Chapter M
Then Professor Rasorio returned to his cogitations, and consequently he fell like a deadweight right across me; even his head could not stay up. His hand covered in ink landed on my pages of philosophy and left hand marks that looked like stamps. From there, the hand bounced on to my pyjama and stained it. I took this dead hand and moved it away, as he was unconscious, just like our sleeping Natale. In fact he was completely laid out on top of me. But it was an indeterminate hand because it did not know where to put itself.
Santoro stuck his head out; he had an olive-coloured bruise on his forehead and was massaging it. They had remained under the table for all that time; I had felt ants climbing up my legs and very small and irritating bites, which I had scratched.
“You defend him,” Santoro said with an expression both offended and malevolent.
“Yes,” I said, “he’s a very eminent professor.”
Fischietti also stuck his head out; they were sitting on a very low trolley generally used for the transportation of books. Their heads did not reach the tabletop.
“Very eminent is your opinion.”
“No, everyone says it.” I think he had heard what Rasorio had said and everything Pantani had said, even though they always gave the impression of being distracted and entirely consumed by their minuscule idiocies.
Santoro addressed me from his position down below with his head at the same level as the table. He kept mixing up his words and laughing, while Fischietti wouldn’t lay off interrupting him and even sticking his hand in Santoro’s mouth to hold his tongue still.
“Yes,” said Santoro, “this is how things stand. This here Professor Rasorio is just another professor amongst the many others there are in this world, who go around giving lectures. He had a lecture he was specialised in and they invited him to repeat it all over the place: public bodies, clubs, schools, foundations and that kind of thing, as I’m sure you can imagine. I was his pupil out there in the world, and so I looked after him. Lay off!” Fischietti meanwhile was pulling his lip with a crochet hook. “At the beginning the lecture was well thought-out, logical and in fact superb. I listened to it each time and can assure you that it flowed with wonderful naturalness from start to finish. While he spoke, he wasn’t aware of anyone, including me, as though in a state of ecstasy. He wasn’t even aware of the environment: he felt neither the cold nor the heat, neither draughts nor inclement weather. He entered this felicitous state an hour before the start of the lecture, and you had to keep an eye on him, because he couldn’t hear car horns and his distracted mind could easily have led to his falling down the stairs. I helped him put on his jacket and tie, and accompanied him to the venue, as you would do with a blind man. But when they gave him the floor following the introductions in accordance with local custom, he always delivered an identical, masterful and perfect lecture. He even had a few mild witticisms that he recited with great art as though he had improvised them in that moment. Every time it was a great success, and every time they applauded. Even I, who followed him from place to place and heard him over and over again, was happy on each occasion. As time went on, I too wanted to learn this art, and prepared my own scientific lecture and would have liked to give lectures for the rest of my life.”
“You!” Fischietti interrupted him, “pull the other leg.”
“Yes, me,” Santoro confirmed. “But then something happened. I don’t know the reason for it – whether it was a normal evolution of this profession or something particular to a certain kind of temperament. He became affected by a slight lack of self-confidence which manifested itself in a terrible sensation of cold just before the start of the lecture.
He would sit thoughtfully on his hotel bed and ask me questions, ‘Which city are we in? Where am I going to be speaking? Are you going to be there?’ And then secondary questions, ‘Will there be a microphone? Will there be a lot of people? What kind of people? Is it a theatre or a hall?
Will I be standing or seated?’ I would say, ‘We’ll find out in due course,’ but he still felt that abnormal cold and wanted to know whether there would be radiators or whether he could keep his coat and scarf on. But once he had been introduced and given the floor, he forgot all these worries and returned to his normal temperature, and the lecture went ahead unaltered – that is to say perfect and just as it should have been.
“But it was in the period leading up to the lecture that he had lost his prior nonchalance and calm. He was now already worried while travelling by train and would have wanted the journey to go on forever. ‘Let’s just stay here,’ he would mutter as he looked at the landscape from the train window. The sight of the station terrorised him.
‘Why,’ he would say, ‘doesn’t someone stop us from getting off? An order from the railway company: the station is dangerous! Would passengers kindly remain in their carriages. We apologise for any inconvenience, but all trains running today will be returning to their departure points with their passengers.’ So we got off the train, and he would whisper, ‘If only the loudspeaker would say:
Professor Rasorio is not wanted in this city for reasons of public order.’ He said other weird things such as, ‘Do you think that this taxi-driver might think I’m a criminal and drive me straight to the prison?’ ‘That’s impossible,’ I would reply, and he would mutter, ‘Sadly you’re right.’ “But the greatest torment started during the hours of waiting in the hotel. ‘I have lost my concentration,’ he would say feeling the chill under his layers of clothing.
Apart from the cold, he was besieged by worries and doubts. He tried going over the lecture again and again, he recited the sequence of the argumentation, the most significant sentences and then looked at me questioningly.
‘What’s up?’ I would say. ‘Nothing. Did I get that right?’ he would reply. Then I had this idea that he could write two or three key words somewhere – on his hand for instance – to jog his memory. ‘Just to ward off bad luck,’ I would say, as he looked at me and thought about it, ‘for your peace of mind, just in case you suddenly couldn’t remember how to go on.’ It did in fact happen that as soon as he was on the stage and got on with his lecture, he delivered it seamlessly and forgot all about the notes on his hand and was infused with that sense of calm and method that are the gift of all scientific endeavour. But he was also feeling the need to write not just words but also entire sentences. I could no longer approve, ‘These are dangerous games.’ I could not tell him why, but I knew it was a bad habit – it was antiscientific.
Indeed, he was no longer the same once he had this idea in his head: he would say that concepts have to be well rehearsed; he might let slip some illogical statement, or run ahead of his argument or behind. That was like slicing the ball and the lecture would lose its levelheadedness.
He would thank me, ‘You came up with a good idea.’ “Then he started to get very upset if he caught sight of someone in the audience he had seen on a previous occasion. I had pointed one out to him so that he would be happy about having such loyal followers. But he wasn’t and he only said, ‘Who is this person? He’ll be someone who wants to witness my downfall.’ So he would say that someone was stalking him and hiding in the crowded halls and theatres. I would say, ‘It’s true, but he is just a passionate admirer.’ And he would reply, ‘No, that man is awaiting my downfall, for my throat to get blocked and for me to remain speechless as though in a trance.’ ‘Why would he want to do that,’ I would try to reassure him, ‘there could be no reason. The lectures have always gone exactly to plan.’ ‘I know these types,’ he insisted, ‘they bring bad luck.’ And thus his nerves became increasingly rattled. I would look at the audience, and recognise not just one or two, but most of them. I told him, ‘But this is normal: they are professors, teachers and even common mortals, with the air of those who want to listen to a lecture and expect nothing else.’ He said that I wasn’t expert in lectures, and that it wasn’t a matter of one or many or most; they are all like that. They come to see the spectacl
e, the circus. ‘They want to see my downfall. They would like to see me humiliated and reduced to silence.’ In the meantime, he continued to lecture going from one city to another. There can be no doubt that he was living on his nerves, and the lectures were being affected. He seemed to be searching for the words one by one, to avoid making a mistake, and in those intervals between one word and another, I too was distressed. The audience took all his attention. He looked at them with a mixture of defiance and anxiety, and the lectures increasingly resembled a brittle rock hurled down on the ground as though to make it crumble, but every time it just became more flattened and worn.
“The disaster occurred at Desenzano on Lake Garda, where he had to give his lecture to a famous club of cultured women and various lecturers similar to himself, some of whom were his personal enemies. That day, Professor Rasorio was beside himself. He paced his hotel room like a caged animal. He said that he could not afford to make a single mistake; the lecture had to be a flawless whole. ‘What if I hit an obstacle?’ he suddenly asked. ‘What if a word – any word, perhaps even the least important word – simply eluded me and I could not articulate it?’ ‘But this has never happened,’ I tried to reassure him. “Why should it happen today?’ ‘You never know,’ he said; ‘there are some expressions that only need me to forget a suffix or a pronominal link, and I am like a fish out of water. Last time it nearly happened to me, and the audience were already gloating.’ Of course I was worried for him and said, ‘Come off it! This lecture has been going for ten years. Are you saying that instead of being perfected, it could all fall apart now?’ He said nothing, or rather he simply said, ‘You don’t understand.’ “I am sure that everything would have gone as it should have, if that miserable and, I say, inappropriate of idea of writing the whole lecture on his hand had not suddenly flashed into his mind. ‘That’s impossible,’ I said, ‘there are pores and wrinkles, skin is oily and then there simply isn’t the space.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘the hand is okay. It was your idea and no one is aware of it. And I just take a look at it when things start to go wrong.’ ‘But this is quite unheard of! A whole lecture! It’s a scandal!’ There was nothing for it: he wanted a pen and wrote half the lecture on the fingers and palm of his left hand. He then insisted that I write the other half on his right hand, which I did – right down to his wrist. He was cold and stiff. His heart was hardly beating.
When we got to the theatre, he looked like a dead body still walking. I held him and pushed him up the stairs using all my strength. He held his hands up and waved them around like damp notebooks. I felt that it was going to end badly, because his idea was so unnatural. If he had written something on a few pieces of paper or a word or two on his cuffs, that would have been psychologically acceptable – but relying entirely on his hands!
“He went off to his place, observed by everyone. He was hobbling along very visibly, but I can tell you that he had never been lame. It was one leg that was baulking, that was tugging, that wanted to say, ‘I strongly advise you to turn back.’ But this was no longer possible, as I would have been the first to tell him. He sat down at the table all tense and looking smaller; so much so that I could hardly recognise him. The presenter introduced him very quickly.
He spoke of Rasorio’s international stature and what an honour it was to have him there as whatever else, it could never be said that Professor Rasorio had ever made a single mistake, not even a slip of the tongue. The professor himself confided in me afterwards that these were wonderful words and no different from the usual, but more noisy that evening because of his ears, which then shrank into him, and he could also feel his aorta, coronary arteries, ventricles and gastric artery tightening. This had never happened to him before: it felt like he had no blood and the lecture had drained out of him. He stood there in full view of the people and looked at them one by one. He thought that he could recognise them all, that they had been convened from all the places in which he had spoken.
Only one thought was clear in his head: an executioner’s axe that was coming down behind him to cut off his head, which would fall on the table and then on to the floor where it would roll amongst the people’s feet, and everyone would know that this lecture was not about to take place.
Then they adjusted the microphone in front of him so that it was at the height as his mouth, and in that moment the only speech he could have made was an extended my God.
He was thinking, hoping that an anarchist still had time to stand up in the audience and start firing a pistol at him from the second row; the first shot would go through his throat, and while he gasped for breath he would try to summarise his lecture in a single word, but the second would shatter the microphone and embed itself in the wall.
The third, he imagined, would go astray and hit the presenter standing close by, knocking him to the floor dead or at least fatally wounded. After which, there would be absolute chaos; the anarchist would perhaps open fire on the crowd, emptying two magazines. Or perhaps he would throw a bomb, although his motive would always remain a mystery.
“Instead the scene unfolded much more simply: as though by the chance act of a nervous man stretching his stiff fingers, he opened his left hand and started to read from it in a mannered and metallic voice. And the audience were asking themselves: is he reading? The presenter was asking himself the same question, and peering at the hand, not understanding why it was open and why it was blue.
Professor Rasorio lifted his eyes for a moment, and I believe that that was his fundamental error. He perceived a question hanging in the air, and noticed the man at his side leaning forward and displaying surprise, so that the professor’s blood suddenly grew very hot and he turned red and started to sweat. Just looking at him made me sweat as well, but he had turned from deathly pale to bright pink.
His hand was now completely covered in sweat and the writing was running. It was no longer legible. The sentences were being erased and mixed together in the wrinkles and folds of his hand, and dripped down his arm into his sleeve. As he had been relying entirely on his hands – certainly not what I had suggested – he gradually lost contact even with the sound of his own lecture, which did continue for a little while. It was a drama that unfolded there on the stage. Rasorio was attempting to hide his hand, but also to blow on it and stop all the writing from being washed away. This just made him more sweaty and restless than before, and the sweat was pouring into his eyes and clouding his vision. He was uttering disjointed sentences which appeared to fall from his mouth, and all around him there stretched the homogeneity of an interstellar vacuum – absolute zero.
“He then drew his hand down over his face, without being aware of it – I think – as he had lost all sense of causal links, and stood there with his face now painted blue in the midst of general consternation.
“Two of us picked him up under our arms and carried him out bodily. We practically had to wring him out, because his hair, his shoes and his clothes were all soaking, and he was dripping like someone rescued from the canal. I slapped his hands. I don’t know if he ever spoke again in public or if he comes here to prepare for his second lecture.”
It should be said that while he was talking, Santoro would occasionally laugh like a madman and add, “All water under the bridge. Who cares any more? We were all so young.” And Fischietti would give him an elbow in the ribs and say, “Shut it. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Who do you think you are? A professor?” Santoro would then laugh all the louder and between them they started to do those playful punches in the stomach and slaps on the face. While the other was talking, Fischietti had picked up a cockroach from the floor and thrown it in his mouth. Santoro had to interrupt himself to spit it out; he examined the half-drowned insect and then laughed again. There was also an exchange of elastic bands in the middle of story. I didn’t know what to believe in the face of this behaviour: whether I should believe it or whether they were just tall stories expressly invented for me. However, it was clear that he was not an une
ducated man, or had not been when he was young. Perhaps Rasorio and Pantani had also told tall stories; they were certainly unlikely, absurd and well calculated to upset my nerves, shock me, gnaw my mind and distract me. All of them seemed to be the shrill and malign voices of temptation.
Once more the hour rang out. It was five and my whole brain suffered from discomfort and toothache.
Chapter N
Santoro had put a bandage diagonally across his forehead with a tie and a bundle of paper, primarily with the intention of looking like a pirate and not so much to dress a real wound. They took turns in pushing each other on the trolley at high speed backwards and forwards around the reading room, and tried going under the chairs. It was actually Fischietti who was most interested in getting Santoro to pass underneath with shouts of “Forward into battle, my hearties”, but with the malicious intent of making him bash his head on a sharp edge or corner of a chair or table. Santoro, however, seemed to lose none of his enthusiasm and after every collision, he repeated with the tie down over his eyes, “Forward into battle, my hearties!”
They tried to get it to go at full speed between the arbitrator Pantani’s legs, as he was standing a few metres away from me – I hadn’t noticed him till then – and was looking blankly upwards towards Miss Iris, who for her part was up a ladder and apathetically putting books back on their shelves. They got caught up in the arbitrator’s trousers and dragged him for a few metres against his will.
In the meantime, I had managed to remove Rasorio from on top of me, taking great care not to stain myself with that hand. I put him back in a position that appeared more professorial, but he had difficulty in maintaining it as he had becomes all droopy and doughy. I propped his head on his forearm and left him in that balancing act to his thoughts.
The Nocturnal Library Page 11