Call me by your name - André Aciman (p42)

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His life, like his papers, even when it gave every impression of being chaotic, was always meticulously compartmentalized. Sometimes he skipped sinner altogether and would simply tell Mafalda, "Esco, I'm going out."

His Esco, I realized soon enough, was just another version of Later! A summary and unconditional goodbye, spoken not as you were leaving, but after you were out the door. You said it with your back to those who you were leaving behind. I felt sorry for those who on the receiving end who wished to appeal, to plead.

Not knowing whether he'd show up at the dinner table was torture. But bearable. Not daring to ask whether he'd be there was the real ordeal. Having my heart jump when I suddenly heard his voice or saw him seated at his seat when I'd almost given up hoping he'd be among us tonight eventually blossomed like a poisoned flower. Seeing him and thinking he'd join us for dinner tonight only to hear his peremptory Esco taught me there are certain wishes that must be clipped like wings iff a thriving butterfly.

I wanted him gone from our home so as to be done with him.

I wanted him dead, too so that if I couldn't stop thinking about him and worrying when would be the next time I'd see him, at least his death would put an end to it. I wanted to kill him myself, even, so as to let him know how much his mere existence had come to bother me, how unbearable his ease with everything and everyone, taking all things in stride, his tireless I'm-okay-with-this-and-that, his springing across the gate to the beach when everyone else opened the latch first, to say nothing of his bathing suits, his spot in paradise, his cheeky Later!, his lip-smacking love for apricot juice. If I didn't kill him, then I'd cripple him for life, so that he'd be with us in a wheelchair and never go back to the States. If he were in a wheelchair, I would always know where he was, and he'd be easy to find. I would feel superior to him and become his master, now that he was crippled.

Then it hit me that I could have killed myself instead, or hurt myself badly enough and let him know why I'd done it. If I hurt my face, I'd want him to look at me and wonder why, why might anyone do this to himself, until, years and years later--yes, Later!--he'd finally piece the puzzle together and beat his head against the wall.

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I'll introduce you Call me by your name (by André Aciman) by putting paragraphs that I love so much here. I like this book a lot and can not giving me the freedom of reading as fast as usual. I just read line by line, paragraph by paragraph, page by page and pause long enough to devour each word. I really think of André Aciman as a master of using grammar as one of his effective methods. I like the way he blends the present tense and past tense into one mixture of a story line in which we can pick up easily his remaining emotion from the past and the present feeling which is still there, somehow even through 20 years of distance.

Someone once said time is just another dimension of space as in space has more than 3 dimensions. If you belive it, 20 years is a distance, really... but if you ever catch up with it again? Ever?... Again?...