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The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana :: Эко Умберто
Страница: 50 из 286For once, here was something I was not supposed to know about through my semantic memory, nor did it have anything to do with my personal history. Who has ever seen dog testicles in their pure state-I mean, without the dog attached? I rummaged around in my pockets. I had a total of forty thousand, and it’s not as though a street vendor is going to take a check.
"I’ll take the dog ones."
"A mistake to leave the others, you won’t get that chance again."
You cannot have everything. I went back home with my dog balls and Paola blanched: "They’re curious, they really do look like a work of art, but where will we keep them? In the living room, so that every time you offer guests some cashews or some Ascoli olives they can vomit on our carpet? In the bedroom? I think not. You can keep them in your studio, perhaps next to some lovely seventeenth-century book on the natural sciences."
"I thought it was a real find."
"Do you know you’re the only man in the world, the only man on the face of the earth from Adam up to now, who when his wife sends him out to buy roses comes home with a pair of dog balls?"
"If nothing else, that’s something for the Guinness book of records. And besides, you know, I’m a sick man."
"Excuses. You were crazy even before. It was no accident that you asked your sister for a platypus. Once you wanted to bring home a 1960s pinball machine that cost as much as a Matisse painting and made a hellish racket."
But Paola knew that street market already. Indeed, she said I should have known it too: once I found a first edition of Papini’s Gog there, original covers, uncut, for ten thousand lire. And so the next Sunday she wanted to go with me: you never know, she said, you might come home with some dinosaur testicles and we’ll have to call a mason to widen the doorway to get them inside.
Stamps and telephone cards did not arouse my interest, but the old newspapers did. Stuff from our childhood, Paola said. "Then forget it," I said. But at a certain point I saw a Mickey Mouse comic book. I picked it up instinctively. It could not have been really old-a 1970s reprint, judging from the back cover and the price. I opened it to the middle: "It’s not an original, because those were printed in two colors, with shading from brick red to brown, and this one is printed in white and blue."
"How do you know that?"
"I don’t know, I just do."
"But the cover is a reproduction of the original cover. Look at the date and the price: 1936; one and a half lire."
Clarabelle’s Treasure: the title jumped out from a colorful background.
"I’ll take the dog ones."
"A mistake to leave the others, you won’t get that chance again."
You cannot have everything. I went back home with my dog balls and Paola blanched: "They’re curious, they really do look like a work of art, but where will we keep them? In the living room, so that every time you offer guests some cashews or some Ascoli olives they can vomit on our carpet? In the bedroom? I think not. You can keep them in your studio, perhaps next to some lovely seventeenth-century book on the natural sciences."
"I thought it was a real find."
"Do you know you’re the only man in the world, the only man on the face of the earth from Adam up to now, who when his wife sends him out to buy roses comes home with a pair of dog balls?"
"If nothing else, that’s something for the Guinness book of records. And besides, you know, I’m a sick man."
"Excuses. You were crazy even before. It was no accident that you asked your sister for a platypus. Once you wanted to bring home a 1960s pinball machine that cost as much as a Matisse painting and made a hellish racket."
But Paola knew that street market already. Indeed, she said I should have known it too: once I found a first edition of Papini’s Gog there, original covers, uncut, for ten thousand lire. And so the next Sunday she wanted to go with me: you never know, she said, you might come home with some dinosaur testicles and we’ll have to call a mason to widen the doorway to get them inside.
Stamps and telephone cards did not arouse my interest, but the old newspapers did. Stuff from our childhood, Paola said. "Then forget it," I said. But at a certain point I saw a Mickey Mouse comic book. I picked it up instinctively. It could not have been really old-a 1970s reprint, judging from the back cover and the price. I opened it to the middle: "It’s not an original, because those were printed in two colors, with shading from brick red to brown, and this one is printed in white and blue."
"How do you know that?"
"I don’t know, I just do."
"But the cover is a reproduction of the original cover. Look at the date and the price: 1936; one and a half lire."
Clarabelle’s Treasure: the title jumped out from a colorful background.