If on a winter's night a traveler (32 page)

is different and new; and I especially like books to be read from beginning to end. For a while now, everything has been going wrong for me: it seems to me that in the world there now exist only stories that remain suspended or get lost along the way."

The fifth reader answers you: "That story of which I spoke—I, too, remember the beginning well, but I have forgotten all the rest. It must be a story of the
Arabian Nights.
I am collating the various editions, the translations in all languages. Similar stories are numerous and there are many variants, but none is that story. Can I have dreamed it? And yet I know I will have no peace until I have found it and find out how it ends."

"The Caliph Harun-al-Rashid"—this is the beginning of the story that, seeing your curiosity, he agrees to tell— "one night, in the grip of insomnia, disguises himself as a merchant and goes out into the streets of Baghdad. A boat carries him along the waters of the Tigris to the gate of a garden. At the edge of a pool a maiden beautiful as the moon is singing, accompanying herself on the lute. A slave girl admits Harun to the palace and makes him put on a saffron-colored cloak. The maiden who was singing in the garden is seated on a silver chair. On cushions around her are seated seven men wrapped in saffron-colored cloaks. 'Only you were missing,' the maiden says, 'you are late'; and she invites him to sit on a cushion at her side. 'Noble sirs, you have sworn to obey me blindly, and now the moment has come to put you to the test.' And from around her throat the maiden takes a pearl necklace. This necklace has seven white pearls and one black pearl. Now I will break its string and drop the pearls into an onyx cup. He who draws, by lot, the black pearl must kill the Caliph Harun-al-Rashid and bring me his head. As a reward I will give myself to him. But if he should refuse to kill the Caliph, he will be killed by the other seven, who will repeat the drawing of lots for the black pearl.' With a

shudder Harun-al-Rashid opens his hand, sees the black pearl, and speaks to the maiden. 'I will obey the command of fate and yours, on condition that you tell me what offense of the Caliph has provoked your hatred,' he asks, anxious to hear the story."

This relic of some childish reading should also be included in your list of interrupted books. But what title does it have?

"If it had a title I have forgotten that, too. Give it one yourself."

The words with which the story breaks off seem to you to express well the spirit of the
Arabian Nights.
You write, then,
He asks, anxious to hear the story
in the list of titles you have asked for in vain at the library.

"May I see?" the sixth reader asks, taking the list of titles. He removes his nearsighted glasses, puts them in their case, opens another case, takes out his farsighted glasses, and reads aloud:

"If on a winter's night a traveler, outside the town of Malbork, leaning from the steep slope without fear of wind or vertigo, looks down in the gathering shadow in a network of lines that enlace, in a network of lines that intersect, on the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon around an empty grave
—
What story down there awaits its end?
—
he asks, anxious to hear the story."

He pushes his eyeglasses up on his brow. "Yes, a novel that begins like that. . ." he says, "I could swear I've read it.... You have only this beginning and would like to find the continuation, is that true? The trouble is that once upon a time they all began like that, all novels. There was somebody who went along a lonely street and saw something that attracted his attention, something that seemed to conceal a mystery, or a premonition; then he asked for explanations and they told him a long story...."

"But, look here, there's a misunderstanding," you try to warn him. "This isn't a book... these are only titles ... the
Traveler
..."

"Oh, the traveler always appeared only in the first pages and then was never mentioned again—he had fulfilled his function, the novel wasn't his story...."

"But this isn't the story whose continuation I want to know...."

The seventh reader interrupts you: "Do you believe that every story must have a beginning and an end? In ancient times a story could end only in two ways: having passed all the tests, the hero and the heroine married, or else they died. The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death."

You stop for a moment to reflect on these words. Then, in a flash, you decide you want to marry Ludmilla.

[12]

Now you are man and wife, Reader and Reader. A great double bed receives your parallel readings.

Ludmilla closes her book, turns off her light, puts her head back against the pillow, and says, "Turn off your light, too. Aren't you tired of reading?"

And you say, "Just a moment, I've almost finished
If on a winter's night a traveler
by Italo Calvino."