Episode 88 | Belittled lives

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My father and mother would often disagree. Since the very beginning in Punaouilo (actually, all had begun on the Île du Blanchomme, I now had to adapt my memories), I feared their explosions -- Catherine's rage and Carlo's indignation. It escalated from quarreling to bickering to serious arguing until they were fighting -- though never physically. In France, it had not been different, and their disputes even worsened. 

And when my father and I had returned from the Apennines, they started having fights every day, often many times a day. Now I was getting to understand the reasons.

Carlo and Catherine rarely agreed on anything concerning our daily life. While Carlo loved cooking and eating pasta, she hated it -- only many years later would Catherine learn to enjoy it, when it was Edoardo cooking. Maybe she had eaten it solely to please him, whom she loved.

But my parents had especially disagreed on my education, disputing about my happiness. Carlo would even link the two words, and spoke of an "education for happiness". Catherine retorted that it was "new age bullshit", and stood up for the traditional education.

"Our son is not happy here, Catherine." That's how many of their quarrels often started -- when I was the main subject. Their errands and rather different daily routines would keep them apart for hours or even days, when Catherine started her studies and later teaching in Belgium, so that their room -- the bed, more specifically -- was the only place my parents knew they would meet.

"Oh, not that speech again, Carlo!" Catherine snorted, showing her impatience. She kept her head buried in her books, ignoring Carlo's presence unless he provoked her. "He just needs time to adapt. He'll learn to like it here in France. Anyways, Laurent is a child, and he has to be where we are. He has no choice. It is as simple as that."

"You really don't care about his happiness, do you?"

"Don't be unfair, Carlo!" Catherine replied, shutting her book, ready for battle. "Of course I do. And that's why I know he has to stay in France. He'll get the best education, here. A proper education. In Punaouilo he was just learning how to be a third class citizen."

"It's not just about education!" My father would insist. Not so much defending his points of view, he was standing for what he thought was good for me. "It's about his happiness! Laurent is increasingly sad here..."

"So what? Do we send him back to that island? To Aunt Joanna?" She laughed disdainfully. "Plus, Laurent has always been sad. Such a melancholic boy, isn't he? I hope he'll make friends with other boys his age here in France, and become less dependent from our company... It's not good for a child to be constantly with adults only."

"I could go back to Punao--"

Catherine did not let him finish the sentence, nor pronounce the awful name. 

"Then you'll go back all on your own, Carlo! My son is staying here with me!"

My heart fluttered as my parents played tug of war with my destiny. Our rooms were on the second floor of the house, opening onto a veranda so large that held several pots of flowers and a bench for three, offering lovely views of mountains in the distance, groves interposed to cultivated fields all around, and the rural road that ended at our front garden. There was even a table with three chairs, that we had never sat at as a family. The doors to our rooms opening onto the veranda were hardly shut in the summer evenings, and to my desperation I could hear my parents arguing next doors. Depending on the breeze, or lack of, I could understand their words quite distinctly -- until one of them, usually Carlo, closed their door, or I put on my walkman.

"Catherine, don't you ever miss Punao--?"

"Not ever. Not the least." She made a very peculiar gesture with her hands, sharply slicing the air, that indicated the discussion was over for her. Punaouilo and her involuntary exile had become an episode in her life she would avoid mentioning in her biographies.

Because, to the heavenly aroma of tropical flowers, that attracted myriads of insects and birds, Catherine preferred the latest in French perfumery, that she would get overseas as gifts from Celeste -- and one day she had asked Uncle Will to simply cut down all the bushes around the small cottage of my childhood. People around the world dreamed of the ring of indivisible beaches stretching all around the island, green palm trees, fine white sand and the translucent blue of the Pacific Ocean -- that Catherine avoided, since she hated walking barefoot and having her hair undone and made greasy from the salty breeze and the daily showers. How she must have missed the beauty saloons!  In Punaouilo, she had dreamed of strolling the Parisian boulevards on her high heels, going back to the Sorbonne and the Cinematéque, returning to her beloved 6e arrondessiment.     

They did not agree even on the house in which we lived. Carlo wanted to build a pool for me, but Catherine did not want to invest in a home that she considered "too middle class". 

"It's a lovely home, Catherine. Don't you think so? I thought you had chosen it yourself."

"Oh yes, of course I chose it... among the options that Celeste gave me, all of them, far away from Paris!" My mother had enjoyed living again in Paris, even if it had been just as my grandmother's guest, in the room she had occupied since childhood, but to which she had "lost the right", Celeste had stated. My mother regarded our rural house as another exile, an exile within France itself. "This house is so ordinary. But at least we don't have a middle class neighborhood around here. I could not stand being invited to those middle class dinners and weekend lunches that are the routine of the ordinary middle class neighborhood. So at last yes, being secluded, this was the least worse house from the options that I had..."

I began to truly worry about my parents relationship when, after their quarrels, they started sleeping apart. One early morning, before dawn, thinking I had heard a noise outside the house during the night, I went to check. I thought it could be my dad -- he always liked to work late into the night. But his studio was empty.

I found him in the small room attached to the studio, that we used as a guest room. In fact, I was the most common guest there -- whenever we had illustrious guests, usually famous writers or movie directors or actors Catherine would invite, they slept in my room, which was much larger and more comfortable, and I occupied the small bedroom next to the studio. 

For me, it was like sleeping out, since it was in a separate building from the main house -- it used to be a deposit, that Carlo had adapted to be his studio. 

 I was too young to properly benefit from the presence of Mr. Chabrol and other illustrious guests from Catherine, with their highly cultivated conversations that often left Carlo out, but I was always thankful that they would send me away from my own room.

On those last weeks before leaving home forever, Carlo would occupy that room every night. Still, I figured it was a passing period. Or at least I hoped -- but the prospect of becoming another child with divorced parents, like so many in my class, seemed to draw dangerously close on me.

Generally, after quarreling, Carlo and Catherine would reconcile in bed. The physical attraction they felt for each other was true and strong still. And as I would later learn -- an adult and sexually very active myself, in the period after Edoardo's death, when Catherine and I were sharing about our lovers --, not only had Carlo had an attractive body, fit and manly and hairy like my mother preferred, and been well endowed; he had also been well trained by Catherine for her own needs, growing from a clumsy virgin to an expert in giving her pleasure. He performed in bed aiming only to please her ever demanding ways, and quench her sexual thirst -- often holding back his orgasms obediently, until Catherine was satisfied or grew tired and allowed him to finish, too. Other times, the game was Catherine trying to make Carlo quickly ejaculate, while he resisted. In a time when several artists and other famous personalities advocated tantric sex, I was convinced my parents were adepts. Our house was never as peaceful as during their sexual marathons, and it must have been satisfying for both. Carlo just couldn't offer Catherine the spiced variety she seemed to enjoy while having several lovers, of several ages and nationalities, and he had silently learned to cope with that -- mainly, it seemed, to maintain our household going.

Instead of feeling ashamed or some sort of awkward curiosity about the sounds of my parent's love making, I felt relief whenever it followed their quarrels. I'd rather wake up to their muffled moans and the bedhead banging against the wall that divided our rooms, than with their screams and shouts. 

But a time came when not even sex would reconcile them. Thinking in retrospect, during my father's last months in our home, Catherine must be making it out with the young officer from the Tax Authorities, and that's how Carlo had lost his main access to my mother. And she might be leaving him out of her bed and their room because of the gipsy girl, Jaella, and that other supposed son of my father's.

*****

"No, you don't have any half brother, Laurent! Even you shall doubt me, son?" Carlo had replied, clearly hurt. Apparently, he hadn't realized I was joking, and that, after discovering my mother had a half brother, I wouldn't be shocked discovering I had one myself. But Carlo was too earnest, "faithful like a dog", Angelo would have commented, to cope with a joke about his fidelity. "I've said it already... I never had any other woman in my life who was not Catherine. As it was proved, later, all tests taken, that the child was not mine. It could never have been..."

Catherine, however, could not, and did not want to believe otherwise. From her own perspective and experience, a second family was something perfectly possible -- and thus weary and traumatized, she did not want to see it repeated in her story.

"Go live with that gypsy girl, Carlo! Go live with your other son! I can perfectly take care of mine on my own! I don't need no man paying me wage." 

It was no use swearing to Catherine that I had never touched that girl -- nor any other woman. Catherine thought I was avenging myself, because of her own infidelity that had started in Punaouilo still.

"By no means, Laurent, would your mother see that she had herself planted those lies in Jaella's mind. It resulted in a story that resembled the plots of her own books, more than real life. It became as if she was reading something, without recognizing she had written it herself. And that's why our fights were more usual than before, with an alarming and increasing seriousness."

"And Catherine asked me several times that I leave the house. But I could not leave home... I could not contemplate living without you, my son. After all, what would I do all day without having you to give a ride, to feed you, to go shopping with you and for you..."

Since moving to France, Carlo had taken upon himself all the household chores, that in Punaouilo had been Joanna's. It was he who bought the groceries and even cooked -- not because he was a natural cooker, but Catherine wouldn't even break an egg. It was he who went to the bank and to the post office, it was he who picked me up in the club, after the training, when due to one reason or another I could not go home by bus or bike.

"And, of course, Catherine did not want to give up the right of having your custody, not even sharing it. For I sometimes pictured you and me living together in Italy... I engaged in these reveries of a better, calmer life as a means to escape that hellish daily routine that my life with your mother had turned into."

"You have belittled our lives, Carlo!" Catherine would scream, accusingly. Sometimes, she clapped her hands at the end of her sentences, like Tibetan monks do. But while they want to emphasize their statements, she wished to underline her rage, when it was at its fullest already. "For you yourself are a small man! Do you realize that? Your interests and your tastes are so limited! Your opinions are even narrower, and so unassertive! That you care more about the weather than for politics, that you pay attention to the moon but has never read Schopenhauer... It tells so much about the size of your mind. Your presence in our lives is limiting, Carlo! Everything around you becomes weak, blurred, humble, ignoble. Even me, Carlo. I feel underprivileged by your side. Look at our meek lives! This unpretentious, middle class house that you seem to enjoy so much! Look how you've debased our lives! Look what you did to me! Take a good look at what you are doing to Laurent, belittling his life with your low-born idea of contentment!"

"That's funny, Catherine!" Carlo wouldn't lose his temper often, but when he did, "What I usually hear from you is Oh, you're so big! God, you're so big..." 

Carlo mocked Catherine's moaning voice in bed.

"Oh, you're too rude!" Catherine replied, disdaining his mockery, walking towards the bathroom, where she would stay until she heard Carlo leave the room, his heavy footsteps clearly echoing along the corridor, past my own door and down the stairs. "But you're right. Your dick is the only big thing that you have!"

"Please!" Carlo was running out of argumentation, and he had started pleading. "You can not make me leave my son, Catherine!" But once she had locked herself in the bathroom, Carlo was uncertain she had even heard his plea. When he was sad -- and he was devastated at the idea of losing me -- he could not scream, and his voice waned.

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Episode 65 | Interlude 1.10

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nudity

It tells me the crossing must be done.

This was the title of the email I received from Fabrizio a few weeks after having visited him. When I saw his name on the mailbox of my professional email, which was available through the art gallery's site, I experienced sadness and anger. Still, I opened  the message -- to find a picture from his Richter's painting, with no other text but the title

It tells me the crossing must be done.

I waited at least a week long, hoping to leave Fabrizio expectant and also to calmly think on my reply. More than an answer, I came up with revenge -- I simply erased the title of his email and rewrote instead Re: Thank you for the pic. Good luck.

I had no wish to prolong that suffering, neither for him nor for myself.

I had my own crossing to make.

"Wait here, please." I told the taxi driver who had taken me from Fabrizio's apartment to the nearest club, where I was pretty sure Gabriel was not an habitué. The entrance queue stretched under a marquee, protecting from the rain a lively crowd of men, all neatly dressed or semi-naked for the night. After the wind had come a downpour, causing a frenzied commotion. Some of the men arriving at the club were enjoying getting wet, and having their bodies revealed suggestively to an always eager audience. One long-haired guy did stop in the middle of a puddle, and stretching his arms, remained still until he was completely drenched, his carefully sculpted body delineated to astonishing details under the tight T-shirt and jeans. Noticeably, he wore no underwear, and his show received brief but enthusiastic applause. I mentally wished him luck in finding an agent or a client for that evening, as I imagined he wouldn't be looking for a painter.

Others, like me, sprinted, trying to avoid the shower as much as possible. I just didn't believe it was necessary to scream while running, like some were doing, as if the thick raindrops were burning. But I guess that depended on how much time one had spent doing the hair.

  Following Fabrizio's rejection, I felt ugly, old and filthy -- and wanted to prove just the opposite. No longer the diva I had been during the times of my scandalous exhibition, I just wished to remain anonymous, and stood at a distance. Discreetly, I checked the guys on offer.  I did not even want to go inside, and from the queue I drew a cute young guy who was looking at me with intensity, who smiled sweetly when I stared back at him. "The taxi is out there, shall we?" I invited bluntly, beckoning him off the line.  He was cute enough -- I wasn't feeling particularly picky after the blow I had just suffered. And again I crossed the town through the storm, towards a pretty decent little hotel near the beach that rented rooms by the hour. I was schooled enough to avoid taking strangers to my own hotel room.

Now, I was not so decent with the young man who later revealed that he had attended one of my workshops at Vice's Museum, and thus had so readily accepted my invitation to leave the queue. When I thought my good looks were working still, I found out he was more interested in me as an artist. 

I did not remember him from the ranks of participants that had remained largely anonymous to me -- a rather handsome dreamer and idealist, who wanted to become a visual artist. He had seen my show several times, and confessed he was fulfilling the fantasy of touching my body, that he had desired on my paintings. Blushing, he told he had masturbated looking at my pictures, and then delighted in going down on real me. He must have been barely past his teenage years, still trying to get rid of an emoish look and displaying pimples on his chin and butt cheeks. 

In bed, more than impressed with my size, that he nevertheless bravely devoured,  he looked at me with so much love that, after so often having done the same thing again and again over the years, my heart finally broke -- when later in the evening I dumped him without further explanations.

Sex had been great, his endurance remarkable. His admiration for my work and public persona, our short conversations about art in between kisses and while we stripped -- that had been a nice surprise. But apart from be entertained and share the stupor of mutually inflicted orgasms, I did not want anything else from him -- no more than to  have laid some guy, any guy, between me and Fabrizio, as quick as I could. It had done wonders to my pride to go to bed with a beautiful boy, younger than both Fabrizio and Gabriel, who showed admiration, even respect for me. Problem is -- I was not capable of reciprocating that respect.

It was only after I had returned to my home in Samsara Heights, remembering the teary-eyed cute young guy -- Justin or Jason, I did not pay attention to his name --, that I understood I also had a crossing to make, my own journey to undertake.

I decided that my journey would begin with a more radical measure, and Fabrizio's email had found me leaving for a three weeks total silence retreat. 

It were three weeks of distress and hardship, physically and mentally, meditating more hours than sleeping. But the numerous and valuable insights into my suffering and personal torments was worth it!

There began a period of voluntary chastity and absolute seclusion, which I spent at my isolated home in Samsara Heights, seeing just a few good friends who ventured climbing The Cliff -- Darren and Brazen, mostly. I left town just once, to visit Armand in Sweden -- and that had been another form of a healing measure, too.

 With the decrease of suffering, my sexual energy had also decreased, and I had also stopped painting -- the two of them had been inexpressibly intertwined for a long time in my life. I tried not to worry about the creative hiatus, because during that time I began to write again.

"Does this feel like a retreat to you?" Fabrizio had asked me one day, during the stay in our Icelandic home. Just like my own in Samsara Heights, we had chosen a house that was well away from the city. And being on Iceland's wild coast, there was no sign of civilization to be seen, as if civilization had actually never touched those shores. And except for an occasional fishing boat, or the far noise of an airplane, we had no contact, not even visual, with any other human being. 

"Oh no!" I laughed sweetly at his remark. "This is a retreated house, but not a retreat in any sense." Though I had been profiting from the silence and spaciousness of both the house and the landscape to meditate often, during the periods in which Fabrizio went on the internet and took care of his businesses. "I never had ​​a retreat with kisses, hugs and sex, babe... I think that doesn't exist!" I laughed again.

Some time before I had left for Sweden, there came another email from Fabrizio. It was the continuation of the Richter message, but in that one there was no text nor image -- just the title that read

The crossing has begun. 

Again, despite all the meditation that I had just undertaken, and how it made me clearly see the way I could be inflicting more suffering on him, I took a lot of time before answering him, wanting him to fell uncertainty and expectation. And then I simply wrote back an even more concise revenge, I mean, answer Re: Congratulations. I had intended to reply Good for you, but I thought it sounded aggressive.

"Does this look like a retreat to you?" I returned Fabrizio the same question. I sought to understand how he was feeling about our Icelandic holidays. The other times, when he had rented a house in  different countries, it had been with Andara and their group of friends -- and now his entourage had came down to me, only. We hadn't so much to talk all day long -- I had been telling Fabrizio about my reunion with Carlo at the Nirvana Lounge after 20 years of separation, but when I felt burdened by emotions, having to go back to my breathing to regain control, we stopped and continued only when I felt at peace again. Which could be hours later, maybe the following day. And in the mean time, there was either silence or music, since we had both agreed on having the television removed from the house.

"I've never done a retreat to know how it is... As you said, I cannot expect love and sex, can I?" Fabrizio giggled.

"Much love, yes. But fraternal, not romantic love." There were some pretty dry and hard retreats, but there were many with so much camaraderie and sharing, like those at Plum Village, that were dearest to me. "And lots of love for yourself,  and acceptance, and self-acceptance, friendship, peace... Fabrizio, would you agree to go on a retreat with me?" I had been feeling tempted to invite him, and I just did. 

In the one week we lived together in a house in Iceland, which would become memorable and leave indelible memories that later helped us survive our separation, Fabrizio and I had the quiet fluidity of time and space, the conviviality, the silence, the attention, the dedication, the care, to get to know each other in greater depth, by asking personal questions that needed time and care to be properly answered.

"I won't say yes, at least for now... But neither will I say no, definitely... Is it a good enough answer for you, monsieur Zen?" Fabrizio smiled his charming, wittiest smile, trying to give me an ambivalent response, just like I had sometimes given him.

I was afraid that Fabrizio would eventually develop a disdain for meditation just like Catherine had -- though hers was closer to aversion. There was a time when Carlo had to hide himself for his sitting sessions, for she was enraged whenever she saw him at it. She felt like she was being excluded, that Carlo had left to a far off place where she could not reach him, even if he was right there in the middle of our living room. Nor have any control over him, that's what frustrated her the most, I guess... And she had been mad at me when I had started it, too. "This is not some religious sect that will kidnap you and steal your money, is it?" Catherine had asked, when I unskillfully shared it with her over the phone from Vice City.

But Fabrizio seemed to be a bit different. Though he did not find himself attracted to any spiritual practice, he demonstrated to respect mine -- just like I did not feel any drive to the financial market, but I did not criticize him for constantly playing the stock market. In fact, our exchange of metiers had led me to ask for his advice before investing any of my money, while he had read Shantideva's and the Dalai Lama's books I had given him, and even a couple of others he had seen laying around.

"The titles are really catchy!" He justified, when he had started reading two of Pema Chödron's books, 'When Things Fall Apart' and 'The Places that Scare You'. I have to confess I had read both books more than once, but I had pretended to be re-reading them because I thought they might interest and help Fabrizio. And they actually had. "Though I don't really understand the difference between this and the self-help guides..." He had commented.

Some time later after that "The crossing has begun" message, once I had already returned from Sweden and been quietly spending most of my days in isolation at home in Samsara Heights -- redecorating it to receive Dan Charmand's first visit, ever, to any of my houses --, another email had popped in my professional mailbox.

It's burning 

was the title of the email, and this time there was more text to it. Compared to our previous standards of succinctness, Fabrizio had almost written a novel.

 Hard to say if it's a bridge or a boat I've taken for this crossing. 

Whatever it is, it's burning. 

The margin I've left, too, seems to be burning. 

Now there is no way of turning back. 

But the boat or the bridge that I'm on, it is also burning. 

These flames all around me, is it what they call Hell? 

Or was it Hell before, with all the lies and deceit?

And now I should be glad, because this fire is purging? 

Does it ever stop burning?

What lies ahead?

For now, I can only see smoke.

On I go, though.

I had goosebumps upon reading that message, and it brought tears to my eyes. Fabrizio insisted on the "crossing" term, and that language was like a code, a Buddhist code, between us -- he would later tell me he had used it because he was writing to a public e-mail at the site of the art gallery, and he was not sure who had access to it. And he neither wanted nor could be exposing himself more than that.

The main difference between Fabrizio and I was in relation to how we handled our personal, private lives, and the part of it that was public.

I did not hide my sexuality, and made it my own art and form of expression. Although it seemed outrageous and scandalous, I absolutely did not care about publicly revealing my nudity. In my understanding, it was just the image of my body, it was not my body itself that people were looking at. I hadn't been shocked at seeing the picture some guy had posted, of a brochure with my self-portraits made all sticky after he had ejaculated on them. Touching or looking at my pictures was not touching or looking at me -- but the urge to, the lust and desire that my art inspired was what made it strong, and a good selling product. I felt so separated from that body of my art, and even the body with which I delighted in bed with other men, just because it had no heart...

It took me longer to answer that message from Fabrizio, since I was dealing with my own grief, having seen how heartless I had become. The Justin or Jason teary-eyed cute young guy from Vice City still haunted me, along with many I had dumped and hurt. 

And then he wrote again, before I could send him a reply.

How does the other margin look like? 

Where is it, actually? 

Are you there, please?

Of all the things I had told Fabrizio that night, one had impressed him more than anything else -- what I had called my loyalty to myself. 

I had a private truth that would set the tone of my public life. Fabrizio's life was exactly like that, too, his private truth actually being the same as mine -- that of being gay --, but the effects were opposite. While I was living my truth openly, with freedom, he lived his in a veiled way that turned his private life into a secret and the public life into a lie. And that I would be included and fit into that scheme was what terrified me -- to be the lover in the private life, parallel to the public life that Fabrizio led with Andara.

It was that "please" in his message, and the realization that he was suffering, and a certain empathy with what he might be going through at that moment, and the fact of being in an airport again -- all that led me to call his mobile, the number which I had stored since that night in Vice City.

But Fabrizio did not answer my call, and when he called back, I was flying to Italy, and he found my phone off for many, long and afflicting hours.

I had finally decided to visit Carlo. 

My chastity had the effect of an artistic abstinence too, and I no longer painted nor even neared my atelier. As I swam at the pool, looking towards the glass box that was my studio -- inspired by Johnson's Glass House that I had once visited --, it was as if I observed the posthumous remains of someone's life, the deceased painter's studio left untouched for posterity. It seemed like the last canvas I had painted was ages ago -- the classy face of Mario, a stunning Brazilian model I had also dumped. Framed and sold, already turned into new clothes, furniture or some kind of investment. For my new, Argentinian art dealer, who kept demanding new works, I had sent some old paintings, which I had not previously enjoyed, but that were not so bad, after all. The guy was exploring new markets in emerging countries, and since what was old to me was new to them, I didn't have to worry much about my creative hiatus. 

Yet, I'd rather be like my father, who painted so little and had thus increased the value of his works so greatly. Seeking for inspiration and guidance, once the atonement and revenge had petered out, I decided to take refuge in his atelier and hermitage in the Apennines, on the farm he had inherited from my great-grandfather.

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Episode 14 | The first apparition

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The next morning, during my meditation session, I imagined I had dozed off when, impossible as it was, I suddenly saw someone standing on the beach. But arousing my attention I realized I hadn't slept, I was not dreaming -- in the eye of a blinding cloud of light, there was in fact someone standing in front of the sun!

I was terrified. I felt icy chills creeping up my spine, and my heart tightened as I jumped to my feet.

My abrupt move was enough for the sinister creature to disappear, leaving me terror-stricken and feeling unbearably cold under the tropical sun.

I found Armand in the kitchen, cooking a recipe he had learned in the Himalayas, some kind of vegetarian dumplings he would add to a buttery soup. I think it was some Tibetan delicacy, but I did not pay attention to his words.

While busy with the pans, he tried to entertain me with more tales of his adventures around the globe, but as fascinating as they were, portraying the people and the costumes of the high Asian Steppes, I hardly listened. I was still scared, as that strange vision kept returning before my eyes in rapid flashbacks. I tried to bring it into focus, the shapeless figure that was barely distinguishable in the blinding light. And each time I tried it, I shivered with goose bumps, and I felt gelid, as if that menacing apparition was laying icy hands on my skin -- or deeper, onto my soul.

As much as it was funny to see Armand joyfully cooking, it was weird to watch my ex-roommate going about in his underwear only. In two days, I had seen more of his body than in the five years during which we had shared a room in Paris. He had always seemed to live in the nutshell of his highly cultivated politeness and discreetness, which did not match nakedness. Now there was a new freedom about his presence that was contagious -- a liberty that made me rethink my own concept of freedom, that ideal which I had turned into a cruel, personal form of slavery. Freedom and slavery had been the same to me, just like I had been master and slave of myself -- on how to kill them both at once, I was suddenly learning from Armand.

"What is it with you today, mon cher Carlo? You've been staring into the horizon mesmerized all morning long... Where have you been while I was telling you about Tibet and Nepal?" Armand did not hide his disappointment. "Not here... Is your house empty today? Are you sun stroke?" He touched my forehead, and I shivered at his gentle touch.

"I'm alright." I didn't feel like talking about that morning apparition to him. Armand was much less skeptical than he used to be, India having opened both his mind and heart while giving rise to his soul, but my own budding spirituality did not contain ghosts nor wandering spirits. Had his wicked stories about the Île du Blanchomme somehow influenced and prepared a mind setting for that apparition? I did not know what I had seen, nor if I had actually seen anything. 

"I guess I'm just trying too hard to have a nicer suntan than you, mon cher Armand, haha!" Maybe he was right, I might be sunstroke. The tropical sun, too, was completely new to me.

"Well, I guess you already have a nicer suntan... from birth, mon cher Carlo, haha!" We both laughed, and seemed to reconnect in the present moment. "Are you sure you don't want me to apply that coconut lotion on you? It should help..." Running his fingers on my chest, he caressed my skin, so much rougher than his, and leaving his hand on my forearm, he changed the subject. "It feels so good... No, it looks so good... I mean," He seemed embarrassed. "It smells good, already. The food, of course." Armand blushed. "Should be ready in a moment... Are you hungry yet?"

His dumplings were delicious, a Tibetan delicacy he had adapted to the ingredients available in the house, though the soup had come out too salty and  practically inedible. The meal was delightful, a feast of unpredictable textures and flavors, all new to me. Just like my old friend, siting right across the table from me, seemed completely new to me... His new skills, his new looks, his new goals for the future, his new easy going attitudes, even the boldness with which he exposed his body, not the least shy in his nakedness. I couldn't help being thoroughly surprised.

I had always thought of Armand as conservative, and thus his transformation impressed me the greater. And in comparison to him, my identity and attitudes seemed sadly crystallized.

"Armand, I have to say how much I admire you!" I mouthed. "You are being so brave! You have reinvented yourself, and I'm rediscovering you..." I took a deep breath, trying to figure out what his reaction to my sudden remark was. But he just stared at me, with curiosity, and I decided to go on. "I mean, you always were my best friend. But now... it seems like I am getting a new best friend... You know? On top of the same best friend I've kept over the years... Do you understand what I mean?'

Finally, we did the tour of the island together. Armand showed me all he had discovered about Herr Weismann's schemes to make life possible on that small circle of sand slightly rising above the ocean. The Île du Blanchomme must have been part of a greater atoll in the past, that had vanished after successive tsunamis had swept that region, leaving behind only that stretch of land. Just big enough to provide the natives with a Portal Island. Armand had discovered a lot of things reading Herr Weismann's journals, but because they were in German, my friend had not always understood everything. There were some technical details that remained a mystery to him, and he expected me to dig deeper into them in the next months. In the most practical forms, working on the island, since I could not understand a single word in German.

He also shared his restoration plans, and how he envisioned the new property. To start with, getting rid of the forest of weeds and the dry brambles that had taken over the years of abandonment.

"I don't know why, but I haven't yet seen many flowers on this island, apart from those that turn into fruits... And therefore, not many insects, and rarely ever flocks of birds. Only a few solitary ones. The Île du Blanchomme has its mysteries... And I thought that you, with your agricultural knowledge, Carlo, could tend the garden. Wouldn't it be lovely to have flowers to decorate the rooms, and fresh vegetables for cooking?" Armand's voice had almost turned into a song, as he happily shared his plans for the island.

"The workers I hired did fix the electrical part and the plumbing system in the house," he continued, "but they had just started with the painting when they decided to leave. I wanted to have everything inside the house painted white... The light is kind of strong here on this part of the world, but somehow the rooms are dark." Indeed, I had already realized it. I thought the contrast between light and shadows was starker than anywhere else I had been, and I wanted to try it on my paintings. Armand went on, enthusiastically sharing his plans. "I thought we could bring some light into the interior of the house, and also honor Herr Weissmann, weiss being the word for white in German. Would you be into this other kind of painting, Carlo?" Armand knew I had taken up a few jobs as a wall painter during the École, including that which had led me to Heinrich Zimmer's book. Just because I needed the money, and I'd rather do those than spend my days in Paris working part time in a shop or an office. "I mean, you don't have to do it alone, that can wait until I'm back from France, and we can do it together..."

"I'll be delighted to paint the interiors of the house and illuminate them." I assured Armand. I thought it was a very meaningful activity, very symbolic of my own spiritual needs. "Don't worry, fratello mio..." For I knew Armand was trying to be tactful and slowly introducing the tasks he expected me to perform in his absence.  "The house will be shining white when you come back!" 

It was such a simple task, and I wasn't lying when I wholeheartedly promised to accomplish it, even if later I was to thoroughly disappoint Armand.

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