Horrified, I leapt to my feet. I was familiar, quite familiar, with my solitude, but only now did I truly feel and touch the horror in everything I saw before me, even looking at my own raised hand. Because what others see isn’t and can’t be in our eyes unless as an illusion, which I could no longer believe. In a state of total confusion, thinking I was seeing my horror in the dog’s eyes when she suddenly bolted up and looked at me, I kicked her to get that horror away from me. But the second I heard the poor little thing’s piercing yelps, I desperately took her head in my hands, yelling:
“Crazy! I’m going crazy!”
Then, I’m not sure how, in that desperate gesture I saw myself again, and then the tears that were about to burst from my chest suddenly transformed into a burst of laughter, and I called poor Bibì, who was limping pitifully, and I began limping myself as well, just for fun, and completely overcome with a cruel, frenzied cheerfulness, I told her I’d only been playing around, just playing, and I wanted to keep on playing. The little beast sneezed, as if to say: “I refuse! I refuse!”
“Oh, really? You refuse, do you, Bibì? You refuse?”
Then I started sneezing myself, to mock her, each time repeating: “I refuse! I refuse!”
5 ~ The Good Game
“Kicked her? Me? That poor little creature?”
Of course not! Why would I? Some chubby brat wandering around out in the country popped her one. I have no idea what startled him. Maybe he got scared, scared of everything and nothing. Of a nothing that could suddenly turn into a something only he could see.
There’s no danger of that, now, here in town. Damn! Everyone’s happily ensconced in someone else’s illusion, certain that anyone would be wrong if they disagreed, saying that we’re not the way others see us.
I felt like shouting to the world: “Sure, come on! Let’s do it! Let’s play the game!”
And also to wave at anyone who happened to be watching from some window. Oh yes, come on! Even if they were opening that window to jump down.
“It’s a great game! Besides, who knows what pleasant surprises await, kind sir, dear lady, if after discarding all your self-illusions, you could somehow return from the dead for a moment and see the world where you imagined you were living in the illusions of all those still alive! Ha, ha!”
The problem was that, still being alive, I was seeing this game played by all the other people who were also still alive, but I couldn’t join in. And this inability of joining into the game, despite knowing it was right there where everyone could see it, exasperated my cheerful frenzy to the point of savage fury.
I’d just kicked that poor little dog simply because she was looking at me. Now, God forgive me, I felt like kicking everyone I saw.
6 ~ Multiplication and Subtraction
When I got home, I found Quantorzo having a serious talk with my wife Dida. They looked so settled and confident there, both sitting in the little pale, shadowy drawing room—he, fat and dark, sunk into the green sofa; she, slender and light, in her frilly dress with an elaborate three-quarter-length-coat, on the armchair beside him, a sunbeam on her neck. They were definitely talking about me, because when they saw me coming, they exclaimed in unison: “Oh, here he is now!”
Since there were two of them watching me enter, I was tempted to turn around and look for the other one who was coming along with me, despite knowing full well that my fatherly Quantorzo’s “dear Vitangelo” not only was inside me along with my wife Dida’s “Gengè,” but that as far as Quantorzo was concerned, I was nothing but his “dear Vitangelo” just like I was exclusively “Gengè” for Dida. So there were two of me. Not in their eyes, but all the same, now I knew that I was one plus one to them. For me, all this wasn’t a plus, but a minus, in so much as it meant that in their eyes I—the real me—was no one.
Just in their eyes? Even for me, even for my isolated spirit, which, at that moment, lacking any apparent substance, was imagining the horror of seeing its own body as no one’s, in the different, overwhelming reality those two were currently giving it.
Seeing me turn, my wife asked: “Who are you looking for?”
Smiling, I blurted out a response: “Oh, no one, dear, no one. Here we all are!”
Naturally, they didn’t understand what I meant by that “no one” I was looking for beside me, and they thought that my “Here we all are!” was referring to the two of them, convinced as they were that only three of us now occupied that modest drawing room, and not nine. Or, rather, eight, given that I, as far as I was concerned, no longer counted.
What I mean is:
1) Dida, as she saw herself.
2) Dida, as I saw her.
3) Dida, as Quantorzo saw her.
4) Quantorzo as he saw himself.
5) Quantorzo as Dida saw him.
6) Quantorzo as I saw him.
7) Dida’s dear Gengè
8) Quantorzo’s dear Vitangelo
In that modest drawing room, those eight people who thought they were three, prepared to have a nice conversation.
7 ~ Meanwhile I Said to Myself:
(Oh, my God, now won’t they feel their self-confidence suddenly falter, seeing themselves looked at by those eyes of mine that don’t know what they’re seeing?
Stopping for a bit to look at someone who’s even doing the most normal, obvious thing in life, watching him in a way that makes him suspect that it’s not clear to us what he’s doing and that it may not even be clear to him—that’s all it takes to make his self-assurance fade and waver. Nothing is more disturbing or upsetting than a pair of vacant eyes that clearly don’t see us, or don’t see what we’re seeing.
“Why are you staring like that?”
And no one realizes that we all should look like that all the time, everyone with eyes full of horror at their own hopeless solitude.)
8 ~ Sore Spot
In fact, as soon as Quantorzo’s eyes met mine, he quickly started getting upset and losing his train of thought as he spoke, becoming so befuddled that he was unconsciously raising his hand now and then as if to say, “Wait, hold on—”
But it didn’t take me long to discover the betrayal.
He was rambling, not because my expression shook his self-confidence, but because when he looked me in the eyes, he got the impression that I’d already guessed his secret reason for paying me this visit: namely, he and Firbo had conspired to bind me hand and foot, complaining that he could no longer serve as bank director if I continued to assert my right to carry out further sudden, arbitrary actions that neither he nor Firbo could assume responsibility for.
With that certainty in mind, I decided to have some fun with him, but not right away like I’d done the other time, babbling and waving my arms around like a madman in front of him and Firbo. No, just the opposite. He’d come so determined, I thought it’d be fun to see how much I could rattle him before he left again. In other words, I thought it’d be most amusing to see how easily I could shatter his warrior-like determination to show me yet again (though I had no need of it) how some trivial thing could suffice to destroy his confidence—some word that I might say, the tone I might say it in—how that would confuse him and make him change his mind, and, along with his mind, inevitably, alter his entire rock-solid reality, the one he felt deep inside and the one he saw and felt out in the world.
As soon as he told me that Firbo in particular couldn’t get over what I’d done, just to annoy him, I put on a fatuous grin and asked: “Still?”
He was definitely irritated. “Still? Oh, my dear friend, you know what? He found all those files on the shelves! You made such a mess of things it’ll take two months at the very least to get them all back in order.”
I then became very serious, turning to Dida to say: “You see, dear? And you thought it was just a joke.”
Dida looked at me immediately, dubious, then looked at Quantorzo, then back at me. Finally, she apprehensively asked: “Well, what on earth did you do?”
I gestured
for her to hang on. Becoming even more serious, I turned to Quantorzo and said: “So Mr. Firbo found a mess on those shelves, did he? Now why don’t you try asking me what I found there?”
At this point, Quantorzo was nervously shifting his weight on the couch and blinking his eyes a couple dozen times as if instinctually refocusing his thoughts after the shock I’d given him, not so much from the question as from the defiant tone I’d used to ask it.
“Wh—what did you find?” he stammered.
“A layer of dust, this thick!” I immediately answered, accompanying my words with a gesture.
Stunned, they looked each other in the eye. My tone made it clear there was no chance I was joking around, even though what I’d said was ridiculous on the face of it.
In his bewilderment, Quantorzo repeated: “A thick layer of dust? What does that mean?”
“Good question! It means that all those files have been sleeping there undisturbed. For years! That layer of dust was inches deep, I’m telling you! And in fact, one house vacant, and as for the other one—Lord knows how long since any rent has been collected on it!”
This time, Quantorzo pretended to be more astonished than ever, which I hadn’t expected. “Oh,” he said, “so that’s how you’re going to wake those houses up, by giving them away?”
“No, my dear friend,” I immediately shouted, getting a little hot under the collar. Yes, my anger was mostly a put-on, but it was also a little bit real. “No, my dear friend! It’s to prove how very wrong you are—very wrong about me—you and Firbo and everyone else! I talk, talk, talk, saying stupid things, acting absent-minded, but it’s not real, you know? Because I actually notice everything—I see it all!”
This time Quantorzo did try to react just as I’d expected, exclaiming: “What do you see? Please tell me! Dust on the shelves, that’s what you see?”
“And my hands,” I immediately added, showing them, not knowing why I’d felt the urge to do so. My tone of voice suddenly provoked a shiver as I recalled the image of that bookcase in that room and the action of raising my hands to steal that file from myself, after having pictured my father’s hands there—white, fleshy, with all those rings and red hairs on the back of his fingers.
“I go to the bank,” I continued, suddenly tired and nauseous in the face of their growing astonishment. “I go to the bank only when you need me to sign something. But be advised that I don’t even need to go there, personally, to the bank, to find out everything you’re doing there.”
I looked askance at Quantorzo. He seemed deathly pale. (But careful, I’m only talking about my Quantorzo. Dida’s Quantorzo may be different. Even if Dida’s version went pale, too, she may just attribute it to indignation rather than fear, although I could’ve sworn my version was scared.) At any rate, his hands really did fly to his chest, and his eyes widened like saucers as he asked me:
“Oh, so you’ve got spies there? So you don’t trust us, huh?”
“No, I didn’t say I don’t trust you, and I don’t have any spies,” I hastened to reassure him. “I just pay attention, out there, to the effects of your business dealings, and that’s all it takes. Tell me this, though: is it true you and Firbo are still doing business the way my father did?”
“To the letter!”
“I don’t doubt it. But the two of you are sheltered, for your part, by the offices you hold: one as director, the other as legal consultant. My father, unfortunately, is no longer with us. I’d like to know who answers for the bank’s actions to the community.”
“What do you mean, who answers for the bank?” Quantorzo said. “We do, us! And it’s precisely because we answer for the bank, that we need to be sure you’re not planning to meddle again with certain actions that are, well, ill-advised to say the least!”
First I waved my finger side to side, then calmly said: “That’s not true. You don’t answer for the bank. Not if you’re following my father’s practices to the letter. At the most, you have me to answer to if you fail to follow his practices, and I ask you to explain and justify yourselves. Now let’s turn to the community—who answers to them? I sign off on your actions, so I answer to them—me, me! And I can’t help noticing this irony: you two sure want my signature on everything you do, but you refuse to sign off on the one thing I do.”
That must’ve really scared him, because at that point I saw him bounce lightly on the couch three times, exclaiming: “Oh, that’s rich! That is rich! That is so rich! What we do—our actions—are normal bank things! You, on the other hand—sorry, but you’re forcing me to say it—what you did was totally insane! Insane!”
I jumped to my feet. I pointed my index finger right at his chest, like a gun. “Do you think I’m crazy?”
“Of course not!” he said, immediately wilting under the threat of my finger.
“No, huh?” I shouted at him, staring directly in his eyes. “Well then, I guess this little matter between us is officially settled!”
Quantorzo was left hanging, head spinning, not so much because he’d suddenly begun to again suspect that I might actually be crazy; no, it was because he didn’t understand why I insisted on establishing the fact that he didn’t consider me crazy. In his uncertainty, he worried I was setting some sort of trap for him. Almost regretting having answered no in the first place, he tried to walk it back with a little smirk.
“No, wait… you have to admit—”
Wonderful! Absolutely wonderful! Now Dida, scowling a bit at me and a bit at Quantorzo, made it quite obvious that she was just as confused about him as she was about me. She obviously saw my outburst, my point-blank question, as Gengè’s outburst and question, and they were totally inexplicable coming from him, unless Quantorzo here and Mr. Firbo had committed some error so grievous that her Gengè was rendered— my God—totally unrecognizable now in the face of Quantorzo’s temporary bewilderment. That outburst, and I daresay that question, cast her respectable Quantorzo’s calm good sense in more doubt than ever before. And her eyes so clearly communicated this doubt that Quantorzo, the second he’d turned to her with his feeble grin, attempting to take back his comment, became more befuddled than ever as he suddenly realized he couldn’t count on her approval which he’d thought he had locked up until that moment.
I burst out laughing, but neither one of them guessed the reason why. I was tempted to shake them by the shoulders and shout to their faces: “Don’t you see? Can’t you see? Now how can you two be so sure of yourselves if from one minute to the next some tiny feeling is enough to make you doubt yourselves and others?”
“Just drop it!” I interrupted him, adding a scornful gesture to let him know that whatever opinion he might have had of me or my mental health was no longer of any concern to me, at least not for the time being. “Answer me this: at the bank I’ve seen all kinds of scales. You use them to weigh items that people pawn, right? But tell me, those things you call normal bank business—do their effects on others ever weigh on your conscience?”
At this question, Quantorzo looked around again, almost as if he felt that others, besides me, were again treacherously pulling him off track.
“What do you mean, on my conscience?”
“You think conscience has nothing to do with it?” I immediately shot back. “Oh, I know! And maybe you think my conscience has nothing to do with it either, because I left it at the bank all these years for you to manage along with the rest of my inheritance, in accordance with my father’s guidelines.”
“But the bank—” Quantorzo tried to object.
Again I shot back: “The bank, the bank… that’s all you can think of, the bank. But I’m the one, out there, who has to hear myself get called a filthy loan shark!”
At this unexpected remark, it was Quantorzo’s turn to jump to his feet, as though I’d uttered the most vehement curse or the most colossal nonsense. Pretending to run off, he raised his arms and exclaimed: “Oh, good Lord!” Then he said it again, “Good Lord!” as he came back, his head in his h
ands, looking at my wife as if saying to her: “You hear that? You hear that childish nonsense of his? And here I thought he had something serious to tell me!”
He grabbed my arms, perhaps to shake some sense into me, undoing the bewilderment his mad gestures had instinctively provoked. “Do you seriously worry about that?” he shouted. “Oh, come on! Come on!”
And to have his revenge, he pointed to my wife as proof. She was laughing and laughing, busting a gut laughing, undoubtedly at what I’d just said, but maybe also because of the effect my words had had on Quantorzo, not to mention my own subsequent astonishment, which had definitely refreshed the crystal-clear image of her Gengè’s sweet, well-known foolishness.
Well, that laughter left me feeling suddenly wounded in a way I wouldn’t have expected possible then, deep in my soul which had partially invested in this conversation and partially ignored it. I’d been stabbed to the quick, although I couldn’t even say where or what that sore spot was, considering that up to that moment, it had seemed clear to me that when I was with these two, the real me didn’t even exist. Instead, there was her “Gengè” and his “dear Vitangelo”—and I couldn’t feel alive in either one of them.
Independent of any image I could picture of myself in the flesh as a living being, or any image I could imagine that others saw of me, there was this “quick” in me, this sore spot, that had been so deeply wounded that the light in my eyes was extinguished.
“Stop laughing!” I bellowed at my wife in such a tone that she looked at me (who knows what expression she saw on my face) and suddenly went silent, her face contorted.
Turning to Quantorzo, I immediately added: “And listen carefully to what I’m going to tell you. I want the bank closed down. This very evening.”
“Closed? What are you saying?”
“Closed! Shut down!” I replied, getting right in his face. “I want it closed. Do I own the bank or not?”
One, No One & 100,000 Page 12
