After that hesitation which Tomatis, oblivious, does not perceive, and which Leto attributes, with some reason, to the Mathematician’s anticipated exhaustion, having already given many recitations, the Mathematician begins, monotonously, to list the cities: Avignon, a murderous heat; Barcelona, the quintessence of the Rosarian soul; Copenhagen, they seemed more proud of Andersen than of Kierkegaard; Naples, felt just like the Abasto Market; Brussels, for The Census at Bethlehem; Fribourg, the Herr Professor must have been on leave; Rome, he imagined it differently; Nantes, a half-meteorological term. Because Tomatis does not seem to be listening, is occupied, severely, in taking the last drag from his cigarette then throwing it to the sidewalk, the Mathematician interrupts himself, but an irritated and somewhat surprised look from Tomatis impels him to continue: Rennes, the streets emptied at seven; Athens, Pergamino plus the Parthenon; Lisbon, you could almost see Entre Ríos from the Plaza of Commerce; Warsaw, there was nothing left; Oxford, a bunch of snobs. Brief, successive, polished and simplified by a fickle memory, the images the Mathematician’s words bring out, to the bright morning air, seem to ricochet against Tomatis’s disheveled and beard-darkened countenance — Tomatis, no? pale and unshaven, his hair a mess, his shirt wrinkled and his pants full of stains, who, between Leto and the Mathematician, not only because of his position on the sidewalk but also his height and even his age, has assumed, without looking anywhere in particular but with his head slightly raised toward the Mathematician, such a still posture that the quick and somewhat nervous shudder of his eyelids, to shield them from the sun, looks like an autonomous faculty, a little strange and disconnected from the rest of his body — Tomatis, I was saying, no? — seized, to put it one way, since he woke up, by a menace, the nameless, that will grip him all day, maybe all week, in a darkened zone; and while he listens to the Mathematician talk he thinks: if I’m going to. . and the whole universe is going to. . sooner or later is going. . is going. . while the Mathematician, without breaking his surveillance of Tomatis’s ragged expression or the persistent recitation of his thoughts on Europe, thinks: At least now he’s not pretending to listen. And Leto: From this version, longer and more ironic, you can tell he admires him more.
Ultimately, every thing, more or less, no? — and after all, what’s the difference. They visited, the Mathematician concludes, several important scientific centers. Scientific? Tomatis interrupts, bitterly shaking his head and fixing his stare on the Mathematician’s clear and now contented eyes, where Tomatis’s subtle rage, more genuine than his lighthearted chattiness, seems to produce considerable satisfaction. Scientific? Tomatis repeats, practically shouting. And then, in the same voice, Pushers on the police payroll more like it, pretending to understand what they call reality because they are so sure that what they’ve decided, without consulting anyone, are plants need to process something they’ve arbitrarily called photosynthesis in order to do that thing they call growing.
— In a certain sense, I don’t disagree, says the Mathematician, unfazed, not ignoring that, in some sense, his engineering studies and maybe his whole person are included in Tomatis’s description. And pulling from his pocket a paper folded in fourths, he adds, While we’re at it, would it be awkward for you to get the Association’s press release into the hands of your colleague correspondent? Thanks.
With the same conviction and goodwill he might demonstrate in receiving a rattlesnake, Tomatis grabs the folded sheet the Mathematician holds out. With pleasure, he says, looking away. If an engineer wrote this, the structure will need to be checked.
He starts laughing. Leto and the Mathematician laugh. This time, Tomatis’s laughter seems sincere, spontaneous, as though, overpowering the depression, not being a coarse engineer who lacks elegance of expression were enough, in the curious machinations taking place inside him, to force the menace, for some unknown reason, to withdraw temporarily. His entire self is clarified by the laughter — the laughter, no? — that sudden euphoria that comes to the face, accompanied by bodily shivers and internal flashes, abstract and present, it’s impossible to tell why some images and not others release that instantaneous and brilliant cascade that’s let loose for a few moments by the coincidence of things. Letting himself be carried along by the good mood, Tomatis pulls from his own pocket a sheet folded in fourths, almost identical to the one the Mathematician just gave him.
— This morning I wrote a press release too, he says, and, without further clarification, starts reading what is written on the page: In another man devoured / my own death I don’t see / but plagued by geometric flowers / I waste away the hours / and now they keep vigil for me. The Mathematician, who had half closed his eyes and assumed an expression of pleasure in anticipation of the reading, no doubt to demonstrate — and no doubt because of Leto’s presence — that he has already enjoyed the privilege of a private reading of Tomatis’s poems many times before, the Mathematician, when Tomatis finishes his slow and slightly pitched but altogether monotone reading, turns toward Leto, interrogating him with ecstatic eyes. And Tomatis, falling, as they say, silent, turns to look, with deliberate indifference, at the bright sidewalk, the blue sky, the cars, the people passing on the street. Brilliant, the Mathematician hastens to say. And then Leto, after hesitating, Could you read it again? I missed part of it.
A faint shadow passes, quickly, over Tomatis’s face. Without ever having thought about it, he knows that a request for a rereading is a veiled way of indicating that the effect the reader aimed for has not reached the listener, and that the listener, Leto, that is, no? to avoid praising what hasn’t affected him, uses the request for a rereading as a way to put off commenting, in order to prepare, during the rereading, a formulaic response that will satisfy Tomatis. But in truth Leto was not listening: during the reading, loose, disordered memories, practically without images or content, had plucked him from the October morning, pulling him back several months, to the time when, owing to Lopecito’s diligence and as a result of Isabel’s compulsion to escape, they had moved to the city. Leto senses, when Tomatis starts reading the poem a second time, his slight humiliation at the unjust judgment, and he senses, above all, while he puts on a much more attentive expression than his natural attention would call for, the gaze fixed on his face, from just above his head, by the Mathematician, who seems to have assumed, in solidarity with Tomatis, severe authority over the aesthetic effect that, peremptorily, the reading should have on him, authority that of course produces the opposite effect, as his excessive pressure on Leto becomes an element of distraction. Tomatis’s slow, pitched, monotone voice, slightly different from his natural voice, lays out the syllables, the words, the verses of the poem, constructing, with his artificial intonation, a sonorous fragment of paradoxical quality, as they say, no? belonging and at the same time not belonging to the physical universe — that’s it, physical, no? — which is, also, another name for that thing, the undulating material magma, so outwardly expansive, less apt to ritual than to drift, though the dreamy animal passing briefly through, suspect of his existence, insists on shipwrecking himself against it with blind, classificatory assaults. Austere or lapidary, Tomatis’s voice declaims: In another man devoured / my own death I don’t see / but plagued by geometric flowers / I waste away the hours / and now they keep vigil for me.