Play That Again Call Me by Your Name

In an sectional extract from the novel, get to know Oliver and Elio — before heading to the theater to check out the lauded new film.

Editor's annotation: The following is an exclusive excerpt from the showtime affiliate of Andre Aciman'due south novel "Call Me by Your Name," adapted by James Ivory for the screen for Luca Guadagnino's lauded film starring Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer.

"After!" The give-and-take, the voice, the attitude.

I'd never heard anyone use "later" to say good day before. It sounded harsh, brusque, and dismissive, spoken with the veiled in- difference of people who may non care to meet or hear from y'all again.

It is the first affair I call up about him, and I can hear it still today. Afterwards!

I shut my eyes, say the word, and I'g back in Italian republic, so many years ago, walking downwards the tree-lined driveway, watching him step out of the cab, billowy blue shirt, wide-open collar, sunglasses, straw chapeau, pare everywhere. Of a sudden he's shaking my paw, handing me his haversack, removing his suitcase from the trunk of the cab, asking if my father is domicile.

It might accept started right at that place and and then: the shirt, the rolled-up sleeves, the rounded balls of his heels slipping in and out of his frayed espadrilles, eager to test the hot gravel path that led to our house, every step already asking, Which way to the beach?

This summertime'south houseguest. Another diameter.

Then, almost without thinking, and with his back already turned to the motorcar, he waves the back of his complimentary hand and utters a careless Later! to another passenger in the motorcar who has probably split the fare from the station. No name added, no jest to shine out the ruffled leave-taking, nothing. His one-give-and-take send-off: brisk, assuming, and blunted—have your selection, he couldn't be bothered which.

You watch, I thought, this is how he'll say goodbye to u.s.a. when the time comes. With a gruff, slapdash Later!

Meanwhile, nosotros'd have to put upwardly with him for six long weeks. I was thoroughly intimidated. The unapproachable sort.

I could grow to similar him, though. From rounded chin to rounded heel. And then, within days, I would learn to detest him.

"Call Me past Your Proper noun"

This, the very person whose photo on the application course months earlier had leapt out with promises of instant affinities.

Taking in summertime guests was my parents' way of helping young academics revise a manuscript before publication. For six weeks each summertime I'd have to vacate my bedchamber and motility ane room downwards the corridor into a much smaller room that had one time be- longed to my grandfather. During the winter months, when nosotros were away in the city, it became a part-time toolshed, storage room, and attic where rumor had it my grandfather, my proper name- sake, still ground his teeth in his eternal sleep. Summer residents didn't have to pay annihilation, were given the total run of the business firm, and could basically practise anything they pleased, provided they spent an hour or so a twenty-four hour period helping my father with his correspon- dence and assorted paperwork. They became part of the family unit, and after near fifteen years of doing this, we had gotten used to a shower of postcards and souvenir packages not only around Christ- mastime merely all year long from people who were now totally de- voted to our family and would become out of their manner when they were in Europe to drop by B. for a solar day or two with their family unit and have a nostalgic tour of their old digs.

At meals there were frequently two or three other guests, sometimes neighbors or relatives, sometimes colleagues, lawyers, doctors, the rich and famous who'd drop past to see my father on their style to their own summer houses. Sometimes we'd even open our dining room to the occasional tourist couple who'd heard of the old villa and simply wanted to come by and take a peek and were totally enchanted when asked to eat with us and tell united states of america all nigh themselves, while Mafalda, informed at the terminal infinitesimal, dished out her usual fare. My father, who was reserved and shy in private, loved nothing better than to have some precocious rising good in a field keep the chat going in a few languages while the hot summertime sunday, after a few glasses of rosatello, ushered in the unavoidable afternoon torpor. We named the task dinner drudgery—and, afterwards a while, and so did most of our six-week guests.

Maybe it started before long after his arrival during i of those grind- ing lunches when he sat next to me and it finally dawned on me that, despite a light tan caused during his brief stay in Sicily earlier that summer, the color on the palms of his hands was the aforementioned as the pale, soft skin of his soles, of his throat, of the bot- tom of his forearms, which hadn't actually been exposed to much lord's day. Almost a light pink, equally glistening and smooth as the underside of a lizard's belly. Individual, chaste, unfledged, similar a blush on an athlete's face or an instance of dawn on a stormy night. It told me things about him I never knew to enquire.

Information technology may accept started during those endless hours afterward luncheon when everybody lounged most in bathing suits within and outside the house, bodies sprawled everywhere, killing fourth dimension before some- one finally suggested we head downwards to the rocks for a swim. Rela- tives, cousins, neighbors, friends, friends of friends, colleagues, or just about anyone who cared to knock at our gate and ask if they could utilise our tennis court—everyone was welcome to lounge and swim and eat and, if they stayed long enough, use the guesthouse.

Or mayhap information technology started on the beach. Or at the tennis courtroom. Or during our first walk together on his very first 24-hour interval when I was asked to testify him the house and its surrounding area and, one matter leading to the other, managed to take him past the very old forged-iron metal gate equally far dorsum as the endless empty lot in the hinterland toward the abased train tracks that used to connect B. to N. "Is there an abandoned station house somewhere?" he asked, looking through the trees under the scalding sun, probably trying to ask the correct question of the owner's son. "No, there was never a station house. The train simply stopped when yous asked." He was curious about the train; the runway seemed so narrow. Information technology was a two-railroad vehicle train bearing the imperial insignia, I explained. Gypsies lived in it now. They'd been living there e'er since my mother used to summer here every bit a girl. The gypsies had hauled the two batty cars farther inland. Did he want to see them? "After. Peradventure." Polite indifference, equally if he'd spotted my misplaced zeal to play up to him and was summarily pushing me away.

Only it stung me.

Instead, he said he wanted to open an account in 1 of the banks in B., then pay a visit to his Italian translator, whom his Italian publisher had engaged for his book.

I decided to have him there past bike.

The conversation was no improve on wheels than on foot. Along the style, nosotros stopped for something to potable. The bartabaccheria was totally dark and empty. The owner was mopping the floor with a powerful ammonia solution. We stepped exterior every bit presently every bit we could. A lonely blackbird, sitting in a Mediterranean pino, sang a few notes that were immediately drowned out by the rattle of the cicadas.

I took a long swill from a large canteen of mineral water, passed it to him, and so drank from it again. I spilled some on my manus and rubbed my face with it, running my wet fingers through my hair. The water was insufficiently cold, not fizzy enough, leaving backside an unslaked likeness of thirst.

What did ane practise around here? Nothing. Expect for summer to end. What did one do in the winter, so?

"Call Me by Your Name"

I smiled at the answer I was about to requite. He got the gist and said, "Don't tell me: look for summer to come, correct?"

I liked having my mind read. He'd pick up on dinner drudgery sooner than those before him.

"Actually, in the winter the place gets very gray and night. Nosotros come for Christmas. Otherwise information technology's a ghost town."

"And what else do you do here at Christmas as well roast chestnuts and drink eggnog?"

He was teasing. I offered the same smile as before. He understood, said goose egg, nosotros laughed.

He asked what I did. I played lawn tennis. Swam. Went out at dark. Jogged. Transcribed music. Read.

He said he jogged too. Early in the morning time. Where did one jog around here? Along the promenade, mostly. I could show him if he wanted.

It hit me in the face just when I was starting to similar him again: "Afterwards, maybe."

I had put reading last on my list, thinking that, with the willful, brazen attitude he'd displayed so far, reading would figure last on his. A few hours subsequently, when I remembered that he had merely finished writing a book on Heraclitus and that "reading" was probably not an insignificant part of his life, I realized that I needed to perform some clever backpedaling and let him know that my real interests lay right alongside his. What unsettled me, though, was non the fancy footwork needed to redeem myself. It was the unwelcome misgivings with which it finally dawned on me, both then and during our coincidental conversation past the train tracks, that I had all along, without seeming to, without even albeit information technology, already been trying—and failing—to win him over. When I did offer—because all visitors loved the idea—to take him to San Giacomo and walk up to the very pinnacle of the belfry nosotros nicknamed To-die-for, I should accept known better than to just stand at that place without a comeback. I thought I'd bring him around simply by taking him up at that place and letting him accept in the view of the boondocks, the ocean, eternity. Merely no. Later!

"Phone call Me by Your Proper name"will exist in theaters on November 24.

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Excerpted from "Call Me by Your Name" past André Aciman. Paperback published by Picador. Copyright © 2007 by André Aciman. Originally published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. All rights reserved.

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Source: https://www.indiewire.com/2017/11/call-me-by-your-name-first-chapter-andre-aciman-1201898733/