‘There is nothing more disagreeable or in poor taste than resorting to quantitative and physiological arguments, but you force my hand. Man is the living being with the most significant brain, with the greatest number of circumvolutions, billions of neurons, internal connections, nerve endings. The human brain, consequently, in its capacity to think, is unrivalled in this world. I’m sorry, but these are facts.’
The tortoise: ‘If we are going to boast, I could bring up my record longevity, which gives me a sense of time you can’t imagine; or even my shell, a product that, in endurance and perfection of design, surpasses human works of art and industry. But this is beside the point, which is that Man, who bears a special brain, and is the exclusive user of language, still forms part of a greater whole, an entirety of living beings, each interdependent, like the organs of a single organism. Within that whole, the function of the human mind appears to be a natural device at the service of all species, responsible for interpreting and expressing the accumulated thoughts of other beings more steadfast in their reasoning, such as the ancient and harmonious tortoise.’
Mr Palomar: ‘I would be quite proud of this. But I’ll go even further. Why stop at the animal kingdom? Why not annex the plant kingdom into the I? Would Man be expected to think and speak for the sequoias, the thousand-year-old cryptomeria, the lichens, the fungi, the heather bush into which you, hounded by my arguments, now rush to hide?’
‘Not only do I not object, I’ll go a step further. Beyond the Man–fauna–flora continuum, any discourse presumed to be universal must include metals, salts, rocks, beryl, feldspar, sulphur, rare gases and all the non-living matter that constitutes the near-totality of the universe.’
‘That’s just where I wanted to take you, Tortoise! Watching your little snout poke in and out of all that shell, I’ve always thought you were unable to determine where your subjectivity ends and where the outside world begins: if you have an I that lives inside the shell, or if that shell is the I, an I that contains the outside world within it, then the inert matter becomes part of you. Now that I am thinking your thoughts, I realize we don’t have a problem: for you there’s no difference between the I and the shell, that is to say, between the I and the world.’
‘The same applies to you, Man. Goodbye.’
‘Dialogo con una tartaruga’
Written in 1977 and posthumously included in Romanzi e racconti, vol. 3: Racconti sparsi e altri scritti d’invenzione in the Meridiani series (Mondadori, 1994).
Dino Buzzati
1906–72
Buzzati’s stories, preoccupied with death and pervaded by the absurd, play out on the hinterlands of reality. Critics likened him to Edgar Allan Poe, Søren Kierkegaard and, to his eventual exasperation, to Franz Kafka, but Buzzati’s blend of the real and the fantastic, in parts sinister and playful, is entirely his own. He isolates moments of acute panic, peril, the collapse of norms. The titles of his stories – ‘Catastrophe’, and ‘The End of the World’ are two examples – locate calamity at the forefront of human experience. Like Savinio and Romano, Buzzati, raised predominantly in Milan, was an accomplished visual artist, and he greatly admired the work of the painter Francis Bacon. He began his long collaboration with the newspaper Corriere della Sera when he was twenty-two, working as a journalist and also publishing many of his stories in its literary supplement, La lettura. He was a war correspondent during the Second World War and later became the art critic for the newspaper. Poema a fumetti (Poem Strip), an amalgam of text and image that stymied critics, is now regarded as the first Italian graphic novel, and Il grande ritratto (published in English under the title Larger than Life), is considered to be among Italy’s first works of science fiction. Buzzati wrote many novels in addition to his stories. His most famous is Il deserto dei tartari (The Tartar Steppe), set in an imaginary country. Born in Belluno, part of the Dolomites, Buzzati was an avid alpinist who wove mountains into much of his work. ‘Sette Piani’ (‘Seven Floors’), among his best-known stories, is widely anthologized, so I have chosen another, in which the supernatural and the domestic savagely converge. He received the Strega Prize in 1958 for his definitive collection of short stories, Sessanta racconti (Sixty Stories).
And Yet They Are Knocking at Your Door
Translated by Judith Landry
Signora Maria Gron entered the ground-floor drawing room with her workbasket. She glanced round to see that everything was exactly as usual, put the workbasket down on a table and went up to a vase of roses, sniffing delicately. The other people in the room were her husband, Stefano, her son, Federico, known as Fedri, both sitting by the fireplace, her daughter, Giorgina, who was reading, and an old friend of the family, Eugenio Martora, who was concentrating on his cigar.
‘They’re all fanées, finished,’ she murmured to herself, drawing one hand lovingly over the flowers. Several petals fell on the table.
‘Mother!’ called Giorgina from the armchair where she was sitting reading.
It was already evening, and the great shutters had been bolted as usual. Yet the sound of the heavy, endless rain could still be heard. At the back of the room, towards the hall, an impressive red curtain hung from the wide arch that formed the entrance: at that time of day there was so little light that it looked black.
‘Mother!’ said Giorgina. ‘You know those two stone dogs at the bottom of the avenue of oaks, in the park?’
‘Well, what about them, my dear?’ replied her mother, politely uninterested, taking up her basket and sitting down in her usual place near a shaded lamp. ‘This morning,’ the young girl went on, ‘when I was coming back in the car, I saw them on a peasant’s cart, just near the bridge.’
Giorgina’s slight voice broke sharply across the silence of the room. Signora Gron, who was glancing through a newspaper, set her lips in a smile of warning and glanced towards her husband, apparently hoping he had not heard.
‘Wonderful!’ exclaimed Martora. ‘Peasants robbing statues now. That’s wonderful – art collectors!’
‘And then what?’ enquired her father, encouraging the girl to go on.
‘So I told Berto to stop the car and go and ask …’
Signora Gron screwed up her nose a little; she always did this when anyone brought up unpleasant topics necessitating some sort of retreat. The affair of the two statues implied something else, something hidden, therefore something which would have to be hushed up.
‘Now, really – it was I who said they were to be taken away,’ she said, trying to close the subject. ‘I think they’re simply horrible.’
Her husband’s voice was heard from over by the fireplace, deep and tremulous with either old age or anxiety: ‘You what? But why did you have them taken away, dear? They were very old, found during some excavations …’
‘I didn’t express myself very well,’ said Signora Gron, trying to sound pleasant. (How stupid am I, she thought at the same time, that I couldn’t think of anything better to say?) ‘I did say I wanted them moved, but only in the vaguest terms – of course I was really only joking …’
‘But please listen, Mummy,’ the girl insisted. ‘Berto asked the peasant and he said that he’d found the dog down on the riverbank …’
She was suddenly silent, thinking that the rain had stopped. But in the silence they could hear its deep, unwavering hiss (depressing, too, though no one had really noticed).
‘Why ‘the dog’?’ enquired Fedri, without even turning his head. ‘Didn’t you say you saw them both?’
‘Goodness, what a pedant,’ retorted Giorgina laughing. ‘I only saw one, but probably they were both there.’
Fedri said: ‘I don’t see the logic of that.’ Martora laughed too.
‘Tell me, Giorgina,’ said Signora Gron, promptly taking advantage of the pause. ‘What book are you reading? Is it that last novel by Massin you were telling me about? I’d like to read it when you’ve finished it. If I don’t mention it right away you’d immediately lend it to your friends, and then
we’d never see it again. I’m very fond of Massin, he’s so different, so strange … Today Frida promised me –’
But her husband broke in: ‘Giorgina,’ he said, ‘what did you do then? Presumably you asked the man’s name, at least? I’m sorry, Maria,’ he added, referring to the interruption.
‘You didn’t expect me to start arguing then and there in the middle of the road, I trust?’ she replied. ‘It was one of the Dall’Ocas. He said he knew nothing about it, he’d found the statue by the river.’
‘And are you certain it was one of our dogs?’
‘Rather too certain. Don’t you remember how Fedri and I once painted their ears green?’
‘And this one had green ears too?’ pursued her father, who was sometimes rather slow-thinking.
‘Yes, green ears,’ replied Giorgina. ‘Of course the colour’s faded a bit by now.’
Once more her mother interrupted. ‘But listen,’ she said with exaggerated politeness, ‘do you really find these stone dogs so interesting? Excuse me for saying so, Stefano, but I really can’t see that there’s any need to make such a fuss about it …’
From outside – just behind the curtain, it almost seemed – there sounded a prolonged and muffled roar, mingling with the sound of the rain.
‘Did you hear that?’ exclaimed Signor Gron promptly. ‘Did you hear it?’
‘Thunder, what else? Just thunder. It’s no good, Stefano, you’re always so jumpy on rainy days,’ his wife hastened to explain.
They were all quiet, but the silence could not last long. Some unfamiliar thought, foreign to that aristocratic household, seemed to have crept into the dimly lit room and settled there.
‘Found it down by the river,’ commented the father, returning to the subject of the dogs. ‘How could it have got there? It couldn’t have flown.’
‘And why not?’ enquired Martora jovially.
‘Why not what, doctor?’ asked Signora Maria, nervously, since she did not usually like the pleasantries their old friend tended to make.
‘I meant: why should the statue not have flown? The river flows about twenty yards below it, that’s all.’
‘What a world we live in,’ sighed Maria Gron, trying once again to change the subject, as though the dogs were a cover for something more unpalatable. ‘First we have flying statues, and then do you know what the paper says here: ‘a new breed of talking fish discovered off the island of Java’.’
‘It also says: ‘Save time’,’ Fedri added rather foolishly – he too was looking at a paper.
‘What, what did you say?’ asked his father, who had not understood, but was generally apprehensive.
‘Yes, it says here: ‘Save time! Time too should figure on the budget sheet of every good businessman, on the credit or debit side, as the case may be.’’
‘I think you might have saved your own in this case,’ murmured Martora, though plainly amused.
At this point, somewhere beyond the curtain, a bell rang: so someone had braved this treacherous night, had broken the barrier of rain that was pouring down, hammering on the roofs, devouring great chunks out of the riverbanks; for fine trees were falling noisily from these banks with their great pedestals of earth attached, to emerge for a moment a hundred yards downstream and be sucked down again by whirlpools: by that river which was swallowing up the edges of the old park, with its eighteenth-century wrought-iron railings and seats and its two stone dogs.
‘Now who will that be?’ said Signor Gron, taking off his gold-rimmed spectacles. ‘Callers even at this time of night? I dare say it’s about the subscription, that man from the parish council has been a perfect nuisance these last few days. Flood victims! Where are they all, anyway? They keep asking for money but I haven’t seen one victim, not a single one. As though … Who’s there? Who is it?’ he enquired in a low voice as the butler appeared from behind the curtain.
‘Signor Massigher,’ replied the butler.
Martora was delighted: ‘Oh, your charming friend! We had such a wonderful discussion the other day … there’s a young man who knows what he wants.’
‘He may be as intelligent as you like, my dear Martora,’ said Signora Gron, ‘but I find that quite the least affecting of all qualities. These people who do nothing but argue … I don’t say Massigher isn’t a fine boy … You, Giorgina,’ she added quietly, ‘when you’ve said hello, be a good girl and go to bed. It’s getting late, you know.’
‘If you liked Massigher better,’ retorted her daughter boldly, though trying to speak jokingly, ‘if you liked him better I bet it wouldn’t be late just yet.’
‘That’s enough nonsense, Giorgina … Oh, good evening, Massigher. We hardly expected to see you tonight … you’re usually earlier than this …’
The young man, his hair ruffled, stopped short on the threshold and looked at the family in horror. ‘But – don’t you know?’ He moved forward, slightly embarrassed.
‘Good evening, Signora Maria,’ he went on, ignoring the reproach. ‘Good evening, Signor Gron, Giorgina, Fedri, excuse me, doctor, I didn’t notice you there in the shadow …’
He was plainly very nervous, pacing around from one person to the next as if bursting with some important news.
‘Have you heard?’ he began at last, since the others gave him no encouragement. ‘Have you heard that the riverbank –’
‘Quite,’ interrupted Signora Gron with masterly calm. ‘Terrible weather, isn’t it?’ And she smiled, half-closing her eyes, trying to transmit some kind of understanding to her guest. (Almost impossible, she thought to herself while doing so: a sense of occasion really isn’t his strong point.) But the father had already risen from his chair. ‘Tell me, what have you heard? Something new?’
‘What do you mean, new?’ interrupted his wife quickly. ‘I really don’t understand, my dear, you’re so nervous this evening …’
Massigher was puzzled. ‘Quite,’ he admitted, casting around for a way out, ‘nothing new that I know of. Except that from the bridge you can see –’
‘Well, naturally, the river in flood!’ interrupted Signora Gron, helping him out. ‘Most impressive, I should think. You remember the Niagara, Stefano? So many years ago …’ At this point Massigher moved closer to the Signora and whispered, choosing a moment when Giorgina and Fedri were speaking to one another: ‘But Signora, Signora,’ his eyes sparkled, ‘the river is right below the house, it’s most unwise to stay, can’t you hear the –’
‘Do you remember, Stefano?’ she went on, as though she hadn’t heard him, ‘do you remember how frightened the two Dutchmen were? They wouldn’t go anywhere near it, they said it was an absurd risk, that one might get carried away …’
‘Well,’ retorted her husband, ‘it has sometimes happened, apparently, people leaning too far over, getting dizzy perhaps …’
He seemed to have recovered his calm, put on his glasses and sat down by the hearth again, stretching out his hands towards the fire to warm them.
Now for the second time they heard the disturbing muffled roar. It seemed to come from deep in the earth below them, from the farthest recesses of the cellars. Despite herself, Signora Gron stopped to listen.
‘Did you hear that, Giorgina?’ exclaimed her father, puckering his forehead. ‘Did you?’
‘Yes, I did. I can’t imagine what it is,’ she replied, the colour gone from her face.
‘Thunder, of course!’ retorted her mother in a tone that admitted of no argument. ‘Just thunder … what do you think it is? … not ghosts, by any chance?’
‘Thunder doesn’t sound like that, Maria,’ remarked her husband, shaking his head. ‘It seemed to come from right beneath us.’
‘You know quite well how it is, my dear: every time there’s a storm it feels as if the house is going to collapse,’ insisted his wife. ‘Then you hear the strangest noises in this house. All you heard was thunder, wasn’t it, Massigher?’ she concluded, certain that he, a guest, would not dare to contradict her.
; He smiled with polite resignation and answered evasively: ‘You mentioned ghosts, Signora … this evening, as I was crossing the garden, I had the curious sensation of being followed … I heard footsteps, as if … quite definite footsteps on the gravel in the main avenue …’
‘And rattling bones, and groans as well, of course?’ suggested Signora Gron.
‘No, just footsteps, probably my own,’ he replied, ‘you sometimes get strange echoes.’
‘Quite right, my dear boy … or mice, that’s far more likely, isn’t it? It’s certainly not a good idea to be as imaginative as you are, or goodness knows what one might hear …’
‘Signora,’ he began again in a low voice, ‘surely you can hear it? The river is right below us, can’t you hear?’
‘No, I hear nothing,’ she said curtly, replying in an equally low voice. Then, louder: ‘You’re not at all amusing with these anecdotes, you know.’
The boy could think of nothing to reply. He tried to laugh, amazed at the woman’s obstinacy. So you don’t want to believe it, Signora Gron? he thought bitterly. (Even in his thoughts he addressed her just as in real life, using the polite form.) Unpleasant things don’t concern you, do they? You think it’s uncouth to talk about them. Your precious world has always withdrawn from them, hasn’t it? Well, let’s see where your ivory tower viewpoint gets you in the end.
‘Just listen to this, Stefano,’ she went on with sudden eagerness, addressing him across the whole room. ‘Massigher claims to have seen ghosts out in the park and he’s not joking … these young people certainly set a fine example.’
‘Signor Gron, don’t believe a word of it,’ and he laughed effortfully. ‘I didn’t say that at all, I …’
He broke off to listen. In the ensuing silence, above the sound of the rain, he thought he heard another sound swelling, threatening and ominous. He was standing in an arc of light from a slightly blue-tinted lamp, his lips parted a little; not frightened, but throbbing with life, strangely unlike the people and objects surrounding him. Giorgina watched him with a feeling of desire.
The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories Page 41