HE GOT SCALDED

Apart from this, he was a normal child.
Clever, carefree, disciplined at times, naughty at times.
Nothing particular.
Except that he got scalded.

It began when he was eight years old, with a friend who lived in the opposite building. In the afternoon they went to the river, unknown to all. And they got wet with muddy waters and irresponsibility, holding their breath. Then they dried themselves running crazily along the friable banks: a headlong balance as tight-rope walkers on a crumbling world.
He had guessed his friend’s honey and pine smell while they dressed again among plane-tree rotten leaves. It was a beginning of drunkenness or the consolation of a little musk in the fingers. He got used to going through that perfume again in his memory, turning around like a demon under blankets and sheets. It seemed an experience of innocence and refreshment, but in the end the bed was as red-hot as the hell.
When the little boy from Saragoza arrived, the river became a deserted place. They played football in the suburban houses courtyards and he always ended up as a goal-keeper. Sometimes they mocked him and in a summer morning he turned suddenly, guessing – nobody knows why – that the others two little boys held hands.

It happened in the fading plastered school entrance just before to go in. He was hugged from behind, as a joke, while a whiff of honey and pine settled down in the air. He didn’t even understand where the strange sharp pain exactly insisted. Afterward he realized it came from his wrist, where his former best friend’s hand had rested. There was a reddish strip, as a slight coral abrasion or a burning jelly-fish scar. He went to put his hand under the water, but that blood-red scratch remained visible for over a week.

He started avoiding people, slipping in the subway solitary wagons, hidden in a corner. He himself asked for playing as a goal-keeper, obviously not daring anything.
But his mother immediately realized that something didn’t work. So she put him with his back to the wall.
“I get scalded”, he finally whispered.
“When they touch me, I get scalded.”

They went to Hamburg for a test on his skin, consulted with sorceresses and neurologists, wizards and psychologists. But he got scalded. Everything was useless. If they touched him, he got scalded.
The idea of a thin asbestos film was pathetic, but he tried all the same. He forgot about it soon, when he realized that the mockery of his mates burnt more than the scalds and it fed cancers either.

He was at last resigned to an epidermic isolation from the surrounding world. Obviously the human world, since he didn’t get scalded with animals or plants. He always wore gloves in order to leave undamaged the ceremony of meeting people and he quickly moved his face away from the kisses of his relatives. As for the rest, he shunned.
Till the chemistry afternoon classes.
“Did you understand anything about the reaction between magnesium and glycerine?”, the boy asked him. He had sparkling dark eyes and sepia hair. They started studying together for the July examination at his seaside home, where the damp comfort of some north-east wind knots seeped from the veranda. Now and then they went to the beach, counting the backwash brackish pulsations, mixing in their hands some sandy soft warmth, defying the icy lash of the stream in the open sea.
An afternoon they fell asleep a few steps from the shore. He woke up the first, just when a gleam of violet lights began to appear on the horizon. He glanced at the innocent sleep of his friend and the dense shadings of colour on his skin. There was a more intense point, where the chest flew with a vibration to the shoulder. It was a place of strength and smells, the prelude of a tasty cavity similar to the scorching magnetism of a boreal dream. He would have liked to lay his hand on there for a moment, to pick on his palm some fragments of pleasure and vigour.
But he couldn’t.
Because he got scalded.
Nonetheless he couldn’t give up staring and eventually he made up his mind. “Just a second. It will be a little bite.”, he thought. And he put his hand on.

Simply unbelievable.

Maybe he was dreaming, but he hadn’t time to waste in useless questions. He took the whole muscle in his hand, then made his fingers slide under the armpit. And at that moment the other boy woke up.
“What’s happening?”, he asked him.
“I’m touching you.”, he answered. “I’m touching you.”

He didn’t need anymore sorceresses and wizards, because the secret was incredibly simple. He had to decide to touch other people. If he decided, he didn’t get scalded. He didn’t get scalded anymore.
He started deciding it at every moment, forestalling everyone. He touched hands and arms, cheeks, chins, hair and eyes, shoulders and backs. He didn’t get scalded anymore.
He didn’t get scalded anymore.

The others got scalded at times.