What can you know of the subdued, shadowy, , grinning hunt that the lover of nornettes may conduct on the benches of old parks, in the scented penumbra of basilicas, on the graveled paths of suburban cemeteries, in the Sunday hour at the corner of the nursing home, at the doors of the hospice, in the chanting ranks of parish processions, at charity bazaars: an amorous, intense, and-alas-inexorably chaste ambush, to catch a closer glimpse of those faces furrowed by volcanic wrinkles, those eyes watering with cataract, the twitching movement of those dry lips sunken in the exquisite depression of a toothless mouth, lips enlivened at times by a glis tening trickle of salivary ecstasy, those proudly gnarled hands, nervously, lustfully tremulous, provocative, as they tell a very sfow rosary!
Can I ever recreate, Reader-friend, the sinking desperation on sighting that elusive prey, the spas modic shiver at certain fleeting contacts: an elbow’s nudge in a crowded tram-«Excuse me, madam, would you like a seat?» Oh, satanic friend, how dared you accept the moist look of gratitude and the «Thank you, young man, how kind!», when you would have have prefe rred to enact on the spot a bacchic drama of possession?-the grazing of a venerable knee as your calf slides between two rows of seats in the pomeridian solitude of a neighborhood cinema, or the tender but controlled grasp-sporadic moments of extreme contact!-of the skeletal arm of a crone you helped cross at the light with the prim concern of an eagle scout.
The vicissitudes of my idle youth afforded me other encounters. As I have said, I had a reasonably engaging appearance, with my dark cheeks and the tender countenance of a maiden oppressed by a delicate virility. I was not unaware of adolescent love, but I submitted to it as if paying a toll, fulfilling the requirements of my age. I recall a May evening, shortly before sunset, when in the garden of a patrician villa-it was in the Varese region, not far from the lake, red in the sinking sun-I lay in the shade of some bushes with a fledgling sixteen-year-old, all freckles and powerless in the grip of a dismaying storm of amorous feelings toward me.
And it was at that moment, while I was listlessly granting her the desired wand of my pubescent thaumaturgy, that I saw, Reader, at a window of the upper floor, the form of a decrepit nanny· bent almost double as she unrolled down her leg the shapeless mass of a cotton stocking. The breathtaking sight of that swollen limb, with its varicose marbling, stroked by the clumsy movement of the old hands unrolling the lumpy article of clothing, seemed to me (to my concupiscent eyes!) a brutal and enviable phallus soothed by a virginal caress: and it was at that moment that, seized by an ecstasy redoubled by distance, I exploded, gasping, in an effusion of biological assent that the maiden (foolish tadpole, how I hated you!) welcomed, inoaning, as a tribute to her own callow charms.
Did you then ever realize, my dull-witted instrument of redirected passion, that you had enjoyed the food of another’s repast, or did the dim vanity of your unripe years portray me to you as a fiery, unforgettable accomplice in sin? After leaving the next day with your family, you sent me a week later a postal card signed «Your old friend.» Did you perceive the truth, revealing to me your perspicacity in the careful employment of that adjective, or was yours simply a bravado use of jargon, the mettlesome high-school girl rebelling against correct epistolary 1 style?
Ah, after that, how I stared, trembling, at every window in the hope of glimpsing the flaccid silhou ette of an octogenarian in the bath! How many evenings, half hidden by a tree, did I consummate my solitary debauches, my eyes trained on the shadow cast against a curtain, of some grandmother sweetly engaged in gumming a meal! And the horrid disappointment, immediate and destructive (tiens, done, le salaud!), when the figure, abandoning the falsehood of those ombres chinoises, revealed itself at the sill for what she was, a naked ballerina with swelling breasts and the tanned hips of an Andalusian mare!
So for months and years I coursed, unsated, in the deluded hunt for adorable nornettes, caught up in a pursuit that was born, indestructible, I am sure, at the moment of my birth, when a toothless old midwife-my father’s desperate search at that hour of the night had produced only this hag, with one foot in the grave!-rescued me from the viscous prison of the maternal womb and revealed to me, in the light of life, her immortal countenance: a jeune parque.
I seek no justification from you who read me (a la guerre comme a la guerre ); I am merely explaining to you how inevitable was the concurrence of events that brought me to my triumph.
The soiree to which I had been invited was a sordid petting party with young models and pimply university students.
The sinuous lewdness of those aroused maidens, the negligent offering of their breasts through unbuttoned blouses in the swirl of the dance, disgusted me. I was already thinking to run away from that place of banal traffic among crotches as yet intact, when a shrill, strident sound (will I ever be able to express the dizzying pitch, the hoarse descent of those vocal cords, long exhausted, the allure supreme de ce cri centenaire? ), the tremulous lament of an ancient female, plunged the assembly into silence. And in the frame of the doorway I saw her, the face of the rmote Norn of my natal shock, the cascading enthusiasm of her lasciviously white locks, the stiffened body that stretched the stuff of the little, threadbare black dress into acute angles, the legs now thin and bent opposing arcs, the fragile line of her vulnerable femur outlined under the ancient modesty of the venerable skirt.
The insipid maiden who was our hostess made a show of tolerant politeness. She raised her eyes to heaven as she said, «She’s my granny . . . «
At this point the intact part of the manuscript ends. What can be inferred from the scattered lines that follow suggests that the story continued more or less in this fashion: A few days later, Umberto Umberto abducts his hostess’s grandmother, carrying her off on the handlebars of his bicycle, toward Piedmont. At first he takes her to a home ,for the aged poor, where, that same night, he possesses her, discovering among other things that the woman is not without previous experience. At daybreak, as he is smoking a cigarette in the semidarkness of the garden, he is approached by a dubious-looking youth who asks him slyly if the old woman is really his grandmother.
Alarmed, Umberto Umberto leaves the institution with Granita and begins a dizzying race over the roads of Piedmont. He visits the wine fair at Canelli, the annual truffle festival at Alba, participates in the historical pageant at Caglianetto, inspects the livestock market at Nizza Monferrato, and follows the election of Miss Milkmaid in lvrea and the sack race in honor of the patron saint’s day in Condove. At the end of his mad odyssey through that northern region, he realizes that for som time his bicycle has been slyly followed by an eagle scout on a motorscooter, who eludes every attempt to trap him.
One day, at lncisa Scapaccino, when he takes Granita to a chiropodist, leaving her alone for a few minutes while he goes to buy cigarettes, he discovers, on returning, that the old woman has abandoned him, running off with her new kidnapper. For several months he sinks into deep depression, but finally finds the old woman agam, fresh from a beauty farm where her seducer has taken her. Her face is without a wrinkle, her hair is a coppery blond, her smile is dazzling. Umberto Umberto is overwhelmed by a profound sense of pity and a resigned despair at the sight of this destruction. Without a word, he purchases a shotgun and sets out in search of the villain. He finds the young scout at a campsite rubbing two sticks together to light a fire. He shoots once, twice, three times, repeatedly missing the youth, until finally two priests wearing leather jackets and black berets overpower him. Promptly arrested, he is sentenced to six months for illegal possession of firearms and hunting out of season.
1959
Fragments
Proceedings, JV Intergalactic Congress of Archeological Studies, Sirius, 4th section, Mathematical Year 121. Paper read by chair Prof Anouk Ooma of the Department of Archeology, Prince Joseph’s Land University, Arctica, Earth.
Distinguished colleagues, You are surely not unaware that for some time Arctic scholars have been engaged in intense research and have, as a result, brought to light numerous relics of the ancient civilization that flourished in the temperate and tropical zones of our planet before the catastrophe of the year the known as 1980, in the ancient era, or, more correctly, Year One, after the Explosion destroyed every trace of life in those zones. For millennia afterward, as everyone knows, they remained so contaminated by radioactivity that until a few decades ago our expeditions could approach these territories only at extreme risk, despite the eagerness of scientists to reveal to the whole Galaxy the degree of civilization achieved by our remote ancestors. One mystery will always remain with us: How could human beings inhabit areas so unbearably torrid, and how could they adapt to the insane way of living
