I stroked the children and could smell their odor, without being able to define it except to say that it was tender. All that came to mind was there are perfumes as fresh as a child’s flesh. And indeed my head was not empty, it was a maelstrom of memories that were not mine: the marchioness went out at five o’clock in the middle of the journey of our life, Abraham begat Isaac and Isaac begat Jacob and Jacob begat the man of La Mancha, and that was when I saw the pendulum betwixt a smile and tear, on the branch of Lake Como where late the sweet birds sang, the snows of yesteryear softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves, messieurs les Anglais je me suis couché de bonne heure, though words cannot heal the women come and go, here we shall make Italy or a kiss is just a kiss, tu quoque alea, a man without qualities fights and runs away, brothers of Italy ask not what you can do for your country, the plow that makes the furrow will live to fight another day, I mean a Nose by any other name, Italy is made now the rest is commentary, mi espíritu se purifica en Paris con aguacero, don’t ask us for the word crazed with light, we’ll have our battle in the shade and suddenly it’s evening, around my heart three ladies’ arms I sing, oh Valentino Valentino wherefore art thou, happy families are all alike said the bridegroom to the bride, Guido I wish that mother died today, I recognized the trembling of man’s first disobedience, de la musique où marchent des colombes, go little book to where the lemons blossom, once upon a time there lived Achilles son of Peleus, and the earth was without form and too much with us, Licht mehr licht über alles, Contessa, what oh what is life? and Jill came tumbling after. Names, names, names: Angelo Dall’Oca Bianca, Lord Brummell, Pindar, Flaubert, Disraeli, Remigio Zena, Jurassic, Fattori, Straparola and the pleasant nights, de Pompadour, Smith and Wesson, Rosa Luxemburg, Zeno Cosini, Palma the Elder, Archaeopteryx, Ciceruacchio, Matthew Mark Luke John, Pinocchio, Justine, Maria Goretti, Thaïs the whore with the shitty fingernails, Osteoporosis, Saint Honoré, Bactria Ecbatana Persepolis Susa Arbela, Alexander and the Gordian knot.
The encyclopedia was tumbling down on me, its pages loose, and I felt like waving my hands the way one does amid a swarm of bees. Meanwhile the children were calling me Grandpa, I knew I was supposed to love them more than myself, and yet I could not tell which was Giangio, which was Alessandro, which was Luca. I knew all about Alexander the Great, but nothing about Alessandro the tiny, the mine.
I said I was feeling weak and wanted to sleep. They left, and I cried. Tears are salty. So, I still had feelings. Yes, but made fresh daily. Whatever feelings I once had were no longer mine. I wondered whether I had ever been religious; it was clear, whatever the answer, that I had lost my soul.
The next morning, with Paola there, Gratarolo had me sit at a table where he showed me a series of little colored squares, lots of them. He would hand me one and ask me what color it was. A-tisket, a-tasket, a green and yellow basket… Was it red? Was it brown? Was it blue? No! Just a little yellow basket. The first five or six I recognized without any trouble: red, yellow, green, and so on. Naturally I said that A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu, voyelles, je dirais quelque jour vos naissances latentes. But I realized that the poet or whoever was lying. What does it mean to say A is black? Rather it was as if I were discovering colors for the first time: red was quite cheerful, fire red, but perhaps too strong. No, maybe yellow was stronger, like a light suddenly switched on and pointed at my eyes. Green made me feel peaceful. The difficulties arose with the other little squares. What’s this? Green, I said. But Gratarolo pressed me: what type of green, how is it different from this one? Shrug. Paola explained that one was emerald green and the other was pea green. Emeralds are gems, I said, and peas are vegetables that you eat. They are round and they come in a long, lumpy pod. But I had never seen either emeralds or peas. Don’t worry, Gratarola said, in English they have more than three thousand terms for different colors, yet most people can name eight at best. The average person can recognize the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet-though people already begin to have trouble with indigo and violet. It takes a lot of experience to learn to distinguish and name the various shades, and a painter is better at it than, say, a taxi driver, who just has to know the colors of traffic lights.
Gratarolo gave me a pen and paper. Write, he said. "What the hell am I supposed to write?" was what I wrote, and it felt as if I had never done anything but write. The pen was sleek and glided smoothly over the paper. "Write whatever comes to mind," Gratarolo said.
Mind? I wrote: love that within my mind discourses with me, the love that moves the sun and the other stars, stars hide your fires, if I were fire I would burn the world, I’ve got the world on a string, there are strings in the human heart, the heart does not take orders, who would hear me among the angels’ orders, fools rush in where angels fear to tread, tread lightly she is near, lie lightly on her, a beautiful lie, touched with the wonder of mortal beauty, wonder is the poet’s aim.
"Write something about your life," Paola said. "What did you do when you were twenty?" I wrote: "I was twenty. I won’t let anyone say that’s the best time of a person’s life." The doctor asked me what first came to mind when I woke up. I wrote: "When Gregor Samsa woke one morning, he found himself transformed in his bed into an enormous insect."
"Maybe that’s enough, Doctor," Paola said. "Don’t let him go on too long with these associative chains, or he might go crazy on me."
"Right, because I seem sane to you now?"
All at once Gratarolo barked: "Now sign your name, without thinking, as if it were a check."
Without thinking. I traced "GBBodoni," with a flourish at the end and a round dot on the i.
"You see? Your head doesn’t know who you are, but your hand does. That was to be expected. Let’s try something else. You mentioned Napoleon. What did he look like?"
"I can’t conjure up an image of him. Just words."
Gratarolo asked Paola if I knew how to draw. Apparently I’m no artist, but I manage to doodle things. He asked me to draw Napoleon. I did something of the sort.
"Not bad," Gratarolo remarked. "You drew your mental scheme of Napoleon-the tricorne, the hand in the vest. Now I’ll show you a series of images. First series, works of art."
I performed welclass="underline" the Mona Lisa, Manet’s Olympia, this one is a Picasso, that one is a good imitation.