Daphne stares at the enigmatic layers of dirt on the floor, not seeing them. Just you wait, you’ll be able to stick with your microbes, you’re so good, says the beatnik. Finally she begins to cry, the way she cries, silently and without moving a muscle. She cries for a long time, and drinks the beer directly from the bottle, and cries. When she’s done she drinks another. He hands it off to her as you do to a bike racer, and she takes it without thanks. Now another beer, still weeping in silence. Then, without being aware of it, she stretches out and falls asleep. Her “father,” as he styles himself, covers her with the throw he uses for his transcendental meditation and switches off the light.
ALONE FOR A NIGHT
Last night (as they say) while I was struggling to get to sleep (same) I thought to myself: if I were ever to try incarnation, I certainly wouldn’t imitate my self-proclaimed offspring. I wouldn’t go around proselytizing barefoot, or pronouncing shamanic catchphrases, as often as not false, or perform miracles. No, the appeal—I started to say the thrill—would lie in a radical transformation. No more bottomless profundity, no definitive word on things, I’d immerse myself in the partial and the finite. Do normal things: squeeze onto the bus at rush hour, shop in shopping centers mobbed with people, watch a TV series sprawled on a sofa. I’d sample the whole palette of human sensations: walk on an empty beach in flip-flops, hurtle down a steep slope on skis, smoke a cigarette, try a fabled Siberian sauna, board an airplane. It would be an incarnation if not quite incognito, then private; no trumpets, no outrageous scenes, just the dignity and composure that befit me.
The incarnation might be set in a palm grove adrift on a magnificent, transparent sea (so it looks from above, at any rate), or in a tidy Alpine village, or a bustling eastern metropolis. I’d have an embarras du choix, like the well-heeled tourist paging through the glossy brochures in a travel agency. And no one would prevent me from whisking myself off, free of any jet lag, should I change my mind. But I bet I’d end up settling in that ugly urban periphery that fades into the gloomy, foggy plain with its industrial fumes, its miasma of effluvia from pig- and bovine-rearing. Where Daphne lives. Those broad avenues measured out in humdrum tram stops, the resigned immigrants, the wastepaper whipped into the air by the wind: a desolate, depressing wilderness lying fallow until the real estate speculators—should the recession lift—begin building again.
And if I do decide to go for incarnation, I suppose I might as well go for fit and good-looking, rather than old. I don’t mean “pretty boy”—God save us from bodybuilders—but not a monster either. A young fellow with all his hair, a pleasing and trustworthy face, a well-turned body, and the toned and well-proportioned reproductive apparatus of a Greek statue.[35] I wouldn’t mind eyeglasses; I’ve always found them alluring. Of course there’s no reason I couldn’t be a girl, although maybe I’d feel a bit (I worry here about being accused of sexist bigotry) like a transvestite.
If I wished, I could be incarnated as a billionaire rolling in luxury and privilege; the effort (effort?) involved would be the same. But the truth is, I would rather be incarnated as a very normal person. I’ve never liked rich people; ninety-nine times out of a hundred they consider themselves superior to the rest simply because they possess a few more things, and they expect the world to worship at their feet. On this point I’m in agreement with my son, although some of his extreme positions leave me puzzled, to say the least.[36]
Once I appeared in man form, I wonder what my very first action, my baptism, if you will, would be. Would I down an espresso standing at the bar, studying the other customers over the rim of the cup? Take an elevator? How would I behave with Daphne, supposing I were to run across her? Would I dare to speak of my feelings, if they are feelings? And if she gave me the brush-off, what would I do—I who am accustomed to always getting whatever I want? Who can guarantee (I’m now trying to look at this from the human angle) that she wouldn’t mistreat me like she does the silent chemist, as women so often do? How would I deal with being reduced to hopeless yearning, losing my appetite, becoming a wreck? Wouldn’t I take it pretty badly?
The most disturbing (put it that way) thing is to recognize that in some ways I might like it, being in despair. Looking down from the top of a skyscraper, one can feel drawn to the abyss below. I mean just for a moment, just enough to understand what it means to feel a hard lump in your throat, a weight on your chest, eyes smarting. To have no future ahead, only a desert of unhappiness.
HIDDEN SECURITY CAMS
As she takes the stairs of the Stock Breeders’ Association three at a time, Daphne decides she’ll profit from this unexpected convocation to ask the president for the go-ahead to do more inseminations, not that she’s in favor of the procedure any more now than she was before—if anything, the more she thinks about it, she’s opposed—but it’s better than nothing when you need work. Striding up to the desk of the secretary who reminds her of Cleopatra, she sees the woman staring at her outfit as if the punk look annoys her even more than usual. There’s a gleam of triumph in her eye, too, a joy greedy for warm blood, then her glance is rerouted to the tumid cactus next to the photograph of her family.
Daphne shrugs this off with a horsey shake of her long neck and enters the presidential office. The man, stout with tiny round eyes, usually beams her one of those crude testosteronic smiles he aims at all young women whether pretty or not, lust pretending to be amiable good humor. Today, though, he welcomes her chin up, his bull’s head tilted to one side, arms crossed, barricaded behind his desk. Before addressing a word to her, he searches for something on the computer. But he can’t find it. He snorts; he’s like a bull waiting for the bullfight to begin, she thinks. Bulls have trouble distinguishing real cows from imitations; imagine how they do with computers. And his fingers are too fat; he needs a large keyboard like on those children’s games.
Finally the president nods, that head of his grafted to a bull’s neck bobs up and down. He’s found what he was looking for. A few seconds of private jubilation and then he turns the flat screen toward her, making a ladies and gentlemen, may I present semicircle with his arm that could be mistaken for humor but ends in a violent jerk. On the screen, a blue and white video from a security camera, showing an empty, darkish corridor, no one present. For quite a while absolutely nothing happens apart from the quivering of the poor-quality image. There’s only the corridor, and that queasy, empty feeling of nothing happening (redundant phrase meant to make the account more gripping). Then a door opens, slowly, and she steps out. It would be difficult to mistake her; she’s wearing the leather jacket she has on right now under her worker’s overalls, and her motorcycle boots are identical, not to mention the unmistakable sideways braidlets. She strides out confidently and enters another door at the opposite corner of the image. A few moments later she reappears with a crucifix in hand, holding it tightly in her fist like a hatchet. Now standing before the door she first came out of, she places the object in her rucksack, the same that’s now sitting at her feet. Like a fisherman carefully depositing the fish he’s just fished. Then she disappears, and the door closes behind her.
Without any interruption, another video begins playing. We see a hall with many rows of chairs and a pulpit supplied with a microphone at the far end. An oblique light enters through picture windows on one side, as if it were a summer evening. Or an August afternoon. Daphne remembers everything. It was the Catholic summer camp next to the huge, newly renovated stable that belongs to the Curia, not far from the lakeshore with those monumental musty old villas. She had just finished work and had thought, while I’m here, how about a spot of hunting? And just then she appears, looking behind her as if she’s heard something. At the back of the pulpit, she reaches up for the crucifix on the wall above. But it’s too high up; even on tiptoe and stretching to the max, she can’t reach it. Now she goes to get a chair and stands on it, detaching my so-called son from the wall and, without getting down from the chair, she studies the figure up close. Suddenly she dashes it to the floor, furious.
35
Physical appearance has always had an exaggerated importance for the humans, according to them for reasons linked to so-called “evolution.” By choosing attractive mates the women hope to produce strapping young offspring. The men are likewise convinced that a pleasing appearance will guarantee against disease and frailty. It’s difficult to see why, now that they’ve cleverly found ways around mere evolution, good looks should count even more.
36
I sometimes think that if he were to come back in these times when money has become sacred, he would be a terrorist. No more turning the other cheek to receive a fresh kick in the backside.