Humans, rather than simply mate and be done with it like other animals, make a huge drama of so-called love. They suffer and sigh, they get all sentimental, become inebriated in a sea of noble aspirations, make crazy promises. We’re not yet at that stage here, however, for right now our young microbiologist is merely lost in contemplation of moonmilk and the risks of climate change. In any case, she’s a novice; up to now, her love stories (I adhere to the formulation) have been limited to a single copulative contact, sometimes two or three and very rarely four or five. These trial sessions tend to establish that the male in question isn’t her type. The scores say it alclass="underline" two–zero, one–zero, three–zero. Forever zero, home game or away. Undiscouraged, she fishes out, more often now online, still another individual with XY chromosomes, but things won’t go well there either: one–zero, three–zero, two–zero. And no particular empathy.
It’s been like this since she was fourteen, when in order to have sex she had to sneak out of her fundamentalist boarding school like a cat in heat. Even to her the thing is starting to seem a bit peculiar, but she’s not disheartened, she’s an optimist, a real Sagittarius (in case you were wondering whether I have anything against the zodiac—I don’t). People who know her consider her a free spirit, but freedom has little to do with it: she’s looking for the right person, and so far she hasn’t nailed it. But she’s convinced that sooner or later she’ll succeed; it’s like those scientific breakthroughs that take years to mature but then turn out to be genuine revolutions.
The Alpine Brown’s rectum is narrower and shorter than that of larger breeds, and she has to squeeze her fist tight when she approaches the stretch next to the cervix. The vagina, too, is smaller and shorter. She likes Alpine Browns because they remind her of undemanding people, people who don’t put on airs, but also because their contained dimensions are heaven-sent (sic) for her hands and arm. While she’s more at ease in the job than usual, there are annoying gasps and sighs coming from the nearby hominid, whose shoulders seem to be held up by an invisible coat hanger. It’s obvious her moves don’t convince him; he thinks she’s too limp-wristed, too indecisive. She wouldn’t mind telling him that an arm in the ass is an arm in the ass; cows are God’s creatures too.
The dairyman huffs and puffs, he moves his legs up and down like a bear tied to a stake, he wishes she would hurry up. She’s watched men do this, she’d like to say—they just want to get their right arm to the uterus and plunge the syringe as fast as possible. It’s that same haste you find during sex with them, and the reason she doesn’t get to orgasm. She’s not wasting time, just avoiding brusque movements, getting the animal to relax. She doesn’t force them.[13]
Removing the dark blue overalls (same color as her eyes), the tall one is thinking that maybe the farmers in some of these tribal areas would benefit from genetic improvement along with their cows. Yes, it would surely be best to begin with them. This fellow could be enhanced with a genotype that promoted an intelligent gaze, good posture and a clear voice (not this grunting like a walrus with a cigarette stuck in the corner of its mouth). Certainly, a physical specimen more in tune with the times.
THE POETRY OF MATHEMATICS
The bespectacled geneticist, all bones and pointy asymmetric angles above and maybe a little too plump below, is convinced that science can explain everything. How the universe was formed, where it’s going from here, the meaning of everything that happens. In her mind, there is just one true explanation, one single transcendent entity, and that is the Theory of Evolution. She believes that one day very soon science will reveal how life itself came forth. Peering into her test tubes with those far-apart bird eyes, she dreams she sees the first spark of the reenactment. You’d think it was some heirloom recipe: one good solid or gaseous ingredient, a defined sequence of chemical reactions, and poof, there you have it, a living being.
She’s not the only one, heaven knows. As time goes by human beings grow more and more inebriated by what they think is their unique talent: their so-called reason. They don’t see that whether it’s rational or irrational, cerebral activity is always faulty and misleading. Reasoning, by definition, gradually homes in on one particular aspect, revealing, in that foolish arbitrary focus, how fallacious and worthless it is. While the only truth is All, the whole, that is to say, God, the undersigned. And so-called reason is only an illusion—slightly less fickle perhaps but still utterly fanciful—of unreason, of the hardwired need human beings have to believe in something. But this they cannot know because they are unable to think about thought (human language makes it impossible to say that better).
Humans throw themselves into their tiny scientific breakthroughs to distract themselves from their finite condition, the way elderly women sew cross-stitch patterns on table linen to keep the aches and the pains and the approaching end at bay. And yes, they have achieved some modest results: for example, they can photograph bacteria, exchange kidneys, fly from one part of the planet to another, even if painfully slowly (the vapor trails their vehicles leave in the sky remind me of snail slime). But in order to arrive at those tiny conquests, they have wrought devastation everywhere, and put their future in question. And at every step of their so-called progress they conceal the consequences, the looming catastrophe.
It was obvious to me from the days when they began to employ their rudimentary telescopes and their Torricelli tubes that, just as the investigators of the Inquisition had perfectly understood, the aim of these scientists (their term) was to compete with me. So that one day they could take my place. If however these wise guys considered that a nuclear-powered rocket would take thousands of human lifetimes to cross a small-to-medium-size galaxy—not to mention clusters of galaxies—and that the temperature inside the most peaceable of stars is a couple million degrees above that of the water in which they boil their pasta, the pressure several million times greater than the cooker they use for artichokes, not to mention the fact that Andromeda is heading straight toward them at a speed of 430,000 miles per hour, well, they might be less cocky. Instead they’re convinced they are advancing by leaps and bounds, that the future holds amazing promise.
And yet, and yet. I must confess that scientific discoveries have always intrigued me. Does that seem strange? Well, I never claimed to be consistent. I enjoy watching matter and organisms be ground up and digested by human intelligence (however limited), seeing complex phenomena reduced to austere algebraic formulae, to gelid equations. As you can probably imagine, the various scientific disciplines with their high-sounding names offer me no novel discoveries—given that everything was created by me with my own hands, I’d be tempted to say if I didn’t mind sounding bombastic. I know full well what they are and what they contain, but still, I find them amusing. Paradoxically, I find that scientific laws, so awkward and insistently insecure, almost always have a graceful side. But above all it’s the enigmatic poetry of mathematics (which for me is just a vague approximation, a baby’s confused babbling) that I like.
13
Human beings are adept at finding ways to soothe their consciences, and especially the human beings of that down-at-the-heel boot known as Italy. Italian thieves believe they are the most honest of criminals, the assassins fancy themselves highly altruistic; everyone has a system to balance his or her personal accounts. We’ll see whether that same indulgence is applied in the court of Last Judgment.