Emmanuel opens the bag and releases the goldfishes, then folds the nylon bag in which he carried them and puts it in his pocket, observing the bewildered flickering of the fishes and holding Saucepan by the collar as he throws himself at them. I am sitting on the bank of the stream and looking at the scene.
Are you sure you did the right thing? I fear they will die before they adjust to the new environment.
Maybe, but at least they'll die free.
He comes and sits next to me.
Yesterday Teresa was about to kill a guinea pig: in her country they have the barbaric custom of eating them. I asked her if she was stupid or what.
Why, we don't do the same thing with rabbits?

I know, it's contradictory. But I don't eat rabbits. Anyway you know Teresa, right? She mumbled a little, but eventually gave me the pig.
What did you do with it?
I freed him too.
You sentenced him to death: it will have ended up in the mouth of the first passing dog. He cannot defend himself, he does not know the rules of nature. It's not like in the comics, Emmanuel, nature has cruel rules.
At least they're true.
What do you mean?
That the human ones are fake. Go green, cross the stripes, don't talk with your mouth full, go to mass on Sunday, get dressed like this, move like that, find a job, get married, have children.
You made a mixed salad: having children is absolutely natural, it is not a rule invented by man. And then, if we want to be honest, with natural laws you only have to lose.
Why?
Because if you clash with someone stronger than you you get a lot of blows, if you get sick you die, if you don't find a job you go hungry and when you are old they throw you away like waste. It is the rules of civil life that prevent all this, Emmanuel, certainly not the natural ones. Your dog knows this too.
What does my dog know?
That big dogs kill small ones.
Maybe that's the way it should be.
Is that what you want?
No, but my opinion does not matter: probably this does not suit me precisely because I am a loser. If I were on the other side, I would probably think in a completely different way.
In any case, giving oneself rules is not against nature: on the contrary, it is in the nature of man.
What are you doing, professor, are you quoting Protagoras?
At least my lessons have helped you.
Nature is beautiful because it is true. The families of the white mill, the politicians, the intellectuals, the professors are not nice, and do you know why? Because they are not true. And what is not true is not good.
Why do you assume that the good coincides with the beautiful?
It's not me, but people like Plato and Einstein who take it for granted.
It is a very dangerous point of view: Plato himself, as he got older, changed his mind on the subject. Good is always beautiful, but beautiful is not always good. It is a very complicated matter.
The fact is that if you take away beauty, man becomes false: he begins to play a part instead of living, and in the end he becomes crazy and bad. Beauty is necessary to live, so it must be good.
Your friends are also looking for beauty when they run after pretty girls, but that doesn't make them chosen souls. You yourself say that you find certain behaviors vulgar.
Do you know what I mean by beauty?
Try to explain it to me.
No.
He closes the conversation: he has no intention of saying more on the subject. He kneels on the grass and begins brushing Saucepan's gray fur, turning his back to me.
I observe him with a mixture of amazement, melancholy and tenderness. I realize that I deeply love him, but my feeling is polluted by an indefinable malaise, like a kind of languor that takes me to the stomach, does not allow me to be serene and always makes me feel uncomfortable: I will probably need time to get used to it; and I will certainly have to, whatever the cost, because I don't want to lose this boy. I don't know how, but I will stay close to him.
When he swore to me that nothing would ever happen between us again, I admit it, I didn't take him seriously; or rather, I had taken his intention seriously, but I didn't think he would have been able to keep his promise: after all, he's only a sixteen-year-old boy. I had to change his mind: he showed an uncommon fortitude, certainly superior to mine. In fact, the problem is more mine than his: the beauty I saw in him in those few moments left a hole in my soul. That joy in the eyes, the trusting abandonment, the shameless physicality, that mysterious and deep trembling, and then that light, that incredible light: it is as if in those moments the material of which it is made is sublimated into luminous energy. I daresay I've never seen anything so spiritual in my life, and I can't lie to myself to the point of denying that I would like to see it again.
But Emmanuel, chaste and adamant like a medieval knight, denies me the sight of his body: if previously he had no qualms about diving naked into the stream before my eyes, now he has completely given up on bathing in my presence; he closed himself up in the lorica of his oversized T-shirts with the print of his favorite musical groups on them, protected by the armor of his grandfather's plaid shirt, renouncing any means of seduction and not realizing that this surly attitude, combined with his chaste and modest clothing, makes him even more desirable for earthly creatures: the very young Parsifal, the pure madman who grew up in the forest, the soul who has renounced the knowledge of the world and is trying to enter the higher life, exercises a mysterious and very powerful fascination over me.
I think he is perfectly aware of my embarrassment: towards me he is always kind and attentive; he does nothing to hide the joy that my presence gives him, but he is careful not to create prison situations and avoids my contact as much as possible. It's like he's grown up all of a sudden.
Or maybe he just doesn't like me enough.
It deeply disturbs me to admit that I would like to see him have more difficulty mastering his adolescent instincts than he does. Yet it is so, I'm trying to... I hesitate to use the right word, but only if you have the courage to define things by their name is he able to perceive their substance. In this case the meanness. Am I trying to lure him? A flush of blush rises to my face as soon as I formulate this thought. Shame, Antonia.
How come the skirt and high heels? he asks all of a sudden, as if he read my mind Not the best for walking in the countryside.
It's a kind of uniform, it gives me a sense of security.
He shakes his head without interrupting his work.
Bullshits. You're provoking me, and that's not fair of you.
He knows how to be very direct in telling the truth: I blush with shame.
You're right, I didn't realize that.
What didn't you realize? That you are provoking me? Come on, I don't believe you.
From tomorrow blue jeans, tshirt and sneakers.
It would be time.
Finally he turns around.
What do you think? he asks me, showing me the polished dog Beautiful, huh?
Saucepan has never been beautiful, but with his ears down and his fur sticking to him he is, if possible, even uglier.
Beautiful I reply.
He lets go of the collar: the dog sets off in a rocket towards the woods.
Where does he go?
To take a ride.
Let's hope he doesn't go too far.
He never goes too far.
I wouldn't want him to go looking for some shedog.
Saucepan in love? – he laughs I don't really see him.
He lays down in the grass leaning on his elbows.
It's shabby to be programmed for mating.
Didn't you say you like being natural?
I did not say that I like it, I said that nature is true and that it is beautiful. Then you got off to a flying start with the discourse on beauty and goodness and I'm still here thinking about it.
It's a difficult speech.
You're right, I'll never be able to be completely natural. For example, I am terrified of disease. By the way, don't you think I'm a little swollen here?
I burst out laughing.
It's Adam's apple, kid: you're growing up.
I know I'm a hypochondriac, but I can't help it. I have become like this since that time when my grandfather got sick and there was no one in the house.
Do you want to tell me about it?
He hesitates for a long time, then speaks with his eyes fixed on the ground.
He was choking. He died on my lap and I couldn't do anything to help him.
I'm sorry, Emmanuel.
What's worse is the guilt.
Why? It certainly wasn't your fault.
Yes, of course it was. My parents wanted to take him to a retirement home because they said he would be better looked after by the doctors, but I didn't want to and I was against it. I said I'd take care of him. So I sentenced him to death.
Poor kid. I caress his hair.
Don't feel guilty, Emmanuel: your intention was good, you did it because you loved him. Your grandfather knows.
I hope so.
What was his name?
Gabriele. He was completely different from the other males in my family: he listened to classical music, played chess, taught me solitaire with cards, read Pinocchio to me. He limped a bit and walked leaning on his cane, but he liked to walk and he often took me to look for mushrooms in the woods. When it snowed he would pull a low branch of a pine and plunge me under the snow, every time: it was a joke he liked very much, poor grandfather. I played along and pretended to fall for it every time.
Who did you get your name from? Your brother is called Michele, for consistency they should have called you Emanuele.
It's a strange story. My greatgrandmother was called Emma, my maternal grandmother Emanuelle and my parents didn't know what name to give me: so Emmanuel came out.
And the paternal grandmother?
Grandma Carlotta? I never met her, I only saw her in photography: she died young. She was a beautiful woman with red hair. My grandfather never remarried, he was made for great loves. After him I didn't love anyone like that anymore, before I met you.
This is, without a doubt, the most beautiful declaration of love I have ever received.
Why don't you ever tell me about your mother?
Because I don't have much to say. My mother lives in a world of her all of her and you have to let her stay there: she has always been beautiful, courted by all men, but she has lived only one great love, that with dad. She can't get out of the fairy tale she invented, where she is the princess and he is the prince who took her to live in an enchanted castle. The problems don't touch her, she puts her head in the sand and pretends they don't exist. Every now and then she looks to see if things have calmed down and if she sees that it's okay she goes back to sit in the living room and turns on the TV. I love her, she is a good person, but you cannot expect protection from her; if anything the other way around. Dad is having a hard time with work, but every time he and my brother talk about business she gets up and walks away, as if it doesn't concern her. A few years ago, her Siamese cat ate a poisoned mouse and got sick. Do you believe? She didn't want to see him anymore, she said she couldn't bear to see him suffer. I called the vet, treated the cat for two weeks and eventually he recovered.
Where is he now?
He died.
Ah.
He was an old cat.
I understand.
There is an insistent moan in the air: Emmanuel looks up.
There's a raptor up there. He has sighted prey.
I look up too and see the slow whirling of a large dark bird above us.
It's a buzzard I say he must have seen a rabbit, a mouse, a dead cat... But where is Saucepan?
Suddenly Emmanuel widens his eyes, leaps to his feet and runs off through the woods. I get up and chase him, but it is impossible to keep up with him: he flies through the trees in long deer leaps.
Panting and exhausted, I finally see him kneeling on the side of the road, motionless: Saucepan is lying on the ground, the car that hit him hasn't even stopped. I lean over the animal: he breathes, turns his head to look at me and lets it fall back.
Don't move him. I tell Emmanuel – I go to the car, we'll take him to the clinic. I do it in a flash.
...
Saucepan, with one leg in plaster and a plastic funnel around his head, is sitting in the new kennel we just bought for him: I see him in the rear view mirror as I drive back from the clinic. He looks dejected but composed and dignified. Emmanuel turns to give him a caress.
He looks like a seventeenthcentury nobleman, right?
Yes, and of high rank: a marquis or something. The Elizabethan collar suits him.
Poor my dumb dog.
He tenderly kisses my hand.
I was so afraid that he would end up like my grandfather.
But he got away with it, thank God.
It is thanks to you.
After a few minutes, exhausted by the nervous tension, he falls asleep and slips into my lap; I still hold the steering wheel with one hand, doing what I can to avoid shifting gears.
I don't believe in God. As I drive and stroke his hair I feel that I love him so deeply that it almost scares me. I'd give my life to protect him, but how? I am a loser myself. There are no exceptions, there are no miracles: nature follows its course and the sick, the different, the losers are always, with indifference, swept away. It's just a matter of time. There is but one way to survive: to be on the other side.