he only wanted to find out if it’s his fault he can’t understand it or if the whole thing is too difficult. and you weren’t able to give him the one true answer. that there’s nothing to understand. |
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mankind can’t endure the thought that the world was born by chance, by mistake, just because four brainless atoms bumped into one another on a slippery highway. so a cosmic plot has to be found—god, angels, devils. synarchy performs the same function on a lesser scale. one morning i went to via marchese gualdi, because i had to get signer garamond’s authorization to order some color photographs from abroad. i glimpsed aglie in si-gnora grazia’s office, bent over the file of manutius authors, but i didn’t disturb him, because i was late for my meeting. when our business was over, i asked signor garamond what aglie was doing in the secretary’s office. the other evening, i took him to dinner with some of our authors, and he made me look great. what conversation! what style! a gentleman of the old school, an aristocrat; they’ve thrown away the mold. what knowledge, what culture—no, more, what information! he told delightful anecdotes about characters of a century ago, and i swear it was as if he had known them personally. do you want to hear the idea he gave me as we were going home? he said we shouldn’t just sit and wait for isis unveiled authors to turn up on their own. | |
it’s a waste of time and effort to read when you don’t even know whether the authors are willing to underwrite the expenses. instead, we have a gold mine at our disposal: the list of all the manutius authors of the last twenty years! you understand? we write to our old, glorious authors, or at least the ones who bought up their remainders, and we say to them: dear sir, are you aware that we have inaugurated a series of works of erudition, tradition, and the highest spirituality? would you, as an author of distinction and refinement, be interested in venturing into this terra incognita, et cetera, et cetera? a genius, i tell you. |
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| i believe he wants us all to join him sunday evening. it seems that extraordinary things are to happen there, a rite, a sabbath, where someone will make gold or quicksilver. it’s a whole world to be discovered, my dear casaubon, even if, as you know, i have the greatest respect for science, the science to which you are devoting yourself with such passion. | |
| indeed, i am very, very pleased with your work, and yes, there’s that little financial adjustment you mentioned; i haven’t forgotten it, and in due course we’ll talk about it. but i do not inquire out of idle curiosity; the fact is that i feel like a father to all of you and.glissons, a la guerre comme a la guerre. the early hours of the evening would be a party in the castle of a very well-to-do rosicrucian. then aglie would take us a few kilometers away, to a place where—at midnight, naturally—some kind of druidic rite, belbo wasn’t sure what, would be held. “i was also thinking,” belbo added, “that we should sit down somewhere and give some thought to our history of metals, because here we keep being interrupted. diotallevi is coming, and maybe lorenza will, too. of course you can bring along anyone you want. lia and i had quarreled two days before. nothing serious; it would be forgotten in a few days, but meanwhile i wanted to get away from milan. | |
when it came time to get into the car, lorenza said, “maybe i’ll stay behind, so you three can work in peace.” lorenza got in, and all through the trip, sitting up front, she kept her hand on the back of belbo’s neck as he drove in silence. but new houses were few, he told us, agriculture was in decline, because the young people had migrated to the city. he pointed to hills, now pasture, that had once been yellow with grain. |
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| the town appeared suddenly, after a curve at the foot of the low hill where belbo’s house was. we got a view, beyond it, of the mon-ferrato plain, covered with a light, luminous mist. as the car climbed, belbo directed our attention to the hill opposite, almost completely bare: at the top of it, a chapel flanked by two pines. we used to go there for the angel’s lunch on easter monday. now you can reach it in the car in five minutes, but then we went on foot, and it was a pilgrimage. villa—actually, a large farmhouse, with great cellars on the ground floor, where adeline canepa—the quarrelsome tenant who had denounced uncle carlo to the partisans—once made wine from the vineyards of the covasso land. | |
| in a little peasant house nearby adeline canepa’s aunt still lived—a .very old woman, belbo told us, who tended a little vegetable garden, kept a few hens and a pig. the others were now long dead, uncle and aunt, the canepas; only this centenarian remained. the land had been sold years before to pay the inheritance taxes and other debts. belbo knocked at the door of the little house. the old woman appeared on the threshold, took a while to recognize the visitor, then made a great show of deference, inviting us in, but belbo, after having embraced and calmed her, cut the meeting short. we entered the villa, and lorenza gave cries of joy as she discovered stairways, corridors, shadowy rooms with old furniture. as usual, belbo played everything down, remarking only that each of us has the tara he deserves, but he was clearly moved. | |
| he continued to visit the house, from time to time, he told us, but not often. “it’s a good place to work: cool in summer, and in winter the thick walls protect you against the cold, and there are stoves everywhere. naturally, when i was a child, an evacuee, we lived only in two side rooms at the end of the main corridor. now i’ve taken possession of my uncle and aunt’s wing. i work here, in uncle carlo’s study.” there was a secretaire with little space for a sheet of paper but plenty of small drawers, both visible and concealed. “when i’m dead, remember this contains all my juvenilia, the poems i wrote when i was sixteen, the sketches for sagas in six volumes made at eighteen, and so on. | |
| i don’t even look at it myself anymore. it’s wonderful working at night while the dogs bark in the valley. lorenza looked at her room, touched the old bed and its great white counterpane, sniffed the sheets, said it was like being in one of her grandmother’s stories, because everything smelled of lavender. belbo said it wasn’t lavender, it was mildew. | |
| ” diotallevi and i moved off, but we heard lorenza ask belbo if he was ashamed of her. he said that if he hadn’t offered her the room, she would have asked him where she was supposed to sleep. “in that case, i’ll sleep here in my darling little room. from the terrace we could see the bricco, and below it a large plain building with yard and a soccer field—all inhabited by little figures, children, it seemed to . “that’s where don tico taught me to .ah, yes, i told you about the dream, the trumpet. don tico taught tie the trumpet, but the band i played the bombardon. i had the impression that talked about other things as to at . here in was a of agreement between the fascists and the partisans. two years in the partisans came down from the hills in and occupied the town, and the fascists kept their distance and didn’t make trouble. | |
| the fascists weren’t from around here; the partisans were all local boys. in the event of , they could move easily; they knew every cornfield and the woods and hedgerows.. .. |