Could all of his gruff Americanisms be nothing more than an exaggerated way of covering up the simple fact that he didn't know—or feared he didn't know— how to take his leave gracefully? It reminded me of how for days he had refused to eat soft-boiled eggs in the morning. He finally consented, only to admit, with a touch of genuine embarrassment that he never bothered to conceal, that he didn't know how to open a soft-boiled egg. From that morning on and well into his stay with us, she would bring Ulliva two eggs and stop serving everyone until she had sliced open the shell of both his eggs.

Did he perhaps want a third? she asked. Some people liked more than two eggs. No, two would do, he replied, and, turning to my parents, added, "I know myself. If I have three, I'll have a fourth, and more. It intimidated me. But she had been won over well before, on his third morning with us, when she asked him if he liked juice in the morning, and he'd said yes. He had never had apricot juice in his life. She stood facing him with her salver flat against her apron, trying to make out his reaction as he quaffed it down. He said nothing at first. Then, probably without thinking, he smacked his lips. She was in heaven. My mother couldn't believe that people who taught at world-famous universities smacked their lips after downing apricot juice.

From that day on, a glass of the stuff was waiting for him every morning. He was baffled to know that apricot trees existed in, of all places, our orchard. On late afternoons, when there was nothing to do in the house, Mafalda would ask him to climb a ladder with a basket and pick those fruits that were almost blushing with shame, she said. No, she would say, this one is too young still, youth has no shame, shame comes with age. I shall never forget watching him from my table as he climbed the small ladder wearing his red bathing trunks, taking forever to pick the ripest apricots. On his way to the kitchen — wicker basket, espadrilles, billowy shirt, suntan lotion, and all — he threw me a very large one, saying, "Yours," in just the same way he'd throw a tennis ball across the court and say, "Your serve. Touching the apricot was like touching him.

Yours, like Later! It would never have occurred to him that in placing the apricot in my palm he was giving me his ass to hold or that, in biting the fruit, I was also biting into that part of his body that must have been fairer than the rest because it never apricated — and near it, if I dared to bite that far, his apricock. In fact, he knew more about apricots than we did — their grafts, etymology, origins, fortunes in and around the Mediter- ranean. The origin of albicocca was al-birquq. My father, who couldn't resist not leaving well enough alone and needed to top his entire performance with a little fillip of more recent vintage, added that what was truly amazing was that, in Israel and in many Arab countries nowadays, the fruit is referred to by a totally different name: mishmish. My mother was nonplussed. We all, including my two cousins who were visiting that week, had an impulse to clap. On the matter of etymologies, however, Oliver begged to differ.

In the case of 'apricot,' however, it's the other way around; the Greek takes over from Latin. The Latin word was praecoquum, from pre-coquere, pre-cook, to ripen early, as in 'precocious,' meaning premature. All I kept thinking of was apricock precock, precock apricock. One day I saw Oliver sharing the same ladder with the gardener, trying to learn all he could about Anchise's grafts, which explained why our apricots were larger, fleshier, juicier than most apricots in the region. Oliver, it turned out, knew more about all manner of foods, cheeses, and wines than all of us put together. Even Mafalda was wowed and would, on occasion, defer to his opinion—Do you think I should lightly fry the paste with either onions or sage?

Doesn't it taste too lemony now? I ruined it, didn't I? I should have added an extra egg—it's not holding! Should I use the new blender or should I stick to the old mortar and pestle? My mother couldn't resist throwing in a barb or two. Like all cau-bois, she said: they know everything there is to know about food, because they can't hold a knife and fork properly. Gourmet aristocrats with plebian manners. Feed him in the kitchen. With pleasure, Mafalda would have replied. It was not only the national hymn of their southern youth, but it was the best they could offer when they wished to entertain royalty. Everyone was won over. Her sister as well. With any of our other summer residents I would have resented it.

But seeing everyone take such a liking to him, I found a strange, small oasis of peace. What could possibly be wrong with liking someone everyone else liked? Everyone had fallen for him, including my first and second cousins as well as my other relatives, who stayed with us on weekends and sometimes longer. For someone known to love spotting defects in everyone else, I derived a certain satisfaction from concealing my feelings for him behind my usual indifference, hostility, or spite for anyone in a position to outshine me at home. Because everyone liked him, I had to say I liked him too. To withhold universal approval would simply alert others that I had concealed motives for needing to resist him.

Oh, I like him very much, I said during his first ten days when my father asked me what I thought of him. I had used words intentionally compromising because I knew no one would suspect a false bottom in the arcane palette of shadings I applied to everything I said about him. He's the best person I've known in my life, I said on the night when the tiny fishing boat on which he had sailed out with Anchise early that afternoon failed to return and we were scrambling to find his parents' telephone number in the States in case we had to break the terrible news. On that day I even urged myself to let down my inhibitions and show my grief the way everyone else was showing theirs. But I wasn't fooling myself. I was convinced that no one in the world wanted him as physically as I did; nor was anyone willing to go the distance I was prepared to travel for him. No one had studied every bone in his body, ankles, knees, wrists, fingers, and toes, no one lusted after every ripple of muscle, no one took him to bed every night and on spotting him in the morning lying in his heaven by the pool, smiled at him, watched a smile come to his lips, and thought, Did you know I came in your mouth last night?

Unlike the others, though, I was the first to spot him when he came into the garden from the beach or when the flimsy silhouette of his bicycle, blurred in the midafternoon mist, would appear out of the alley of pines leading to our house. I was the first to recognize his steps when he arrived late at the movie theater one night and stood there looking for the rest of us, not uttering a sound until I turned around knowing he'd be overjoyed I'd spotted him. I recognized him by the inflection of his footfalls up the stairway to our balcony or on the landing outside my bedroom door.

I knew when he stopped outside my French windows, as if debating whether to knock and then thinking twice, and continued walking. I always tried to keep him within my field of vision. I 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. 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.

Just making conversation. Casual chitchat. 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.

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. All this to say nothing of his poker and bridge playing at night, which flourished by means totally unknown to us. Sometimes he skipped dinner altogether and would simply tell Mafalda, ''Esco, I'm going out. 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. 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 end to it. I wanted to kill him myself, even, so as to let him know how much his mere existence had come to bother me, how unbearable his ease with everything and everyone, taking all things in stride, his tireless I'm-okay-with-this-and-that, his springing across the gate to the beach when everyone else opened the latch first, to say nothing of his bathing suits, his spot in paradise, his cheeky Later!

If he were in a wheelchair, I would always know where he was, and he'd be easy to find. I would feel superior to him and become his master, now that he was crippled. Then it hit me that I could have killed myself instead, or hurt myself badly enough and let him know why I'd done it. If I hurt my face, I'd want him to look at me and wonder why, why might anyone do this to himself, until, years and years later—yes, Later! Sometimes it was Chiara who had to be eliminated. I knew what she was up to. At my age, her body was more than ready for him.

More than mine? I wondered. What I didn't realize was that wanting to test desire is nothing more than a ruse to get what we want without admitting that we want it. I dreaded to think how experienced he himself was. If he could make friends so easily within weeks of arriving here, you had only to think of what life at home was like. Just imagine letting him loose on an urban campus like Columbia's, where he taught. The thing with Chiara happened so easily it was past reckoning. With Chiara he loved heading out into the deep on our twin-hulled rowboat for a gita, with him rowing while she lounged in the sun on one of the hulls, eventually removing her bra once they had stopped and were far from shore.

I was watching. I dreaded losing him to her. Dreaded losing her to him too. Yet thinking of them together did not dismay me. It made me hard, even though I didn't know if what aroused me was her naked body lying in the sun, his next to hers, or both of theirs together. From where I stood against the balustrade along the garden overlooking the bluff, I would strain my eyes and finally catch sight of them lying in the sun next to one another, probably necking, she occasionally dropping a thigh on top of his, until minutes later he did the same. They hadn't removed their suits. I took comfort in that, but when later one night I saw them dancing, something told me that these were not the moves of people who'd stopped at heavy petting. Actually, I liked watching them dance together. Perhaps seeing him dance this way with someone made me realize that he was taken now, that there was no reason to hope. And this was a good thing.

It would help my recovery. Perhaps thinking this way was already a sign that recovery was well under way. I had grazed the forbidden zone and been let off easily enough. But when my heart jolted the next morning when I saw him at our usual spot in the garden, I knew that wishing them my best and longing for recovery had nothing to do with what I still wanted from him. Did his heart jolt when he saw me walk into a room? I doubted it. Did he ignore me the way I ignored him that morning: on purpose, to draw me out, to protect himself, to show I was nothing to him? Or was he oblivious, the way sometimes the most perceptive individuals fail to pick up the most obvious cues because they're simply not paying attention, not tempted, not interested? When he and Chiara danced I saw her slip her thigh between his legs.

And I'd seen them mock-wrestle on the sand. When had it started? And how was it that I hadn't been there when it started? And why wasn't I told? Why wasn't I able to reconstruct the moment when they progressed from x to y? Surely the signs were all around me. Why didn't I see them? I began thinking of nothing but what they might do together. I would have done anything to ruin every opportunity they had to be alone. I would have slandered one to the other, then used the reaction of one to report it back to the other. But I also wanted to see them do it, I wanted to be in on it, have them owe me and make me their necessary accomplice, their go-between, the pawn that has become so vital to king and queen that it is now master of the board.

He thought I was being coy. She said she could take care of herself. I described her naked body, which I'd seen two years before. I wanted him aroused. It didn't matter what he desired so long as he was aroused. I described him to her too, because I wanted to see if her arousal took the same turns as mine, so that I might trace mine on hers and see which of the two was the genuine article. Except I like to go it alone, if you don't mind. It would allow us to warm up to one another through her, to bridge the gap be- tween us by admitting we were drawn to the same woman. Perhaps I just wanted him to know I liked girls. But don't. It put me in my place. No, he's the noble sort, I thought. Not like me, insidious, sinister, and base. Which pushed my agony and shame up a few notches. Now, over and above the shame of desiring him as Chiara did, I respected and feared him and hated him for making me hate myself.

Neither did he. When I eventually brought up jogging, because the silence on the matter had become unbearable, he said he'd already gone. Indeed, for the past few mornings, I had become so used to finding him waiting for me that I'd grown bold and didn't worry too much about when I got up. That would teach me. The next morning, though I wanted to swim with him, com-"ng downstairs would have looked like a chastened response to a casual chiding. So I stayed in my room. Just to prove a point. I heard him step lightly across the balcony, on tiptoes almost. He was avoiding me. I came downstairs much later. We stopped talking. Even when we shared the same spot in the morning, talk was at best idle and stopgap. You couldn't even call it chitchat. It didn't upset him. He probably hadn't given it another thought. How is it that some people go through hell trying to get close to you, while you haven't the haziest notion and don't even give them a thought when two weeks go by and you haven't so much as exchanged a single word between you?

Did he have any idea? Should I let him know? The romance with Chiara started on the beach. Then he neglected tennis and took up bike rides with her and her friends in the late afternoons in the hill towns farther west along the coast. It threw me back to age six. I shrugged my shoulders, meaning, Go ahead, I couldn't care less. But no sooner had they left than I scrambled upstairs and began sobbing into my pillow. At night sometimes we'd meet at Le Danzing. There was never any telling when Oliver would show up. He just bounded onto the scene, and just as suddenly disappeared, sometimes alone, sometimes with others.

When Chiara came to our home as she'd been in the habit of doing ever since childhood, she would sit in the garden and stare out, basically waiting for him to show up. Then, when the minutes wore on and there was nothing much to say between us, she'd finally ask, "C'e Oliver? Or: He's in the library with my dad. Tell him I came by. Mafalda shook her head with a look of compassionate rebuke. Couldn't she have found someone her own age? Thinks I haven't seen anything? Or comparing notes with Chiara's housemaid. I looked at Chiara. I knew she was in pain. Everyone suspected something was going on between them. In the afternoon he'd sometimes say he was going to the shed by the garage to pick up one of the bikes and head to town. An hour and a half later he would be back. The translator, he'd explain. Sometimes we'd run into each other in town. Sitting at the caffe where several of us would gather at night after the movies or before heading to the disco, I saw Chiara and Oliver walking out of a side alley together, talking.

When had they found the time to become so intimate? Their conversation seemed serious. Banter was both how he took cover and tried to conceal we'd al- together stopped talking. A cheap ploy, I thought. Chiara was still deep in thought. She was avoiding my eyes. Had he told her the nice things I'd been saying about her? She seemed upset. Did she mind my sudden intrusion into their little world? I remembered her tone of voice on the morning when she'd lost it with Mafalda. That's why he's such a well-behaved boy. Don't you see? Nothing to rebel against. Was he trying to rehabilitate me after that little jab about my late hours, or was this the beginnings of yet another joke at my expense? I shot him a complicit glance. He intercepted it, but there was no hint of mischief in his eyes when he finally returned my glance. Whose side was he on? I watched them look for an empty table at one of the adjoining caffes. My friends asked me if he was hitting on her.

I don't know, I replied. Are they doing it, then? Didn't know that either. I'd love to be in his shoes. Who wouldn't? But I was in heaven. It spilled over everything I touched. Just a word, a gaze, and I was in heaven. To be happy like this maybe wasn't so difficult after all. All I had to do was find the source of happiness in me and not rely on others to supply it the next time. I remembered the scene in the Bible when Jacob asks Rachel for water and on hearing her speak the words that were prophesied for him, throws up his hands to heaven and kisses the ground by the well. Was he my home, then, my homecoming? You are my homecoming. When I'm with you and we're well together, there is nothing more I want. You make me like who 1 am, who I become when you're with me, Oliver. If there is any truth in the world, it lies when I'm with you, and if I find the courage to speak my truth to you one day, remind me to light a candle in thanksgiving at every altar in Rome.

It never occurred to me that if one word from him could make me so happy, another could just as easily crush me, that if I didn't want to be unhappy, I should learn to beware of such small joys as well. But on that same night I used the heady elation of the moment to speak to Marzia. We danced past midnight, then I walked her back by way of the shore. Then we stopped. But she J said she too loved swimming at night. Our clothes were off in a second. She asked me to turn around and not stare while she used her sweater to towel her body dry. I pretended to sneak a clandestine glance, but was too obedient not to do as I was told.

I didn't dare ask her not to look when I put my clothes on but was glad she looked the other way. When we were no longer naked, I took her hand and kissed her on the palm, then kissed the space between her fingers, then her mouth. We were to meet at the same spot on the beach the following evening. I'd be there before her, I said. I motioned that my mouth was zipped shut. I was showing off. This was what people who were okay with themselves did. But I could also sense he was onto something and wasn't coming out with it, perhaps because there was something mildly disquieting behind his fatuous though well-intentioned try again later. He was criticizing me. Or making fun of me. Or seeing through me. It stung me when he finally came out with it. Only someone who had completely figured me out would have said it. And again after that," came the watered-down version. But try again later was the veil he'd drawn over If not later, when? I repeated his phrase as if it were a prophetic mantra meant to reflect how he lived his life and how I was attempting to live mine.

By repeating this mantra that had come straight from his mouth, I might trip on a secret passageway to some nether truth that had hitherto eluded me, about me, about life, about others, about me with others. Try again later were the last words I'd spoken to myself every night when I'd sworn to do something to bring Oliver closer to me. Try again later meant, I haven't the courage now. Things weren't ready just yet. Where I'd find the will and the courage to try again later I didn't know. But I also knew that I was circling wagons around my life with try again laters, and that months, seasons, entire years, a lifetime could go by with nothing but Saint Try-again-later stamped on every day. Try again later worked for people like Oliver. If not later, when? was my shibboleth. What if he had found me out and uncovered each and every one of my secrets with those four cutting words? I had to let him know I was totally indifferent to him. But not me. There was something at once dry, irked, and fussy in his voice.

Anyway, I'm not playing this game with either her or you. I shrugged my shoulders. I had overstepped my bounds again and there was no getting out of it gracefully except by owning that I'd been terribly indiscreet. I'd never heard him speak in that lambent tone before. Usually, it was I who teetered on the fringes of propriety. I looked up at him as though to return challenge for challenge. But I had only managed to sound peevish and hysterical. A less canny reader of the human soul would have seen in my persistent denials the terrified signs of a flustered admission about Chiara scrambling for cover. Maybe you should go away now, while there's still time. But I also knew that if he so much as showed signs of suspecting the truth, I'd make every effort to cast him adrift right away. If, however, he suspected nothing, then my flustered words would have left him marooned just the same. In the end, I was happier if he thought I wanted Chiara than if he pushed the issue further and had me tripping all over myself.

Speechless, I would have admitted things I hadn't mapped out for myself or didn't know I had it in me to admit. Speechless, I would have gotten to where my body longed to go far sooner than with any bon mot prepared hours ahead of time. I would have blushed, and blushed because I had blushed, fuddled with words and ultimately broken down — and then where would I be? What would he say? Better break down now, I thought, than live another day juggling all of my implausible resolutions to try again later. No, better he should never know.

I could live with that. I could always, always live with that. It didn't even surprise me to see how easy it was to accept. And yet, out of the blue, a tender moment would erupt so suddenly between us that the words I longed to tell him would almost slip out of my mouth. Green bathing suit moments, I called them—even after my color theory was entirely disproved and gave me no confidence to expect kindness on "blue" days or to watch out for "red" days. Music was an easy subject for us to discuss, especially when I was at the piano. He liked my combinations of two, three, even four composers chiming in on the same piece, and then transcribed by me. One day Chiara started to hum a hit-parade tune and suddenly, because it was a windy day and no one was heading for the beach or even staying outdoors, our friends gathered around the piano in the living room as I improvised a Brahms variation on a Mozart rendition of that very same song.

Then everything else flows naturally. I had seldom spoken to anyone about books except my father. Or we talked about music, about the pre-Socratic philosophers, about college in the U. Or there was Vimini. The first time she intruded on our mornings was precisely when I'd been playing a variation on Brahms's last variations on Handel. Her voice broke up the intense midmorning heat. Oliver, who was lying flat on his stomach on the edge of the pool, looked up with the sweat pouring down between his shoulder blades. But no one gives me any work. Vimini is also a genius. Isn't it true you're a genius, Vimini?

But it seems to me that I may not be. I shook my head. Because I have leukemia. Well, goodbye. If the music hadn't already brought us closer together at least for a few hours that day, Vimini's apparition did. We spoke about her all afternoon. I didn't have to look for anything to say. He did most of the talking and the asking. Oliver was mesmerized. For once, I wasn't speaking about myself. Soon they became friends. Find Me pdf book was awarded with Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fiction ,. The book was first published in October and the latest edition of the book was published in May 21st which eliminates all the known issues and printing errors. by Andre Aciman. by Alexander Aciman. by Bella Andre. by Andre Norton. BooksVooks Genres Fiction Andre Aciman Find Me pdf. FREE Find Me PDF Book by Andre Aciman Call Me By Your Name 2 Download or Read Online Free Author: Andre Aciman Submitted by: Maria Garcia Views Request a Book Add a Review Find Me PDF book by Andre Aciman Call Me By Your Name 2 Read Online or Free Download in ePUB, PDF or MOBI eBooks.

Find Me PDF Details Author: Andre Aciman Book Format: Paperback Original Title: Find Me Number Of Pages: pages First Published in: October Latest Edition: May 21st Series: Call Me By Your Name 2 Language: English Awards: Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fiction Genres: Fiction , Lgbt , Romance , Contemporary , Glbt , Queer , Lgbt , Gay , Audiobook , Adult , Literary Fiction , Novels , Formats: audible mp3, ePUB Android , kindle, and audiobook. Other Books From Call Me By Your Name Series Call Me By Your Name Find Me View All. As I only was interested in Elio and Oliver reuniting, I skipped to those pages. It's a shame that Oliver's point of view was so brief. I didn't quite like how the book ended, although very happy they find each other. The main character of the story are Elio, Oliver. The book was first published in January 23rd and the latest edition of the book was published in September 21st which eliminates all the known issues and printing errors.

by Andre Aciman. by Alexander Aciman. by Bella Andre. by Andre Norton. BooksVooks Genres Fiction Andre Aciman Call Me By Your Name pdf. FREE Call Me By Your Name PDF Book by Andre Aciman Download or Read Online Free Author: Andre Aciman Submitted by: Maria Garcia Views Request a Book Add a Review Call Me By Your Name PDF book by Andre Aciman Read Online or Free Download in ePUB, PDF or MOBI eBooks. Call Me By Your Name PDF Details Author: Andre Aciman Book Format: Paperback Original Title: Call Me By Your Name Number Of Pages: pages First Published in: January 23rd Latest Edition: September 21st Series: Call Me By Your Name 1 Language: English Genres: Fiction , Lgbt , Romance , Contemporary , Glbt , Queer , Audiobook , Adult , Lgbt , Gay , Romance , M M Romance , Young Adult , Coming Of Age , Main Characters: Elio, Oliver Formats: audible mp3, ePUB Android , kindle, and audiobook.

Other Books From Call Me By Your Name Series Call Me By Your Name Find Me View All.

edu no longer supports Internet Explorer. To browse Academia. edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser. Log in with Facebook Log in with Google. Remember me on this computer. Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. Need an account? Click here to sign up. Download Free PDF. Call me by your name andre aciman. noelia rodriguez. Abstract Call me by your name pdf. Continue Reading Download Free PDF. I'd never heard anyone use "later" to say goodbye before. It sounded harsh, curt, and dismissive, spoken with the veiled in- difference of people who may not care to see or hear from you again. It is the first thing I remember about him, and I can hear it still today.

Suddenly he's shaking my hand, handing me his backpack, removing his suitcase from the trunk of the cab, asking if my father is home. It might have started right there and then: the shirt, the rolled-up sleeves, the rounded balls of his heels slipping in and out of his frayed espadrilles, eager to test the hot gravel path that led to our house, every stride already asking, Which way to the beach? This summer's houseguest. Another bore. Then, almost without thinking, and with his back already turned to the car, he waves the back of his free hand and utters a careless Later! to another passenger in the car who has probably split the fare from the station. No name added, no jest to smooth out the ruffled leave-taking, nothing. You watch, I thought, this is how he'll say goodbye to us when the time comes. With a gruff, slapdash Later! Meanwhile, we'd have to put up with him for six long weeks. I was thoroughly intimidated.

The unapproachable sort. I could grow to like him, though. From rounded chin to rounded heel. Then, within days, I would learn to hate him. This, the very person whose photo on the application form months earlier had leapt out with promises of instant affinities. Taking in summer guests was my parents' way of helping young academics revise a manuscript before publication. During the winter months, when we were away in the city, it became a part-time toolshed, storage room, and attic where rumor had it my grandfather, my namesake, still ground his teeth in his eternal sleep.

Summer residents didn't have to pay anything, were given the full run of the house, and could basically do anything they pleased, provided they spent an hour or so a day helping my father with his correspondence and assorted paperwork. They became part of the family, and after about fifteen years of doing this, we had gotten used to a shower of postcards and gift packages not only around Christmastime but all year long from people who were now totally devoted to our family and would go out of their way when they were in Europe to drop by B. At meals there were frequently two or three other guests, sometimes neighbors or relatives, sometimes colleagues, lawyers, doctors, the rich and famous who'd drop by to see my father on their way to their own summer houses.

Sometimes we'd even open our dining room to the occasional tourist couple who'd heard of the old villa and simply wanted to come by and take a peek and were totally enchanted when asked to eat with us and tell us all about themselves, while Mafalda, informed at the last minute, dished out her usual fare. We named the task dinner drudgery—-and, after a while, so did most of our six-week guests. Maybe it started soon after his arrival during one of those grinding lunches when he sat next to me and it finally dawned on me that, despite a light tan acquired during his brief stay in Sicily earlier that summer, the color on the palms of his hands was the same as the pale, soft skin of his soles, of his throat, of the bot- tom of his forearms, which hadn't really been exposed to much sun.

Almost a light pink, as glistening and smooth as the underside of a lizard's belly. Private, chaste, unfledged, like a blush on an athlete's face or an instance of dawn on a stormy night. It told me things about him I never knew to ask. It may have started during those endless hours after lunch when everybody lounged about in bathing suits inside and outside the house, bodies sprawled everywhere, killing time before someone finally suggested we head down to the rocks for a swim. Relatives, cousins, neighbors, friends, friends of friends, colleagues, or just about anyone who cared to knock at our gate and ask if they could use our tennis court—everyone was welcome to lounge and swim and eat and, if they stayed long enough, use the guesthouse.

Or perhaps it started on the beach. Or at the tennis court. The train simply stopped when you asked. It was a two-wagon train bearing the royal insignia, I explained. Gypsies lived in it now. They'd been living there ever since my mother used to summer here as a girl. The gypsies had hauled the two derailed cars farther inland. Did he want to see them? But it stung me. Instead, he said he wanted to open an account in one of the banks in B. I decided to take him there by bike. The conversation was no better on wheels than on foot. Along the way, we stopped for something to drink.

The bar-tabaccheria was totally dark and empty. The owner was mopping the floor with a powerful ammonia solution. We stepped outside as soon as we could. A lonely blackbird, sitting in a Mediterranean pine, sang a few notes that were immediately drowned out by the rattle of the cicadas. I took a long swill from a large bottle of mineral water, passed it to him, then drank from it again. The water was insufficiently cold, not fizzy enough, leaving behind an unslaked likeness of thirst. What did one do around here? Wait for summer to end. What did one do in the winter, then? I smiled at the answer I was about to give. He got the gist and said, "Don't tell me: wait for summer to come, right? He'd pick up on dinner drudgery sooner than those before him. We come for Christmas. Otherwise it's a ghost town. I offered the same smile as before.

He asked what I did. I played tennis. Went out at night. Transcribed music. He said he jogged too. Early in the morning. Where did one jog around here? Along the promenade, mostly. I could show him if he wanted. It hit me in the face just when I was starting to like him again: "Later, maybe. What unsettled me, though, was not the fancy footwork needed to redeem myself. It was the unwelcome misgivings with which it finally dawned on me, both then and during our casual conversation by the train tracks, that I had all along, without seeming to, without even admitting it, already been trying—and failing—to win him over. When I did offer—because all visitors loved the idea—to take him to San Giacomo and walk up to the very top of the belfry we nicknamed To-die-for, I should have known better than to just stand there without a comeback.

I thought I'd bring him around simply by taking him up there and letting him take in the view of the town, the sea, eternity. But no. But it might have started way later than I think without my noticing anything at all. Or you notice him, but nothing clicks, nothing "catches," and before you're even aware of a presence, or of something troubling you, the six weeks that were offered you have almost passed and he's either already gone or just about to leave, and you're basically scrambling to come to terms with something, which, unbeknownst to you, has been brewing for weeks under your very nose and bears all the symptoms of what you're forced to call I want. How couldn't I have known, you ask? I know desire when I see it—and yet, this time, it slipped by completely. I was going for the devious smile that would suddenly light up his face each time he'd read my mind, when all I really wanted was skin, just skin.

I was seventeen that year and, being the youngest at the table and the least likely to be listened to, I had developed the habit of smuggling as much information into the fewest possible words. I spoke fast, which gave people the impression that I was always flustered and muffling my words. After I had finished explaining my transcription, I became aware of the keenest glance coming from my left. It thrilled and flattered me; he was obviously interested—he liked me. It hadn't been as difficult as all that, then. But when, after taking my time, I finally turned to face him and take in his glance, I met a cold and icy glare—something at once hostile and vitrified that bordered on cruelty.

Anchise insisted on applying some sort of witch's brew. I had been perfectly willing to brand him as difficult and unapproachable and have nothing more to do with him. Hated it? What struck me was not just his amazing gift for reading people, for rummaging inside them and digging out the precise configuration of their personality, but his ability to intuit things in exactly the way I myself might have intuited them. Call Me By Your Name PDF Details Author: Andre Aciman Book Format: Paperback Original Title: Call Me By Your Name Number Of Pages: pages First Published in: January 23rd Latest Edition: September 21st Series: Call Me By Your Name 1 Language: English Genres: Fiction , Lgbt , Romance , Contemporary , Glbt , Queer , Audiobook , Adult , Lgbt , Gay , Romance , M M Romance , Young Adult , Coming Of Age , Main Characters: Elio, Oliver Formats: audible mp3, ePUB Android , kindle, and audiobook.

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