With the climbing of the sun above the ridges they have long since left the wooded area behind them. Not a single cloud in the vicinity. A chain of purplish blue mountains blocked off the horizon in front. Towards nine o’clock they stopped at a filling station. Opposite the road was a motel extending to a café and a supermarket; a little further to the right of the blue asphalt road a town was spread over several hills and in the early morning light, also falling at an angle, the white houses glittered like bottle-shards, so much so that Angelo had to think that these houses were still uncompleted. At a distance beyond these white houses against the slight rise of a further hill with a strip of uninhabited land between the two developments (a no man’s land), the first town’s sister township commenced, a second half. The first building of this location — it looked like an entry gate or perhaps a tollhouse — was big and yellow but also as if snapped in two, all crumpled and with a hump in the centre: exactly as if it had been hit and summarized by an earthquake. Further back then are strung out the other little houses: small, crooked, poor, and of all the colours of the rainbow. It was very clearly the living area for Coloureds as opposed to the preceding area for Uncoloureds. A pump attendant with a big florid face wiped the last tracks of dust from the Silver Phantom’s windscreen with his yellow rag and then planted himself with arms akimbo next to them. With the rag hand he pointed to the shimmering town. Worcester, he said.
Accompanied by the attendant they crossed the road to go and look for breakfast in the roadhouse. They mounted the few steps and pushed open the glass doors. Around smart little tables on high chromed legs several people sat drinking and smoking (although there were no cars parked in front of the motel), mostly farmers from the surrounding fields, with friendly blue-eyed faces and black coats. At the table nearest to the entrance sat a couple, both dressed in Chinese clothes, unaware of the slurping mouths and the looking eyes of the other customers, lost in a game of tiny sticks and cards. Their hands particularly attracted Angelo’s attention: flabby, bleached fingers with red tips in which no graphic of mercy could be detected. When Angelo out of curiosity tried to follow the game from close up, the attendant pulled him by the sleeve over to one side and placed a warning finger to his mouth: they are playing “swallow”, he explained. Cruel? He repeated the unworded question and winked at Gregor Samsa. Isn’t it rather a case of love? And who can stop that? You certainly must know Molière’s La Princesse d’Elide:
Soupirez librement pour un amant fidèle,
Et bravez ceux qui voudraient vous blâmer
Un coeur tendre est aimable, et le nom de cruelle
N’est pas un nom à se faire estimer:
Dans le temps où l’on est belle,
Rien n’est si beau que d’aimer.
Literature, oh dear — and he shakes his head very primly. Keen apparently to act as guide and let them see all the advantages of this motel complex, the attendant invited them to follow him to a large area lying somewhat lower than the café’s floor. They found themselves in a self-service shop with counters and shelves exhibiting all kinds of toys, condiments, bottles of wine, and especially motor accessories: from dashpots to piston springs to valves and sparkplugs, from filters to radios and lubricants. There is also a wheel-shaped bookcase which can be pivoted. A clerk or salesman presents himself. He wears a neat and expensive striped suit with a bow tie and a thick black moustache tied like a supplementary tie under the nose. This is our Travelling Library, all the most recently published books immediately available — the petrol attendant proudly whispers in Angelo’s ear whilst clutching at his sleeve with a hand rimmed with black nails. Indeed, the newest editions are there and each volume has a mirror for a cover: one by one the books are pulled with a flash from the shelves by the agent (or librarian perhaps) and given into Angel’s hands with an expectant smile and a twinkle in the eye above the moustache. There is something by Jorge Luis Borges; there is a totally unknown long poem by Dostoevsky entitled “The Kiss” and there is another one dealing with the tactical problems of Bonaparte’s retreat from Moscow; There is the Popol Vuh; there is Ludwig Prinn’s De Vermis Mysteriis and next to it Abdul Ahazreed’s Necronomicon; there is The First Principle; there is D. Espejuelo’s On the Noble Art of Walking in No Man’s Land; there is a treatise on the first French motor enthusiasts who traversed the Sahara from the Algerian coast and far past Pépé de Foucauld’s wind-covered grave in Tamanrasset to Timbuktu (that is, those enthusiasts who weren’t stuffed into a cooking pot along the way); there is something about popes and something concerning space travel. He takes a thin volume and opens it. Starts reading. “During this period the evenings become purple. This phenomenon should probably be ascribed to the fluctuation of seasons — change summed up in a combination of factors: the days longer and ever warmer so that more unused light is left over at the fall of evening; even when day has already died. .
“But this is no treatise on bullfighting. . ”
He turns the pages, reading a paragraph here and a sentence there. The excellent type page and the neat type font please him: it resembles a carefully penned handwriting.
“It is only: a tentative description of the moth chamber which Angelo and his wife, Giovanna Cenami, so much wanted to see. (Concerning the moth chamber more exte — ”
“. . oozing water, salty, and not of the cleanest, of course constituted a major problem which the guardians didn’t know how to solve. How water could so constantly penetrate the room, in fact the whole house, was in itself an enigmatic mystery which even the most acute research has not yet been able to elucidate. Although there’s water over the surface and although the chairs stand several centimetres deep in water (but the upholstery remains dry) — the moths’ appetites don’t seem to be stimulated. The question thus arises: how do the moths procreate and what do they live from since the ceiling too is smooth and no one has ever observed them clinging to the walls. For certain these are not the same moths (of the Sphingidae family alone several kinds have been identified: Leucophlebia afra with pink and orange wings, the ochre-coloured Polyptychus contrarius, Sphinx funebris — several varieties here of, such as conimacula, peneus, maculosa and ovifera — the Atemnora westermanni, and many more) it was argued at a given time. The answer to this was: (i) that there’s no window or aperture through which new arrivals could enter; (ii) that nowhere in the rest of the house and in truth nowhere in the immediate environment have any other moths or even butterflies or dragonflies or wasps or meatflies or suchlike (lepidoptera of whatever nature, be it as eggs, caterpillar, pupa, chrysalis, cocoon or in the final stage as imago) ever been noticed; (iii) that the moths, whenever the door is opened to enter the dark room, have never attempted escaping; and (iv) that, according to the calculations of the supervisors — difficult to be sure, and not scientifically exact — an unchanging number of moths are present. One must make certain that all are counted, that the total tallies with that of the morning and the numbers entered in the book: a drudgery.