Ode to jealousy.
Sitting on the sofa in the living room, I leaf through a magazine and absentmindedly listen to the rhythmic cadence of the tennis dribble, interrupted by exclamations of satisfaction or disappointment. I don't want to watch the game: I already know that Michael will humiliate Gianluca and Massimiliano, mediocre players. The house is deserted on this April afternoon: my future mother-in-law has gone away for the biweekly ritual of shopping, which she celebrates every Tuesday and Thursday in the company of two friends, with whom she walks along via Roma searching the shop windows and spotting the more exclusive items, such as the magnificent décolleté by Sergio Rossi and the refined carré by Hermès that she wore yesterday at lunch.
I eagerly enjoy every moment of this rare solitude, hoping that it will last as long as possible and that Michael will give his opponents revenge. I'm fine like this, in the company of myself. The one person I desperately need is from the past.
Exactly one year ago we were sitting on the river bank and talking about Platonic Eros. It is probable that I only imagined it, indeed dreamed it. Now that I'm awake I cling to a mediocre paraphernalia halfway between epicureanism and stoicism: I repeat to myself that it was right like this, that everything is fine as long as nothing disturbs my inner serenity, made up of tiny everyday things; take one step after another: after all, this is life; be satisfied with what you have; no one has the right to claim happiness and so on.
But it's not true, I'm not serene either: I don't feel at ease in this house anymore, unless, like now, I'm completely alone.
A few evenings ago, while I was waiting for Michael's return, I found myself face to face with the engineer; Mrs.Helena had gone to sleep, tormented by one of her frequent migraines; he was silent and drank whiskey sitting in an armchair, while I absentmindedly watched TV. At times I felt the weight of his blue eyes on my legs. After a few minutes of embarrassment, I got up saying I had to go home. Kellermann walked me to the door and suddenly, in the doorway, he tried to kiss me. I released myself from his grip with a feline flash telling him "you want to joke engineer". I ran out and came home with my heart in my mouth. His smell of whiskey and aftershave lingered on me: I took a shower, but my night was troubled by strange dreams.
I thought about Emmanuel's words about his father. I measured the distance between his instinctive intuition and his brother's blind rationality, and this made me feel even more in danger. Michael will never know who he is surrounded by: he is too honest a person to assume dishonesty in others, but this, far from being a good thing, is a very serious limitation; and what's worse, I will never be able to tell him about it, because I should start with myself. I ended up in a blind alley from which I don't know how to escape.
At times the prospect of our marriage takes on the contours of a nightmare for me: I am constantly tempted to screw everything up on a pretext. Despite his lack of intuition, Michael must have sensed my uneasiness and is planning to move into a house all to ourselves, which he has already located in strada Cassano on the Pecetto hill: a modern villa on one floor, surrounded by a not too big garden. It's beautiful, I feel that I could be fine there. Michael, however, is still undecided about the purchase: that house, however pretty, is certainly not the status symbol that his parents expect from their eldest son: it doesn't even have a swimming pool; therefore he is considering the possibility of buying a much more prestigious house in the same area, at the cost of taking on a mortgage. I'm trying to dissuade him: I'm rooting for that house, I don't care about the pool. I'm sure we could be fine there, away from his relatives.
But the real problem is Emmanuel.
That boy has produced an irreparable damage in me: it is above all in order not to be forced to see him that I would like to leave this house, but at the same time I am counting the minutes that separate me from the moment in which I will be able to see him again. I know perfectly well that he is no longer the boy I used to hang out with a year ago, but he is all I have left of him.
Every day I wait impatiently for his return: only when I hear his footsteps on the gravel in the garden do I start breathing again. His presence hurts me as much as it is indispensable to me. The thought that sooner or later I'll see him enter this house hugging a girl is a constant torture for me; at the same time I couldn't survive without him next to me, no matter how. I would like to run away, but running away would throw me into an endless void.
In summary, I'm freaking out.
Suddenly the alarm siren emits a deafening sound, the flashing lights begin to flash: I feel that he is here. My heart is pounding.
He enters the living room with his gym bag slung over his shoulder and closes the door with a foot, holding a book in one hand and a glass in the other. I look away, unable to hide my emotion. He has always been beautiful in my eyes, but now the sight of him stops my heart in my chest.
Emmanuel at seventeen has become embarrassingly beautiful: 
he has grown further, his shoulders have widened, his jaw has taken on a more precise outline, the features of his face have become more defined, his voice deeper; he has let his hair grow down to his shoulders and divides it in the middle like a girl, letting it fall in disarray. He doesn't show off his physical means, indeed he seems to wear them with the same indifferent carelessness with which he wears his jeans 
ripped on his knees; he doesn't hold his beautiful head up, his gaze turned to the ground avoids meeting that of the others. This surly shyness makes him even more attractive. At times I seem to go mad with jealousy, but I stare stubbornly into the sun until the creatures of the night disappear. I've given up on him forever. I know the myth: the mortal who commits hybris with a god ends up incinerated. Like certain splendid jellyfish, Emmanuel burns even from a distance.
Of all this he is perfectly unaware.
He nods to me. His face is reddened by the sun, his hair is pulled back in a ponytail; he wears a white necklace around his neck and a gold circlet on the lobe of his left ear; his cheek is starting to get a delicate gray shadow, his gaze with dusty tones is underlined by light dark circles like bluish brushstrokes.
I feel that something in him is changing. I feel unjustifiable irritation:
- You don't say hello?
He turns towards me three-quarters of a strange face, sweet and angular like that of Botticelli's boys, a face that is not exactly what I remembered.
- I just said hello.
I feel like arguing with him: I find another foothold to argue with.
- And you don't offer?
- This juice is for you.
Like any good tennis player, Emmanuel always manages to surprise his opponent. He hands me the glass and opens the book.
- What a nice thought. What do I owe it to?
- I'm trying to somehow buy your favors.
He gives me a silly smile:
- Not the ones you think. I have a Greek test tomorrow.
- I don't think anything. What makes you think I'll help you?
- You always have done it.
- You don't need me anymore.
- Oh yes I do.
He places the open book in front of me:
Aeolian dialect.
Impossible to escape his request for help in the face of the most abstruse of Greek dialects.
- All right, come on. Sit here.
He slides into a seat beside me with slender hips sheathed in tight designer jeans, so different from those of a year ago, frayed and tattered, that he swung off over his head and tossed on the grass before running to the creek with his dog. He turns to look for something in the bag; his bent back gives off an acrid and warm smell: this reminds me that this morning he played the final of the volleyball tournament.
- How was the game?
- We won, - he says absently, while leafing through the book in search of the passage to translate - those of the other team didn't have good lifters, and then the cheering was all for us.
- Especially the female one, I guess.
- It could be - he replies vaguely. The ball rolls ignored out of bounds.
I'd hoped it was Alcaeus, but predictably it's Sappho's ode to jealousy. I used to love it, but I've come to hate it: I find the teachers' lack of imagination regrettable.
I approach the explanation being careful to keep it on a technical level: quatrains of three hendecasyllables plus final adonius, psilosis, baritonesis, phonetic changes etc. He follows me in silence, taking notes. I conclude, as always, with a question.
- Try reading in metrics. Be careful not to confuse the rhythm with that of the falecian hendecasyllable, it is a very common mistake: the dactyl is in third position, not in second.
He carries out the request with surprising ease.
- Well: you've improved a lot, I see.
- I hang out with some good students.
- I'm glad to hear it. Now translate.
- "Equal to the gods he seems to me...".
And as he translates the all-too-famous ode, a silver lock that has escaped from his ponytail brushes his face; and as his fingers caress the lines of the Greek text
- "...and smile softly; and this makes my heart leap in my chest...".
the blue of the dark circles draws a pale trace under the unnaturally dark eyelashes
-..."immediately a subtle fire runs under my skin, with my eyes I see nothing more, my ears are buzzing...".
- They rumble, they don't buzz.
and the sparkle of the gold earring pierces his lobe, while the necklace rests delicately on his collarbones drawing the border between the neck and the chest, which rises in regular breaths under the chaste white shirt.
His body blooms with feminine charms. A beautiful butterfly has emerged from the chrysalis I loved, but it's not exactly the kind of metamorphosis I had hoped for.
A few days ago I unintentionally witnessed a tirade from the engineer Kellermann about Emmanuel's clothing, too different from anything that has ever been seen in this house. He listened to him in silence with downcast eyes, until the paternal recriminations moved on to his mother who defended him as always, "he's as handsome as an archangel", while he slipped unseen to his room and left them there to argue with each other, according to a well-established tactic.
- The metric reading and the translation are going very well - I say at the end. - Now let's hear the commentary. How would you define this ode?
- Define it how?
- Try giving it a title.
- It already has. However I think it is wrong.
- In what sense?
- In the sense that jealousy has nothing to do with it.
I'm about to inform him that his hunch is probably correct, when his cell phone rings.
- Sorry - he says, and gets up to answer.
I pick up the magazine and pretend to immerse myself in reading. He says hello and turns his back on me. More than talking, he whispers. No, I can't today. He talks with one shoulder leaning against the wall; he turns around smiling. Tomorrow maybe. All right, yes. He laughs at a joke. He turns his back to me again and speaks softly, I can't hear what he's saying anymore.
This phone call has the same tragic cycle as the scene in that film where he is dying and climbs the stairs starting all over again. From the extent of my feeling bad I understand how bad I could feel if...
I block my thought in the bud. The regret of those crazy and wonderful moments is excruciating, the very idea of repeating them terrifies me. I hate myself: how long I walked on the edge of a cliff and how close I came to falling. A dizziness seizes me: I get up, go to the window and open it. Michael smiles and nods to me as he plays tennis, the hills are still in their place, drawn by the precise furrows of the vineyards like a rake, the charioteer firmly gripping the reins. It's all right, all right: I go back to sit down.
I hear him finish the call, yeah okay, I said yes, I can't talk right now, I'm with a friend. Yes tomorrow, I promise, bye.
A friend.
He hangs up and the smile falls from his lips. He takes his place on the sofa:
- Okay, sorry. Can we finish?
- It's finished, I think, isn't it?
I light a cigarette. My hands are shaking.
He blows away the smoke with an annoyed gesture.
- Not really, you asked me about the title.
- Let's listen then: why did you say that jealousy has nothing to do with it?
- Because in my opinion what Sappho expresses is amazement, not jealousy. She feels devastated at the sight of the girl she loves and doesn't understand how the man who is close to her can remain indifferent.
He hesitates for a moment:
- I mean, it's just my idea: in practice she describes a paroxysmal crescendo, a heart attack situation; I don't know if it's possible to feel like this just because you see a person from afar.
- Yes, it is possible.
- So I think this is the meaning.
- If it can comfort you, it is the thesis that is the most popular.
- It comforts me a lot, thank you.
- One last question: if the teacher asked you who imitated this ode, would you be able to answer?
He nods and begins to list the imitators, starting with Catullus.
- Who was on the phone? - I ask absently.
- A friend.
I inhale a puff of smoke.
- You mean a girlfriend.
- No, a male friend.
I extinguish the cigarette by crushing it in the crystal ashtray. I linger to look at the last threads of smoke.
- Let me understand: do you young people of today use this tone with friends?
- No, we young people of today don't usually use it.
I roll and unroll the magazine staring at the floor. I feel like I'm dying, but I adore this terrible creature whatever it's becoming. I feel the irrepressible urge to stroke his cheek, but I manage to control myself.
- Well, I tell him with a sigh, it's your choice of life, let's not talk about it anymore.
He seems surprised and slightly annoyed at my reaction.
- In fact, I don't think it concerns you, he replies with dignity.
I can't help but make a bit of a sour joke: 
Just try not to compete with me: you're becoming more feminine than me.
He doesn't answer anything: he looks at me with an expression halfway between reproach and pity, gets up, collects his things and goes towards the exit.
- You'll make a great impression, you're very well prepared - I tell him.
On the threshold he turns and coldly says to me:
- Thanks Professor.
He goes out.
A scream from the field: someone has scored a deadly ace and won the game. Applause, laughter, voices approach.
The sun disappears behind a cloud.
I look at my hands and, for the first time in my life, I realize I'm old.