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The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana :: Эко Умберто
Страница: 62 из 286Two were peevish and willful, the third, a sort of Angora, with thick, soft black fur, was graceful when asking for food, rubbing against my pant leg and emittinga seductive rumble. I love all animals, I think (did I not join an antivivisection league?), but one cannot control instinctive attraction. I liked the third cat best and gave it the choicest morsels. I asked Amalia what the cats’ names were, and she replied that cats don’t have names since they’re not God-fearing creatures like dogs. I asked if I could call the black cat Matù, and she said I could, if kitty, kitty, kitty wasn’t good enough for me, but I could tell she was thinking that city people, even Signorino Yambo, had crickets in their heads.
Crickets (real ones) were making a great racket outside, and I went into the courtyard to listen to them. I looked at the sky, hoping to discover familiar figures. Constellations, just constellations from an astronomy atlas. I recognized the Great Bear, but as one of those things I had always heard about. I had come this far to learn that the encyclopedias were right. Return to the interiorem bominem and you will find Larousse.
I said to myself: Yambo, your memory is made of paper. Not of neurons, but of pages. Maybe someday someone will invent an electronic contraption allowing people to travel by computer among all the pages ever written, from the beginning of the world till today, and to pass from one to another with the touch of a finger, without knowing any longer where or who they are, and then everyone will be like you.
Still awaiting my misery’s company, I went to bed.
I had just dozed off when I heard a voice calling me. It invited me to the window with a rasping, insistent pssst pssst. Who could be calling me from outside, hanging from the shutters? I flung them open and saw a whitish shadow flee into the night. It was, as Amalia explained to me the next morning, a barn owl: when houses are empty these creatures like to take up residence in attics or gutters, I’m not sure which, but as soon as they detect the presence of humans, they move elsewhere. Too bad. Because that barn owl fleeing into the night caused me to feel again what I had described to Paola as a mysterious flame. That barn owl, or one of its kind, must have belonged to me, must have woken me on other nights and on other nights fled into the dark, a clumsy, pea-witted ghost. Pea-witted? I could not have learned that word from the encyclopedias either. It must have come from within, or from before.
My sleep was full of restless dreams, and at a certain point I woke up with a sharp pain in my chest.
Crickets (real ones) were making a great racket outside, and I went into the courtyard to listen to them. I looked at the sky, hoping to discover familiar figures. Constellations, just constellations from an astronomy atlas. I recognized the Great Bear, but as one of those things I had always heard about. I had come this far to learn that the encyclopedias were right. Return to the interiorem bominem and you will find Larousse.
I said to myself: Yambo, your memory is made of paper. Not of neurons, but of pages. Maybe someday someone will invent an electronic contraption allowing people to travel by computer among all the pages ever written, from the beginning of the world till today, and to pass from one to another with the touch of a finger, without knowing any longer where or who they are, and then everyone will be like you.
Still awaiting my misery’s company, I went to bed.
I had just dozed off when I heard a voice calling me. It invited me to the window with a rasping, insistent pssst pssst. Who could be calling me from outside, hanging from the shutters? I flung them open and saw a whitish shadow flee into the night. It was, as Amalia explained to me the next morning, a barn owl: when houses are empty these creatures like to take up residence in attics or gutters, I’m not sure which, but as soon as they detect the presence of humans, they move elsewhere. Too bad. Because that barn owl fleeing into the night caused me to feel again what I had described to Paola as a mysterious flame. That barn owl, or one of its kind, must have belonged to me, must have woken me on other nights and on other nights fled into the dark, a clumsy, pea-witted ghost. Pea-witted? I could not have learned that word from the encyclopedias either. It must have come from within, or from before.
My sleep was full of restless dreams, and at a certain point I woke up with a sharp pain in my chest.