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The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana :: Эко Умберто
Страница: 200 из 286The Wind Is Whistling
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I would like to remember Lila What was Lila like? From the soot of this half-sleep rise other images, but none of her…
And yet under normal conditions a person ought to be able to say, I want to remember last year’s vacation. If he has retained any trace, he remembers. I cannot. My memory is proglottidean, like the tapeworm, but unlike the tapeworm it has no head, it wanders in a maze, and any point may be the beginning or the end of its journey. I must wait for the memories to come of their own accord, following their own logic. That is how it is in the fog. In the sunlight, you see things from a distance and you can change directions purposefully in order to meet up with something particular. In the fog, something or someone approaches you, but you do not know who until it is near.
Maybe this is normal, you cannot have everything in a single moment, memories come in a sequence, as on a skewer. What was it Paola said about the magic number seven that psychologists talk about? It is easy to remember up to seven elements from a list, but any more is too many. Not even seven. Who are the seven dwarfs? Happy, Dopey, Sleepy, Grumpy, Bashful, Doc… And then? You can never remember the seventh. And the seven kings of Rome?
Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Servius Tullius, Tarquin the Elder, Tarquin the Proud… and the seventh? Ah, Sneezy.
I think my earliest memory is of a doll dressed as the lead drummer in a military band, in a white uniform and a kepi, and when you wound him up with a little key he would beat out his rat-a-tat-tat. Is that it, or did I revise it to that over the years, harnessing my parents’ reminiscences? Might it not be the fig scene, me at the base of a tree and a farmer named Quirino clambering up a ladder to pick me the best fig-except that I could not yet pronounce the word fig and said sig ?
Last memory: in Solara looking at the First Folio. Will Paola and the others realize what it was I was holding in my hands when I was sleep-struck? They should give it to Sibilla, immediately, because if I remain like this for years they will not be able to bear the expenses, will have to sell the studio, and then Solara, and even that might not be enough, whereas with the First Folio they could pay for my everlasting hospitalization, with ten nurses, and that way they could just come see me once a month and then get back to their own lives.
Another figure from an ad is approaching, grinning at me and making an obscene gesture with a large aspirin. It is as if he were running into me and wrapping himself around me and then dissolving in the mist.
The drummer boy with the kepi passes by. I seek refuge in my grandfather’s arms. I smell the odor of pipe as I put my cheek against his vest. My grandfather smoked a pipe and smelled of tobacco.
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I would like to remember Lila What was Lila like? From the soot of this half-sleep rise other images, but none of her…
And yet under normal conditions a person ought to be able to say, I want to remember last year’s vacation. If he has retained any trace, he remembers. I cannot. My memory is proglottidean, like the tapeworm, but unlike the tapeworm it has no head, it wanders in a maze, and any point may be the beginning or the end of its journey. I must wait for the memories to come of their own accord, following their own logic. That is how it is in the fog. In the sunlight, you see things from a distance and you can change directions purposefully in order to meet up with something particular. In the fog, something or someone approaches you, but you do not know who until it is near.
Maybe this is normal, you cannot have everything in a single moment, memories come in a sequence, as on a skewer. What was it Paola said about the magic number seven that psychologists talk about? It is easy to remember up to seven elements from a list, but any more is too many. Not even seven. Who are the seven dwarfs? Happy, Dopey, Sleepy, Grumpy, Bashful, Doc… And then? You can never remember the seventh. And the seven kings of Rome?
Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Servius Tullius, Tarquin the Elder, Tarquin the Proud… and the seventh? Ah, Sneezy.
I think my earliest memory is of a doll dressed as the lead drummer in a military band, in a white uniform and a kepi, and when you wound him up with a little key he would beat out his rat-a-tat-tat. Is that it, or did I revise it to that over the years, harnessing my parents’ reminiscences? Might it not be the fig scene, me at the base of a tree and a farmer named Quirino clambering up a ladder to pick me the best fig-except that I could not yet pronounce the word fig and said sig ?
Last memory: in Solara looking at the First Folio. Will Paola and the others realize what it was I was holding in my hands when I was sleep-struck? They should give it to Sibilla, immediately, because if I remain like this for years they will not be able to bear the expenses, will have to sell the studio, and then Solara, and even that might not be enough, whereas with the First Folio they could pay for my everlasting hospitalization, with ten nurses, and that way they could just come see me once a month and then get back to their own lives.
Another figure from an ad is approaching, grinning at me and making an obscene gesture with a large aspirin. It is as if he were running into me and wrapping himself around me and then dissolving in the mist.
The drummer boy with the kepi passes by. I seek refuge in my grandfather’s arms. I smell the odor of pipe as I put my cheek against his vest. My grandfather smoked a pipe and smelled of tobacco.