Pancuervo! Pancuervo! he started screaming one day. Frau rushed to his study: he seemed to be dozing in his chair, a branch from the cherry tree was coming through the open window beside him. It was the end of May, the cherries were bright red, he leaped to his feet and screamed out the window, at the fields, Pancuervo! Frau stood very still, petrified, he stepped onto the sunny terrace, raced down the stone steps, and started dancing round the cherry tree, grasping the trunk now and then, tugging, as if he wanted to pull the tree up by the roots, kicking his legs high like a wild man of the forest, screaming, cherry pink and apple blossom white!.. Frau had followed behind him and stood there, terrified, while he danced crazily and sang these strange words, and she thought he was having some kind of fit, poor Frau, she was petrified, stood absolutely still, even when he raced off to the fields, still screaming, Pancuervooo! Pancuervooo!.. It wasn’t some kind of fit, it was that he understood, he suddenly understood, a flash of lightning come too late, that it all began in Pancuervo many years before, that there, at the end of the line from his boy exploding, sat Pancuervo, that’s where he had to look, Pancuervo … But did Pancuervo really exist?… The train pulled in, then pulled away, but he hadn’t climbed on board, he’d stayed put in a remote little station in Castile, staring off at the rolling hills, barren and strange, hills like white elephants.
… I was just drowsing a little and something popped into my head … why are you doing all this? I mean, you put up with my rotten moods, and everything else … in my opinion you’re a tricky devil, no offense, and maybe you don’t even realize it … well … you’re awfully patient … so that phrase popped into my head, tricky devil … don’t be offended, I’m a jerk, no, I’m a jailed jerk, blame it on this gangrene that’s eating me alive, I think it’s got my balls by now, do me a favor, get me that menthol talcum powder on the dresser … sorry to be so intimate, but I’ve been telling you such private things, we’re pretty close at this point … I notice you come rushing in at the ring-a-ling of my bell, no matter what time it is, even if it’s just to hear me say something mean to you, like right now … So, I guess Tristano’s life really must matter to you, huh?
The Abderites insisted that Tristano was raving mad, and I told you he was crazy, too, but the truth is, he just arrived too early … early arrivals always seem crazy, they’re fated to be Cassandras, they might just be little nothing Cassandras, but nothing Creons are still scared of them, that’s why they invented asylums, places to stuff those harmless Cassandras, while the dangerous people are on the outside, and they’re the ones in charge … You know what’s going to happen, writer?… I’ll tell you what Tristano thought after he figured out pippopippi’s true nature, because now it’s all coming to pass … pippopippi, with the solemn goal of obliterating from the mind any thought that might be harmful to him, to pippopippi, will slowly expunge all images carrying even the slightest trace of thought from all his glass boxes, until you’re all completely weaned, and anything with any sign of meaning will have completely disappeared, because the image itself, even the most paltry, wretched, repulsive image — like the ones they dish up to you every night — can lead to a thought, and thoughts are dangerous … and so you all will simply stare at the light, at the trembling electric lines, the crackling dots of light, where you’ll lose your thoughts, and the shipwreck will be sweet for you in that shimmering … a modern nirvana? maybe the fateful mu, finally attained, that Buddhism speaks of. That’s what awaits you tomorrow, writer, because after all, as Scarlett said, tomorrow is another day, I can see you all there, at night, gathered in your carpeted caves, fixated on your electric fire, all of you together murmuring muuuu … and on the hearth I lay my war cross, that piece of junk, because he shall be the lord your god, and you shall have no other gods before him … not that the electric fires in other countries will be so different from yours, to each according to his due … I say your country because mine’s almost gone … I’m already more there than here, my feet practically swinging in the air, I’m stateless, I don’t belong to anyone, my passport’s useless for the customs I have to get through, and there’s no one who can grab hold of my feet and pull me down from the orange tree, like Tristano did for his Daphne, that I can assure you.