ITALO CALVINO
229
Almost without realizing it, I find myself at the entrance to the
campus, still running, in jogging garb and running shoes, I did not go
by my house to change and pick up my books, now what do I do? I keep
on running across the campus, I meet some girls drifting over the lawn
in little groups, they are my students already on their way
to
my class,
they look at me with that ironic smile I cannot bear.
Still making running movements, I stop Lorna Clifford and I ask
her: "Is Stubbs here?"
The Clifford girl blinks. "Marjorie? She hasn't shown up for two
days .... Why?"
I have already run off. I leave the campus. I take Grosvenor
Avenue, then Cedar Street, then Maple Road. I am completely out :Jf
breath , I am running only because I cannot feel the ground beneath my
feet, or my lungs in my chest. Here is Hillside Drive. Eleven, fifteen,
twenty-seven, fifty-one; thank God the numbers go fast, skipping from
one decade
to
the next. Here is 115. The door is open, I climb the stairs,
I enter a room in semi-darkness. Tied on a sofa there is Marjorie,
gagged. I release her. She,vomits. She looks at me with contempt.
,
"You're a bastard," 'she says
to
me.
What story down there awaits its end?
Walking along the great Prospect of our city, I mentally erase the
elements I have decided not to take into consideration. I pass a Ministry
building, whose facade is laden with caryatids, columns, balustrades,
plinths, brackets, metopes; and I feel the need to reduce it to a smooth
vertical surface, a slab of opaque glass, a partition that defines space
without imposing itself on one's sight. But even simplified like this,
the building still oppresses me: I decide to do away with it completely;
in its place a milky sky rises over the bare ground. Similarly I erase five
more Ministries, three banks, and a couple of skyscraper-headquarters
of big companies. The world is so complicated, tangled, and over–
loaded that
to
see into it with any clarity you must prune and prune.
In
the bustle of the Prospect I keep meeting people the sight of
whom, for various reasons , is unpleasant to me: my superiors, because
they remind me of my inferior position; my inferiors, because I hate to
feel possessed of an authority I consider petty, as petty as the envy,
servility, and bitterness it inspires. I erase both categories, without any
hesitation; out of the corner of my eye, I see them shrink and vanish in
a faint wisp of fog.
