GOLD, INCENSE and MYRRH by Andrej Koymasky (C) 2005 written the 21st of February, 1994 translated by the author English text kindly revised by Brian
USUAL DISCLAIMER
"GOLD, INCENSE and MYRRH" is a gay story, with some parts containing graphic scenes of sex between males. So, if in your land, religion, family, opinion and so on this is not good for you, it will be better not to read this story. But if you really want, or because YOU don't care, or because you think you really want to read it, please be my welcomed guest.
CHAPTER 3 - Gold...
Massimo remained at Riccardo's home until the evening of December 31st. Riccardo told him it was time to go to their friend Carlo's home to welcome the new year with their friends.
But Massimo said: "I really don't feel like it. Apologize for me to our friends. I prefer to pass the night alone."
Riccardo tried to insist, but at the end he surrendered. When Massimo was alone, he took a sheet of paper and wrote:
"Dear Riccardo
I didn't have the courage to say farewell to you in person, because you would have insisted that I stay at your place, and I possibly would not have had the strength to refuse. But I have given you too many problems while I've been here with my stubborn silence and my desperate pain. So, I decided it is time for me to leave. In a few hours the old year ends and the new one will start. I also hope tonight marks the end of my tragedy and the beginning of a new life. I don't know what it will be like, but it has to be better than what I have had in these last ten days. I thank you very much for all you did for me - you really have been a dear friend. You and my other friends. Say thanks to everybody on my behalf. And if it is true that a God exists, He will be able to compensate you for everything, as I am not able.
Always remember Diego and me, and the love that binds us. Forgive me, Riccardo, for leaving this way, and don't be angry with me. Again, thanks for everything.
Yours Massimo."
He put the sheet on the pillow of Riccardo's bed, pulled on his thick jacket and went downstairs, to the street. He took his bicycle and started to pedal. He looked at his watch - it was 10:15 p.m. Still one hour forty five minutes to midnight. He would say farewell to the old year with all its sufferings. He felt the lump in the pocket of his thick jacket - it was a nice nylon rope, for rock-climbers, thick as a thumb, strong and beautiful, bright red, ten feet long. When he bought it in a sports shop, the assistant girl asked him how much he wanted.
"Ten feet."
"Just that?" the girl asked, somewhat puzzled.
"Yes, that will be enough for sure. The main thing is it has to be very strong."
"Oh, it is. This holds safely up to three hundred kilograms."
"Good, then it is the right rope."
Then the assistant asked him what color he liked, and showed him the rolls.
"Red, is good. It is new years' Day color, isn't it? Following the tradition, the new year is to be started wearing something red."
"Yes, sir, but usually worn as underwear." the girl merrily answered.
"It will be underwear." Massimo said with an odd smile.
"Oh! I would like to see you wearing just this rope!" the girl said giving him a cunning smile.
Massimo, entering in the park, chose a fine tree, big and strong. It's dark branches stood towards the black sky like a forest of arms raised in prayer. He leaned his bicycle against the trunk, pulled off his jacket and folded it on the bicycle. He pulled the rope from its pocket, unrolled it. Then he prepared a good slipknot at one end. Even if ten years had elapsed, it had been useful to be a boy scout, he thought - the knot was slipping perfectly. Then, he tried to climb the tree. When he was a boy scout he was skilled... At last, at the forth attempt, he succeeded. He pulled himself up to where the branches forked, climbed some more and chose a branch that seemed sturdy. It was running parallel to the ground and was as thick as his arm. He sat on it, his legs hanging down. He measured the rope to be sure it was not too long, and tied it carefully to the branch. He again looked at his watch - 23:39. Twenty one minutes left. He pulled up the rope and put the noose round his neck.
"I'm coming soon, my puppy. If it is true that there is an afterlife, we will be together again. And if there is nothing... here too there is nothing anyway, now. At least, I will end my suffering. I love you, Diego, wherever you are. Bound forever, in life and death."
Minutes were passing slowly, the park was deserted and immersed in silence. Massimo now felt well, he felt serene, at last. Yes, he would start the new year with a real new life. Or with the nothing, who knows! He hoped that some tramp passing would profit of his bicycle and his jacket. Then, with gruesome irony he thought that he was transforming that bare tree into a Christmas tree - the red rope and him as a decoration, and underneath, the presents.
He again looked at his watch - 11:56. It was rather cold without his jacket, but only four minutes remained. He adjusted the noose around his neck and thought that this gesture was a little like when fixing a neck-tie to go to a party. Then asked himself how many people in that same moment were looking at their watches like him - for sure Diego's family...
"Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three...
Happy New Year to everybody!" he shouted joyfully and jumped from the branch.
Rasim was wandering in the park. His friends had told him that he would not have found a soul, that night. But he, without even knowing why, felt the impulse to go out all the same, to go cruising. He decided that night, his first john would have had sex with him for free, as a present for the new year. He could allow himself to be generous, he earned good money anyway.
He was a very beautiful boy, he looked less than his twenty years, and Christians loved to fuck a nice Arab boy. In the two years since he had come to Italy, he earned lot of money, so much so that he could start to send some to his family in Morocco, so they could have a comfortable life. Four months ago he bought a studio, so he could take his johns home and asked for even more money. He furnished it in the Arab style - his johns loved that, they had the impression of being in a harem, in a tale of One Thousand and One Night. Rasim smiled satisfied. After so much misery, he now had a good life, rich and pleasurable. Being a Muslim and gay, in his land, gave him a lot of problems. Here, on the contrary, it earned him a good living...
He looked at his watch - it was 11:54. Still six minutes to the New Year. And the park was deserted. Who knows what the New Year might bring for him? For sure more johns, more fun, more money. He was becoming a luxury hustler, he started to have good regular clients, he was planning to put in a telephone. But at times he liked to go to hustle in this old park where he started his career.
11:58. The park was really empty, his friends were right. He stopped walking along the boulevard and penetrated amongst the trees.
11:59, still one minute. Perhaps somebody will appear later, at the end of the parties.
Rasim stopped and looked around in the half darkness of the park. All was really deserted. That is, no - down there, there was a bicycle against a tree, therefore there must be somebody around, possibly looking for a boy like him. He looked again at his watch - here, just eight seconds. He counted out loud in Arabic: "53, 54, 55, 56, 57..." and he heard a cry, then a sharp shoot like of a pistol, and, looking towards the tree with the bicycle, he saw something fall down and collapse on the ground.
For an instant he remained still, without understanding, then ran towards the tree. Here, he saw on the ground a body, a red stripe, and a broken branch. The red stripe was a rope, joining the man's throat to the branch. And Rasim suddenly understood. That man tried to hang himself but the branch broke. He anxiously bent over the body and he was still alive. The face was cyanotic as the rope was tight around the neck. With trembling hands he loosened the noose, rolled the body on it's back and looked at the stranger's face. He seemed very young, and beautiful, and he tried to kill himself at the beginning of the new year. Bah! But Allah didn't allow that to happen and... it had been without any doubt Allah who made him go out that night, and had made him decide to go to that park, at that time. Allah wanted him to take care of that man, it was evident.
He slipped off the rope from the young man's neck and brushed with his fingertips the mark that the rope left. Without even knowing the reason, he untied the rope also from the branch and carefully rolled it up. Then looked at the face of the young man again. Who knows what could have pushed him to try and kill himself? He hung the roll of red rope at his belt and sat near the inert body of the young man, lifted his head and laid it on his lap, lightly caressing it. He was really beautiful. Ah, if he had such a beautiful client... Rasim thought continuing to caress his hair.
Massimo moaned.
"Hey, friend, how are you?" Rasim asked looking at his eyes.
The man opened his eyes and their looks met. The boy read in those eyes a pain so deep that hurt him.
"What happened?" Massimo asked.
"God had different plans for you." Rasim said as an explanation. He didn't say Allah, as for sure the man was an infidel, and would not have believed him.
"What? What are you saying?" Massimo murmured confusedly, and brought his hand to his neck.
"It isn't there. I have it. The branch broke. It was not yet your time."
"But I had to die." Massimo said with a tired voice.
"No, it's clear that you hadn't. And God sent me here, for you."
"Who are you?"
"Rasim. A Moroccan. A hustler. And you?"
"Massimo. An Italian. Dead." he gloomily answered.
"No, not dead. You are alive. How old are you?"
"Twenty four."
"And at twenty four you wanted to die? Why?"
"Because... what purpose is there now to live? I have nothing more."
"We don't live for what we have, but for what we are."
"I am nothing more, nothing!" Massimo insisted.
"You are Massimo, Italian, twenty four years old, and very handsome. And now you will come at my place."
"Why?"
"Because this is the New Year. Can you manage to stand up?"
"I don't know. Give me back my rope, I'll look for another branch."
"No. Not today. I found you. You come home with me."
"But I want to die." Massimo said, underlining the "want".
"No, not today, I told you. I ask for just two days of your life, just two days. For me. Then, I'll give you back your rope, and you may do as you like. But now you come to my place, with me. Agreed?"
"Two days?"
"Forty eight hours. Can you stand up?" the boy asked again.
Massimo tried. He felt weak, but he stood up.
"That bicycle is yours, right?"
Massimo nodded.
"Then so is the jacket. Wear it, it's cold. Go on!"
Massimo reluctantly put it on. Rasim took the bicycle and nodded him to follow him. They didn't talk all the way. Rasim from time to time threw him a glance. The boy thought that Massimo was walking like one sentenced to death, going to the gallows - yet he had sentenced Massimo to live for two more days, and that was his gallows. Wanting to die, life must seem insufferable to him. Who knows why!
They reached Rasim's house and the boy made Massimo enter.
"Take off your jacket. It's warm in here" the boy said. Pulling off his white padded jacket and putting the roll of red rope on it, whose coils sprung open like a flower.
"Sit down there." he said pointing to his low mattress covered with cushions with very colorful brocade pillowcases.
Massimo sat, his feet off the mattress, his arms wrapped round his legs, his forehead on his knees.
"I don't have any alcohol at home, I am a good Muslim. So, do you prefer orange juice, mint tea, or a coffee made with the mocha-express?"
"I don't care."
"Then, two big glasses of fresh orange squash." Rasim decided. He sat at his side and handed him one of the two glasses. "Drink. To our health. Our forty eight hours together."
Massimo resigned, nodded and drank a sip.
"Now, tell me why you decided you want to die." the boy asked, ready to listen.
Massimo hesitated for a moment, but then started to narrate. He didn't start from Diego's death, but from the first day he noticed him in the barracks. He told him everything, in the smallest details, for hours and hours. Rasim listened to him, without interrupting, and experienced all the emotions that Massimo was conveying to him with his sorrowful narration.
At the end, Massimo concluded: "Do you see? What purpose can life now have for me? Do you understand now,,, why I want to die?"
Rasim didn't answer - he instead started to recount his life.
"I am the ninth child. We were very poor. Dad was a mason and, when there was work, we had barely enough to eat. When he had no job, we would survive just going to pilfer fruits and some vegetables in the fields. But we never starved. At times we also went to beg. But God never let us miss the essential, real richness... the richness of life.
"I was twelve. An uncle living in town came to visit us. He saw me and decided to take me with him. He gave some money to my family and took me to his town house. My mother told me "My brother will be like a father to you, obey him always. Do anything he asks you." I thought that perhaps he didn't really want a son, as he had his own, already grown up. This uncle was widowed and didn't marry again. He possibly wanted a servant, but this was all right with me. In fact, as soon as we arrived at his place, he explained to me what my tasks, my duties were, and put me to work immediately. I thought that after all I was lucky - I would live in a beautiful house, and I would never go hungry. He gave me a new tunic, and put a pallet for me in a cubbyhole. I had to work inside the house from morning to night, without ever stopping, pausing just to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner with my uncle and my cousins. At night I was dead tired and as soon as I was allowed to hit my pallet and I lied down, I fell asleep. But at least I ate three times a day and very good food.
"In just one month my once thin body filled out. I was deadly tired at the end of each day. I knew nobody besides my uncle and the two youngest cousins who still lived with their father, but I had no time to grow bored. In a couple of months I became a handsome boy.
"My cousin, the eighteen year old, one day orderd me to go with him to the bathroom, to wash him. Not to wet it, he makes me take off my tunic and so, I too am naked, I start to soap his body. Seeing him naked, touching him, caused my first erection. He noticed it, burst into laughter and asked me if I became aroused by just touching him. In honesty I had to answer yes. So he asked me if I like men, and I again answer yes. Then he gets out of the tub, and I see that he is hard and erect. He takes me, makes me turn and bend, spreads something between my little buns, and rapes me. I scream and cry, and wriggle - it's hurting me so much I thought I was going to die, he has a big dick, and I am still a child and virgin. But without effort, he held me fast, laughing, amused and excited, he continued to fuck me at his leisure, until he got his full satisfaction. Then he rinsed, dried himself and left me there in tears, ordering me to clean the bathroom thoroughly. I also dry myself, and notice that I'm bleeding from my butt, and as I moved, I felt a sharp pain.
"So, when my uncle got back home, I told him tearfully what my cousin did to me. My uncle burst into laughter, calls his son and asks him if it is true. "Sure," my cousin answers, "Rasim is a horse, he told me so". In our land, to say that a boy is a horse, means that he likes being buggered, and that therefore a man can ride him. So, my uncle tells me that if I am a horse, I must not complain and anyway it is part of my duties to serve and please all the members of the family - this is why he bought me. And he was not joking, in fact soon my other cousin, the one twenty one year old, starts to ride my ass, and later also my uncle decides to give it a try... I now never sleep in my cubby-hole - every night I have to be ready in one of the three men's bed, and at times, I am passed from one bed to another. So, after having drudged all the day long, I have now also to be available for the three of them all night.
"When I was fourteen years old, unhappily for me I become more and more handsome, my elder cousin decides to make me available to the friends he invites expressly to amuse themselves to ride my ass also. Anyway, I must say, that little by little I become used to the fucks, and that the pain soon disappears. After a few months I even start to feel pleasure, especially when it is my youngest cousin, who first raped me, and who is now twenty years old. He knows how to fuck me, and does it in a way that makes me enjoy it more than any other man. In spite of that, I hate all of them, because to them I am just a slave, an object of pleasure. On the other hand, didn't they buy my from my parents? Even if my parents had the illusion I would have been treated like a son!
"When I was fifteen I decided to run away and go back to my family. I leave with only the tunic I am wearing. I had no money, and even though it would take me three weeks to reach my village on foot, I was determined. I asked the way from passers-by or in the villages, and I begged for my food. But when my uncle became aware that I'd fled, he reported me to the police telling them I stole money and some gold jewelry. The police caught me when I was mid way to my village. My uncle must have paid the police, because when they take me and search me, the policeman shows some gold saying he found it on me. I didn't take anything... but my uncle recognizes the jewel as belonging to him. So I am taken to prison, tried, and condemned to two years of detention.
"In jail the rumor spreads that I am a horse. I am sure it was my uncle, or his policeman friend that made it known, to punish me for fleeing. So, from the very first day, I became the horse for everybody. But in that prison there was also a man who grew fond of me, and after three months he decided to take me into his cell, and tells the others that I am now his pussy-boy, he would geld anybody who tried to put his hands on me. So, I only have sex with him and I also eat better. That man was kind to me, and each night he fucked me with the vigor of a bull in heat. When I am near the end of my term, he gave me the address of a friend of his, telling me that he would help me.
"I am now sixteen and half, almost seventeen. The man suggested I go to Italy to work clandestine. He can get me the transport. I go to bid farewell to my family then go back to meet him. He tells me that, to pay for my transport, I have to work for six months in a brothel for men, he keeps his word and after six months, when I am seventeen, I enter Italy through France and go to Milan to another of his friends. The man there puts me on the street to sell lighters and other bullshit like that. And I sleep in a room with seven other Moroccan boys working for him. But after just a couple of months, I meet a Tunisian boy on the street who hustles. And he tells me: "You are handsome, and if you hustle, you can earn a lot of money... a lot more than with your fucking shitty job! Italian men like to fuck us Arab boys!"
"So, I start to hustle, and I really earn lot of money, so much that I can start to send even more money to my family, they will be less poor, and will not be forced to sell any more of my siblings. Now, this studio belongs to me, I have good clothes, I choose the johns I like best. And in all these years I learned one thing - the only real wealth is life. We cannot and must not waste it, throw it away." Said Rasim.
"But you, at least, have a reason to live - to help your Family." Said Massimo. "You live for them. I would have done anything and everything for my Diego. But he is no longer here, so I have no more reason for living."
"You are wrong. Even if I didn't have my family, or they didn't need me. I would never know if I could perhaps, one day help them or someone else. No, life is a gift that one is given and cannot waste. Now in your heart is night because of the pain, and so you don't understand, you can't understand. But all passes in time. After the night, the sun rises. And you don't know what the future is keeping for you. I didn't know that my future was preparing me for all this, when I was a slave, or a prisoner, or a brothel-boy! But I always thought that there is only one true wealth - life."
"I feel tired, Rasim. May I have a sleep, now?"
"Sure you can. It will do you good. When we wake up, I'll fix you a good couscous. Did you ever try it?"
"No... but why are you caring about me, a stranger?"
"Because God put me on your path, Massimo. And you promised me as a gift forty- eight hours of your life. Also, I know you a little better, and we are no longer strangers."
They lay on the mattress. Massimo fell asleep immediately. Rasim looked at him for a while, with a feeling of tender affection, mixed with desire and decided that, before the forty-eight hours ended, he would like to make love to that beautiful young Italian man.
Rasim woke up at noon. Still thirty-six hours, he thought. He immediately started to cook the couscous for himself and the beautiful youth that Allah placed in his path. Massimo woke to the smell of cooking. At first the young man didn't understand where he was, but then he remembered. He looked at Rasim, who was now wearing a creamy-white tunic and was busy at the stove. He looked at him in silence for a long time, asking himself what sense could be made of where he had ended up, in the home of this Arab boy. What explanation could be offered that the boy cared about a stranger, about a man of another race, another language, another religion - a perfect stranger. Rasim turned and saw Massimo sitting on the low mattress lying directly on the floor, surrounded by the multicolored cushions, and smiled him.
"Was it a good sleep?"
Massimo gave a start - each morning Diego asked him that question, exactly those words and that tone, smiling at him.
"So, was it a good sleep?" Rasim asked him again.
"Yes, thank you. And you? Have you been awake long?"
"I slept well. The couscous is almost ready, soon we can eat."
"I don't feel so much like eating..."
"Oh course, as you don't enjoy life now. But you will eat with me, you owe me that. You gave me these hours, remember."
"Am I your slave?"
"You can think so, if you want." Rasim cheerfully answered.
"So, you want to fuck me?" Massimo asked, recalling the boys story.
"I would really like to make love to you. But I don't think you feel like it."
Massimo felt empty, and yet he could feel the friendliness and the human warmth that that boy was offering him. He asked himself if, as he gave these hours of his life to the other, and as the boy desired him, he could also give him his body once, before killing himself. Diego was no more, his body didn't belong to anyone - whoever wanted to, could use it...
Rasim put a low table near the mattress and put two pillows at its sides. "Come, sit on a pillow. We will eat in the Arab way, with our fingers. I'll teach you."
He put the pans on the table then showed Massimo how to eat as the Arabs do. Massimo imitated him, just to be kind towards the boy. They ate.
"Do you like it?" the boy asked.
"It's tasty." Massimo answered.
After they ate, Rasim brought him a cup of scented warm water to rinse his fingers, and a cloth. Then prepared mint tea which they sipped slowly. Rasim cleared the table, while some Arabic tunes were playing at a low volume on his stereo. He went back to sit on a cushion in front of Massimo.
"So, the illusion of being in my land is almost perfect." he said.
"Do you miss your country?"
"No, because I have it here, inside my heart. And I also feel at home in Italy. All this decoration is not for me, it's for my Italian clients. I made the couscous and wore this tunic for you. I normally eat spaghetti and wear jeans. I eat all of your food except pork."
"As you are a Muslim?"
"Right."
"But do you believe in that?"
"Yes, sure."
"Therefore, you also believe that there is a paradise."
"Yes, it is right."
"And then, my Diego now would be in paradise?"
"He was a good man, for sure he is in paradise."
"I would like to believe that, too."
"But, even if you don't believe it, he is there." Rasim answered with an obvious tone and a smile.
Massimo had his hands on the tabletop, his fingers intertwined, his head bent down staring at his hands. He was thinking of nothing, his brain was empty. Inside he was hearing that scream that didn't want to come out, those tears that didn't want to flow.
Rasim asked him: "Have you ever been to Morocco?"
"No, never. I've never been out of Italy, beside once to Paris."
"Many Italians go to Morocco for their holidays. It is a fine land. But Italy is also a fine land. I will probably live here forever, if the law doesn't catch me and send me back. One day I will stop hustling. One day I will find a lover."
"An Italian?"
"Why not?"
"Rich?"
"Oh, that is not important. Rich, youth, beauty... I don't care, these are all trivial things. He has to be good hearted, honest, able to love. Somebody I can respect, love, dedicate my life to.
"I did find him. Now he is dead."
"But he gave you the five most beautiful years of your life, didn't he?"
"Yes."
"And surely he died happy, because he had you in his heart."
"I hope so."
"Sure it is so! If I was offered five years of intense and true happiness and then death, I would accept at once."
"I had them, therefore I can die."
"It's different. You can die, sure, but not kill yourself."
"Why, is it not my life?"
"Oh no, for forty eight hours it is mine. And if afterwards you kill yourself, you will kill a part of me also."
"I don't understand."
"That's a pity."
"You never hated life, Rasim?"
"Not, ever."
"Not even when you were raped, at twelve?"
"Of course I didn't! I hated those who raped me, not life."
"But I am being raped by life."
"No, not at all. You have been raped by a driver who didn't respect the stop signal, not by the life!"
"You have a strange way of reasoning..."
"I don't know which is more weird mine or yours, my friend."
They talked all the afternoon. Then Rasim fixed the supper and they ate again. They talked some more, until Rasim decided it was time to hit the sack. They lay side by side.
After a while, Massimo asked: "Are you sleeping, Rasim?"
"No, not yet."
"If you want to make love to me... it's all right with me."
Rasim didn't talk, didn't move. Drawing nearer to Massimo, in the dark, touched him lightly, caressed him. He felt that Massimo was inert. Undoubtedly he liked Massimo very much, he felt attracted to him. He wouldn't use sex, for the first time, to get a personal advantage, as with his clients, be it money or his pleasure, but mainly as a gift to that being that Allah sent him to find. But the complete inertia of the other at his caresses, made him understand that he not was not ready for love.
"No, let's sleep, now. It would be better."
"Yes, it will be better. But then... what do you want from me?"
"Bah, one has always to want something from the others?"
Rasim felt Massimo relaxing then he understood that his guest, even in his inertia, was tense. "Why did you tell me if I wanted I could make love to you?" he then asked.
Massimo didn't answer.
"I like you. But I'm not interested in an empty body."
"Dead, you mean?"
"Rather, who wants to die."
"Don't you think I have the right, I have a reason?"
"No, I don't think so, not the right nor the reason."
"Perhaps you are stronger than me."
"Me? I don't know... who knows. But now, let's sleep."
"I don't know if I can. But I'll try not to bother you."
Rasim asked himself what he could do for that young man. If Allah put him on his path, it meant that he had to do something, but then, why didn't Allah make him understand what? The boy was immersed in these thoughts when he heard the breath of his guest becoming heavy, deep, understanding Massimo was asleep. He asked Allah to illuminate him and he slept too.
When Massimo woke up, he felt a sensation of sweet warmth. He became aware that his body had been covered with a soft quilt. He opened his eyes. Rasim was already up. He wore the same tunic of soft wool and was silently moving round the room. Massimo looked for a long time at him, in silence. He was recalling what happened between them in the darkness. The boy desired him, he offered himself to the boy, but Rasim did nothing. To Massimo the boy was strange, incomprehensible. The boy was a hustler, and yet he didn't take Massimo with him for money. The boy said that he desired Massimo, but didn't look for his own pleasure. He asked himself if the boy was doing all this out sympathy, but he didn't have the impression that the boy was pitying him.
Rasim was a beautiful boy, likeable. Yet Massimo didn't feel an attraction towards the him. After all, he thought, life didn't have any meaning to him, therefore not even the search for pleasure. He no longer felt desire, felt nothing any more.
"Was it a good sleep? Have you been awake long?" Rasim asked him.
"Just a few minutes."
"Do you feel cold?"
"No, it is nice and warm here."
"Yes. When I was a child I suffered so much cold that, now I have the means, I don't want to suffer any more."
"Cold? In Morocco?"
"Oh yes, on the mountains in winter and at night, it is really cold. I bought air conditioning six months ago. So it is 23°C, and the right humidity, all year long. That is my biggest luxury. See, I still don't have a TV set, a car, or a phone, but I have air conditioning. So I feel good wearing just this light tunic, and my body feels healthy." Rasim explained with some pride.
Massimo stood up, while the boy finished fixing breakfast. He was looking at that little piece of the Middle East transplanted to Milan and felt the odd sensation of being on a movie set. With a wonderful young Arabian actor, Rasim. The boy told him his story, and yet he didn't know him. It was like telling the plot of a movie - you hear it, you can also feel involved in the moment, but after all it doesn't concern you, you remain a stranger to it.
Massimo looked at his watch and calculated the hours to midnight. He could leave before, the boy couldn't stop him, but he had promised after all it wouldn't cost him to keep it.
Rasim started to tell him more about his life, his dreams, his hopes. Massimo -listened... but he was not interested, he had the impression the boy needed to be listened to, and anyway time passed faster.
At a certain point, in the afternoon Rasim said him: "I never told these things to anybody. My Arab friends, who after all are not true friends, would not understand them. Even those who hustle, swear they are not gay. And my clients, wouldn't be interested, the only thing they care about is enjoying my body, that's what they pay for. Therefore, you are the first to be told all this."
"And why are you telling me?"
"Because I have nothing else to give you."
"To give me? You owe me nothing. I am interested in nothing."
"Not even in what I told you?"
"I didn't want to say that, but... after all it's true. Because I am not able to be interested in anything, at this point."
"But you listened to me. Why?"
"I don't know. Sincerely, I don't. Sorry." Massimo said.
Rasim smiled - the fact that the young man was apologizing meant that after all he did care, at least a little bit, about him.
Later, he showed him a fine picture book about Morocco.
"See, how many beautiful things there are in my country? I never saw them, I know them just through these pictures. And then I think - how funny is it that people coming from so far away to take pictures, and I, who lived there, who was born there, never went to see them. Life is funny. Now that I am far from there, I would like to be able to go and see them. But I don't want to go back to live there. I would like to go one day as a tourist. But then, I think - who knows what life has in store for me?"
"Life is not funny, is cruel."
"No, at times we are cruel to ourselves, or others are cruel with us, or both of those."
"Life deprived me of everything."
"No, you still have life, that is the most precious thing. Wait..." Rasim said standing up. He went to rummage in a drawer and came back with his hand closed in a fist: "I want to give you something." he said, opened his hand and stretched it towards Massimo. "Take it. It is gold, it is a small box."
Massimo took it - it was worked in filigree in a very intricate design, it was very beautiful.
"Guess what it contains?" Rasim asked with a cunning smile.
"I don't know..."
"Open it." the boy said.
Massimo opened it: "But... it's empty."
"Right. You see, that little box is like life - it is a beautiful, intricate, precious container in pure gold. Ready to contain all that you want to put in it. And, if you put nothing in it, it is empty. But you can fill it with whatever you want - sand or gold dust, ash or diamonds, manure... It is a splendid container, a precious one. It is my gift. It is an ancient handcraft of the nomads of my mountains. You can open it, when you want to, but remember that it has been made to contain something, anything you want, not to remain empty."
"No, thank you. To you it is a memento."
"No, I want you to take it, really. At least you will remember the young Rasim, A gay Moroccan, a hustler."
"I'll remember you all my life." Massimo answered with bitter irony.
The boy seemed not to perceive what the witticism implied and answered with a sweet and quiet smile. They remained together to the midnight of January the second. Rasim tried to involve him with a thousand things, but Massimo continued to react almost mechanically, without a real participation. And looked more and more often at his watch.
And at last Massimo stood up. "Well, Rasim, the forty eight hours are over, now."
"Yes, it's true."
"Then, I'm going."
"All right."
"Good bye, Rasim."
"May Peace be with you, my friend. Salaam alaikum." Rasim said, remaining seated.
Massimo left, almost surprised that the boy didn't try to stop him. He closed the door behind him, took his bicycle and went out into the street. The night was cold and his breath came out in a thick white cloud from his parted lips.
The thought of Diego, hadn't abandon him in these forty eight hours, even if at times they seemed far off, then it came back sharp, alive, painful. Life is a precious gift, all right. More precious than gold, it is true. But Diego had been robbed of it, and so now his own didn't have any meaning nor value. An empty box, golden but empty, exactly like Rasim's gift. And inside him that scream that didn't want to come out, that hammering question - why? why? why?
He walked without a goal, pushing his bicycle. Then mounted and started to pedal. He wandered in half deserted streets, until he reached a boulevard. That boulevard went up, crossed over the railway. Massimo stopped - why not? Almost like Diego, a blow and the end! He went back. Leaned his bicycle against the bridge parapet and looked below him to the rails. It was easy enough to jump down when he saw a train coming. Just to calculate the time, a short jump and...
CONTINUES IN CHAPTER 4
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