Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories (26 page)

But before a drop appears at each hole in the shower head to lengthen in a still uncertain dribble then suddenly swell all together in concentric circles of vibrant jets, I have to wait a whole second, a second of uncertainty during which there’s no way of knowing whether the world still contains any water, whether it hasn’t become a dry, dust-covered planet like the other celestial bodies in our vicinity, or in any event whether it contains enough water for me to be able to take it in the hollow of my hands, far as I am from any reservoir or spring, in the heart of this fortress of asphalt and cement.

Last summer there was a big drought in Northern Europe, pictures on the TV showed wastes of fields reduced to a cracked and arid crust, once prosperous rivers shyly revealing their dry beds, cattle nuzzling in the mud to get some relief from the heat, queues of people with jugs and jars by a meagre fountain. It occurs to me that the abundance I have been wallowing in until today is precarious and illusory, water could once again become a scarce resource, hard to distribute, the water carrier with his little barrel slung over his shoulder raising his cry to the windows to call the thirsty down to buy a glass of his precious merchandise.

If I almost succumbed a moment ago to a sense of titanic pride as I took hold of the command levers of the shower, it’s taken less than a second to have me thinking how unjustified and fatuous my illusion of omnipotence was, and it’s with trepidation and humility that I now watch for the arrival of the gush announced by a subdued quivering higher up the tube. But what if it were just an air bubble passing through the empty pipes? I think of the Sahara inexorably advancing a few inches every year, I see the lush mirage of an oasis trembling in the haze, I think of the arid plains of Persia drained by underground channels towards cities with blue majolica domes, crossed by nomad caravans that set out each year from the Caspian Sea to the Persian Gulf, camping under black tents where, crouched on the ground, a woman holds her gaudy veil with her teeth as she pours water for the tea from a leather bag.

I raise my face towards the shower waiting out that second before the spurts rain down on my half-closed lids to liberate sleepy eyes that are now exploring the chrome-plated shower-head peppered with little holes rimmed by calcium, and all at once I see it as a lunar landscape riddled with calcareous craters, no, it’s the deserts of Iran I’m seeing from the air, dotted with small white craters all in rows at even intervals, showing the route the water follows along conduits three thousand years old: the
qanat
that run underground for fifty yards at a time, communicating with the surface via these wells where a man can climb down securing himself to a rope to carry out maintenance work. I too project myself into one of those dark craters, in an upside-down world I drop into the showerhead holes as though into the
qanat
wells towards the water running there invisibly with a muffled hiss.

A fraction of a second is all it takes for me to rediscover the notion of up and down: it’s from above that the water is about to reach me, after a jerky uphill journey. In thirsty civilizations artificial watercourses run below or along the ground, much as in nature itself, while the great luxury of civilizations lavish with the vital lymph has been that of having water overcome the force of gravity, having it rise up to then fall down again; hence the profusion of fountains with plays and sprays of water, the tall pillars of overhead aqueducts. The imposing masonry of Roman arches supports the lightness of a torrent suspended up above; it’s an idea that expresses a sublime paradox: the most solidly, lastingly monumental at the service of the fluid and transitory, the elusive and diaphanous.

I listen hard to the network of waterflows suspended above and around me, to the vibration spreading through a forest of pipes. Above I sense the sky of the Roman Campagna crossed by conduits perched on gently descending arches, and higher up still by clouds that vie with the aqueducts to draw up immense quantities of running water.

The point of arrival for an aqueduct is always the city, the great sponge made for absorbing and spraying, Nineveh and its gardens, Rome and its baths. A transparent city never ceases to flow within the compact thickness of stones and cement, a fine filigree of water swathes the walls and streets. Superficial metaphors define the city as an agglomerate of stone, many-sided diamond or sooty coal, but every metropolis can also be seen as a grand liquid structure, a space defined by vertical and horizontal lines of water, a stratification of locations subject to tides and floods and undertow, where the human race realizes an ideal of amphibian life that satisfies its deepest vocation.

Or perhaps it is water’s deepest vocation that is realized in the city: climbing, gushing, flowing upwards. It’s in their height that cities find their identity: Manhattan raising up its watertanks on top of skyscrapers, Toledo which for centuries had to draw off barrel after barrel from the Tagus way below and plod them uphill on muleback, until for the delight of the melancholy Philip II
el artificio de Juanelo
lurched into creaking motion and, miracle of brief duration, brought the contents of its swinging buckets up the cliff to the Alcazar.

Here I am then ready to welcome the water not as something naturally due to me but as a lovers’ tryst, an encounter whose freedom and felicity are proportional to the obstacles it has had to overcome. To live in complete intimacy with water the Romans placed the baths at the centre of their public life; today this intimacy is the heart of our private life, here under this shower whose streams I have so often seen running down your skin, naiad nereid undine, thus I see you once again appearing and disappearing as the jets fan out, now that the water comes gushing in swift obedience to my call.

When I was a boy, I spent hours and hours in front of the mirror pulling faces. Not that I thought my face so handsome as never to tire of looking at it; on the contrary, I couldn’t bear it, that face of mine, and pulling faces gave me the chance to try out different ones, faces that appeared and were immediately replaced by other faces, so that I could believe I was a different person, many people of every kind, a host of individuals who one after the other became myself, that is I became them, that is each of them became another of them, while as for me, it was as if I didn’t exist at all.

Sometimes after trying three or four different faces, or ten perhaps, or twelve, I would decide that just one of these was the one I preferred, and I would try to make it come back, to arrange my features so as once again to set them in that face that had looked so good. No chance. Once a face had gone, there was no way of getting it back, of having it merge with my face again. In the attempt I would assume constantly changing faces, unknown, alien, hostile faces, which seemed to take me further and further from that lost face. Frightened, I would stop pulling faces and my old everyday face would surface again, and I thought it duller than ever.

But these exercises of mine never lasted too long. There was always a voice to bring me back to reality.

Fulgenzio! Fulgenzio! Where’s Fulgenzio sneaked off to? Typical! I know how that idiot spends his days well enough! Fulgenzio! Caught you in front of the mirror pulling faces! Again!

Frenetically I would improvise guilty, caught-red-handed faces, soldiers’ standing-at-attention faces, obedient, good-boy faces, moron-from-birth faces, gangster faces, angel faces, monster faces, one after the other.

Fulgenzio, how many times do we have to tell you not to get so wrapped up in yourself! Look outside the windows! See how nature burgeons sprouts rustles whirrs blossoms! See how the busy town seethes pulsates throbs churns produces! Every member of my family would raise an arm to point me to something out there in the landscape, something that as they saw it would have the power to attract me excite me give me the energy that—as they saw it of course—I lacked. I would look and look, my eyes would follow their pointing fingers, I would try to get interested in what father mother aunts uncles grandmothers grandfathers older brothers older sisters younger brothers and sisters once twice third removed cousins teachers supervisors supply teachers school-friends and holiday friends were suggesting to me. But I couldn’t find absolutely anything extraordinary in things as they were.

But perhaps there were other things hidden behind these things, and those, yes, those might interest me, indeed I was extremely curious about them. Sometimes I would see something, or someone, or some woman appear and disappear, I wasn’t quick enough to identify what or whom, and at once I would race off after them. It was the hidden side of everything that intrigued me, the hidden side of houses, the hidden side of gardens, the hidden side of streets, the hidden side of towns, the hidden side of televisions, the hidden side of dishwashers, the hidden side of the sea, the hidden side of the moon. But when I managed to get to that hidden side, I realized that what I was looking for was the hidden side of the hidden side, or rather, the hidden side of the hidden side of the hidden side, no; the hidden side of the hidden side of the hidden side of the hidden side…

Fulgenzio, what are you doing? Fulgenzio, what are you looking for? Are you looking for somebody, Fulgenzio? I didn’t know what to answer.

Sometimes, at the back of the mirror, behind my reflection, I thought I saw a presence I wasn’t quick enough to identify and which immediately hid. I tried to study not myself in the mirror but the world behind me: nothing caught my attention. I was about to turn away when, there, I would see it peep out from the opposite side of the mirror. I would always catch it with the corner of my eye in the place where I least expected it, but as soon as I tried to get a good look it had gone. Despite the speed of its movements this creature was flowing and soft, as if swimming underwater.

I left the mirror and started to look for the spot where I’d seen the presence disappear. ‘Ottilia! Ottilia!’ I called it, because I liked that name and thought a girl I liked could have no other. ‘Ottilia! Where are you hiding?’ I always had the impression she was near, there in front, no: there behind, no; there round the corner, but I always arrived a second after she’d gone. ‘Ottilia! Ottilia!’ But if they had asked me: who is Ottilia? I wouldn’t have known what to say.

Fulgenzio, a person has to know what he wants! Fulgenzio, you can’t always be so vague about your plans! Fulgenzio, you must set yourself an end to achieve—an objective—an aim—a target—you must press on to your goal—you must learn your lesson, you must win the competition, you must earn a lot and save a lot!

I aimed at where I planned to get to, I concentrated my strength, I tensed my will, but my point of arrival was departing, my energies were centrifugal, my will tended only to distend. I gave it all I’d got, I worked hard to study Japanese, to get my astronaut’s diploma, to win the weight-lifting championship, to collect a billion in hundred-lire pieces.

You keep right on on the path you’ve chosen, Fulgenzio! And I stumbled. Fulgenzio, don’t wander from the line you’ve set yourself! And I muddled myself up in zigzags and ups and downs. Leap over the obstacles, my son! And the obstacles fell on me.

In the end I was so disheartened that not even the faces in the mirror were any help. The mirror wouldn’t reflect my face any more and not even a shadow of Ottilia, just an expanse of scattered stones as though on the surface of the moon.

To strengthen my character I took up archery. My thoughts and actions must become like arrows that dart through the air along the invisible line that ends in an exact point, the centre of all centres. But my aim was no good. My arrows never hit the bull’s eye.

The target seemed as far away as another world, a world that was all precise lines, sharp colours, regular, geometric, harmonious. The inhabitants of that world must make only precise and sudden movements, with nothing vague about them; for them there could be only straight lines, compass-drawn circles, set square corners…

The first time I saw Corinna, I realized that that perfect world was made for her, while I was still excluded.

Corinna would shoot her bow and wham! wham! wham! one after another the arrows thudded into the centre.

‘Are you a champion?’

‘Of the world.’

‘You know how to bend your bow in so many different ways and every time the arrow’s trajectory takes it right to the target. How do you do it?’

‘You think that I’m here and the target there. No: I’m both here and there, I’m the archer and I’m the target that draws the archer’s arrow to it, and I’m the arrow that flies and the bow that releases the arrow.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘If you become like me, you will understand.’

‘Can I learn too?’

‘I can teach you.’

In the first lesson Corinna said to me: ‘To give your eye the steadiness you lack you must look at the target a long time, intensely. Just look at it, stare, until you lose yourself in it, until you convince yourself there’s nothing else in the world than that target, and that you are in the centre of the centre.’

I gazed at the target. The sight of it had always communicated a feeling of certainty; but now, the more I looked, the more this certainty was overcome by doubts. There were moments when the red areas seemed to rise in relief against the green, others when the green areas seemed to be higher while the red sank back. Gaps opened up between the lines, precipices, chasms, the centre was in the bottom of a gorge or on the tip of a steeple, the circles opened up dizzying perspectives. I felt that a hand would come out from between the lines of the pattern, an arm, a person… Ottilia! I immediately thought. But I was quick to banish the idea. It was Corinna I had to follow, not Ottilia, her image was enough to make the target dissolve like a soap bubble.

In the second lesson Corinna said: ‘It’s when it relaxes that the bow releases the arrow, but to do that it must first be properly tensed. If you want to become precise as a bow you have to learn two things: to concentrate yourself within yourself and to leave every tension outside.’