At first, Elio found Oliver’s confidence irritating, an intrusion on his quiet world. Yet, irritation soon curdled into fascination. He began to watch Oliver—the way he played volleyball, the way he ate his eggs, the way he wore his Star of David necklace. A magnetic pull developed between them, charged with the tension of things unsaid. They cycled through the Italian countryside, their conversations dancing around a hidden center.
Winter arrived, coating the villa in a pale, cold light. During Hanukkah, the phone rang. It was Oliver. He was calling to say he was getting married to a woman in the States. The news was a final, cold blow to the warmth of that July.
Oliver, a twenty-four-year-old American doctoral student, was the latest "summer guest" to stay at the Perlmans' 17th-century villa to assist Elio’s father, a professor of archaeology. He was tall, confident, and possessed a breezy nonchalance—summed up by his frequent, curt departure: "Later." Call Me by Your Name(2017)
As the summer waned, they took a final trip to Bergamo. For a few days, they were free—dancing in the streets to "Love My Way," hiking near waterfalls, and living as if time had no power over them. But the train station at Clusone eventually loomed. A final embrace, a lingering look, and Oliver was gone, headed back to the States.
Elio returned to the villa, the silence of the house now deafening. Seeing his son’s quiet devastation, Mr. Perlman sat him down for a conversation that would define Elio's life. He didn't offer platitudes; instead, he validated Elio’s pain. "We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should," he said. "But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything—what a waste!" At first, Elio found Oliver’s confidence irritating, an
What followed was a tentative, breathtaking awakening. Their romance flourished in the secret corners of the villa and during midnight swims. It was a love defined by the phrase Oliver whispered as they first grew intimate: "Call me by your name, and I’ll call you by mine." It was an act of total surrender, a merging of two identities into one.
The sun-drenched summer of 1983 in Northern Italy felt like a suspended dream, a blur of golden light, bruised apricots, and the rhythmic chirping of cicadas. For seventeen-year-old Elio Perlman, life was a sophisticated, if somewhat restless, routine of transcribing music, reading in the shade, and swimming in the river. That was until Oliver arrived. A magnetic pull developed between them, charged with
One afternoon, in a town square near a war memorial, the subtext finally broke the surface. Elio admitted his feelings in a coded, desperate whisper: "If you only knew how little I know about the things that matter."