Time Ages in a Hurry

Drip, Drop, Drippity-Drop

The pain that woke him ran down his left leg, from the groin to the knee, but its provenance was elsewhere, by then he knew this all too well. With his thumb he began to press from his tailbone upward, when he arrived between the third and fourth lumbar vertebrae, he felt a sort of electric current running through his body, as if right from that spot a radio station was broadcasting out from the neck to the toes. He tried rolling over in bed. At the first attempt the pain paralyzed him. He stayed on his side, actually not even on his side, on half his side, which isn’t a precise position, it’s a would-be position, a passage. He stayed suspended in this movement, if one can put it that way, as in certain Italian Baroque paintings where the saint, male or female, gracefully overexcited from fasting or from Christ, remains forever suspended within the painter’s brushstrokes, because the craziest of painters, who are also the ones of genius, are marvelous at catching the unfinished movement of their depicted character, usually crazy himself, and the pictorial miracle happens as a kind of bizarre levitation that seems to dispense with the force of gravity.

He tried to wiggle his toes. With a little pain they moved, the big toe included, the one most at risk. He stayed like this, not daring to shift a millimeter, looking at his toes, and thought of that poor guy from Prague who one day awoke out of context, meaning that instead of lying on his back he was lying on his armor-plated shell, and watching the ceiling of his little room, which he imagined to be pale blue, who knows why, he helplessly waved his hairy little paws and wondered what to do. The thought irritated him, not so much because of the comparison but because of the reference to genre: literature, literature again. He tried out an experimental phenomenology of the situation. He got up his courage and shifted his side a centimeter. From the fourth vertebra a dart of pain shot to the base of the neck — he could almost hear the whistle — then it spun around, reached the groin, and spread along the entire leg. How to Speak with Your Own Body was a book he’d read with skepticism yet with a certain curiosity, he couldn’t deny that, a popular book though probably not very reliable in scientific terms, but why shouldn’t one talk to one’s own body? There are people who talk to walls. As a young man he’d read a novel by a writer quite popular at the time, then unjustly neglected, quite a guy, who really got down to the nitty-gritty at times and who in that book spoke to his own body, indeed a specific part of his body, which he called his “him,” and from there arose a dialogue that was anything but banal. Here though it wasn’t the same, since his “him” wasn’t involved, and so he simply said: leg, oh leg! He moved it and it responded with a lacerating pain. Dialogue was impossible. He stretched it very carefully and the pain concentrated in his spinal column. The column of infamy. He grew irritated again. He thought that if he called the doctor, who at this point he was all too familiar with, he’d tell him he was suffering from literature, an observation already made in the past. He pictured the doctor saying: my dear fellow, the problem is mainly due to the fact that you assume the wrong positions, actually you’ve assumed the wrong positions all your life, to write, because the problem unfortunately is that you write, don’t be offended, instead of leading a life more consonant with hygiene and well-being, that is, going to a pool or jogging around in shorts like other men your age, you stay all bent over writing your books for whole days at a time, and not only bent over — I’ve seen you — you’re all crooked too, like a misshapen biscuit, your spine looks like the sea when a southwest wind blows, all crooked, but it’s too late to reform it now, you could try torturing it a bit less, you don’t seem capable of reading the X-rays I brought you, so to make you really understand, tomorrow I’ll bring you the plastic articulated spine I used to study with at college, and I’ll shape it like yours, so you’ll finally see what you’ve reduced it to.

We gave her oxygen because she was having difficulty breathing, said the doctor, but her condition is stable, don’t worry. Which meant: stay calm tonight, she’ll get through it. He entered on tiptoe. The room was dim. The patient in the next bed was asleep. She was a chubby blond woman who yesterday had spent all afternoon on her cell phone while lying in bed in her robe, waiting for the operation she needed to have as soon as possible, she said. And added: I don’t know why I decided to check myself into the hospital, today of all days, with the Easter holidays and our restaurant in Porto Venere packed, you know, dear sir (she said it like that, dear sir), ours is one of the very few Ligurian restaurants that appear in the Michelin Guide, and imagine that, I came here to have this little operation on this of all days, when diners are waiting in line to get in, could I be any stupider, just for a few gallstones, Armando, Armando (meanwhile Armando, who must have been her husband, was on the phone), please don’t make Leopoldina set the tables, she does her best but she always mixes up the glasses, puts the wine glasses in the wrong spot, I spent the whole winter teaching her but she doesn’t get it, she’s a girl from the country, bye, Armando, mi raccomando. And having gotten rid of Armando with a rhyme, she went on: you’ll understand, dear sir, demanding clients, they’re almost always from Milan, or they’re Lombards, anyway, and as you know better than I, it’s Lombardy that pulls the cart in our country, they’re rich because they work, and it’s understandable that they’re demanding, and if a Milanese says I’m paying and I demand, you can’t object, because if someone’s paying then he demands, dear sir, it stands to reason. And then she began describing in detail the specialty of the house, tagliatelle with lobster, but fortunately she was cut off by another call from Armando.

He avoided passing too close, circled around her bed, and sat at the foot of the other one. His aunt wasn’t sleeping, she always seemed to be sleeping yet as soon as she heard a rustle she’d open her eyes. When she saw him she removed her oxygen tube. She didn’t want her body to look ravaged by illness, even flat on her back she was able to eye him up and down, she noticed the cane right away, perhaps she read the suffering on his face, even though the worst of it had passed with the painkillers. What happened to you? she asked, yesterday you were fine. It’s been since this morning, he said, I don’t know, I talked with the doctor, it seems my spine has had another crash like last year in May, I need another X-ray, I’ll do it when I can. She wagged her finger, a warning sign: in Italy the only good kind of crash is a financial one, she murmured, today the woman in the other bed spent the afternoon watching TV, she wanted a TV, she says it’s her right since she’s paying for the room, they gave her headphones so I wouldn’t be disturbed, at a certain point they interviewed that show-off from Telecom who caused a shortfall of I don’t know how many millions, he fixed himself right up with that crash. Unfortunately mine is only vertebral, he replied. The conversation was mouth to ear, so the restaurateur wouldn’t wake up and start reciting the second part of the recipe for tagliatelle with lobster. Don’t come anymore, she said, sitting in that chair day and night is destroying you, with that spine of yours, stay at home a few days. What are you saying? he said, excuse me, I stay home lazing away like the doctor would want while you’re here in this bed, at home I get depressed, at least here we chat. Don’t be silly, she said, what chatting, in a whole day I get out three words, I don’t have the breath anymore. And she smiled. It was strange, the smile on her face; on the suffering mask drawn by illness the smile restored that beautiful woman with prominent cheekbones and enormous eyes whom the disease had buried in extensive swelling, as if she’d reemerge stubbornly, that young woman who had acted as a mother to him when he was a kid and his own wasn’t able to. And an image returned that his memory had erased, a precise scene, the same expression on the aunt’s face now, and her voice saying to the sister: don’t worry, just go to the hospital, I’ll take care of the boy like he’s my own, I’ll think only of him. And right after came the image of Enzo, surfacing from an eternity of time came Enzo, the judicious student of jurisprudence, Enzo, so proper and so polite, who after graduating was supposed to join the firm of his grandfather as an intern because he’d be marrying this aunt, and he was so earnest, Enzo, everybody used to say, and still surfacing from the well of memory here was Enzo now, waving his arms and shouting, he, who was so proper and polite, was yelling at the aunt, telling her that she was crazy: but you’re crazy — I’m taking the bar exam and you’re heading to the mountains for three months with the kid, and what about us, when are we supposed to get married! And he saw again his self from back then, a scrawny little kid, wearing glasses because he was nearsighted, he didn’t understand, and then why was his left knee always hurting, he didn’t want to go to the Dolomites, they were far away, and up in the mountains he couldn’t play bandits with his friend Franco, his aunt whirled around, her voice was icy and low, he’d never heard her use that tone before, Enzo, you don’t understand anything, you’re broke, and you’re also a bit of a fascist, I’ve heard that you and your friends criticize my father for his ideas, this kid has tuberculosis of the knee, he needs to be in the mountains, and I’m taking him to the mountains with my own money, not yours, which you don’t have, except for what my father is kind enough to give you every month, and if you ever feel like taking a real curve, now’s the moment. Go ahead and take the curve: was it possible his aunt had used this expression? And yet the words resounded in his ears: go ahead and take the curve.

For the rest of the afternoon the woman talked about her gallstones, his aunt murmured in his ear, it’s not possible they’d put her in a ward like this for gallstones, it has to be more than gallstones, poor woman, and then she watched Big Brother, her favorite show, I pretended to sleep, so she took off her headphones and lowered the volume but I could hear too, I didn’t want to call the nurses, what do you expect, educating people is a waste of time, besides, by now these people have made their money and Big Brother has educated them, that’s why they vote for him, it’s a vicious circle, they vote for those who educated them, you’ve lost the tail end of the tagliatelle with lobster, but I wanted to humor myself, you know how much she charges her demanding diners for a lobster tagliatelle? Fifty euros, and it’s frozen lobster, I made her confess. She seemed to want to stop talking, turning her head on the pillow. But then she murmured: Ferruccio, I want to say several words I’ve never said in my life, or I haven’t said them often, only when nobody could hear me, but now I’d really like to say them out loud, and if I wake that one up over there, too bad. He nodded and winked at her. What a fool, poor woman, she said. And then added: they’re all a bunch of assholes. She closed her eyes. Perhaps she’d really fallen asleep.

Ferruccio. He remembered that name, Ferruccio. She’d called him Ferruccio only a few rare times, when he was a child, though, then she stopped. His uncle’s name was Ferruccio, but no one called him Ferruccio, it was his given name, the kind people are given but never use, that used to happen where they lived, the newborn would be given the name of some ancestor, to honor his memory, and then they’d call the baby something else. He’d always heard his aunt’s brother called Cesare, sometimes Cesarino, maybe that was his middle name, Ferruccio Cesare, who knows, but on his gravestone there was no Cesare, just Ferruccio. His aunt was the only person who’d always called her brother by the name Ferruccio, he died in Mussolini’s war, in the pictures sent from that Greek island where he’d refused to surrender to the Germans, he was a scrawny little lieutenant with an honest face and curly hair, he was studying engineering, when his draft card arrived in ’39 the aunt had a terrible fight with him, she’d told him about it once, she didn’t want her brother to leave, but where do you want me to go, he objected, are you crazy? Go into the mountains here behind us, she said, hide in the caves, don’t go to war for these cockroaches. But in ’39 nobody was in the mountains yet, there were only wild rabbits and foxes, the aunt was always ahead of her time, and so Ferruccio left for Il Duce and for the King.

He moved close enough to brush against her face. She wasn’t sleeping: she suddenly opened her eyes and put a finger to his lips. The aunt’s voice was a whisper, so feeble it seemed like the rustling wind. Pull up your chair and move closer to my mouth, she said, but don’t think I’m dying, I’m talking like this so the restaurateur won’t wake up, if we interrupt her dream she’ll get upset, she’s dreaming of lobster. He laughed softly. Don’t laugh, she said, I need to talk, I’d like to talk to you, and I don’t know if there’ll be another occasion. He nodded and whispered in her ear: what would you like to tell me? About your childhood, she said, when you were so small you can’t remember. It was the last thing he expected. And she sensed it, his aunt didn’t miss a thing. Don’t be surprised, she said, it’s not all that strange, you think you’re so smart but it probably never occurred to you that memories of the time when someone is very young are kept by the grown-ups near him, you can’t recall such far-off memories, you need the grown-ups from back then, if I don’t tell you about it myself maybe something of it will remain but only in a confusing, thick fog, like when you’ve dreamed something but can’t really remember what, so you don’t even try to remember since it doesn’t make sense to try remembering a dream you don’t remember, this is how the past is made, especially if it’s really past, I couldn’t possibly remember when your uncle Ferruccio and I were children, yet I remember it like it was yesterday though more than eighty years have passed, because in her last days my grandmother thought to tell me what I was like before I knew who I was, when I wasn’t aware yet of being myself, have you ever thought about this? He shook his head no, he never had, and said: so what years do you want to tell me about? When you were five and everyone at home had come to believe you were a bit retarded, as the kindergarten teacher said, but that just didn’t make sense to me, how could you be retarded if you already knew how to write your name? I’d already taught you the alphabet and you’d learned it in the blink of an eye. I write the letters on the blackboard, the teacher said, I ask him to repeat them, like everybody else, and he stays silent, there are two possibilities, either he’s a difficult boy and is refusing, or he just doesn’t understand. I suddenly grasped the problem one July day, we were at Forte, a woman with a white apron and a basket on her arm was walking along the beach, yelling: doughnuts! We were under the beach umbrella, you wanted a doughnut, and your father was about to call her over, but I said to you: Ferruccio, go and get one by yourself, then I’ll give you the money, do you remember? He said nothing, drifting back. Go on and try, she said, see if you can catch hold of the memory, you were sitting on a black-and-white rubber ring your father had made for you from the inner tube of a moped to which he’d stuck a waterproof, papier-mâché duck head he’d found in a warehouse for carnival floats, it must have been one of the first Viareggio carnivals after the disaster, you were hugging it all morning long but didn’t have the courage to take it into the water, now can you see yourself? He could see himself. Or it seemed like he did, he saw a skinny little boy hugging an inner tube with a duck head attached to it and the little boy saying to his dad: I want a doughnut. I see him, Aunt, he confirmed, I think I’m back there. And then I told you to go and get the doughnut, she murmured, you left the duck and ran toward that white apron on the beach, hurrying hurrying, afraid that apron would go by, an imposing man was standing at the water’s edge showing off how elegant he was in his white robe and he took you by the hand, not understanding, and called to us in a haughty voice, and I said to your father: the kid can’t see distances, he mistook that man for the doughnut woman, he is really nearsighted, no way he’s retarded, take him to an eye doctor.

The aunt’s phrasing came back to him. She’d never say a game was nice, it was really nice, and she hadn’t bought him a colorful book but a really colorful one, and we had to go for a walk because that day the sky was really blue. Meanwhile she’d moved on to another memory, murmuring in that silent room, all those devices over the bed: the tanks, the plastic tubes, and the needles inserted in her arms, then she went quiet and suddenly the silence grew heavy, the sounds of the city seemed almost from another planet, the vast grounds surrounding the hospital isolated it from everything. And in that silence he listened to her murmuring in his ear, leaning forward, curiously his back pain had ceased, and behind that feeble voice he found he was navigating in a self he’d lost, back and forth like a kite twisting on a string, and from up there, from that kite upon which he was seated, he began to discern: a tricycle, the voice of an evening radio broadcast, a Madonna everybody claimed was crying, a little girl from a “displaced” family, with bows in her braids, who as she hopped on a chalk pattern on the ground exclaimed: square one, bread and salami! and other things like that, the aunt by then was talking in the dark since even the dim overhead light had been shut off, only the pale blue lamp over the bed remained and a glowing slice of neon coming from under the door. She closed her eyes and fell silent, she seemed exhausted. He straightened up in the chair and felt a sharp pinprick of pain between his vertebrae. She’s fallen asleep, he thought, now she’s really fallen asleep. Instead she brushed his hand and beckoned for him to come closer again. Ferruccio, he heard her breath saying, do you remember how beautiful Italy used to be?

How can the night be present? Composed only of itself, it’s absolute, every space belongs to it, its mere presence is imposing, the same presence a ghost might have that you know is there in front of you but is everywhere, even behind you, and if you seek refuge in a patch of light you become its prisoner because all around you, like the sea surrounding your little lighthouse, is the impenetrable presence of the night.

Instinctively he dug in his pocket for his car keys. They were attached to a small black device as big as a matchbox with two buttons: one set off a dot of red light that opened and closed the car, from the other, a mini-eye with a convex lens, emerged a bright fluorescent beam. He pointed the white beam at the floor. It cut through the dark like a laser. He scribbled with the light until he found his shoes, how strange, he’d never realized that they were still those shoes. Italian shoes? the woman at the next table had asked, studying them with interest. It’d started like that, with the shoes. But of course they’re Italian shoes, madame, he mumbled to himself, handmade, finest leather, just look at the uppers, shoes are judged mainly by their uppers, here, madame, put your finger inside, don’t worry, no, it doesn’t tickle, do you like? But why do people hold on to a pair of shoes for twenty years, even Italian shoes, they wind up ruined, old shoes must be thrown out. The fact is they’re comfortable, madame, he continued mumbling, I wear them because they’re comfortable, don’t kid yourself that these worn-out shoes are the madeleine of your lovely lashes, the point is lately my feet get a bit swollen, particularly at night, bad circulation, this damn discopathy has brought on arterial stenosis in my leg, the capillaries have been affected and so, madame, my feet swell.

Cautiously he pointed the beam of light toward the wall, like a detective searching for clues in the dark, he avoided the patient, especially her body, slowly scrolling down over the bed. He began to catalog. One: the plastic bag full of that milky stuff, with a narrow tube leading to the stomach: food. Two: next to it some sort of intravenous drip that disappeared under the sheets. Three: the oxygen boiling soundlessly in the water, now emerging from the inhaler she’d removed. Four: a little white bottle hanging upside down from a rack, with a thin tube that made a U-turn, the drops falling one after another before descending in a fixed rhythm down to the arm: morphine. With that same rhythm, all day and all night, doctors administered an artificial peace to a body that otherwise would shake from a storm of pain. He would’ve liked to avert his gaze but couldn’t, as if he were being drawn in, hypnotized by that monotonous rhythm of drops. He pushed the little button and turned off the light. And then he heard them, the drops. At first they were muffled sound, a subterranean thrum, as though coming from the floor or walls: drip, drop, drippity, drippity, drip, drop, drippity-drop. They reached into his skull, tapped against his brain, but with no echo, a snap that pops and disappears to make way at once for the next snap, seemingly similar to the previous snap, but actually with a different tone, the same way rain begins falling on a lakeshore but if you really listen you can hear there’s a variation of sound from drop to drop, because the cloud doesn’t make the drops identical, some are bigger, some smaller, you just have to listen: drip, drop, drippity-drop, according to their own musical scale, they sounded like that, and after arriving and getting muffled inside his head, began growing in intensity to the point where he heard them burst in his head as though his skull couldn’t contain them anymore, and they burst from his ears into the surrounding space, like bells gone crazy whose sonic waves grew to a spasm. And then, by sorcery, as though his body were a magnet able to attract sonic waves, he felt they were swarming toward him, but no longer in the brain, in the vertebrae, at a precise point, as though his vertebrae were the well of water where the rod discharges the lightning bolt. And it was also right at that point, he felt, that they extinguished themselves, tearing through the pall that the night imposed on the earth, lacerating its presence. The chinks in the shutters began going pale. It was dawn.

And if we were to play the if game? The memory came with a voice at the little table next to his, as though his uncle were there, hidden behind the hedge bordering the terrace of the coffee bar. It was his uncle’s voice this time, actually his uncle was the one who’d invented that game. Why? Because the if game is good for the imagination, especially on certain rainy days. For instance we are at the beach, or in the mountains, it doesn’t matter, since the kid is sick and the sea and the mountains are both good for him, it all depends, otherwise a bad worm will gnaw at his knee, and for instance it’s September, and in September sometimes it rains, never mind, if it’s raining and he’s at home, a kid can find a lot to do, but during this forced vacation, especially in a poorly furnished rental cottage or even worse in a pensione, if it rains, boredom sets in, and with it melancholy. But fortunately there’s the if game, and so the imagination gets to work, and the best player is the one who throws out the craziest ideas, totally crazy, mamma mia that laughter, listen to this: and what if the pope were to have landed in Pisa?

He asked for a double espresso in a large cup. The hospital grounds were coming to life: two young doctors in white uniforms were chatting, a little truck marked Hospital Supplies set off, a man in light-blue coveralls came down a side street carrying a whisk and a plastic bag, now and then he’d stop and sweep up some leaves, some butts. On his little table he spread out the paper napkin folded next to his cup and smoothed it carefully so he could write on it. On a corner of the napkin, a brand: Caffè Honduras. He circled it with his fountain pen. The paper, porous, absorbed a little ink but held up: he could try. The first sentence was obligatory: what if I were to go to Honduras? He continued numbering the sentences. Two: and what if I were to dance the Viennese waltz? Three: and what if I were to go to the moon and eat Cain’s fritters? Four: and what if Cain hadn’t made any fritters? Five: and what if I had left on the ship? Six: and what if the ship had already left? Seven: and what if at a whistle it would turn back? Eight: and what if Betta were to get married? Nine: and what if the Maltese cat were to play the piano and sing in French?

Read as a poem it had its own personality, maybe that woman who’d asked him to write something for a poetry anthology for children would like it, but that wouldn’t be honest, it wasn’t for children, it was a poème zutique. But children like zutiques, what matters is saying silly things, so even if it’s done out of melancholy, children won’t realize. I’ll phone him, he said to himself. There was no need for a cell phone, besides, he’d never had one: right by the coffee bar was a phone booth, and some change left on the table, tempting him. Sure, it wouldn’t be easy to explain himself, the conversation had to be set up right, like a teacher wants with an essay, because if you set up the theme correctly, you’re safe, even if you express yourself poorly. Perhaps before approaching the topic you’d need a code, something that once suggested complicity, a sort of watchword, like sentinels in the trenches would use when they changed guard. He thought: hand hand square and there passed a crazy hare. Sure that he’d get it. And then he’d say: I know very well you can’t wake up someone at this hour after not calling him for three years, but the fact is I went into hiding for a bit. Hand hand square and there passed a crazy hare. He went on: I set my mind on writing a big novel, let’s put it that way, that novel everyone’s waiting for, sooner or later, the publisher, the critics, because sure, they say, the short stories are splendid, and also those two books of meanderings, even that fake diary is a text of the first order, no doubt, but a novel, when are you going to write us a real novel? Everyone’s fixed on the novel, so I was fixed on it too, and if you’re going to write the novel everyone wants from you, which will be your masterpiece, you realize you need the right atmosphere, and the right place, and you need to search for the right place God knows where, because where you are is never the right place, and so I went into hiding to look for the right place to write my masterpiece, am I making myself clear? Hand hand square and there passed a crazy hare. Ingrid is in Göteborg, she went to see our daughter, I don’t know if you know but she got married in Göteborg, she went back to her maternal roots, besides, she’s better off there than here around someone dying, but I’ll explain that later, no, I’ll explain right now, I’m in my usual haunts, at the city hospital, no, no, I’m really fine, sure I’d like to see you, I’m coming to the point, because my call is nothing but an SOS from a radio operator who turned off his radio, but it’s not that there was a storm around me, if anything a dead calm, without even any shadow lines to cross, they had been crossed a long time ago, there was a sandbar instead on which the boat ran aground. Hand hand square and there passed a crazy hare. My aunt is dying, said en passant. Mine, not yours, we each have a mother, and our father didn’t have sisters, so it’s my aunt, though that’s not really why I’m calling, it’s that actually I wanted to read you a passage from the novel I’ve been working on these past three years of silence so you’ll have some idea of the effort I’ve put into it, I’m sure you’ll understand why I didn’t show up earlier, you ready? It goes like this: and what if I went to Honduras? And what if I danced the Viennese waltz? And what if I went to the moon and ate Cain’s fritters? And what if Cain hadn’t made his fritters? And what if I left with the ship? And what if the ship had already left? And what if at a whistle it would turn back? And what if Betta got married? And what if the Maltese cat played the piano while singing in French? It cost me more than the Serchio River cost the people of Lucca, you like it?

He sat there, with the coins in hand, staring at the phone booth, there’s a world of difference between saying and doing, and doing was saying: listen, I’m back, I’m here at the hospital, no, I’m totally fine, well, not totally, the fact is these three years have heaped up one on top of the other as though they were all just one day, actually just one night, I know I’m not making myself clear, I’ll try to be clearer, think of plastic bottles, the ones for mineral water, the bottle makes sense as long as it’s full of water, but when you’ve drunk it you can scrunch it up and throw it out, that’s what happened to me, my time has scrunched up, and my vertebrae too, if I can put it that way, I know I’m jumping around but I can’t express myself any better, be patient. And while he was thinking of what he’d come up with, he noticed a nurse in white pushing a wheelchair coming out of the low pavilion not far from the coffee bar, its glass door opened from the inside. And on the door closing behind them was a yellow sign with three blades, like a fan. The nurse was moving forward slowly because the path from the pavilion to the coffee shop rose slightly, and in the wheelchair was a boy, or at least from a distance it seemed a boy because he had no hair, but gradually as they approached he realized it was a girl. The features of the face, even though it was a childish face, weren’t male, because the difference is already clear at ten or twelve, which seemed roughly the age of that boy, which is to say, that girl, and also the voice was already female, since at that age the vocal cords are well differentiated, and she talked with the old nurse pushing the wheelchair, although from there he couldn’t make out what they were saying, he caught only the sound of the voices. He’d stood up with the coins in his hand aimed at the phone, rather he’d almost stood, he half stood, just like the day before getting out of bed, when the same razor blade cut into his back again, slicing all the way down to below his navel. He stood very still, like that figure of Pontormo he liked so much, whose face is a landscape of pain almost as though he were bearing the cross instead of the one destined for such a task. The two female voices were still too feeble to be deciphered, but they were cheerful, this he got from the tone, they seemed to be twittering back and forth, like two little sparrows telling each other something, he shut his eyes and the twittering became a squeak and he thought instead of mice chattering together in their cage, those white mice that scientists experiment on, they were two guinea pigs for the science of so-called life, the most agonizing science of all, one of them was being subjected to it prematurely, the other, the old one, had endured the experiments and gone on. They fell silent, perhaps because the woman pushing the wheelchair was getting tired and the girl didn’t want to wear her out, but as soon as they reached the top of the path the girl began talking again, and must have been responding to something the nurse had said, from her tone of voice it was clear she was affirming something, a solemn affirmation that nobody could prove wrong. Her voice was joyful, full of life, as when life, through the voice, is willful and affirms itself. The girl repeated what she’d said just as they were passing him, and while she spoke a broad smile lit up her face: but this is the most beautiful thing in the world! But this is the most beautiful thing in the world!

The path continued down toward a clinic in the middle of the grounds. They’d stopped talking, but he could hear the noise of the wheelchair rolling over the gravel. He wanted to turn around but was unable to. The most beautiful thing in the world. That’s what the girl had said, this bald girl, being hauled in a wheelchair by a nurse. She knew what the most beautiful thing in the world was. He, however, did not. How was it possible at his age, with all he’d seen and experienced, that he still didn’t know what the most beautiful thing in the world was?