Read Blindly (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) for Free Online Page B

would no longer have anything to fear regarding his secretarial post and what it had to offer. I went down Via Madonnina, along with the runnels of muddy water, awkwardly holding in my hand that edition of the
Argonautics
which he had given me at the last minute, with unusual impulsiveness. “Here, as a memento ...,” he said. “I don’t know if you’ll have time, but—you like good literature, don’t you? And with the translation on the facing page ...” I felt myself vanish in that greyness, under the rain and amid the people; at a certain point I imagined Blasich, at the window, watching me grow smaller and fade away—I can almost see myself, my back drenched, my shoulders a little hunched, the rapid stride of someone disappearing over the horizon.

4
    A LITTLE ORDER , I agree, I was just about to say so, for one thing because otherwise I’m the first to get lost. Moreover it’s not my fault; with all these questions piling up, the responses get tangled up too, because each time I have to stop and think and by the time I answer there’s already another question, and so it seems like I’m answering chaotically. For that matter, it’s a technique used in all interrogations.
    And don’t say you’re not asking me anything because I can sense your questions just the same; I can read them on your clamped lips, in the faces you make, even over there, in those other rooms, or who knows where, when everyone questions all those things about me. I hear them in my ears, your repeated cries, shouts, questions questions questions; everyone wants to know everything, drag everything that’s his out of a poor devil’s head, thoughts, images, memories, facts. There are so many things in your head, smiles, seas, cities, screeching hurricanes; the wind coils among the shrouds shrieking, enters the convolutions of the brain and can’t get out, an eddying whirlwind between one hemisphere and the other, right and left, here and there, boreal and austral. I saw that photograph of mine, Dr. Ulcigrai, on your table, I knew it was mine by the name, thoughthe name is debatable ... but I would have recognized myself just the same in that nocturnal galaxy exploding in the immensity, in that grey and white corolla that exfoliates in the darkness, Identi-Kit for wanted prisoner Salvatore Cippico-ipiko, passport photo of convict Jorgen Jorgensen, official portrait of His Majesty King of Iceland, a section obtained through Brainvox magnetic resonance imaging, I heard your henchman say in the usual sibylline jargon of inquisitors.
    Yes, there are many things in a man’s head. Or there were, because they take them from you, they empty you out; those black plates, scored with white filaments like shooting stars in the night sky, that bear my name, are the image of the dark, empty space that’s in your head after they’ve taken everything from you throughout your entire life. That milky obscurity, those clots floating through infinity are me—if this is the portrait of a man, can one tell his story, does he have a story, a life, this mushy pulp? But then Maria, white daisy in the dark glade, her eyes slanted, tender, ironic ... those dark stars, gleaming in the night ...
    I have some difficulties, however, with those translucent portraits of mine in your folder, Dr. Ulcigrai. I recognize myself more clearly in the photo printed in the
Hobart Town Almanack
that accompanies my autobiographical sketch. I doubt that your x-rays are as durable and I’d like to see them, after a century.
    It’s sharp, distinct. Moreover you’re already familiar with it, it must have been you who stuck it in that magic lantern of yours the other day, like my uncle Bepi used to do sometimes in the evening ... I’m making magic, he would say. As you see I’m diligent in following your urging not to let ourselves idle away in here, to cultivate our interests, as you say, to take part in your games—well, if only ... No nothing, nothing, it’s great in fact,