“Niente, niente,” the judge said gently and explained to Emile that if he didn’t want to be sold he was free to go. In his own country Emile would have gone home indignantly but he was not in his own country and inquisitiveness or something deeper held him there. He was shocked to think that unfamiliar surroundings, lights and circumstances might influence his morals. To reinforce his character he tried to recall the streets of Parthenia but they were worlds away. Could it be true that his character was partly formed from rooms, streets, chairs and tables? Was his morality influenced by landscapes and kinds of food? Had he been unable to take his personality, his sense of good and evil, across the Bay of Naples?
In the piazza a band began to play and from behind the café a few mortars were fired off. Then the padrone opened the door and called to a man named Ivan, who smiled at his companions and went out onto the terrace where there was a block on which he stood. He seemed to acquiesce gracefully at this turn of events. Emile went out onto the terrace and stood in the shelter of an acacia tree. The bidding began lightheartedly, it seemed a joke, but as the bidding increased he realized that the young man’s skin was up for sale. The bidding rose quickly to a hundred and fifty thousand lire; but then it came in slowly and the stir in the crowd was erotic. Ivan seemed impassive but the beating of his heart could be seen. Was this sin, Emile wondered, and if it was, why should it seem so deeply expressive of everyone there? Here was the sale of the utmost delights of the flesh, its racking forgetfulness. Here were the caves and the fine skies of venery, the palaces and stairways, the thunder and the lightning, the great king and the drowned sailor, and from the voices of the bidders it seemed that they had never wanted anything else. The bidding stopped at two hundred and fifty thousand lire and Ivan stepped off the block and walked into the dark where someone, Emile couldn’t see who, had been waiting with a car. He heard the motor start and saw the headlights shine on the ruined walls as they drove off.
An Egyptian named Ahab came next but something was wrong. He smiled too knowledgeably, seemed much to ready to be sold and to perform what was expected of him and was knocked down at fifty thousand lire in a few minutes. A man called Paolo re-established the atmosphere of sexuality and the bids, as they had been for Ivan, came in slowly and hoarsely. Then a man named Pierre climbed onto the block and there was some delay before the bidding began at all.
Something had gone wrong. The bloom was off him. He had drunk too much wine or was too tired and now he stood on the block like a stick. His slip was cut scant enough to show his pubic hair and his pose was vaguely classical—the hips canted and one hand curved against his thigh—classical and immemorial as if he had appeared repeatedly in the nightmares of men. Here was the face of love without a face, a voice, a scent, a memory, here was a rub and a tumble without the sandy grain of a personality, here was a reminder of all the foolishness, vengefulness and lewdness in love and he seemed to excite, in the depraved crowd, a stubborn love of decency. They would sooner look at the prices on the menu than at him. His look was sly and wicked, he was more openly lascivious than the others but no one seemed to care. There was some subtle change in the atmosphere of the place. Ten thousand. Twelve thousand. Then the bidding stopped. This was the worst of all for Emile to see. Ivan had sold himself to God knows whom, a face in the dark, but it seemed more shameful and more sinful that Pierre, who was willing to perform the sacred and mysterious rites for the least sacred rewards, was wanted by no one and that for all his readiness to sin he might, in the end, have to spend a quiet night in the dormitory counting sheep. Something was wrong, some promise, however obscene, was broken and Emile sweated in shame for his companion, for to lust and to be unwanted seemed to be the grossest indecency. In the end Pierre was knocked down for twenty thousand lire. The padrone turned to Emile to ask if he wanted to reconsider his decision and in an intoxication of pride, a determination to prove that what had happened to Pierre could not happen to him, he went forward and stood on the block looking out boldly at the lights in the piazza as if he had in this way managed to come face to face with the world.
The bidding was spirited enough and he was knocked down for a hundred thousand lire. He stepped off the platform and walked through the tables to where a woman was waiting. It was Melissa.
