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The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana :: Эко Умберто
Страница: 29 из 286Two men in dustcoats with big black goggles, and me with mile-long ears that look like wings." Where did that image come from?
Paola looked at me. "What’s the fastest you think a car can go?"
"Oh," I said, "up to eighty kilometers per hour…" Apparently they go quite a bit faster now. My ideas on the subject seemed to come from the period when I got my license.
I was astonished that, as we made our way across Largo Cairoli, every few steps we passed a Negro who wanted to sell me a lighter. Paola brought me for a bike ride in the park (I have no trouble riding a bike), and I was astonished again to see a group of Negroes playing drums around a pond. "Where are we," I said, "New York? Since when have there been so many Negroes in Milan?"
"For some time now," Paola replied. "But we don’t say Negroes anymore, we say blacks."
"What difference does it make? They sell lighters, they come here to play their drums because they probably don’t have a lira to go to a café, or maybe they’re not wanted there. It looks to me as if these blacks are as badly off as the Negroes."
"Still, that’s what one says now. You did, too."
Paola observed that when I try to speak English I make mistakes, but I do not when I speak German or French. "That doesn’t surprise me," she said. "You must have absorbed French as a child, and it’s still in your tongue the way bicycles are still in your legs. You learned German from textbooks in college, and you remember everything from books. But English, on the other hand, you learned during your travels, later. It belongs to your personal experiences of the past thirty years, and only bits of it have stuck to your tongue."
I still feel a little weak. I can focus on something for half an hour, an hour at the most; then I go lie down for a while. Paola takes me to the pharmacist every day to have my blood pressure checked. And I have to pay attention to my diet, avoid salt.
I have begun watching television; it is the thing that tires me least. I see unfamiliar gentlemen who are called president and prime minister. I see the king of Spain (was it not Franco?) and ex-terrorists (terrorists?) who have repented. I do not always understand what they are talking about, but I learn a great deal. I remember Aldo Moro, the parallel convergences, but who killed him? Or was he in the plane that crashed into the Banca dell’Agricoltura in Ustica? I see some singers with rings through their earlobes. And they are male. I like the TV series about family tragedies in Texas, the old films of John Wayne.
Paola looked at me. "What’s the fastest you think a car can go?"
"Oh," I said, "up to eighty kilometers per hour…" Apparently they go quite a bit faster now. My ideas on the subject seemed to come from the period when I got my license.
I was astonished that, as we made our way across Largo Cairoli, every few steps we passed a Negro who wanted to sell me a lighter. Paola brought me for a bike ride in the park (I have no trouble riding a bike), and I was astonished again to see a group of Negroes playing drums around a pond. "Where are we," I said, "New York? Since when have there been so many Negroes in Milan?"
"For some time now," Paola replied. "But we don’t say Negroes anymore, we say blacks."
"What difference does it make? They sell lighters, they come here to play their drums because they probably don’t have a lira to go to a café, or maybe they’re not wanted there. It looks to me as if these blacks are as badly off as the Negroes."
"Still, that’s what one says now. You did, too."
Paola observed that when I try to speak English I make mistakes, but I do not when I speak German or French. "That doesn’t surprise me," she said. "You must have absorbed French as a child, and it’s still in your tongue the way bicycles are still in your legs. You learned German from textbooks in college, and you remember everything from books. But English, on the other hand, you learned during your travels, later. It belongs to your personal experiences of the past thirty years, and only bits of it have stuck to your tongue."
I still feel a little weak. I can focus on something for half an hour, an hour at the most; then I go lie down for a while. Paola takes me to the pharmacist every day to have my blood pressure checked. And I have to pay attention to my diet, avoid salt.
I have begun watching television; it is the thing that tires me least. I see unfamiliar gentlemen who are called president and prime minister. I see the king of Spain (was it not Franco?) and ex-terrorists (terrorists?) who have repented. I do not always understand what they are talking about, but I learn a great deal. I remember Aldo Moro, the parallel convergences, but who killed him? Or was he in the plane that crashed into the Banca dell’Agricoltura in Ustica? I see some singers with rings through their earlobes. And they are male. I like the TV series about family tragedies in Texas, the old films of John Wayne.