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“Rewind”
VI
The sun is finally on its way down, and a chill settles on Max, turning a long hot day's sweat ice cold. One moment, the sun is low and huge in the sky, flooding these foreign hills with orange light. Then it vanishes behind the mountains on the horizon and everything is tinged with gray. The hills, the trees, even Max's hand in front of his face, all seem a little blurrier around the edges. Minutes ago, Max had been stumbling along, still trembling from the noise of a single gunshot. Now he stands completely still. Already, the horrors of the day are beginning to feel distant and long ago – unreal, even. Is it possible that this entire nightmare has been just that? A bad dream and nothing more?
His knees finally give in, and Max half sits, half falls down on the ground. He runs his fingers through the grass, but does not feel the expected tingle – he is completely numb. Shock, maybe. Max will take whatever blessing he can. A sudden wave of fatigue washes over him, and the possibility of sleep, of momentary respite, is too much of a temptation to resist. Max lays his head down on the soft grass, closes his eyes, and tries to forget.
It may be an hour later, or it may only be a minute, when Max is woken by a distant chiming. He sits up, confused at first as to his unfamiliar surroundings, before remembering where he is and what he has done. He stands up on uncertain legs, turns around, and determines that the sound is coming from Valle del Sole – the village he fled earlier this evening. But it is pitch black now, surely too late for church bells...
The last of his exhaustion drains away as he sees flashing lights in the darkness. Not church bells, police sirens. And they're getting closer. If Max still had the gun in his hand, he believes he would choose this moment to turn it on himself. But the old revolver is in Valle del Sole, lying next to a dead man on a hotel room floor.
Max scans his surroundings, looking for an escape route or simply a place to hide, and gets nothing. The police cars are closer now, doubtlessly tearing down these country roads in pursuit of what they believe to be a dangerous madman who is running for his life. But Max is tired. He sits back down on the grass, wondering if they will see him among the shadows, or drive straight past. Either way, he will know soon enough. The sirens are louder than ever now, close enough to hurt his ears. Max is almost relieved when he sees a car stop, twenty feet from where he is sitting. Two policemen emerge, and he rises to greet them. Thank God, he thinks. It's over.
V
“Vitto?” Max can barely hear his own voice. “Vitto?” It's just a vibration in his throat, making no sound. Or at least, no sound that can be heard over the ringing in his ears and the thick, stifling stillness in the air. “Vitto...” He says his lover's name one final time, knowing that Vittorio will not answer.
He is lying motionless on the floor, just as handsome dead as he had been alive. His dark skin still has a flush to it, and his mouth is ever so slightly open, lips parted in surprise. He almost looks like he might stand up any second and ask Max what the hell is going on.
But Max knows that won't happen. Vitto's eyes are open, but they've lost their dark intensity; they are vacant now, glassy, staring up at the ceiling like marbles or buttons sewn into the face of a discarded teddy bear. At least they are not judging him.
It dawns on Max that the gun is still in his hand. No smoke is pouring forth from it like there would be if this were an old film, but it does feel red hot against his skin. He tries to release his grip on it, but for a moment it's as if his fingers are glued to the thing. Then his whole hand spasms outward and the revolver falls onto the carpet with a muffled clunk. Now it's lying not too far from Vitto, the cause and the effect, there together like a sick tableau.
Max forces himself to look at what he's done. The hole in Vitto's chest isn't particularly big, and that in itself seems wrong. Unfair. One tiny piece of metal should not be able to do this. And all that blood... it's soaked into Vitto's shirt like spilled wine. That's all it should have been, Max thinks, just a clumsy mistake. A thrown glass or an angry shove, but not this. Never this.
The distant sound of a bird cawing somewhere outside the small window reminds Max that a world still exists beyond these four walls. A world that may soon venture inside to investigate a loud noise that was followed by silence. “Just like a gunshot,” one of the villagers might well say. How long has he been stood like this, paralyzed, over his boyfriend's body? It feels like hours, days, weeks. Surely any moment there is going to be a knock on the door.
It is with this thought in his mind that Max edges carefully around what used to be Vitto. He reaches the bedroom door, and tears his gaze away from the body so that he can unlock it. He feels he should take one final second to do something, but he doesn't know what. Say goodbye, maybe, or utter a quick prayer. Max can't do either of these things, so he crosses himself instead before going out into the hallway and closing the door behind him. Now that it is no longer in sight, he can begin to think more clearly. Obviously, the rational thing to do is to turn himself in. But something inside him is saying that he stopped behaving rationally the moment he shot his lover.
It comes home. Vitto is dead. Max will never hear his voice again; those English vowels enriched with the hint of an accent from his homeland. They'll never kiss again, never make love. As the full realisation hits him, Max feels himself die. No, this isn't death. This is something worse, something less natural.
He stumbles down the stairs and falls into Agostina. The gray-haired landlady has none of the twinkle in her eye that Max saw earlier that day. She looks fearful, horrified. She speaks to him in her own tongue, and even though he doesn't understand a word that she says, he knows she is asking him where Vitto is. Then she switches to slow, laboured English.
“What... what you do?”
There are tears in her eyes now, and Max feels their threatening sting in his own. The inn feels unbearably claustrophobic; there seems to be no oxygen, no light.
“I'm sorry,” he says. “I'm so sorry, oh God...” He shoves past Agostina and runs out into the open, fleeing the scene of his crime.
IV
Vitto is chasing him. Max doesn't need to look back to know that. What's more, Vitto knows this alien village a lot better than he does. He grew up playing on these narrow, labyrinthine streets and walkways. Where could Max possibly hide where Vitto won't find him? He practically throws himself round a corner and there, miraculously, is the back door of the tavern, offering some degree of safety, no matter how relative. How is it that in what barely feels like a minute, he has traversed the small town? Max doesn't stop to answer his own question, but instead rushes for the open inn door, with no idea how far, or if still, Vitto is behind him.
He nearly slips and goes flying on the tiles that cover the kitchen floor, but ends up zeroing his momentum by crashing into the sturdy oak table. A fractured, rushed idea comes to him, brought on but not thought through by the questionable logic of panic. Max opens the third drawer in the kitchen dresser, reaches in and grabs what he knew would be there, then heads into the hallway. The sound of a man's weight colliding against the swinging back door speaks volumes, and once again without a single glance backwards, Max runs up the stairs two at a time. Slamming their bedroom door shut behind him, Max curses under his breath when he comes to realise that he has no way of locking it. He hears Vitto coming up the stairs, and feels the same tightness in his stomach, chest and throat that an animal must do when it discovers it has been cornered. It strikes Max as slightly ridiculous that in the space of an afternoon, he and Vitto have gone from being a couple to what could be described as predator and prey.
Vitto's footsteps are directly behind him now, and Max imagines her can hear him breathing on the other side of the door, precious air cycling in and out, his lungs aglow, inflamed from the chase and that other adrenaline-inducing agent – anger. Max tries to press his entire body back against the wood, already knowing that his tired English frame and some old pine will probably not offer much of a challenge to Vitto's strength; the same masculine fortitude that has so often been a turn-on for Max. It was unbelievable, the feeling of Vitto on top of him in bed, or on the floor, or wherever the mood took them, which in the early days had been often. It hadn't been emasculating in the slightest, no – Max remembers looking up into those dark eyes and knowing that if he were to simply surrender, Vitto could keep fucking until there was nothing left of slight, pale Max.
So he isn't at all surprised when the door springs open behind his back and he is flung forward, further into the room. He turns to face Vittorio, who is in the process of locking the door with its one and only key. He leaves it in the lock, and stares at the floor in front of him for a moment before looking up at Max. He seems to have lost some of his heat, and Max knows that the white hot rage has now crystallized into cold fury.
He wonders if Vitto will hit him, or if the moment will overtake them both and his throat will soon end up between firm, immovable hands. Something along these lines is coming, of this he has no doubt. A lifetime ago, not long after they first met, the subject of infidelity came up. Vitto's exact words: “I'd kill a lover who betrayed me.” He'd laughed it off, of course, although his mirth was entirely unconvincing. All the same, Max had marveled at such a Medieval world view, thinking that surely it was better to lose one's life to a crime of passion than to live it with no passion at all. Now, Max curses his younger self for such a romantic, preposterous notion.
Vitto is clenching and unclenching his fists; trying to calm himself, maybe, or just warming up for the final act? For a split second Max considers giving into Fate, and letting whatever may happen in this tiny Italian bedroom just happen. It is only when Vitto strides forward, the look in his eyes unreadable, that the cornered animal finally remembers its own teeth, and Max raises the gun in his right hand. In the split second it takes for the trigger to give way against his trembling index finger, Max sees everything in slow motion. He sees Vitto's eyes widen at the sight of the weapon, as if only just registering its existence. He sees Vitto's fists clench one last time, not threateningly, but almost as if in surprise.
The shot is so loud that Max wonders if he has gone deaf in the immediate aftermath. His hand and arm jerk upwards and backwards, reverberating from the force of the old revolver. What have you done? He asks himself, watching Vitto crumple and silently lay himself on the carpet. Max had been pointing dead ahead. He'd felt Vitto's chest pushing forward against the short barrel of the gun that he took from the third drawer of the kitchen dresser. He'd only picked it up as a half thought – something to scare Vitto away. He'd never meant for it to fulfill its own unexpected destiny. But... it had been exactly where he knew it would be. He remembers Agostina's muttered prophecy, and thinks liar. I'm not lucky at all.
III
It is scorching hot, and Max fools himself into thinking that he can actually feel his skin burning in the afternoon sun. This only serves to exacerbate his already petulant mood – because what this twentysomething going on thirtysomething is doing, in this field, in the middle of the afternoon, underneath this baking hot sun, is sulking. It's something he has become quite an expert in, since he first met Vitto (which is longer ago than he often thinks). He is a semi-professional sulker, and a connoisseur of all related activities; brooding, storming off, the art of the cold shoulder. Perfectly useless skills that he has nonetheless perfected during his time (which sounds and often feels like a sentence) with Vitto.
He can't remember exactly what it was that drove him out of the inn and into the blazing day in such a huff, it could have been one of any number of things. A look, an interruption, the wrong kind of smile... Max knows that he should give Vitto a break, that he should acknowledge fault in himself for the increasingly visible cracks in their once unblemished relationship. In fact, that is the very reason why Max took time off work and come on this trip, so they could reconnect. He hadn't anticipated the exact opposite happening. Ever since their arrival just this morning, Max has felt like an outsider, the odd one out, speaking neither the same verbal language nor the equally significant body language as everybody else in the village, including Vitto. Vitto, who claims not to have spoken a word of Italian since he was a child, when he moved to Britain with his family, and now talks fluently, almost personally, with every local as if they are cousins or childhood friends. Which, reasonably, they could be. Of course Vitto doesn't mean to exclude him, but too late Max has woken up – what else was going to happen in a place like this?
A voice, heavier with accent than Vitto's but more easily comprehensible than Agostina's, surprises hiim.
“Cheer up,” the voice says. “It might happen.”
“You mean it might never happen,” Max says, turning around. The speaker, a young man, shrugs.
“Both make no sense.”
Max smiles and shrugs too, which is a sort of silent agreement. The young man, who Max feels he might have already met today, is not wearing sunglasses, yest is not squinting at all in the blinding daylight. Max's eyes are half-closed, even hidden and protected as they are behind his expensive but uncomfortable shades.
They both take a step forward, shortening the distance between them to almost a yard. The youth is startlingly attractive, but it is clear that he is very aware of this.
“What's your name?” Max asks, remembering how to say it in Italian but choosing English.
“Nino,” says the stranger, effectively making him a stranger no more.
“Max.” He's unsure for a moment as to what else he should say, and so hesitates before adding; “I'm here visiting, with my –”
“I know who you are,” Nino says, not ominously but maybe just a little mischievously. “You're the English that Vitto brought with him.”
It makes sense that people would be aware of him; Valle del Sole is a tiny village, and how else might Nino have known to address him in English... Nevertheless, Max feels oddly exposed, almost as if the secret reason behind this visit (a salvage mission for their relationship) is also common knowledge.
“You know Vittorio?” Max asks, to deflect the questions being asked inside him, questions like don't you already know it's doomed?
“Not really,” Nino replies. “He's older than me, I was just a bambino when he went away. But our parents were friends; when they first heard that he was making arrangements to come back for a while, it wasn't long before everybody knew. But nobody heard a thing about you... Everybody is very curious.”
“Curious about what, exactly?” Curious as to whether he really loves Vitto?
“La Valle del Sole is very old and very small. No man who left ever brought another man back with him.”
“Oh, it's about that.” Max relaxes a little. He stopped worrying about that sort of controversy so long ago, it now feels practically benign, quaint even, when compared to his more recent troubles. Max remembers swearing to never see his family again after they “disapproved” of his relationship with Vitto, an oath that lasted a whole year before they offered an olive branch. And nowadays he finds himself wondering if the man he chose over his own flesh and blood has really been worth all that heartache.
“Yes, that's it,” Nino says. “Are you in love?” Max peers through his sunglasses straight into his young eyes, and can't come up with a simple yes or no answer.
“I'm... tired.” He says, finally. “Being with Vittorio is so full on, all of the time, it takes everything out of me.” Nino at this point says nothing, offers no interruption or insight, so Max continues. “When we're together, I can be so completely happy one minute, and so completely miserable the next... and when we're not together, I find myself unable to do the simplest things because I'm so overwhelmed by the world outside of him. So maybe we're in love, or...”
“Or maybe you're obsessed with each other,” Nino says. Max smiles ruefully.
“Your English is very good,” he tells him. “Apart from that very first phrase –”
“Confession,” Nino butts in. “I hoped you would correct me. I wanted to talk to you.”
“Why?” Max is momentarily confused. Momentarily, meaning in the moment that it takes Nino to close the remaining distance between them and slip his tongue into Max's mouth, smoothly and swiftly, meeting no resistance, as if it belongs there. Max is shocked, taken aback, but doesn't push Nino away, instead savouring the taste of someone new, the touch of someone different. The kiss lasts for a minute or two, during which Nino's hands roam all over Max's body; gliding down his back, cupping his buttocks, and then making their way round to the front.
When their fingers intertwine, and Nino's grip tightens until he is dragging him out of the field by both hands, Max doesn't object. Nino leads him back towards the village, to a small house that is cool and shady on the inside. As soon as the door is secured shut behind them, Max takes off his sunglasses, presses Nino up against a wall and kisses him again; harder this time. By now they both know what is going to happen.
Nino's mouth is moist and impossibly soft wherever it goes, his young body pliable like a sapling. Max is stronger than him, bigger – an experience, a viewpoint, that he has been deprived for a long time. He knows that he is allowing himself to be seduced, that his very recognition of this fact posits a certain weakness. But he feels power, too. The power to hold both of Nino's wrists down, the power to give pleasure. That position of control is just as seductive as the youth who moans and bucks underneath him for the better part of an hour.
After, when Max has put his clothes back on and his sunglasses dangle between his fingers, Nino stretches out on the narrow bed and for a moment looks like a satisfied cat, arching and purring.
“I have to go,” Max says, in a voice that sounds nothing like his own. Nino makes a small sound that might be “alright” and might just as likely be him clearing his throat. Max stands, crosses the small room, and is about to open the door when he hears Nino come up behind him, then feels him kiss the back of his neck. Why, he thinks, why? He shrugs Nino off, the guilt already welling up inside him, and opens the door.
He has taken less than two steps out onto the street when he sees Vitto. Their eyes meet, and for a split second Max feels a jolt in his stomach, and dares to think that maybe things will be okay after all. Then Vitto's gaze shifts, and Max knows he can see Nino in the doorway behind him. The guilt turns to fear in an instant, and Max's sunglasses fall to the ground with a pricey clatter as he begins to run.
II
“Welcome to the valley of the sun,” says an old man with skin the colour of walnuts. “And welcome to la taverna di mela.” Max does a quick, ham-fisted translation in his head; The Apple Inn. It's a nice enough name, and the small bed and breakfast looks homely and welcoming. Although Max is fairly certain he hasn't seen a single apple tree so far.
Vitto is talking to their new hosts, a handsome, aged couple, in rapid Italian that he can't follow. Despite having spent several years supposedly “learning” the tongue from Vitto, Max can barely string a sentence together and he's always been content that way. Now that they are in provincial territory, he is already feeling out of place and inadequate.
Agostina, unlike her husband Blanco, speaks barely any English whatsoever. Her skin is a similar colour, and together they both look like they bathe in olive oil. While Vitto speaks, she doesn't take her eyes off Max. Her face is still, serene, but she's smiling in her eyes and Max likes that in people. He'll take kind eyes any day over a dazzling grin or crooked smirk, both of which Vitto uses to sweep people off their feet the first time they meet him. Sometimes Max thinks that he can't help it, and that could well be true. To be so handsome must surely mean that new acquaintances, especially women and men of a certain disposition, are prone to forming crushes after a nicely put “hello” and a smile. Or, as they say here, “ciao”.
Agostina is having none of it though. While Blanco seems to have all sorts of things to say, prolonging his conversation with Vitto, his wife remains silent. And her stare stays on Max. So much so, that it begins to make him uncomfortable and he forcibly turns to Vitto and Blanco, trying to ingratiate himself in their exchange by nodding along with whatever the hell it is they are saying.
Shortly after, when they're settled in the room and unpacked, Blanco invites them downstairs for a game of cards. Vitto sits down to shuffle the deck, all the while talking to Blanco, while Agostina and Max are sent into the kitchen to get wine and glasses. Agostina searches the kitchen dresser for a corkscrew, finally finding one in the third drawer. Max sees something in the drawer that he doesn't believe at first. He looks away, as if he's inadvertently walked in on somebody nude, then looks back furtively, and there it is still – a gun. Agostina catches him looking, and jerks her head towards the back door, as if to say just in case. And that makes a certain amount of sense, Max reckons. If trouble were coming, it wouldn't knock on the front door to announce its arrival, it would sneak around and come right in the back door, surprising you from behind.
The card game itself is a nightmare. It's complicated and full of rules that make no sense to Max, explained as they are to him in a curious hybrid of English and Italian. He loses three games in a row, and Agostina laughs, although it sounds like an old car horn honking. She mutters something, then knocks back her wine. Max slides his own glass over to her, making a senseless gesture as if to explain that it is a bit early in the day for him to be drinking.
“What did she say?” He asks Vitto.
“She said...” Vitto sips his wine, sets his glass down then begins to shuffle the cards again, “sfortuna al gioco, fortuna in amore. It means that you are unlucky at cards, but lucky in love.” He smiles as he says this, almost leering, because of course Max is lucky – who wouldn't think themselves fortunate to be with a man like Vitto? Incensed by this arrogance, Max rises from his seat and steps away from the table.
“I'm going for a walk,” he tells Vitto. He smiles to Agostina and Blanco, then leaves the room.
I
The sun has been up for a couple of hours by the time the taxi arrives in the idyllic village that is La Valle del Sole, carrying two tourists from the airport. Well, one is a tourist; the other was born here, even if he has himself forgotten it over time. Vitto, the once-native, gently shakes his companion from the doze he has fallen into on the journey.
“We're here,” he says. Max seems disoriented for a moment, and looks straight into Vitto's eyes as if that will somehow help him get his bearings.
“I had a weird dream,” he mumbles, his voice and manner still thick with the heavy warmth of sleep. “Sorry, what did you just say?”
“I said, we're here.”
Max finally takes a look out of the grimy window, and a smile breaks out on his face.
“This is going to be great,” he says, turning back to Vitto and kissing him on the cheek. “It's just what we need.” Vitto kisses him back, and whispers in his ear;
“Ti amo.”
“I love you too...” They kiss again, and Vitto's hands begin to wander. Max laughs, but pushes them away. “You really think the cab is the place for this?” Vitto looks disgruntled for a moment, probably because during their entire history together, Max has never said no. While this exchange has been going on, the driver has got out of the vehicle and walked around to the rear. He opens the boot, takes out their two suitcases, and slams it shut.
“That's our cue,” Max says, and turns to open his door.
“Wait,” Vitto says, and puts his hand on Max's shoulder in such a way that he doubts he could get out of the car even if he wanted to. It's the same intimate motion that Vitto made after their first huge fight, to pull Max back and kiss him.
“What?” Max says impatiently.
“I really do love you,” Vitto says, his eyes never leaving Max's.
“I know,” Max smiles to alleviate his growing discomfort, and kisses Vitto again. The driver bangs the side of his fist twice lightly on the side of the car, and the moment is over.
“Time to go,” Vitto says, and gets out of the car. A handsome youth watches from across the road as Vitto walks around to Max's side and opens the door, but only Max notices, and even then it is from the corner of his eye.
Vitto takes his hand, and Max follows his lover out into the glorious morning sun.
