RICARDO by Andrej Koymasky (C) 2009 written on on June 2, 2002 translated by the author English text kindly revised by Randhir
USUAL DISCLAIMER
"RICARDO" is a gay story, with some parts containing graphic scenes of sex between males. So, if in your land, religion, family, opinion and so on this is not good for you, it will be better not to read this story. But if you really want, or because YOU don't care, or because you think you really want to read it, please be my welcomed guest.
Chapter 6 - MY BROTHER
Sergio is fifty-two years old. He is married for twenty-nine years with Tana, who is forty-three. He made her pregnant when she was just fourteen, and then he had to marry her and thus my nephew, Marta was born. Tana is a very smart woman; my brother has been lucky. Then came Gemma and their last child is Piercarlo, or Picc". Tana is the same age of my sister; they were classmates. I was eighteen when this happened. When Sergio confessed at home what scrape he had gotten himself into, a tragedy seemed to explode at home.
My father asked him, yelling, if he didn't know that condom's, or "raincoats" as he called them, were invented centuries ago.
My mother said to him it was a shame he had taken advantage of such a young and naive girl, "É who moreover is the same age as your sister!"
They married, but Tana's parents demanded that she had to go on living with them until she was eighteen. It didn't go in that way. Exactly the same summer when I met Giorgio at the beach, in September, Tana ran away from her parents' home with Marta in her arms, and showed up at our home - she declared she wanted to live with her husband. My mother agreed with her. Tana's family kicked up an incredible row, but the law was on Tana and Sergio's side. They lived one year with us then Sergio, with our father's help, found a small apartment and that was when Gemma, was conceived, while they still lived in our home.
Piercarlo instead was born six years after Gemma; in fact my nephew is now twenty-one years old.
Sergio is not bad, as a man. He is serious, a hard worker and honest. He just is somewhat narrow-minded. He despises gypsies, Arabs, gays, drug addicts, communists and priests. He doesn't hate them, he doesn't discriminate them, he says, as long as they don't hang around him.
That's why unlike my sister, he doesn't know that I am gay or if he suspects it, we never talked about it. But I believe he really doesn't know, or else he would not keep silent. I can imagine it, "I love you, you are anyway my brother, but don't show any more here. If you are in need I will always give you a hand, but keep clear of me." Exactly what he said to his son.
He is not a bad man, when somebody says that the Arabs are to be all killed, he becomes furious, "They are men like us. They just have to stay in their countries. They are welcome in Italy, but just as tourists!"
Sergio owns a bar - he never refuses a glass of water to an Arab, and if the Arab orders something and pays for it, he treats him like any other customer. He is somewhat more selective with gypsies. But only because they are dirty, he justifies himself.
"If they want to live a nomadic life, it's their business; they have just no to come to Italy."
When I asked him where they have to go if no country want them, he answered, "Then they have just to stop being nomads, they have to find an honest job, to wash themselves, to stop bothering people begging or stealing. Look at the Philippines - nobody has anything against them, isn't it so? But they work hard, they are honest, they are clean!"
You can't move him, in spite of any reasoning you can do. He is a man of sound convictions, be they right or wrong. Of course he thinks they are right. It is just that he never has any doubts about his ideas, he never considers that they could be wrong. He is a champion of tautology - there are just two possibilities, either I'm right or you are wrong. When I made him notice that, he got angry.
Tana is smart. I think they never quarrelled. My sister in law is clever, she knows perfectly which are Sergio's faults and his limits but, rightly, she never talks about them. One times I got a load off my chest with her for some friction with Sergio, her only heart-felt comment has been, "but he is a good man". She is right, I never told her anything moreÉ or almost.
Sergio is anyway generous. When I left my job twenty years ago, he gave me a hand until I found a new job. He, Dad and Clara helped me for almost two years. And in that period Sergio didn't have so much money - all his three children were little, Picc" was just two years old. And anyway he helped me, without my asking him.
At times Sergio is boring - he complains about everybody and everything. Mainly about taxes and our politicians, even though I can't disagree with him about these two points. He is a member of the Liberal Party and goes often to their meetings, even though he is not really an activist. But according to him, there is not a single honest person in the world, or anyway you can count them on the fingers of one hand. His employees are lazy; they have neither passion nor intelligence. If you don't watch them they will only try to cheat on youÉ and so on.
Therefore we have at times somewhat tense discussions. I love him and that's why when he does some kind of reasoning, I get mad at him. Anyway we never had much confidence, much understanding, in spite of us just five years apart. When we were children, he never treated me badly, but he was feeling too much grown up to allow me in his world. He never played games with me. He never helped me to do my homework. He never soothed me when I was hurt. But he never stole my toys and never treated me as a snotty kid.
He always hated his son's nickname Picc", "It seems the initials of the Communist Party!" he thundered. Now that the Communist Party doesn't exist any more he could possibly have calmed down, but the problem doesn't exist any more, as Picc" now lives with with me.
When the problem of Picc" burst into the open, his reaction was complex, "I couldn't expect anything else from you! If it wasn't me who sired you, I would say they had not been able to straighten you. But unhappily also from the good under stocks can come out bad vines!" he thundered.
He was out of himself. Tana had difficulties in calming him down, poor woman.
About the fact that Picc" confessed everything, he said that it was the minimum his son could do, "And if they put you in jail, I hope they will throw away the key!" he icily said, but I know he really didn't think so.
About the menaces to his bar, he just laughed out loud - he wasn't afraid of four outskirts hoodlums. It wasn't a pose, he really wasn't afraid.
Once, when I was sixteen, he caught me while I was masturbating. I felt like sinking in the ground. He didn't scold me, he didn't even smile. He dryly told me to go and do it in the toilet and to lock the door. He told me I was a fool to do it in the bedroom in that way what if Dad or Mum had walked inÉ he left the sentence unfinished, but with an accent of menace.
He always felt very much the "elder brother". He ceased that attitude only when I too started to work. But he treated me as a kid even through my university years. He didn't want to go on studying after the high school. As soon as he graduated, he went to work in a bar, which he liked very much. He learnt this trade very well and by the age of 30 he opened his own bar. He knows very well how to treat his patrons.
When first Marta and then also Gemma started to flirt with some boys, he took them apart, explained them about him and their mother, and said, "Sooner or later, if you didn't already do it, you will get to something more intimate with your boyfriends, it's natural. Therefore you have to always have in your handbag a box of condoms, to avoid being made pregnant as I did with your mother - we men are reckless. But as it is not good for a girl to go in a chemist's shop to buy them, I bought some for you and put them in that drawer. Take them when you want, but never forget to have some with you, don't forget it!"
Beppe, Gemma's husband had worked at Sergio's bar since he was a boy, and my brother was glad when they started to date and then married. He is less happy with Luigi, Marta's husband, who is a painter - a timewaster, according to Sergio. On the contrary, Luigi is a rather established painter and earns good money. I like Luigi more than Beppe.
Sergio once called me at home and Sandro went to answer, this was before either Picc" or Ricardo had been living with me.
"Who's that guy?" Sergio asked me.
"A friend. Why?"
"And he answered your phone?"
"He's my guest, he sleeps in my living." I lied.
"And why? Doesn't he have enough money to pay for his place? Doesn't he have a job?"
"Yes, but so we simply share the expenses." I said.
"Ah, well, yes; then you can save money." Sergio concluded, placated by my explanation.
I was with them when Gemma and Beppe married. At the wedding party, there was one of Beppe's cousins, a rather effeminate boy, who gave you the feeling he could be gay.
My brother at a certain point said, "Just look at that one! The inverts should be all castrated!"
"Why?" I asked rather disturbed by his remark.
He answered, "Because they are ill people and so they would not corrupt the children."
"Sergio, first of all don't mistake gay people with paedophiles, and there are plenty of the latter also amongst the so called straight people. And second, what that boy can do or not do in his bed, doesn't concern you!"
Beppe, who heard that remark, intervened, "Who, Roby? He gay? Don't be duped by the appearances, Dad, Roby is a real womanizer!"
I giggled and Sergio asked me, "Well, what made you laugh?"
"NothingÉ you would have castrated somebody like you." I whispered him.
"I am not a womanizer, I never cheated on Tana!" he cut short, frowning.
He probably is sincere - I don't know and am not interested to know. Anyway I caught the glance that Clara threw to me when she too heard Sergio's remark and then she winked at me. I don't think she wanted to say that Sergio had had some adventures out of his marriage, but just that she appreciated the exchange between my brother and me.
I always thought that Sergio was more handsome than me. I never envied him for this. I could see how the girls were looking at him, and at times even some boys.
I never felt looked at in that way, except by Ricardo.
When our father died, I think that the one who grieved the most was Sergio. He admired Dad very much and he resembled him a lot especially for his character, even though physically he took more by Mum. He then took Mum to live with him until she also passed away. Mum and Tana got along well - they weren't the classical mothers in law and daughter in law. Sergio seemed happy having with him both his mother and his wife and that they fit so well with each other.
When Picc", my brother's son, was born I was twenty-five years old. They asked me to be his godfather at his christening. I didn't want to give him the usual gold chain that then ends up forgotten in some chest of drawers. I took a gold chain bracelet that I got as a gift from my uncle at my coming of age, and that I never used, took it to Stefano asking him to restore it, find for it a more modern case, and to carve on the small plaque my nephew's name outside, and his birth date inside.
I asked my brother and my sister in law to keep it apart and to give it to Piercarlo when he was old enough to appreciate it and not to lose it. They gave it to him at his fifteenth birthday, and his joy abundantly paid back those fifteen years of waiting.
Since a child Piercarlo has always been my preferred nephew. Of course I love the others as well, but for him, possibly because he is my first male nephew, possibly because I had been his godfather, I always had a weakness. As well as he for me.
We used to play for hours together, and at times Tana said, "Don't wear down your uncle in that way, or else he will never again come to play with you!"
Then Piercarlo looked at me in alarm, but I winked and then he again opened in a trusting smile.
When Piercarlo, or Picc" as I called him, was attending the middle school, his learning problems started. Even though he had a normal intelligence, he didn't like to study. He was not lazy, but evidently his teachers, possibly already in the primary school, had not been able to make him fond of studies.
Tana repeatedly told him, "You are hopeless, you are hopelessÉ" and so doing she worsened the situation.
"I'm hopeless, uncle." the kid repeated to me in a desolate tone.
In that period I was living with Sandro. When I was free and Sandro had some commitment, I went to Sergio's house to study with Picc".
"Can we play, uncle?" he asked full of hope.
"Sure, if you first study and you deserve it."
"But I'm hopeless, uncle!"
"And I don't think so. What's a tactical foul?" I asked and he, readily, explained it. "What's the difference between the Italian and English points calculation?" and he perfectly explained it. "Do you see? If you understand such things, know them, and remember them it means that you can learn also the school matters."
Caught at fault, he hinted a smile and said, in a low voice, "But soccer is amusing, school isn'tÉ"
But then he studied with me, and at the end of the school year he managed to get the promotion. Sergio gave him a gift, and Picc" said to me in a low voice, "But at least the half of this gift would be yours!"
At that I answered, "For sure, and that half is my gift for your promotion." and winked to him.
When he was sixteen, after leaving school and getting a job, Piercarlo underwent a change - with me he was always nice, but he became closed, somewhat sulky and started to spend more and more time out of home with his friends and less and less with me.
"He's just growing up, Tana, and he's get out from his mother's apron strings. It's just natural." I said to my sister in law to calm her.
In reality I was worrying too. But I understood I had not to harp on at him too much, as his mother was already doing so too much.
In his bedroom started to appear Sex Pistols posters, Devils posters, then slogans like "Out-law" and so on. It was normal in a kid of his age, but I got the feeling he was trying to assert something peculiar. He was seventeen and a half when on his room appeared a Nazis' swastika.
"What's that?" I asked him.
"A swastika, don't you know?" he answered sarcastic.
"Yes, but what does it mean to you?" I asked him, frowning.
"Nothing." he answered shrugging his shoulders as to cut off that speech.
"No, it's not nothing or else you would not have put it on your wall. What does it represents for you, Picc"?" I insisted.
"Wouldn't you please care for your fucking shit?" he answered, worked up.
He never talked me in such a way and I looked at him agape. He was looking at the tip of his shoes, but had an angry expression.
"Well, "I said, "if you put it in these termsÉ" and went away from his room.
After that time we were barely exchanging a little more than a bye when we met in his home. I was missing the Picc" who as a boy was cheerful each time he saw meÉ He is just growing up, I went on telling myself. And I resigned myself to have become for him just a little less than a stranger.
One new thing started to make Tana worry - Picc" seemed to have more money than he should. How did he get it?
"He says he wins it playing cards with his friends," his mother told me, "but, besides the fact I don't like him to bet money, is it possible he always wins?"
"Is it much money?" I asked her.
"I don't know, not so very much, but anyway not so littleÉ And once he cames home with a gold lighter, another time with a watchÉ always won at cards so he saysÉ"
"It could be soÉ" I said, even though I too didn't believe it.
So I decided in spite of my previous decision to face again Picc".
"You don't believe me?" he asked quietly, too much quietly, "If you don't believe me, just play poker with me and a couple friends. But, as you don't believe me, we will start with a kitty of one hundred thousand liras. If I lose, you probably are right, I could be a thief. But if I win, I have you gulp down all your fucking suspects, as I will leave you naked!"
He seemed too self-assured, so I let it go.
CONTINUES IN CHAPTER 7
In my home page I've put some more of my stories. If someone wants to read them, the URL is
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If you want to send me feed-back, or desire to help revising my English translations, so that I can put on-line more of my stories in English please e-mail at
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