Signor Dido, on that extremely warm evening in the middle of July, heard the family clock strike ten; he thought that his duty as a good son had been prolonged beyond the necessary limit.
He knocked on his mother’s door.
The grand baroness was about to go to bed.
The young baroness, Signor Dido’s wife, was in the Piedmont for a week, visiting one of her sisters, along with their little daughter.
The old signora made a dash across the room, like a young girl surprised at her bath. She was wearing a Scheherazade dressing gown, and from inside the foaming lace emerged the hands of a tortoise and the neck of a fighting cock. On her head was a handkerchief knotted at the four corners—a sign that she had taken off her wig. In response to her son’s good night, she averted her face and spluttered—a sign that she had taken out her dentures.
Signor Dido lived near the Porte de Versailles. He made his way to Montparnasse on foot. Even the transports en commun were celebrating that night of the 14th of July.
At every intersection, men and women, holding each other at a distance, serious, avoiding each other’s eyes, performed a hopping dance, as if in a laborious reeducation of the lower limbs. The musicians, on a sort of revolutionary tribunal, repeated to infinity a dance tune from the time of President Fallières.
Between the Dôme and the Rotonde, Signor Dido had to elbow his way through men in shirtsleeves and suspenders and women blinded by their own hair, which smelled of sun-warmed hemp.
The place was brightly lit. The sum of streetlights, café lights, the Venetian lanterns drawn in festoons from one sidewalk to the other.
All at once Signor Dido felt an extraordinarily more intense source of light behind him.
He turned around.
He pretended not to see. He quickened his pace.
He had met Mary two or three times in the house of his brother the painter; they had exchanged a dozen words in all—and with studied detachment.
Mary called his name.
Alone? . . . She, too, was alone. Bronislaw was in London.
A sort of swimming began. Effortless. Unobstructed. A swimming in dreams.
So this meeting was the conclusion of a long story? How long had they known each other? . . .
Alone—in the midst of the crowd, the dancing, the voices, the music, the noise. Alone . . .
Enclosed in some ineffable insulation, in some miraculous gelatin.
People—life—how vulgar, stupid, ridiculous!
Mary spoke like a clear stream. And his soul glided into that stream.
When had Signor Dido ever given his heart with such confidence—and wrapped in such rectitude?
What had become of that embarrassment that put Signor Dido into a frozen state every time he found himself face-to-face with a woman?
Of that embarrassment there was barely a trace. Signor Dido had gone out with very little money in his pocket.
Had the divine Mary guessed it?
They strolled from café to café. Like sleepwalkers. Displeased with the ambience. In search of an ambience “worthy of them.”
Which? . . . In each new café, to the expectant waiter, under the anxious silence of Signor Dido, the luminous voice repeated: “Un café crème.” Signor Dido drew a breath of relief.
If they moved closer together? He sensed a warmth, an odor . . . So even this creature of light palpitated, perspired.
They came out as if from a dream: the dancing had stopped, the music was spent.
They walked.
Mary lived in a pavillon. A separate house. There are no doormen in pavillons.
They talked and talked in front of the open door.
He glimpsed an umbrella hanging from a coatrack, the foot of a staircase.
A thought flashed in Signor Dido. To cross that threshold, to kick the door shut behind him.
A dreadful thought.
Had anything shown on his face?
Dawn was coming.
When Signor Dido turned the corner with a last wave of the hand, all weight left him. He flew.
The night wind, too, has died down; the curtains hang still.
No passers-by. No rapid breath of automobiles.
1931. Signor Dido makes a quick calculation: twenty years . . .
Who had brought Signor Dido that news? And did the brain tumor refer to Mary or Bronislaw?
Berenice’s hair is spread out behind Signor Dido’s eyelids.
The luminous hair is parted at the top of a minuscule, black head. Big only in its hollow eyes, its exposed teeth.
And strand by strand the hair goes out.
A Strange Family
SIGNOR DIDO IS A PAINTER. TO ONE of his paintings he has given the name A Strange Family. It shows a family: father, mother, daughter. The pose of a group before the photographer’s lens. The father in a frock coat and standing (approximate era: 1905). The mother in the middle, the daughter to the right: both seated. The daughter on the verge of spinsterhood, which she combats by means of gauzy blouses and big ribbons at her waist and in her hair. The mother going on fifty (the fifty of 1905, far different from the fifty of today: cette jeunesse), that is, the age at which a woman, by rubbing her face with cucumber, assiduously correcting her eyelashes, cheeks, and lips, and smoothing out her network of wrinkles, transformed herself into a taffeta woman: shiny and rustling. The father a commendatore.
This is the group that forms the Strange Family. But, put like that, the group of the Strange Family has nothing strange about it.
The strangeness is in their faces. It comes from their faces. From that sort of banana that bars the father’s face; from the eye that swells like the entrance to an anthill on the mother’s face; from the eyes that protrude like celestial ping-pong balls from the eye sockets of the daughter.
Those who have seen this picture and arrived at a judgment of it are divided into two categories: those, and they are the majority, who say that these strangely eczematous faces have no other reason for being than that of making Signor Dido pass for an original painter; and those few who, knowing Signor Dido well, have taught themselves to understand the legitimacy and profundity of these strange representations.
Which are said to be strange, but in fact are the exact representation of the truth.
I will explain myself.
Man looks at the men and things around him and believes he sees them, but in truth he does not see them. Instead he sees so many fixed schemes of men and things that he carries inside him, which together form his personal and idealistic representation of the world.
What is wrong with this believing one sees while not seeing? Think of a policeman who, even in the most inveterate criminals, goes on seeing honest men and nothing but honest men.
Like a policeman of humanity and the world, Signor Dido is not an idealist. Whether by training or by innate faculty, he sees men and things beyond the veil of idealism. Not always (that would be frightening): sometimes. Then men and things reveal their—how shall I say?—archaeological aspect. Better: their profound aspect. Signor Dido, in other words, reveals what might be called the psychism of forms.
Men and things, seen in this way, are not beautiful. But for Signor Dido this lack of beauty does not matter. On the contrary. It makes him love men and things even more deeply. A sort of leper’s kiss.
Yesterday Signor Dido went to visit Colle del Cardinale, in the neighborhood of Perugia. At lunch, in the home of relatives, he met a gentleman and lady who said to him: “On your way back come and find our little house in Quercia. We’ll have a bite together. The brat will be there, too.”
Signor Dido did not catch the names of this gentleman and lady. He noted that the gentleman was called “Dottore.”1 How many dottores are there in Italy?
Signs whose nature it is still impossible to determine alert Signor Dido whenever he is about to come in contact with the psychism of forms.
So it was with the looks of this gentleman and lady.
Signor Dido and S
ignora Dido set out in their Topo,2 visited Colle del Cardinale, and coming back in the mild twilight, among lushly wooded hills, set about searching for this Quercia.
The Topo, if one may put it so, groped its way.
Night fell.
Signor Dido stopped, inquired about the “Dottore’s” house. Of a group of men sitting on a low wall in the dark, one stood up and, raising his fist in Signor Dido’s direction, shouted: “Long live the proletariat!” From which Signor Dido deduced that his Topo, small and black, parked at the side of the road, was unequivocal evidence of plutocratism.
Once the smoke of this political gunshot scattered, Signor Dido, maneuvering with skillful gentleness, succeeded in finding out that, to reach the “Dottore’s” house, one had to go uphill to the left fifty meters on, and then, after another two hundred meters, turn right, arriving at a gate between two high columns.
The Topo’s tires grated on the gravel of the dark ascent.
Signor Dido went the presumed fifty meters, but found no crossroad either left or right. He went further: nothing.
Signor Dido stopped the Topo, began a difficult movement in reverse with his hand on the brake and the risk of rolling into the invisible abyss, and after Signora Dido had gotten out—not from fear, but, as she said, “to make the car lighter.”
Signor Dido went down a little way on foot and stopped.
His eyes became accustomed to the dark. A white form moved a few steps away. Came closer: the white shirt of the “Dottore.”
The Dottore was calm and at the same time astonished. Not find his house? Nothing could be easier!
He got behind the wheel himself. Stepped on the gas. The Topo took off at such speed as it had never dared or managed to reach under Signor Dido’s guidance.
The Dottore swerved, plunged the Topo around the side of the hill.
The hill swallowed up the Topo, sucked it in through a black trench.
“Won’t you turn on the headlights?” Signor Dido risked asking.
“No need,” replied the Dottore. “It’s such an easy road . . .”
The race up the dark slope continued at an insane speed and with dizzying curves. Signora Dido, in the back seat, was not breathing. Perhaps she had fainted.
“Here we are,” said the Dottore. And the Topo came boiling to a stop.
“Here where?” thought Signor Dido.
They walked through the dark until Signor Dido stumbled.
“The stairs,” said the Dottore.
When his eyes became accustomed to the light, Signor Dido found himself in the midst of a strange family. Not the one he had depicted: one of the many strange families scattered over the world.
“We never have anyone come here,” the Dottore explained. “But you are something else. I’ve read your books. Followed your writings. You’ll understand the reason for this refuge of ours. Most convenient at that. Only a few kilometers from the city. And you’ve seen what an easy road it is. We come here every evening. In certain periods we spend whole weeks here. Now that school’s over, the brat doesn’t go down to the city anymore.”
The brat was a little boy of about nine, sitting on a seat shaped like a swan. He had fixed eyes and a sort of horn on his head.
“What’s your name?” asked Signora Dido.
“I won’t tell you,” replied the brat. “I don’t like my name.”
“What nonsense!” said the mother, sitting on a seat shaped like a drum. “His name is Clodio.”
“Why, that’s a beautiful name!” said Signora Dido. And at the brat’s grimace she added: “Would you like to be called Andrea?”
Andrea is Signor Dido’s name, hence for Signora Dido it is the most beautiful name in the world.
“No,” the brat replied firmly. “Andrea’s a woman’s name.”
“What relaxation here!” the Dottore picked up again. “The rest that people allow themselves is never complete. It’s not enough to take off your shoes and tie. You have to take off everything you put on yourself in order to resemble other people: to camouflage yourself. Complete rest is self-recovery.”
A brief pause.
“Me, for example. In the city, I run an electrical engineering shop. But I’m not an electrical engineer: I’m a musician. That’s my true nature. Up here I recover myself. You’re also a musician, aren’t you?”
“Somewhat,” whispered Signor Dido.
“I know,” said the Dottore. “One of your ballets was recently staged with success at La Scala. For another, no, but for you . . .”
The Dottore took from a cupboard an object shaped like a xylophone, placed it on the table that stood in the middle of the room, and on which Signor Dido would have preferred to see a tablecloth descend and plates be set out, some empty, others laden with foodstuffs.
The Dottore began to squeeze between his fingers, now one by one, now two together, the wooden cylinders that lay across the hollow of this strange instrument, and to shake them.
His face lit up; he rolled his eyes, undulated his body, moaned like an orchestra conductor in action.
His wife and the brat gazed at him in rapture.
The Dottore came to the end of this music without sound and fell wearily onto a chair.
“Beautiful!” said Signor Dido. “What is it?”
“My latest composition,” replied the Dottore. “I call it Music of the Spheres. Pythagoras explained it. We don’t hear the sublime music that the worlds make in their harmonious movement. Why? Because we hear it all the time.”
A thump on the ceiling was heard.
“Grandma,” said the brat.
“We won’t be eating tonight,” said the lady sitting on the drum. “I put two pizzas in the oven. But Tullio played Music of the Spheres, and the pizzas went watery.”
What she meant by saying that on account of her husband’s soundless music the pizzas went watery, Signor Dido was unable to find out.
Meanwhile the “complete rest” was at work.
Once social restraints are relaxed, the depth of the psyche expands freely, and frees forms at the same time. Noses lengthen into proboscises; eyes flow into globes of gelatin; lips round themselves into gimlets.
“When Signor Dido and Signora Dido found themselves in their hotel, Signor Dido, who was subject to cardiac dysfunctions, felt a certain agitation in his chest and thought it prudent to take a sedative.
He looked for the little tube of Tefapal, but did not find it.
“What are you looking for?” Signora Dido asked him from the bed.
Signor Dido did not reply at once, because to say that one has need of medications is to confess a minor disgrace.
But on the other hand, what to do? Signor Dido plucked up his courage:
“I’m looking for the Tefapal.”
“Let me do it,” said Signora Dido, and she started going around the room in her nightgown.
Signora Dido moved with such circumspection that even this time Signor Dido did not manage to discover where Signora Dido had hidden the Tefapal from him.
A wife, says Signora Dido, is her husband’s collaborator. To justify this affirmation, Signora Dido hides from her husband the objects that are necessary for him, so that, in order to have them, Signor Dido has to turn to her each time.
To requests for payment, and to them alone, does Signora Dido not say: “Let me do it.”
The House on the Hill
SIGNOR DODI, IN HIS LITTLE CONVERTIBLE with the top down, is driving very slowly up the hill.
A stupendous morning.
At the foot of the hill flows the wide, peaceful river. Beyond the river stretches the city; on this side of the river rounds the hill, lush with vineyards, dotted with houses.
Having reached the top, Signor Dodi stops.
A house stands on the top of the hill. A two-storied house, surrounded by well-combed flowerbeds.
All the windows are open.
“From there,” thinks Signor Dodi, looking at the second-story windows, “from
there who knows what a marvelous view you enjoy.”
At a second-story window, a white muslin curtain flutters a little and then hangs motionless.
Signor Dodi is a bachelor. He is about to turn sixty. For forty years now he has been feeding himself on projects. He thinks of a form of happiness, studies it, savors it: at the point of putting it into practice, he stops and postpones it.
Signor Dodi looks at the house on top of the hill, its open windows. He thinks:
“Here is the house of conjugal happiness. What time is it? Ten. He has gone down to the city. He doesn’t need to work, but every man has to do something. Otherwise what kind of man is he?”
He, Signor Dodi, does not do anything, has never done anything. But he, Signor Dodi, it is not known why, he himself does not know why, places himself outside the common category. A sort of authorized outlaw.
“She,” Signor Dodi goes on thinking, “she is still in the bathroom. Mature, soft, slightly fat.”
The thought of this unknown and mature beauty shut up in the bathroom to do her toilette excites Signor Dodi a little. Oh, no! If Signor Dodi has not taken a wife, it is not for the same reasons that others do not take wives—Oscar Wilde, for instance.
“The babies,” Signor Dodi goes on thinking, looking at the house on top of the hill. “Why babies? Children. The children are in school. They will return to the house in papa’s car. In the kitchen, the cook is tightly trussing up the veal roast and pricking it with lard. In the bedrooms, the chambermaid is making the beds. This house seems empty; but the truth is that inside it is filled with quiet domestic labor.
“At one o’clock he comes back from the city, finds his wife . . . I find my wife, we sit down at the table . . .”
At the same moment as Signor Dodi is about to complete his imaginary conjugal happiness, a howl comes from the window with the white curtain.
Signor Dodi, frozen on the seat of his little convertible, thinks: “A werewolf.”
Signor Dodi thinks, more precisely: “A lycanthrope.” This “blank” man, this enemy of all care, of all responsibility, likes fine talk.
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