Leto observes that the Mathematician is walking with his eyes half closed and wearing a pensive smile that he attributes to some kind of rhythmic test he set for himself, or for Leto maybe, as if, concentrating, he was preparing to adapt himself to any change in rhythm, velocity or even trajectory that Leto, unexpectedly, might decide to employ. In any case, this is what Leto interprets in his expression, and accepting the challenge he imagines in the Mathematician’s face, he accelerates a little more, so unexpectedly that that Mathematician, whose modest person is trying to formulate an equation — valid forever, anywhere, in any language — to once and for all substitute the word reality with a more manageable tool for thought, reciprocates the acceleration without turning his head and, changing his stride, as though marching, adapts to Leto’s pace. Unfortunately, the ekstasis, more akin to animal pleasures than complex abstractions, vacates once again from the equation, and his whole body prepares for possible approaching changes, while above, inside his head, the fragile distinctions that as pure diversion he has been trying to sort through, are demolished by the muscular effort and silently fall apart.
Thanks to years of training on rugby fields, the Mathematician could easily, if he wanted, with a few vigorous strides, overtake Leto who, because of his shorter and less prepared legs, would need to supply extra effort to follow him, but, actually, he doesn’t want to, and he allows Leto to lead, forcing him into a contradictory effort intended to mitigate rather than impel the force of his stride, and so each of his steps is measured and careful — fruit, as they say, of a controlled energy that produces more aesthetic and, you could say, moral satisfaction in him than a continuous acceleration, taking him to the limit of his strength, would produce, in a race, for example, and after a few seconds he adapts so well to the effort, matching the imperceptible but constant increase in velocity that Leto adds to the walk, that the idea of an equation to stand, in any language, time, or place, for the word reality appears again obstinately but in the form of euphoric convictions or visions that follow one after another in the lucid part of his mind: It’s the visible plus the invisible. In every state. Me plus everything that’s not me. This street plus everything that’s not this street. Everything in all its states, thinks the Mathematician, somewhat self-exultant, and in order to see the street in a different state from the one he is seeing, he turns his head, without modulating the rhythm of his stride at all, and starts to look, over his left shoulder, at the street they have been leaving behind. Leto, tense and vigilant, observes all of these gestures out of what they call the corner of his eye, puts on a rigid grin when he perceives the head turn and, very slowly, as though it were something millimetric and ritual, copies the movement. The Mathematician, who likewise notices, waits a few seconds while they take two or three steps and, to take Leto by surprise and make him hesitate, continues, with the rest of his body, the turn he had just made with his head only, without interrupting his walk, so that now his whole body is facing the part of the street they have already traveled and the Mathematician continues as before, but walking backward. Leto carries out the same movement with a fraction of a second’s difference, satisfied by his quick adaptation to the Mathematician’s inexplicable whim. Upright and even more tense because of the unnaturalness of their movement, rhythmically and cautiously in reverse, they arrive, without realizing, at the intersection, underestimating the disturbance that their singular attitude is causing in the people passing them. Two or three have to step aside to avoid a collision. From the sidewalks, others look at them with surprise, with indignation, or with an incredulous and condescending smile. An old man stops and looks after them, shaking his head reprovingly. But they ignore them, less so out of insensitivity than because of the extreme concentration their walk demands, and most of all because, whether or not they think it in words, the straight street they are leaving behind is made of themselves, of their lives, is inconceivable without them, without their lives, and as they walk it forms along with the movement — it’s the empirical edge of the occurrence, ubiquitous and mobile, which they take with them wherever they go, the shape the world takes when it gives in to the finite, the street, morning, color, matter, and movement — all of that, let us be clear so it’s well understood, more or less, and if you like, while it’s always the Same, no? and in the Same always, as I was saying, but after all, and above all, what’s the difference!
The Last Seven Blocks
To be clear: the soul, as they call it, is not translucent, it seems, but murky. The motives compelling it to be carried away, on this block, by what they call play and elation, just as arbitrarily, and in a no less unforeseen way, submerge it — to use the expression once more — in an intense melancholy on the following block. Or so it seems, in any case, no?