City

by Alessandro Baricco

  “Miss Shell, you shouldn’t . . .”

  “Of course I should, if all the professors like you insist on keeping their brains pickled in the brine of . . .”

  “. . . you shouldn’t at all . . .”

  “. . . of their self-love, convinced that they have found the goose with the golden eggs and have become so completely . . .”

  “. . . Miss Shell, I invite you to . . .”

  “. . . completely besotted by this business of the Nobel, because—let’s speak plainly—that’s what you’re aiming at, you and . . .”

  “WILL YOU PLEASE CLOSE THAT SHIT-FILLED MOUTH OF YOURS?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I asked you if you would please close that shit-filled mouth of yours.”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “. . .”

  “. . .”

  “. . .”

  “. . .”

  “Miss Shell, it is an unfortunate situation, I agree, but that boy is a genius. Believe me.”

  “. . .”

  “I would like to add one more thing. Birds fly. Geniuses go to universities. Although it may seem banal, that’s the way it is. I’ve finished.”

  Months later, the day before she left, Shatzy went to say goodbye to Professor Mondrian Kilroy. Gould had already been gone for a while. The professor went around in slippers and continued to vomit. It was clear that he was sorry to see them all leave, but he wasn’t the type to be weighed down by things. He had a formidable capacity to accept the necessity of events, as they happened. He spoke a lot of nonsense to Shatzy, and some of it even made her laugh. At the end, he took something from a drawer and gave it to Shatzy. It was the brochure with the prices of the “contact room.” On the back was the Essay on Intellectual Honesty.

  “I would very much like you to keep this, Miss Shell.”

  There were the six theses, one written under the other, in block letters, on a slight slant, but in orderly fashion. Under the last there was a note, written with a different pen, and in script. It didn’t have a number in front of it, nothing. It went like this:

  In another life, we will be honest. We will be able to be silent.

  It was the passage that made Poomerang literally freak out. It was the thing that made him crazy. He never stopped repeating it. He didn’t say it to everyone, as if it were his name.

  Shatzy took the brochure. She folded it in two and put it in her pocket. Then she embraced the professor and the two of them performed some of those actions that put together are called goodbye. A goodbye.

  For years afterward, Shatzy carried with her that yellow brochure, folded in four; she always carried it with her, in her bag, the one that said Save the Planet Earth from Painted Toenails. Every so often she reread the six theses, and also the postscript, and heard the voice of Prof. Mondrian Kilroy, who was explaining and becoming emotional, and asking for more pizza. Every so often she had the desire to get someone to read it, but the truth was that she never met anyone who was still innocent enough to understand any of it. Sometimes people were intelligent, and all, smart. But it was clear that it was too late to bring them back, to ask them, even for a moment, to come home.

  She ended up losing the yellow brochure and the entire Essay on Intellectual Dishonesty, when, early one morning, at the house of a doctor, while she was trying to sneak away and couldn’t find her black stockings, she turned the bag upside down. It made a big mess and while she was putting everything back in he woke up, so she had to say something silly, and was distracted, and went away as usual, and the yellow brochure stayed there.

  It was too bad. Really.

  On the other side, where the prices for the “contact room” were printed, there was a whole list of services, and the last, the most expensive, was called “Crossing contact.”

  It remained one of the things that Shatzy never understood: what in the world was a “Crossing contact”?

  23

  “At the microphone is Stanley Poreda, we’re here with him in the gym where he is training for his upcoming bout with Larry ‘Lawyer’ Gorman, scheduled for eight rounds, on Saturday the 12th. So, Poreda . . . confident?”

  “Very.”

  “A lot of rumors are circulating on the subject of your return to the ring . . .”

  “People like to talk.”

  “They’re wondering why a fighter whose career was over has decided after two years . . .”

  “Two years and three months.”

  “. . . two years and three months, an eternity, if you like, people wonder why a fighter who was finished with professional boxing . . .”

  “People wonder about fucking stupid things.”

  “Surely Poreda means to say that . . .”

  “Poreda means to say that they are fucking stupid questions, I’m coming back for the money, why else? Boxing has hurt me, you can see my arms, they’re a mess, I made so many punches my arms are mangled, that’s what boxing did for me, but it’s the only thing I know how to do and if someone’s giving me money, a lot of it, I come back, and . . . what was the fucking question?”

  “People are saying the fight is fixed.”

  “Who says that?”

  “It’s been in the papers. And the bookmakers say they won’t take bets until the night before the match. Not even they get the picture.”

  “And when do they ever get the picture, I’ve enjoyed screwing them for years, they never get it, they’ve lost more money on my fights than my ex-wife’s bills . . .”

  “You mean to say it’s a clean fight?”

  “. . . you know my ex-wife, right?, she was a money pit, it was impressive, she was always saying she didn’t have enough money for clothes, I didn’t believe her, I left her saying it, but she insisted, she didn’t have enough money for clothes, well, I had to believe it when I saw the pictures of her in Playboy . . .”

  “Will it be a clean fight, Poreda?”

  “. . . in Playboy, get it? . . .”

  “You don’t want to answer?”

  “Listen, fag: boxing isn’t clean. And this fucking fight won’t be. Expect it to be dirty. Blood and shit. Listen, you little faggot: I bring the shit. Lawyer has the blood. OK?”

  Gould got up, flushed, pulled up his pajama pants, glanced in the mirror over the sink, then opened the door and went out. Shatzy was sitting at the top of the stairs. She had her back to him and didn’t turn around even when she started talking. She didn’t turn around once, all the way to the end.

  “OK, Gould, let’s make it short so no one gets mad, you’re going to Couverney, I didn’t know, now I know, and it doesn’t matter how I found out, anyway Professor Kilroy told me, he— although in a certain sense he’s a fine person—he talks just a little too much, he likes to gossip, but you shouldn’t be mad at him, since sooner or later I would have found out just the same, maybe you would have sent me a telegram, or something like that, I’m sure it would have crossed your mind, at Christmas, let’s say, or after a reasonable number of weeks, I know you would have told me, you’d just need time to get settled, of course, it must not be easy to show up like a parachutist in a war zone dominated by neurotic and potentially impotent brains, surrounded by colleagues who pay to study whereas you are paid to study, however hard you try to be pleasant it’s predictable that you’ll find a certain aversion to big smiles and pats on the back, among other things you have to explain all this stuff like how you don’t play on the soccer team, you’re not in the chorus, you don’t go to the dance at the end of the year, you don’t go to church, you’re petrified by anything that is or appears to be an association or a club or anything that requires meetings, and, on top of that, smoking doesn’t appeal to you, you don’t collect anything, you couldn’t care less about kissing girls, you don’t like cars, and they will end up asking you what the fuck you do in your free time, and it won’t be easy to explain to them that you go around with a giant and a mute sticking che
wing gum in ATM machines, I mean it won’t be easy for them to absorb, you can always try telling them that you watch soccer games because the mute missed a move he saw years ago and has to find it again, this is slightly more reasonable, they might even let it pass, I’d be for keeping to generalities, though, a good answer might be I don’t have any free time, play the hateful genius, but since it’s what they’ll want to think about you, that you’re a hateful genius, you could be Oliver Hardy and they would still think you’re hateful—they need to think it, it soothes them—and above all presumptuous, to them you will always be presumptuous, even if you go around saying Excuse me all the time, excuse me excuse me excuse me, to them you will always be presumptuous, it’s their way of turning the tables, mediocrities don’t know they’re mediocre, that’s a fact, since by definition mediocrities lack the imagination to see that someone might be better than they are, and so anyone who is better must have something wrong with him, or he cheated somewhere, or must be a lunatic who imagines that he’s better, and that is presumptuous, as they will certainly let you know very quickly and in ways that are none too pleasant, and even cruel, at times, this is typical of mediocrities, to be cruel, cruelty is the virtue par excellence of mediocrities, they need to practice cruelty, it’s an activity that doesn’t require the least intelligence, which is helpful, obviously, and makes it easy for them, makes them excel, so to speak, in that activity which consists of being cruel, whenever they can, and therefore often, more often than you might expect, since they’ll surprise you, this is inevitable, their cruelty will stab you in the back, probably it will happen like that, it will stab you in the back, and then it won’t be easy at all, it’s better for you to know it now, if you still don’t see, they’ll stab you in the back, I have never really survived anything that stabbed me in the back, and I know there’s no way, finally, to defend yourself from what comes at you from behind, there’s nothing to do about it, just continue on your way, trying not to fall, or stop, since no one is so stupid as to think that he can get anywhere except by staggering, picking up wounds from every direction, and in particular from behind, it will be like that for you, too, especially for you, if you like, since you won’t get this curious idea out of your head, this fucking stupid idea, of walking in front of everyone else, on a road that I don’t want to say but, school and all that, the Nobel, that business, you can’t claim that I really understand it, if it were up to me I’d tie you to the toilet bowl until it passes you by, but on the other hand I’m not the most suitable person to understand, I’ve never had this thing of walking in front of everyone else, I don’t know, and then school was always a failure, without exception, so naturally I don’t understand anything, even if I make an effort, all that comes to mind is the stuff about rivers, if I want to find some way to digest all this stuff, I end up thinking about rivers, and about the fact that people began to study them because it didn’t make sense this business about how a river takes so long to reach the sea—that is, it chooses, deliberately, to make a lot of curves, instead of aiming directly at its goal, and you have to admit there’s something absurd, and this is precisely what people thought, there’s something absurd in all those curves, and so they started studying the matter, and what they discovered, incredibly, is that any river, it doesn’t matter where it is or how long, any river, just any river, to get to the sea takes a route exactly three times as long as the one it would take if it went straight, which is astonishing, if you think about it, that it takes three times as long as necessary, and all on account of curves, on account of the stratagem of curves, and not this river or that river but all rivers, as if it were required, a kind of rule that’s the same for all, which is unbelievable, really, nuts, but it was discovered with scientific certainty through studies of rivers, all rivers, it was discovered that they are not crazy, it is their nature as rivers which constrains them to that continuous, and even precise, winding, since all, and I mean all, navigate a route three times as long as necessary—three point one four times, to be exact, I swear, the famous Greek pi, I didn’t want to believe it, but it seems that it really is true, you take the distance from the sea, multiply it by pi, and you have the length of the route, which, I thought, is really great, because, I thought, there’s a rule for them, can it be that there isn’t for us—I mean, the least you can expect is that it’s more or less the same for us, and that all this sliding to one side and then the other, as if we were crazy or, worse, lost, is actually our way of going straight, scientifically exact and, so to speak, predetermined, although it undoubtedly resembles a random series of errors, or rethinkings, but only in appearance, because really it’s just our way of going where we have to go, the way that is specifically ours, our nature, so to speak—what was I saying?, oh yes, that business of the rivers, if you think about it, it’s reassuring, I find it very reassuring, that there is an objective principle behind all the stupid things we do, it’s been reassuring, ever since I decided to believe in it, and then, lo and behold—what I meant is that it hurts me to see you navigate revolting curves like Couverney, but even if every time I had to go and look at a river, every time, to remind myself, I will always think it’s right, and that you are right to go, although just saying so makes my head feel like it’s splitting, but I want you to go, and I’m happy that you’re going, you’re a strong river, you won’t get lost, it doesn’t matter if I wouldn’t go there, not even dead, it’s just that we’re different rivers, I guess, I must be another model of river, in fact if I think about it I feel like more than a river, I mean, it may be that I’m a lake, I don’t know if you understand, maybe some of us are rivers and others are lakes, I’m a lake, I don’t know, something like a lake, once I went swimming in a lake, it was very strange because you see that you’re moving forwards, I mean, it’s all so flat that when you swim you realize you’re moving forwards, it’s a strange sensation, and then there were a lot of insects, and if you put your feet down, near the shore, where you could touch, if you put your feet down it was really disgusting, like greasy sand, you would never have known from the surface, a kind of greasy, oily sand, disgusting, really, anyway I only meant to say two things, the first is that if they try to hurt you I’ll come there and put up a high-tension wire and hang them by the balls, yes, by the balls, and the second is that I’ll miss you, that is, I’ll miss your strength, it doesn’t matter if you don’t understand it now, maybe you’ll understand later, I’ll miss your strength, Gould, you strange little boy, your strength, goddam fucking shit.

  Pause.

  “Do you know what on earth time it is?”

  “No, I don’t. It’s dark.”

  “Go to sleep, Gould. It’s late, go to sleep.”

  24

  It was all so sudden and, in a certain sense, natural.

  That morning Gould had gone back down to Renemport, the school—it had occurred to him that he might see that black kid again, with his basketball, and all the rest—to be precise, he felt that he was there, he had awakened with the certainty that he was there.

  It took a while, then he got to Renemport. Maybe it was recess, or some holiday or the last day of something. The fact is that the playground was overflowing with boys and girls and they were all playing, making a noise that sounded like an aviary, but an aviary where someone was shooting invisible silent bullets, fiercely and with very bad aim.

  There were a lot of balls, of all sizes, which bounced around and set off geometries against feet, hands, book bags and walls.

  The school, behind the great aviary, seemed empty.

  There was no sign of the black kid. Every so often someone shot at the basket. But almost no one made it.

  Gould sat down on a bench near the street, a dozen yards from the school fence. The street ran behind him—grazed by speeding cars and trucks. In front of him there was some grass and then the rusty iron mesh, extending upwards, and finally the playground full of children. There was no rhythm in all that, no order, or center, so that it was difficult to
think there, in a sense impossible—to have thoughts. So Gould took off his jacket, laid it over the back of the bench, and sat there, not thinking.

  The sun was high in the sky.

  The ball went over the fence, not by much, a few inches, no more. It landed on the grass, bounced a few yards from Gould and rolled towards the street. It was black and white, a soccer ball.

  Gould was not thinking. Instinctively his eyes followed the parabola of the ball, watched it bounce on the grass and disappear behind him, in the direction of the street. He went back to not thinking.

  A voice pierced the confusion, shouting

  “Ball!”

  It was a girl. She was leaning against the fence with her fingers hooked around the rusty iron links.

  “Hey, throw me the ball?”

  Years of study with Prof. Taltomar had taught Gould not to feel the slightest embarrassment. He sat staring straight ahead, back to not thinking.

  “Hey there, will you throw me that ball, hey, I’m talking to you, are you deaf?”

  It went on for a while, with the girl shouting and Gould staring straight ahead.

  Minutes.

  Then the girl got fed up, abandoned the fence, and went back to her game.

  Gould watched her run over to another girl, taller than she was, and then disappear somewhere in the great animal pen of children and balls and shouts and happiness. He focused on the fence where moments earlier her hands had been, and imagined the rust, on his palms and in the creases of his fingers.

  Then he got up. He turned around and looked until he saw the black-and-white ball on the other side of the street, stopped at the edge of the sidewalk, spinning with the dust swirled up by the speeding cars.