The next room contained big glass cases, full of vertical tubes with cotton wool stoppers reminiscent of eighteenth-century powdered wigs.
“Are they bacteria cultures?”
“Yes,” his attractive companion replied. “Diphtheria, pneumonia, malaria, typhoid,” she continued, pointing to the various tubes, on each of which was a label. While she was telling him how bacteria were stained for examination under the microscope, a man with huge feet emerging from under his white coat went by.
“Doctor,” the young woman said, leaving Tito alone in front of the tubes containing the bacteria cultures, “they telephoned from the anatomy institute; they want a woman’s body, if possible a young one.”
“I haven’t anything at the moment,” the doctor replied after a moment’s thought, “but I hope something will be available at latest by this evening. A woman’s body did you say? Yes, I’ll get one. Tell the professor I hope to let him have it this evening.”
And he went into the next room.
Tito took advantage of the woman doctor’s momentary absence to help himself to one of the glass tubes and hide it in an inside pocket.
He stayed a little longer, listening distractedly and impatiently to what his guide told him, and as soon as he could he hurried home, lovingly stroking the tube of bacteria culture through the outside of his jacket. Typhoid, typhoid bacteria, he said to himself. I’ll drink the lot and I shall die. It’s the kind of death I want. If fate wants to save me, it will send me a doctor able to cure me.
He shook the viscous liquid, poured it into a glass, and drank it. It tasted sour, and brackish.
A bacteria culture doesn’t make at all a bad drink, he said to himself.
He washed it down with a liqueur glassful of chartreuse.
He took from his wallet the naked photograph of Cocaine, looked at it, and put it back.
He sat at his desk, took a blank sheet of paper and wrote: “I’m committing suicide because I’m tired of life. Every intelligent man when he reaches the age of twenty-eight should do the same.
“I want no priests at my funeral. But, since priests are not for the dead but for the living, if any priests attend I want a rabbi and a Waldensian pastor to be present also. I have a great deal of liking for priests of all religions, because either they are in good faith, in which case I consider them worthy of admiration, or they are in bad faith, in which case they are to be admired, as are all skillful mystifiers.
“I wish to be put in my coffin wearing green pajamas and with my hands in my pockets.
“I wish to be cremated.
“I wish my ashes to be put in my two multi-colored cinerary urns, one to be kept in my memory by Pietro Nocera, the other by my Maud Fabrège.
“I leave all my books and my clothes to Pietro Nocera. I leave my gilt monstrance to my friend the monk. I leave my few articles of jewelry to Maud Fabrège (Maddalena Panardi).
“I leave my money to the Society for the Protection of Animals.”
He added his signature and the date, put the document in an envelope so large that it needed a double dose of saliva, and wrote on it: My last Will and Testament, to be opened immediately after my death.
And to dispel melancholy he went out, carefully looking left and right to avoid being run over and killed by a tram.
He put one or two pinches of the white drug up his nose and went into a cinema. But he didn’t see anything.
When I told my mother I had a toothache she sent me to the dentist to have it out (he said to himself). When I had a boil, she squeezed it for me. When I told her I was suffering because of a girl she told me not to be silly. Soon after I was born my father sent for a priest. Since he sent for one priest rather than another I worshipped one God rather than another. When I changed my religion they called me a renegade because I no longer wanted to use the priest my father used. When I was a boy they taught me manners; but manners are nothing but lying, pretending not to know something that someone doesn’t want us to know, smiling at persons whom we should like to spit at, saying, “Thank you” when we should like to say, “Go to hell.” A few years later I rebelled against manners and made a display of the pleasures of sincerity, but later I realized that sincerity did me nothing but harm, so I reverted to lying. So I might just as well have followed the original teaching from the outset. First they told me that vox populi, public opinion, was right. In certain circumstances that closely concerned me I made enquiries for myself and discovered that public opinion was wrong. But since then I have gone into the matter more deeply and have been forced to admit that public opinion was right, after all. When everyone says that X is a thief and Y is a tart, you don’t believe it. For a year or two you swear that both are the soul of honor and purity, but when you’ve known them for three years you realize that there’s a great deal of dishonesty in him and a great deal of whorishness in her, so you might just as well have accepted vox populi at the outset. When I was twenty they told me to swear loyalty to the King, a person who acts in that capacity because his father and grandfather did the same before him. I took the oath because they forced me to, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. Then they sent me to kill people I didn’t know who were dressed rather like I was. One day they said to me: “Look, there’s one of your enemies, fire at him,” and I fired, but missed. But he fired and wounded me. I don’t know why they said it was a glorious wound.
Meanwhile the cinema program continued. The various items were followed by intervals, and Tito stayed in his seat, letting his mind wander. He had used up all the cocaine in the box. An attendant came and told him he had seen the whole program three times and asked him to leave.
In the street his mind went on wandering in a very disconnected fashion. He told himself that he had now reached the age of twenty-eight, which is the tragic age for male lovers; you no longer have the vigor of a young lover and don’t yet have the money of an old one. If a woman loves you, he said to himself, she’s willing to make any sacrifice for you; when she has fallen out of love with you, she’s capable of anything to give vent to her malice, slandering and plotting and setting traps for you. He ridiculed ideals; behind the noblest aspirations lay the metallic clink of money. Old feelings that had disappeared revived in him. There was no such thing as love without jealousy; only women and pimps maintained the opposite. He considered original ways of committing suicide, such as plunging headlong from the gallery into the stalls at a theater. Women willing to give themselves to anyone refused the man who loved them on the day when they fell out of love with him. On the day they gave themselves to you they were making a great concession; but when you reproached them for giving themselves to another they insisted it was a trifle of no importance.
He went to cafés frequented by businessmen.
I’ve never understood how one can live by trade, that is, by selling for a hundred something that cost you ten (he said to himself). Whenever I’ve tried to sell anything, I sold for ten what cost me a hundred and fifty.
He decided that if he were born again he would be a vagrant or a beggar. Money was valuable only in so far as you could spend it. If you had to work, you had no time to spend what you earned. The thing to do was to be born rich or to rob. What did killing a man amount to? Five minutes was enough to plan, carry out, repent and forget the deed. Since it did not take more than thirty seconds, what did a painful deed (painful for the other party) amount to in comparison with the happiness of a lifetime?