“I guess it’s the same for me, then,” you said, turning around and pulling off your swim shorts, revealing your behind, quickening my pulse. Your ass was powerful, like two great smooth rocks sculpted by the sea. “And the swimming clears my head,” you went on, your voice unchanged, putting on your briefs. “Entirely. It’s like I’m bathing my mind.”

I asked you what you needed to clean from your mind as you pulled on your trousers and turned back to me, your dark hair falling over your forehead.

“Different things. Work. The future. And you? What clears your head?”

“Reading,” I said without needing to think.

“Oh yeah? What are you reading right now? Anything good?”

I couldn’t bear to look at you while I thought. The sky had turned an even darker blue, and I felt safe in the dimming light.

“Right now, nothing. But I’m starting a new book soon, and I think it’ll be really good.” I thought of Giovanni’s Room, hidden at the bottom of my bag, its precious pages waiting to be read.

“What’s it called?”

You sat next to me. I looked at you, the air in my throat suddenly immobile and heavy, my mind reeling. I didn’t know why I’d let myself bring up this secret, tried hard to think of another title to tell you. The distant sound of the camp bell rang through the air, stirring us both. Then an odd silence between us, like something balancing on an edge, deciding which way to fall.

“It’s dinnertime,” you finally said, rising. “C’mon. I’m starving.”

We walked to the camp, back through the fields, the light fading. I felt peculiarly close to you, and happy to have you all to myself with nothing but the sky looking at us. I asked where you had learned to swim so well, and you told me that there was a river not far from your house, where you had played with your brothers. You said that they had taught you.

“And in the summer we’d go around the mountains and swim in the other rivers there,” you said.

“Where?”

“Near Rabka. By the Tatra Mountains.”

“A southern boy,” I said, smiling.

You nodded. “Can’t you tell from my accent?”

“Now that you say it, yes.” Some of the words you said, even later, were inflected with a drawl, pulling the last syllable out like pliable dough.

“And you?”

“Wrocław.”

“A city boy, huh?” Your eyes flashed in the dark.

By then we had reached the camp. We stopped in front of the canteen, as if we’d agreed on it before.

“See you tomorrow,” you said, putting your hand on my shoulder for a moment and then going in, leaving me standing outside.