Today Emmanuel does not seem to feel my presence: he holds Saucepan by a paw and looks lazily at the sunlight filtering through the branches. It is very hot again and his shirt is open; I see his chest, furrowed with a trickle of sweat, rise and fall in his breath.
The school year draws to a close and my task can be considered happily completed: he has redeemed all his failures and will undoubtedly be promoted, even if he I will have a couple of 'C' grades on his report card. Michael is proud of me; I have received compliments from Mrs Helena and even from the taciturn engineer Kellermann. 
I too am satisfied, but I don't feel happy. In fact, to be honest, I'm sad: I had got used to looking forward to getting on his uncomfortable scooter with Saucepan in my arms to go to the river, amid jolting, laughter and constant risk of falling. I will miss our afternoons in the fresh air.
There is something strange about his silence: I tried to break it with a few sentences, but he always dropped the subject, as if he was following the thread of his thoughts and did not want to be disturbed. Finally he decides to speak:
- It's tough being sixteen.
- Why? You are very cute, you will be successful with girls.
- Perhaps.
- Perhaps? It is a fact: look in the mirror.
- Whatever. Besides, I've never really committed to girls.
- And what are you waiting for? You're a big boy now.
- I don't want my first time to be with just anyone. Then sorry, why do you assume that I want girls to like me?
- What do you mean?
- You got that right.
- No, I didn't understand at all.
- How did you suddenly become so unperceptive?
- Cut to the chase.
- It's simple: boys also like me, and I don't exclude that boys might like me. There's a fellow senior...
- Finish the sentence.
- Nothing, just like that. He is much more interesting than any girl I know.
A sense of despondency assails me.
- Please tell me you are joking.
He sighs and relaxes:
- I knew it. So many prejudices, prof.
I don't understand: his diary was about a she, not a he. I feel a twinge in my stomach. I try to play it down:
- It's normal that boys like you: you have delicate features, you don't have a beard yet.
- If it is normal all the better. But even if it were abnormal, it would do just the same.
- I don't like you thinking like that, Emmanuel.
- It is strange that it is you who is giving me this speech.
- If you allude to homosexuality in Greece, I have explained to you many times that it had a different, cultural meaning.
- Yes, well, good night. 
He sits up cross-legged.
- Listen to me: either you like persons for their body or you like them for who they are. Right? You've given me such a headache with platonic eros, I'd be damned if you'd tell me it's wrong.
- What does that have to do with it?
- Do I have to like females just because they are females?
- I understand what you mean, but I don't like to think of you in this situation. Unless it's a deep-seated need of yours, in which case....
- I'm not queer, if that's what you mean. It is simply that the girls I know are not interesting; it is embarrassing how limited their perspectives are.
- Not all girls are like that.
- So it's me who only knows stupid ones.
I feel personally offended, but I try not to show it.
- You will know others - I reply dryly.
- Almost all artists are homosexual or bisexual, have you noticed? There must be a reason.
- Maybe, but I don't feel like talking about it right now.
- You're wrong: it's always a time to talk about important things, and this one is for me. Surely it can't be an accident, can it?
Thomas Mann could give you some explanation.
- Where?
- Death in Venice.
- Thank you, I will read it.
- It is a beautiful novel, but for some strange reason I hated it.
- All the more reason to read it.
- I see that you now use me as an inverted compass: you steer in the opposite direction to mine.
- No, that's not it at all: I will also read it to find out what bothered you. You should feel flattered.
- Well, even flattered...
- I have nothing against homosexuality. The point if anything is another: any sexual habit is beautiful as long as one is young. Then everything becomes sordid.
- Thanks, huh.
- I wasn't alluding to you, prof. Can I still call you prof? 
- Please, go ahead, you know it has always bothered me.
- But luckily school is almost over, you won't have to put up with me much longer. Not as a pupil, at least.
- Yes, luckily.
- And then you are young. I was actually thinking about certain rock stars: everything they did in their twenties looked good, even if they were completely out of their minds; now they're just ridiculous. The lucky ones are the ones who died early.
- Don't talk nonsense.
- It's called bullshit, not nonsense. Look at them, the survivors: banal the ones who have integrated, pitiful the others. They do not resign themselves to growing old, they marry supermodels, the older they are, the more young girls they get. They don't realise that they are absolutely pathetic, the same as the old industrialists who buy eighteenyearold wives. And they pass themselves off as alternatives.
- One day you will grow old too, Emmanuel.
- That's the problem: at sixteen I feel quite calm and I can do what I want, but I don't think I will be able to age well. That's something that scares me a lot.
He shakes his head and adds bitterly:
- I would rather die than reduce myself like this.
- There is no need for you to reduce yourself like this: you can also become a normal adult, don't you think?
- What do you mean by normal? Like my father and brother? No thanks, it's not for me. 
He closes the speech. I am silent too, because I cannot tell him what I am thinking: I know very well that Emmanuel is not made to follow the path of the normal and the homologated; the fact is that I cannot imagine any adult future for him, and that scares me: I wish I could watch over him somehow, but I do not know how.
After a few minutes he starts talking again, in a low, grave tone.
- My father has a mistress.
I am completely taken aback by his exit.
- What are you talking about?
- Please don't ask me how I know. I am sure of it.
My heart is pounding and my mouth feels dry, I give up replying. Suddenly, like a flash, the memory of a strange sensation crosses my mind, a kind of a viscous, boiling liquid, which a few days ago in the living room I felt settle on my crossed legs. I looked up and met his father's eyes: I scrutinised for a moment the beautiful but strangely unmade features of that face, which must have been similar to Michael's, and I felt a sensation of strong unease.
- Luckily Mum is too distracted to notice. Poor Mum, she still hasn't understood what rich men are like. I don't want to become like him under any circumstances.
- Don't talk like that about your father, Emmanuel. He loves you.
- I love him too, perhaps.
- Perhaps?
- I don't know, sometimes I feel like I have a desert inside. And anyway, just because I love him doesn't mean I feel like being like him. 
- For now you look very different to me.
- Thank you for noticing, it didn't take Sherlock Holmes.
He lies back down in the grass, absorbed in some of his thoughts. I get the impression that he touches me, but he hasn't moved. He remains silent for a long time, then throws out a question in a distracted tone that stuns me like a punch in the face:
- It's over, isn't it prof?
I stammer a question in turn:
- Over what?
- You know we won't see each other again.
- No, what are you saying? It's just a matter of waiting until next autumn.
- So, if I want to see you again, I have to suck at school: is that what you're telling me?
- Emmanuel, we will see each other every day at your house: I am your brother's girlfriend.
He shakes his head with a sour smile.
- How banal you can be.
- Banal in what sense?
- Banal in the sense of banal.
Now I'm getting a little irritated.
- Sorry, could you clarify that?
- Trivial, sleazy, obvious. My brother's friends, the squatters, the nonEU shit, the Bahamas, the calendar slut... How do you do it? Actually, who are you? Do you wear the mask with me or with them?
- I do not wear masks.
- You don't? Well, then it's worse than I thought. If you're really like that, you're not worth much.
- Better, don't you think? At least you won't waste time regretting me.
- You see, that's exactly the point: you're old, and I don't mean that in the anagraphic sense, you're boring, you're bourgeois, you're predictable, you're the repetition of a cliché that's already been overdone, you're the concentrate of everything I've never put up with in life. But I will still regret you.
- You are calling yourself an idiot, Emmanuel, I don't know if you realise that.
He gives me an icy stare:
- It's not me the idiot. Keep it up, professor, and you'll roll for nine thousand years.
He lies down again with his arms behind his neck.
- Around and under the ground - he adds punctiliously.
He starts staring at the clouds. I feel deeply depressed.
- Emmanuel, I don't want to argue with you. Not today, please.
- Not today why? Because it's the last time? Then you see you know.
- I want to be honest with you: I admit, it is a mask. I am forced to wear it in order not to be cut off. Your environment is not mine, I am too different from you.
- Well, that's better.
- The real Antonia is this one.
He turns towards me, leaning on one elbow:
- This one? Or the one trying to get fucked by Frédéric?
I feel like a ball smashed to the ground: the boy is playing tennis with my soul.
- I won't allow such low insinuations. It's just a game, a little innocent provocation, that's all.
He goes back to lying supine.
- You are playing a dangerous game, Antonia.
- Dangerous why?
- Because Frédéric is dangerous.
- But I don't care about him: my life is peaceful, I have everything I could wish for. Even a little brother.
- That would be me, of course.
- Exactly.
He shakes his head.
- Too bad indeed. I should have known you before.
- Before what?
- Before I was born. What were you like at my age?
- It's been too many years, I don't remember anymore.
- Liar. I'm telling you: you were an old-fashioned girl with braids and glasses. Usually girls like you waste their first time with a jerk who only wants to fuck them, and this stuff they confuse with great love, like Madame Bovary.
I do not answer. He continues:
- Would you like to rewind the tape to that point and experience that moment as you had always dreamed it?
I remain silent.
- Why don't you answer?
- You enjoy embarrassing me, don't you? I'm not having any fun.
- But you would like it.
- Yes, I would like it, but yours is an unnecessary cruelty: one cannot go back in time.
- Maybe it's not so impossible.
He says nothing more. After about ten minutes the silence begins to get heavy.
- Your shirt is torn - I tell him, just to break the embarrassment.
- Yes, it has become uncomfortable, I can no longer close the collar. But it's Grandpa's, I wear it anyway.
- It's not the shirt that has become uncomfortable, it's your shoulders that have broadened. You have very nice shoulders.
He smiles:
- You know how to grasp the spirituality in things.
He lies there looking at the sky. He is of the purest beauty at this moment, he hurts the eyes.
- Emmanuel, it's late. I think we should...
- Yes, I also think we should.
- You don't even know what I meant.
He turns and stares at me with a disarmed nakedness in his gaze.
- I know it. I've known it all my life. It's you the one who doesn't remember.
He stretches out a hand. I feel a sharp pain in my brain.
A tiny green spider weaves a thread between two stalks of grass, in the silence broken by the warbling of a nightingale. I have always wondered why this bird's song generates a state of tension and unease in me, an excruciating foreboding, like the bells ringing on Sundays.
My heart stops in my chest, I in turn extend a hand to block him.
- Enough, I forbid you to speak.
But he has no intention of speaking.
...
According to Plato it works more or less like this: there is one who loves and one who allows himself to be loved. The one who contains beauty in himself is the latter: and precisely because he is beautiful and knows he is, he does not generally desire, but feels already fulfilled. Above all, he does not desire someone who desires him, because to desire means to feel the lack of something, and therefore one who desires qualifies himself as lacking something. He is not attractive. But, says Plato, if the lover's love is true, sooner or later it will work in the eyes of the beloved like a mirror: he will see himself in this mirror as the other sees him, and he will end up falling in love too. With himself. But just don't tell him...
...
Suddenly the mirror explodes, a splinter sticks in my diaphragm. I jerk up and walk away, clinging to the plants like a drunk. I collapse to sit under a tree, struggling to breathe. What are you doing, you idiot?
He immediately reaches me, kneels down beside me and caresses my shoulder.
- Why are you running away?
I push him back with a tug, avoiding his contact as if it would burn me.
- Leave me, you disgust me. Go away. I never want to see you again.
I hear his footsteps moving away.
...
The silence lasts too long: I perceive its unnatural sound. Suddenly I feel cold, I am afraid.
I get up, I run to find him, I call him with my heart in my throat, but I get no answer. My stomach clenches in a vice, like in a nightmare I don't recognise the places, I lose my bearings, I don't even know what time it is, the sun is very low now.
Instinct tells me to head for the barn of an old abandoned farmhouse. Suddenly I see Saucepan crouched at the foot of the ladder. He is mute, his muzzle resting on his crossed front paws; he barely moves the tip of his tail when he sees me: I stroke his head, deeply soothed. I climb the wooden steps, my skirt catches on a nail, I pull hard and tear it off. Finally at the top. He is here, God be praised. I begin to breathe again.
Curled up like a porcupine, his face hidden on his bent knees, he rocks back and forth like autistic children. I kneel beside him.
- Please forgive me.
- Go away, go away.
I try to touch him, but he rebels violently.
- Don't touch me, I don't want to make you sick.
- Listen to me, please.
He remains in grim silence for a few seconds; then raises his head and rests his chin on his knees:
- Speak.
- You do not disgust me at all, Emmanuel: you are not to blame for what happened. It is I who disgust myself.
- It didn't happen: you left before.
- But it was going to happen. It's a normal thing at your age, but for me it's absolutely unforgivable, don't you understand?
He raises a hand.
- Halt. - he says harshly - I see that there are important things to clarify, we didn't really understand each other.
- I'm listening.
- I don't want your fucking sympathy. I know exactly what I was doing and why. You're making me feel like the protagonist in one of those sleazy little erotic movies where the nephew gets it on with his aunt. What do you think, that I'm the usual teenager with hormones beating in his head? If you think that way, you're right to hate me. But you're wrong, I know what I want. And don't think I don't care about my brother: I'm sorry, I know it makes you feel bad.
- Your brother has nothing to do with it now: the problem is you and me. You were entrusted to me by your parents, they trusted me: I should have had respect.
- Why, did you disrespect me?
- Of course I disrespected you, I disrespected everyone: you, them and myself.
He shakes his head.
- Then it is all useless.
- Useless why? I really care about you, Emmanuel, I can't afford to lose you.
- Why should you lose me?
- Because if I act stupid I lose you, don't you understand?
- Yes, I understand. 
- Do you really understand?
- I understand that it is impossible.
- What is impossible?
- Being with you.
- Of course it is impossible: it would take a miracle.
He tries to smile.
- I don't know how to perform miracles yet, but maybe with a little effort....
- Do you think you can learn?
- You say that with commitment you achieve everything, don't you? However, the most important miracle has already happened.
- What miracle?
- I found you again.
- I don't understand you: explain yourself better.
- Yet you should understand at once: it was you who explained Plato to me. When I saw you for the first time, that afternoon at my home, I immediately felt a great relief.
- Relief?
- Déjà vu, Professor. I've met you before, I don't know when. Who knows who you were, who knows who I was then, who knows what my name was. But I certainly loved you, I missed you so much.
He hesitates for a moment, then adds:
- I like your name too much, I don't know why.
I smile:
- Maybe your name was Ambrosio.
- What a fucking name. Why Ambrosio?
- Tomorrow I will lend you a book so you understand.
- Another one? Okay, if nothing else, being with you will give me an education.
He scrutinises me with some apprehension:
- Because we can be together at least as brother and sister, right?
- Of course we can.
- You said you care about me too, right?
- Yes, I really care about you.
- Then everything is okay.
He remains silent for a while; then he says:
- I swear it won't happen again.
- I trust you: it's myself I don't trust. I made a big mess, it won't be easy to go on as if nothing happened.
- I'll take care of it, don't worry.
- I cannot predict what effect this will have on me, it scares me.
He takes my hand and kisses it affectionately. 
- Don't worry, prof, you have my word. You can trust me. 
He smiles with some irony:
- You know what they say, don't you? It takes two to tango.