I remember everything ― a Call Me By Your Name short story

PART 1 ― blessed be...

He didn't call me by his name.

I waited and I wanted it more than anything. I was pleading silently for it to happen now or anytime soon. While we stood there in my father's ghost spot, he said he was like me, he said he remembered everything. We held our gaze and our breaths in that moment when he spoke out these words, a thousand thoughts swimming in those blue eyes while they looked at me so deeply and thoughtfully and kindly, as mine did at him, both of us waiting for something more to happen, anything more. And suddenly, harshly, as if the universe or God or faith had had a second thought on what should happen, that moment was ripped away with not a word spoken as farewell. We stared at each other, for minutes or hours, until he looked away and continued his way into the house. I paralyzed for a second, perhaps still hoping he would turn around and say it, say anything, hold me, kiss me; but as nothing happened, I went back inside too.

I still recall his last stay in B., as I tend to do with each and every one of our encounters during our lives. We visited the city, the piazzetta, the old library which is now a caffée, San Giacomo; all of it without speaking too much, just visiting the places and embracing the places. The breeze. The view. Each other's presence and side looks. I don't think anything else needed to be said, even though both of us had fiery urges to just spill everything out to each other - we, in some sort of way, had already spoken everything, and we might have been scared that any other impulsive truth could dissolve these moments away, as if they were just memories made of sand and sea foam. We knew everything already. And we knew we knew.

Going to all those places with him, walking or riding those old bikes, made me feel a peacefulness I could only enjoy when I had his body and eyes and smile and voice around me. While he was staring at the horizon in the piazza or closing his eyes as he felt the the sunny afternoon at the belfry, I would just look at him and realize how hellish my life is without his presence, the same feeling I felt when we talked and drinked at that hotel, that injustice and desire, but stronger; I carried on, and I thought and told myself vehemently, for twenty years, that I was fine; but when I saw him coming through the little gate once more and standing in his little heaven with his espadrilles and just being there being him, I realized I had just accustomed to the void left where his soul used to reside inside my being. I never even tried to fill that gap, I just got used to the feeling of something missing, dimmed by time. But the same way time fades pain away, it has a cruel manner of making it all resurface with immeasurable might. It hit me all at once, the lack he made, and yet the calmness he brought to my heart wouldn't move from its place, standing its ground tall and strong and resilient inside my heart and veins.

We went to all those places and felt all those memories resurfacing, and when the night came, we were back at the house. Mafalda made dinner and fed my mom in her room, while Manfredi dined with us in a comfortable silence. I was wondering when it would be the time to go upstairs to the rooms and what to do - where to go - when the time arrived. I was expecting a rush of overwhelmness. For both of us. We would stop at the french windows, in that familiar place that would alight even more the old remembrances, and look inside, look at the sky, look at each other. And the question would play in our minds and go all the way to the tip of our tongues, "You come to mine or I go to yours?" The thought of having him next door exactly the way I had two decades ago made me realize that, same as before, I didn't know what to do even though I had a lot of ideas bursting in my head. Restlessness. He may have felt it too, for each attempt of small talk that came from us or, mostly, Manfredi, perished in a matter of seconds. We ate. Mafalda arrived at time for a late night coffee, and then her questions and laughter filled the room a little bit. Always stern, but still energetic. She asked Oliver about work, the States, his wife, his kids. When these last subjects arrived, I sensed he'd flinched for a fraction of a second before answering Mafalda normally and happily. He may even have cast a timid glance in my direction, but I was staring at the night outside and just listening. He spoke of them with joy. About his kids, specially. He spoke with a little hint of a smile in the side of his lips, a mild nostalgic tone in his voice, and I smiled at that. It was beautiful, what he felt for them. He was beautiful, as beautiful as the day he arrived, so much and no time ago. The same eyes that could cast you loving or steely gazes in a flicker of a second; same glowing, moving eyes. The same smile. His hair was a little bit longer than last time, resembling the one from back in those days, but with charmful scattered white strands. As proven in so many ways before, time meant nothing for us. It was just as if yesterday he ate my peach and merged his being with mine by doing so and just this morning we had talked about translated poems in heaven. And earlier in the afternoon, we were at the hotel bar. Memories just fresh, livid. I forget nothing. And I hope, if just to make him suffer with the memories or to make him love me again or love me still, neither does he.