What about me who was born there? Oh, God! Do all five of you also think that some imbecile who was born in this house (which is really five houses in one) in such-and-such year, month, day is the same imbecile for all of you? One of you will regard me an imbecile because I keep Quantorzo on as bank manager and Firbo as legal advisor. Another of you considers me incredibly shrewd for the very same decision. Another believes that my stupidity is rendered glaringly obvious by the fact that I take my wife’s little dog for its daily walk, and so on.
Five imbeciles all in one. Seen from the outside, five imbeciles standing in front of you. Inside, I’m five in one (like the house), all five going by the name Moscarda. Not a single one of them has his own name, since the one name serves to designate five different imbeciles, all five of whom would turn around if you called out: “Moscarda!” But each one wears the guise you give him—five different guises. Five different smiles when I laugh, and so on.
And wouldn’t every action I take be the action of one of these five, from your point of view? How could this action possibly be the same, if all five are different? Each one of you will interpret it, giving it meaning and value according to the reality you’ve assigned me.
One of you will say: “Moscarda did this.”
Another will say: “What do you mean? He did something else altogether!”
And the third: “I think he did the exact right thing. It’s what he should’ve done!”
The fourth: “What a so-and-so! He behaved despicably. What he should’ve done was…”
And the fifth: “What should he have done? But he didn’t do a thing!”
And you’ll all inclined to fight about what Moscarda did or didn’t do, about what he should or shouldn’t have done, without caring to comprehend that one guy’s Moscarda isn’t the next guy’s Moscarda. You’ll think you’re talking about one single Moscarda, just the one individual standing right in front of you, the one you can see and touch. But in fact, you’re talking about five Moscardas, because each of the other four of you also has one standing in front of him that he can see and touch. Five Moscardas in all—six if you count the one that poor Moscarda can see and touch for himself. One and no one, alas, because he sees and touches himself while the other five see and touch someone different.
9 ~ Ending the Digression
In any case, have no fear that I’ll make every effort to give you the reality you think you have. In other words, I’ll try to picture you the way you picture yourselves. But by now we’re all aware that’s not possible, though, since no matter how hard I try to picture you your way, it’ll always be just my version of “your way,” not the “your way” you and others know.
Excuse me? If my only reality for you is the one you give me, and I’m ready to recognize and admit that it’s no less real than the one I could give myself, and that it’s actually the only real one as far as you’re concerned (and God only knows what kind of reality you’re giving me!), how can you possibly complain about the one I give you in my good-faith attempt to represent you your way as much as possible? Please.
I don’t presume that you’re the way I picture you. I’ve already stated that you’re not even the one you picture yourself to be, but rather several individuals at once, based on all your potential selves, influenced by coincidences, relationships, and circumstances. Besides, how am I hurting you? You’re the one hurting me, thinking that I don’t have or can’t have any reality other than the one that you assign me—which is yours and yours alone, believe me. It’s your idea of me, the one you’ve constructed, a potential individual fashioned the way you perceive him, the way he looks to you, based on what you see as possible in yourself, since you have absolutely no way of knowing the slightest thing about what I can be for myself. But then, neither do I.
10 ~ Two Visitors
Just now as you’re reading this little book of mine with that slightly mocking smile you’ve had from the start, I’m happy about two unexpected visits, one inside the other, which demonstrate how stupid that smile of yours was.
I can see you’re still disconcerted, irritated, mortified by the embarrassing way you treated your old friend right after your new one arrived, sending him away with a petty excuse because you just couldn’t stand seeing him in front of you anymore, hearing him talking and laughing in front of your new friend. What were you thinking, sending him away like that when you’d been having such a good time talking and laughing with him right up until the other friend arrived?
Who did you send away? Your friend? Do you seriously think he was the one you sent away?
Mull that over for a moment.
There was no inherent reason to send your old friend away when the new one showed up. The two had never even met before. You introduced them to each other and they could’ve spent a half hour or so in your living room, chatting about this and that. Neither one was the slightest bit awkward or embarrassed.
You were the one who was embarrassed, and that embarrassment grew sharper, becoming intolerable as you saw those two gradually getting along better, making plans to see each other again. You immediately intervened, putting an end to their plans. Why? (Are you still unwilling to grasp this?) Because the second your new friend arrived, you suddenly realized you were two separate individuals, each quite different from the other. When you finally got to the point where you just couldn’t take it anymore, you simply had to send one of them away. Not your old friend, no—it was yourself that you sent away, the self that you are to your old friend, because you felt like that self was totally different from who you are, or who you’d like to be, to your new friend.
They weren’t incompatible, those two, despite being perfect strangers to one another. They were both entirely civil, and perhaps it was only natural that they’d get along swimmingly. But the two versions of you that you’d suddenly discovered in yourself stood in the way—you simply couldn’t tolerate getting one’s business mixed up with the other’s, since the two literally shared nothing in common. Nothing, absolutely nothing, since you had one reality for your old friend and another for your new one, and the two were complete polar opposites, to the point that when you were talking to one of them, the other would be looking at you bewildered, no longer recognizing you.
He’d exclaim to himself: “What’s going on? Is this really him? Is this what he’s really like?”
And in the unbearable embarrassment of finding yourself there, like that, two different people at the same time, you came up with a petty excuse to get yourself out of the situation—not by getting rid of one of them, but of one of the two of you that you were forced to be at the same time.
Alright then, get back to reading my little book, but lose that smile you’ve had up to now.
But keep in mind that if the experience you’ve just gone through caused you some discomfort in any way—well, you haven’t seen anything yet, my dear friend, because you’re not just two individuals, but who knows how many, even though you don’t know it yet and still think you’re just one person.
Let’s move along.
BOOK FOUR
1 ~ What Marco di Dio and His Wife Diamante Were Like to Me
I say “were like,” but perhaps they’re still alive. Where? Still here, maybe, and I could run into them tomorrow. But where, here? I don’t live in the world anymore. I have no way to find out anything about them, where they purport to be. If I see them walking down the street tomorrow, then I’ll know for certain that they’re walking down the street.
I could ask him: “Aren’t you Marco di Dio?”
And he’d reply: “Yes, I’m Marco di Dio.”
“And you’re walking down this street?”
“Yes, down this street.”
“And this lady is your wife Diamante?”
“Yes. My wife Diamante.”
“And the name of this street is such-and-such?”
“Yes, such-and-such. With so many houses, so many cross-streets, so many lamp posts, etc.”
Just like a lesson from a Berlitz language book.
Alright, that was enough to satisfy me then, like it satisfies you now, as far as establishing the reality of Marco di Dio and his wife Diamante and the street where I might yet run into them, just like I used to. When? Oh, not too many years ago. Time and space are so wonderfully precise! On the street, five years ago.
Eternity collapsed for me. Not just during those five years, but from one minute to the next. And the world I inhabited then now seems farther away than the farthest star in the sky.
Marco di Dio and his wife Diamante seemed like two unfortunate wretches to me. On the one hand, their squalor seemed to have convinced them it was a waste of time even washing their faces in the morning. But on the other hand, it certainly persuaded them to leave no stone unturned in their efforts to earn, not just that meager sum that would keep them from starving from day to day, but enough to make them overnight millionaires. Mil-lion-aires as he pronounced it, stressing each individual syllable with wide, menacing eyes.
Back then I would laugh, and everyone around me would laugh, hearing him talk like that. Now I’m horrified by the thought that I could only laugh about it because I hadn’t yet come to doubt that reassuring, highly providential phenomenon called uniformity of experience. That’s why I could consider the idea of becoming an overnight millionaire an amusing dream. But what if this thread, by which I mean the uniformity of experience, which has already been shown to be very thin, had snapped in me? What if this amusing dream repeated itself two or three times, thus acquiring regularity for me? Then it would be impossible even for me to doubt that one could actually become an overnight millionaire. Those who cling to the blessed uniformity of experience can’t imagine which things could be real or credible for someone who lives outside the boundaries of all rules, which is exactly what that man did.
He considered himself an inventor.
And an inventor, my friends, opens his eyes one fine day, invents something, and boom! He becomes a millionaire!
Plenty of people still remember him as a backward lout who’d just arrived to Richieri from out in the country. They recall that back then he was taken into the studio of one our most respected artists, now dead, and that in short order he’d learned to work very skillfully with marble. So much so that one day the master sculptor decided to use him as a model for one of the figures in his composition, which was later displayed in plaster at an art show, becoming famous under the title Satyr and Boy.
The artist succeeded in conveying without prejudice a fantastic vision onto the clay—certainly not a chaste vision, but one of great beauty—and he was quite pleased with the result and the praise it received.
The crime was in the clay.
The sculptor never suspected that his student would be tempted to take that fantastic vision from the clay, where it had been permanently set in laudable fashion, and impose his own fantastic vision upon it, in a fleeting and no longer commendable action. But there in the oppressive, suffocating heat of a summer afternoon, as the sweaty student laboriously blocked out that composition in the marble, that’s what happened.
The real-life boy didn’t possess the smiling meekness that the fictitious one displayed in the clay. He screamed for help. People came running and Marco di Dio was caught in a beastly act that had suddenly emerged in that moment of suffocating heat.
Let’s be fair now. Yes, it was definitely a beastly, absolutely disgusting act, but considering everything else he was known to have done, wasn’t Marco di Dio still in some way that same fine young man that the artist claimed he’d always known his assistant to be?
I realize my question will offend your sense of morality. In fact, you reply that if such a temptation could arise in Marco di Dio, it’s a clear sign he wasn’t the fine young man his teacher claimed. I could point out the fact that even the lives of saints are filled with similar (and even more vile) temptations. Saints attributed them to the work of the devil, and with God’s assistance, they were able to overcome them. Likewise, your customary restraint usually keeps such temptations from getting the better of you, preventing your inner thief or murderer from suddenly popping up. The oppressive heat and mugginess of a summer afternoon has never managed to dissolve the veneer of your customary rectitude, let alone awaken your primal beast. You’re free to condemn.
Now what if I brought up Julius Caesar, whose imperial glory fills you with such admiration?
“Don’t be vulgar!” you exclaim. “He wasn’t even Julius Caesar then. We admire Julius Caesar where he was really himself.”
Fine. Got it. Himself. But don’t you see? If Julius Caesar was himself only where you admire him, then when he wasn’t there any more, where was he? Who was he? No one? Some random man? Which one?
We’d have to ask his wife, Calpurnia, or King Nicomedes of Bithynia.
I’m going to keep plugging away until I finally get it through your thick skull: one single Julius Caesar never existed. Sure, there was one Julius Caesar he embodied during much of his life, and this version was undoubtedly far more valuable than the others. However, please believe me when I say it was no more real than the others—the imperial Julius Caesar was no more real than the mincing, annoying, completely shaven, half-naked, wildly unfaithful husband of Calpurnia, or the lewd, indecent lover of King Nicomedes of Bithynia.
It’s always the same old problem, my friends: every single one of them had to go by that one same name—Julius Caesar. And they all had to share that one male body, even the female one, who, wanting to be a woman but not finding a way to do it in that male body, did what she could where she could, unnaturally, shamelessly, and repeatedly.
It seems the satyr within that poor Marco di Dio surfaced just that one time, tempted by the sculptor’s figures. Caught in that momentary act, he was forever condemned. No one wanted anything to do with him, and once out of prison he began racking his brain to come up with the most far-fetched plans to recover from the disgraceful misery he’d sunk into, while walking arm in arm with a woman who’d shown up one day out of the blue, from where, no one knew.
For about ten years he’d been saying he was leaving for England the following week. But did those ten years really go by for him? They went by for everyone who’d heard him talking about it. He was always determined to leave for England come the following week. He was even studying English. Or at least he’d spent years carrying an English grammar book under his arm, always open to the same page, so that those two open pages had become totally illegible due to the constant rubbing of his arm and the grime from his coat, while the following pages remained pristine. But up to the greasy part, he knew the lessons by heart. Every once in a while, as they walked along, he’d surprise his wife by blurting out some question in English, frowning, as though he were testing her speed and preparedness:
“Is Jane a happy child?”
And his wife would quickly and earnestly reply: “Yes, Jane is a happy child.”
Because his wife would be joining him when he left for England the following week.
It was a dismaying as well as a pitiful sight, this woman he’d managed to attract and hold onto like a faithful dog with his crazy dream of becoming an overnight millionaire thanks to some invention such as “odor-free toilets for houses without running water.” You’re laughing? They were glaringly serious about it. I mention it because everyone laughed at them. Actually, they were bitterly serious. And the more people laughed, the more bitter they became.
They’d gotten to the point that if someone happened to stop and listen to their schemes without laughing, instead of being happy about it, the couple would cast nasty sideways scowls not just full of suspicion, but also dripping with hatred. Others’ mockery had in fact become the air that their dream breathed. Absent the mockery, they risked suffocating.
Which leads me to explain how my father had been their worst enemy.
The fact was that my father didn’t just treat me with that excessive indulgence that I m
entioned earlier. He also enjoyed accommodating with a never-ending generosity (while laughing with his distinctive smile) the ludicrous illusions of those who, like Marco di Dio, would come and bitch and moan to him about how unhappy they were because they didn’t have the means to carry out their plans, to realize their dream: to become wealthy!
“How much?” my father would ask.
“Oh, not much.” Because those people never needed much to get rich, to become mil-lion-aires. And my father would give it.
“What? You said you only needed a little bit—”
“I know. A slight miscalculation. But this time I’m sure—”
“How much?”
“Oh, not much.”
And my father gave and gave. But later, at a certain point, that was it. Then those people, as you might expect, weren’t grateful that he didn’t want to revel in their total disillusionment to the bitter end, nor were they grateful that they could now blame him without compunction for the utter failure of their dreams. And no one unleashed greater vindictive rage in calling my father a loan shark than they did.
The most furious of all was this Marco di Dio. After my father’s death, he directed all that ruthless hatred to me, and not without cause. I say not without cause because I’d continued as his benefactor, practically without realizing it. I let him stay in a shack I owned, and neither Firbo nor Quantorzo had ever asked him to pay rent. Now this very shack provided me the means to use him for my first experiment.
2 ~ But it Was Overwhelming
Overwhelming. All it took was that desire deep inside me to budge ever so slightly, playfully—the desire to reveal myself differently from the hundred thousand versions of me that I embodied—to alter all my other realities in a hundred thousand different ways.
One, No One & 100,000 Page 8