Ten Tributes to Calvino (4 page)

“The reader, who is the main character near the end of this story.”

“It seems you are quite Calvinoesque already!”

He nodded gratefully but remained silent until we entered the woods. Then he craned his head upwards in surprise. “Who are all those men sitting in all those trees?”

“Viscounts,” I replied, “but they aren’t non-existent, so ignore them. It’s not far now but we aren’t there yet.”

How it happened I don’t know, but I clearly took a wrong turning and our destination remained elusive. The forest became darker and stranger and I couldn’t find my way back out. We were thoroughly lost. At last I stopped the car near a large hut.

“I’ll go in there and ask directions,” I said.

“I’ll come with you,” he answered.

We entered the hut together. It was a sort of hostel or refuge for walkers and climbers and it was full of people, but after only a few minutes I realised they were all writers who had hoped to change styles but ended up here instead. One Irish author told me that he wanted to explore Joycean territory and had gone looking for it on a very drunken horse.

“That was after an experience I had in the oddest restaurant in Dublin,” he added. “I wasn’t happy with the service and so ordered a new waiter. To my astonishment the old waiter came back with a tray and one of those big silver coverings I don’t know the name of. He lifted it to reveal a tiny man with impeccable manners and a napkin.”

“You got what you ordered,” I pointed out.

“Maybe. But a tiny man like that wasn’t much use to me, so I asked for another replacement. The tiny man had his own tray and silver covering which he lifted to reveal an even smaller waiter. I demanded yet another. The next one was truly minuscule and they kept getting smaller. I expect that sort of thing in Cork but not in Dublin. Finally I galloped away to safety.”

“A sensible precaution,” I observed very helpfully.

Then I saw that CCCP Snow was growing agitated. He didn’t like being around other writers, especially as they were all more interested in themselves than in him. He felt intimidated by a sailor who introduced himself as Captain Nothing and explained how he had sailed here down a narrow stream looking for Conradian themes. Another fellow had been hoping to tread ground already covered by Kafka. His failure in this regard wasn’t quite Kafkaesque enough to satisfy him.

Although I am a very helpful man, there is a limit to what I am prepared to do. I didn’t know where I was, so there was no way I could return my passenger to the market where I found him, much less drop him off in Calvinoesque territory. I am a very helpful man but I rarely keep my promises. Because I
am
so very helpful I tend to make promises I can’t keep. Let that be a helpful warning to you. Take my hand and shake it to prove my good faith.

Thanks. Now I have a firm grip on your hand I can pull you into this story. Too late to resist! Take my hat and coat as well. You look just like me and CCCP Snow will never notice the difference. While you deal with him, I’ll slip out and make my escape. He’s coming over now. Thanks again! Farewell.

“I dislike this place. I think it’s time to leave.”

“I’m not the man who drove you here. My name is
____
. I was innocently reading this story when I was dragged out of the real world and onto the page. I hate literary tricks like that.”

“Well I’m planning to use more of them in my next book. I’m moving away from social realism. What did you say your name was again?”

“It’s
____
. Actually my full name is
____  ____
.”

“Don’t you have a middle name?”

“If I do, it’s
____
. If I don’t, I can’t help you.”

“But you’re supposed to be a very helpful man.”

“You must be mixing me up with someone else.”

“Do you have any idea where we are?”

“This is just a guess but I think we’re on Happenstance, a planet that collided with the Earth so slowly they became stuck together without major catastrophe. Happenstance is where Christendom overlaps with Lackadaysia, the Three Utopias and Muffin Chops. All these facts I made up just now.”

“I thought you were a reader, not a writer!”

“Someday the name
____  ____
will occupy the highest pinnacles of Mount Literary Fame. Believe it!”

“Bah!”

I was long gone by the time that conversation was half done. I drove randomly for an hour, worried that I was going in circles, but then I spotted a tree without a figure sitting in it. At last I had wandered into Calvinoesque territory. From here I knew my way home. I waved at the empty tree as I passed.

I decided to return to work. I own a time machine shop. Being very helpful isn’t enough when there’s no help for it.

“Do you have any time machines in stock?”

“Past or future models sir?”

“I’ll take a future, if I may.”

“We’re still waiting for them to come in.”

“In that case I’ll have a past.”

“Sorry. We used to have them, but they’ve all gone!”

CURTAINS

The setting sun eventually became paranoid. “Why does everyone keep staring at me? They never scrutinise me in the middle of the day – only when I’m going to bed! I think I’ll draw the clouds tight from now on and get some privacy!”

WAITING FOR BREAKFAST

A boy sat on the beach with a toasting fork, holding it up to the sun. “You need to light a fire with driftwood,” the sun told him, “because I’m not hot enough to toast that slice of bread.”

“You will be when you turn into a Red Giant,” answered the boy.

The sun considered this and said:

“Yes, I’ll swell up and engulf the innermost planets and boil into steam the oceans of Earth, and any bread lying around will toast nicely, but that won’t happen for billions of years!”

The boy laughed and shook his head.

“Don’t you know that one day I’ll have children and entrust this task to them, and that they too will have children and do likewise, and so on until the necessary time has elapsed?”

The sun was amazed. “That
is
a long wait for breakfast!”

THE FABLE

“What are you doing in there?”

“Nothing, I assure you.”

But the sun wasn’t convinced. “Are you writing fables again? You’ll grow pale and unhealthy if you stay indoors all day; come out and bask in my beams instead. If you must continue writing, you can do it in the fresh air. There can’t be much to write about in a dark room anyway! I wonder what inspiration you find in gloom?”

“Sometimes,” I responded, “it’s easier to write about a subject when I force myself to avoid the real thing.”

“Ah, so the new fable is about your wife?”

I said nothing; I’m not married. But I looked down and to my surprise saw that my fable was finished: this one.

PASSING THE LIGHT

The moon reflects the light of the sun; and the frozen lake reflects the light of the moon; and the coin held between the thumb and forefinger of the assassin reflects the light of the frozen lake.

“If this is genuine, I’ll do what you ask,” he tells a hooded figure who stands in the shadows of the tallest tree.

Then he puts the coin between his teeth and bites it.

And on the other side of the world, the sun screams…

THE FREE SPIRIT

The sun has a large brood of planets and Earth is just one of its children and not even the favourite. “Saturn’s the one that makes me most proud and I wish the others would try equally hard to be so distinctive; I don’t mean by copying his rings but with some other original approach to the question. It’s not for me to specify what.”

An astronomer overheard this and said, “But Saturn isn’t really the most unique world in your family.”

“How are you able to understand my words? They should be inaudible to you; I have already set on your locality.”

“But I’m standing on a high mountain and although the land below me is blanketed with the shadows of twilight, up here you are still visible and will be for another minute at least.”

“Fair enough, but won’t you grow cold up there?”

The astronomer pulled on thick gloves and knotted a scarf around his neck. “I’m a professional and used to it. Every evening I wait here for you to go down, and then I enter my observatory.”

“Tell me why you disparage Saturn,” the sun demanded.

“Because it’s just as timid as the others: they all refuse to go off and make their own way in the universe. I left home when I was seventeen! And yet once, many aeons ago, you had a planet that took the brave step of leaving its orbit and going travelling; it wanted to establish itself as its own master in this difficult cosmos of ours!”

“Ah yes, I remember Scruffy, the old rogue! But he never came back, never kept in touch. Do you have news of him?”

“Last night my telescope found him. He is herding lost comets near Alpha Centauri and seems happy enough.”

THE SUN LAMP

Two merchants approached the sun and said, “We have something to sell you that we know you’ll find very useful. In this box is the latest kind of sun lamp! It’s powerful and projects a light similar to your own. So now you’ll be able to read books or comb your hair or search for dropped pins or squeeze your spots at night.”

The sun frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

The merchants smiled indulgently. “Which part don’t you understand? The books, the comb or the pins?”

And the sun answered, “What is night?”

SAYINGS OF THE SUN

Some of the sun’s favourite sayings:

“I yearn for nostalgia!”

“Second guessing is my special talent. I know what you’re going to say about that… but it really is!”

“My apparent arrogance is always tongue in cheek, but it’s a wonderful tongue in a most super cheek!”

“I’m a tautology lover and therefore love tautologies!”

“Bring back atavism!”

“A business question about Mephistopheles: was he ever incorporated or did he remain a soul trader?”

“Is the San Andreas Fault all it’s cracked up to be?”

“Standing on the shoulders of giants to see further is a fine tactic, but not when they have big hair!”

“This is only the second time I’ve had déjà vu!”

“The word ‘chortle’ always makes me snigger; but the word ‘snigger’ mostly just makes me guffaw!”

“My mind’s an open book, but I’ve cracked the spine so it always falls open on a pre-arranged page!”

“Despite the pain it always causes, a contradiction in a sentence never hurt anyone.” And ultimately:

“Excessive understatement is so over the top!”

MAKING A REQUEST

“Why don’t you ever come to Wales?” asked the people of that country, through a gigantic megaphone that penetrated the thick endless layers of low grey cloud. “Not once in living memory have you visited us; but we have many attractions for you to shine on! There are castles and hills and forests and secret valleys and little offshore islands and ancient megaliths and the ruins of abbeys and quaint piers and narrow-gauge railways and rousing choirs and coracles and odd hats. Take a copy of this guide book and read about them for yourself!”