Read Ten Tributes to Calvino for Free Online Page A

notebooks with me when it comes, and pens, and though I do less work, I’m happier in my soul.
    The wilderness for me must be sun-drenched. Otherwise I can’t feel its beauty deep down; I succumb to bleakness instead and mope from cliff to cliff, or over pallid dunes, searching for a cave mouth where I can huddle around a fire of frosty driftwood sticks.
    No thanks. I love the sun far too much! My creativity ripens in the sun and ferments into the wine that will keep me from despair in winter. Once I walked across the Alpujarras in midsummer, writing at odd moments as I went: the result was a novella full of inventors, explorers, mermaids and minstrels across which daily crawled large ants to greet, or challenge, the scrawl of black multi-legged words.
     
    JUMPING INTO SUMMER
     
    Two hikers, one male, one female, stopped for the night in a forest glade. The sun was low in the west and its ruby beams slanted almost horizontal between the rough trunks. A hooded figure watched from the shadows of the tallest tree and grimaced ferociously.
    “I feel a little uneasy,” said the female.
    The male hiker nodded. “I know what you mean. Spending the night in a forest is always unnerving. Not like sleeping on the beach or in dunes; there’s the constant feeling of being watched and of being at the mercy of predators or paranormal forces.”
    “I’m not sure I can last until morning!”
    “Very well. Here’s a solution. Night is about to fall and will probably endure for the whole of the next paragraph. If we both take a long enough run up, we should be able to jump right over that paragraph and end up in the one after it, which will almost certainly describe tomorrow morning. I think we should hold hands and do this together. Are you ready? Let’s run as far as that log and then leap…”
    The sun vanished over an unseen horizon. Dusk gathered itself rapidly and the stars were very dim when they appeared through gaps in the thick canopy of rustling foliage. Owls hooted, rodents scurried and bright eyes glowed in the undergrowth; twigs snapped and the very trees appeared to unfreeze from some paralysis and move their branches like arms. Hours passed slowly, fearfully, chillingly.
    Very slowly, the sky grew lighter. The night was finally coming to an end. The sun came up and climbed higher; and the character of the forest changed completely; the eeriness was utterly dispelled and now it was a cheerful place, a paradise of wild flowers and birds. The sun reached its highest point, began to descend, sank lower and lower and its ruby beams slanted almost horizontal between…
    “Damn it!” grumbled the male.
    “What’s the matter?” asked his companion.
    “We jumped too far. We cleared not only the paragraph containing the night, but also the one describing the morning after, so we’re back in late afternoon – of the following day!”
    The female considered this. Although unaware that the hooded figure had been left behind in yesterday, she said, “I don’t have the same uneasy feeling. Let’s camp here anyway.”
    “I agree,” the male said, “and nothing has been lost by the jump. We’re one day closer to summer, in fact!”
     
    THE HOUSE OF THE LYING SUN
     
    There is a House in Old Orléans they call the Lying Sun… That’s how a song might begin. Except that this Orléans is pronounced Or-Lee-On and the house in question is a café rather than a brothel. Inside this café there are steps leading down into a cellar and in one corner of this cellar, which has been converted into a private room for patrons, the two merchants are trying to turn on each other. One of them said, “Why not purchase off me this bronze Ptolemaic model of the solar system? It depicts all the planets and stars in their correct positions!”
    “No, it doesn’t; it shows the sun going round the Earth! And where are Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Scruffy? I don’t want it. But you ought to like my efficient solar-powered