Episode 39 | Everything harmed her

previous episode

I tried preparing a rather simple, fresh lunch, again thinking on my grandfather's sensible recipes, and trying to add a touch of elegance and daring with Armand's spices.

It mustn't have been that bad, for Catherine ate as much as she could. She had an amazing appetite for a such a petite girl -- and I wondered if she had caught a worm that she was also feeding in her stomach, haha. At least some kind of food poisoning she must have had, because despite having thanked me and discreetly praised my lunch, she was again to vomit in the afternoon.

I thought we were having another remarkable conversation, for like Armand and me she had also been an habitué at the Cinématèque Française. We shared impressions about many movies, but after a while she stopped listening to me. She seemed to be shivering, and I started getting really worried, remembering my own illness, that had interrupted my self-imposed exile in the old factory and made ​​me face the world again... And hadn't I just then found a letter from Armand in the mail... And because I had to go to the hospital was I now living on the Île du Blanchomme... Maybe I should thank the rats and rusty cans for my present good fortune? Had they led me to the lovely young woman before me? A sickness was a blessing in disguise?, I wondered.

I had had a good intuition the other night when I thought Catherine had been suffering from sunstroke. But my intuitions were to no avail when she began to actually feel ill.

During lunch I noticed how she had turned red from all those hours under the sun, and I realized that she was getting sick, though trying to keep her pretentious -- or true? -- friendly smile, listening with polite interest while I was discoursing passionately about... Art, of course.

"Are you feeling ill?" I finally asked, when I thought she might fall from the chair at any moment, from shivering so much. How could she have been cold under that tropical sun?

That question was the sign for her to get up and run to the bathroom... that she did not reach in time, puking on the veranda in front of Armand's room. She then moved on to the toilet, where again I heard her vomit.

I did not wish to interrupt Carlo's narrative, but I had been guessing something for some time now, and it was making ​​me suffer.

"Was my mother bulimic, Carlo?" This was a night of revelations for me, old lies were falling down defeated, and perhaps Catherine's diet, that had kept her with a flawless body at fifty eight years old, had a different, more sinister nature.

"Oh no!" Carlo gave the shortest of laughs, since laughing was not very appropriate at that stage in the story. "That's a disturb no one talked about, back then... Your mother has always had a very delicate constitution. She was thoroughly urban, and life in that tropical part of the world... the food, the water, the sun, the temperature, the insects, the boats, the tides, the moon... and even I..." Carlo smiled sadly. "Everything harmed her health."

"I was monitoring her from outside the room, listening to her crying after she had stopped vomiting..." my worries dismissed, we drifted back to the Île du Blanchomme, "And since after some time she hadn't come out of the bathroom, and everything was so quiet, I decided to check how she was..."

I found her lying unconscious on the bathroom floor, next to the toilet. She was soaked in her vomit, and when I tried to clean it from her, I noticed how she shivered at the touch of a cloth dipped in cold water -- and if I had been still thinking of food poisoning, from that moment on I was convinced of a heatstroke.

But I had never taken care of anyone sick before. My grandfather had never been sick, apart from an occasional flu -- he used to say himself that he would die healthy. As for Armand, I had accompanied him once to a private clinic of a friend of his father, some famous doctor, where he was treated for an inflammation in the lungs.

I was nearly desperate as I tried to recall what cares I had received at the hospital in Paris, and that was when I remembered a first aids book and a box of medicines that Armand had shown me in his office. It was the one room in the house that I rarely entered, since the only thing in there for me was the radio, that I had been unable to use. I tried to turn it on again, randomly pressing this and that button, but I don't know if it had to warm up or what, and again I gave up. I resented being so inapt at technological stuff. But even if it had worked, what then? I would be screaming for help, hoping someone would send an helicopter to the Île? Grow up, Carlo, -- I remember telling to myself -- this is the time. Someone depends on you.

And only then, glancing around the room in dismay, did I realize that Catherine had been in the office already, leaving her notebooks, pens and two novels on my friend's desk. It seemed like another outrageous invasion to me -- but who cared, when there was an emergency going on? At that moment, I was more mad at myself than I could ever be at the sick girl.

There was a manual on tropical diseases provided by the Colonial government, dating from Herr Weissmann's time, but I figured that orientations on how to treat heatstroke should not have changed with the decades....

Removing Catherine from the bathroom was my first problem -- when I tried to lift her, she cried in pain. I felt like I was violating her when I nevertheless lifted her in my arms and carried her to bed, despite her painful groans. I felt genuine tenderness with her in my arms, like I had never felt before. Despite her smelling to vomit and the sweat on her skin, I wanted to keep on holding her in my arms. But it was the wrong moment for romantic impulses, I knew -- I had to read the manual, my only adviser in that situation.

Her skin was almost purple and she was sweating profusely -- which was a good sign according to the manual, because it meant her sweating had not been affected -- but what worried me were the chills that made her squirm, and her state of consciousness, semi-consciousness or unconsciousness, that I could not quite determine. According to the manual, if the person presented an altered state of consciousness, she should be taken urgently to the hospital... that lied nine hours away at least, had the boat been there.

I tried not to panic.

One of the recommendations was placing the affected person in a cold bath -- but I had just brought her from the bathroom, and I thought it would be cruel to move her again. I then adopted the second best recommended method, which was to put cool, wet rags on her skin, at the back of her neck, on her groin, and her armpits. And I was supposed to mist and fan her to promote evaporative cooling.

 For hours, I moved between the bathroom sink and Armand's bed, drenching the floor along the way and also the mattress, while trying to cool Catherine's body. She struggled, and no matter how gently I placed a wet cloth on her skin, it seemed to cause her an unbearable pain and shock. I also gave her water to sip slowly, to counteract dehydration. And I started watching for the girl in her delirious state.

One of the recommended procedures, however, troubled me -- it was removing the clothes of the person with heatstroke, to help in the cooling process. I decided I would not do that, because no matter how much panic I felt in that situation, another bestial part of me still watched Catherine's exposed breasts. My criminal gaze kept falling repeatedly over the bikini tan lines on her burnt skin... Although there was nothing sensual about the situation, yet one continuous tingle seemed to live in my groin.

But night was falling, and Catherine still struggled in her delirious state, not showing much improvement in her condition. It seemed to me she was somehow trying to get rid of the clothes herself... So I decided to help her. Promising myself to behave like a monk, I undressed her. She had taken her bikini off before having lunch, and I found her completely naked under her fancy and now stained dress...

How utterly beautiful she were, I thought. Yet, it crossed my mind how helplessly weakened a sick person is, totally dependent and not able to defend oneself, and how in this situation someone with bad intentions might take advantage and abuse... Suddenly, I felt that, at that exact moment, the sick and helpless people around the world were being abused, so many of them at that very moment... at this very moment, for it is happening now, do you realize it, Laurent? All around the world indeed... as I watched Catherine's lovely naked body, bare before my eyes for the first time. At the same time that I was filled with compassion for the sick, I felt those demanding sensations in my groin...

"What is it Laurent? Why are you crying?" Carlo interrupted the story.

Those were tears I could not restrain nor explain, and I had been glad that my father was so engrossed in his story, imagining that he would not notice.

"It's nothing... It's just that... thinking about my mom so sick and in pain, and seeing you so lost and unprepared..." And while that actually sensitized me, there was something worse... a thought had entered my mind crawling from my darkest fears... it invaded me... the awful truth that my parents had hidden from me... "You were both so young..." I could see Carlo... taking advantage of Catherine, and I had been born... from an abuse! That would explain so many things in my life... my karma.

"That was just a training..." Carlo smiled tenderly, and in an instant his sincere sweetness liberated me from my fears, "...for the times when you got sick, my son. Caring for an adult is demanding and complicated, but caring for a sick baby, a baby crying in pain..." Carlo was sad again. "... it's heartbreaking!" He reached across the table and gently squeezed my hand. "Please do not cry, Laurent, or I'll cry too!"

next episode

Episode 34 | Not yet your mother

previous episode

nudity and sex

"In the broad silence, I could hear the girl vomiting in the bathroom. And also crying, angrily, and I think even cursing... She kept flushing the toilet, repeatedly, and I thought I should have warned her about how it was crucial to save water on the island..." And I realized that Carlo had, without warning, returned to the Île du Blanchomme, to the evening of Catherine's arrival. "I waited for everything to become again quiet, and as she did not return to the beach, I went upstairs to look for her in the house."

I found her sitting at one of the tables that Armand had placed on the veranda, around a small lounge which he called the Music Room, where he kept his guitar and the stereo. It was the only room in the house that actually resembled a hostel, with the four tables creating a small eating environment, a bit like a charming Parisian bistro -- and it was there that the girl had sat. She should have found the matches, because she had lit a candle, and under that gentle light, for the first time I thought she looked beautiful in her fancy dress, which bared her back.

I brought her some juice I had prepared that afternoon, thinking she might like to drink something to get rid of the vomit's taste in her mouth -- I didn't mention that to her, of course -- and as an apology for my previous rudeness.

"Merci." she said, when I handed her the glass with juice. Inadvertently I glanced at her generous décolleté dress, and I caught a glimpse of her breasts under the loose fabric. But luckily, she seemed oblivious at my indiscretion. "I hate boats!" And then she was telling me how sick she had been since coming to the islands, having to use boats to get around, and I realized that she too was trying to apologize for her bad temper. "I have once been on a cruise ship, and I also felt sick, but these tiny little boats here... They are dreadful! And worst of all was travelling to this island!"

I tried to tell her the probable reason for the sea being rougher around the Île du Blanchomme were the dangerous currents encircling it, but she did not seem to want to listen to it, and just cut me off.

"Juice?" she grinned, having drunk half a glass until finally realizing what she was drinking. "Don't you have anything stronger?" And she clarified it as I looked at her blankly. "Are you sure that you understand French? Have you ever been to France?" But she did not want to hear my reply. "Don't you have wine? Or anything alcoholic? I need to recharge my energies..."

I laughed. Not at the request properly, and of course not at the fact that she was feeling weak, but at the absurdity of thinking that there could be wine on a tiny island lost in the Indian Ocean.

"Sure!" I told her wryly. "I'll bring you our wine list..." I added.

But she didn't listen to the irony in my remark -- it seemed my Italian accent was affecting her understanding of my French --, and I saw she took me seriously, for she was happy with the offer. She only understood it was a joke when I did not leave her side. I laughed again.

She was immediately offended, and again I saw her mood worsen.

She was furious at me as she jumped from the chair, her anger exploding. 

The girl had a delicate constitution and looked fragile, her figure so slim and petite -- her arms were so thin that it looked like they could break with that emotional burst. In contrast to her round breasts, that I found myself watching, and which were not too full but so well made, ​​like those from a Greek classical statue. In her outbursts, her frailty transformed into recklessness. 

It is her way of imposing herself, I thought.

"How rude you are!" she cried, full of scorn. "If you intend to host civilized beings, how can you not have wine? What kind of hole is this hostel? Mon Dieu, how long will I have to wait to get out of here?" She snorted.

"Maybe a week..." I replied calmly, without stepping into her ​​anger. "...at least!" I confess I felt a certain pleasure in torturing her with that disheartening information. "I'm not sure how often the boat comes around the island, but I think it never takes more than ten days to return..."

"How come you don't know? Don't you live here?" She moaned. "Ten days? You must be kidding! I need to wait that long for that damn boat? At this hole... with you?" She emphasized the 'you', making it clear that my company was worse than the uncivilized island and the dreadful boat. "Where are the other guests? Is there anyone more educated here that I can talk to?"

"No guests! I've said it before... this is not a hostel..." I said it gently, but it was as if I had punched the girl, who leaned over her own body, moaning, and walked towards the couch at the Music Room, where she collapsed.

"Can I help you? Do you want more juice?" I did not know what to do, I did not know what to say, I did not know how to behave in such a situation, but I guessed I should try. "Haven't you been overexposed to the sun on the beach, this afternoon?" I had noticed her skin was so pale and delicate, and it seemed to me to be overly pinkish, as if she had been assaulted by an army of sun rays. "It could be a heatstroke, and drinking water probably helps..."

"No!" She groaned, and gestured me to back away from her. "I want to be alone!" She fidgeted on the couch, restlessly. "Is the ground of the island moving?"

"No, of course not..." Her ideas were so ridiculous, but I tried not to laugh, and instead empathize with her suffering. "You could still be feeling the rocking of the boat..."

"Damned boats..." she whispered, and it seemed to me that in a couple more minutes she fell deeply asleep. 

I went to the kitchen to wash the dishes of the day, and I had to smile as I saw the lipstick mark on the girl's glass. Did I place my own lips on it, before washing the glass? I don't remember if I did it that first night already, but I certainly did it afterwards...

When I returned to the Music Room, she was sound asleep. Against my will, against my education, I again glanced at her breasts... and more intently this time, since I knew I wasn't being observed. From the way her body was twisted, I could see the edge of one of her nipples appearing under the fabric -- and I almost felt vertigo from the overwhelming wave of desire that invaded and dominated me. I had to run away from the room, confused, not to act brutally against the asleep, helpless girl.

I went down to the beach, as far as I could from that girl. What was that?!? Lust burst in me more violently than anything else I had ever felt, an urge like nothing I had experienced before... If I had stayed a moment longer beside that couch, watching the sleeping girl, I could not have stopped my hand from touching her... and not only grabbing her breasts, feeling her nipples... Next, I could have thrown myself on top of her, and maybe...

Maybe... I would had been conceived! I could not help but think.

I was a little embarrassed from the way Carlo was telling me his story, including such intimate confessions. But at the same time I was fascinated with the possibility to acknowledge my own conception... I guess many children have that curiosity about the occasion of their conception, and as a teenager I had once asked Catherine about it. Shamelessly, she had told me a story I now discovered had been thoroughly made up, about their romantic encounter in a fancy resort in Punaouilo -- and I was about to discover the truth.

"There haven't been many women in my life..." Carlo pondered. "From my mother, I remember very little. And when I moved in with my grandfather, he was already a widower. I think I took from him a certain asceticism, and my celibacy never bothered me. In my teenage years in the Apennines there was nothing sexually exciting -- the animals having intercourse and procreating, yes, but that did not arouse any desire in me, to try it myself. Moreover, sometimes we had some guys helping on the farm, but until Armand's heartfelt confession I had never thought of having sex with another man."

Parisian women astounded me, and I simply dismissed, them thinking they were meant for guys like Armand. To my eyes, they were voluptuous, sophisticated, intellectual, all full of attitudes and style -- even the waitresses and shop assistants seemed like untouchable queens to me. I could blush when I recalled them, especially at the Cinematéque, engaging in long, passionate kisses with their boyfriends. And I never considered having one for me -- I had to struggle to survive in Paris, make good use of my time to get the best training possible, and try to somehow establish myself in the city. Most of the times, despite Armand's generosity and hospitality, I felt like a transplanted tree striving to grow roots, against all odds, in foreign soil.  

Returning to the house, I thought I'd take a cold shower to calm myself. But that was not what happened at the bathroom, and for the first time since coming to the island, I jerked off. Not even the smell of her vomit still lingering in the bathroom turned me off. I stroked myself feeling a guilty pleasure all the time -- for I was finally wasting the sexual energy I had been diligently accumulating and transforming into vital and spiritual energy, like I had studied in that book about Indian philosophies. And I felt even more guilty for being so aware of the girl's presence in the house... and in my mind... and the fact that she was the reason why I was wildly touching myself like that... and when I came, I was thinking of her bared nipple and how it would have tasted in my mouth...

I had not known how to deal with women, and less did I know how to deal with my own lust.

I had learned from the masters of India that lust was the chief enslaver of human beings -- and since I had never really felt it before, I had considered myself naturally free of it. I took myself for the one remarkable exception to all beings. 

Until that evening on the Île du Blanchomme.

It was a tremendous explosion, or as if the walls of a huge dam had collapsed  -- and I could no longer contain the force of the waters of my desire. Neither wanted I.

"I went to sleep, and after having fidgeted in my bed for a few minutes, again I masturbated..." Carlo suddenly looked at me, as if returning from the Île du Blanchomme. "Am I embarrassing you, son? You know, I was in my early twenties, and a virgin... Now that I am older this seems so far away... almost a curiosity... and so unlikely to have happened. That strong lust... I was guiltily masturbating in my room, aware of being separated only by a tiny wall from the girl sleeping on the couch, whom I evoked in my wild fantasies... Was she real, or was she just an image? Her presence was real, but what she performed in my mind..." Carlo shrugged, dismissing those recollections. "That girl, Laurent, was not yet your mother... And as I furiously jerked off I was thinking of Armand, too, and equally feeling guilty, and confused..." 

Carlo gulped, and the continued. "I was as tormented as I had been the previous night, but it was a different kind of suffering -- instead of nightmares, I was fully awake and aroused by an imperative lust, which I did not seem to want to get rid of... In my mind, I could understand how enslaving it was, but those bodily sensations were so addictive good, so intensely pleasurable... And I gave in, again I gave in to it and masturbated until I exploded and was left drained..."

I eventually fell asleep, exhausted.

I woke up a few hours later, before dawn, again with a hard-on -- and needing to go to the bathroom to pee.

Since Armand had been gone, instead of using the corridor, I had taken to crossing his room, which was next to mine, to get to the bathroom, adjoining his.

I stopped halfway.

The girl must have woken up in the middle of the night, and having left the Music Room, wandered through the house without my noticing it -- but had she seen me, lying naked and hard on my bed?  She had found Armand's bedroom and taken hold of his big, comfortable bed.

For a moment I was just confused and baffled. But next I was furious with her, for she had occupied my friend's bed with such ease, something that I had been unable to do even in his absence. I almost kicked her out of that room, such was my indignation at her disrespecting the bed where I had experienced so many emotions and special feelings and sensations with Armand. Of course, to her it had been just an available bed in the hostel, not a love nest...

 But I did not wake her up in my rage, only because my demanding hard-on humiliated me... and I cautiously turned back, returning to my room.

Once back there, though separated by a single wall, my fury and indignation quickly vanished to give in to lust -- and while servicing my raging hard-on and watching dawn breaking, I fantasized about both Armand and Catherine, and I was now inside him, then I was in her, and in my thoughts I could not distinguish whom I was with, riding that bed that now united and mingled their bodies into one gender-less body, confusing them in my mind.

I saluted dawn with another big spurt in several ropes that I aimed at my body, so that I didn't have to clean the room afterwards. And all covered with sperm I went down to the beach to bathe in the sea, so as to cleanse myself and to calm down.

For another day in a row I did not meditate in the morning. I did try to sit, but the problem was no longer just calming my mind... since my thoughts kept going back to the girl, my body was no longer like a safe and stable mountain to which I'd bring back my wandering mind. The solid mountain had turned into a blazing volcano.

 So I just sat there, feeling the breeze on my naked body, watching the sun rise, and then I swam as long as I could, against the currents, trying to tire myself and pacify my desire. 

I felt I was losing it... but what was it? My freedom, probably. My privacy, surely. My peace of mind, of course. I was finally, essentially losing myself, as painful and pleasurable and definite as it could be!

next episode

Author's note: having been imported from a former version of the story, some of the comments below are dated previous to this post. Once the plot has not been altered, just the pagination, I am keeping them since they are very dear and precious to me.

Episode 20 | Paris, 1969

previous episode

"Carlo..." I murmured, and I almost called my father 'mon cher Carlo'. "Can I ask you when did you travel to the Île du Blanchomme?" The truth is, I had not the faintest idea when my father had lived in Paris, nor any other date in his life, apart from the year of his birth. And that because, despite looking older, he was my mother's age. I waited and smiled, as I observed him frowning, concentrated in doing some mental calculations. Simple as they were, they might have been a challenge to him.

"It was the beginning of the 1970s... I graduated from the École in...1973, I'm almost sure about that. Or was it the end of 1972?" Like a little boy, he was counting his fingers. "Then I spent a year, or almost a year... but at least three seasons in that abandoned factory in Paris...  Spring, Summer and Fall... So it must have been by the end of 1973 or the beginning of 1974, during the Winter, when I traveled to the Indian Ocean... Why, Laurent?"

"Nothing special." I lied. "I was just curious, trying to picture you, back then." Because I was doing my own calculations. I had been born in 1975 in Punaouilo, where Carlo had met Catherine, and now I was wondering when... and why... and how... he had crossed from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, and what had happened to Armand, who hadn't gone with him. Or had he? Could Carlo have had both Armand and my mother as lovers, and at the same time? I started wondering how distant were Punaouilo and the Île du Blanchomme.

"Do you want me to continue with the story, son? Or are you bored?"

"Bored? Mon Dieu, no!" I was intrigued, or more than that, I was thrilled. And invested in what I sensed was my father's upcoming confession of a gay love affair in his youth. "Please, Carlo, please!" 

"After having slept only a few hours, I still woke up much later than the other days. Armand was sound asleep, and I let him sleep." Carlo continued.

It had been a long night, full of acute revelations and intense emotions.  A lot for both of us to take in, but for my friend, who had been living in a state of tension and expectation for so long, it must have been exhausting.

The sun was already high up, and it was too hot to sit to meditate under the shade of a palm tree.

Instead, I decided to go for a walking meditation around the island.

But I could not concentrate on my breath, nor my steps.

My mind was running wild, and for once I decided to let it run free, and follow its mad jumps and bumps, out through the malleability of time and into space immensity.

It came as an insight to me that Armand and I had never been too personal in our conversations. Maybe when we spoke about our respective families and childhoods, our upbringing, our share each of solitude as only children. But that was all, and it wasn't often. Hadn't the previous night, as we immersed ourselves in the stimulating smells and gentle sounds of a tropical, secluded island where we were the only human beings, been the perfect cradle of an unforgettable first time -- when we had really and deeply opened our hearts to one another?

We had been constantly together -- or seeking one another's company in Paris --, even if we studied different disciplines at the École des Beaux-Arts. Architecture for him, and Fine Arts for me. That had actually helped our friendship, since we had even more knowledge and fresh information to exchange. And all the time, we had talked to one another, a lot, interminably during the days and often late into the nights, until we'd fall asleep, exhausted and satisfied.

We arrived in Paris in 1969. That's an easy enough date to remember, because everybody kept saying we were one year late. I was constantly being informed that I had lost one of the grandest moments in the history of the city, that had affected the whole country, maybe the whole western world. Everything had changed, everything was new. But whatever the changes May 1968 had brought, I could not have guessed -- to me, a peasant coming from the isolated high mountains, it was all indeed new. Can you imagine the day I arrived in Paris, Laurent? When I stepped from the train onto the platform, it was as if my senses had blown up -- and for months I felt they were daily being heightened. Of course I had noticed how the scenery had changed, from the little village where I boarded the first local train with other peasants and chickens, to become increasingly more dense, and populated, villages turning into cities, and for the first time my eyes met the fascinating ugliness of the industries and the frightening clutch of the suburbs. But nothing had prepared me to Paris -- its noises, smells, the long avenues I had to walk all on my own looking for the Auberge de la Jeunesse, as the cars and scooters went by in an unbelievable speed, as I went by the array of shops and fancy dressed people in a mesmerizing, affluent stream of diversity. The other students could mock me, and say whatever they wanted -- everything was new to me, including the language, the food, the school, bearing my ways in the academic world and venturing into my own artistic path. I wasn't more overwhelmed because I was so humble and poor, and could not really mix with the Parisian crowds, that I watched from a prudent distance.

To Armand, a prince brought up not far from the City of Light, that he had been often visiting, nothing was really new in Paris. He had watched the news about the student's revolution on TV, at his home in the Chateâu de Montbelle, and after the initial shock and wave of fear, a certain natural and defiant or artificial, defensive blasé attitude he seemed to cultivate, had taken over. Contrary to me, he seemed to glide untouched and unaffected through the admirable new world people praised around us.  

Or so I believed.

We first met in a museum, starting a conversation over two paintings in a corner. They showed the Russian writer Dmitriy Furmanov in an aristocratic pose, and on the other was an anonymous young man sketching -- we couldn't have been each better represented in those depictions. I was visiting the museum for the first time, while Armand was there again just for his best loved paintings. From that specific pair, he knew plenty of details and was eager to share them with me. From the start, he was my first master in Paris.

At some point during our conversation, I recall him mentioning he had already seen me at the École. Naively, unaware of the wealthy person I had before me, I asked him if he knew someone who wanted to share a room -- because I'd have to leave the Auberge de la Jeunesse soon --, implying that maybe he needed a room himself. And after a lovely day well spent together at the museum and the nearby park, having both realized how our presences harmonized and we easily congregated, having shared impressions and opinions in an unstoppable torrent that left us stimulated and pacified at the same time, came Armand's invitation to visit the apartment his father had rented for him, to see whether I would like to share it with him.

For me, his small apartment in the bustling 6e arrondessiment, that he had described as being quite modest -- since he held the Château de Montbelle as comparison -- was instead luxurious, even grand, if I were to have the Auberge and even our stone house in the Apennines in perspective. And for the next five years, realizing I was in Paris at my own expense, Armand did not allow me to pay more than the amount I had payed for a bed at the Auberge, since I had insisted in paying him something at least. 

At the beginning of my stay in Paris, your great-grandfather Tarso was too disappointed and angry at me for having abandoned him in the Apennines, and would not send me any money. Not that I ever asked him for any aid, ever. I knew he would never agree with and approve of my decision to leave our ancestral lands to study and practice Painting in Paris. But later he repented, and did start sending me whatever little money he spared. 

Though I had to work hard to make money in Paris, painting walls here and there, it was a derisive amount I handed Armand every month. But he always found a way of returning the money, buying art supplies, books or even clothes for me.

Armand and I came from completely different backgrounds. And instead of separating, those differences fascinated and reunited us. Armand thought it was magical and a very special form of wisdom that I could guess the weather from looking at the sky and the clouds, taking in consideration the sun and moon lights, as soon I started understanding what the climate in Paris was like. And point to him that a rose was not an azalea, or that strawberries and pumpkins did not grow on trees. He was astonished with all the information I poured on him as we walked around the Jardin des Tuileries, just across the Seine river from our school. I never judged him silly for mistaking a raspberry for a cherry, because that would have made me silly, myself. 

And if I had never been to a museum nor a theater before I had joined the École, Armand had already visited them all in most European countries. Those previous visits with his parents, and an impressive quantity of books he had read, turned him into the most accomplished guide to the Parisian cultural life I could have wished for. And I never judged him arrogant, nor ever thought he was showing off his knowledge, since it felt like just another form of his generosity pouring over me. 

To me, it was a budding period! Armand delighted in introducing me to so many wonderful places and things. We would stroll through the city for many hours, while he pointed all sites of interest, and told their history. From the alleys mentioned by Hugo in Les Miresables to all the sceneries from Balzac's novels, Armand made Paris an even more fascinating, lively city for me. Thanks to him, I could recognize the spots depicted in several paintings, too, and the Arts dominated my daily life in an interplay between past memories, or depictions, and present impressions.

Whenever he had two tickets or the entrance was free, we would go to museums, theaters and the movies together, preferably at the Cinémathèque Française. Chabrol and Costa-Gravas, Louis Malle and François Truffaut, Godard and Resnais, but also Visconti and Bergman and Tarkovsky -- I discovered them all under Armand's enthusiastic guidance. And from his frequent dates with the well-off girls, he would always bring me the exquisite booklets of the best operas and plays in town, that I could not go to myself. What else could a peasant like me have wished for? My life was already richer than I had ever pictured.

For many days we would debate about a controversial play or movie we had watched. Since my French was just rudimentary in the beginning, Armand also shared his books with me, and was very patient and dedicated in teaching me his language. I had never read French poetry before he gave me Baudelaire's 'Les Fleurs du Mal', followed by Rimbaud's 'Le Bateau ivre'. I flipped, as with my friend's aid I made my way through French Literature. In the five years we were roommates, he erected a wonderful library in our apartment, that I profited so much from. We used to call it 'The Church', our church. "Let's go to church?", "Let's meet at the church after class?" It sounded completely démodé, and listening to that our colleagues from the École regarded us as two antiquated religious fanatics, while we rejoiced with our private joke.

It's funny to recall how much time we spent just talking, debating, discussing. Many times we would miss a meal or even class because we engaged in a conversation and forgot about everything -- and everyone -- else.

We rarely discussed politics. The Cold War and the Vietnam War were going on, but we lived in a private, rather harmonious world we had built at our apartment, and that we took with us everywhere that we would go, in our conversations and the immense pleasure we had in each other's company. 

But religion was an almost daily topic. Actually, it was more on spirituality, since none of us was religious, despite our anecdote about 'The Church'. We both agreed that religion actually parted us from experiencing the sacredness of all things. We debated about God -- the concept, the idea, its existence or non existence -- and on faith. It strengthened our bonds, since not many students our age had interest on those topics in those days.

The meaning of life? Were we born with a mission or a purpose in life? Or was the purpose of life simply giving life a purpose? 

Armand was highly cultivated and would bring quotes from Plato, Kierkegaard, Teilhard de Chardin, and other names I'd hear for the first time in our conversations. I'd talk about the crops and the seasons, about magnificent lightning storms and the fierce winds in the mountains, about observing a baby deer daily evolving, and all the corresponding insights I had gained through those experiences.

Though many times we agreed on books and movies, more than not, to me it actually didn't matter whether we concurred on a subject or not. I didn't have to like Heidegger nor the Bauhaus school; to me it was important how these fresh things Armand kept bringing up would help me to avert my peasant past and build a brand new future. Like I had learned to comply and silence when he raised his hand to interrupt me, before I let out some foolishness, I easily gave in to his opinions, and let him conduct me in the world of high culture. Just like he would let me guide him through the gardens and along the alleys of the Parisian parks naming plants and animals for him, though often in Italian, directing his awareness towards the birds singing and the rustling of the leaves, the perfume of the flowers or the scent of rain coming with the wind. On the other hand, he introduced me to Kandinsky and Morandi, among other wonderful painters -- his advice and trained glance would influence my own painting --, while I made him notice the intricately beautiful patterns of moss and the variety of shapes in the clouds.

Armand too, with my company and rather erratic guidance, had started diverting from his past. Showing him how a simple pebble could be as unique and beautiful as the marble that adorned the palaces in Paris -- as well as his own Château de Montbelle --, was rather revolutionary in terms of his cultivated tastes and values. Having an eye to tell the difference between Carrara and Calacatta marbles, it was literally groundbreaking that I would point at the beauty ordinarily existing underneath his feet. 

But who could have guessed the ashrams in faraway India were coming into his life? And that I was the one to be responsible for that addition, and the upcoming shift in Armand's perspectives? I am pretty sure I had never heard about any of those Indian philosophies before I stumbled upon Heinrich Zimmer's book, the one that had made a long, unauthorized journey from a Parisian café to rest in Herr Weismann's libray on the Île du Blanchomme.




next episode