porcelain of his teeth. His belt buckle pressing into my hipbone, the stubborn buttons of his shirt, his long fingers getting caught in my hair. His scent of cologne and coffee, tomatoes and sweat. I had to keep my eyes shut: that was the only way I could limit the number of senses flooding me with information I couldn’t reconcile.
I lost my grasp of time, or perhaps time had lost its linearity. When had we started kissing: two minutes ago, two hours ago? I didn’t have the faintest idea. The beginning had slipped into oblivion and the end was no longer inevitable. One kiss led to another and the only certainty was that we couldn’t stop.
Then out of nowhere, something came over me—an inspiration, though not a flash of light but rather a flash of darkness, like a power cut. I was blinded, plunged into the deepest night. I was suspended there, stolen out of my own body, stripped of my sense of self, and yet it was such an incredible feeling that I could have stayed there forever, floating in the universe. Was this why people took heroin? But if it was so, then it was also true that he and I had shot up with the same drug, the same needle, for in that very moment we both opened our eyes.
We looked at each other for an eternity, or maybe just a breath. A transparent and peaceful gaze that went beyond judgment or embarrassment, even beyond curiosity. Our mouths still attached, we watched each other as if someone else were doing the kissing, our bodies carrying on without us. We had nothing to do with it, we were merely witnessing the beauty of the world.
We closed our eyes, letting the kisses rock us like so many exploding stars. Decorum was gone. Lips wandered to the cheekbones, chin, neck. I rubbed my cheeks across his stubble, wishing now for rawness. He rolled on top of me, murmuring things that made no sense, a warm mist breathing into my hair and my ear, not words at all but a spirit moving me. My god, was this how they kissed in the province of Avellino? It was a divine, primordial chaos that seemed to be building up to a great upheaval of the elements. I became afraid, and as if to brace myself, to ground myself, I searched for his mouth so that I could take in his breath once more. I’d forgotten where I was and how I’d come to be there, I’d even forgotten his name or that he was like any of the other people on the planet who had names, pasts, and daily concerns. He was simply him, this man, whose mouth was mine to kiss, every warm and rich corner of it, and whose chest was pressed, sternum and ribs and heart and all, up against mine.
When the sun began staining the port soda-pop orange, we looked into each other’s eyes again and there was a renewed awareness that we were two separate individuals. We started laughing, at nothing, perhaps with relief. I leaned against Pietro’s chest. There it was, the pendant I shouldn’t have seen when his shirt had opened up on the terrace, a smiling silver sun. I asked him if it had any special meaning to him.
“I bought it in a market, just a couple of months ago. And I thought while I was buying it that I wished I had someone to give it to. It’s pathetic, I know.”
“Not at all.” I held the sun in my hands. Around a grin of fulfillment were rays with tips almost too sharp to touch. “I find it moving.”
“You’re such a good person, Heddi,” he said rather solemnly.
“How did you learn my name?”
“I asked around. It wasn’t that hard.” Brushing the hair off my face, he added, “You’re beautiful too. But I bet you’ve heard that many times before.”
The truth was that, like all girls, I’d heard it plenty. When it came to the female form, at least in the slums a Neapolitan man wasn’t a man unless he vomited his private thoughts in the streets. But hearing it from Pietro was another thing altogether.
“I don’t know what you see in me,” he said. “I’m just from a small village. You’re a big-city girl.”
“A big city?” As if American cities were ranked by their verticality, I cut Washington down to size by telling him there were no skyscrapers, and that my dad and stepmom’s neighborhood was full of undocumented Mexican immigrants in cowboy hats, out of work and far from home, some who were so drunk by midday they couldn’t even stand up. I didn’t mention the Polish and Ugandan embassies just down the road: I didn’t want the capital of the United States to steal my thunder. But neither did I mention the other half of my life spent in the suburbs with my mom and stepdad.
Pietro’s particular dot on the map went by the name of Monte San Rocco. His parents were farmers, he told me, and poor—or at least they acted like they were. His mother hadn’t finished elementary school, and it was Pietro who’d taught his father to sign his own name. “Before that he used to sign with an x.”
“You mean he’s illiterate?”
Pietro turned toward the wall. “I don’t think you’d have given me another glance if you saw me on a tractor.” He turned back to me. “And yet, Heddi, I can’t help but want to be with you, from the first time I saw you.”
I hoped he couldn’t feel the drum of my heart against his chest. “Who knows? Maybe someday I’ll get to see you ride a tractor … or is it drive a tractor?”
“Fly a tractor.” He wiped his laughter away with a hand. As for me, the joke had not just saved me from a linguistic slipup but also broken the tension, and I burst out in heartfelt laughter. He said, “I’d sure like to fly to Washington someday.”
“I’d rather be here.”
“Really?”
“I love living by the sea.”
I laid my head on his chest. I hardly knew him but his smell was familiar even in its exoticness—a new spice, but one as earthy as salt, one I might no longer be able to do without. It came from his now crinkled shirt, his dusty hair, and his fading cologne that was now on my face too.
The slippery, molten sunlight cast sharp, geometrical shadows against the surrounding rooftops. The insidious sand of the scirocco really seemed to have gone. Maybe it wouldn’t be back again until next year.
I bolted upright. “I have to get back home.”
“Now?”
“It’s late. The boys will be worried.” But I wasn’t really thinking about the boys. I was thinking about Sonia.
From: [email protected]
Sent: January 14
Dear Pietro,
How strange to be writing to you after all this time. How strange to be writing, period. I exchange letters with only a handful of people, I don’t have a diary. Sometimes I think I haven’t really made my peace with words and I’m more comfortable in the woods listening to the chirping of birds. Can you believe it, me in the woods? I like to immerse myself in their world and listen to all those unintelligible and at times haunting languages that overlap like verses sung in a round. It’s like being inside a beating heart …
Funnily enough, my job consists of words. I teach English to foreigners, mostly Chinese, Korean, and Russian immigrants. Learning is a game; we even go on field trips together and become quite close. Then they get into the university or find the job they were aiming for, etc., and I don’t see them again. I’m happy at least to have helped them make their dreams come true. I remember the dreams you had. Where have they gone?
It’s true, at times I do think about my own aborted dreams and it makes me suffer. But you shouldn’t beat yourself up, Pietro. It’s not your fault: blame destiny. Or rather, blame the lack of destiny and order in the world, blame chaos. I too have to accept responsibility for what happened. Besides, over the past few years I’ve come to realize something important: it’s possible to live without having any answers. You survive, life goes on. The world, with its tides and natural rhythms, is beautiful anyway, stunningly beautiful, even though (or maybe precisely because) it’s indifferent to our ups and downs and broken hearts.
I really would like it