When the cold supper was over, sharp and syncopated sounds rose up and overwhelmed the disorderly shouting; some couples embraced and turned around themselves in a restricted space. Their eyes were open, but their faces were asleep.
At midnight Signor Dido made a move to go home.
This time the distribution of places in the automobile was as follows: Signor Dido at the wheel; to his right Signora P. M., a well-known writer; in the back seat Signora Dido and, to her left, the famous writer M. B.
His foot on the pedal, the gearshift in third, Signor Dido started down the road through the park. The automobile began to pick up speed.
Signor Dido searched for the brake pedal with his foot. The pedal was no longer there.
It is noon and Signor Dido is still in bed.
The evening before, he and his companions having escaped unhurt from this fearful adventure (an adventure caused, as became known later, by a stripped bolt that had left the brake pedal in the condition of a milk tooth about to fall out), Signor Dido and Signora Dido had reached home by means of luck. Signor Dido’s nervous tension held out as far as the house. On the threshold of the house, Signor Dido collapsed.
Now Signor Dido is in bed. He is in bed and unhappy. He is unhappy because he is in bed; he is unhappy because Signora Dido’s back is pinning him down under the covers; he is unhappy because he feels himself a prey.
Professore Elvio, his attendant physician and personal friend, has questioned him at length about shock and the effects of shock. But they were not sincere questions: they were insidious questions. Each of Professore Elvio’s questions was intended to unmask Signor Dido, to make Signor Dido say things that he was concealing. Is a sick man then someone to be distrusted? . . . Signor Dido’s answers fell on barren ground. Nothing on Professore Elvio’s face betrayed it.
Signora Dido’s face is worried. But behind the varnish of worry, Signora Dido is pleased, and Signor Dido knows it. Professore Elvio’s incredulity plays into her hand. Signor Dido says that he is well? That he is ready to get up? Nonsense! The whole day in bed. And maybe tomorrow as well. And the day after, not in bed, but in an armchair.
Signor Dido is their prey: the prey of Signora Dido, the prey of Professore Elvio.
A fine illness that, under the veil of affectionate solicitude, of medical treatment, gives a virtuous appearance to predators!
Why does Signor Dido find death repugnant? Dead, a man becomes the total and definitive prey of those who are left alive. And he lies there: mum.
“Air! Air!”
Signora Dido believes in the restorative virtues of air.
“The window? . . . Too cold. But the door at least.”
Nice Mattaglioni, the maid of all work in the Dido household, profits from the open door.
Nice Mattaglioni, short on personal life, loves mixing into the life of others.
Two particular features characterize Nice Mattaglioni: a boundless admiration for her own father, a small rural landowner and extemporaneous poet; and the practice of equivalences, which consists in opposing to any fact of someone else’s a fact of her own.
“Poor signore!” murmurs Nice Mattaglioni, peeking shyly from the doorway at Signor Dido stretched out in bed. “These cars! Nothing but trouble! . . . Even my father. One evening he was coming home on his motorcycle. All of a sudden, poom! a tire blew: papa went flying into the fields. My mama, poor thing, lit one match after another looking for the pieces.”
Signora Dido asks:
“Your father was blown to pieces?”
“No, he was fine.”
How deny that the sources of fantasy well up from the people?
“Basta!” cries Signor Dido. “I won’t be a prey anymore! I’ll be like that cursed car: no brakes!”
So saying, Signor Dido throws the covers into the air and leaps out of bed. Signora Dido had been sitting on the edge: she finds herself sitting on the floor.
“Are you crazy? Get back in bed at once!”
Professore Elvio says nothing and stares through his lenses at the empty bed.
In pajamas and with the gait of a marionette, Signor Dido goes off down the corridor.
Man, in each of his acts, is sacred.
So thinks Nice Mattaglioni.
She looks at Signor Dido, in whom she sees her own father again, and murmurs: “The signore! . . . What a hero!”
A Mental Journey
SIGNOR DIDO RESIDES IN ROME. A few days ago he made a short trip to Milan. He went by train. And alone. Differently than had been planned.
It had been planned that Signor Dido would go to Milan by automobile and in the company of Signora T. More exactly, Signor Dido would have traveled from Rome to Milan in the automobile of Signora T., who owns a powerful automobile and drives it herself, with the same authority and the same skill with which Armida drove the dragons yoked to her chariot.1
The parallel between Signora T. and Armida is not fortuitous. Both are witches. The magic practiced by Signora T. is less sulphurous than that practiced by Armida, but to make up for that, it is more subtle and of greater range.
All the same, it has no power over internal combustion engines. The night before the planned trip to Milan, the engine in Signora T.’s automobile broke down. Signora T. left for Milan by train. Signor Dido also left for Milan by train.
In the capital of the ex-duchy, Signor Dido and Signora T. met. They visited an important exhibition of paintings together. They dined now in restaurants of international fame, now in eating places of local character but equally conspicuous as to price.
So it went for three days. At the end of the third day, Signora T. said to Signor Dido:
“Tomorrow I go back to Rome.”
Signor Dido hesitated for a moment, but then said in his turn:
“I, too, go back to Rome tomorrow.”
“I’m taking the 12:45 express,” said Signora T.
“I’m also taking the 12:45 express,” Signor Dido said in his turn, and it seemed to him that the voice of Echo was in his mouth.
“It’s a good idea to reserve a place in the Pullman,” Signora T. suggested.
“Do you think so?” asked Signor Dido. “I always find a place on the train.”
And Signor Dido, trusting in his good railway star, did not reserve a place.
The next day, at the stroke of noon, Signor Dido went up the majestic stairs of the Milan station. He was slightly agitated. In Signor Dido’s organism, psychic agitations influence the digestive system.
The train was standing in the station.
It was not the train Signor Dido was expecting. He was expecting a streamlined electric express, high of windows and warlike of armor plating. He found instead a train of cars antiquated in form and divided into compartments.
And the Pullmans? Where were the Pullmans?
Signor Dido occupied the two window seats in a first-class compartment. On the seat facing in the direction of the trip and destined for Signora T., Signor Dido placed his own beret: that beret with which, except in seasons that allowed one to go around bareheaded, he usually protected his baldness.
Signor Dido climbed down to the platform. The effects of psychic agitation on his digestive system were increasing.
Signora T. came through the gate to the tracks at 12:43. She was escorted by two Herculeses in striped capes, bent under suitcases. She stopped by a car watched over by a uniformed employee and handed him a piece of paper.
As Signora T. was setting about climbing into the car watched over by the uniformed employee, Signor Dido said softly to her:
“I’ve saved two places in first class.”
“But this one is the Pullman,” said Signora T., continuing to climb in. “They’ve reserved a place for me.”
“Ah, really?”
Signor Dido went up to the uniformed employee.
“Kindly give me a place on the Pullman.” And so saying, Signor Dido patted the bulge of his wallet on his right buttock.
“Al
l taken,” replied the uniformed employee.
Signor Dido relayed the words of the uniformed employee to Signora T. He added:
“Let’s try to meet in the dining car.”
“Travelers in the Pullman,” replied Signora T., “are served in their own places.”
Signor Dido climbed down quickly. He caught hold of the door of his car as the train was already moving.
He ate alone.
When he went back to his compartment, he found the place destined for Signora T. occupied by a priest. He was sleeping peacefully, his lips rounded in the form of a kiss.
Signor Dido huddled on the seat. Through the window, between one cloud and the next, he glimpsed the stern but friendly face of Fate.
A piercing draft came through the window. Signor Dido shrank back against the seat. He began to think.
He thought:
Man, as a male, is an incomplete creature. Man finds his complement in woman, and forms with her that complete creature which the Greeks once represented in Hermaphroditos, and today is designated by the word Androgyne.
In youth, man sets about the acquisition of his complement by cynegetic means; in old age he sets about it by less violent means, as a sick man obtains a sick-nurse.
One must prepare oneself for the most ticklish situation. Remain perfectly defenseless. One must entrust oneself to safe hands, to eyes in which that scorn does not appear which is in the hunter’s look at his prey.
Only the most trustworthy hands can return us to the Great Mother from whom we have all come. Hic natus hic situs est.2
Signor Dido thought trustingly of the hands of Signora Dido.
The lights of Rome shone in the night.
The train stopped in the station.
Signor Dido was slow to get off.
He plunged into the sea of passengers, just as, when a child, in case of danger, he had gone to hide himself behind the divan in the living room.
The Disappearance of Signor Dido
UP BRIGHT AND EARLY!
It is seven-thirty.
The bus is parked in front of the hotel entrance.
The matutinal and punctual are already sitting in the bus. The rear door gapes open, waiting for the latecomers.
“And Massimo? And Paola?”
“Paola announced that she’s tired and isn’t coming. Here’s Massimo now.”
Massimo, ancient, tiny, with his trumpet-like nose, comes scurrying on little steps under his trailing overcoat. A dozen men and women, furred, cloaked, scarfed, pour out the door of the hotel and swarm towards him.
“Here’s Massimo! Here’s Massimo!”
The company fans out, moves with the movement of a farandole, draws Massimo in, bears him with their group right up to the bus.
They are all people of a certain age, some even quite old, but today they behave like little children. Who knows? The early rising, the excursion, that puerility which is so intimately connected with senility . . . They get into the bus a few at a time, pushing each other from below, pulling each other from above, laughing and vying with each other in high spirits.
Spirits . . .
“Are we all here? Nobody missing?”
“Nobody!”
The thud of the closing door, the rasp of the gearbox, and they’re off! The entire jury of the poetry prize,1 with a constellation of the committee members’ wives, though the stars were in truth a little spent, escorted by journalists and photographers, excited and shouting, sets out for Mongibello.2
Italy, as we know, sends up a whole garden of prizes each season: prizes for poetry, prizes for painting, prizes for fiction.
The most celebrated names of national tourism, and the less celebrated as well, think to make themselves still more celebrated by offering conspicuous cash prizes to poets, painters, fiction writers, and bestowing the awards and laurels amidst the whirl of ostentatious evenings.
Even Signor Dido is occasionally called upon to serve on a prize committee, though his service is usually very discreet—so discreet as to become inoperative.
In the days prior to the awarding of the prize, the committee members’ time is divided between the labors of the judging sessions and recreational excursions.
This trip to Mongibello is just such a recreational excursion.
The bus speeds for a stretch down the Messina–Catania road, turns right onto a road marked at the start by a sign saying ETNA, begins to snake its way up the mountain that stands like a beautiful pyramid of marron glacé whitened at the top by a bit of whipped cream, under which Enceladus sleeps a peaceful sleep, shaken now and then by frightening dreams.3
For Signor Dido, this excursion up Etna is more than anything else an on-the-spot investigation.
Signor Dido cannot say that he is not on good terms with his contemporaries, but he is on much better terms with some people of the past, and even of the remotest past.
One of them is Empedocles.4
Empedocles was a physicist and at the same time a poet. In other words, he did not separate the physical from the metaphysical. That is what makes Empedocles so pleasing to Signor Dido, because Signor Dido also thinks that there is no break between the physical and the metaphysical, and that the metaphysical is the direct and natural continuation of the physical.
Before this recreational excursion, Signor Dido had never been on Etna. He is quite pleased, therefore, to be approaching places that were the setting for one of the most important events in Empedocles’ life—to wit, his death.
The bus, in which the shouting is beginning to die down and some heads are nodding, drives through Trecastagni, leaves behind the vineyards, the orange groves, the “gardens” bordered by prickly pears, and enters a black and motionless sea of old lava, less old lava, recent lava.
Of the death of Empedocles there are, as we know, several versions. Empedocles—Heraclides tell us—performed a sacrifice to which he invited several friends. After the banquet, the friends went to sleep under the trees: Empedocles remained alone at the banquet table, after which he disappeared.
Then there is the version of Hippobotus. “Empedocles, remaining alone, rose from the table and climbed up Etna. He threw himself into the crater in order to vanish from men’s eyes and thus give greater credence to the rumors, already persistently going around, that he was a god. But the crater some time later spat up one of Empedocles’ shoes, and returned it intact, because Empedocles wore bronze shoes.”5
Mongibello, which could be contemplated from the hotel terrace in all its breadth and height, disappeared from Signor Dido’s sight now that he was on it. “Chateaubriand was right,” thinks Signor Dido. “Mountains must be seen from a distance.”
Now there is a lunar desert all around: the desert of a moon blackened by some ancient fire. Here and there a gigantic broom plant, a few pines closer to the effects of rust than of chlorophyll.
The first stop was at a shelter, the second at a hotel a little lower down, where the tables were set for a banquet.
The analogy struck Signor Dido.
A banquet then, a banquet now.
True, the sacrifice is missing. But is life itself not perhaps a sacrifice?
From in back came a quivering of strings, a banging of drums. Singers burst into the banquet room, the women in vests and skirts, the men with black bonnets hanging down their backs like socks.
The choruses of the singers were answered by the speeches of the tourists. A sort of Compar Alfio,6 vibrating the sound with his tongue, his lips, his fingers, and his heart, performed a solo on the Jew’s harp, which the tourists, at their tables, listened to gravely, their eyes shining and fixed on the void.
Neither the choruses, nor the speeches, nor even the Jew’s harp succeeded in distracting Signor Dido from his Empedoclean meditations.
He thought:
“I, too, am now on Etna. I’ve seen what it’s about. Interminable spaces, roads that never end. And we’ve done it by bus. How would it have been if we’d had to do it on foot? A
nd after going all that way we’ve arrived here—here, barely fifteen hundred meters up. And they say that to reach the plateau, you have to climb another thirteen hundred meters. And to reach the top of the cone, where the crater opens, it’s another four hundred and sixty meters. All right, there are lesser craters, but still . . . What sort of man was this Empedocles? And when he came up here he was no youngster: he was sixty years old, the same as me. What did he have for legs?”
Coffee was being served. The tourists signed the menu in turn, in memory of this magnificent Etnean day.
Though not usually very loquacious with his wife, Signor Dido communicated to Signora Dido his astonishment at the alpinistic abilities of Empedocles of Agrigentum.
He added: “And, after all, why couldn’t I do the same thing Empedocles did?”
Signora Dido replied: “Have you looked in the mirror?”
“Fall in!” piped the boyish voice of Signor Pino, a photographer attached to tourism and the group’s leader.
Committee members, wives of committee members, journalists, photographers climbed back into the bus. Less brash now, and their voices more restrained.
“Are we all here? Nobody missing?”
A pause.
“Professore Dido is missing . . . Where is Professore Dido?”
Signor Dido was not in the banquet room, nor in the intimate places of the hotel, nor in the pinewood below the hotel, crisscrossed by frightened parties of “processionaries.”
Signora Dido, however reluctantly, made up her mind to speak.
“We were at the table. My husband said to me: ‘Empedocles, after the banquet, got up from the table and went to throw himself into the crater of Etna.’ He added: ‘After all, why couldn’t I do what Empedocles did?’”
There was a chorus of laughter.
“Always a great jester, that Dido,” shouted Professore Ciurlo. “Your husband was joking, as usual. Get in, Signora, get in! You’ll see, we’ll find him on the way down.”
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