by Primo Levi
AFTER A WHILE, the young hostess emerged from a group of guests and came toward him. She was very thin, with large, wide-set gray eyes and an expression between annoyance and surprise, as if someone had brusquely woken her up at that very moment. She told him that she had heard a lot about him, and this Innaminka found hard to believe: maybe it was just a form of greeting, and she said it to all her guests. She asked him if he’d like something to eat or drink: she didn’t seem very intelligent, but she probably had a kind heart, and it was precisely because of her kindness rather than her intelligence that she realized that Innaminka understood her fairly well but could not answer her, and she moved on.
Actually, Innaminka was hungry and thirsty: not to an unbearable degree, but enough to make him uncomfortable. Now, the dinner was one of those melancholy buffet affairs, where you have to choose what you want from a distance, craning between heads and shoulders, find the plates, find the silverware and the paper napkins, get in line, reach the table, serve yourself, and then back away, making sure not to spill anything, either on yourself or on anyone else. Besides, he could see neither grass nor hay on the table: there was a rather appetizing-looking salad, and peas in a brown sauce, but as Innaminka hesitated, debating whether or not to get in line, the one dish and then the other were finished. Innaminka gave up. He turned his back on the table and, proceeding with care through the crowd, tried to return to his corner. He thought with loving nostalgia of his wife, and of his youngest, who was growing up: he was a good jumper and went out to pasture by himself, but now and then he still demanded to return to his mother’s pouch—indeed, he was a little spoiled, and liked to spend the night in that warm darkness.
During his laborious retreat, he encountered several waiters who carried trays and offered glasses of wine and orangeade and canapés that looked tempting. He didn’t even think about taking a glass in the middle of the crowd, while everyone was bumping into him. He gathered up his courage, grabbed a canapé, and brought it to his mouth, but it instantly fell apart in his fingers, so that he had to lick them one by one and then lick his lips and whiskers for a long time. He looked around, suspicious, but no, no one was paying any attention. He crouched in his corner, and to pass the time he began to observe the guests closely, trying to imagine how they would behave, men and women, if they were being chased by a dog. No mistaking it—in those long wide skirts, the women would never get off the ground, and even the swiftest among the men, even with a good running start, wouldn’t be able to jump a third of the distance that he could jump from a standstill. But you can never tell, maybe they were good at other things.
HE WAS hot and thirsty, and at some point he realized with dismay that an increasingly urgent need was growing in him. He thought that it surely must happen to others, too, and for a few minutes he looked around to see how they dealt with it, but it seemed that no one else had his problem. So very slowly he approached a large pot in which a ficus tree grew, and pretending to sniff the leaves he sat astride the pot and relieved himself. The leaves were fresh and shiny and had a nice smell. Innaminka ate a couple and found them tasty but had to stop because he noticed a woman staring at him.
She stared at him and came closer. Innaminka realized that it was too late to pretend that nothing had happened and move away. She was young and had broad shoulders, massive bones, strong hands, a pale face, and clear eyes. To Innaminka, of course, her feet were of primary importance, but the woman’s skirt was so long and her shoes so complicated that he couldn’t get even an idea of their shape and length. For a moment he feared that the woman had noticed the business with the ficus tree and had come to reprimand him or punish him, but he soon realized that it wasn’t so. She sat down on a small armchair beside him and started talking to him sweetly. Innaminka understood hardly anything she said, but at once he felt calmer; he lowered his ears and made himself more comfortable. The woman came even closer and began to caress him, first on the neck and back, then, seeing that he was closing his eyes, under his chin and on his chest, between his front paws, where there is that triangle of white fur that kangaroos are so proud of.
The woman talked and talked, in a subdued tone, as if she were afraid the others would hear. Innaminka understood that she was unhappy, that someone had behaved badly toward her, that this someone was, or had been, her man, that this event had occurred a short time ago, perhaps that very evening: but nothing more than that. Since he, too, was unhappy, he felt sympathetic toward the woman, and for the first time that evening he stopped wishing that the reception would soon be over; instead he hoped that the woman would continue to caress him and, in particular, that her hands would go lower and run lightly and knowingly along the mighty muscles of his tail and his thighs, of which he was even prouder than of his white triangle.
This, however, was not to be. The woman continued to caress him, but with increasing distraction, paying no attention to his shivers of pleasure, and continuing all the while to complain about certain human troubles of hers that seemed to Innaminka not to amount to much—to one man instead of another man whom she would have preferred. Innaminka thought that, if this was how things stood, the woman would do better to caress this second man instead of him; and that maybe that was exactly what she was doing; and furthermore that she was beginning to bore him, given that for at least a quarter of an hour she had been repeating the same caresses and the same words. In short, it was clear that she was thinking of herself and not of him.
Suddenly a man sprang out of the seething crowd, grabbed the woman’s wrist, jerked her to her feet, and said something very unpleasant and brutal to her. He then dragged her away and she followed, without giving Innaminka so much as a farewell glance.
Innaminka had had enough. From his observation post he stretched up as high as he could, straightening his back and raising himself on his hind legs and tail as on a tripod, to see if anyone was starting to leave. He didn’t want to attract attention by being the first. But as soon as he caught sight of an elegant elderly couple making the rounds to say their goodbyes and heading toward the cloakroom, Innaminka took off.
He negotiated the first few meters slinking between the legs of the guests, below the level of breasts and stomachs; he stayed low, supported alternately on his hind legs and on his front legs with the help of his tail. But when he was near the table, which by now had been cleared, he noticed that the floor on either side of the table was clear, too, and so he jumped right over it, feeling his lungs fill effortlessly with air and with joy. With a second leap he was at the head of the stairs: rushing, he miscalculated the distance and landed off-balance on the top steps. There was nothing for it but to descend that way, like a sack, half crawling and half rolling. But as soon as he reached the ground floor he hopped to his feet. Under the expressionless gaze of the doorman, he took a deep, voluptuous breath of the damp, grimy night air and immediately set off along Via Borgospesso, no longer in a rush, with long, happy, elastic leaps.
The TV Fans from Delta Cep.
Dear Piero Bianucci,*
You will be surprised to receive a letter from an admirer, so quickly and from so far away. We know your silly notions about the speed of light; where we are, a modest one-time supplement to the TV subscription fee is all it takes to be able to send and receive intergalactic messages in real time, or almost. As for me, I am a great admirer of your TV programs, and especially of the ad for tomato puree. I wanted to tell you that I was very enthusiastic about your program last Tuesday, where you spoke about the Cepheids. In fact, I was pleased to learn that you call us that, because our sun is indeed a Cepheid; I mean, it’s a star much bigger than yours, and it pulsates regularly, with a period of five days and nine hours, earth time. It is, to be precise, the Cepheid of Cepheus—what a coincidence! But before I embark on describing our way of life* I want to tell you that my girlfriends and I really like your beard. The men here don’t have beards—in fact, they don’t even have heads. Our men are ten or twelve centimeters long and look like y
our asparagus, and when we want to be inseminated we put them under our armpits for two or three minutes, as you do with thermometers when you take your temperature. We have ten armpits: we are all built with binary symmetry, so that our width is the golden section of our radius. This is unique in our galaxy, and we’re very proud of it. Males cost from twenty to fifty thousand lire depending on their age and condition, and they don’t bother us much.
By the way, don’t get your hopes up: our temperature varies, around −20° C in winter, 110° C in summer— but we’ll become friends anyway. I heard that you are an astrophile, and this made me… [indecipherable] because my friends and I also spend many evenings in the posterior hemisphere contemplating the starry sky; we enjoyed locating your sun, which, seen from here, is a little shy of the seventh magnitude and lies in a constellation we call Jadikus (it’s a kitchen utensil). Almost all of us, except for a few who love solitude, live in the anterior hemisphere, because it has more light and a better view. After all, our planet isn’t big: changing hemispheres is a short trip of three or four kilometers that can be made on foot, or by swimming in the rivers when they’re not frozen or dry.
We are also far from our sun, so it’s rare for the rocks to melt, except for sulfur. When I spoke of summer and winter, I was referring to the pulsations of our sun. It wouldn’t be easy for you people to adapt. There is a law-enforcement agency for the distracted and for the habitually late; sirens blare in all the towns and villages, and we have to burrow underground within half an hour. Each of us takes along her males. They say it’s quite a spectacle, but only the girls from law enforcement can see it, with periscopes, from inside their adiabatic observatories: apparently the sun swells before your very eyes, and in a few minutes the sea starts to boil. It’s a sea of water and sulfur dioxide, with iron salts—aluminum, titanium, and manganese—dissolved in it. We also have an armor made of iron oxide and manganese, and we change it when it gets too tight. We never go into the sea, because we are alkaline and the water is acid and would dissolve us. That happens sometimes: those who are tired of life throw themselves deliberately into the sea. It’s not a very deep sea, and when the sun swells it evaporates in a few hours; it turns into an ugly expanse of gray and brown salt and all the water goes up into the sky to form a mist over the sun.
The summer lasts two of your days; we spend it sleeping and laying eggs. Our optimal temperature is around 46° C, so that if you and I were to meet during the pleasant season we could even touch; I’d like that, but it probably won’t happen because… [indecipherable] aren’t here yet. Then the heat gradually subsides, rain pours down, hot and then warm, and the grass starts to sprout again. It’s the season when we all go out to pasture and exchange news. Last fall one of my friends told me that she saw a supernova; there hadn’t been one in a while and she urged me to let you know about it. From your perspective, it should be in the neighborhood of Scorpio; if you pay the one-time tachyonic subscription you can see it in ten days, otherwise you’ll have to wait 3,485 years.
At the end of autumn, everything freezes: the sea with all its salts, the grass trapped in the rain and the dew, as well as everyone who remains outside. Winter is pleasant: our caves are well heated, we eat canned food, we get inseminated three or four times by various males, to set ourselves apart a little, but also because it’s fashionable; we make music with our stridulating organs, watch all the TV in the universe, and organize literary prizes. Three years ago I even won a prize. It was for a very sexy short story, about a girl who had bought a male with her first paycheck and then she fell for him and didn’t want to exchange him or have him pulped. I wrote it in 2 and 36 hundredths seconds. We do everything pretty quickly.
Your TV show is one of the most popular, especially because of the purees, which are of great interest to us. If you are able to submit your one-time payment and respond in a reasonable time, please send me the formula for your most important: (a) anti-fermentatives; (b) anti-parasitics; (c) anti-conceptions;* (d) anti-aesthetics; (e) anti-Semitics; (f) antipyretics; (g) antiquarians; (h) antihelminthics; (i) antiphons; (j) antitheses; (k) antelopes.
As a matter of fact, we of the eighth planet of Delta Cepheid are also exposed to many dangers and threats from which we need to protect ourselves. In particular, regarding points c and h there was much discussion in my den last winter, because the TV commercials weren’t clear. At any rate, my friends and I would like to get the local chemical industry to produce them so we can try them—we had the impression that they could provide relief for some of our ills.
Cordially yours,… [signature illegible] and friends
Delta Cep./8, d.3° a.3,576.10–11
Translated by Primo Levi.
The Molecule’s Defiance
I’ve had it,” he said to me. “I need a change. I’ll quit, find some ordinary job, maybe unloading stuff at the wholesale market. Or I’ll leave, go away—on the road, you spend less than you do at home, and you can always find some way of earning money. But I am not ever going to the factory again.”
I told Rinaldo to think it over, that it’s never a good idea to make a decision in the heat of the moment, that a factory job isn’t something to throw away, and that in any case it would be better if he told me the story from the beginning. He is enrolled in the university, but he does shifts at the factory. Shift work is unpleasant—every week your schedule changes, and the rhythm of your life, too, so you have to get used to not getting used to things. In general, middle-aged people manage this better than the young.
“No, it’s not a question of shifts. It’s that a batch spoiled on me. Eight tons to throw away.”
A batch that spoils is one that solidifies halfway through the preparation: the liquid becomes gelatinous, or even hard, like horn. It’s a phenomenon that is called by fancy names like gelatinization or premature polymerization, but it’s a traumatic event, an ugly sight, not to mention the money that’s lost. It shouldn’t happen, but sometimes it does happen, even if you’re paying attention, and when it happens it leaves its mark. I told Rinaldo that it’s useless to cry over spilled milk, and immediately I regretted it—it wasn’t the right thing to say. But what can you say to a decent person who has made a mistake, who doesn’t know how he did it, and who carries his guilt like a load of lead? The only thing to do is offer him a cognac and invite him to talk.
“It’s not because of the boss, you see, or even the owner. It’s the thing in itself, and the way it happened. It was a simple procedure, I had already done it at least thirty times, so that I knew the formula by heart and didn’t even have to look at it…”
I, too, have had batches spoil in the course of my career, so I know very well what it’s like. I asked him, “Isn’t it possible that’s the problem, the cause of the trouble? You thought you knew it all by heart, but you forgot some detail, or made a mistake in a temperature, or added something you weren’t supposed to?”
“No. I checked afterward, and everything was normal. Now the lab is working on it, trying to figure it out. I’m the accused, but still if I made a mistake I’d like to find out. I really would. I’d prefer if someone said to me, ‘You idiot, you did this and that which you shouldn’t have done,’ rather than sit here asking myself questions. And then it’s lucky that no one died—no one was even hurt—and the reactor shaft didn’t get bent. There’s only the financial damage, and if I had the money, I swear, I would happily pay.
“So. I had the morning shift. I had come on duty at six, and everything was in order. Before going off, Morra left me the instructions. Morra is an old guy, who worked his way up; he left me the production note with all the materials checked off at the right times, the cards for the automatic scale, so there was nothing out of the ordinary—he is certainly not the type to leave a mess, and he had no reason to, because everything was going well. Day was just breaking: you could see the mountains, almost close enough to touch. I glanced at the thermograph, which was functioning properly; there was even a bump on the
curve at four in the morning, registering fifteen degrees higher. It’s a bump that appears every day, always at the same time, and neither the engineer nor the electrician has ever understood why—as if it had taken up the habit of telling a lie every day, and, just as with liars, after a while no one pays attention anymore. I also glanced inside the reactor through the spy hole: there was no smoke, there was no foam, the mixture was beautifully transparent and circulating as smoothly as water. It wasn’t water; it was a synthetic resin, of the type that is formulated to harden, but only later, in the molds.
“Anyway, I was feeling calm, there was no reason to worry. I still had two hours to wait before starting the tests, and I confess that I had other things on my mind. I was thinking… well, yes, I was thinking about the chaos of atoms and molecules inside that reactor, as if every molecule were standing there with its hands outstretched, ready to grasp the hand of the molecule passing by to form a chain. There came to mind those great men who had guessed the existence of atoms from common sense, reasoning on matter and void, two thousand years before we appeared with our equipment to prove them right. And—because when we were camping this summer my girl made me read Lucretius—I also remembered Corpora constabunt ex partibus infinitis,* and the guy who said ‘Everything flows.’ From time to time, I looked through the spy hole, and it seemed to me that I could see them, all those molecules buzzing like bees around a hive.
“So, everything was flowing and I had every reason to be calm, although I hadn’t forgotten what they teach you when you’re entrusted with a reactor. And that is, that everything is fine as long as one molecule connects to another as if each had only two hands: they’re not supposed to make more than a chain, or a rosary of molecules—it can be long, but only a chain. And you have to keep in mind that, among the many molecules, some have three hands, and there’s the rub. In fact, they are inserted on purpose: the third hand is the one that is supposed to catch hold later—when we decide, not when they do. If the third hands grip too soon, every rosary joins with two or three other rosaries, and in the end they’ve formed a single molecule, a monster molecule as big as the whole reactor, and then you’re in a fix. Goodbye to ‘Everything flows’—nothing flows, everything is blocked and there is nothing to be done about it.”