City

by Alessandro Baricco

  As he spoke, he became, obviously, emotional. Not that he actually cried. But glistening eyes and a catch in his throat, that sort of thing. He was made that way.

  Once Poomerang asked Prof. Mondrian Kilroy why he didn’t publish the Essay on Intellectual Honesty. He didn’t say you could make a nice thick book, with a lot of blank pages, and here and there, inserted at random, the six theses. Prof. Mondrian Kilroy said it was a good idea, but he didn’t think he would publish the essay, because deep down he had a suspicion that it was too naive. He found it infantile. He also said, however, that in a certain sense he liked it precisely because it was a hair’s breadth away from being naive and infantile but was never that way completely; it hung, so to speak, in the balance, and this made him suspect that it was, in reality, an idea, in the full sense of the term. In the honest sense of the term. Then he said that, in truth, he no longer understood a damn thing. And he asked if there was any more pizza.

  One thing was certain, that he was now vomiting more and more often, not because of the pizza, but whenever he got too close to various professors and intellectuals. Sometimes all it took was reading an article in the newspaper, or a book blurb. The day of the English scholar, for example, the one who stared fixedly into space, he would have liked to stay and listen, he was interested in hearing him speak and all, but it was completely impossible, in the end he had vomited, and it had been a big mess, so that afterwards he had to go and apologize to the rector and the only thing he could think of saying was to obsessively repeat the phrase “You see what a fine person he is, I’m sure he is a fine person.” He was referring to the English scholar. Rector Bolder looked at him speechless. “You can see that he’s a fine person, I’m sure he’s a fine person.” And the next day, while they were washing the trailer, he kept on with that nonsense about how the man was a fine person. To Gould it seemed ridiculous.

  “If he were a fine person he wouldn’t make you throw up.”

  “It’s not that simple, Gould.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Gould was washing the tires. More than anything else, he liked washing the tires. Black shiny soapy rubber. A pleasure.

  I’ve thought about it, I’ve thought about it a lot, Gould, and with all the rigor I’m capable of, but I’ve come to understand that no matter how obscenely men abandon the truth, devoting themselves to the maniacal pursuit of artificial ideas with which to destroy one another, no matter how much anything that stinks of ideas nauseates me, no matter that I cannot, objectively, help throwing up at the daily display of this primitive struggle disguised as an honest search for truth—no matter how immense my disgust is, I must say: this is right, it is revoltingly right, it is simply human, it is what must be, it is the shit that belongs to us, the only shit that we are equal to. I came to understand this by watching the best of them. Close up, Gould, you have to have the courage to look at them from close up. I’ve seen them: they were revolting and right, you see what I mean? revolting but inexorably innocent, they wanted only to exist, can you take that away from them?, they wanted to exist. Consider men with high ideals, with noble ideas, men who have made their ideas a calling, who are above every suspicion. The priest. Take the priest. Not an ordinary one. The other kind, the one who is on the side of the poor, or the weak, or the excluded, the one in the old sweater and the Reeboks, he must have started out with some dazzling chaotic apparition of the infinite, something that in the dim light of youth dictated to him the imperative of taking a stand, even a suggestion of which side to stand on, and it all must have begun in honesty, but then, holy God, when you come upon him again, grown-up now and famous, Christ, famous, just to say it is disgusting, famous, with his name in the papers and his picture, with the telephone ringing constantly because journalists have to get his opinion, on this or that, and he answers, fucking shit, he answers, and joins in, and marches at the head of processions, a priest’s telephone doesn’t ring, Gould, let me tell you with all the necessary cruelty, you may not know it but a priest’s telephone doesn’t ring, because a priest’s life is a desert, it is by definition a desert, a kind of protected national park, where people can look, but from a distance, he is an animal in a national park, and you’re not allowed to touch him, can you imagine it, Gould?, for a priest it’s a problem just to be touched, have you ever seen a priest who kisses a kid or a woman, in greeting, for no other reason, a meaningless gesture, normal, but he can’t do it, because people would immediately feel a sense of unease and of imminent violence, and this is the harsh daily condition of the priest in this world, he who is a man like other men, and instead has chosen that dizzying solitude, from which there would be no exit, none, if not for an idea, maybe even a good idea, that comes from the outside and changes that landscape, restoring to him some human warmth, an idea that, used properly, refined, revised, sheltered from risky encounters with the truth, leads the priest out of his solitude, and little by little makes him the man he is now, surrounded by admiration, and by people’s wish to get close to him, and even by desire in its pure state, a man in a sweater and Reeboks, who is never alone, who goes around enveloped in children and brothers, who is never lost because he is always tied to some media terminal, every so often in the crowd he fleetingly catches a woman’s eye charged with desire, think what this means for him, that dizzying solitude and this explosive life, is it surprising if he is ready to die for his idea?, he exists in it, what does it mean to die for that idea?, he would be dead anyway if it were taken away from him, he is saved in that idea, and the fact that he may save hundreds and even thousands of his fellows doesn’t change the point by one iota, which is that he saves himself above all, with the optional alibi of saving others, stealing from his destiny that dose of recognition and admiration and desire essential to make him alive, alive, Gould, understand this word clearly, alive, all they want is to be alive, even the best, those who establish justice, progress, freedom, the future, even for them it’s all just a matter of survival, get as close as you can, if you don’t believe it, see how they act, whom they have around them, look at them and try to imagine what would become of them if one day they happened to wake up and simply change their mind, what would be left of them, try to get an answer out of them, one that is not an instinctive self-justification, see if one single time you can hear them explain their idea with the wonder and hesitation of someone who is right at that moment making a discovery, and not with the assurance of someone who is proudly showing off the devastating efficacy of the weapon he is holding, don’t be taken in by the apparent mildness of their tone, by the words they choose, purposefully mild, they are fighting, Gould, fighting with their teeth for survival, for food, the female, the den, they are animals, and they are the best, you see?, can you expect anything different from the others, from the petty mercenaries of intelligence, from the bit players of the great collective struggle, from the nasty little warriors who scavenge the debris of life on the edges of the battlefield, pitifully sweeping up laughable salvations, each with his artificial little idea, the top doctor in search of funds for his son’s college education, the critic who alleviates neglect in his old age with forty lines a week brought out where they can make a little stir, the scientist and his Vancouver purée, with which he feeds the pride of wife, children, lovers, the pathetic appearances on television of the writer who is afraid of disappearing between one book and the next, the journalist who takes a stab at anything to make the front page, to be sure of existing for another twenty-four hours—they are only struggling, you see?, they fight with ideas because they don’t know how to use anything else, but the substance doesn’t change, it is a fight, and their ideas are weapons, and, sickening as it is to admit, it is their right, their dishonesty is the logical deduction from a primal need, their disgusting daily betrayal of the truth is the natural consequence of a natural state of acknowledged deprivation, you don’t ask a blind man to go to the movies, you don’t ask an intellectual to be honest, at
least I don’t think you can, although it’s depressing to admit it, but the very concept of intellectual honesty is an oxymoron Intellectual honesty is an oxymoron. or, rather, a highly prohibitive and perhaps inhuman task, since no one, in practice, would even dream of undertaking it, being content, in the more admirable cases, to do things with a certain style, a certain dignity, let’s say with good taste, that’s it, the exact term would be with good taste, in the end you feel like saving the ones who at least manage to do things with good taste, with modesty, who don’t seem proud of the shit that they are, not so proud, not so damn proud, not so shamelessly, arrogantly proud. God, how sickening.

  “Something wrong, Professor?”

  “I was wondering . . .”

  “What, Professor.”

  “What, exactly, am I washing?”

  “A trailer.”

  “I mean: what, precisely, is the role of this yellow object in your ecosystem?”

  “For now, the function of this yellow object in our ecosystem is to wait for a car.”

  “A car?”

  “A trailer can’t go anywhere without a car.”

  “This is true.”

  “Do you have a car, Professor?”

  “I had one.”

  “Too bad.”

  “To be precise, my brother had one.”

  “It happens.”

  “Having a brother?”

  “That, too.”

  “In fact it happened to me three times. And you?”

  “No, it never happened to me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why?”

  “Hand me the sponge, please.”

  They talked. They enjoyed it.

  Once Gould, Diesel and Poomerang stopped because they had a game to watch, down on the field.

  Professor Mondrian Kilroy and Shatzy stayed. They washed everything thoroughly and then they sat on the front steps, looking at the yellow trailer.

  They talked.

  At one point Professor Mondrian Kilroy said it was strange but he would sadly miss that boy. He meant that he would sadly miss Gould. Then Shatzy said that if he wanted he could come, too, the trailer was small but they would figure something out. Prof. Mondrian Kilroy turned to look at her and then asked if they really intended to go all the way to Couverney in the trailer, and if all of them were going. To which Shatzy said

  “Couverney?”

  “Couverney.”

  “What does Couverney have to do with it?”

  “What do you mean, what does it have to do with it?”

  “What are we talking about, Professor?”

  “About Gould.”

  “So then what does Couverney have to do with it?”

  “It’s Gould’s university, isn’t it? Gould’s new university. A place where your blood freezes, by the way.”

  “They asked Gould to go to Couverney, they only asked him.”

  “They asked him and he’s going.”

  “As far as I know, he doesn’t know that.”

  “As far as I know, he knows it perfectly well.”

  “Since when?”

  “He told me. He decided to go. He starts in September.”

  “When did he tell you?”

  Prof. Mondrian Kilroy thought for a while.

  “I don’t know. A few weeks ago, I think. I’m never very clear on when things happen. Isn’t it ever like that for you?”

  “. . .”

  “Miss Shell . . .”

  “. . .”

  “Do you always know when something happened?”

  “. . .”

  “Yes, I’m only asking out of curiosity.”

  “Did Gould really tell you he’s going to Couverney, Professor?”

  “Yes, I’m certain of it, and he also told Rector Bolder; you know, he would like to have a goodbye party, or something like that, and Gould would prefer to avoid it, he says it would be . . .”

  “What the hell does he mean by a goodbye party?”

  “It’s only an idea, an idea of Rector Bolder’s, he is a man who appears to be hard and inflexible but a sensitive soul is hidden inside, I would almost say . . .”

  “Have you all lost your minds?”

  “. . . I would almost say . . .”

  “Jesus, that boy is fifteen years old, Professor, Couverney is a place for grown-ups, a person isn’t grown-up when he’s fifteen, he is when he’s twenty, if a person is twenty he’s grown-up and then maybe, if he really wants to throw his life in the toilet, he can consider the curious possibility of going to bury himself in a den of . . .”

  “Miss Shell, may I remind you that that boy is a genius, not a . . .”

  “But who the hell said so?, I’d like to know who said so? I would like to know how it is that you all decided point-blank that a boy like that is a genius, a boy who has seen nothing but your goddam classrooms and the road that leads to them, a genius who wets his bed at night and is afraid if someone on the street asks him what time it is, and hasn’t seen his mother for years and listens to his father Friday night on the telephone, and will never go up to a girl even to pray to her in Arabic—what score does all this add up to? I imagine that it adds up to a fantastic score in the special category of geniuses, too bad he doesn’t stutter, that would make him nearly unbeatable . . .”