第一章~第一部分音频 Later 1
第一部分网易云简介里英文的没有完整，
网易云说是非法字符，老福特倒是可以贴
If Not Later, When?"Later!" The word, the voice, the attitude.Id never heard anyone use "later" to say goodbye before. It sounded harsh, curt, and dismissive, spoken with the veiled in?difference of people who may not care to see or hear from you again.It is the first thing I remember about him, and I can hear it still today. Later!I shut my eyes, say the word, and Im back in Italy, so many years ago, walking down the tree-lined driveway, watching him step out of the cab, billowy blue shirt, wide-open collar, sun glasses, straw hat, skin everywhere. Suddenly hes shaking my hand, handing me his backpack, removing his suitcase from the trunk of the cab, asking if my father is home.It might have started right there 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 stride already asking, Which way to the beach?This summers houseguest. Another bore.Then, almost without thinking, and with his back already turned to the car, he waves the back of his free hand and utters a careless Later! to another passenger in the car who has probably split the fare from the station. No name added, no jest to smooth out the ruffled leave-taking, nothing. His one-word send-off: brisk, bold, and blunted—take your pick, he couldnt be bothered which.You watch, I thought, this is how hell say goodbye to us when the time comes. With a gruff, slapdash Later!Meanwhile, wed have to put up with him for six long weeks.I was thoroughly intimidated. The unapproachable sort.I could grow to like him, though. From rounded chin to rounded heel. Then, within days, I would learn to hate him.This, the very person whose photo on the application form months earlier had leapt out with promises of instant affinities.Maybe it started soon after his arrival during one of those grinding lunches when he sat next to me and it finally dawned on me that, despite a light tan acquired during his brief stay in Sicily earlier that summer, the color on the palms of his hands was the same as the pale, soft skin of his soles, of his throat, of the bot?tom of his forearms, which hadnt really been exposed to much sun. Almost a light pink, as glistening and smooth as the under side of a lizards belly. Private, chaste, unfledged, like a blush on an athletes face or an instance of dawn on a stormy night. It told me things about him I never knew to ask.It may have started during those endless hours after lunch when everybody lounged about in bathing suits inside and outside the house, bodies sprawled everywhere, killing time before some?one finally suggested we head down to the rocks for a swim. Relatives, cousins, neighbors, friends, friends of friends, colleagues, or just about anyone who cared to knock at our gate and ask if they could use our tennis court—everyone was welcome to lounge and swim and eat and, if they stayed long enough, use the guesthouse.Or perhaps it started on the beach. Or at the tennis court. Or during our first walk together on his very first day when I was asked to show him the house and its surrounding area and, one thing leading to the other, managed to take him past the very old forged-iron metal gate as far back as the endless empty lot in the hinterland toward the abandoned 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, prob?ably trying to ask the right question of the owners son. "No, there was never a station house. The train simply stopped when you asked." He was curious about the train; the rails seemed so narrow. It was a two-wagon train bearing the royal insignia, I ex?plained. Gypsies lived in it now. Theyd been living there ever since my mother used to summer here as a girl. The gypsies had hauled the two derailed cars farther inland. Did he want to see them? "Later. Maybe." Polite indifference, as if hed spotted my misplaced zeal to play up to him and was summarily pushing me away.But it stung me.Instead, he said he wanted to open an account in one 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 take him there by bike.The conversation was no better on wheels than on foot. Along the way, we stopped for something to drink. The bar-tabaccheria was totally dark and empty. The owner was mop?ping the floor with a powerful ammonia solution. We stepped outside as soon as we could. A lonely blackbird, sitting in a Mediterranean pine, sang a few notes that were immediately drowned out by the rattle of the cicadas.I took a long swill from a large bottle of mineral water, passed it to him, then drank from it again. I spilled some on my hand and rubbed my face with it, running my wet fingers through my hair. The water was insufficiently cold, not fizzy enough, leaving behind an unslaked likeness of thirst.What did one do around here?Nothing. Wait for summer to end.What did one do in the winter, then?I smiled at the answer I was about to give. He got the gist and said, "Dont tell me: wait for summer to come, right?"I liked having my mind read. Hed pick up on dinner drudgery sooner than those before him."Actually, in the winter the place gets very gray and dark. We come for Christmas. Otherwise its a ghost town.""And what else do you do here at Christmas besides roast chestnuts and drink eggnog?"He was teasing. I offered the same smile as before. He understood, said nothing, we laughed.He asked what I did. I played tennis. Swam. Went out at night. Jogged. Transcribed music. Read.He said he jogged too. Early in the morning. 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 like him again: "Later, maybe."I had put reading last on my list, thinking that, with the willful, brazen attitude hed displayed so far, reading would figure last on his. A few hours later, when I remembered that he had just 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 not the fancy footwork needed to redeem myself. It was the unwelcome misgivings with which it finally dawned on me, both then and during our casual conversation by the train tracks, that I had all along, without seeming to, without even admitting it, 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 top of the bel?fry we nicknamed To-die-for, I should have known better than to just stand there without a comeback. I thought Id bring him around simply by taking him up there and letting him take in the view of the town, the sea, eternity. But no. Later!
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