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«Ich, wenn ich uns erfinden dürfte, hätte uns Zeit gegeben.»
«Had I been allowed to invent us, I would have given us time.»
—Christa Wolf, Nachdenken über Christa T.
January 1988
The moment that Thomas kisses him catches him with his guard down, entirely unprepared.
They have been—there is no other word for it that Aldo can think of—fucking, though he resents the crudeness of the term as well as its vulgarity. Fucking feels lewd, a little dirty, and what he and Thomas are doing has always felt clean to him, the way running a marathon feels clean: messy and sweaty in the moment, but it leaves you invigorated, with lungs full of fresh air and a head clear of cobwebs.
There have been warnings signs, of course. Thomas is on his back under Aldo—but he said he pulled something in his knee in the gym that morning and would prefer to do it on his back, and Aldo would never suspect Thomas, kind and honest Thomas, of any kind of subterfuge. It’s anathema to who he is.
Face to face as they are, there is no escaping the expression on his friend’s face, which might constitute the second warning. Thomas is usually pale as his favourite books, but right now his cheeks bear a high blush, like the cheeks of those chubby naked cherubs in Renaissance paintings. When Aldo pushes into him Thomas's eyes slip shut, only to open again immediately, as though he can’t bear to look away from Aldo for one second.
This kind of look makes Aldo realise that, since this whole thing started back in June, he has not considered how Thomas is thinking about what they are doing. It’s the sort of thought that makes him lean in, his bare chest touching Thomas’s bare chest.
“Alright?”
In response, Thomas kisses him.
Aldo’s movements falter. There is something to the action—he can’t fuck and kiss Thomas at the same time. The intimacy of it, the uncomfortable closeness of breath, his own dry lips against Thomas’s, preclude any sort of simultaneous fucking.
Thomas makes a noise—urgent, in the back of his throat.
Aldo pulls away.
When he looks at Thomas, his friend’s eyes are wide. Aldo realises, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, that the light in his friend’s eyes might very well be love.
August 1987
Let's back up. Aldo's bed, that previous August. Rome is empty of residents and full of tourists. The temperature has been hovering above ninety all week and in Aldo's small, un-airconditioned room the heat is stifling.
The seminary is mostly deserted. Many of the boys have gone to see family. Some months ago, Aldo and Thomas spoke about how they didn't feel like making the trip this year and so, they decided to stay in Rome together instead, to visit a museum or a corner of the city they haven't seen before.
Of course, that was before that June afternoon during exam week, before they sat next to each other on this very bed and Aldo watched Thomas take himself in hand for the first time.
Things have changed, since then.
In the evenings, after they're done studying (or whatever occupies their time on that day) they will now retire to Aldo's room, to—Aldo still struggles for a word, a way to describe what they're doing. It's not an unspoken agreement but they haven't used many words to discuss it, either. Mostly fragments of sentences. Aldo has indicated he's more than happy to provide this release on a regular basis. Thomas has proven amenable.
At first, they just jerked off next to each other. Then Aldo reached for Thomas one night and watched Thomas's eyes go wide as he came, splattering his t-shirt and Aldo's sheets. The time after that, Aldo gave Thomas a blow-job, just to see how he would react. The results were encouraging. Aldo might never forget the sight of Thomas's long limbs twitching in helpless rapture. Thomas reciprocated as soon as he had caught his breath, and with great enthusiasm.
There's an ease to being with Thomas that Aldo did not anticipate. It reminds him of Federico and some of his other friends in the Village with whom sex was an extension of a friendship, not complicated or messy or somehow special. There are no expectations between them beyond things that they already share: time, trust, laughter and strife. The good times and the bad.
Tonight, Thomas has a book open on his lap, but it's not related to his studies for once. He's forever trying to improve his Italian, so he picked up some detective mystery at a bookshop they visited this afternoon, where the clerk looked at their clerical attire, then their purchase, then their clerical attire again. Thomas is leaning against Aldo's shoulder with a casual ease that warms Aldo's heart.
The heat that has carried over into the night has Aldo feeling lazy in that luxurious way of the height of summer. He's well-rested for the first time in months, they have nowhere to be except mass tomorrow, and he wants to do something nice for Thomas.
"Would you like it if I fucked you?" he asks into the comfortable silence that permeates the room. Thomas looks up from his book. His eyes moved rapidly over Aldo's face. He purses his lips.
"How—" he begins, then looks away and blushes. He shuts his mouth.
Aldo rests his hand lightly atop Thomas's.
"Only if you want."
The point of contact where their hands touch makes the ensuing silence less awkward, merely contemplative.
Aldo feels too fond of Thomas in that moment. It's an urgent sensation, one he has never felt before.
"How would it—" Thomas clears his throat; swallows. "How would it work?"
There is curiosity in his voice. Desire shoots through Aldo with unexpected suddenness. He can feel his heartbeat speed up.
"Would you like me to tell you?"
Their eyes meet. The blue of Thomas's irises is very dark. He sounds breathless when he answers:
"Yes. Please."
They shift on the bed so that Aldo's back is against the headboard and Thomas's back is against Aldo's chest. Thomas smiles when Aldo is done arranging him, a tender expression that makes Aldo smile in turn. Thomas's skin is warm. Aldo runs his hands along it, feeling the hair on Thomas's arms, the muscles under his skin. More lightly, he traces the shape of Thomas's chest through his shirt. He removes Thomas's collar and places it on the nightstand before undoing the top button of his friend's shirt.
"It feels good," he says, not sure where to start. "Being close to someone like that. Feeling them inside of you. It's—" He struggles for a word. "Intense. Intimate."
Thomas nods. His breath has shallowed slightly.
"We'd take it slow," Aldo continues. "I just want you to feel it. I want you to feel good."
"Yes. Hm-mh."
From his position, Aldo has an excellent view of Thomas, shifting in his lap. He can also see the burgeoning outline of Thomas's erection. It makes his mouth dry with desire.
Thomas makes an uncertain gesture.
"How would we—"
"Mh." Aldo hums. "Well, first I would touch your cock."
Thomas gasps, quietly. Aldo moves his hand, slowly, down Thomas's torso. He can feel Thomas's breaths, the way their rhythm speeds up as his hand moves lower—his chest, his belly, contracting and expanding in response to Aldo's touch. He strokes Thomas's cock through his pants, softly, just feeling the shape of it, but still Thomas tenses and then relaxes with a sigh.
"Yes," Thomas whispers.
"When you're so hard that you're—" Aldo, too, can't say everything he imagines. That you're dripping, he means to say, but that feels crass. "—that you can't stand it, I'd move my hand. Lower."
Thomas thrusts his hips up into Aldo's grasp.
"And then?" he asks, his breaths coming heavily.
Aldo unzips Thomas's pants and pulls out his cock. It's hard, flushed with blood and Thomas's desire. He resumes stroking it, now in earnest, revelling in the feeling of skin on skin.
"I'd feel you. Feel how warm you are down there. How soft."
"Aldo." Thomas thrusts up his hips again. "Don't tease me."
"Do you want me to tell you or not?"
He bites Thomas's ear, lightly, and Thomas whines. It's getting increasingly difficult for Aldo to not rut shamelessly against Thomas's backside, cradled so safely in his lap.
Thomas quiets.
"Please," he mutters, absurdly polite given their situation. "I'm sorry. Go on."
Aldo tucks his grin away against Thomas's neck, but the fondness is still audible in his voice.
"I can put a finger in, to see if you like it. To feel how you feel around me."
Thomas's cock twitches in his hand at that.
"I would. I will."
"Yes?"
Aldo is surprised when Thomas twists around in his arms.
"Do you have protection?"
Aldo raises his eyebrows. Thomas, it seems, is full of mysteries. It might take Aldo a lifetime to unravel all of them.
"I do," he says.
Thomas looks determined.
"I want you to do it."
Aldo's mouth goes dry. His cock throbs in anticipation.
"Alright."
He can reach his nightstand from here, it's just a bit of a production to twist himself around with Thomas in his lap. The work is made moot a moment later when they realise they both have to get up to take off their pants. Since it's silly to keep their shirts on when their pants are off, they strip down completely, and then Aldo realises this is the first time that he's seen Thomas completely naked.
It's a sight to see: Thomas is slim, but he's lost the last of the boyhood awkwardness he carried in his first year of seminary. Over the last years, he has grown into a tall, handsome man. The sight of his cock, hard between his legs, drives Aldo to distraction.
Thomas blushes when he realises that Aldo is watching him.
"Stop staring."
Aldo steps closer. He puts a hand on Thomas's hip. His skin is warm and soft there, too. "But I like what I see."
They lock eyes. The moment seems suddenly charged, and neither of them moves. What is Thomas thinking, Aldo wonders. Does he—
He pushes the thought down; moves past Thomas to the bed. He pats the space next to himself.
"Come here."
Thomas sits down and Aldo wraps him back up in his arms. It's different, holding each other with nothing between them. The hair on their legs whispers against each other. Aldo's skin burns wherever it comes into contact with Thomas.
He resumes his gentle touches from earlier, feeling the shape of Thomas's body. Thomas reaches for his erection, tugs at it lazily, and Aldo has to press his cock against Thomas for some relief because the image threatens to overwhelm him.
With one slick finger, he skims lightly over Thomas's balls, his perineum, until he reaches that hottest part of him.
Thomas gasps at the sensation of Aldo's finger.
"Ready?" Aldo whispers. He doesn't trust his voice beyond that.
"Please," Thomas responds, equally quiet, like they might disturb something if they speak any louder. He exhales, long and hard, as Aldo's finger enters him, a contemplative note of breath.
"Alright?"
"Mh-mh," Thomas affirms. "Keep going."
Aldo isn't sure he has ever taken things so slowly. He draws his finger out carefully and Thomas clenches and shifts around him. Aldo presses his forehead against Thomas's shoulder. The thought that he is inside this man is nearly too much for him.
He spends what feels like a long while just lightly thrusting into Thomas like that, one slick finger, cheek pressed against Thomas's cheek. Thomas breathes in sync with Aldo's movements. He hasn't touched his cock since they began, but it still stands tall.
"Can you put in another?" Thomas asks. "I think it would feel even better if you put in another."
Aldo can only nod. His voice seems to have abandoned him. He finds the lube, pours more onto his fingers, then returns to his task. Two fingers are more difficult, but then Thomas breathes out and they sink in just fine, two of Aldo's fingers, not quite as deep but now stretching Thomas out in a way that makes his breath hitch.
"Oh. Yes," he mutters. "Yes."
Aldo feels like he is floating slightly outside of his body. It's the prolonged arousal, yes, but also the full-body contact with Thomas, so pliant in his arms. He can no longer say how long they've been at it. His face is overly warm; his erection near painful.
"Thomas," he says, and his voice comes out hoarse. "Do you think you're ready?"
"Almost." Thomas sounds suddenly shy. "I've seen your—I mean you're bigger than—"
He doesn't finish the sentence. It's fine. Aldo fits another finger besides the two that are already inside Thomas, and Thomas tenses but then he opens to that, too. His legs are splayed open obscenely by now. His cock rests against his belly.
"Please, Thomas," Aldo whispers in his ear. "I need—"
"Yes," Tomas says. "I'm ready."
Aldo can't help the noise he makes when he rolls on the condom. Thomas looks lost for a moment, unsure what position to assume, but Aldo guides him back on his side and hooks up one of his legs, then fits himself against Thomas's back. It's tight in their little seminary bed but Aldo doesn't mind, it keeps them close.
He guides his cock inside slowly. The tight warmth is nearly unbearable. He presses his forehead against Thomas's neck. He keeps his movements as shallow as possible.
"Alright?"
"A moment." Thomas is breathing heavily. "It's—different. Give me a moment."
Aldo does. It feels like it's killing him. Thomas is tightening and relaxing around him. Finally, he nods.
"Go on. I can take more."
Aldo sinks in another inch. He can't help a quiet moan.
"Does it feel good?" Thomas sounds stunned, like he can't quite believe he is doing this to Aldo.
"It does." That truly is the understatement of the century. "For you?"
"It feels so good, Aldo. So good. I can barely stand it."
Thomas sounds slightly manic.
"More?" Aldo asks.
"Please."
Finally, Aldo thrusts in all the way. He exhales in relief. Somehow, his hand has become linked with Thomas's where he has wrapped his arm across Thomas's breast. Both their knuckles are white with how tightly they're holding on to one another.
"Fuck," Aldo mutters, his voice cracking on the vowel. "Thomas. Thomas."
Thomas doesn't respond with words, he just nods and grasps Aldo's hand more tightly.
"Can I move?"
"Just a moment." Thomas is breathing heavily. "It's so much. I think I might—"
"Oh," Aldo says, and now it's his turn to feel manic. "Do you want to?"
"Not yet. Not yet—" Thomas breaks off and shudders, head to toe. "It feels so good. I don't want it to be over."
So Aldo holds Thomas, cradled safely in the deepest part of him, until Thomas's heartbeat has slowed and he can breathe in and out at a more normal pace. He feels like he is slowly being driven mad. Finally, Thomas says—
"You can move."
Aldo pulls out and the drag of it is heavenly. When he thrusts back in, Thomas grunts quietly. He repeats the motion, slowly, picking up speed carefully, until he hits upon a rhythm he feels he can sustain. The sensation is almost too much. The smell of Thomas's sweat and arousal is in his nose.
"Aldo. Aldo. Aldo—" Thomas punctuates every thrust with an exclamation of his name.
"Touch yourself," Aldo mutters. Thomas does, and Aldo moans when he feels Thomas clench around him.
"Just like—" His breath hitches. "Just like that."
"How does it feel?" Thomas asks. "How do you feel, Aldo? Tell me?"
How does he feel? He feels like he has come home after a long time in a desert he hadn't even realised was around him. He feels like he finally understands why he was miserable for so long, because he wouldn't have come here, to Rome, otherwise to find Thomas. He feels like he is on the verge of some great discovery, and that it's Thomas's presence in his life that has made this discovery possible.
"Warm," he says. "Safe."
Thomas kisses his knuckles. Aldo gasps. The gesture is sweetly chaste compared to what they're currently doing.
It feels like he has waited too long. The need to come is overwhelming. Words are slowly abandoning him, and there is only the place where his body is joined with Thomas's. He can begin to feel the shape of it now.
"So close." He makes a sound, born of that desperate need, forced out behind his teeth. He speeds up his thrusts. "Tommy, I'm close."
Thomas gasps. His body stills, and Aldo feels the tremor that runs through Thomas in himself. The warmth of Thomas's release hits their hands, still joined over Thomas's breast. Thomas shakes and shakes in his arms. His muscles contract around Aldo, squeezing him rhythmically, and there is really nothing for Aldo to do but give himself over to what Thomas demands of him. He plunges himself deep into Thomas, once more, twice more, and then he falls apart, cock pulsing with release. He sinks his teeth into Thomas's shoulder. He rides the waves of it until it's through him and he can breathe again. It feels like it takes a long time before he comes back to himself.
They separate in dreamlike slowness. When Aldo slips from Thomas's body they both make a sound, disappointment and the pain of separation. The colour is high in Thomas's cheeks.
Aldo goes to the bathroom. Thomas follows. They clean up in companionable silence.
Afterwards, they return to Aldo's bed. Thomas settles against Aldo's chest. Aldo can feel this may become a new favoured position of theirs.
Thomas traces idle patters on the back of Aldo's hand.
"You should call me Tommy more often," he says, apropos of nothing. Aldo smiles and presses his lips against the back of Thomas's head.
"Although," Thomas says, as an afterthought. "Maybe not when the others are around."
June 1987
Maybe we have to go back further to understand it all: an unbearably hot Roman summer day earlier that year. It’s the end of the semester in their fifth year of seminary. The air is stale with the smell of rotting garbage and the stink from the Tiber.
Aldo and Thomas start that day in the library. Well, they start the day with the morning prayer and breakfast, but as soon as the day really begins they’re in the library, each of them with a stack of notebooks and an even taller stack of books. It’s not really cooler in the library, only less smelly.
They both started wearing clerical attire two years ago, as did the other seminarians of their cohort but in this weather, the collar is pure torture. Blessedly they can still wear short sleeves. When Aldo looks up from his dictionary of ecclesiastical Latin and his Aquinas his eyes, on occasion, fall to the way Thomas’s nose crinkles in concentration when he makes a note of a particular point.
Poor fellow. Maybe he is regretting specialising in a subject that requires so much rote memorisation.
Aldo, of course, has his own regrets at the moment. Whenever he glances at his journal, a litany of assignments due over the next two weeks glare back at him, not to mention the exams at the end of the month. He used to think seminary life would give him the breathing space his life was so direly lacking in New York. He’d imagined days of contemplative silence, in communion with God and the Saints. It’s had to feel contemplative when his professors are still calling his grasp of Aquinas basic, and his takes on canon law not even fit for a layman.
They take lunch not in the seminary cafeteria but in a little osteria down the street from the library. It’s the sort of rebellion afforded to the upper years: that no one raises a complaint when they don’t come in for lunch or the midday prayer. What might they have prayed today? Psalm 120? To the Lord in the hour of my distress I call and he answers me? A fitting prayer for students facing down a deadline. When Aldo looks at the new cohorts, those fresh-faced Italian boys, he cannot imagine he and Thomas were ever that young.
Over lunch, Thomas outlines the content of a case he has been reading this morning in his well-worn copy of Lezioni di diritto canonico. His oral examination is on Thursday and he still gets nervous about the state of his Italian before an exam, so they converse in Italian. It means that lunch doesn’t quite feel like a break, either, and before they know it they’re back in the library. Aldo squints at his books and wonders whether he should see an optometrist soon. He’s over thirty now. Maybe it’s time to slowly let go of his vanities, especially considering he’ll be ordained as a deacon this time next year. The glasses might lend him an air of authority.
They take dinner with the other seminarians, then it’s back to the library for them. When the library closes, they retire to Aldo’s room.
They keep the window open. At night, the smell isn’t so bad. There’s something near fragrant to the breeze.
Thomas sits on Aldo’s bed, knees drawn to his chest, a book balanced on his knees, pen cap between his teeth. It falls when he looks up and sees Aldo staring.
“What?”
Aldo can’t help a grin. Thomas is his closest friend; he knows his mannerisms intimately. Even as the pressure of their impending examinations threatens to drive him out of his mind, it’s comforting to know that Thomas is going through it with him.
“Do you think they’ll let us become priests if we fail?” Aldo asks. “I mean, at this point it’s a little ridiculous. So much time and effort invested in our education. It would be a waste.”
Thomas picks up the pen cap, a fond smile on his face.
“We’re not going to fail.”
“Your optimism is inspiring.”
“Aldo.” Thomas sets the book down and stretches his legs out. “In our last session, Professor de Luca called you the most inspired theologian he’s met in a decade.”
“He also said my grasp of Aquinas was basic.”
The two statements were, in fact, linked by a conjunction: You are the most inspired theologian I’ve met in a decade but your grasp of Aquinas is basic.
“So you have a weak subject. We all do.”
Thomas stands, setting the book aside. He groans as he stretches. He, too, is nearing thirty, and sitting curled up on a bed is an activity one can only really undertake up until age twenty-five.
“I can’t wait for this to be over,” Thomas says. “I would like to sleep again.”
“You’re not sleeping?”
Aldo himself hasn’t been sleeping either—but as is the case so often, it’s easier to care about someone else. He wonders if this is a tendency that his pastoral training has instilled in him. He cannot remember now. His life before the seminary often seems to him like a movie starring a person that happened to look a lot like himself.
He watches Thomas shake his head.
“It’s the stress. My hearing gets more sensitive. I can hear the people in the rooms next to me when I’m almost asleep, and then I’m awake again.” An amused expression enters his face. “Praying helps. But my body doesn’t really care whether I spent the night praying or staring at my ceiling. In the morning the exhaustion is the same.”
Recently, since they graduated with their Laurea triennale and began facing the realities of now having only two years of seminary left, Aldo has felt, at times, an unbearable tenderness when looking at Thomas. It’s at once a deep satisfaction at how far they’ve come and an anticipatory nostalgia: soon, their lives will change. They will not be this young forever.
He feels that tenderness now—strong enough to make him stand up and put an arm around Thomas, who gives him a look of surprise.
“Maybe I’ll go for a walk,” Thomas says, more to the window than to Aldo. “I have too much energy to sleep. It’s because we barely move all day.”
But he stays here, in the crook of Aldo’s arm.
“I can’t sleep, either,” Aldo says. “Though I doubt a walk would do enough to work through all that energy.”
“What do you do? When you can’t sleep?”
Aldo can’t help it; he laughs. Instinctively, he lets go of Thomas, who looks lost.
“You don’t want to know,” Aldo says before he can think better of it, because in his mind it’s funny.
Thomas gives him a look.
“Aldo,” he says. “You’re not serious.”
“Oh, come on.” Aldo is caught now somewhere between embarrassment and annoyance. “Surely you do, too.”
Thomas blushes; a high colour in his cheeks.
“I don’t,” he says, and says it like a challenge. Like he expects Aldo to doubt him again.
“Well then,” Aldo says. He should say something else, like: “Good on you for taking celibacy seriously.”
What he does say is:
“Maybe it would help?”
His friend’s blush deepens.
“But it’s—”
He makes a gesture. Sinful. Shameful. Aldo gets the gist of his hangups without Thomas having to spell them out.
“Oh, look.”
Aldo has tried, but that particular point of doctrine has never stuck with him. Perhaps it’s because he never only knew sex as something special. Back in the Village, he knew guys who had sex because they were in love, but he also knew guys who had sex for money and guys who had sex because they had a free hour before their evening plans came through. Sometimes sex, Aldo figures, is like a workout or taking a shower. It's not always about lust, and surely it’s lust that’s the sin.
“It was just an idea,” he finishes.
“Will you—” Thomas asks and alright, Aldo did not expect that. “Tonight?”
That night, for the first time, they sit next to each other on Aldo's bed. Both of them face the wall on the other side of the room, where Aldo's timetable and a postcard with a picture of a beach are the only thing breaking up the off-white paint. They pointedly don't look at each other, the way people on the subway wouldn't look at their seat neighbours—except when Aldo can't, not quite.
Thomas seems fearful. Not of Aldo, not of what they're doing, but of what he's feeling. His eyes are closed. He touches his cock like he's afraid of it.
When Aldo puts a hand on the back of his neck, Thomas startles. His eyes, dark blue in this light, meet Aldo's. He hiccups on a breath, and comes.
It's not what Aldo expected—but there's something to the look in Thomas's eyes that speaks of trust and that catches on a part of his heart too long untouched.
He can feel Thomas's pulse beneath his thumb. It's enough to undo him.
August 1984
Perhaps that was where they went wrong. Then again, they might never have gotten to this point if not for that weekend at the end of their second year, when he and Thomas and their friends and fellow seminarians Clemens and Lluc had packed their bags for a trip to the Italian Alps.
They take a train, followed by a bus, followed by a long walk up a steep street where they take care not to trip over their feet as they stare at the mountains rising above them. Even Lluc, who had declared beforehand that he would likely not be impressed—"I used to live in a monastery on the most beautiful mountain in the world"—is speechless. The Alps, it seems, are something else. Aldo and Thomas, who are both from regions without any dramatic changes in elevation, can't get enough of the view. Aldo wishes he had a camera.
Their accommodations are at the end of a street in the small village. Aldo, still the one with the most Italian among them, takes over conversation with the landlady who lets them into the house and shows them around.
It's nothing fancy: two bedrooms, a large kitchen, and a porch overlooking the steep slope down towards the valley. As they stand, surveying the village below them in the summer afternoon light, Clemens nods as though he has just now decided something.
"It looks just like Swabia," he says: a statement which prompts disagreement and outrage from the others. A small smile in the corner of Clemens's mouth is the only sign it might have been a calculated provocation.
They have gotten to know Clemens as studious and quiet. It's only in the last months that he's thawed somewhat, and allows himself to make jokes with the rest of them. A rather short man who cannot yet grow a beard, he still looks like a boy with an awkward mop of black hair and perpetually hunched shoulders. He is the eleventh of twelve children, a fact that shocks Aldo whenever he remembers it.
In many ways, he is the opposite of Lluc: a man who hasn't yet realised he is no longer a boy. There are times—most times, even—that Aldo forgets Lluc is older than him. He's from Cerdanyola on the Spanish Mediterranean coast, where his father runs some sort of manufacturing business. He rarely speaks about his father, except to complain when he receives a letter. All of them are about the business, which Lluc is supposed to inherit. Lluc lost a tooth some years ago, under circumstances he never specified. Their teachers frown upon how it makes him look. Probably they think a priest shouldn't appear to have been brawling.
Really, though, Aldo spends most of his time with Thomas.
It hadn't been his guess when they were first getting to know each other. In fact, Aldo had assumed he would get along better with Lluc, who is outgoing and shares Aldo's love for secular culture, even if he prefers German to Italian opera. Thomas seemed more suited to Clemens's quiet nature—always listening, rarely speaking, except with some careful observation long considered.
Against all of these odds, it's Thomas who has become his closest friend. They have taken the same courses at university by chance, then on purpose, and spend most of their time studying together. Aldo practices Italian with Thomas, and Thomas in turn is the only one who can keep up with Aldo in a debate. Aldo feels like there is a part of him that has been waiting for Thomas, that has always understood Thomas, even before he knew he existed.
Dividing up the rooms is, therefore, easy. Aldo bunks with Thomas; Clemens with Lluc. After they drop off their bags (and Aldo watches Thomas flop backwards on the bed to test the mattress) they reconvene in the kitchen, the centrepiece of which is a heavy wooden table.
Suddenly, they don't know what to do. They've grown unused to the freedom of deciding over their own time.
"We should buy groceries," Aldo says, "before the shops close."
Groceries. Right. They look at each other. In the seminary, they don't cook their own food.
"Do any of us know how to cook?" Aldo asks.
Clemens raises a tentative hand.
"I can make lentils. With—Spätzle?" He drops his hand again. "I think."
Lluc shrugs. "We get some bread, some tomatoes. Olive oil. There you have breakfast. Or lunch. Or dinner."
"A Mediterranean answer," Aldo notes drily. "But food. I'll take it. I can contribute mac and cheese." He turns to Thomas. "What about you?"
Thomas looks charmingly sheepish. "I'm afraid no."
The rest of the table—now secure in the knowledge they could at least come up with one dish—erupts into glee. Thomas only turns redder.
"I went to boarding school!" he says defensively. "And I didn't have to cook at Oxford, either. There never was a chance for me to learn!"
Really, their glee is unwarranted. Over the course of the weekend, Thomas proves a ready help in the kitchen. He chops vegetables, grates cheese, lays the table and washes up.
Out of all of their dishes, Aldo's mac and cheese turn out the best, though there is hardly any competition. Lluc's tomato bread barely counts as cooking. Clemens's Spätzle turn out an unmitigated disaster—it transpires that making them is not easy, certainly not as easy as his sister Anna (who, they learn, is his oldest sister, though not his oldest sibling, and also not his favourite) always made it seem. But five minutes later, after they've scraped up the worst of the flour-and-egg mess, they're laughing about it and washing the sticky dough out of Lluc's hair so they can go down to a restaurant in town that will feed four clueless boys who are trying to find their way in the world.
Aldo loves them all so much.
The first day, they go hiking. It's an unbearably beautiful day—sunny but not too hot on the mountain, although Thomas manages to get a light sunburn on the bridge of his nose despite the hat he wears and the sunscreen he applies. There is snow on the peaks above them but the cliff faces are stark and clear of both snow and vegetation. Aldo has a strange sense, that feeling of awe he usually feels singing a hymn on one of the high holidays.
They have a fellow hiker take a picture of them under the cross on the peak with Lluc's camera. Aldo is sure he looks horrible and sweaty, but when he gets a copy of the picture some eight weeks later, after Lluc has had it developed, he finds he doesn't mind. They look exhausted, yes, but also profoundly happy.
That night, they watch a movie Lluc brought with him on a VHS tape. "A friend from London sent it to me," he says with a nod to Thomas, who looks intrigued at the prospect.
Needless to say, The Life of Brian is not what they expect.
"I think my friend wanted to make fun of me," Lluc says after the credits roll. Opinions are split, not so much on whether or not the movie is blasphemous, but whether it constitutes a successful satire. Lluc, who feels he's been made a fool, declares it unsuccessful and, moreover, lazy.
"Oh, I don't know." Thomas can't quite stop grinning. "It's—oh, it's—" He shakes his head, still smile. "It's very English, is all."
Aldo considers his a moderate position, but it's Clemens who stuns them all the moment he chooses to speak up.
"In many ways, the film was reminiscent of the second century satire 'The Passing of Peregrinus.' I think."
They all turn to him.
"What in God's name are you talking about?" Aldo asks.
On Sunday morning, they go to mass in the town's church. It's a lovely service, and afterwards the local priest gives them a tour when he hears that the four of them are seminarians from Rome.
He invites them to lunch at his house, too, and Clemens and Thomas ask him a flurry of questions about parish life. Does it feel intimidating, to know so many people look up to him? Does he miss the intellectual part of seminary life? The exchange with other priests? Does he get to go on holiday? Father Senoner answers their questions patiently and then recommends some of the village's sights for their afternoon.
They wander out of his house several hours later, well-fed and ready to explore the town. For an hour or so they amble around, taking in the picturesque houses, but the food has made them sluggish and they're happy to return to their accommodations, where they settle on the porch with a bottle of wine which they empty as the sun sets.
It's funny, the way a journey can cement a friendship. Aldo thought that seminary life already brought you as close as you could possibly be to your fellow students, but travelling is a wholly different bonding experience. He now knows how Lluc complains when the train is delayed; that Clemens likes to pack a snack for every outing; and that, when Thomas wakes in the morning, there is a period of time when he can speak to Aldo without later remembering what was said.
When Aldo came to Rome, he was looking for an escape. He didn't think he would also find a home there.
For dinner, Aldo makes them mac and cheese. He and Thomas keep bumping into each other as they shuffle around the kitchen, which escalates into a small tussle. Lluc opens another bottle of wine and they drink as they eat, and each story someone tells seamlessly prompts another from someone else.
The evening is mild enough that they end up back on the porch. The mountains loom as invisible shapes against the night sky, which is clear and full of stars. The streetlamps dot the town below them with orange light, a mirror of the sky above.
"I never thought the seminary would be like this," Clemens says—indicating the valley before them but also the porch, the wine, his friends.
Aldo hums a note of agreement.
"Me neither," Thomas says. "In a good way, though."
They all agree emphatically.
"I'm curious." Thomas looks sweet in the light spilling out from inside, cheeks flushed with the third bottle of wine. "Why did you all join? When did you hear the call?"
"It's a miracle I heard it at all, over the noise of my siblings," Clemens mutters and they laugh.
"I was at Oxford, before," Thomas says. "But it wasn't what I expected. I took things too seriously, I think—my readings, my friendships, the world around me, and I felt like nobody else did." He gives Clemens a nod. "In a way, I was also looking for something to cut through the noise."
Clemens raises his glass in a toast of acknowledgement.
Thomas gives Lluc an expectant look. Lluc meets it.
"I don't think I'm drunk enough for this conversation."
He reaches for the bottle, which is empty, so he rises and ambles to the kitchen for another one. He uncorks it on the porch, forehead creased in concentration or with an emotion he's not yet ready to share. With his attention nominally turned to the bottle, he says: "Franco was still alive when I made my decision."
He fills his glass back up. The red wine looks black in the glass as Lluc tells them a story—his story, though he sounds detached, as if it happened to someone else. How, at eighteen, he enrolled in university for a business degree that would allow him to take over his father's manufacturing business. How, for the first time, he met other people who were growing frustrated with running up against the authoritarian and often arbitrary rules of the regime which sought to tell them how to live, how to love, what they could say and in what language they could say it. When a death sentence was spoken over sixteen ETA members, Lluc joined the sit-in at the Abbey of Montserrat.
"I lost my tooth when the police cleared out the monastery." Lluc smiles, the gap clearly visible. "But the death sentences were commuted. I made a promise to the Virgin, then."
He'd knelt before the icon of the Black Madonna and vowed that when his country was liberated, he would dedicate his life to the priesthood.
"My father was furious when I told him I was leaving to become a priest. I'm his only son."
He's smiling again now, but it's a smile that's tight at the corners of his mouth. He takes a deep drink of his wine. For the first time, he looks his age.
Clemens puts a hand on his shoulder. A pained look crosses Lluc's face.
"I have family in East Germany," Clemens says. "I pray every day that the wall will come down and they will be able to visit us again."
Lluc reaches for his hand and squeezes it, a grateful look on his face. Aldo thinks about how pain makes you feel like you are separated from the world by a wall of glass, unable to reach out or have someone reach out to you. What an unexpected gift it can be to feel a touch that manages to shatter that barrier.
Lluc turns to him, ready to move the focus away from himself.
"What about you, then, Aldo?"
Aldo makes a half strangled, half amused sound. "Hm." He forgot someone might ask him that question.
It's easier to look at his hands than his friends. The wine makes him feel oddly calm, even though he can feel his heart beating heavily in his chest. He could lie, or refuse to elaborate. But he will not.
"All my friends were dying of AIDS."
Silence.
Aldo looks up. His friends' faces are frozen in the moment before a reaction, unsure how to respond.
He laughs, bitterly. Shakes his head. Always, always the gap between his grief for his friends and other people's horror at the cause of their death.
He startles at Thomas, reaching for his hand.
"I'm so sorry," Thomas says.
Aldo has to make himself meet his eye. When he does, the earnest sorrow on Thomas's face has him exclaim again, this time with urgency as he feels that he is about to cry. But he keeps it together; keeps the tears at bay, right until he catches Clemens's eye.
"I will include them in my prayers tonight, Aldo."
His sob comes out strangled. Thomas pulls him into his arms.
Lluc quietly refills his glass of wine.
Later, in the room he shares with Thomas. The lights are off and Thomas has turned on his side to sleep. Aldo, too, has closed his eyes, though this is mostly a performance.
He knows he will not sleep. He feels terrible. Part of him, engaged in the business of sober reflection, is sure he has made a terrible mistake. He trusts his friends, yes, but there are things he will never be able to un-say; will never be able to erase from their perception of him.
From the corner of his eye, he glances at Thomas, who is facing away from him. He does not move except for the rise and fall of his chest—an artificial stillness, not the repose of sleep. Perhaps this is the end of their easy camaraderie, of tussles in the kitchen and of him ruffling Thomas's hair in passing in the library.
"I'm sorry," Aldo says into the darkness—to the ceiling, which is easier to address than his friend. "I don't want you to—to think any less of me. I would hate for you to feel uncomfortable. If you want to, I'll sleep on the couch."
He makes to rise. He stops when the rustling of the blanket announces Thomas turning to face him.
The bit of light falling in through the window above the bed illuminates Thomas's face. Aldo's heart tightens at the seriousness of his expression.
"Aldo," Thomas says. He says Aldo's name like it's much more than a simple form of address. "There's nothing you could say, nothing you could do that would make you lesser in my estimation."
Aldo swallows. His hand twitches—reaching out, then thinking better of it, but Thomas recognises the gesture and takes it.
It's only later that Aldo learns about Thomas's time at Oxford, about his friend Samuel. When he does, he wonders if this—this bed, this night—formed the moment when a first glimmer of hope bloomed in Thomas's chest as he began to understand something about himself. If there was anything he himself could have done to prevent it.
In reality, there is no preventing anything. Aldo is done for that weekend in Vigo. He is done for the first time Thomas comes over to his desk in the library to ask his opinion on a point in their lecture on Hegel.
He's done for the first time he sees Thomas in his room, repeating Italian phrases to a CD player.
Il mio nome è Thomas.
Come stai?
Dov'è la biblioteca?
He's done for when he sees the expression on Thomas's face when he realises Aldo has seen him, half embarrassed and half defiant, as if waiting for Aldo to criticise his pronunciation. "We can practice together," is what Aldo says instead. And they do.
He's done for that first day of orientation, when he goes downstairs to the mixer with his seminary cohort after mass where, after twenty minutes of fruitlessly trying to talk to the other Italians, who do not see him as one of their own but instead an American with a funny accent, he wanders over to that table of four lost souls that become his closest friends.
He's done for on the outbound plane from New York, where he sits with his fingers digging into his thighs until the plane takes off, as though someone might come and wrest him from it at the last minute. Where, somewhere over the Atlantic, he pulls out the brand new journal he's bought, empty as he hopes to be when he gets to this new country, and writes, in bold letters:
I MADE IT. I GOT OUT.
January 1988
In the aftermath—after Thomas has kissed Aldo, after Aldo has realised what this kiss means to Thomas—they sit on Aldo's bed. They don't look at each other. Thomas is still nude, Aldo is in his boxers. He needed to create some kind of barrier between what they just did and the conversation they're about to have. His mind is blank with an inarticulate panic.
He wants to say something—but he knows that when he does, it will shatter their equilibrium. Things won’t be the same. Aldo would like things to remain the same.
"Thomas—" he begins. It takes all of his courage.
Thomas, with a quick movement, reaches for his hand. He grips Aldo's fingers tightly.
When Aldo turns to see what expression might accompany such a tight hold, Thomas kisses him again.
Aldo stays very still.
It's easy to kiss Thomas—easy as matching his stride as they amble through the Roman streets, easy as meeting his banter, easy as falling asleep and waking up next to him. It's the look in Thomas's eyes that scares him.
The devotion. The hope. The fear.
He puts a hand on the side of Thomas's face; feels the stubble under his palm. He pulls back, still cradling his friend's face gently.
"Thomas," he says again. When Thomas tries to turn away, Aldo keeps him there. "Thomas—this isn't what we are."
It isn't Aldo, at least. The feeling he's seen on Thomas's face suggests something else about his friend. It speaks of an emotion he can't match. He never could, with anyone, and that had sometimes caused a spat or a broken heart in New York.
It's just—he thought that he and Thomas understood each other.
It eases his mind to see Thomas nod.
"Of course." He nods more firmly. "You're right."
Relief floods through Aldo.
"Yes?" he says.
Thomas presses his lips together. "Yes."
Aldo releases Thomas's face, but a spike of anxiety pierces him even as he does, so he reaches for Thomas's hand.
"You're the most important person in my life. You know that, right, Tommy?"
He watches Thomas's face twist. Eventually it settles on a calm expression that should reassure Aldo, and yet it doesn't.
"I know." Thomas slips his hand from Aldo's grasp. "I'm going to shower."
Aldo watches him pick his clothes up off the floor and disappear into the ensuite. He himself remains seated on the bed in mute shock because—because what? Because Thomas is in love with him? The notion is ridiculous. They're both on the path to become priests. No one joins the seminary to fall in love. What they have can't be love because Aldo doesn't do love, not in the flowers-and-chocolates kind of way.
But maybe Thomas does?
Surely not. Thomas is more committed to this path than anyone Aldo knows. It must be something else. Perhaps it's fucking that has caused this confusion for Thomas. Aldo has known people who fall in love with every stranger that tumbles them. What was a convenient way to relieve stress and find joy with a friend for Aldo might have turned into a source of pain for Thomas.
The trickle of running water sounds faintly from the ensuite. The thought that he has been tormenting his friend is unbearable to him. But what can he do?
When Thomas emerges some minutes later, hair wet, now in boxershorts and a t-shirt, Aldo is ready.
"Are we good?"
Thomas runs a hand through his hair. He will not quite meet Aldo's eyes.
"Yeah. Sure."
Aldo rises, heading towards the bathroom himself now. He wants to place a kiss on Thomas's cheek in passing, but Thomas flinches away.
Aldo goes to shower.
When he comes back out, his room is empty.
The next day, Aldo rises for morning prayer and feels horribly nauseous. He barely slept. When he did, it was plagued by nightmares. The scent of Thomas's cologne lingers on his pillow.
Clemens and Lluc are in the chapel when he gets downstairs, but Thomas is nowhere to be seen. A new wave of nausea overcomes him but he kneels down, makes the sign of the cross, folds his hands and bows his head. For the first time since he came to Rome, prayer fails to calm him.
Later, as they head towards the cafeteria, Clemens catches up with him.
"Where's Thomas?"
"I don't know," Aldo says. It's true in that he doesn't know where Thomas is. It's a lie in that he does know why Thomas is absent.
"Is he sick? You guys were studying late last night, no?"
Studying. At this rate, Aldo will actually be sick soon. The fiction was always easy for him but he realises acutely that he has used Thomas. Used him to blow off steam, used him and his friendship and his earnest, trusting nature in a way that he never should have. That is Aldo's true sin here. Not the sin of the flesh. The letting down of a brother.
"We were," he says, praying his voice will hold steady as he speaks. "I haven't seen him this morning. Maybe he overslept."
"That's unlike Thomas."
Clemens is doubtful, and Aldo doesn't blame him. He shrugs. What can he say? It is indeed unlike Thomas to skip anything.
They enter the cafeteria. Thomas isn't here, either. The frown on Clemens's face deepens. Aldo ignores it and begins to go about assembling his breakfast.
At the coffee machine, he passes Lluc. They exchange a glance. Lluc musters him, and Aldo gets the feeling he is trying to figure something out.
He hurries away.
After breakfast, he walks to class as though in a trance. Rome in mid-January is nothing to write home about: it's wet, it's grey, the whole sky an unbroken dome of bleakness. He finds his classroom by force of habit alone. Everything in him wants to be elsewhere, but he doesn't know where that would be.
He forces himself to take notes. About five minutes after they've gone from the organisational to the content part of the class, the door opens and Thomas slips in.
"Scusa il ritardo," he mutters and promises it won't happen again. The lecturer waves for him to sit down—which Thomas does, right by the door, and not in his habitual seat next to Aldo.
Aldo can barely hear the lecture over the ringing in his ears. If he needed any proof that not all is right between him and Thomas, here it is. Conclusive evidence.
Of course Thomas is out of his seat the moment their lecturer dismisses the class, and although Aldo is ready with his things gathered, by the time he gets out of the room Thomas has disappeared around a corner.
It would be easy, Aldo knows, to find Thomas in his room. There is no other place he's more likely to be. Still, Aldo doesn't go there. If he has been able to convince Thomas that what they're doing is right, that it should be something he enjoys, even, he evidently cannot be trusted around Thomas. He should give him space.
Perhaps he is a coward. He wants to talk to Thomas not in the privacy of his room, but when other people are around so they're both forced to pretend that everything is as it was between them. But Thomas avoids the next meal, and the next, and though he is there for mass, he doesn't sit with them, and that is when Clemens gets suspicious. After mass is done, he hurries out of the chapel after him.
Lluc stays behind with Aldo. He gives him another look. Aldo chooses to ignore it.
That mass, Aldo watched the priest and deacon in a wholly new light. He tried to imagine himself, as his vocation director in New York had told him, in their places: in twenty, in forty years. Shepherd to some parish, in communion with God but otherwise alone.
The only thing he can think is: it'll be better that way.
Thomas, he learns from Clemens the next morning, has the flu. Apparently the nurse has been to see him, as has his spiritual director. They prescribed a week's bed rest.
Aldo feels relief, then guilt. He should not be relieved that Thomas feels the need to hide from him. Then again, perhaps a week's separation will allow them to put some distance between themselves and what happened between them.
Clemens asks him if he wants to go and visit Thomas, to bring him some tea and entertain him. Keep him up to date on his classes. Listen to the radio, if his head doesn't hurt too much for it. Aldo declines, muttering something about not wanting to catch what Thomas has.
Clemens seems perturbed, but he says nothing more on the subject.
The week wears on. Exams are drawing nearer and Aldo should focus on studying but his entire routine has been upended. He can't study because he's supposed to study with Thomas. There is a gaping hole in his day.
He misses his best friend.
"Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."
He goes to Father Lorenzo Mancini, his spiritual director, on Saturday. He is at his wits' end. He has barely slept. He hasn't seen Thomas. The guilt is consuming him.
"It has been five days since my last confession."
The ritual is familiar, but confession has never felt like this. The sins Aldo has thus far confessed have been trivial. This feels weighty. It feels real.
"I have wronged one of my brothers. I have—led him to temptation. I chose not to see how it was hurting him."
They're in Father Mancini's office, because Mancini does not think much of the confessional. He always speaks of confession as a conversation, but today, Aldo wishes for the partition. He cannot look his director in the eye. He feels sick again.
"Aldo," Mancini says after a moment of silence that is unbearable for Aldo. "Is this about Thomas Lawrence?"
Aldo feels hot, then cold with dread.
"No," he lies, then remembers where he is. "… Yes," he amends, and hopes the Lord will forgive him a lie of fear in the confessional.
He waits. Father Mancini is silent for an uncommonly long time. Finally, he asks—
"Do you love him?"
Aldo wants to scream. Nobody ever understands. If he loved Thomas as Father Mancini thinks he does, he wouldn't be here.
"No," he says. "Not like that. I love him because he's my brother and my best friend. But I don't—"
"You wouldn't be the first," Father Mancini interjects gently.
"But it's not that!" Aldo doesn't know how to explain it, any of it. Sometimes he feels that even when he manages, nobody is listening to him. They think they already know what he feels. "I thought it was just—a way to relieve stress. Because we trust each other. But he trusted me, and I used his trust."
He buries his face in his hands, presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. He wishes, suddenly, that he had never glimpsed Thomas, his youthful face, his graceful hands, his lean form.
"Aldo," Mancini says, "this happens. You are not the first, and you won't be the last."
Aldo doubts that. If boys before him had to go and fall in love with a fellow seminarian, surely they at least managed to do it right.
"The question you have to ask yourself," Mancini continues, "is what to do now. How do you want to go on from here?"
"I want to erase it," Aldo says, head still in his hands. "I want none of it to ever have happened."
There is an amused, knowing chuckle from Mancini.
"Do you want to know why confession is my favourite sacrament?" he asks. Aldo makes a noise that indicates for Mancini to go on.
"Because we can never go back and do it over. The Lord our Father put us into this world where we can live and learn, and to learn we must get many things wrong. And then he asks us to go out again and make them better. And in confession he tells us: it's alright; I knew you weren't going to get it right the first time. I absolve you. Try again. Because we cannot move forward when we are weighed down by guilt."
Aldo presses his hands harder against his eyes.
"What could I possibly learn from this?" he bites.
"That is for the Lord to show you. In the meantime, you have to make amends in this world."
Aldo scoffs bitterly, but he takes his hands from his eyes.
"Thomas doesn't want to talk to me."
Mancini looks on him with a kind expression. It's more than Aldo feels he deserves.
"Maybe not. But don't you think he needs to speak with you?"
Aldo cannot deny that.
They pray together. When Aldo walks away from Mancini's office, he tries to hold on to that moment of lightness he felt when Mancini pronounced his absolution.
He makes a plan to speak to Thomas that evening. The time he would have spent studying, he devotes to coming up with a list of things he will say to him.
At mass, he prays for the right words. He is scared but also resolved. Father Mancini was right. They both need this.
After mass, Clemens stops him in the hallway.
"Aldo. Do you have a moment?"
Aldo wants to brush him off, but there is something anxious about his friend's expression. He stops, even though every part of him is screaming that he just wants to be done with talking to Thomas.
"What is it?"
Clemens looks at him helplessly.
"It's Lluc." He still pronounces it Luke, the American way. "He told me he's leaving. He's leaving the seminary."
He finds Lluc on the fire escape down the hall from his room. From up here, on the upper floors of the building, they can look over some of the surrounding houses and scrutinise the balconies of others, with their January brown flowers and empty clotheslines. When Aldo looks above the buildings, towards the light blue of the winter sky, a pink sunset blush is just beginning to colour the horizon.
Lluc is smoking by the staircase. The acrid smell of cigarettes wafts on the crisp winter air. He acknowledges Aldo's presence with a nod.
Aldo motions towards Lluc's cigarette. Lluc passes it to him. Aldo takes a drag, then coughs.
"Clemens told you, didn't he?" Lluc says.
Aldo nods.
"Hm," Lluc says. He takes the cigarette back from Aldo.
There is something about him. Aldo is noticing it tonight for the first time, but now that he has seen it, he realises that it's been a long time in the making.
Lluc has grown up.
Anxiety grips Aldo. He realises suddenly that this—this place, this time, these friendships—will not last forever. That, in fact, they are already heading towards some kind of breaking point. Things are changing. They have been changing for a while.
Lluc will leave.
Thomas might never speak to him again.
Aldo thought he had found a place to stand in the world, and grapples with the fact that it's now shifting under his feet.
"Why?" he asks. "We're almost done. Why now?"
It's the only reason he can think to drop out: the academic pressures they've endured, the rigidity of seminary life, the privations. All this will change in the parishes. They will gain the autonomy that any man their age must crave, and also new responsibilities that will challenge them.
Lluc stubs out the cigarette and flicks it over the railing. When he looks at Aldo his mouth is smiling but his eyes aren't.
"Because we're almost finished, Aldito."
It hits Aldo, cold as dread.
"You don't want to—" He gestures around them. The seminary. Rome. "—become a priest?"
He watches Lluc sigh.
"I don't. I don't think so."
Aldo is almost relieved to hear the doubt in his voice. He couldn't have stood certainty in this moment. He might have lost his mind hearing someone pronounce a certainty.
"What brought this on?" he asks.
"My father wrote to me again."
"The business?"
As long as Aldo has known Lluc, that story has been the same, but Lluc shakes his head.
"No. My mother is divorcing him."
"Oh," Aldo says. He's not sure what the appropriate response is.
Lluc waves it away. "It's alright. They both want it, though my father can't say he does, of course. They were very young when they got married. But it's hard on him. In his last letter, he sounded…" Lluc searches for the right word. "… dispirited. Like there was less of him, you know?"
"You want to be there for him," Aldo guesses.
"I want to be there, period." Lluc looks anguished. "My family. My town. My friends. The people in the bar until late at night. The demonstrations. I want to be among them, not apart from them. I want to change things with them. That's why I made the vow to become a priest. Because I want to change things."
"You will do that. It's only a little bit longer."
Lluc laughs and shakes his head.
“We have a story in Catalonia, where I’m from, from the abbey where I did my activism. A poor shepherd’s boy found a statue of the Virgin. When he told the bishop about it, the bishop ordered her brought down to Manresa so that she would be displayed in all the glory she deserved. They carried the statue down the mountain. But when they came to the foot of the mountain, their hands were empty.”
Lluc takes a breath—a shuddering, exhausted breath.
“It’s the place, not just the statue. You can’t take the Moreneta down from the mountain. And I don’t feel like myself here. It’s like everything that made me—that made me myself is gone. My hands are empty.”
His mind is made up, Aldo realises. Their spiritual director has always emphasised that the priesthood isn't for everyone, and that it's no shame to drop out. Everyone serves God in their own way.
"I'm going to miss you," Aldo says.
In the fading light, his friend already looks like a different person. Aldo wishes he had known everything would change just a week ago. He would have savoured it more.
Lluc tries to put on a brave face but he, too, is not unmoved.
"Look after Clemens for me, alright? I don't think he quite understands."
Aldo embraces him before they part. Lluc squeezes him tightly and pats his back. Aldo pictures him, a few days from now, on a plane westwards across the Mediterranean. On his way to a life governed by mundane concerns, but also rich in mundane freedoms.
The image stays on his mind as he makes his way down the hallway, slowly because he dreads the arriving, counting his steps, making himself take slow breaths, until he stands in front of Thomas's door.
Everyone serves God in their own way, he thinks. Father Mancini had said that he could learn something from this experience. He thinks about Lluc's certainty that the priesthood is not for him, and then tries to see himself with the same mundane freedoms that Lluc will now enjoy. He realises that even if he wanted those freedoms, he would never want them as much as this: a life devoted to serving God, the sacrament of the priesthood. Everything else in his life will take a secondary place to that.
If his love for Thomas will never be enough, he should not torment him with it.
When Thomas opens the door, he is wearing track pants and an Oxford hoodie. His hair is held back with a thin band, the way he wears it when he knows he'll have to take a shower in the morning. He looks pale and tired.
"Come in," he says when he sees Aldo, sounding resigned, and Aldo steps inside and closes the door behind himself.
It's dark out by now, but Thomas only has the bedside lamp burning. His textbooks are in a neat stack next to the lamp, as though he's been catching up on his reading in bed.
Thomas gestures for Aldo to sit on his desk chair. He himself sits down on the edge of the bed.
Aldo feels acutely unprepared. He's thought of all the things he needs to say, but not of how to begin to say them. He settles on:
"How have you been?"
Thomas smiles, briefly. It looks pained.
"Miserable. I've been miserable, Aldo."
Aldo exhales. The worst has been said.
He nods. "Yes. Me too."
It's only when he watches Thomas's face change that he realises he's made a mistake. Thomas's lovely brow furrows, and he looks at Aldo with a mixture of disbelief and disgust.
"Oh," he says. "You've been miserable?"
"I—" Aldo thinks of something else to say, but it's the truth. "Yes. I have been."
Thomas scoffs. He says nothing.
"I feel terrible," Aldo continues, now thinking of the words he has prepared, "I never should have—I let this get out of hand. I never should have—we never should have done any of this."
"This," Thomas repeats, the word taking on a difference valence. "What do you mean, fucking or falling in love?"
Aldo has never seen this side of his friend. He didn't know Thomas—gentle, kind, forgiving Thomas—has such a temper.
"I'm not in love," he says.
"Yes," Thomas counters. "Right. Keep telling yourself that."
Is this the point where Aldo realises he may not be able to salvage things between them? Later, he isn't sure anymore. He only remembers how desperate he felt to salvage anything, and how the conversation slipped from his fingers bit by bit.
How can he make Thomas see?
"Thomas," he says carefully. "Where did you think this was going to go?"
Is it really possible Thomas has not yet asked himself that question? He must have. They're less than a year from their ordination as deacons. Their status quo is changing; the future looming ever larger on the horizon and if Thomas, as he claims, is in love, surely he has dreamed of what that future will look like. Does he still see them becoming priests? Ministering to neighbouring parishes? Driving over on a slow day for a quick fuck? How will he bring that together with his vows?
Thomas looks at him. His gaze comprehends nothing.
"I don't know," he says and he sounds genuinely anguished. "I just—"
Aldo watches him wrestle with himself for a minute. He did this, he thinks. He failed Thomas.
"I love you, Aldo," Thomas says. "I'm sure of that. I love spending time with you. I love everything we do together. Why is that so terrible?"
It breaks Aldo's heart. He wishes there was some earthly way to gather Thomas to his breast and keep him safe from all the things he has already done to hurt him.
"It's not," Aldo says. "It's not a terrible thing to want. But Thomas—"
He pauses for a moment. He has a feeling that there will be no coming back from what he is about to say.
"I say this with all the love in my heart. If this is really, truly a thing you feel—" He takes a breath. He wishes he could take Thomas's hands, but they are past that now. "—maybe you should search your heart to see if this is really the best line of work for you."
In the wake of that, Thomas gives him a look of absolute astonishment.
"I would be alright if we never slept with each other again, Aldo," he says. "I know what celibacy will require of me. But it won't change the fact that I love you."
Aldo buries his face in his hands. "Don't say that, please."
"I love you," Thomas insists.
"Jesus," Aldo hisses. "You don't have to do this. You can drop out. Why are you torturing yourself?"
He's tired. Too many things have happened in the past week. He can't remember the last time he slept well.
"You can do whatever you want, Thomas. You can be happy."
"I am happy," Thomas says. Close to tears.
"You don't look it," Aldo says.
August 1981
When he is still in New York, seven years younger and about a year into his first attempt at a degree in philosophy, Aldo spends an afternoon at his friend Federico's place.
It's the kind of summer afternoon for which New York is infamous—it's too hot, the air sits as though trapped under a glass dome, and he and Federico are both naked on Federico's bed. Federico keeps saying he has to get ready. He's working that evening, but the prospect of putting on clothes is deeply unpleasant.
Aldo, for his part, has once again failed to make it to class that morning.
He wishes he could light up a joint he's relatively sure is sitting in the back pocket of his jeans, but he's mindful of the fact that Federico will be on stage tonight, and surely the New York City Ballet does not look kindly upon its dancers—even the third fairy from the left—stoned.
"Do you want to fuck?" Federico asks.
Aldo makes a noise—not quite yes, not quite no. He doesn't want to do anything. It's the heat. It's the semester. It's the summer, it's this year.
"Do you want to come to the show tonight?"
Another noise that signifies nothing except that Aldo has heard the question. He doesn't know why it's so hard to make himself do anything these days. Get up, get dressed, go to class. Give a shit. He feels like everywhere he looks, the future looks equally unpromising.
He sits up abruptly, as though the movement might disturb the lethargy around his heart.
"I've been going to church again," he says.
Federico looks sceptical but not stunned. As long as they have known each other, Aldo has been "going back to church" every couple of months. Most of his friends think it's a crisis of sexuality. He doubts he could explain to them just how much deeper his crisis runs.
"I spoke to their vocation director."
"What's that, some kind of counsellor?"
Federico flops on his back.
"A career counsellor, yes." Aldo prevaricates. "It's someone you talk to before you join the seminary."
"The seminary, huh?" Federico doesn't say 'and how do the seminary and what we did earlier today go together?' and Aldo quietly thanks him for that. "What brought that on?"
Like as not, Federico can guess.
"Rick," he says and feels strange saying the name. The names of the dead hold too much meaning—in the absence of the person they signify, they take on the full burden of representation. It's too much for one word to hold. 'Rick' now stands for the man they both knew, who smiled and played football in the park in the summer and who died weighing nothing, a pared down parody of a person.
At that, Federico snorts.
"You may be the only person driven to the church by that."
"I wouldn't be so sure."
Aldo can't imagine he's the only one looking for meaning in all of this death. Others must be looking, too. He has to hope that some of them have found answers.
"What about your degree?" Federico asks. "What about becoming America's response to Foucault?"
We all say a lot of stupid shit when we are young and imagine the world is just waiting for us to burst onto the stage.
"It wouldn't be for nothing. They make you take philosophy in the seminary as well."
"Including Foucault?" Federico is teasing. His brown eyes spark. Aldo has always loved his humour, even if he doesn't think he loves Federico.
"Maybe I'll be the first to have read him. And anyway, I don't know if I want to go."
Federico watches him for a moment. Aldo feels self-conscious under his scrutiny.
"How are your classes?" Federico asks. He knows Aldo hasn't been showing up. Aldo has told him about his struggles, just as Aldo knows about all the worries Federico has regarding his body, because they share these sorts of things with each other.
"It's just this semester," Aldo says. "I'm sure I'd get back into the swing of things."
"Mh-mh." Federico nods, sceptical.
"I'm just thinking about it!"
He's not sure why he's starting to feel defensive now. Something about the ease with which Federico accepted his confession. He's offended that apparently his thoughts weren't all that surprising.
He wishes the notion of him becoming a priest sounded more outlandish to his friend. Then it might be easier to discard the nagging feeling that tells him this is exactly the thing he needs to do.
"Listen, Aldo." Federico sits up. His torso is muscular and tanned and beautiful, his face as fine as a Renaissance statue's. "If this is something you want, if it would make you happy—" He begins again. "If you can see yourself in that life, despite the celibacy, despite the church's stance on us—maybe you should take it seriously."
February 1988
Nothing remains to be said between him and Thomas. Aldo has tried it all. Thomas loves him in a way that Aldo will never reciprocate. You can't solve that like a theological debate, by referring to scripture or the Greeks. Aldo wants Thomas to be well. He holds him in affectionate regard. But it's nothing like the love Thomas has professed to feel.
So they don't sit next to each other anymore. Not during mass, and not at mealtime. Not in the library, which Aldo now avoids when he can. By mutual unspoken agreement, they divide up the places they used to frequent together into places that belong to Thomas, and places that belong to Aldo.
People notice, of course. Some may even understand that what broke between them was a little more than friendship. Clemens, though he often takes things too literally and is slow to understand interpersonal nuances, isn't stupid. One afternoon, he takes Aldo aside. He looks at him with pleading, serious eyes.
"Fix this, Aldo. First Lluc, now this. I can't stand it."
But Aldo will not cause Thomas more hurt than he already has by forcing a familiarity that is not wanted.
The problem is—the problem is it doesn't get better.
Thomas is still there every day, and Aldo misses him like he misses a limb. He wants to touch him. He wants to laugh when Thomas says something funny in class. He wants to sit with Thomas on his bed and read. He can't focus without the sound of his breathing next to him.
He sends a letter to his vocation director in New York. It's the only thing he can think to do. Eleven days later, there is an answer on lined legal paper.
An invitation. A way out.
Aldo only has to take it.
When he gets right down to it, it's simple. He's done it before.
He goes through his books first. He comes up with none he wants to keep, save for his journals, and those he packs up and ships home. He donates what he still has for civilian clothes. The picture of the beach on his wall goes in the trash. His lemon tree, he gifts to Clemens.
When he is done, Aldo Bellini's life once again fits into a single suitcase.
He leaves early in the morning. A cab picks him up to drive him to the airport. The sky is February grey and Rome doesn't look like a place that he will miss.
On the plane, he pulls out his journal. It’s not the one he carried across the Atlantic all those years ago. In fact, it’s not even the same brand of journal. He’s changed so many of his customs over the last half dozen years. But he still remembers the relief he felt on that flight, that disbelieving mixture of elation and dread at the thought that things would never be as they had been before.
He uncaps his pen. In bold, capital letters; in a hand that has gotten more elegant over the years, he writes:
I DID IT. I GOT OUT.
It does not make him feel better.
When he closes the book to put it away, something slips from between the pages. He has to unbuckle his seat belt so he can lean forward and fish it out from under the seat in front of him.
He rights himself.
He looks at the paper in his hand.
It’s the picture from their weekend in the Alps.
He stares at it. He sets it down on top of his journal. He presses a hand to his mouth. An unfamiliar grief threatens to overwhelm him.
Here they all are: Aldo and Thomas and Clemens and Lluc. Some years and a lifetime ago, with no idea what lay ahead of them. Lluc’s hair is still long and he’s smiling in the way that shows his missing tooth. Clemens hasn’t yet learned how to smile. He gives the camera a defiant look, eyes dark and serious. Aldo has his arm around Thomas—he doesn’t remember doing that this early in their friendship, but there are things that the heart knows before the mind does. He’s been in Thomas’s corner from the very beginning.
A sob escapes his throat. His seat neighbour turns, then does a double take—likely the man has never seen a priest cry before.
Aldo slips the picture back between the pages and hopes it will be many years before it takes him by surprise again. He closes his eyes, focuses on the droning hum of the plane engines, and tries to find comfort in the idea that in this small relic, they will remain happy ever after.
October 1988
He is ordained deacon on a crisp October day, leaves underfoot and fall on the breeze. His family is there. Some of his old friends from the Village show up, but many have forgotten him or lost his number when he joined the seminary.
Many others are dead. The names still reach him, when he asks after someone. Oh, Lenard? He died. He has nowhere to put that grief, since all his acquaintances have processed it long ago. He just picks it up and carries it with him until he can think of somewhere to put it.
For his parish year, he moves to Boston. He doesn’t want to stay in New York. He prays, and he reads, and he throws himself into parish work. His superiors praise his drive, his work ethic. There is talk of sending him to Rome after his ordination, and Aldo tries to listen to that without fear or favour.
In November 1989 the Berlin wall comes down and he calls Clemens. They have a lovely conversation, albeit stilted through distance and the crackle of static in the telephone line. The conversation lasts five minutes, and Aldo is out of sorts for five days afterwards.
He wonders how Thomas is doing, constantly. That part cannot be helped.
As his ordination as a priest approaches, the urge to call him intensifies until it keeps him awake most nights.
This will be one of the proudest moments of his life. He wants Thomas to be there.
But then he imagines it—Thomas in the pews on that day as Aldo prostrates himself before the altar. Thomas who loved him, who might still love him, and who might have walked a different path with Aldo if Aldo had let him.
No. He cannot take his vows looking at Thomas.
He doesn’t call. He doesn’t write.
On the day of his ordination, Aldo Bellini stands alone before the altar.
September 1986
In September 1986, before he and Thomas start sleeping with each other, before things go wrong between them, Aldo receives a letter from his friend Federico in New York.
It's not a long letter. In it, Federico mostly reminisces about Aldo and their time together just before Aldo left for Rome and joined the seminary. It's a letter that's most notable for how much it manages to rattle Aldo. All the things he left behind, the things he misses and the things he doesn't miss, come back and haunt the back of his mind like a bad taste in his mouth.
Thomas notices that something is amiss with him. While Thomas knows that Aldo is gay, and has known since at least 1984, Aldo has never told him much about his life before the seminary. The prospect of explaining anything about New York to Thomas still seems impossible. Maybe, he thinks, one day the memories will pass. It has been so long now. Thomas knows the gist of it. He does not need to know the sordid details.
Still, when Thomas asks him what's wrong, and when all Aldo can say is "letter from an old friend," Thomas somehow instinctively comprehends the shape of what's troubling him. When Aldo wants to beg off their usual post-dinner hangout, Thomas insists. He brings a book and lounges on Aldo's bed until Aldo sighs, and relents, and tells him—in fits and starts—the story of himself.
Thomas only listens. His eyes are blue, and attentive, and never judge Aldo for any of it.
That night, after Thomas has gone, Aldo kneels before his bed; hands folded in prayer. He feels gratitude so acutely it scares him. He never thought someone like this—someone who understands him without trouble, without effort—was in the cards for him.
There, before his bed, on his knees, he closes his eyes and thanks God for throwing him on a path where his life intersected with this unassuming British boy with blue eyes. He asks the Lord, as fervently as he has ever prayed for anything, never to part him from Thomas and feels the answering certainty from above: that life will link him and Thomas together, and keep them linked thereafter.
In that moment, he is nothing but thankful. He can't imagine a time when he will ever feel otherwise.