Chapter 2

IT WASN’T as late as he had feared. Once he’d reached the beach, he found that his mother wasn’t back yet. The beach was emptying. A few scattered swimmers still lingered in the dazzling sea. Everyone else, languid and overheated, was lined up beneath the midday sky, leaving by the boardwalk that led to the street. Agostino sat under the beach umbrella and waited. His mother’s ride seemed to be lasting longer than usual. Forgetting that the young man had arrived late and that it hadn’t been his mother who wanted to go alone but he who had disappeared, he told himself that the mother and the young man must have taken advantage of his absence to do the very things that Saro and the boys had talked about. The thought did not make him jealous; instead, it sent a shudder through him that was new and filled with complicity, curiosity, and smug, glum approval. It was right that his mother should behave in such a way with the young man, that she should go with him on the boat every day, and that at this very moment, far from prying eyes, between the sea and the sky, she should lose herself in his arms. It was right, and now he was perfectly capable of understanding it. While mulling over these thoughts, he scanned the horizon for the two lovers.

Finally the pattino appeared, no more than a white speck on the deserted sea, approaching rapidly. He saw his mother sitting and the young man rowing. The oars lifted and lowered, and every stroke was accompanied by a splash of glittering water. Agostino stood up and went to the water. He wanted to see his mother getting off the boat, to observe carefully any traces of the intimacy in which he had participated unknowingly for so long, and which now, after the revelations of Saro and the boys, he thought would appear to him in a completely new light filled with indecent telltale clues. From the pattino, even before it came to shore, his mother gave him a big wave. Then she jumped into the water cheerfully and in a few strides was by her son. “Are you hungry? We’re going to go have something to eat right away. Goodbye, goodbye, see you tomorrow,” she added in a melodious voice, turning around and waving to the young man. To Agostino she seemed happier than usual, and as he followed behind her on the beach, he couldn’t help but think that her goodbyes to the young man conveyed an elated pathetic joy, as if something the son’s presence had impeded so far had really happened that day. But his observations and suspicions stopped there. Besides, except for that ungainly joyousness so unlike her customary dignity, he couldn’t understand what exactly had happened during the ride and whether they had engaged in amorous relations. Face, neck, hands, body: no matter how closely he studied them with his cruel new awareness, they showed no sign of the kisses and caresses they had received. The more Agostino looked at his mother, the more disgruntled he felt.

“The two of you were alone today, without me,” he tried to say while they headed toward the cabin, almost hoping she would answer, “Yes, and we were finally able to make love.” But his mother seemed to interpret his words as an allusion to the slap and his subsequent running away. “Let’s not speak about what happened anymore,” she said, stopping for a moment, squeezing him by the shoulders and staring him in the face with her smiling excited eyes. “Agreed? I know that you love me. Give me a kiss, and not another word about it.” Agostino suddenly found himself with his face against her neck, once so sweet with the perfume and warmth that enveloped her chastely. But beneath her lips he seemed to sense a new yet faint throbbing, like the last surge of the bitter lingering feeling the young man’s mouth must have awakened in her flesh. The mother quickly climbed the stairs to the cabin. With his face blushing from a shame he could not understand, he lay down in the sand.

Later, on their way home, he ruminated at length, in the depths of his troubled heart, on these new and still-obscure sentiments. How strange it was that earlier, when he was still unaware of good and evil, his mother’s mysterious relations with the young man had seemed ridden with guilt. Now that the revelations of Saro and his young acolytes had opened his eyes and confirmed those first painful suspicions of sensuality, he was filled with doubt and unsatisfied curiosity. Earlier, his spirit had been aroused by filial affection, jealous and naive; now, in this cruel new light, his still undiminished affection had been replaced in part by an acrid disenchanted curiosity that found those first minor stirrings inconsequential. Earlier, every seemingly discordant word or gesture had offended him without enlightening him, and he had almost preferred to ignore them. Now that his eyes were always on her, the gaffes and missteps that used to upset him seemed insignificant, and he almost hoped to surprise her in one of the naked, shameless, natural poses he had just learned about from Saro and the boys.

The truth is, he might not have been seized by a desire to spy on his mother and to destroy the aura of dignity and respect with which he had viewed her if, on that same day, chance had not set him so violently on this path. At home, mother and son ate almost without speaking. The mother appeared distracted, and Agostino, lost in his new and—to him—incredible thoughts, was unusually quiet. But later, after lunch, he was suddenly filled with an irresistible desire to go and spend time with the gang of boys. They had told him they would meet at Vespucci beach in the early afternoon to plan the day’s excursions and exploits. After his initial feelings of repulsion and fear had passed, the brutal and humiliating company of the boys reasserted its dark appeal. He was in his room, lying on the bed, in the warm mottled shade of the lowered blinds. As was his habit, he was playing with the wooden pull switch of the electric light. From outside only a few noises entered: the turning wheels of a solitary carriage, dishes and glasses clattering in the street-side rooms of the pensione across the way. By contrast to the silence of the summer afternoon, the noises at home sounded sharper and more isolated. He could hear her enter the next room, her loud heels crossing the floor tiles. She walked back and forth, opening and shutting drawers, moving chairs around, touching objects. “Now she’s going to take a nap,” he thought for a moment, shaking himself from the torpor that had slowly come over him, “and then I won’t be able to tell her I want to go to the beach.” Worried, he got up from bed and left the room. His room opened onto the balcony facing the stairs. The mother’s door was next to his. He walked up to it, but finding it slightly ajar, rather than knock as usual, he pushed the door softly until it was half open, guided perhaps unconsciously by his new desire to surprise his mother in her intimacy. In the mother’s bedroom, much larger than his own, the bed was near the door, and facing the door was a chest of drawers topped by a wide mirror. The first thing he saw was his mother standing in front of the chest of drawers.

She wasn’t naked, as he had almost sensed and hoped while entering, but rather partly undressed and in the act of removing her necklace and earrings in front of the mirror. She was wearing a sheer negligee that barely covered her hips. Beneath the two uneven and unbalanced swellings of her loins, one higher and contracted, the other lower and extended and relaxed, her elegant legs tapered in a listless pose from her long sturdy thighs all the way down to her calves and narrow heels. Her arms were raised to unhook the clasp of the necklace, lending her back a movement that could be seen through the transparent fabric, making the furrow that divided her expanse of tanned flesh blur and fade into two different backs, one lower and beneath the kidneys, the other higher and beneath the nape of the neck. Her armpits opened to the air like the jaws of two snakes, the soft long hairs like thin black tongues protruding as if eager to escape the heavy, sweaty constriction of her arms. Her whole large and splendid body seemed in Agostino’s dazed eyes to sway and palpitate in the shadows of the room and, as if to leaven her nakedness, to expand immoderately, reabsorbing into the dilated, cloven roundness of her hips the legs along with the torso and head, and then to balloon, stretching and tapering upward, one extremity touching the floor and the other the ceiling. But in the mirror, in the mysterious shadow of a blackened painting, the pale and distant face seemed to look at him with inviting eyes and the mouth seemed to smile at him seductively.

Agostino’s first impulse was to withdraw quickly, but a new thought, “She’s a woman,” immediately stopped him, his hand still on the door handle, his eyes wide open. He could feel the whole of his former filial spirit rebel against this paralysis and pull him away; but the new, timid yet strong spirit ruthlessly forced him to fix his reluctant eyes on a spot he would never have dared to set them the day before. So in the battle between repulsion and attraction, astonishment and pleasure, the details of the picture he was contemplating appeared more firm and sharp: the pose of the legs, the listlessness of the back, the profile of the armpits. They seemed to respond fully to the new feeling that required only this confirmation to overwhelm his imagination completely. Descending suddenly from respect and reverence to the opposite sentiments, he almost hoped that before his eyes her clumsiness would turn to vulgarity, her nudity to provocation, her innocence to naked guilt. His eyes shifted from astonishment to curiosity, filled with a scrutiny he considered almost scientific but whose false objectivity was related instead to the cruelty of their guiding sentiment. And while the blood rushed to his head, he kept repeating to himself, “She’s a woman, nothing more than a woman,” in words that seemed simultaneously to strike, disdain, and insult her back and legs.

The mother, having removed her necklace and set it on the marble top of the chest of drawers, brought her hands together at her earlobe in a graceful gesture to unscrew one of the earrings. Throughout this motion, she kept her head tilted to one side and turned toward the room. Agostino feared she would see him in the cheval glass situated near the window, in which he could see his whole body, upright and lurking, between the double doors. Forcing himself to remove his hand, he knocked lightly on the doorpost, asking, “May I?”

“Just a minute, dear,” his mother said calmly. Agostino saw her move and disappear from sight. Then, after a quiet rustling, she reappeared in a long blue silk dressing gown.

“At this hour?” she said, distractedly. “But it’s hot outside. Wouldn’t it be better to take a short nap?” One hand reached out and caressed him on the cheek. With the other she smoothed a loose lock of his straight black hair from behind his neck.

Agostino said nothing, reverting to childhood for the occasion, and stood in stubborn silence, as he used to do whenever a request was not granted, eyes on the floor, chin lowered to his chest. This pose was well known to his mother, who interpreted it in her usual manner. “All right, then, if it matters to you so much,” and added, “go ahead. But first go to the kitchen and have them give you a snack, but don’t eat it right away, put it in the cabin, and above all don’t go in the water before five. I should be there by then, and we can go for a swim together.” These were her usual words of advice.

Agostino said nothing in reply and ran barefoot down the stone steps of the staircase. Behind him, he heard the door to her bedroom closing softly.

He raced down the stairs, slipped on his sandals in the entryway, opened the door, and went out into the street. He was immediately struck by a wall of torrid air, the silent ardor of the scorching August sun. At one end of the street, the sea glittered, motionless, beneath the distant, tremulous air. At the opposite end the red tree trunks of the pine grove tilted beneath the sultry green mass of their rounded foliage.

He hesitated, wondering whether it would be easier to go to the Vespucci beach along the water or through the pine grove. He decided on the beach because, although the sun beat down more heavily there, at least he wouldn’t risk walking by it without noticing. He traveled the full length of the street to where it merged with the seashore, then he started to walk quickly, staying close to the walls.

He didn’t realize it, but what attracted him to Vespucci, besides the company of the boys, was their brutal mocking of his mother and her alleged lovers. He could sense that his former affection was turning into an entirely different sentiment, both objective and cruel, and he felt he should seek out and cultivate the boys’ heavy-handed irony for the simple fact that it had hastened this change. He couldn’t say why he wanted so much to stop loving his mother, why he hated her love. Perhaps it was his resentment at being deceived and at having believed her to be so different from what she really was. Perhaps, since he couldn’t love her without difficulty and insult, he preferred not to love her at all and to see her instead as merely a woman. He instinctively tried to free himself once and for all from the burden and shame of his former innocent, betrayed affection, which he now saw as little more than naïveté and foolishness. This was why the same cruel attraction that had made him stop and stare at his mother’s back a few minutes earlier was now compelling him to seek out the brutal and humiliating company of the boys. Wasn’t their irreverent talk—like his glimpse of her nudity—a way to destroy the filial condition he now found so repellent? A bitter pill that would either kill or cure him.

When he came within sight of Vespucci, he slowed his pace. Although his heart was beating rapidly and he was almost out of breath, he assumed an attitude of indifference. Saro was sitting under the tarp as usual, at his wobbly table with a flask of wine, a glass, and a bowl with the remains of a fish stew. No one else seemed to be around. Or rather, as he approached the tarp, he discovered, dark against the whiteness of the sand, little Homs, the black boy.

Saro didn’t seem to be paying much attention to Homs. He was smoking a cigarette, lost in thought, a tattered old straw hat pulled over his eyes. “Where is everybody?” Agostino asked in a disappointed voice.

Saro looked up at him, regarded him for a moment, and said, “They all went to Rio.” Rio was a deserted location up the coast, a few kilometers away, where a stream flowed into the sea between the sand and a canebrake.

“Oh,” said Agostino, disappointed, “they went to Rio? What did they go there for?”

Homs replied, “They went to have lunch,” and made an expressive gesture, bringing his hand to his mouth. But Saro shook his head and said, “You kids won’t be happy till someone shoots you in the pants.” The lunch was clearly a pretext to go steal fruit from the fields, at least as far as Agostino could tell.

“I didn’t go,” the black boy replied in a fawning voice, as if to ingratiate himself with Saro.

The black boy protested, squirming in the sand. “No, I didn’t go because I wanted to stay with you, Saro.”

He had a smarmy, singsong voice. Saro said to him contemptuously, “Who gave you the right to call me by my first name, boy? We’re not brothers, you know.”

“No, we’re not brothers,” answered Homs, unperturbed. Indeed, he seemed jubilant, as if he were deeply pleased by the observation.

“So keep in your place,” Saro concluded. Then he turned to Agostino. “They went to steal fruit and corn. That’s their lunch.”

Saro said nothing. He looked at Agostino and seemed to be mulling something over. “They won’t be back for a while,” he replied slowly, “not before evening. But if we want, we can join them.”

“Yes, let’s take the boat,” cried the black boy. Eager to go, he got up and stood next to Saro, but the man ignored him completely. “I’ve got a sailboat. In half an hour, more or less, we can be in Rio, if the wind is good.”

“All right, let’s go,” said Agostino cheerfully. “But if they’re in the fields, how are we going to find them?”

“Don’t worry,” said Saro, standing up and adjusting the black sash around his waist, “we’ll find them.” He turned toward Homs, who was peering at him anxiously, and added, “And you, boy, help me carry the sail and the mast.”

“Right away, boss, right away,” the black boy said jubilantly, following Saro into the shack.

Left to himself, Agostino stood up and looked around. The mistral wind had picked up, and the rippled sea was now a purplish blue. In a dust cloud of sun and sand, the shoreline between the sea and the grove appeared deserted as far as the eye could see. Agostino didn’t know where Rio was, and with infatuated eyes he traced the capricious line of the solitary beach with all its points and bays. Where was Rio? Maybe over where the fury of the sun blurred sky, sea, and sand into a single widening haze? He was immensely attracted by the trip, and nothing in the world could make him miss it.

He was shaken from these reflections by the voices of the two coming out of the shack. Saro had a bundle of ropes and sails in one arm and a flask in the other. Behind him came the black boy, brandishing the green-and-white mast like a spear. “Off we go,” said Saro, heading down the beach without a glance at Agostino. He seemed to be in an unusual hurry, Agostino didn’t know why. He also noticed that his repellent flared nostrils seemed redder and more inflamed, as if the web of capillaries was suddenly swollen with thicker and brighter blood. “Off we go, off we go,” sang the black boy in Saro’s wake, the mast under his arm, improvising a kind of dance on the sand. Saro was ahead of him, almost to the cabins, so the black boy slowed down, waiting for Agostino to catch up. When he did, the black boy made a complicit gesture. Surprised, Agostino stopped.

“Listen up,” said the black boy in a familiar tone, “I need to talk with Saro about some things, so do me a favor— don’t come. Get lost.”

“I just told you, because I need to talk to Saro, just the two of us,” the other boy said impatiently, stomping his foot.

The black boy looked at him. In his blank eyes and oily, quivering nostrils, Agostino sensed an anxious passion that repelled him. “Listen here, Pisa,” he said, “if you don’t come, I’ll give you something you’ve never seen before.” He let the mast slip from his hands and dug into his pockets, pulling out a slingshot made from a pine twig and two rubber bands tied together. “Nice, huh?” the black boy said, showing it to him.

But Agostino wanted to go to Rio, and Homs’s insistence raised his suspicions. “No, I can’t,” he replied.

“Take the slingshot,” the other boy said, looking for his hand and trying to force the object into his palm. “Take the slingshot and get lost.”

“I’ll give you the slingshot and these playing cards,” the black boy said. He dug into his pockets again and pulled out a small deck of pink cards with gilt edges. “Take both of them and get lost. You can use the slingshot to kill birds. The cards are new—”

The black boy looked at him, agitated and imploring. Large beads of sweat formed on his forehead, and his face suddenly twisted into a plaintive expression. “Why not?” he whined.

“I don’t want to,” said Agostino. And he fled toward the lifeguard, who by now had reached the boat on the beach. He heard the black boy yelling, “You’ll be sorry,” and, huffing and puffing, he reached Saro.

The boat was sitting on two raw pinewood logs, a short distance from the water. Saro had already tossed the sails into the boat and seemed impatient. “What’s he doing?” he asked Agostino, pointing to the black boy.

At that moment the black boy came running, the mast under his arm, making long leaps over the sand. Saro grabbed hold of the mast with the six fingers of his right hand and then with the six fingers of his left. He stood it upright and stuck it in a hole in the middle seat. Then he got into the boat, attached the tip of the sail, and pulled on the line; the sail slid up to the top of the mast. Saro turned to the black boy and said, “Now let’s get to work.”

Saro stood to the side of the boat, gripping one side of the bow. The black boy got ready to push the stern. Not knowing what to do, Agostino looked on. The boat was of medium size, half white and half green. On the bow, in black letters, you could read its name, Amelia. “Heave-ho!” said Saro. The boat slid over the logs, advancing across the sand. As soon as the hull rolled off the rear log, the black boy would squat down, pick it up, press it against his chest like a baby, and leaping over the sand as if in a modern dance, run to place it under the bow. “Heave-ho!” Saro repeated.

Again the boat slid forward a stretch, and again the black boy raced from stern to bow, skipping and jumping with the log in his arms. With a final push, the boat slid with its stern lower into the water and floated. Saro got into the boat and started slipping the oars into the oarlocks. At the same time, he gestured to Agostino, with a complicity that excluded the black boy, to climb on board. Agostino waded into the water up to his knees and started to climb in. He wouldn’t have managed if the six fingers of Saro’s right hand hadn’t taken a firm hold of his arm and pulled him in like a cat. He looked up. While lifting him, Saro was concentrating not on him but on straightening out the left oar with his other hand. Filled with repulsion at the fingers that had gripped him, Agostino went to sit in the bow.

“Wait for me, I’m coming, too,” shouted the black boy from the shore. Panting, he jumped into the water, nearing the boat and grabbing onto one side. But Saro said, “No, you’re not coming.”

“How am I supposed to get there?” the boy cried in distress. “How am I supposed to get there?”

“Take the streetcar,” Saro replied, rowing vigorously from an upright position. “You’ll get there before us.”

“Why, Saro?” the boy insisted plaintively, running in the water beside the boat. “Why, Saro? I’m coming, too.”

Without saying a word, Saro set the oars down, bent forward, and placed an enormous wide hand over the black boy’s face. “I said you’re not coming,” he repeated calmly, and with a single thrust shoved the boy back into the water. “Why, Saro?” The boy continued to cry, “Why?” and his plaintive voice, amid the splashing of the water, sounded unpleasant to Agostino’s ears, filling him with a vague pity. He looked at Saro, who smiled and said, “He’s so annoying. What were we supposed to do?”

When the boat was farther from the shore. Agostino turned and saw the black boy emerging from the water and shaking his fist in a threatening gesture that seemed directed at him.

Without saying a word, Saro pulled the oars in and laid them on the bottom of the boat. He went toward the stern and tied the sail to the boom, stretching it out. The sail fluttered indecisively for a moment, as if the wind were battering it from both sides, then all of a sudden, it turned starboard with a loud snap, tightening and billowing out. Obediently, the boat also tilted starboard and started to skip over the light playful waves lifted by the mistral wind. “We’re good,” said Saro. “Now we can lie down and rest a while.” He dropped down to the bottom of the boat and invited Agostino to join him. “If we sit on the bottom,” he explained, “the boat goes faster.” Agostino did the same and found himself sitting on the bottom of the boat, next to Saro.

The boat sailed smoothly despite its potbellied shape, tilting to one side, going up and down on the waves and occasionally rearing like a colt chafing at the bit. Saro was reclining with his head on the seat and one arm slipped below Agostino’s neck to control the tiller. For a while he said nothing. “Do you go to school?” he finally asked.

Agostino looked at him. Lying on his back, Saro seemed to be voluptuously exposing his nose with its inflamed flared nostrils to the sea air, as if to refresh them. His mouth was half open beneath his mustache, his eyes half closed. Through his unbuttoned shirt you could see the hairs, gray and dirty, rustling on his chest. “Yes,” said Agostino, with a shiver of unexpected fear.

“Give me your hand,” said Saro, and before Agostino could refuse, he grabbed hold of it. Agostino felt like he was trapped not by a hand but by a snare. The six short stubby fingers covered his hand, circled it, and joined below it. “And what do they teach you,” Saro continued, getting into a better position and sinking into a sort of bliss.

The boat reared up, and Saro, without moving or modifying his blissful pose, gave the tiller a shove. “Uh, I don’t know,” said Agostino, frightened and embarrassed, “they teach me lots of poems. Carducci . . .”

“Ah, yes, Carducci . . .” Saro repeated mechanically. “Tell me a poem by Carducci.”

”By the Sources of Clitumnus,” Agostino proposed, horrified at the hand that would not release its grip and trying slowly but surely to break it.

“Still, Clitumnus, down from the mountains, dark with

Waving ash trees, where ’mid the branches perfumed . . .*

The boat skipped along, Saro was still on his back, nose to the wind, eyes closed, making gestures with his head as if he were scanning the verses. Suddenly clinging to the poem as if it were the only means of avoiding a conversation he sensed would be compromising and dangerous, Agostino continued to recite slowly and clearly. All the while he tried to free his hand from the six fingers clutching it, but the grip was tighter than ever. He was terrified to realize that the end of the poem was approaching, so to the last stanza of By the Sources of Clitumnus he appended the first line of “Before San Guido.” It was also a test, as if he needed one, to confirm that Saro didn’t really care about poetry and had another very different purpose in mind. What exactly that was he could not quite understand. And the test was successful. “The cypresses which still to Bolgheri run stately and tall . . .” sounded jarring, but Saro gave no indication he had noticed the change. So Agostino interrupted his recital and said in exasperation, “Would you please let go?” while trying to free himself.

Saro was startled, and without letting go he opened his eyes, turned, and looked at Agostino. In the boy’s face there must have been such wild-eyed repulsion, such barely concealed terror, that Saro seemed to realize immediately that his plan had failed. Slowly, finger by finger, he released Agostino’s aching hand and said in a low voice, as if he were speaking to himself, “What are you afraid of? Now I’m going to bring you to shore.”

He pulled himself up heavily and gave a push to the tiller. The boat turned toward the shore.

Without saying a word, Agostino got up from the bottom of the boat, rubbing his aching hand, and went to sit in the bow. As they approached the shore, he could see the whole beach, which was quite wide at that point, and its white, deserted, sun-beaten sand. Beyond it, the pine grove was thicker, tilting, purplish. Rio was a V-shaped crevice in the dunes. Farther up, the reeds formed a blue-green smudge. But in front of Rio, he noticed a group of figures gathered from whose midst a wisp of black smoke rose to the sky. He turned to Saro, who was sitting in the stern adjusting the tiller with one hand, and asked, “Is that where we’re landing?”

As the boat approached the shore, Agostino saw the group around the fire suddenly break up and run toward them. He realized it was the gang. He saw them waving. They must have been shouting something, but the wind carried their voices away. “Is it them?” he asked anxiously.

The boat got closer and closer to shore and Agostino could discern the boys clearly. No one was missing: Tortima, Berto, Sandro, and all the others were there. And in a discovery he found unpleasant, though he didn’t know why, so was Homs. Like the others, he was jumping up and down and shouting by the water.

The boat sailed straight to the beach, then Saro gave a shove to the tiller, turning it sideways. Rushing at the sail, he gathered it in his arms, shortened it, and lowered it. The boat rocked from one side to the other in the shallow water. From the deck of the boat Saro picked up an anchor and threw it overboard. “We’re getting out,” he said. He climbed out of the boat and waded through the water to the boys waiting for him on the shore.

Agostino saw them crowding around and applauding, which Saro welcomed with a shake of the head. Another louder round of applause greeted his own arrival, and for a moment he fooled himself into believing it was friendly and polite. He realized immediately that he was wrong. Everyone was laughing, sarcastic, and contemptuous. Berto shouted, “So, our little Pisa likes to go on boat rides,” and Tortima made a face, bringing his hand to his mouth. The others echoed their behavior. Even Sandro, usually so reserved, seemed to view him with contempt. Homs, instead, was leaping around Saro, who walked on ahead toward the fire the boys had lit on the beach. Shocked and vaguely alarmed, Agostino went with the others to sit by the fire.

The boys had packed wet sand into a kind of makeshift pit. Pinecones, pine needles, and brush were on the fire. Laid across the mouth of the pit, a dozen ears of corn were slowly roasting. Nearby you could see, on top of a newspaper, a big watermelon and clusters of fruit. “What a good boy, little Pisa,” Berto started up again after they were sitting down, “now you and Homs can be buddies. Sit a little closer to each other. You’re, how can I put it? You’re brothers. He’s dark, you’re white, otherwise there’s no difference. You both like going for boat rides.”

The black boy snickered contentedly. Saro, huddled over, was busy turning the ears of corn on the fire. The others were snickering. Berto was the most derisive of all, shoving Agostino into the black boy so hard that for a moment they were on top of each other, one snickering at his abasement as if it were flattery, the other uncomprehending and filled with repulsion. “I don’t understand you guys,” Agostino blurted out, “I went for a boat ride. What’s wrong with that?”

“Oh, what’s wrong with that? He went for a boat ride. What’s wrong with that?” many voices repeated, ironically. Some of the boys were holding their bellies from laughter.

“Yeah, what’s wrong with it?” Berto repeated in the same tone of voice. “Nothing at all. On the contrary, Homs thinks everything’s right about it. Don’t you, Homs?”

The black boy agreed, jubilantly. The truth finally began to dawn on Agostino, however vaguely. He couldn’t help but establish a connection between the teasing and Saro’s strange behavior during the trip. “I don’t know what you mean,” he declared. “I didn’t do anything wrong during the boat ride. Saro made me recite some poetry, that’s all.”

Saro said neither yes nor no, settling for a smile and sneaking what one might call a curious glance in his direction. The boys interpreted his seemingly indifferent but in fact treacherous and self-serving behavior as a contradiction of Agostino. “Of course,” many voices repeated, “ask the innkeeper if the wine is good, right, Saro? Nice try. Oh, Pisa, Pisa.”

The vindictive black boy seemed to be enjoying this more than anyone. Agostino turned to him and, trembling with rage, abruptly asked, “What’s so funny?”

“Hey, don’t fight, Saro will make peace between you,” Berto said. But the boys were already talking about something else, as if what they had been alluding to was moot and no longer worth mentioning. They talked about how they had snuck into a field and stolen the corn and fruit. About how they had seen the farmer chase after them, armed and furious. About how they had fled and the farmer had fired his gun at them without striking anyone. The ears of corn were ready, browned and roasted on the embers. Saro removed them from the grate and, with his usual paternal complacency, distributed them to everyone. Agostino took advantage of a moment when everyone was intent on eating, and with a somersault made his way to Sandro, who off to one side was nibbling at his corn.

“I don’t understand,” he started. The other boy gave him a knowing look, and Agostino realized there was no need to say more. “Homs came on the streetcar,” Sandro uttered slowly, “and he said you and Saro had gone for a boat ride.”

“Keep me out of it,” replied Sandro with his eyes to the ground, “it’s between you two, you and the black boy. But as for Saro . . .” He let the sentence drift off and stared at Agostino.

Sandro looked around them and then, lowering his voice, he gave Agostino the explanation he had almost intuited without fully understanding. “Oh,” said Agostino. And without being able to say more, he returned to the group.

Squatting among the boys, with his cold good-natured head leaning on one shoulder, Saro was the very picture of a good father surrounded by his children. But now Agostino couldn’t look at him without a deep and even stronger hatred than he felt toward the black boy. What was particularly despicable about Saro was his silence in the face of Agostino’s protests, as if to insinuate that the things the boys had accused him of really had taken place. Yet he couldn’t help but perceive the contempt and derision that separated him from the others. The same distance, now that he noticed, between the gang and the black boy. Except that the black boy, rather than feel humiliated and offended like Agostino, seemed to be amused by it. More than once he tried to talk about the subject burning inside him, but he was met with ridicule and apathy. Besides, although Sandro’s explanation couldn’t have been clearer, Agostino still couldn’t fully understand what had happened. Everything was obscure both in and around him, as if rather than the sunlit beach, sky, and sea, there were only shadows, fog, and vague menacing shapes.

In the meantime the boys had finished devouring the roasted corn and thrown the cobs away in the sand. “Should we go for a swim in Rio?” one of them proposed, and the proposal was instantly accepted. Even Saro, who was supposed to bring them all back to the Vespucci beach in his boat later, stood up and came with them.

Walking along the beach, Sandro broke away from the group and joined Agostino. “You’re mad at the black kid,” he whispered, “so scare him a little.”

“He’s stronger than me,” said Agostino, remembering their arm wrestling, “but if you help me—”

“What’s it got to do with me? This is between you and him.” Sandro said these words with a special tone, as if to insinuate that his thoughts as to why Agostino despised Homs were no different than everyone else’s. Agostino felt his heart pierced by a profound bitterness. Even Sandro— the only one who had shown him any friendship so far— also participated in and believed the slander. Having offered this advice, Sandro walked away from Agostino and joined the others, as if he were afraid of being near him. From the beach they now passed through the undergrowth of young pines. Then they crossed a sandy path and entered into the canebrake. The reeds were dense, and many of them had feathery white plumes on top. The boys appeared and disappeared between the tall green stalks, slipping on the cane sap and shaking the canes with a dry rustling of the stiff fibrous leaves. They finally found a point where the canebrake opened up to a small muddy riverbank. When the boys appeared, big frogs leapt from all around into the glassy compact water. And here, one leaning against the other, they started undressing before the narrowed eyes of Saro who, sitting on a rock close to the reeds, seemed intent on smoking but was spying on them. Agostino was embarrassed, but fearing more teasing, he, too, began to loosen his trousers, as slowly as possible, casting furtive glances at the others. But the boys seemed overjoyed to get naked and tore off their clothes, bumping into one another and joking around. Against the green background of the cane, their bodies were brown and white, a miserable, hairy white from their groins to their bellies. This whiteness revealed something strangely deformed, ungainly, and overly muscular about their bodies, typical of manual laborers. The only one who didn’t actually seem naked was Sandro, blond in the groin and on the head, graceful and well proportioned, perhaps because his whole body was evenly tanned. Not naked, that is, in the foul manner of kids at a public swimming pool. The boys, getting ready to dive in, acted out hundreds of obscene gestures, tripping, pushing, and touching each other with brashness and an unrestrained promiscuity that shocked Agostino, who was new to this type of thing. He too was naked, his feet bare and caked with cold mud, but he would have preferred to hide behind the cane, if only to escape the looks cast his way through the half-closed eyes of Saro, crouching and motionless, like a giant toad who dwelled in the canebrake. Except, as usual, Agostino’s repulsion was weaker than the murky attraction that drew him to the gang. So thoroughly intermingled were the two that he couldn’t tell how much pleasure was actually concealed by his loathing. The boys measured each other up, boasting of their virility and physique. Tortima was the most vain and at the same time the most brawny, the most deformed, the most plebeian and sordid of the group. He got so excited that he shouted to Agostino, “What if I were to show up one nice morning at your mother’s, naked as the day, what do you think she’d say? Would she come with me?”

“And I say she would, immediately,” said Tortima. “She’d look me up and down, just to size me up, and then she’d say, ’Come on, Tortima, let’s have some fun.’”

All this horseplay made everyone laugh. At the sound of, “Come on, Tortima, let’s have some fun,” they all jumped into the stream, one after the other, diving in headfirst like the frogs who had been disturbed by their arrival a short while earlier.

The bank was surrounded by reeds so tall they could only see one stretch of the river. But from the middle of the current, they could see the whole stream which, with the imperceptible movement of its dark dense waters, flowed into the sea farther downstream, between the sandbanks. Upstream the river flowed between two rows of short fat silvery bushes that cast fluttering shadows over the reflecting water. In the distance a small iron bridge against a background of cane and poplar trees, dense and pressed tightly together, completed the landscape. A red house, half hidden between the trees, seemed to stand watch over the bridge.

For a moment Agostino felt happy as he swam while the cold powerful stream tugged at his legs, and he forgot every hurt and every wrong. The boys were swimming in all directions, their heads and arms breaking through the smooth green surface. Their voices echoed clearly in the still air. Through the glassy transparency of the water, their bodies looked like white offshoots of plants that, rising to the surface from the darkness below, moved whichever way the current took them. He swam up to Berto, who was nearby, and asked, “Are there a lot of fish in this river?”

Berto looked at him and said, “What are you doing here? Why don’t you keep Saro company?”

“I like swimming,” Agostino replied, feeling hurt, and turned and swam away.

But he wasn’t as strong and experienced as the others. Tiring quickly, he let the current carry him toward the mouth of the stream. Soon the boys with their shouting and splashing were far behind him. The canebrake thinned, and the water turned clearer and colorless, revealing the sandy bottom covered with wavy gray ripples. After passing a deeper pool, a kind of green eye in the diaphanous current, he placed his feet on the sand and, struggling against the force of the water, climbed out on the bank. The stream flowed into the sea, swirling and forming almost an upswell of water. Losing its compactness, the current fanned out, thinning, becoming little more than a liquid veil over the smooth sands. The sea flowed into the river in light foam-tipped ripples. Here and there pools forgotten by the current reflected the bright sky in the squishy untrodden sand. Completely naked, Agostino walked for a while on the soft gleaming sand, amusing himself by pressing his feet down hard and watching the water instantly rise up to flood his footprints. He was feeling a vague, desperate desire to cross the river and disappear down the shore, leaving behind the boys, Saro, his mother, and his whole former life. Who knows if by walking straight ahead, along the sea, on the soft white sand, he wouldn’t reach a land where none of these awful things existed. A land where he would be welcomed as his heart desired and be able to forget everything he had learned, and then relearn it without shame or offense, in the sweet and natural way that had to exist and of which he had a dark presentiment. He looked at the haze on the horizon enveloping the ends of the sea, the beach, and the woods, and he felt drawn to that immensity as if it were the only thing that could release him from his servitude. The shouts of the boys, heading across the beach toward the boat, awakened him from these sad imaginings. One boy was shaking Agostino’s clothes in the air. Berto shouted, “Pisa, we’re leaving.” He shook himself and, walking along the shore, reached the gang.

All the boys crowded together in the shallow water. Saro was busy warning them paternally that the boat was too small to hold everyone, but he was obviously joking. Like madmen, they threw themselves at the boat, shouting, twenty hands grabbing at the sides, and in the blink of an eye the boat was crammed with their gesticulating bodies. Some lay down on the floor. Others piled up in the stern near the tiller. Others took the bow, and yet others took the seats. Lastly some sat on the edges, letting their legs dangle in the water. The boat really was too small for so many people and the water came almost all the way up the sides.

“So everybody’s here,” said Saro, filled with good humor. Standing up, he unfurled the sail, and the boat glided out to sea. The boys saluted the departure with applause.

But Agostino didn’t share their good humor. He thought he spied an opportunity to clear his name and be exonerated from the slander weighing on him. He took advantage of a moment when the boys were arguing to approach Homs, who was alone, perched in the bow, looking in his blackness like a new style of figurehead. Squeezing his arm tightly he asked, “Listen here, what did you go around telling everyone about me?”

He had chosen the wrong moment, but it was the first opportunity Agostino had found to approach the black boy who, aware of Agostino’s hostility, had kept his distance the whole time they were on land. “I told the truth,” Homs said, without looking at him.

The black boy uttered a sentence that frightened Agostino. “Don’t press me, I only told the truth, but if you keep pitting Saro against me, I’m going to go tell your mother everything. Watch out, Pisa.”

“What?” exclaimed Agostino, feeling the abyss opening beneath his feet. “What are you talking about? Are you crazy? I . . . I . . .” he stuttered, unable to put into words the lurid image that had suddenly materialized before him. But he didn’t have time to continue. The whole boat had erupted in laughter.

“Look at the two of them, one next to the other,” repeated Berto, laughing. “We should have a camera to take a picture of the two of them together, Homs and Pisa. Stay where you are, lovebirds.” His face burning with shame, Agostino turned and saw everybody laughing. Even Saro was snickering beneath his mustache, his eyes half closed behind the smoke from his cigar. Recoiling as if he had touched a reptile, Agostino broke away from the black boy, pulled his knees to his chest, and stared at the sea through eyes brimming with tears.

It was late and the sun had set, cloudy and red on the horizon above a violet sea riddled with sharp glassy lights. The boat was moving as best it could in the gusts that had suddenly risen, and all the boys on board made it tilt dangerously to one side. The bow was turned toward the open sea and seemed to be headed not for land but for the faint outlines of faraway islands that rose from the swollen sea, like mountains above a plateau. Holding between his legs the watermelon stolen by the boys, Saro split it with his sailor’s knife and cut it into thick slices that he distributed to the gang paternally. The boys passed them around and ate greedily, taking big bites, digging their teeth in or breaking off big chunks of the flesh with their fingers. Then, one after the other, the white-and-green rinds were tossed overboard into the sea. After the watermelon, out came the flask of wine, which Saro pulled solemnly from below deck. The flask made the rounds, and Agostino also had to take a swig. The wine was strong and warm and went right to his head. Once the empty flask had been stowed, Tortima started singing an obscene song, and everyone joined in on the refrain. Between the stanzas, the boys urged Agostino to sing along. Everyone could tell he was miserable, but no one spoke with him except to tease and make fun of him. Agostino’s sense of oppression and silent pain was made more bitter and unbearable by the fresh wind on the sea and the magnificent blazing of the sunset over the violet waters. He found it utterly unjust that on such a sea, beneath such a sky, a boat like theirs should be so full of spite, cruelty, and malicious corruption. A boat overflowing with boys acting like monkeys, gesticulating and obscene, helmed by the blissful and bloated Saro, created between the sea and sky a sad unbelievable vision. There were moments he hoped it would sink. He thought he would gladly die, so infected did he feel by their impurity and so ruined. Distant was the morning hour when he had first seen the red tarp on Vespucci beach; distant and belonging, it seemed, to an age gone by. Every time the boat climbed a big wave, the gang gave a shout that made him jump. Every time the black boy spoke to him with his repellent, deceitful, and servile deference, he retreated farther into the bow to avoid hearing him. The dark realization came to him that a difficult and miserable age had begun for him, and he couldn’t imagine when it would end. The boat drifted for a while in the sea, making it almost to the harbor and then turning back. As soon as they came ashore, Agostino raced away without saying goodbye to anyone. But then he slowed his step. Turning back, he could see in the distance, on the darkening beach, the boys helping Saro pull the boat onto dry land.

* G.L. Bickersteth, Carducci: A Selection of His Poems, with Verse Translations, Notes, and Three Introductory Essays (London, New York, Bombay and Calcutta: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1913).