By now her movements are automatic. She slides the products by the barcode reader in one continuous motion, but not too fast: she must look efficient but not exhaust herself before the eight hours are up. She knows the supervisor with the belly that makes him look pregnant is watching her from his elevated booth; he picked her out as snooty right away, reading the puzzled looks of a nearsighted mathematician as contempt. She can’t see him through the reflections on the glass, but he is staring at particular sections of her body with his lewd watery cow’s eyes. I can’t help it if all her bosses lust after her and bother her the way a satyr bothers a wood nymph; I merely report the situation. In theory, there are supposed to be persons of both sexes at the registers, but in fact the ones working there are all female and all have ample backsides and thighs. Those are the tastes of Cerberus the Expectant.
MAN’S EXISTENCE
I never really understood how tragic (wo)man’s existence is until I saw it up close. Humans are constantly at the mercy of all sorts of illnesses, accidents, and environmental catastrophes; from one minute to the next their situation can go from tolerable to utterly untenable. The only thing for certain is that they must die, usually in dreadful pain: not a very cheering certainty. In such conditions, it’s pointless for them to make plans for the future, but they keep on making them anyway, they never give up.
Once I considered them awful whiners, chronic depressives, inveterate grudge-holders. Now I think I understand them, somewhat. It can’t be pleasant to be hungry, terribly hungry, and then when you do find something to eat, you get a stomachache because you ate too much. To be cold, terribly cold, and dream of being in a warm place, then a split second later find you’re dying of the heat and longing for it to be cool. To desire a partner and suffer atrocious heartache because the other’s keeping you at arm’s length, then to realize that you’re bored to death with that person and tempted to commit murder. To observe the relentless furrowing of your own skin, the deterioration of your vital organs, and know that your brain, too, is beginning to fail.
Humans, incapable of being happy, spend their entire existence fantasizing they will be happy in the future. Five minutes later, half an hour later, that afternoon, next year, ten years hence, all the hitches and the problems will vanish, the desired state will materialize out of nothing and as if by magic everything will be easy, jolly. Unlike the other animals they are born premature, and no matter how hard they try they can never catch up; something about them always remains infantile, unfinished.[39] They try to make up for this by telling a million stories, twisting the facts, philosophizing, drowning in their own words. All vain efforts; unhappy they are, unhappy they remain.
Maybe I should have inverted the life cycle, putting death at the beginning of their existence and birth at the end. It might be a relief to them to be done with the perishing—out with the tooth, out with the pain—and have the icing on the cake ahead of them: a peaceful, delightful childhood. Maybe that way their condition would seem more acceptable, and they’d be happier. The intolerable stages of maturity and senescence finished, they would slip into a pleasant unconsciousness, running around, playing and screaming like children. And then they’d re-enter their mothers’ wombs without suffering and without regret, the way you park a car in the garage at night, to enjoy life’s one period of genuine tranquility and fusion with the universe. Eight to nine months and they’d be back to the embryonic stage, then just a rowdy spermatozoon or an ovum, and then nothing.
THE CARROTS AND THE HOE
It’s only 6 p.m. and she’d give anything to be able to escape right now, or even just lock herself in the bathroom. What heaven it would be to sit on the toilet and smoke a cigarette; it’s forbidden, but she’s been doing it anyway. Today, between one shopper and another, she hasn’t even had time to take a deep breath. What’s worse, she thinks the stink of the supermarket, the gorgonzola and the hair spray and all that, must have permeated her bronchial tubes, her flesh, and her skin. Every time she looks at the clock next to the pregnant ogre’s booth, she finds only a minute has passed, or at the best, two. Time stands still in this quagmire she’s fallen into.
When she’s finished she heads for the wee one’s house, although she’s a wreck and wouldn’t mind going straight home. But they said they’d meet. The one-bedroom/zoo is in turmoil; Aphra seems very pleased to see her but every few seconds her phone rings anew and she’s going on about banners, frontiers to cross, the van they’ll be traveling in and possible police roadblocks. The cockatoo and the other animals seem worried. Is she about to get into some kind of trouble again? When she was in prison before, the household had descended into chaos. As if replying to their concerns, she explains she’s taking off for a little town in eastern Europe where they plan to mow down a field of genetically modified corn and dump it in the town square. And then they’ll liberate 2,000 pigs from a giant pen where they’re given only genetically modified feed. She’s leaving early tomorrow morning.
While she boils water to make tea, she speaks of Vittorio. Smiling as always, her big eyes slightly droopy, she tells Daphne that he’s had some awesome freakin’ luck (I merely report what she said); as things turned out he’s now doing exactly what he wanted to and making a shitload of money. She’s really happy for him, she says, her cheeks trembling. Really happy, she says again, rubbing her eyes. She begins to cry. Her face crumples up like a baby, and her sobs are accompanied by high-pitched throaty yelps. The phone rings again but she doesn’t answer. Maybe she doesn’t even hear it. Daphne wraps a long arm around her shoulder, she too quite teary. She’s crying, you understand, also and maybe primarily on her own behalf, as humans always do.
Truth is, Aphra’s happy that Vittorio is ten thousand miles away, she tells Daphne when she’s calmed down a bit and is stroking the other’s back. Although she’s in the dumps right now. The cockatoo is back on her shoulder; he seems to want to be sure to hear what she’s saying. It was the last thing she’d expected,[40] she goes on, patting her long Bambi eyelashes dry. Then she cries some more, but smiling to show her impish teeth. The telephone rings again and this time she answers. Cocò, the prying white cockatoo, takes off and lands on the refrigerator, his high-strung head-wagging a signal the tragedy is over.
What we could do is rent some land, the two of us, she pipes up. A house to live in and a nice piece of land to cultivate, she adds, patting the fox cub with the injured leg that’s climbed onto her lap. (Cocò is observing them suspiciously from atop the fridge.) Daphne freezes, her teacup at half-mast. She has always detested rural silence, broken only by the chickens clucking and the hum of the neighbor’s tractor, rows of crops as far as the eye can see. What a great idea, says her mouth, however. And now that she’s said it, she really does think she’d like to live out in the country with her friend, indeed it seems to be the only way to rid herself of the supermarket. She feels tremendously relieved, thinking of it.
39
They even project this shortcoming of theirs on yours truly; it’s just impossible to have a mature relationship with them.
40
If I may, her reaction is just one more example of the utter inconsistency of human beings. They want something, and when they get it, they complain.