‘conscience’ needs to be acted out in private, I said to myself:
‘You are accused… you are a scoundrel… an incendiary. You have enough remorse for a whole lifetime. You will be interrogated by the police and by the courts and by the devil… prisoner in the dock, this is no joke… you don’t understand that you need to be serious… you’re going to be thrown headfirst into the clink.’
But my attempt at seriousness did not convince me. It sounded empty, like an empty can. No, I couldn’t take this mystification seriously. And now I was a free man, and what did society have to do with this freedom? And now I was free I could do whatever I liked… kill myself if I wanted… but that was a bit ridiculous … and I… I needed to do something beautifully serious, perfectly serious: to love Life. And I repeated:
‘Yes, Life… you are pretty, Life… did you know it? From here on in I will love all the pretty things of the Earth… of course… I will worship trees, and houses and the sky… I will adore everything that there is in you… and also… tell me, Life, isn’t it the case that I’m an intelligent kid? Did you ever know anyone like me?’
Then I fell asleep.
The first person to enter the bookshop in the morning was Don Gaetano. I followed him. Everything was as we had left it. The atmosphere was filled with damp, and in the back, on a line of leather-bound spines, a patch of sun came in through the skylight.
I went to the kitchen. The coal had gone out, it was lying in a pool of water that had formed when Stinking God washed the plates.
That was the last day I worked there.
Chapter 3
The Mad Toy
After doing the washing up, closing the doors and opening the shutters, I went back to bed, because it was cold.
On the wall, the sun slantingly reddened the bricks.
My mother was sewing in another room and my sister was preparing her lessons. I got ready to read. On a chair next to the bedstead were the following works:
Virgin and Mother
by Luis de Val, Bahía’s
Electrical
Engineering
and Nietzsche’s
Antichrist. Virgin and Mother
, four volumes of 1,800 pages each, had been lent to me by a neighbour who took in ironing.
When I was sitting comfortably, I looked at
Virgin and Mother
with little enthusiasm. It was clear that I wasn’t in the mood for some gruesome doorstop, and so I decided to take up
Electrical Engineering
and set to studying the theory of rotating magnetic fields.
I read slowly and with satisfaction. I thought, once I had interiorised the complex explanation of multiphase currents:
‘It is a sign of universal intelligence to be able to appreciate all kinds of beauty,’ and the names of Ferranti and Siemens-Halske 21 sounded harmoniously in my ears.
I thought:
‘One day I too will be able to say in front of a conference full of engineers, “Yes, sirs… the electromagnetic currents the sun generates can be used and condensed.” How stupid, they need to be condensed first, and then used! Damn, how can you condense the sun’s electromagnetic currents?’
I knew, because of various scientific announcements that appeared in the papers, that Tesla, 22 the wizard of electricity, had come up with the idea of a ray condenser.
And I dreamt like this until it grew dark, when I heard the voice of Rebeca Naidath, a friend of my mother’s, in the other room:
‘Hello! How are you, Frau Drodman? How’s my little girl?’
I lifted my head from my book in order to listen.
Señora Rebeca was of the Jewish faith. Her soul was petty because her body was small. She walked like a seal and examined everything like an eagle… I hated her because of certain bad things she’d done to me.
‘Is Silvio there? I need to talk to him.’ I was in the next room in a flash.
‘Hello! How are you, Frau, what’s up?’
‘Do you know about mechanics?’
‘Of course… well, I know something. Didn’t you show her the letter from Ricaldoni, mama?’
And it was true, Ricaldoni had
‘You are accused… you are a scoundrel… an incendiary. You have enough remorse for a whole lifetime. You will be interrogated by the police and by the courts and by the devil… prisoner in the dock, this is no joke… you don’t understand that you need to be serious… you’re going to be thrown headfirst into the clink.’
But my attempt at seriousness did not convince me. It sounded empty, like an empty can. No, I couldn’t take this mystification seriously. And now I was a free man, and what did society have to do with this freedom? And now I was free I could do whatever I liked… kill myself if I wanted… but that was a bit ridiculous … and I… I needed to do something beautifully serious, perfectly serious: to love Life. And I repeated:
‘Yes, Life… you are pretty, Life… did you know it? From here on in I will love all the pretty things of the Earth… of course… I will worship trees, and houses and the sky… I will adore everything that there is in you… and also… tell me, Life, isn’t it the case that I’m an intelligent kid? Did you ever know anyone like me?’
Then I fell asleep.
The first person to enter the bookshop in the morning was Don Gaetano. I followed him. Everything was as we had left it. The atmosphere was filled with damp, and in the back, on a line of leather-bound spines, a patch of sun came in through the skylight.
I went to the kitchen. The coal had gone out, it was lying in a pool of water that had formed when Stinking God washed the plates.
That was the last day I worked there.
Chapter 3
The Mad Toy
After doing the washing up, closing the doors and opening the shutters, I went back to bed, because it was cold.
On the wall, the sun slantingly reddened the bricks.
My mother was sewing in another room and my sister was preparing her lessons. I got ready to read. On a chair next to the bedstead were the following works:
Virgin and Mother
by Luis de Val, Bahía’s
Electrical
Engineering
and Nietzsche’s
Antichrist. Virgin and Mother
, four volumes of 1,800 pages each, had been lent to me by a neighbour who took in ironing.
When I was sitting comfortably, I looked at
Virgin and Mother
with little enthusiasm. It was clear that I wasn’t in the mood for some gruesome doorstop, and so I decided to take up
Electrical Engineering
and set to studying the theory of rotating magnetic fields.
I read slowly and with satisfaction. I thought, once I had interiorised the complex explanation of multiphase currents:
‘It is a sign of universal intelligence to be able to appreciate all kinds of beauty,’ and the names of Ferranti and Siemens-Halske 21 sounded harmoniously in my ears.
I thought:
‘One day I too will be able to say in front of a conference full of engineers, “Yes, sirs… the electromagnetic currents the sun generates can be used and condensed.” How stupid, they need to be condensed first, and then used! Damn, how can you condense the sun’s electromagnetic currents?’
I knew, because of various scientific announcements that appeared in the papers, that Tesla, 22 the wizard of electricity, had come up with the idea of a ray condenser.
And I dreamt like this until it grew dark, when I heard the voice of Rebeca Naidath, a friend of my mother’s, in the other room:
‘Hello! How are you, Frau Drodman? How’s my little girl?’
I lifted my head from my book in order to listen.
Señora Rebeca was of the Jewish faith. Her soul was petty because her body was small. She walked like a seal and examined everything like an eagle… I hated her because of certain bad things she’d done to me.
‘Is Silvio there? I need to talk to him.’ I was in the next room in a flash.
‘Hello! How are you, Frau, what’s up?’
‘Do you know about mechanics?’
‘Of course… well, I know something. Didn’t you show her the letter from Ricaldoni, mama?’
And it was true, Ricaldoni had
Similar Books
