ALBERTO MORAVIA
407
did not reveal the body of the dancer who, as a result, seemed almost
not to exist at all; and the clusters of shells rose, letting you glimpse
the smooth black features of the face, with only the nose outlined
under the silk of the stocking, like certain Negro statues which are
otherwise stylized. Perhaps, at first glance, the masked dancer hadn't
seemed terrifying; and yet after a while, he became almost unbearable
to look at. Yet his intention was not to produce fear in the spectator–
he "was" fear. The weakness of the terrified human being was expressed,
by the Africans, through the body in the form of straw; the face, closed
in the stocking and covered with shells like an underwater rock,
alluded
to
man's incapacity to emerge with his face freed from a
prolific and overwhelming prehistoric nature. Then, above the field,
almost grazing the roofs of the huts that surrounded it, an enormous
airplane flew over with a deafening roar. But the spectators didn't
turn around, they didn't raise their eyes to the sky: all their attention
was fixed on the masked dancer who personified fear.
San'a, February
The airplane descends, swaying over a wide pale green plain
surrounded by steep brown mountains to the far horizons.
It
is the
plateau glittering with sunlighl on which, at two thousand meters, rises
San'a, the capital of Yemen. Down there, very far away, crushed to
the ground by the blue sky, you see the walls of the city, a rose–
colored brown that suggests the color of turtle doves, with cylindrical
towers set in rows at regular intervals. Between those walls and myself
stretches a surface so flat that even the stones there project a shadow.
The camels, tall and hunch-backed standing here and there on the
plain, look like immobile chess pieces on a board.
Now the plane has come to a stop in front of a yellow cabin;
under a shed in the sun, a crowd of bystanders watch two soldiers
who, bending down, weigh the passengers' luggage on a dusty market
scale. The brown hands with fine fingers make the weights run along
the steel bar; a few kilos are added or subtracted; a scribe, squatting
on the ground, rapidly covers a sheet of paper with fluttering signs.
The two soldiers, having finished the weighing, get up and look at us.
They are small and thin with narrow ankles and wrists, dark thin
bearded faces. They both wear a black turban, a black jacket, a newly
washed shirt, a white sash and a striped skirt tight at the hips and
around the legs. Two polished metal cartridge belts cross over their
chests: from the sash, at the height of the navel, projects the handle
of a short scimitar; in its scabbard a smaller straight dagger is also
