One other specimen made an impression on me – conjoined twins preserved in Stygian water, and next to it, their dried skeleton. Proof of great economy of material – two specimens with one double body.
MANO DI CONSTANTINO
The first thing that caught my eye upon arriving in the Eternal City was the beautiful black salesmen of handbags and wallets. I bought a little red coin purse, because my last one had been stolen in Stockholm. The second thing was the stalls laden with postcards – as a matter of fact you could leave it at that, spending the rest of your time in the shade on the banks of the Tiber, perhaps having a glass of wine later on in one of the expensive little cafés. Postcards of landscapes, panoramas of old ruins, postcards ambitiously prepared so as to show as much as possible on that flat space, are slowly being replaced by photographs focusing on details. This is no doubt a good idea, because they relieve tired minds. There is too much world, so it’s better to concentrate on particulars, rather than the whole.
Here is a nice detail of a fountain, a little kitten sitting on a Roman ledge, the genitalia of Michelangelo’s David, a stone sculpture’s gigantic foot, a mutilated torso that instantly makes you wonder what face belonged to that body. An individual window on a wall the colour of ochre, and finally – yes – just a hand with its index finger raised up into the sky, monstrous, detached from some incredible whole just here, at the wrist – the hand of the Emperor Constantine.
I was infected by that postcard. You really have to be careful about what you look at when you’re first starting out! From that point forward I saw hands pointing something out everywhere; I became a slave to that detail, which possessed me.
The half-naked statue of a warrior, just in a parade helmet and with a pike in one hand; the other pointing out something up above. Two putti with greasy fingers directing others’ attention to the fact that there, above their heads – but what? And more, two women tourists bent over with laughter, their fingers, a group of people in front of an elegant hotel – because Richard Gere and Nicole Kidman had just come out of it – and on St Peter’s Square you could see hundreds of those pointing fingers.
At the Campo di Fiori I saw a woman petrified by the heat next to a tap with water, her finger up against her ear, as though she wanted to remember a melody from her youth and was just beginning to hear the first notes of it.
And then I noticed an old, sick man in a wheelchair being pushed by two girls. The old man was paralyzed, sticking out of his nose were two little transparent plastic tubes that disappeared into a black backpack. An expression of absolute terror was frozen on his face, and his right hand, with a predatory gnarled finger, was pointing at something that must have been just over his left shoulder.
MAPPING THE VOID
James Cook set out on the southern seas to observe the passage of Venus over the solar disk. Venus revealed to him not only its beauty, but also the land that had already been noticed by the Dutchman Tasman. From his notes the sailors already knew it had to be here somewhere. Every day they looked out for it, and every day they made the same mistakes – taking clouds for land. In the evenings they would talk about the mysterious island – that it would certainly be beautiful, given it was in the custody of Venus, but that it had to also have other superior characteristics, being the land of Venus. Everyone had his own fantasy about it.
The first officer was from Tahiti; he was certain that this land would be like his Hawaii – warm, tropical, sun-drenched, surrounded by long, endless beaches, full of flowers, useful herbs and beautiful women with bare breasts. The captain himself came from Yorkshire (of which he was very proud), and as a matter of fact he wouldn’t have anything against here being like there. He even wondered if maybe lands on the other side of the globe might not be connected by some sort of correspondence, a planetary intimacy, a likeness – if not obvious and trivial, then perhaps manifested in some other, deeper way. The cabin boy, Nils Jung, dreamed of mountains, wanted this land to be mountainous, for them to reach up into the sky and have snow-capped peaks, and between them, for there to be fertile valleys, filled with grazing sheep, and clear streams in which trout swam (he apparently came from Norway).
And it was his eyes that first spotted New Zealand on 6 October 1769.
From then on the Endeavour sailed straight ahead, and the sight of land emerged from the clouds, mile by mile. In the evenings an emotional Captain Cook transferred its contours onto paper, drawing maps.
Over several years of this mapping they had many adventures, which have already been colourfully described. When a crew member mused aloud that such an extraordinary land must be inhabited, the next day they saw smoke over the bush. When they began to fear obstacles in securing provisions on land and to imagine it peopled by valiant savages, that same morning they appeared on the land – scary and frightening. They had tattooed faces, they stuck out their tongues and shook their spears. To definitively demonstrate their advantage and immediately establish a hierarchy, they shot several savages – that’s when the explorers were attacked.
New Zealand was, it seems, the last land we invented.
ANOTHER COOK
In 1841, Thomas set out on foot to a meeting of the Temperance Society – for he was a great advocate of the temperate mind – from his native Loughborough to Leicester, eleven miles removed. With him went several other gentlemen. Along the way, which was long and tiring, this Cook had an idea – it now seems so strange that no one had ever thought of it before, but that is of course the famous simplicity of brilliant ideas – namely, to rent a railway carriage to transport all the travellers together on the next trip.
A month later he managed to ready his first excursion for several hundred people (it is unknown whether all of them were heading to the Temperance Society, however). And so the first travel agency was born.
Thomas Cook and James Cook: two of the chefs who cooked up our reality.
WHALES, OR: DROWNING IN AIR
In Australia, everyone in the environs would come out onto the seashore when the news was circulated that yet another disoriented whale had run aground. In shifts, people would charitably ladle water over its delicate skin and try to convince it to go home. Older ladies dressed like hippies would maintain that they knew what they were doing. Apparently all you had to do was say, ‘Go, go, my brother,’ or, if need be, ‘Sister.’ And, with your eyes shut tight, transfer some of your energy into it.
All day, little tiny figures would mill about the beach, waiting for high tide: let the water take it back. Attempts would be made to fasten nets to boats and drag it out by force. Yet the great beast would soon become dead weight, a body indifferent to living. It’s no surprise people would begin to call it ‘suicide’. A small group of activists would appear in order to argue that animals ought to be allowed to simply die, if they so wished. Why should the act of suicide be the dubious privilege of mankind? Maybe the life of every living being has its own set limits, invisible to the eye, and once those have been crossed, life just runs out, on its own. Let that be taken into consideration for the Declaration of Animal Rights being drafted in Sydney or in Brisbane at just that moment. Dear brothers, we give you the right to choose your death.