He did not doubt that his mother and the young boatman were engaged in the type of relations that the boys had described under Saro’s tarp. And he was strangely amazed by the change that had taken place in himself. His heart had been filled with jealousy of his mother and dislike of the young man, two vague and almost dormant feelings. But now, in the effort to remain calm and objective, he would have liked to feel understanding toward the young man and indifference toward his mother — except his understanding was little more than complicity, and his indifference indiscretion. Rarely did he accompany them out to sea anymore, always finding a way to escape the invitations. But every time he did go with them, Agostino realized he was studying the young man’s behavior and words, as if waiting for him to overstep the boundaries of his usual urbane gallantry; likewise, he studied the mother’s actions, as if hoping to see his suspicions confirmed. These sentiments were unbearable for him because they were the exact opposite of what he desired. And he almost missed the compassion he used to feel for his mother’s clumsiness, so much more human and affectionate than his cruel attention to her now.
From those days spent struggling with himself, he was left with a murky sense of impurity. He felt as if he had bartered away his former innocence, not for the virile, serene condition he had aspired to but rather for a confused hybrid state in which, without any form of recompense, the old repulsions were compounded by the new. What was the use of seeing things clearly if the only thing clarity brought was a new and deeper darkness? Sometimes he wondered how older boys, knowing what he knew, could still love their mothers. He concluded that this awareness must have gradually killed their filial affection, while in him one had not succeeded in expelling the other, and their coexistence had created a turbulent mix.
As can happen, the place of these discoveries and conflicts — his home — soon became unbearable. At least when he was on the beach, he was distracted and numbed by the sun, the crowd of bathers, and the presence of so many other women. But at home, between four walls, alone with his mother, he felt prey to every temptation, trapped by every contradiction. On the beach the mother blended into all the other naked flesh, while at home she appeared singular and excessive. Like a private theater in which the actors seem larger than life, her every action and word stood out. Agostino had a sharp and adventurous sense of family privacy. As a child he had seen the halls, closets, and rooms as strange mutable places to make the most curious discoveries and live out the most fantastic adventures. But now, after the encounter with the boys under the red tarp, those events and discoveries belonged to a realm so different that he couldn’t tell whether they attracted or frightened him. He used to imagine ambushes, shadows, presences, voices in the furniture and in the walls. But now, rather than the fictions of his boyish exuberance, his imagination focused on the new reality that seemed to permeate the walls, the furnishings, and even the air of the house. The innocent fervor that his mother’s kisses and trusting sleep used to calm at night was replaced by the burning, shameful indiscretion that was magnified in the dead of night and seemed to feed his impure fire. Everywhere he went in the house he detected the signs, the traces, of a woman, the only one he happened to be near, and that woman was his mother. When he was close to her, he felt as if he was monitoring her, when he approached her door it was as if he were spying on her. And when he touched her clothes he felt as if he was touching the woman who had worn them against her skin. At night he conjured up the most troubling nightmares. Sometimes he felt like the child he used to be, frightened of every noise and shadow, the child who would suddenly get up and run to the safety of his mother’s bed. But the instant he set his feet on the floor, even amid the confusion of the dream, he realized that his fear was nothing more than a maliciously disguised curiosity and that, once he was in his mother’s arms, his nocturnal visit would quickly reveal its true, hidden purpose. Or he would suddenly wake up and wonder whether the young boatman chanced to be on the other side of the wall, in the next room, with his mother. Certain sounds seemed to confirm this suspicion. Others allayed it. For a while he would toss and turn in his bed and then, without knowing how he arrived there, find himself in his nightshirt, in the hall outside his mother’s door, in the act of listening and spying. Once he even yielded to temptation and entered without knocking. He stood in the middle of the room without moving. Through the open window the moonlight shone, indirect and white, and his eyes focused on the bed where the dark hair and long bulging shapes wrapped in the sheets revealed the woman’s presence. “Is that you, Agostino?” the mother asked, roused from her sleep. Without saying a word, he quickly returned to his room.
His repulsion at being near his mother led him to spend more and more time at Vespucci beach. But the other, different torments that awaited him there made it no less hateful than home. The boys’ attitude toward him after the boat ride with Saro had not changed. Indeed, it had taken on a definitive aspect, as if based on unshakable conviction and judgment. He was the boy who had accepted that fatal, notorious invitation from Saro, and nothing would change their minds. So their initial envious contempt motivated by his wealth was compounded by a scorn based on his supposed deviance. In a sense, to their brutish minds, the one seemed to explain, to give rise to the other. He was rich, they insinuated through their cruel, humiliating behavior — was it any wonder he was deviant as well? Agostino quickly discovered how close the correlation between the two accusations was, and he came to the vague realization that this was the price he had to pay for being different and superior: a social superiority that was displayed in his finer clothing, his talk about the comforts of his home, his tastes, his speech; a moral superiority that drove him to reject allegations of his relations with Saro, and that constantly appeared in his obvious loathing for the boys’ behavior and manners. Consequently, more to express the humiliating state in which he found himself than out of conscious desire, he decided to be the person he thought they wanted him to be, one identical to them. He deliberately started wearing his ugliest and most worn-out clothes, to the great dismay of his mother, who no longer recognized in him any sign of his former vanity. He deliberately stopped talking about his house and his wealth. He deliberately pretended to appreciate and enjoy the behavior and manners that still horrified him. Worse still, and after a painful struggle, one day when they were teasing him, as usual, about his ride with Saro, he deliberately said that he was tired of denying the truth, that the things they were saying about him really had happened, and that he had no problem telling them about it. These assertions startled Saro, but he carefully avoided contradicting them, perhaps out of fear of exposing himself. This open acknowledgment that the rumors which had tormented him were true initially created great amazement, since the boys didn’t expect such boldness from someone so timid and bashful. But then a torrent of indiscreet questions followed about what had actually happened, and these completely overwhelmed him; flustered and upset, he refused to say another word. The boys interpreted his silence in their own way, of course, as the silence of shame rather than what it really was: ignorance and the inability to lie. And the brunt of their usual teasing and contempt grew even worse.