Call Me by Your Name: A Novel by André Aciman Read Free Book Online Page A

never let him drift away from me except when he wasn’t with me. And when he wasn’t with me, I didn’t much care what he did so long as he remained the exact same person with others as he was with me. Don’t let him be someone else when he’s away. Don’t let him be someone I’ve never seen before. Don’t let him have a life other than the life I know he has with us, with me.
    Don’t let me lose him.
    I knew I had no hold on him, nothing to offer, nothing to lure him by.
    I was nothing.
    Just a kid.
    He simply doled out his attention when the occasion suited him. When he came to my assistance to help me understand a fragment by Heraclitus, because I was determined to read “his” author, the words that sprang to me were not “gentleness” or “generosity” but “patience” and “forbearance,” which ranked higher. Moments later, when he asked if I liked a book I was reading, his question was prompted less by curiosity than by an opportunity for casual chitchat. Everything was casual.
    He was okay with casual.
    How come you’re not at the beach with the others?
    Go back to your plunking.
    Later!
    Yours!
    Just making conversation.
    Casual chitchat.
    Nothing.
     
     
    Oliver was receiving many invitations to other houses. This had become something of a tradition with our other summer residents as well. My father always wanted them to feel free to “talk” their books and expertise around town. He also believed that scholars should learn how to speak to the layman, which was why he always had lawyers, doctors, businessmen over for meals. Everyone in Italy has read Dante, Homer, and Virgil, he’d say. Doesn’t matter whom you’re talking to, so long as you Dante-and-Homer them first. Virgil is a must, Leopardi comes next, and then feel free to dazzle them with everything you’ve got, Celan, celery, salami, who cares. This also had the advantage of allowing all of our summer residents to perfect their Italian, one of the requirements of the residency. Having them on the dinner circuit around B. also had another benefit: it relieved us from having them at our table every single night of the week.
    But Oliver’s invitations had become vertiginous. Chiara and her sister wanted him at least twice a week. A cartoonist from Brussels, who rented a villa all summer long, wanted him for his exclusive Sunday soupers to which writers and scholars from the environs were always invited. Then the Moreschis, from three villas down, the Malaspinas from N., and the occasional acquaintance struck up at one of the bars on the piazzetta , or at Le Danzing. All this to say nothing of his poker and bridge playing at night, which flourished by means totally unknown to us.
    His life, like his papers, even when it gave every impression of being chaotic, was always meticulously compartmentalized. Sometimes he skipped dinner altogether and would simply tell Mafalda, “ Esco , I’m going out.”
    His Esco , I realized soon enough, was just another version of Later! A summary and unconditional goodbye, spoken not as you were leaving, but after you were out the door. You said it with your back to those you were leaving behind. I felt sorry for those on the receiving end who wished to appeal, to plead.
    Not knowing whether he’d show up at the dinner table was torture. But bearable. Not daring to ask whether he’d be there was the real ordeal. Having my heart jump when I suddenly heard his voice or saw him seated at his seat when I’d almost given up hoping he’d be among us tonight eventually blossomed like a poisoned flower. Seeing him and thinking he’d join us for dinner tonight only to hear his peremptory Esco taught me there are certain wishes that must be clipped like wings off a thriving butterfly.
    I wanted him gone from our home so as to be done with him.
    I wanted him dead too, so that if I couldn’t stop thinking about him and worrying about when would be the next time I’d see him, at least his death would put an