The next morning I awoke with a clear awareness: I was destroying Antonia. I had become a serious addiction to her; I was having the same effect on her that Michelle had had on me. I had to rid her of me, but at the same time I did not want to lose her for any reason in the world: I had gotten into a terrible short circuit, from which I did not know how to get out. From there on, the path would be all uphill: it was a matter of mastering my physical impulses, putting aside the jealousy that was inevitable at the thought that she would continue to have sexual relations with my brother and perhaps with Frédéric (the maybe depended on him), acting with the utmost determination toward her to direct her toward an unlikely emancipation from her physicality. It was all going to be so difficult: and I was going to succeed. The white horse's turn had come. Around three o'clock in the afternoon we met on the riverbank. Instead of accompanying her to the barn, as she had expected, I proposed a walk; I took her by the hand and walked with her for a while in a fairy-tale atmosphere: I distinctly remember the clear, crisp color of the young leaves of the poplars and maples on which the pearls of recent rain glistened, against the clear background of a deep blue, while little clouds of steam rose here and there from a carpet of green grass. She told me about her day, the usual college stuff; when we were tired of walking I spread my kay-way on the grass and sat down on it, made her sit on my lap, and started reading Fear and Trembling with my chin resting on her shoulder, using her legs as a lectern. That day she was dressed quite provocatively, in a skirt and high heels: astonished and displeased by my indifference, she almost immediately tried to lead me into temptation: this was widely expected and I was not caught unprepared. I tightened her in an embrace that had the dual purpose of reassuring her and keeping her still. She still managed to wriggle free and slip a hand under my shirt: come on, stop it, I'm studying, I told her seriously, continuing to read. Then she abruptly turned away from me and said in an anguished tone you don't like me anymore. Don't talk nonsense, I replied, and hugged her tighter. Pretending to equivocate, she again tried to take advantage of the situation and slipped my left hand under her skirt; I had the impression that she was about to orgasm at my mere contact. Concerned by the obvious degeneration of her mental state, I squeezed her almost to the point of pain and threatened her sternly: if you continue like this I will not even be admitted to the exam, and it will be all your fault: you know I have to make up two subjects. I knew how to blackmail her: she calmed down immediately, said you are right, and plunged into the preparation of her university handouts, no longer trying to lead me into temptation. That situation repeated itself for a few days, putting me in serious difficulty: in the end I was just a common 18-year-old holding the beloved woman in my arms, resisting was not easy for me or for my white horse, evidently novice as an ascetic. Antonia, deeply humiliated, stopped asking me for what I was no longer willing to grant her, but it aroused in her a terrible uneasiness: she feared that our relationship was at the end of the line, that I had already grown tired of her; she did not even wear makeup anymore, she dressed casually and dimly, convinced as she was that she was no longer attractive in my eyes. Poor Antonia, I certainly could not get tired of the woman I loved, but all appearances played against me. At one point, not being able to bear to see her so depressed, I was forced to explain to her in full how things were. I told her the truth, which was that my attraction to her had remained unchanged, but that situation had turned into an addiction for both of us and was not at all what I needed to heal. I wanted our relationship to be the result of a choice, not a necessity. We had to prove to ourselves that we were able to be together even without knocking ourselves out with sex, which in the end was a different kind of drug: it was too easy, too comfortable to be high all the time, but would we be able to endure normalcy? I had no intention of repeating with her the experience I had with Gherti: somehow I was reliving the same situation by substituting heroin for sex, and this degraded her image in my eyes. I did not want her as a lover: I felt something much deeper for her. I had no idea what the outlet of that feeling might be, but of one thing I was certain: I would not make her my bedmate. For a while, then, we would do without sex, all the more so because she had had that strange hemorrhage whose cause was still unknown. Antonia listened to me carefully, heartened by my words, and recognized that I was right. We bargained for a chastity period of three months, so that we would pass the month of July and with it the baccalaureate exam: then what to do would be decided. She took the commitment very seriously, comforted by the fact that I was making long-term plans for the two of us; she stopped provoking me and began to dress in chaste clothes and low-heeled collegiate shoes. Yeah, the shoes: sometimes women don't realize what turns out to be exciting for a man. Because of those strap-on baby shoes, which had stirred something inside me, I once made the mistake of letting go: suddenly I knocked her down in the hay with a paw, without saying a word; she reminded me of our pact, but then, gratified by my glance as a ravenous young wolf, she allowed herself to be devoured. It was a beautiful moment, but with that carelessness I risked ruining everything. Moreover, there was bleeding again: although the gynecologist had found nothing alarming, I was worried. I did not repeat the mistake again. She, for her part, began to force herself not to look at me: the sight of me aroused desires in her that could no longer be fulfilled. I thought I would have to radically change my look, because my cursed angel appearance, as my brother put it, seemed tailor-made to awaken torrid sexual fantasies, which was perfect for someone like Gherti, but totally unsuitable for my relationship with Antonia. I had also changed the genre of music I listened to when we were together: I tried to avoid exciting tunes and to offer her something that could relax her without being dull and boring. Sometimes I would aim for classical music. One evening, I remember, while we were listening to music, I hesitated to look for the right words to ask her a question. I had told my mother that I would not be back for dinner, and we had brought with us the necessities for a hearty snack, which we consumed around six o'clock. It was a warm evening; it was nice outdoors. While we dangled our legs in the void sitting on the edge of the barn and the expanse of grass below us lit up with the intermittent twinkle of the first fireflies, I put on a song from several years ago, a tune I loved and that seemed particularly appropriate for that phase of our lives. She usually listened without question, but that time she asked me: What a wonderful voice: who is singing? Tim Buckley. Strange: I remembered a different voice. He did not have one voice: he had a thousand. What is the title of the song? Phantasmagoria In Two. It's beautiful. I appreciated that simple and unpretentious critical comment: as I said, beauty should not be vivisected, it should be felt and loved. Will you sing it to me, accompanying yourself on the guitar? Please. She asked me. I burst out laughing: I don't have a vocal range of five and a half octaves like he had. It is impossible for a normal male to sing in that key, it would take a female voice. You should sing it instead. Too bad I can't sing. Suddenly a doubt came to me. Are you in tune?, I asked her. I realized that I had no idea: I had never heard her sing. Yes, I am quite in tune. At school they made me sing in the choir. Then try singing it: I will accompany you on guitar. But I don't know the words, and then my English is barely passable. The words are there, here they are, I said, handing her the CD case. She weakly tried to object. No, come on: I'm afraid of ruining the song. I smiled at her. No one can hear us, at most we scandalize a few bats. She let herself be persuaded. We did a few rehearsals, one verse at a time. I, too, was struggling a bit to find the right chords: besides I had to arpeggiate them, a technique I did not master perfectly. When we both felt confident enough, I told her: Ready? Yes, she replied. I attacked the ballad, and she began to sing in her thin, tuneful voice. If a fiddler played you a song, my love and if I gave you a wheel Would you spin for my heart and loneliness Would you spin for my love... I still have in my ears the lovely somewhat scholastic grace with which she performed the refrain. I understood that she wanted to enter my world. That woman loved me in the only possible way, the only right way for me. Finally, I hugged her tightly. Well done, my love!, I told her, moved. I promised myself to repeat the experiment more often: I didn't know that, due to a series of unfortunate circumstances, that would be the first and last time. She did not answer anything. She hid her face on my chest and we stayed like that for a few minutes in silence. After a while, stroking her hair, I plucked up the courage to formulate the question I had been planning from the beginning: How is it going with my brother? As usual, why? Nothing, just like that. I wouldn't want our sacrifices to be in vain as you continue to have physical relations with him. She took it at a distance: You see Emmanuel, there are things that are not easy to explain. I know, but give it a try. I'm very fond of your brother. Sex with him is not a problem, I can do it or not do it, it doesn't change anything for me. In what sense does it not change anything for you? In the sense that Michael is as balanced in sex as in everything else, and this does not generate addiction; not in me, at least. What is addictive about you? I asked, thinking I knew the answer all too well. But she surprised me: Two opposite excesses: spirituality and carnality. Your brother possesses neither one nor the other. What about me? You what? How am I? Too spiritual or too carnal? She smiled. Let's change the subject, shall we? No way. She blushed a little and turned her face so that I could not see her eyes. Will you be offended if I tell you that through sex you transmit nothing physical? No, I am not offended. If anything, I am surprised: it seems to me that you experience quite intense physical sensations when you make love to me, or am I wrong? You are not wrong. So what? There is no discontinuity between the physical and spiritual planes, at least for me. If you conquer my soul you have won the game. I already knew, because it was the same for me, but I wanted to hear it from her. She added with some embarrassment: This is not to say that you are not a good lover, mind you: you are very good, but it is not the technique that counts; someone else who is just as good would not have the same effect on me, probably would have none at all. The fact is... She interrupted. I don't know how to tell you. Try it, I repeated to her. It is not because you are good that it works so well, it is because you are you. It gives me an indescribable thrill to feel you inside me. I feel everything you feel, you transmit all your feelings to me, I always know exactly what you feel, and I can't help but feel it too. This is something that happens to me only with you. I thought myself fully satisfied with the answer: that thing she had just described is called love. The next question was more difficult, but I managed to formulate it with sufficient ease: What about Frédéric? Freddy is the exact opposite: his spirituality he keeps to himself, he does not give it to a female. Laconic answer, as was to be expected. I did not press that sore point any further, not least because that diminutive meant that the relationship between them, had probably never entirely broken down. I forced myself not to give in to the temptation to investigate further: for no reason in the world would I risk jeopardizing our relationship again. It was a matter of enduring, patience, waiting for the moment when the situation would stabilize. I had to learn to stall. I was studying an elegant way to express my disappointment to her without letting my jealousy show, when she suddenly, for no apparent reason, lifted her head and said: I would like to have a baby. These words not only completely displaced me, they bumped into me with the violence of a fist. I did not understand why: perhaps I was offended by the generality of his desire, perhaps it simply lacked a possessive adjective. Why? She shrugged her shoulders: There is no why: it is natural for a woman to desire a child. I kept feeling a confused and very strong uneasiness whose meaning I could not decipher. I expressed it as well as I could: words of bitter reproach came to me. Antonia, you never wanted to be natural. You said you wanted to be somebody, to have a career, to prove you were worth something. Did you forget your talk about the Sistine Chapel and dirty diapers? Were you making fun of me when you said those things? I never made fun of you, Emmanuel. The fact is that I'm no longer up to no good: I think I'm going to abandon my college career. Those words gave me a very strong grip on my heart: how was it possible that my professor would want to abandon the universe that she loved and that she had made me love as well? It seemed absurd, grotesque, unnatural. Then I began to sense, with an even more painful clenching of my heart, that I alone was to blame: I realized how much things had changed around me while I was all busy wracking my brains with Gherti. Antonia must have been living for months in a tense and anxious situation that had practically alienated her from herself. I tried to provoke her, hoping to arouse a reaction of pride in her: What, did you realize you'd rather be a kept woman for a rich husband? Don't be unfair, come on. It's just that in my field you can't do things half-heartedly, without passion. Aristophanes would not forgive me. Leave Aristophanes alone: he would certainly forgive you, if only you would stop bullshitting. She smiled shaking her head and did not respond. Feigning superficiality was not the right tactic. I stopped provoking her and asked her heatedly: Antonia, seriously, why? She lowered her gaze: Don't blame me: it was you who changed me. Unfortunately, I knew it. I still feigned astonishment: Me? How? Smiling in an absurd way, she replied: I was only happy with you. What does that have to do with your change? It has to do with. And why, then, do you speak in the past tense? Are you no longer happy now? Because I have to get used to thinking of you in the past tense. I've been thinking a lot these past few weeks, and now I finally understand. Her words were going to touch some delicate nerve ganglion, some raw nerve of my being. I was about to plug her mouth with one hand to silence her; instead I asked her: Understand what? That a woman and a man have very little to say to each other. The perfect relationship is between a woman and a child. I was only myself with you, Emmanuel: I loved playing with you, because you know our days at the river were a game. We used to play the teacher's game with the pupil, that's all. It was not a game: I was really studying. But yes it was a game, you know. Studying was also a game, a beautiful game. I loved watching you grow, I loved your naivete, I loved indulging all your desires. Even sex was mostly a way to get to know you better, to watch you grow. Every day I thanked God that you existed. She smiled and added: A pagan god, I suppose. I didn't answer anything. She resumed: But now you are almost a man. The child I knew belongs to the past. That's why I was saying that I would like to have a child: I miss that kind of relationship so much. I wish I could have him back; it's the only thing that can make me happy. Work has given me some satisfaction, but it has never made me happy. I sensed in that statement a tremendous truth, a dead end that thwarted all my efforts. There and then only a trivial objection came to my mind: I was already no longer a child when you met me. Yes you were, and a little bit you still are. I spoke to her in the voice of despair: "Then believe it all the way, Antonia". Fucking believe it. Children grow up, Emmanuel: I have to let you go. Her eyes were shiny with tears. I suddenly felt invaded by a mad, exalted courage: if the solution did not exist, I would invent it, I would shape it from nothing. The artist's panic when faced with the blank page is his true strength. Don't worry, I told her in a cheerful tone, I will find a remedy. I won't grow at all, in fact look, I'm already shrinking, see? I'm shrinking as far as the eye can see. I managed to make her laugh: that made me feel a little better. Wouldn't you like to have a child?, she asked. No. Why? I don't know, Antonia. I just wouldn't like it. Still because of overpopulation? It was not easy for me to explain what I myself had not yet understood. Overpopulation is a huge problem, I told her, but I don't think that's why. Even if there wasn't, I would feel the same way. I interrupted myself, trying to give a rational formulation to my feelings. Then finally I said: The fact is that people generally change for the worse when they have children. What do you mean by that? That living personally is not easy, Antonia: it is more convenient to delegate this responsibility to a child. When one has a child, he feels as if he has achieved a purpose: one basically shifts the problem onto the child and gives up considering himself as a purpose. But if everyone did this, it would create a senseless loop, don't you think? Everyone would look for the purpose of his existence in someone else, who in turn would look for it in someone else, and so on, and in the end no one would have a purpose in life. She nodded, as if she thought my reasoning made sense. I resumed: That's what you are doing, Antonia: you are giving up yourself and your purposes and projecting them onto a child. Imagine if Leonardo had decided to be a family man instead of painting the Last Supper. I am not Leonardo, she smiled, and then this reasoning also applies to Hitler and Vlad the Impaler. On a conceptual level it is the same thing. The greats of history made questionable choices, but they made them: they did not delegate their lives to anyone. Weren't you the one who said that history is male? Yes, that was me. You have lost yourself, Antonia, you have given up the truest part of you: and the fact that you say it is my fault destroys me. I never said it's your fault. And it was not the truest part of me. Yes it was, Antonia: any woman is capable of making a child, but none is moved by Aristophanes' metrics. Either way, it's not your fault. It is. I've done everything I could to distract you from yourself, first with my narcissistic bullshit and then with my junkie trips. And you've become a kind of appendage of mine: you live hanging on my bipolarity, up and down on a roller coaster, and you're always too scared to think about yourself. I concluded disconsolately: The fact is that I wanted you all to myself, Antonia. And don't tell me I didn't have the right, because I know. My lips were trembling. I was going to tell her I love you, but at that moment it would have been pathetic. However, if I could go back, I would tell her. There is nothing irretrievable about this, Emmanuel: I can still resume my work and my studies, if I want to. Are you going to do it? I will, at some point. Will you still write some absurd and incomprehensible articles? Yes, if you like. But you don't have to do it to please me, I begrudgingly insisted. You have to do it for yourself. All right, I will do it for myself. But now stop nagging yourself: I have nothing to forgive you, you don't know how happy it makes me to see you healed. This is the only important thing, the rest will work out. She caressed my hand. I tried to master the emotion given to me by that maternal caress, which contained all her undeserved forgiveness. Then, becoming master of myself again, I said to her: The fact is that a child for people is the illusion of immortality, but if you think about it, the opposite is true: to bring a child into the world is to force him or her to share mortality with us. You can't not understand that. Do you really have that much desire to feed more human flesh to cancer and war? She did not answer. The newly risen moon, yellow and perfectly round, lit up the blue almost like day. There is not only pain in life, she finally said, there is also this moon. I smiled with some bitterness: This moon is just a painted backdrop, love. Painted well, though. He has to do things right, if he wants us to believe he is God. Why, who is he instead? I have no idea. Maybe a great mathematician. Or a wonderful artist, with an extraordinary sense of aesthetics and no sense of ethics. Or perhaps a brilliant prankster. The situation suddenly appeared to me for what it was: a grotesque role reversal, in which the teacher did not recognize Timaeus and expected metaphysical answers from the pupil. Too bad the pupil was groping in the dark as much as she was: I would have gladly given her all the answers she wanted, if I had known them, because the only thing I wanted at that moment was to make her feel good. A doubt suddenly assailed me: what if to make her feel good I also had to... Suddenly a shrill cry behind us made us turn our heads: a large bird with a very long tail was plying the twilight above us. Look!, she exclaimed, pointing at him. I recognized it immediately: It is a peacock: my grandfather kept one in the garden. I didn't think peacocks could fly. Yes, they can fly. More like gliding, like gliders. It is beautiful. Wonderful, but it has a horrible voice. The animal flew over us with its wings spread wide and motionless, emitting its high-pitched, ungainly whine several times, and disappeared behind the hill at an unspecified point in the sky. We stood watching it in silence. What a sight, huh?, I said. Wonderful. She was silent for a while, curling up with his knees in his arms. Then she resumed: Maybe we are fictional too; maybe we are the protagonists of a play written by someone else. I was kneeling behind her: I surrounded her with my arms, resting my chin on her hair. I don't think so, my love. Maybe a part of us is true, but we cannot see it as long as we keep going like this. We must strive to go in the opposite direction. Which direction? I took her head in my hands and rotated her neck like that of a doll, forcing her to look up, above the hill, high, to an unspecified point in the sky.