It was nine o'clock on a Saturday evening in November. It had been raining continuously for several hours, with an unusual intensity, and something in the weather conditions didn't bode well. There was a strange storm going on, absolutely out of season: gusts of wind whipped the walls of my villa and made the branches of the trees in the park whistle. The sky had turned black as usually happens in late August; there was thunder and lightning from a summer storm, but it was November: November 5th to be exact. Something was definitely not going right. Only later did I learn that these were the prodromes of the terrible flood that in a few hours would bring the provinces of Alessandria, Asti, Turin and Cuneo to their knees: the Po and the Tanaro were about to overflow.
My parents and my brother had all three gone out to a gala evening at the Rotary, my mother very elegant as always in a long Prada dress and a mink coat, leaving behind a refined trail of lily of the valley perfume. Not exactly the right night to hang out, but the meeting was in the hills, in a historic villa in the neighborhood, far from possible flooding, and an important guest was present, a world-famous heart surgeon who my parents judged unmissable. Antonia, not inclined to that kind of meeting, had declined Michele's invitation and stayed to keep me company while I studied Aeschylus for the Greek exam the following week. Around eight o'clock she had set the table in the kitchen and we had eaten the dinner left warm by Teresa, who was away on her evening off: I hoped for her sake that her mysterious companion had taken her to safety, poor Teresa. When she had learned of Tegame's death, she had hugged me very tightly crying, aware of my pain, and had tried to console me with a spicy delicacy, arguing that allspice lifts morale. I had obeyed, but was baffled by that strange taste somewhere between pepper, ginger and clove. Rather, it was her maternal presence that cheered me up.
After dinner Antonia had cleared the table, we had washed the dishes together and she had begun to revise the notes for a lecturer she was supposed to give on Monday morning, while I, sitting on the sofa opposite in the living room, underlined in the textbook the sentences that they seemed more significant to me. There was no allusion between us, just a mutual desire to be together again, or so it seemed to me. After my dog's death she had become very kind to me, realizing that I needed sweetness, and I was deeply grateful for that.
- I think the Choephori are the most beautiful tragedy I have ever read, together with Hamlet - I said suddenly, more to myself than to her.
- You are right. Among other things, the juxtaposition is very appropriate, because the character of Hamlet was modeled precisely on the precedent of the Aeschylean Orestes: full of doubts and uncertainties.
- And Simba, the son of the Lion King, too, don't you think?
- Yes, I think so.
- The Lion King was good. I loved it.
- Yes, it was beautiful.
- That incredible scene in which Oreste discovers that his mother doesn't care about his death... And then the finale, when he appears on the proscenium, begins his monologue and loses the thread, then picks it up again, sees the Furies, jumps off the stage screaming and runs away without being able to finish the speech: I think Aeschylus in that scene has touched one of the pinnacles of world poetry.
- I'm glad you think so: I too have always considered it a stroke of genius.
This courteous, formal tone between us was completely new: it made me a little uneasy, but it was inevitable, given the circumstances, and I gladly accepted it.
I started studying again. It had just been a fortnight since my dog's death and I felt completely down, but being close to her even simply sharing those literary emotions gave me a sense of warmth and well-being.
Suddenly there was a thunderous roar: lightning must have struck in the immediate vicinity. We both jumped, then suddenly it was dark.
- The power's gone out - I said.
- Lightning must have struck a pylon. - she hypothesized - This means that the electric gate is blocked. I won't be able to go home for who knows how long.
- Maybe the power will come back soon - I tried to minimize, hoping in my heart that it wouldn't come back at all.
- I don't think so: the weather is really scary tonight - she replied, and was silent, looking out the window.
Sudden glares like gigantic flashlights illuminated the garden as day, snapping snapshots of the skeletons of trees whipped by the wind; meanwhile roaring thunders, interspersed with the dull background rumble of the upset sky, followed one another without stopping. The shutters flapped in the wind with violent whip cracks: she got up and ran to close all the ones on the ground floor, telling me to do the same thing upstairs. I obeyed. When I went down to the living room it was pitch dark, you could only see flashes of light filtering through the cracks of the closed shutters. She sat back in her place, I did the same.
- Did you close them well? - she asked me.
- Yes - I replied. And we didn't talk anymore.
That situation seemed made to unmask the fiction: the embarrassment was palpable. The electric charge that was passing through the air was being transmitted to us. We were alone, with no hope of seeing the light again for who knows how long. Alone and in the dark.
I closed the book, now useless. I thought I could break the silence with some generic comment, strike up a conversation about the weather anomaly, but I didn't. Not even she tried to fill that void with circumstantial banality: she remained silently staring at her notebook. We could have looked for candles, a flashlight, but we didn't. Thus, in that silent and unreal immobility, at least twenty minutes passed, in which I felt my heart beating with ever slower and deeper beats, as if it wanted to stop for fear of disturbing the silence and what I perceived in it.
In the dark I saw her profile light up as day with every flash that filtered through the shutters, I always saw her still in the same position, absorbed in contemplation of the cover of her notebook. She didn't look for excuses to speak, she remained silent. It seemed to me that that silence could only be interpreted in one way, but I didn't dare believe it. Then the lightning almost ceased, only the howling of the wind remained, the violent patter of the rain, she invisible in front of me.
Now mine was no longer a sensation, but a certainty. My heart began to beat again with an almost painful intensity. I leaned my neck against the back of the sofa and waited. I promised myself that I wouldn't move a single muscle in my body, I wouldn't do anything at all: everything should have happened by itself. My eyes in the dark must have glowed like the pupils of certain wild animals: I was sure she saw them glow in the dark.
After a period of time that seemed to me endless Antonia got up without saying a word and sat down next to me. I don't know if she expected any reaction from me, but I didn't do anything. She placed her mouth on mine and kissed me silently. I returned her kiss with the chastity of a nun's schoolgirl. I felt her hand slip into my pants, finding me obviously desperately aroused, in grotesque contrast to my virginal kiss. I guess she expected me to unbutton my pants, but I didn't. She was the one who had to do everything, or do nothing: I was willing to accept anything. Mine was an unconditional surrender, the offering of a sacrificial victim, she could do with me what she wanted, as in the early days; but, even more than in the early days, my role was less than zero, totally passive. I closed my eyes and let her do it in absolute abandon, without commenting, without sighing, without moaning, trying not to break with any sound the spell of that moment that I had believed to be unrepeatable. In those minutes I was able to measure the abyss that separated the sensations I felt with her from those I had felt with any other girl, bitterly realizing that it would have been the same with no one else. No, never again.
As I came, I felt a brutal and violent pleasure, as always with her, and at the same time an unspeakable, excruciating, acute pain, which made me moan more like the agony of a dying man than the sigh of a lover. Without even realizing it, my face was flooded with tears. They flowed without restraint, I could not hold them back in any way, my chest contracted in convulsive sobs. I felt completely desperate.
She wasn't surprised: it was as if she had foreseen it, perhaps even wanted it; I suspected that hers had even been a maneuver between the pedagogical and the therapeutic. She stroked my hair for a few minutes, keeping my head resting on her chest and cradling me lightly. Then she said:
- Do you see, Emmanuel? We can't do it anymore. It hurts you too much.
I shook my head.
- That's not what hurts me. It's everything else, everything. It's all bad for me.
- I know - she replied softly.
- Antonia, - I said, trying to suppress my sobs, - I can no longer feel pleasure without feeling terribly guilty. I feel like I don't deserve it, I feel like I should be dead. How do I live like this? How can I do?
She hugged me.
- You are not to blame, Emmanuel. You have done everything possible for your dog and made him happy. You have to resign yourself to the fact that we are not the ones who decide the games, but someone higher up: we don't know who he is or why this happens, we can't judge him. But we are not the culprits: it is not you who wanted this evil.
I was unable to answer: a knot was strangling me. I wanted to tell her that I didn't give a damn if I hadn't wanted to, because I had done it anyway, as had happened with my grandfather, and that that made it doubly incomprehensible to me. But I feared she would reply that this was subject for a tragedy by Sophocles and I had no desire to talk about literature in a moment of such deep and utter despair.
When I was able to speak I said to her:
- It's not you who hurt me, Antonia. Indeed, you make my life a little more bearable. Thank you for being there.
She hugged me again and replied:
- I'm happy if I can comfort you, Emmanuel, but what has just happened should make you understand that this is not your path. Sex with me hurts you, it brings back moods that you have to forget now, for your own good.
- What is it that I should forget for my own good?
- What made you feel good in the past and now makes you suffer.
- You mean my adolescence?
- Not your adolescence: you're still very young. Let's say that phase of your life.
I smiled bitterly.
- I was a kind of Adam in Eden before the original sin: now innocence is lost. It's all lost.
- Not all is lost, Emmanuel: only that small part of your existence is lost, but you have the whole life to live. You will have other experiences, you will like many: you have to look ahead. With me you can only look back and the past hurts you. You have to go other ways.
- What other ways?
- The ones that life will put in front of you from time to time. Right now you just have to take one step after another with holy patience, without being in a hurry, until you find your way.
- I thought I'd already found my way.
- It's not like that, and what just happened proved it to you.
I felt a little irritated.
- But what did it prove to me? I don't know how to tell you anymore, Antonia, you're not the problem, it's me who can no longer experience sex without being devastated by remorse. It's not that with another girl or another man it would be different.
- But I think so. Anyway, you have to try, for your own good.
- For my fucking good!
- I only want your good, do you understand?
- No, I don't understand at all. I just told you that your presence is the only thing that comforts me, but obviously you're not listening. Your presence, not the sex. I didn't ask you for sex.
- You are right, sorry.
- You don't have to apologize, it was very nice. It's me that just can't take it anymore, it makes me sick. And if it's sex that hurts me, I'd rather give up sex than you.
- You don't have to give up on me: I will always be by your side like an older sister.
- I don't need older sisters, I already have a brother.
- As a friend, if you prefer.
- I love you, Antonia. I don't need sex to love you.
These words exploded from my mouth like the cork of a champagne bottle. They hit her in the stomach, I felt her diaphragm contract. I had been imprudent, but the truth had to be told.
She remained silent for a while, not knowing what to reply.
- I believe... - she began, but broke off. She didn't know what she believed.
The wind howled loudly among the pines in the park, bent them almost to the ground, like taut arches.
I didn't give her time to pick up the thread of the conversation.
- Tell me you love me too. - I pressed - Tell me, because it's the truth, you know.
she kept silent.
- Tell me - I repeated.
At that moment the light came on again.
We looked at each other as if waking up from a dream. She blushed a little, moved away from me, straightened my trousers and tucked my sweater back in place with motherly gestures.
- You feel better? - she asked me affectionately.
- No - I replied in a hostile tone.
- You need to go to sleep: a good night's sleep will put you back on track.
Such a banality, uttered at that moment, could have only one meaning: Antonia couldn't wait to distance herself from me and from what had just happened.
I almost looked at her with hatred. She pretended not to notice, gathered her things, kissed me on the forehead, left the house, diving into the storm without hesitation, and ran to her small car. A few minutes later I saw her come out of the gate of the villa.
A devastating despondency assailed me, an indescribable sense of loneliness. I had the confirmation that only the old way was able to give me comfort, to alleviate the pain of my dog's death, but I had been told that I had to go "other ways". I had to go like a wandering beggar, at random, I had to go without knowing where, like a dog abandoned by its master in the open countryside.
It wasn't I who wanted to leave, it was Antonia who wanted to get rid of me: I was a danger, a threat, a useless nuisance; his attraction to me, of which I had just had the most tangible evidence, was hindering her life. I realized that it had been a terrible mistake to unmask her, to hold the truth in her face, to tell her that she too loved me: from now on she would only offer me a lukewarm friendship, or maybe, if she didn't succeed, not even that.
And maybe actually, I thought bitterly, Antonia didn't love me: she felt an irresistible attraction for me, but love was something else. Yes, I would have been able to stay close to her without sex, dominating my instincts in the name of something higher. But she couldn't do it: there wasn't this something higher in her, she was too material a creature, and what's worse, she didn't realize she was. Or maybe, who knows, my desire for her wasn't as intense as what she had for me.
My head was exhausted, confused: I stopped thinking, because I no longer understood anything.
I felt that I no longer had any point of reference: whatever Antonia really was, she had been a teacher, mother, friend, lover for me. I had lost my crazy compass which pointed to any north: I had a desperate need for that north, for that any direction, I felt that without it I was lost. I no longer even had my best friend, my dog. I was alone, completely alone. Mine was pure terror, animal terror, Bambi's terror when he loses his mother in the forest fire.
I went to bed dazed, staggering, with the giddy feeling of a drunk, mechanically carrying the Choephori with me.
The howl of the wind in the downpours of rain was deafening: I had the impression that it was about to hail. I put my head under the pillow, irrationally clutching the book in my hands, as if Aeschylus could protect me on that stormy night.
I felt that I too wanted to jump off the stage, like Orestes.
I felt that maybe that was the solution: to drown the pain in madness.