“Get him! Kill him!” the crowd was screaming. “Filthy loan shark! Greedy moneylender!”
I’d instinctively raised my hands to signal for them to wait, but I thought it looked like I was begging for mercy, so I immediately lowered them again. Meanwhile, the young office assistant on the table, waving his arms madly to quiet the crowd, continued shouting:
“No, no! Stop and listen to me! He donated it. It was him. He had Mr. Stampa the notary draw up the paperwork for the donation! He donated a house to Marco di Dio!”
The entire crowd was stunned. But I felt far away, disillusioned, dejected. Still, that silence from the crowd got my attention. Like when you light a fire in a pile of wood, for a moment you don’t see or hear a thing, then a bit of kindling begins to pop and spit, sparks fly, and finally the whole pile is crackling and shooting out flames through the smoke.
“Him?” “A house?” “What?” “Which house?” “Shut up!” “What’s he saying?”
These and similar questions began to erupt from the crowd, quickly becoming an increasingly loud and more confused clamor as the young office assistant confirmed:
“Yes, yes, a house! His house at 15 Via dei Santi. And that’s not all! The donation also includes 10,000 lire to install and outfit a workshop!”
I couldn’t see what came next. I had to deny myself the pleasure because I urgently needed to run off somewhere else. But shortly thereafter I found out how happy I would’ve been, had I stayed.
I’d hidden myself in the vestibule of that house on Via dei Santi, waiting for Marco di Dio to come and take possession of it. Light from the front steps barely reached where I was standing.
He was still being followed by the crowd when he opened the street door with the key the notary had given him. When he saw me leaning against the wall like a specter, his body jerked and he jumped back, his cruel eyes shooting me a look I’ll never forget as long as I live. Then, with a feral, rasping growl that seemed to be accompanied by both sobs and laughter, he sprang on me in a wild, frenzied rage and began screaming. It wasn’t clear to me if he wanted to compliment or kill me as he slammed me against the wall.
“Lunatic! Madman! Nut job!”
The whole crowd there on the other side of the door was yelling the same thing:
“Lunatic! Madman! Nut job!”
All because I’d wanted to demonstrate that I could be different from how everyone else perceived me.
BOOK FIVE
1 ~ With My Tail Between My Legs
Fortunately, at least I could avail myself at the moment of Quantorzo’s considered opinion that, back in the day, my father had also been prone to fits of “excessive indulgence” like this one of mine, mixed with a certain good-natured cruelty. Back then Quantorzo had never dreamed of even suggesting that my father should be locked up in an insane asylum or at the very, very least be declared incompetent the way Firbo was strenuously insisting be done now in my case, in order to protect the bank’s reputation, which had been seriously compromised by my crazy stunt.
Oh my God, didn’t the whole town know I never got involved in bank business, not in the least? So what was up with this threat of bad publicity all of a sudden? What did my personal actions have to do with the bank?
Sure. But then Quantorzo’s argument, meant to shield me behind my father’s memory, fell apart. Even if my father occasionally may have had similar flights of fancy, he’d always demonstrated that he had his head on straight when it came to business dealings, so it certainly never would’ve occurred to anyone to lock him up in an insane asylum or to declare him incompetent. My manifest foolishness and total lack of interest, on the other hand, only demonstrated that I was stark-raving mad and that all I was good for was scandalously destroying what my father had built with all his hidden shrewdness and presence of mind.
Oh, there’s no denying that logic was completely on Firbo’s side. But Quantorzo’s argument was equally logical, if you will, because he (I have no doubt about this) privately pointed out to Firbo that since I was the owner of the bank, that my disinterest in its affairs along with my foolishness shouldn’t be used against me, because, thanks to those very qualities, the two of them had become the real inside managers of the bank. And anyway, come on, it was best to leave well enough alone and keep quiet about it, at least unless there were signs I intended to keep doing crazy things.
Besides, I could’ve privately asked Firbo if—defeated as I was by the experiment I’d just done—the best thing for me to do would be to just stand there with my tail between my legs while he and Quantorzo settled their argument. Or, more aptly stated, while it remained up in the air as to whether Firbo would prevail against me in his thirst for revenge for having insulted him in front of all the clerks, or whether Quantorzo’s self-serving interest to keep the whole affair quiet would prevail.
2 ~ Dida’s Laughter
I was down in the dumps, hiding out behind Dida’s skirts, in the silent calm and lazy stupidity of her Gengè, to make it seem clear not only to her, but to everyone else as well, that if what I’d done could be chalked up to insanity, it had to be Gengè’s insanity. In other words, it was just a vague, momentary whim of a harmless fool.
Meanwhile, all the scolding she directed at her Gengè made my stomach churn with humiliation that I don’t know how to describe, then my body was racked with fits of laughter that I couldn’t hold back in order to maintain (as I was obliged to) his appearance, which wasn’t one of contrition—Heaven help me!—but rather that of a pig-headed fool who refused to give up even though he realized that yes, he’d gone a bit overboard. And at the same time, no longer restrained, fear suddenly appeared in those eyes which looked at her askance, or burst free from my mouth in a horrible cry of atrocious desperation, unleashed by my secret, unspeakable anguish.
Oh, my anguish was unspeakable, unconfessable, because it was confined to my spirit and beyond any form I could imagine or recognize as belonging to me, other than this real and tangible one inside me, for example, which my wife assigned to her Gengè who was standing there in front of her, but who wasn’t me. I also couldn’t say who I was any longer, and as for this dreadful anguish that originated outside him and was suffocating me, I couldn’t tell who was causing it or where it came from.
By then I was so totally locked into this torment that I’d become alienated from myself to the point that, like a blind man, I entrusted my body to others to guide me, so that everyone could choose from among all those inseparable strangers I carried around inside me, taking the one that I was for him. Then he could do with it as he pleased: beat it, kiss it, or even lock it up in an insane asylum.
“Here, Gengè, sit here. There you go. Look me in the eyes. Why not? Don’t you want to look at me?”
Oh, how tempted I was to take her face in my hands to force her to look into the abyss of those two eyes that were totally different from the ones she wanted to have looking at her!
She was there, facing me. She grabbed my hair and sat on my lap. I felt the weight of her body.
Who was she?
She hadn’t the slightest doubt that I knew who she was.
Meanwhile, I was repulsed by her eyes that were looking at me, cheerful and confident. Repulsed by her cool hands that were touching me, certain that I was exactly the same as her eyes perceived me as being. Repulsed by her entire body that was pressing into my lap, as she confidently surrendered herself to me without the slightest suspicion that she wasn’t really giving that body of hers to me, and that as I was wrapping my arms around her, I wasn’t embracing in that body a woman who belonged wholly to me, but rather a stranger, one I couldn’t begin to describe, because she was for me exactly what I seeing and touching— this stranger—here, like this—with this hair and these eyes and this mouth I was kissing in my fiery passion of love, while she was kissing mine in her own fiery passion, a passion totally different from mine and immeasurably far away, as though for her everything—sex, nature, form and meaning of things
, thoughts and affections that constituted her spirit, memories, tastes, and even the touch of my coarse cheek against her delicate one—everything, everything was different. We were two strangers, not just to each other, but each to him or herself, in that body the other was holding tight.
I know, you’ve never experienced this repugnance because you’ve always wrapped your arms around your entire world embodied in your wife, without the slightest inkling that she was simultaneously holding hers in you, and that her world is different, impenetrable. Still, all it would take to feel it, to experience this repugnance, would be to think for a moment about—I don’t know—about some silly, trivial thing. Something you like and she doesn’t—a color, a flavor, an opinion about something. That would get you thinking beyond a superficial difference in tastes, feelings, or opinions.
While you’re looking at her, her eyes aren’t seeing inside you and can’t see things the way you do. She can’t know how you perceive the world, life, and the reality of things, and how it’s all different from her way, because when she sees and touches the exact same things, including you and herself, she perceives a different reality. She can’t even explain it to you, because for her it’s simply what it is, and she can’t imagine it could be any different for you.
It wasn’t easy concealing the cold resentment that was hardening my heart more and more as I saw that Dida, no matter how much she struggled to keep a straight face, would eventually crack up at the terrible prank her Gengè had pulled off, obviously oblivious to the fact that not everyone would understand the way she did, that all he wanted was to play a practical joke, nothing more.
“Think about it! You don’t joke about things like that! Throwing someone out in the rain, and hanging around to watch, provoking everyone’s outrage! You dumb schmuck! They were this close to killing you!”
As she was saying that, she turned her head to hide the chuckle my sulky scowl provoked. The resentment she saw on her Gengè’s face was exactly the way she pictured it was during the eviction, facing everyone’s indignation. To her it looked like spite, nothing more than comical spite on the part of her “dumb schmuck,” because his joke had bombed, and no one understood it.
“What were you expecting anyway? Did you think they were going to laugh at that crazy man’s rage while you were having his junk thrown out in the middle of the street in the rain? Meanwhile, this guy here—get a load of him, will you—was keeping his mouth shut about the surprise donation the whole time! Well, Mr. Firbo’s right, you know! Playing such an awful trick on him was crazy. And with such a high price to pay. C’mon, get moving! Here, take Bibì out for a little walk.”
I saw my hand close on the little dog’s red leash. I saw my wife bending over with the ease that women have bending at the hips, to adjust the muzzle on Bibì’s little snout without hurting her. I just stood there like an idiot.
“What are you doing? Aren’t you going?”
“I’m going…”
When the door closed behind me, I leaned against the wall of the landing, wanting nothing more than to sit on the top step and never get up again.
3 ~ I Talk to Bibì
And there I am, walking along, squeezed up next to the walls along the street, no longer knowing how or where to look, with that little dog trailing behind, as if to show she didn’t want to come with me on a walk any more than I wanted to take her. She drags her tiny paws, making me pull her along until I get so irritated I yank on that little red leash, nearly snapping it in two.
I walk a few steps away from the house and duck behind a fence to hide in a lot that had been sold for a house they were supposed to build, a large one and no telling how ugly, judging from the others nearby. The ground has been partially excavated for the foundation, but the piles of earth haven’t been taken away. The building stones, looking old and crumbling even before being used, are scattered here and there among the thick regrowth of grass.
I sit on one of these stones. I look at the wall that stands guard—tall, white, silhouetted in the blue of the house next door. Bare, windowless, so entirely smooth and white, the wall is blinding with the sun beating down on it. I look down into the shadow of that useless grass, which smells warm and fertile in the still silence, punctuated only by the hum of tiny insects. A grim, buzzing horsefly, irritated by my presence, comes at me. I see Bibì, sitting on her haunches in front of me with her ears pricked up, surprised and disappointed, as if to ask why we’d come here, to this unexpected spot, where, among other things, someone passing by, probably at night…
“Yes, Bibì,” I tell her. “It stinks here, I smell it. But you know, at this point it seems like the least I can expect from people. At least it comes from the body. What emanates from the functions of the soul is a lot worse, Bibì. I really envy you, since you haven’t the slightest inkling what I’m talking about.”
I grab her two front paws, pull her toward me, and continue talking.
“Do you want to know why I came here to hide? Well, Bibì, because people look at me. It’s a bad habit people have, and you can’t break them of it. So we’ve all got to break our habit of going out walking in a body prone to being looked at. Oh, Bibì, Bibì, what am I going to do? I can’t bear being looked at anymore. Not even by you. Even the way you’re looking at me now scares me. No one doubts what he sees, and we all go about the world, certain that everything looks the same to us as it does to everyone else. You can imagine that no one stops to consider that you animals are there, too, looking at people and things with those silent eyes of yours. Who knows how you see them and what you make of it all? I’ve lost my reality, lost it forever, along with the reality of everything in everyone’s eyes, Bibì! I touch myself and I’m not there. Because under my own touch, I imagine the reality that everyone assigns to me, a reality I don’t know and will never be able to know. So, do you see? I—the one talking to you now—the one holding your two little paws up in the air like this—the words that I’m saying to you—I don’t know, Bibì, I really don’t know who’s saying them to you.”
The poor little thing suddenly jumped and tried to pull her paws from my hands. Without pausing to consider whether she was startled because what I said had scared her, I let go of her paws so she wouldn’t get hurt, and she immediately darted off, barking at a white cat barely visible in the grass at the far edge of the lot, but the red leash dragging along underfoot as she ran, abruptly got caught on a branch, yanking her so hard she flipped over backwards and rolled like a little fur ball. Foaming with rage, she got back up and stood there, planted squarely on all fours, no longer knowing where to vent her interrupted rage—she looked around, but the cat was gone.
She sneezed.
I had to laugh at the way she ran off, first, then at her reverse somersault, and now at the sight of her standing there like that. I shook my head and called her to me. She made her way back light as a feather, practically dancing on her slender little legs. When she got to me, she lifted her two front paws to lean on my knee, almost as if she wanted to continue our half-finished discussion which she’d been enjoying. Of course she liked it, because I would scratch behind her ears as I spoke.
“No, no, Bibì, that’s enough,” I told her. “Let’s close our eyes instead.” I took her head in my hands, but the little creature wriggled to get free, so I let her go.
A little later, as she was stretched out at my feet with her snout resting on her front paws, I heard her heave a loud sigh, as if she couldn’t take any more of the weariness and boredom that burdened even her life as a poor, spoiled, cute little dog.
4 ~ What Others See
When somebody thinks about killing himself, how come he always sees his death from everyone else’s point of view, and never from his own?”
After I’d spent over an hour deep in meditation there in that fenced-in lot, my torment resurfaced, bloated and livid like the corpse of someone who had drowned, bringing with it this question: Would this be a good time to get it over with? Not so much to fr
ee myself from this torment, but to really surprise everyone who envied me so much, or maybe to confirm that I really was as stupid as they all thought.
Then, picturing various images of my violent death, what sort of reactions did I think would suddenly arise amid the dismay and shock of my wife, of Quantorzo, of Fibro, of my many, many other acquaintances? As I forced myself to respond to that question, I felt myself more lost than ever, since I had to recognize that my own eyes really had no image of myself, at least not one that I could somehow say was independent of how others saw me. I couldn’t see my own body, or anything else for that matter, the way I imagined others saw them. That meant that my eyes, on their own, free of what others saw, would no longer really know what they were seeing.
A distant memory returned, sending a shiver down my spine. I was a boy, absent-mindedly heading out into the countryside, when I suddenly found myself lost without a trace, in a remote wilderness, bleak in the dazzling sunlight. I didn’t know how to explain the alarm I felt at the time. But now I know it was the horror of realizing that something could suddenly reveal itself to me alone, independent from the eyes of everyone else.
Isn’t it always the case that when we discover something that we think no one else has seen, we run and call someone to come see it with us right away?
“My God, what is that?”
When what others see doesn’t help us construct the reality we see, our eyes no longer know what they’re seeing. Our self-awareness loses its way because this thing that we believe to be the most intimate part of ourselves, our self-awareness, is really everyone else in us, and we can’t feel it in ourselves without others.
One, No One & 100,000 Page 11