"The Mysterious Flame Of Queen Loana" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eco Umberto)3. Someone May Pluck Your Flower____________________ I know how to get around outside, have even learned how to act when people greet me: you gauge your smile, your gestures of surprise, your delight or courtesy by observing the other person’s smiles, gestures, and courtesies. I tried it out on neighbors, in the elevator. Which proves that social life is mere fiction, I said to Carla when she congratulated me. She said this incident is making me cynical. Of course, if you didn’t start thinking it was all playacting, you might shoot yourself. Now then, Paola said, it’s time you went back to the office. Go by yourself, visit with Sibilla, and see what feelings your place of work inspires. Gianni’s whisper about the beautiful Sibilla came back to me. "Who’s Sibilla?" "She’s your assistant, your girl Friday. She’s fantastic and has kept the studio running these past few weeks. I called her today and she was quite proud of having made some amazing sale or other. Sibilla-don’t ask me her last name because nobody can pronounce it. A Polish girl. She was majoring in library science in Warsaw, and when the regime there began to crumble, even before the fall of the Berlin Wall, she managed to get a permit to come study in Rome. She’s sweet, maybe too sweet, she must have figured out how to win some bigwig’s sympathy. In any case, once she got here she started looking for a job and never went back. She found you, or you found her, and she’s been your assistant for nearly four years now. She’s expecting you today, and she knows what happened and how she should behave." She gave me the address and phone number of my office. After Largo Cairoli feeds into Via Dante and before you get to the Loggia dei Mercanti-you can tell it’s a loggia from a distance-you turn left and you’re there. "If you have trouble, go into a café and call her, or me, and we’ll send a team of firemen, but I don’t think it will come to that. Oh, bear in mind that you started off speaking French with Sibilla, before she learned Italian, and you never stopped. A little game between the two of you." So many people in Via Dante. It feels good to pass by a series of strangers without being obliged to greet them, it gives you confidence, makes you realize that seven out of ten people are in the same condition you are. After all, I could be someone who is new to the city, who feels a little alone but is getting his bearings. Except that I am new to the planet. Some man waved hello from a café door, no call for theatrical recognition, I waved back and it went smoothly. I found the street and my studio like the boy scout who wins the treasure hunt: a sober plaque on the ground floor said STUDIO BIBLIO. I must not have much imagination, though I suppose the name sounds serious-what was I supposed to call it, Roman Holiday? I rang, went up the stairs, saw a door that was already open, and Sibilla on the threshold. "Bonjour, Monsieur Yambo… pardon, Monsieur Bodoni…" As if it were she who had lost her memory. She was indeed quite beautiful. Long, straight blond hair that We were both embarrassed. "Mademoiselle Sibilla?" I asked. " Like a delicate hiccup. The first " If I had had to explain what a book studio was, I would have described something much like what I now saw. Bookcases of dark wood, filled with antique volumes, and more old books on the heavy, square table. A little desk in a corner, with a computer. Two colorful maps on either side of a window with opaque glass. Soft light, broad green lampshades. Through a door, a long narrow storage room-it seemed to be a workroom for packing and shipping books. "So you must be Sibilla? Or should I say Mademoiselle something-I’m told you have an unpronounceable last name." "Sibilla Jasnorzewska, yes, here in Italy it causes some problems. But you’ve always just called me Sibilla." I saw her smile for the first time. I told her I wanted to get my bearings, wanted to see our prize books. That wall in the back, she said, and she went over to show me the correct bookcase. She walked silently, brushing the floor with her tennis shoes. But maybe it was the moquette that muted her steps. "What?" she said, turning her head, her hair twirling. "Nothing," I said. "Let’s see what we have." Lovely volumes with an ancient air. Not all of them had a title label on the spine. I took one from the shelf. Instinctively I opened it to look for the title page, but I did not find one. "Incunabulum, then. Sixteenth-century blind-tooled pigskin binding." I ran my hands over the sides, feeling a tactile pleasure. "Headcaps slightly worn." I flipped through the pages, touching them to see whether they squeaked, as Gianni had said. They did. "Wide, clean margins. Ah, minor marginal staining on the endpapers, the last signature is wormed, but it doesn’t affect the text. Lovely copy." I turned to the colophon, knowing it was called that, and slowly sounded out: "Venetiis mense Septembri… fourteen hundred ninety-seven. Could it be…" I turned to the first page: "It’s the first… Monsieur Bodoni. You recognize it?" "No, I don’t recognize anything, you’ll have to learn that, Sibilla. It’s just that I know that the first "Forgive me, I’m trying to get used to it. It’s just that you were so proud of that copy, it’s really splendid. And you said that for now you weren’t going to sell it, there are so few around-we’d wait for one to appear in some American catalogue, since they’re so good at jacking up prices, and then list ours." "So I’m a canny businessman, then." "I always said it was an excuse, that you wanted to keep it to yourself awhile, so you could look at it now and then. But since you did decide to sacrifice the Ortelius, I have some good news." "Ortelius? Which one?" "The 1606 Plantin, with 166 color tables and the Parergon. Period binding. You were so pleased to have discovered it when you bought Commendatore Gambi’s entire library on the cheap. You finally decided to put it in the catalogue. And while you… while you weren’t well, I managed to sell it to a client, a new one. He didn’t seem like a real bibliophile to me, more like someone who buys as an investment because he’s heard that antiquarian books appreciate quickly." "Too bad, a wasted copy. And… how much?" She seemed afraid to say the amount; she got a form and showed it to me. "In the catalogue we put ‘price on request,’ and you were prepared to deal. I immediately named the highest price, and he didn’t even try to bargain, just signed a check and was off. ‘On the nail,’ as they say in Milan." "We’ve reached these levels now…" I didn’t have a sense of current prices. "Well done, Sibilla. How much did it cost us?" "Basically nothing. That is, with the rest of the books from the Gambi library we’ll easily make back, little by little, the lump sum we paid for the whole lot. I took care of depositing the check in the bank. And since there was no price listed in the catalogue, I think that with Mr. Laivelli’s help we’ll come out quite well on the financial side." "So I’m one of those who don’t pay their taxes?" "No, Monsieur Bodoni, you just do what your fellow dealers do. For the most part, you have to pay the full amount, but with certain fortunate deals you might, how do you say, round down. But you’re ninety-five percent honest as a taxpayer." "After this deal it’ll be fifty percent. I read somewhere that citizens should pay every penny of their taxes." She looked humiliated. "Don’t worry about it, though," I said paternally. "I’ll talk it over with Gianni." Paternally? Then I said, almost brusquely, "Now let me take a look at some of the other books." She turned around and went to sit at her computer, silent. I looked at the books, flipped through their pages: Bernardino Benali’s 1491 Paternally? I was pulling out books and putting them back, but in fact I was thinking about Sibilla. Gianni had given me that hint, clearly mischievous, and Paola had delayed telling me about her until the last minute, and had used certain phrases that were almost sarcastic, even if her tone was neutral-"maybe too sweet," "a little game between the two of you"-nothing particularly rancorous, but she seemed a hairsbreadth away from calling her a slyboots. Could I have had an affair with Sibilla? The lost maiden newly arrived from the East, wide-eyed and curious, meets an older gentleman (though I was four years younger when she got here) and falls under his spell, after all he is the boss and knows more about books than she does, and she learns, hangs on his every word, admires him; and he has found his ideal pupil-beautiful, smart, with that hiccupped I seem to know all the clichés, but not how to put them together in a believable way. Or else these stories are terrible and grandiose precisely because all the clichés intertwine in an unrealistic way and you can’t disentangle them. But when you actually live a cliché, it feels brand-new, and you are unashamed. Would it be a realistic story? In recent days I felt that I no longer had desires, but as soon as I saw her I learned what desire is. I mean, someone I just met for the first time. Imagine being around her every day, following her, seeing her glide around you as if she were walking on water. Of course this is mere speculation; I would never start something, in the state I am in now, something like that, and besides, with Paola, I would really be the prize swine. For me, this girl might as well be the Immaculate Virgin, I cannot even think it. Great. But for her? She might still be in mid-affair, maybe she wanted to greet me with That I am not quite all here is a matter of clinical record. What am I brooding on about? With me sharing my office with a beautiful girl, of course Paola would play the part of a jealous wife-that is just a game old married couples play. And Gianni? It was Gianni who spoke of the beautiful Sibilla, maybe he is the one who has fallen for her, maybe he drops by my office all the time with some tax excuse, then hangs around pretending to be enchanted by the squeaking pages. He is the one with the crush, I have nothing to do with it. It is Gianni, old enough to smell a little like a corpse himself, he is trying to steal away, has stolen away, the woman of my dreams. Here we go again: the woman of my dreams? I thought I was going to be able to handle living with so many People I do not recognize, but this is the greatest hurdle yet, ever since those senile fantasies entered my head. What pains me is that I might cause her pain. So you see, then… No, it is natural for a man not to want to hurt his own adoptive daughter. Daughter? The other day I felt like a pedophile and now I discover I am incestuous? And after all, my God, who said we ever slept together? Maybe it was just a kiss, a single kiss, or a platonic attraction, each understanding what the other felt but neither ever speaking of it. Round Table lovers, we slept for four years with a sword between us. Oh, I also have a "Unfortunately no, Monsieur Bodoni. Ours is the 1497 Olpe. The first is also Olpe, Basel, but from 1494, and in German, "You know so much, Sibilla, what would I do without you?" "You were the one who taught me. To get out of Warsaw I passed myself off as a Admiration, devotion. Is she trying to tell me something? I murmur, " "Don’t worry, Monsieur Bodoni, I completely understand. I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. I’ll wait…" Are you really a slyboots? Are you saying that you are waiting for me to get back on my feet, as of course everyone is doing, or that you are waiting for me to remember a certain thing? And if the latter, what will you do, in the coming days, to remind me? Or do you want with all your heart for me to remember, but will not do anything, because you are not a slyboots but a woman in love, and you are holding your tongue to avoid upsetting me? Are you suffering, not letting it show because you are the marvelous creature you are, yet telling yourself that this is finally the right time for the two of us to come to our senses? You will sacrifice yourself, never doing anything to make me remember, not trying to touch my hand some evening as if in passing so that I might taste my madeleine-you who with the pride of all lovers know that although no one else can make me smell the scents that will be my Open Sesame, you could do so at will, simply by letting your hair brush my cheek as you lean over to hand me a form. Or by speaking again, as if casually, that banal phrase you spoke the first time, which we spent four years embroidering, quoting like a magic word whose meaning and power only we knew, we whom our secret set apart? Like: Let us try at least to get one thing clear. "Sibilla, perhaps you’re calling me Monsieur Bodoni because it’s as if today I were meeting you for the first time, even though after working together we may have begun to use She blushed, emitting again that modulated, tender hiccup: Her eyes glittered with happiness, as if a weight had been lifted from her heart. But using "Well then!" I said cheerfully, "we’ll pick up exactly where we left off. You know that in general picking up where I left off may be helpful to me." How did she take that? What did picking up where we left off mean to her? Back home I spent a sleepless night, and Paola stroked my hair. I felt like an adulterer, yet I had done nothing. On the other hand, I was not troubled for Paola’s sake, but for my own. The best part of having loved, I told myself, is the memory of having loved. Some people live on a single memory. Eugénie Grandet, for example. But to think you have loved, yet not be able to recall it? Or worse still, you may have loved, you cannot remember it, and you suspect you have not loved. Or another possibility, which in my vanity I had not considered: Madly in love, I made an advance, and she put me in my place, kindly, gently, firmly. She stayed because I was a gentleman and behaved from that day on as if nothing had happened, in the end she enjoyed working there, or could not afford to lose a good job, maybe was flattered by my move; indeed, her feminine vanity, without her realizing it, had been touched, and although she has never admitted it even to herself, she is aware of having a certain power over me. An Maybe Sibilla… Here I go again. The next morning, I took a taxi to Gianni’s office. I asked him straight out what he knew about Sibilla and me. He seemed floored. "Yambo, we’re all a bit infatuated with Sibilla-myself, your fellow dealers, lots of your clients. There are people who come to you just to see her. But it’s all a joke, schoolboy stuff. We all take turns kidding each other about it, and we often kidded you: I have a feeling there’s something between you and the lovely Sibilla, we’d say. And you’d laugh, and sometimes you’d play along, as if to imply outrageous things, and sometimes you’d tell us to lay off it, that she could be your daughter. Games. That’s why I asked you about Sibilla that evening: I thought you’d already seen her and I wanted to know what impression she’d made." "So I never told you anything about me and Sibilla?" "Why, was there something to tell?" "Don’t joke about this, you know I’m an amnesiac. I’m here to ask you if I ever told you anything." "Nothing. And you always told me about your affairs, perhaps to make me envious. You told me about Cavassi, about Vanna, about the American at the London book fair, about the beautiful Dutch girl you made three special trips to Amsterdam to see, about Silvana…" "Come on, how many affairs did I have?" "A lot. Too many, I thought, but I’ve always been monogamous. About Sibilla, I swear to you, you never said a thing. What’s got into you? You saw her yesterday, she smiled at you, and you thought it would have been impossible to be around her and not think about it. You’re human; I certainly wouldn’t have expected you to say, Who’s this hag,… And besides, none of us ever managed to find out whether Sibilla had a life of her own. Always relaxed, eager to help anyone as if she were doing him a special favor-sometimes a girl can be provocative precisely because she doesn’t flirt. The ice sphinx." Gianni was probably telling the truth, but that meant nothing. If something had happened and Sibilla had become more important to me than all the others, if she were The One, I certainly would not have told even Gianni about it. It would have had to remain a delicious conspiracy between Sibilla and me. Or not. The ice sphinx, in her off-hours, has her own life, perhaps she already has a man, keeps it to herself, is perfect, does not mix her work and her private life. I am stung by jealousy of an unknown rival. "I have a widow for you, Yambo," said Sibilla with a wink. She is gaining confidence, how nice. "A widow?" I asked. She explained that antiquarian book dealers of my stature have certain methods of procuring books. There is the fellow who shows up at the studio asking whether his book is worth something, and how much it is worth depends on how honest you are, though in any case you try to make a profit. Or the guy is a collector hard up for cash, he knows the value of what he is offering, and the most you can do is haggle a little over the price. Another technique is shopping the international auctions, where you can get a bargain if you are the only one to realize a book’s worth, but your competitors are not fools. Thus the margin is minimal, and things get interesting only if you can set a very high price for your find. Then too you buy from your colleagues: one might have a book that is of little interest to his sort of client, so his price is low, but you know a collector who is lusting after it. Then there is the vulture method. You identify the great families in decline, with the old palazzos and the ancient libraries, and you wait for a father to die, a husband, an uncle, at which point the heirs already have their hands full selling the furniture and the jewels, and they have no idea how to appraise that hoard of books they have never examined. "Widow" is just a manner of speaking: it could be a grandson who wants to turn a quick buck, and if he has problems with women, or drugs, so much the better. Then you go look at the books, spend two or three days in those great shadowy rooms, and formulate your strategy. This time it actually was a widow. Sibilla had received a tip from someone (my little secret, she said with a pleased, mischievous air), and it seems I have a way with widows. I asked Sibilla to come along, since by myself I ran the risk of not recognizing By the end we had identified ten volumes that at good prices would have netted us, conservatively speaking, at least a hundred million lire: the "You call it a We came back to the studio as gleeful as kids who had just played a practical joke. "Is it dishonest?" I asked. "Of course not, Yambo, How would I manage without Sibilla? Tough and gentle, wise as a dove. The fantasies began to haunt me again, and I reentered the terrible spiral of the day before. Luckily, the visit to the widow had completely worn me out. I went straight home. Paola remarked that I seemed more unfocused than usual, I must be working too hard. Better to go into the office only every other day. I tried to think of other things: "Sibilla, my wife says that I collected writings about fog. Where are they?" "They were horrible photocopies, little by little I transferred them to the computer. Don’t thank me, it was fun. Watch, I’ll find you the folder." I knew computers existed (just as I knew airplanes existed), but of course I was now touching one for the first time. It was like riding a bicycle: I put my hands on it, and my fingertips remembered on their own. I had gathered at least a hundred and fifty pages of quotes about fog. I must truly have taken the subject to heart. Here was Abbott’s I found I could finish most of the quotations from memory. "How is that possible," I asked Paola, "if I’ve forgotten everything that has to do with me? I made this collection myself, with a personal investment." "It isn’t that you remember them because you collected them," she said, "you collected them because you remembered them. They’re part of the encyclopedia, like the other poems you recited to me on your first day back home." In any case, I recognized them on sight. Beginning with Dante: D’Annunzio has some lovely pages on fog in Then Dickens, the classic opening of "I didn’t know Pascoli," Sibilla said. "Listen to how lovely it is…" Now she had come quite close so she could see the screen; she could have brushed my cheek with her hair. But she did not. She pronounced the verses with a soft Slavic cadence: She balked at the third quotation: "Fog… per " "Ah." She seemed excited to have learned a new word: Good fog in Pirandello, and to think he was Sicilian: "You could slice the fog-Around every streetlamp a halo yawned." But Savinio’s Milan is even better: "The fog is cozy. It transforms the city into an enormous candy box, and its inhabitants into pieces of sugar candy… Women and girls pass hooded in the fog. A light vapor huffs around their nostrils and at their half-open mouths… You find yourself in a parlor stretched by mirrors… you embrace, each still fragrant with fog, as the fog outside-discreet, silent, protective- presses against the window like a curtain…" The Milanese fogs of Vittorio Sereni: I collected everything. Here is Sibilla was enchanted by Flaubert: "A whitish day passed beyond the curtainless windows. She glimpsed treetops, and in the distance, the prairie, half-drowned in fog that smoked in the moonlight." And by Baudelaire: "The buildings sank into a sea of fog, / And deep in hospices the dying heaved…" She was speaking other people’s words, but for me it was as if they were rising up from a fountainhead. She was there, the fog was not. Others had seen it and distilled it into sounds. Perhaps one day I really could penetrate that fog, if Sibilla were to lead me by the hand. I have already had several checkups with Gratarolo, but in general he approves of what Paola has done. He likes the fact that I have now become almost self-sufficient, thus at least eliminating my initial frustrations. I have spent a number of evenings with Gianni, Paola, and the girls playing Scrabble; they say it was my favorite game. I find words easily, especially esoteric ones like ACROSTIC (by adding on to TIC) or ZEUGMA. Later, incorporating an M and an H that were the first letters of two words going down, I start from the first red square in the top row and go all the way past the second, making AMPHIBOLY. Twenty-one times nine, plus the fifty-point bonus for playing all seven of my letters: two hundred and thirty-nine points in a single play. Gianni got mad. Thank God you’re an amnesiac, he yelled. He said it to boost my confidence. Not only am I an amnesiac, but I may be living out fictitious memories. Gratarolo mentioned the fact that in cases like mine, some people invent scraps of a past they never lived, just to have the sensation of remembering. Have I been using Sibilla as a pretext? I have to get out of it somehow. Going to my studio has become torture. I said to Paola, "Pavese was right: Work’s tiring. And I always see the same old part of Milan. Maybe it would do me good to take a trip; the studio runs fine without me, and Sibilla is already working on the new catalogue. We could go to Paris or somewhere." "Paris is still too much for you, with travel and all. Let me give it some thought." "Okay, not Paris. "To Moscow?" "That’s Chekhov. You know quotations are my only fog lights." |
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