawns ghostly; every blade of grass seemed distinct, otherwordly in the phosphorescent glow. I stood for a moment in the moon’s full light, transfixed. Beside me, Vera’s flowers shone colorless, white as stone. All the bedroom lights were out—the Grants retired each night quite early—but I found my way easily to the cottage by following the pale gravel path.

In those days I slept naked, especially on hot nights. Without bothering to turn on a lamp—the moonlight was more than sufficient, pouring through windowpanes onto the tiled floor—I began undressing on my way to bed, dropping bits and pieces behind me: a sweaty shirt, shoes and socks, a pair of jeans, my boxers. The cool sheets of the bed would feel welcoming. Built of stone, the cottage always retained a certain musty coolness, and a fragrant cross-breeze swept between the open windows, never failing to create obliging conditions for sleep.

I realized, before I hit the bed, that I was not alone.

“You have been late, no? And drinking!”

“Marisa?”

“I have waited too long for you. You make me so angry, Lorenzo. We have made arrangements, no?”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Don’t argue it. You have been to the bar, I can smell. The men in Naples are like this when they go to the bar.” She draped her arms around my neck, pulling me toward her breasts. Like me, she wore nothing.

I resisted, slightly.

“You don’t like my body?”

“No, I do. I like it very much.”

“So be here,” she said. “It is a very short life.”

I could hear Nicky in my head, urging me on. “Just do it,” he was saying. Yes, Nicky, I said. Yes.

Our bodies lengthened beneath the sheets and the world was soon all skin, teeth clattering as we kissed, clicking like ice cubes in a glass. I tasted the tobacco on her breath, but it was not unpleasant. Her arms circled me, and she pressed close, rocking against me with her hips, now undulating with quick, sharp pelvic thrusts. I was startled by the length of her, the sense that her body seemed to extend in every direction for a thousand miles. Her long black hair was wonderfully thick and rich, and she had recently washed it—the shampoo was fresh and clean. I took long, slow breaths.

“Make love with me,” she said, her voice hoarse.

I said nothing, but followed her instructions, sinking into my first full sexual experience in many months, savoring the liquor of her body. I drank her in, loving the soft fuzz of her pubic hair, the moist brush of skin and tongue. When I finally came into her, she was wide beneath me, her legs as open as I could possibly have wished for. She was wet and warm. I floated out to sea on this raft of pleasure, forgetting everything that had ever happened in my life, ignoring everything to come.

Afterward, Marisa sat up in bed and lit a cigarette while I lay half asleep beside her, too exhausted to contemplate anything so rational as a consequence. I had been completely in thrall to instinct, and didn’t mind at all. The experience had felt absolute, unmediated, and commonplace in the best way. Before long I fell asleep, my arm across her stomach. A deep and apparently dreamless sleep overwhelmed me, as if the unconscious were going to let me off the hook for once. When I woke, soon after dawn, I noticed that she had gone, and that the moon, too, had fallen across the sky, dragging with it the whole night sky.

I sat in bed with Rilke’s letters, fumbling for a passage in the seventh letter that I recalled dimly and wanted to reread. “For one being to love another,” he wrote to young Kappus, “that is perhaps the most difficult task of all, the ultimate and last test and proof, the work for which all other work is mere preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it.” I underlined that passage, knowing I had a great deal to learn about this subject. “But young people err so often and so grievously in this,” Rilke continued, “they (in whose nature it lies to have no patience) fling themselves at each other, when love takes possession of them, scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their untidiness, disorder, confusion.”

That morning, more than ever, my life was just those things: untidiness, disorder, and confusion.