How to Travel With a Salmon and Other Essays (3 page)

True, you still have the perfumed towelette: but this cannot be distinguished from the little envelopes of salt, pepper, and sugar, and so, after you have put the sugar in the salad, the towelette has already ended up in the coffee, which is served boiling hot and in a heat-conducting cup filled to the brim, so that it may readily slip from your seared fingers and blend with the gravy that has now congealed around your waist. In business class the hostess pours the coffee directly into your lap, hastily apologizing in Esperanto.

Airline quartermasters are certainly enlisted from the ranks of those hotel experts who adopt the only type of pot that, instead of pouring the coffee into the cup, scatters eighty percent of it on the sheet. But why? The most obvious hypothesis is that they want to give the traveler an impression of luxury, and they assume he has in mind those old Hollywood movies where Nero always drinks from broad-brimmed goblets that spatter wine on his beard and his chlamys, or the pictures where a feudal lord gnaws a haunch of meat that smears grease on his lacy shirt, as he embraces a courtesan.

But why, then, in first class, where the space is ample, do they serve compact foods, like Russian caviar on buttered slices of toast, or smoked salmon or lobster chunks with a drop of oil and lemon? Is it perhaps because in the films of Luchino Visconti, when the Nazi aristocrats say "shoot him," they pop a single, compact grape into their mouth?

1987

The other night, after an amorous tryst with one of my numerous mistresses, I did away with my partner, bludgeoning her to death with a rare Cellini saltcellar. 1 was inspired not only by the strict moral code instilled in me since childhood, according to which a woman who indulges in the pleasures of the senses is unworthy of mercy, but also by an esthetic motive: namely, to experience the thrill of the perfect crime.

I waited, listening to a CD of English baroque water music, until the corpse was cold and the blood had congealed; then, with an electric saw, I began dismembering the body, trying at the same time to adhere to certain fundamental anatomical principles, thus paying a tribute to our culture, without which refinement and the social contract would not exist. Finally, I packed the pieces in two suitcases of oryx hide, put on a gray suit, and caught the wagon-lit for Paris.

Once I had handed over my passport and a scrupulous customs declaration to the conductor, listing the few hundred francs I was carrying on my person, I slept like a log, for nothing encourages repose more than the sense of having performed one's duty. Nor did customs venture to disturb a traveler who, merely by purchasing a private berth in first class, asserted ipso facto his membership in the hegemonic class and thus his status as a person above suspicion. The situation was all the more satisfying since, to avoid any withdrawal symptoms, I was carrying with me a trifling amount of morphine, perhaps eight hundred grams of cocaine, and a canvas by Titian.

I will not go into details about how, once in Paris, I rid myself of the wretched remains. I will leave that to your imagination. You
can
simply go to the Beaubourg, set your valises on one of its escalators, and years will pass before anyone notices. Or else you can stow them in a niche specially provided for such purposes in the Gare de Lyon. The password-controlled method of unlocking the storage space is so complex that thousands of pieces of luggage lie there and no one ever dares to attempt to retrieve them. But, even more simply, you can sit at a table at the Deux Magots and leave the suitcases outside the La Hune bookshop. Within minutes they will be stolen, and from then on it's the thief's problem. I cannot deny, however, that the matter left me in a state of tension, which, for that matter, always marks the achievement of an artistically complex and perfect operation.

On my return to Italy I felt on edge and so decided to treat myself to a vacation in Locarno. Suffering, through some inexplicable sense of guilt, from a vague fear of being recognized, I decided to travel second class, wearing jeans and a polo shirt with a crocodile logo.

At the border I was assailed by vigilant customs officials, who examined my luggage and personal belongings down to the most intimate undergarments, then charged me with clandestine importation into Switzerland of a carton of filter-tip MS. And finally they discovered that, behind my sphincter, I had concealed fifty Swiss francs of uncertain provenance, for which I was unable to produce documentation of proper acquisition through a bank.

I was subjected to interrogation beneath a naked 1,000-watt bulb. I was whipped with a wet towel. I was temporarily held in solitary confinement, chained to my cot in a straitjacket.

Luckily, it occurred to me to declare that I had been a member of the underground terrorist group, the Fascist Black Brigades, since its foundation, that I had placed several bombs on express trains for ideological reasons, and that I considered myself a political prisoner. I was promptly assigned to a single room in the Welfare Center set up in a wing of the Grand Hôtel des Iles Borromées. A dietitian advised me to skip a few meals to trim down to ideal weight, while my psychiatrist initiated the process of having my status changed to house arrest, because of certified anorexia. In the meanwhile I wrote some anonymous letters to the courts in the area, insinuating that the judges regularly wrote one another reciprocal threatening anonymous letters, and I denounced the Queen Mother of Great Britain, accusing her of having had active relations with the Communist Combatant Squads.

If all goes smoothly, I should be home in a week.

1989

You can undertake an air journey with an ulcer, scabies, housemaid's knee, tennis elbow, shingles, AIDS, galloping consumption, and leprosy. But not with a cold. Anyone who has tried it knows that when the aircraft suddenly descends from ten thousand meters you feel shooting pains in the ear, your head seems about to explode, and you hammer your fists against the window, yelling to be let out, even without a parachute. Well aware of all this but armed with a nasal spray of devastating effect, I resolved to leave for New York, clogged nostrils and all. A mistake. Once on the ground again, I felt as if I were lying in the Philippine Trench. I could see people opening their mouths but I couldn't hear any sound at all. The doctor subsequently explained to me, in sign language, that my tympana were inflamed; he stuffed me with antibiotics and sternly enjoined me not to fly for at least three weeks. Since I had to visit three different places on the East Coast, I traveled by train.

American trains are the image of what the world might be like after an atomic war. It isn't that the trains don't leave, it's that often they don't arrive, having broken down en route, causing people to wait during a six-hour delay in enormous stations, icy and empty, without a snack bar, inhabited by suspicious characters, and riddled with underground passages that recall the scenes in the New York subways in
Return to the Planet of the Apes.
The line between New York and Washington, patronized by newspaper reporters and senators, in first class offers at least business-class comfort, with a tray of hot food worthy of a university dining hall. But other lines have filthy coaches, with eviscerated leatherette cushions, and the snack bar offers food that makes you nostalgic (you'll say I'm exaggerating) for the recycled sawdust you are forced to eat on the Milan-Rome express.

We see Technicolor films in which ferocious crimes are committed in luxurious sleeping cars, where beautiful white women are served champagne by handsome black waiters who have just stepped out of
Gone With the Wind.
Lies, all lies. In reality, on American trains the passengers seem to have just stepped out of
The Night of the Living Dead;
and the conductors proceed with disgust along the aisles, stumbling over Coca-Cola cans, abandoned shopping bags, and sheets of newspaper smeared with the tuna fish salad that erupts from sandwiches when hungry travelers open red-hot plastic containers radiated by microwaves extremely harmful to the genetic patrimony.

The train, in America, is not a choice. It is a punishment for, having neglected to read Weber on the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, making the mistake of remaining poor. But liberals are politically correct no matter what, and the conductors are extremely polite even with the dirtiest dropout (naturally I should say "victim of marginalization"). In Pennsylvania Station there are many "non-travelers" wandering around, casting glazed looks at their neighbors' luggage. But the controversy about police brutality in Los Angeles is still in the air, and New York is a PC city. The Irish cop approaches the presumed bum, smiles, and asks him how he happens to be in the neighborhood. The bum appeals to the Rights of Man, and the cop, remarking angelically that it's a lovely day outside, goes off, dangling (not swinging) his long nightstick.

Among the poor, too, there are those who cannot manage to abandon the ultimate symbol of marginalization: they smoke. If you try to climb into the one smoking car, you suddenly find yourself in the
Dreigroschenoper.
I was the only one wearing a tie. For the rest, catatonic freaks, sleeping tramps snoring with their mouths open, comatose zombies. As the smoker was the last car of the train, on arrival, this collection of outcasts had to walk a hundred yards or so, slouching along the platform like Jerry Lewis.

Having escaped from this railway hell and changed into uncontaminated clothes, I found myself having supper in the private dining room of a faculty club, among well-dressed professors with educated accents. At the end, I asked if there was somewhere I could go and smoke. A moment of silence and embarrassed smiles followed, then someone closed the doors, a lady extracted a pack of cigarettes from her purse, others looked at my own pack. Furtive glances of complicity, stifled laughter, as in a striptease theater. There followed ten minutes of delightful, thrilling transgression. I was Lucifer, arrived from the world of shadows, and I illuminated everyone with the blazing torch of sin.

1991

It has become a familiar custom, as summer vacation time approaches, for the political and literary weeklies to recommend at least ten "intelligent" books that will enable their readers to spend their "intelligent" vacations intelligently. But thanks to a persistent and unpleasant habit of considering the reader underprivileged and ill-read, some quite celebrated writers take great pains to suggest reading matter that any person of average culture should have read in high school, if not before. It seems to us, if not offensive, at least condescending to insult the reader by advising him to look into, say, the original German edition of the
Elective Affinities,
the Pléiade Proust, or Petrarch's Latin works. We must bear in mind that, bombarded by so much advice over such a long time, the reader has become more and more demanding; and we must bear in mind those who, unable to afford luxury vacations, are game to venture into experiences as uncomfortable as they are thrilling.

For vacationers who will be spending long hours on the beach I would recommend the
Ars magna lucis et umbrae
of Athanasius Kircher, fascinating for anyone who, lying under the infrared solar rays, wants to reflect on the wonders of light and mirrors. The Roman edition of 1645 can still be acquired through antiquarians for sums undoubtedly inferior to those that our former political leaders exported into Switzerland. I do not advise trying to borrow this book from a library, because it is found only in ancient palaces where the attendants are so elderly that they tend to fall off the ladders leading to the rare-book shelves. Additional drawbacks are the size of the book and the friability of the paper: not to be read on days when the wind is blowing over beach umbrellas.

A young person, on the other hand, one who is journeying around the continent on a Eurailpass, and who must therefore read in those overcrowded passages where you have to stand with one arm out of the window, could take with him at least three of the six Einaudi volumes of Ramusio's travels, to be read holding one volume in hand, another under an arm, the third clutched between the thighs. Reading about journeys while
on
a journey is an intensely stimulating experience.

For young people who are recovering from (or disappointed by) political activity, but are still anxious to keep an eye on the problems of the Third World, I would suggest some little masterpiece of Muslim wisdom. Adelphi has recently published
The Book of Advice
by Kay Ka'us ibn Iskandar, but unfortunately without the original Iranian; the translation does not convey the flavor of the text. I would suggest instead the delightful (
Kitāb) al-Sa'ādah wa-al-is'ād
by Abū al-Hasan al-'Amirī, available in Teheran in the critical edition of 1957.

But not every reader is fluent in Middle Eastern languages, of course. For the patristically-oriented motorist, less burdened by constraints on bulk or weight of luggage, the complete collection of Migne's
Patrologia
is always an excellent choice. I would advise
against
the Greek Fathers before the Council of Florence of 1440, which would require packing both the 160 volumes of the Greco-Latin edition and the 81 of the Latin edition, whereas the Latin Fathers prior to 1216 are squeezed into 218 volumes. I am well aware that not all of these are readily available on the market, but the reader can always fall back on photocopies. For those with less specialized interests I would suggest selected works (in the original, naturally) from the cabalistic tradition (essential today for anyone who wants to understand contemporary poetry). A few volumes are enough: a copy of the
Sefer Yezirah,
the
Zohar,
of course, and then Moses Cordovero and Isaac Luria. The cabalistic corpus is particularly suited to holidays, because original editions of the oldest works can still be found in scroll editions, easily stowed in hitchhikers' backpacks. The cabalistic corpus is also perfectly suited to the Clubs Mediterranés, where the animators can organize a Cabala Competition, the prize to be awarded the team constructing the most attractive golem. Finally, for those whose Hebrew is rusty, there is always the
Corpus Hermeticum
and the gnostic writings (Valentinus is best; Basil is not infrequently prolix and irritating).