The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana   ::   Эко Умберто

I am notwandering at random, I have a goal, but I pass it by, often and on purpose. I have seen, at the train station newsstand, an edition, perhaps several years old, judging by what looks to be a prewar price, of Pierre Benoît’s Atlantida. Its attractive cover depicts a large hall full of stone guests and promises a tale like no other. It is cheap; in my pocket I have the exact sum and no more. Occasionally I risk it: I stop at the station, rest my bike on the sidewalk, go in, and contemplate the book for fifteen minutes. It is in a display case, so I cannot open it to get a sense of what it might offer me. On the fourth visit, the vendor begins eyeing me suspiciously, and he can watch me all he wants, because there is no one else in that concourse-no one arriving, no one leaving, no one waiting.

The city is nothing but space and sunlight, a track for my bike with its pitted tires, and the book in the station is the only guarantee that, through fiction, I will be able to return to some less desperate reality.

Around five o’clock, that long seduction-between me and the book, between the book and me, between my desire and the resistance of infinite space-that amorous pedaling through the vacuous summer, that excruciating concentric escape, comes to an end: I have made my decision, I withdraw my capital from my pocket, purchase Atlantida , and head home to curl up and read it.

Antinea, the gorgeous femme fatale, appears dressed in an Egyptian klaft (what is a klaft? it must be some magnificent and tempting thing, veiling and revealing at the same time) that flows down around her thick, wavy hair, so black it is blue, until the two points of its heavy, golden fabric reach down to her slim hips.

"She wore, beneath a black veil that glittered with gold, a flimsy, loosely fitting tunic, barely held closed by a white muslin sash embroidered with irises made of black pearls." Beneath those garments, a slender girl with long black eyes and a smile unheard of among the women of the Orient. You cannot see her body through those diabolically sumptuous vestments, but her tunic is audaciously open on the side (ah, the slit), her delicate bosom is exposed, her arms are bare, and mysterious shadows can be glimpsed beneath the veils. A temptress, bitterly virginal. For her, a man could die.

I close the book, embarrassed, when my father comes home at seven, but he thinks I am simply trying to conceal the fact that I am reading. He remarks that I read too much and am ruining my vision. He tells my mother I should get out more, go for a nice bike ride.