But as soon as the three grew stronger, so did the fourth—their dispute. Each sought to construe recent events to his own advantage: opinions are like nails—the harder one hits them, the deeper in they go. Now that each of the three mouths had been temporarily separated—one from kisses, another from words, a third from food —none of the three wanted ever again to give up his point, driven in as far as it would go by pain. And since the deserted forest replied only with echoes, they decided to go on.
“And go they should,” said Fev. “But it’s time that we, my fellow conceivers, turned back. I see the friends’ route from here on as a dotted line: the series of encounters may be expanded or abridged, the wandering-dispute plot gives one that license; the route—from beginning to end—uncoils like a lasso, the trick is to throw it as far as it will go then catch the end in the loop. The ending here, I think, should be roughly as follows.”
Led on by their dispute, the three walked and walked till they were cut off by the sea. They turned along the shore and soon came to a port, into which and out of which ships would sail. But the sea was like glass, not a ripple, sails were sagging—the wandering dispute would also have to wait for the wind.
The sack given to Ing still jingled with a dozen coins. The friends went into an eating house. When the wine had loosened their tongues, Ing turned to the sailors with whom they had been drinking—strapping, salt-rimed lads—and said, “What, to your mind, is the purpose of a mouth?” He asked them to choose one of the three answers.
The lads scratched their heads and exchanged sheepish glances.
“Won’t all three of those, what do you call them … purposes, fit in one mouth?” one of the sailors at last replied, glancing warily at the strangers.
Smiling indulgently, Ing explained, “All purposes are not alike. Causes—Duns Scotus* tells us—are either complete, that is total, or incomplete … or let’s say, for simplicity’s sake, empty. Here are three bottles: two empty and one full. See?”
“Yes,” the lad replied, furrowing his brow.
“Now. Place them before a sighted man and say to him: choose. Obviously, the man will reach for the bottle with wine in it. Isn’t that so?”
“That’s so,” the lad echoed, his forehead beading with perspiration.
“Now close your eyes.”
The lad did as he was told. Ing noiselessly rearranged the bottles. “Take one. Quick.”
The fellow grabbed the neck of an empty bottle. There was a roar of laughter. Ing, gazing into the sailor’s guiltily blinking eyes, concluded, “It’s the same with purpose. People are blind: that’s why their purposes are empty. It’s the rare man who drinks not from an empty bottle.”
There was a respectful silence—then the oldest sailor said with a mournful sigh, “We’re simple folk and unschooled: how are we to answer questions like that? But the winds blow to all ends of the earth. The calm will lift, and I’ll set sail with my load of salted fish: I’ll trade it for raisins and pistachios on the far shore. Come with me: maybe overseas you can trade your questions for answers.”
Meanwhile dawn had scoured the black windows with light; the three paid up and went out into the street. Not far off, her gaunt back pressed against the wall, sat a woman; her cheeks were painted the color of the dawn, but she had had no takers this night; only the morning chill, without having paid a kopeck, fumbled the strum-pet with icy fingers, forcing itself farther and farther under her motley rags.
“The poor thing’s shivering,” Nig squinted, “but not with passion. What can she be waiting for?”
“Your kisses, Nig.” Ing elbowed him. “The sore on her lip has been pining for you.”
“I don’t think so. Better offer her some words of comfort.”
Ing bent over the woman. “My child, if you don’t rot on earth, you won’t flourish in heaven.”
Gni cut Ing short with a swift kick. Then he approached the frozen creature and, scrabbling in his pockets without a word, pulled out a hunk of bread and poked it in her mouth. The woman’s thin hands seized the crust and went on pushing it in to meet her frantically chewing teeth.
“Tell me, little morsel,” Gni smiled, watching with emotion as her jaws worked, “isn’t it true that God made a hole in our face not so that words might pour out of it or that idiotic kisses might be planted on it, but so that man—by means of it—might know the joy of taking nourishment?”
The hunk of bread kept the woman from answering for some time. Finally the three heard: “I really don’t know: in our profession, if you don’t kiss, you don’t eat. But you shouldn’t ask me, go along the shore by that path, it leads to a cave. The cave’s not empty: a wise man lives there—a hermit. He knows everything—that’s why he gave everything up.”
“We haven’t tried any hermits. What do you say we go?” The wandering dispute continued on its way along the winding path.
The sun had all but set when Gni, his companions lagging behind, poked his head inside the pitchy cave and asked, “What suits a mouth best: kisses, words, or victuals?”
From out of the darkness he heard: “Where does the dew come from—the earth or the sky?”
“From the sky, they say.”
Ing and Nig walked up.
“From the sky,” they agreed.
Perplexed, Gni again poked his head into the darkness: something heavy struck him on the forehead, knocked him off his feet, and, lolloping out of the cave, came to rest nearby: it was an ordinary cast-iron pot. The friends inspected it inside and out, but found no answer.
“Now you do the asking,” said Gni, clutching his bruised brow. “I’ve had enough.”
They moved away from the entrance to the cave and decided to spend the night: they would continue on their way in the morning. The cast-iron pot remained in the grass where it had fallen, bottom-side up.
Gni was the first to open his eyes—the lump rising on his forehead woke him. In the dawn blaze he saw sitting beside him a stranger. The stranger smiled affably and said, “Come to see the hermit?”
“Y-yes. You too?”
The stranger made no reply; hiding a smile in his wispy gray beard, he eyed the dawn-dappled dewdrops gleaming on the grass’s green tips.
“I wouldn’t disturb the hermit if I were you.”
“Why?”
“Because instead of an answer, you’ll get this. Get hit with this, that is.” Gni kicked the cast-iron pot with annoyance. The pot rolled away, and on the blades of grass that had been hiding under it Gni was astonished to see large sprightly dewdrops trembling with iridescence.
“What the devil!” Gni exclaimed. “How did they get under that pot from up in the sky?”
“To explain what’s inside a cooking pot,” said the stranger, “you needn’t climb up to the sky—the answer is right here, under the pot, close to the ground. And to explain what arose in your head, you needn’t wander the earth: the answer is right here, under your crown, next to the question. A riddle is always made up of its answer; answers—so it has always been and will be—are older than questions. Don’t wake your companions, let them sleep: you have a long and difficult way home ahead of you.”
Picking up the cast-iron pot, the old man disappeared into the pitchy cave.
That same day the three set off on their return journey.
The good tradition of plot development requires that the outward journey be told on slow hired horses, the return on fast relay horses. So then, let’s suppose that my three, having worn out a dozen soles between them, are nearly home. Their native town comes out to greet them: a young monk, hitching up his cassock to avoid the puddles, exchanges decorous bows with Ing; a girl with a swelling belly drops her bucket in the mud at the sight of Nig; haunters of the Three Kings hang out of the window, calling and waving to Gni—but the three companions, without relinquishing their staffs, walk past and on. Nig is in front: he is leading them to Ignota.
They arrive. The yard is bare except for a fresh wheel track in the mud and some
pine branches scattered from gate to door. They knock: no answer. Nig gives the door a shove, it springs open; they walk into the passage. “This is the place”—but the door to Ignota’s tiny room is also open; the stove bench is strewn with straw, the air is thick with incense, and not a soul. Nig takes off his hat. So do the other two. Going out in silence, the wayfarers follow the green pine needles to the graveyard. Among the crosses too: not a soul. Only a distant spade slapping the earth. They follow the sound. The mourners, if there were any, have gone. Only the gravedigger lingers: the packed earth is resisting his shovel.
“Is Ignota here?” asks Nig.
“Yes. Only if you want something from her, better come back later, when eternity’s over.”
“We don’t want anything from her, except the answer to one question.”
“I’m here to inter corpses, not disinter questions. And corpses, as you know, are not talkative: whatever you ask them, they won’t open their mouths. No, I’m wrong,” the gravedigger grinned and gave them a sly wink. “They’ll open their mouths all right, like they want a last word, only they’re not allowed to say it—first their jaws are bound shut, then their mouths are stuffed with earth, so whatever word that is, the word of the dead, no one’s ever heard it. Though I’d like to.”
“Blockhead,” mutters Ing.
“Why is there no cross?” asks Gni.
“Her kind don’t get one,” the gravedigger mumbles, and again takes up his spade.
Crossing their staffs, the three tie them together to make a cross;* when it has spread its straight wooden arms over Ignota, Ing says, “Yes, the land of questions keeps expanding and multiplying its riches, the many-colored land of questions blooms ever more brightly and abundantly, while the land of answers is desolate, destitute, and dismal, like this graveyard. Therefore—”
“We should go and have a drink,” Gni supplies him. “Amen.”
All three finish their story where they began it: in the Three Kings. Whew. That’s all.
Fev sat breathing unevenly and hoarsely. His eyes swam back, into the fat. The president was some time in breaking the silence. “Well, your story too shall have a place in our nonexistent library.” He dipped his fingers into the shelves’ black emptiness, as though considering where to put the unwritten book. “Your theme, it seems to me, is a sort of merry hearse: spinning its spokes amid the flickering torches, it dances over the pits in the road, its pied tassels and funereal frippery jouncing, and yet it is a hearse and bound for the cemetery. You may call me a grumbler, but you all, my esteemed conceivers, insist on dumping your plot endings into one and the same grave. That won’t do. The art of the literary endgame requires subtler and more varied denouements. To fall into a pit is easy, to climb out of it—if it’s deep—is harder. We have not flung away our pens so as to take up the shovels of gravediggers.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Fev nodded, “we do tend, I don’t know why, to move from white squares to black ones, rather than the reverse. Our thematic resolutions are sad because … they’re sad. But since it’s come to that, I’ll show you that I can also sail against the wind. It won’t take long: I’ll push my theme into a grave, to the very bottom; then I’ll ask you to watch it scramble up out of the pit, to life.”
“Well, well, we’re listening,” smiled Zez, edging his chair closer to Fev’s. “Go ahead.”
Fev threw his head back as though struggling to recall something, violet glints sprang from the ceiling onto the swollen bubbles of his cheeks.
This conception began to stir in me years ago. I was then both more vigorous and more curious; I still felt the pull of distant spaces and often traveled. It happened this way: on one of my visits to Venice, walking down a scorching morning calle or vicoletto[2], I turned—wanting to make water—into one of those marble bastions that obtrude from most every wall and smell of ammonia. From small gaudy squares of paper pasted to the wall around the drain, the addresses of venereologists leapt out at me. And off to one side, protected by a narrow black border, its decorous black-on-white letters surmounted by a small black cross, a striking avviso[3] inquired,
HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN TO PRAY FOR THE 100,000 WHO WILL DIE TODAY?
This was a trifle, of course, a dry statistic deftly caught by that black square, a polite reminder—only a reminder.
I did not pray for the hundred thousand souls led away to death, but when I stepped out from the wall’s shadow into the bright sun, thousands upon thousands of agonies prevented me from seeing the day: the thousands perishing today crowded around me, thousands of suns tumbled down into the darkness; I saw a multitude of wax-like, sharp-featured faces with bulging white eyes; a sweetish decay threading my nostrils to my brain would not let me think or live. I remember it pierced me almost physically. I sat down at a little sidewalk table, the waiter brought me a place setting and at just that moment I saw thousands of them—lying on tables, mouths slack, slowly growing cold, helpless and frightening, banished from today to never. I did not eat my slowly cooling minestrone; my mind was feverishly trying to step out of that accursed black square. Then suddenly to the rescue came my theme. It flooded me all at once. In its grip, I remember, I rose mechanically, quickly paid the …
Here Fev—followed by the others—turned his head at the sound of a chair being pushed back. To my surprise I saw Rar stepping out of the circle of conceivers; in his hand he held the key that only a moment ago had lain on the mantelpiece.
“I’m leaving,” he said curtly.
The key clicked metallically, the door jerked open, and Rar’s steps broke off with a muffled slam somewhere below.
There followed an exchange of astonished looks.
“What has gotten into him?” Mov half rose, as if he meant to go after Rar.
“Order!” Zez’s cold voice rang out. “Sit down. Or if you’re up, close the door. Skip it. Fev will continue.”
“No, Fev has finished,” Fev retorted, angrily blowing out his cheeks.
“Because he left?” stammered Zez.
“No. Because my theme—if you can imagine it—left with him.”
“You, evidently, want to out-Rar Rar. Fine. We’ll consider this meeting adjourned. But let’s agree on the program for next Saturday. It will be Mov’s turn. I suggest he jump off the springboard set up by Fev. Let him—do you hear me, Mov?—see himself by that wall, before the notice inside the black border, let him rethink—after Fev—the myriad agonies in one ‘today,’ and then jump: from black to white.”
Mov flicked the stubborn forelock from his brow.
“I’ll do it. What’s more, I’ll take a running start up to the springboard—as you call it—through the first theme from today’s meeting. Let it be a sack race. I have a week. With any luck I’ll make it.”
[1] Free will. (Lat.)
[2] Very narrow street or alley. (Ital.)
[3] Notice. (Ital.)
6
THE CLOSER each day brought me to the next Saturday, the more entangled I became in my own guesses and conjectures. How was one to take Rar’s “I’m leaving”? Was it a simple display aimed at Fev, or a protest hitting much harder and farther? A firm decision, or a momentary whim? What was Rar shunning—a hundred thousand or six? I recalled his pale, inward-gazing face, his erratic retreating step. Perhaps he needed my help? I no longer wondered whether to go or not to go. Besides, the pull of those Saturdays, the vortex of the blank shelves, the black temptation of booklessness, had begun to affect even me.
Having waited till the day and hour, I was nearing the Letter Killers Club. The first hazy warmth of spring hovered above the tamped-down snow, the icicles pendant from roofs wept, beating a tattoo with their tears on the pavement. When the door admitted me to the meeting room, the first thing I saw was Rar’s empty chair. They had all come—except him.
As always, the key clicked once then again, as though separating the room of black shelves from the world. I felt a short, warm jolt to my brain.
Mov, who was to s
peak, cast several anxious glances at the place minus a person. Then Zez gave the sign—and Mov, turning to face the dark pit of the fireplace (the incipient spring had extinguished it), made an effort to concentrate and began.
Mark Licinius Sept was found by the door of the dimly lit tablinum:* he lay dead, among unfurled scrolls.
The late Sept’s slaves, Manlius and old lame Aesidius, carried the body to the stone bench in the tablinum, hurriedly dressed it in the best toga, with a red border, washed the bloody foam off the face and mouth, forced apart the clenched teeth, and, having inserted a copper obol,* began preparations for the funeral.
Two old professional mourners, having nosed out the deceased, were already banging the bronze knocker on the back door; there, in the little courtyard by the lispily splashing fountain, Aesidius argued with their high-pitched voices, trying to bargain them down at least ten or twenty sesterces:* the late Mark Sept had been poor—he had had to make do.
Manlius ran off to order the bier, buy incense, make arrangements with the torchbearers, and inform the deceased’s two or three friends. Mark Sept had lived a poor and lonely life among papyruses and waxed tablets, avoiding close friendships. Manlius meant to finish his errands before sunset.
But the body could not be left unattended: evil larvae* and wandering shades might profit.
“Fabia, hey! Fabia, where are you? In the street again, naughty child. Come here. Take this stool and sit by the master’s feet. Don’t be frightened because he is pale and does not stir—the master has died. Well, you’re not old enough to understand: sit here quietly until Aesidius has finished with the old women. I’ll be back soon.”
Six-year-old Fabia had important business of her own, and if her father had not been so strict with her she would never have stayed in that dimly lit room; outside, around the corner, a hawker stood with his tray of sugared dates, raisins, and figs: the sight alone was bliss. Whereas here …
Fabia tucked her legs under the stool and began to listen. The tablinum was quiet; a large blue fly droned and fell silent; but even through the wall she could hear the hawker’s cries: “Dates, dates—one obol a bunch. Buy sweet dates—one obol—only one obol …”
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