He scrutinized me carefully, then said, "Ciao. You're the one I've heard so much about?"
I gave him a questioning look and replied, "It depends on whom you have in mind. What exactly have you heard?"
"Well, we know you're very young, even if I personally don't believe you're eighteen yet. And not because you don't look it, but because I feel it. Anyhow, they told me you've participated in soirees like this on many occasions, although only with men."
I blushed and wanted to sink. "Who told you this?"
"Bah, what does it matter? People talk… You're a pretty little slut, aren't you?" He smiled.
I tried to stay calm and play the game without ruining everything.
"I've never been into planned encounters. I agreed to do it because I wanted to."
He stared at me, knowing full well that I was lying. Still, he went along with it. "There are always plans of one sort or another. Some people have plans that are linear and orderly, while others prefer a more rococo caprice."
"And then there's mine: a bit of both," I said, fascinated by his response.
Valerio approached and told me to join him on the sofa.
I nodded to the man, although I didn't say goodbye since I was almost certain that during the soiree we would wind up penetrating each other.
Sitting on the sofa were a muscular young man and two vulgar women wearing heavy makeup, garish and provocative. One had platinum blond hair.
The Prof and I sat in the center of this huge sofa. With one hand he began to caress my breast beneath my pullover, immediately dragging me through shame and embarrassment.
"Come on, Valerio, do we really have to be the ones to start?"
"Why not? Don't you like it?" he asked, biting my earlobe.
"I was thinking just the opposite," the muscular one brashly remarked. "She has desire written all over her face."
"Desire for what?" I said defiantly.
He didn't respond. Instead he shot a hand beneath my skirt and worked it between my thighs, kissing me furiously. I was beginning to let myself go, but his silly violence was dragging me away again. I lifted my buttocks a bit to kiss him, and the Prof took advantage of this move. He caressed my ass with slow, gentle gestures that gradually turned hot and determined. The people around me no longer existed, even if they were there, watching me, waiting for one of the two men to penetrate me. While Muscles was kissing me, one of the women snaked her arms around his chest and kissed his neck. Then Valerio lifted my skirt: everyone was admiring my ass and my sex, flaunted on a strange sofa among strangers. My back was arched, and I was offering myself completely to him while Muscles was grabbing my tits and squeezing them hard.
"Mmmm, you're as fragrant as a young peach," said a man who had come up to nuzzle me, "soft and smooth, just washed, fresh."
The young peach will ripen, whereupon it will lose first its color, then its taste, and then its skin will soften and sag. Finally, it will rot, and worms will suck out the pulp.
I opened my eyes wide; my face reddened. Suddenly I turned toward the Professor and said, "Let's go. I don't want this."
It happened just at the moment when my body was yielding completely… Poor Flavio, poor Muscles, poor everybody, poor me. I abandoned them all, including my hard-as-nails self. I got it together fast and, with tears in my eyes, ran down the long hallway. I opened the door and made for the car sitting in the road. Its windows were fogged with the thick humidity that wrapped the house and me.
Not a word on the way back. Only when I reached the gate of my house did I tell him. "You still haven't said anything about the letter."
A long silence, then simply, "Adieu, Lolita."
20 June
6:50 A.M.
I put my lips to the phone and heard his voice scarcely roused from sleep. "I want to live with you," I whispered, my voice a thread.
24 June
Night has fallen, Diary, and I am on the terrace outside the house, watching the sea.
It's so calm, quiet, pleasant; the tempered heat tones down the waves, and I hear their roar in the distance, peaceful and delicate… The moon is partly hidden; it seems to be watching me with its compassionate, indulgent gaze.
I ask her what I should do.
It is difficult, she tells me, to strip away incrustations from one's heart.
My heart… I don't recall having one. Perhaps I've never known if I do.
A touching scene at the cinema never touched me, a powerful song never moved me, and I've always only half believed in love, thinking I could never actually experience it. Yet I've never been cynical. No, the fact is that nobody ever taught me how to express the love I kept hidden inside, concealed from everyone. It was somewhere, it needed to be tracked down. I tried, flinging my desire into a world from which love was banished. And nobody, I mean nobody, blocked my path, saying, "No, little one, you can't enter here."
My heart was locked in a frozen cell. To break through it with a decisive blow would have been risky: my heart might have been shattered forever.
But then the sun arrived, not this Sicilian sun, which burns, inflames, belches fire, but a mild, discreet, generous sun, which melted the ice slowly and thus avoided any sudden flooding of my arid soul.
In the beginning, I felt I ought to ask him when we should make love, but later, when I was about to, I bit my lip. He realized something was up and asked me, "What is it, Melissa?" He calls me by my name; to him I am Melissa, I am a person, an essence, not an object, a body.
I shook my head. "Nothing, Claudio, really."
Then he took my hand and placed it on his chest.
I took a deep breath and stammered out, "I was asking myself when you'd want to make love."
He was silent, and I was mortified. I felt my cheeks burn.
"No, Melissa, love, I'm not the one who should decide when we'll make love. We'll decide together if and when we do it. It'll be you and me, together." He smiled.
I gazed at him, astonished, and he realized my stunned look begged him to continue.
"Because, you see, when two people join it is the height of spirituality, and this can be achieved only if they love each other. It's like a whirlpool enveloping their bodies, and they are no longer themselves. One is inside the other in the deepest, most intimate, and most beautiful way."
Even more amazed, I asked him what he meant.
He replied, "I'm in love with you, Melissa."
Why does this man believe so deeply in what I considered an impossibility only a few days ago? Why has life shown me nothing but wickedness, filth, and brutality till now? Can this extraordinary creature offer me a hand and raise me from the cramped, stinking hole where I crouch in fear? Moon, do you think he can do it?
Incrustations are hard to remove from one's heart. But perhaps this heart can beat strongly enough to shatter its carapace into a thousand pieces.
30 June
My ankles and wrists feel bound by an invisible rope. I'm suspended in the air, and someone is pulling from below, shouting in a hellish voice, while someone else is pulling from above. I jerk up and down, weeping, sometimes touching clouds, sometimes worms. I keep repeating my name, Melissa, Melissa, Melissa, like some magic word that can save me. I grab hold of myself and cling to me.
7 July
I've repainted the walls of my room; now they're pale blue. Marlene Dietrich's languid gaze no longer looks over my desk; now there's a photo of me, my hair in the wind, as I calmly observe the chalk-stained boats in the port. Behind me stands Claudio, his arms encircling my waist, his hands resting delicately on my white blouse, lowering his face to plant a kiss on my shoulder. He seems not to notice the boats, but rather to be absorbed in contemplating us.
After the photo was snapped, he whispered in my ear, "Melissa, I love you."