ITALO CALVINO
225
because all around me there are only inert objects, including the
telephone, a space that apparently cannot contain anything but me,
isolated in my interior time, and then there is the interruption of the
continuity of time, the sp"ace is no longer what it was before because it
is occupied by the ring, and my presence is no longer what it was before
because it is conditioned by the will of this object that is calling. The
book would have to begin by conveying all this not only immediately
but as a diffusion through space and time of these rings that lacerate
the continuity of space and time and will.
Perhaps the mistake lies in establishing that at the beginning I and
a telephone are in a finite space such as my house would be, whereas
what I must communicate is my situation with regard to numerous
telephones that ring, telephones that perhaps are not calling me, have
no relation to me, but the mere fact that I can
be
called to a telephone
suffices to make it possible or at least conceivable that I may be called
by all telephones. For example when the telephone rings in a house
near mine, for a moment I wonder if it is ringing in my house, a
suspicion that immediately proves unfounded but which still leaves a
wake since it is possible that the call might really be for me and
through a wrong number or crossed wires it has gone to my neighbor,
and this is all the more possible since in that house
th~re
is nobody to
answer and the telephone keeps ringing, and then in the irrational
logic that ringing never fails
to
provoke in me, I think: perhaps it is
indeed for me, perhaps my neighbor is at home but does not answer
because he knows, perhaps also the person calling knows he is calling a
wrong number but does so deliberately to keep me in this state,
knowing I cannot answer but know that I should answer.
Or else the anxiety when I have just left the house and I hear a
telephone ringing which could
be
in my house or in another apartment
and I rush back, I arrive breathless having run up the stairs and the
telephone falls silent and I will never know if the call was for me.
Or else also when I am out in the streets, and I hear telephones
ring in strange houses; even when I am in strange cities, in cities where
my presence is unknown
to
anyone, even then, hearing a ring, my
first thought every time for a fraction of a second is that the telephone
is calling me, and in the following fraction of a second there is the
relief of knowing myself excluded for the moment from every call,
unattainable, safe, but this relief also lasts a mere fraction of a second,
because immediately afterwards I think that it is not only that strange
telephone that is ringing; many kilometers away, hundreds, thousands
of kilometers, there is also the telephone in my house, which certainly
at that same moment is ringing repeatedly in the deserted rooms, and
