The Watcher and Other Stories by Italo Calvino Read Free Book Online Page B

eyes were only eyes, without thoughts behind them, and yet you would have thought he had some message to communicate, from his wordless world, his world without relationships. What judgment, Amerigo wondered, can a world deprived of judgment pass on us?
    The sense of human history’s vanity which had come over him a little earlier in the courtyard seized him again: the realm of the dwarf overcame the realm of the Member, and now Amerigo felt entirely on the dwarf’s side, he identified with Cottolengo’s testimony against the Parliamentarian, against the intruder, the only real enemy who had infiltrated this place.
    But the dwarf’s eyes rested, with the same absence, on everything that moved in the courtyard, Member included. Denying value to human powers implies the acceptance (or the choice) of the worse power: the realm of the dwarf, having demonstrated its superiority over the Member’s realm, annexed it, made it its own. And now dwarf and Member confirmed that they were on the same side, and Amerigo could stay there no longer, he was excluded....
    The black automobile returned and unloaded its freight of trembling little old women. With great relief, the Member took refuge inside the car, rolled down the window to issue some final incitements, and then left.
XI
    AT NOON the flow of voters began to thin out. At the polls they agreed on taking turns in leaving, so some of the watchers who lived nearby could slip home for a bite to eat. Amerigo’s turn came first.
    He lived alone, in a little apartment; a woman came in by the hour to clean up and do a bit of cooking. “The Signorina telephoned twice,” the woman said. He answered: “I’m in a hurry; give me something to eat right away.” But there were two things he wanted more than food: to take a shower and to sit for a moment with a book open before his eyes. He took the shower, dressed; in fact, he changed his suit and put on a clean shirt. Then he drew his armchair over to the bookcase and started looking through the lower shelves.
    His library was limited. As time went by, he had realized it was best to concentrate on a few books. His youth had been full of random, insatiable reading. Now maturity led him to reflect, to avoid the superfluous. With women it had been the opposite: maturity made him impatient; he had had a succession of brief, absurd affairs, all of them, as he could tell from the beginning, mistakes. He was one of those bachelors who, from habit, like to make love in the afternoon and, at night, to sleep alone.
    The thought of Lia, which, all morning, as long as she remained an unattainable memory, had been necessary to him, was now irksome. He should telephone her, but talking to her at that moment would undo the web of thoughts he was slowly weaving. In any case, Lia would soon call him again, and before hearing her voice, Amerigo wanted to begin reading something that would channel and accompany his reflections, so that he could resume their train after the phone call.
    But he couldn’t find a book that met his needs, among the ones he had there: classics, haphazardly assembled, and modern writers, especially philosophers, a few poets, some books of cultural interest. Lately he had been trying to avoid pure literature, as if ashamed of his youthful vanity, his ambition to be a writer. He had been quick to understand the error concealed in it: the claim to individual survival, having done nothing to deserve it beyond preserving an image, true or false, of oneself. Personal literature now seemed to him a row of tombstones in a cemetery: the literature of the living as well as of the dead. Now he sought something else from books: the wisdom of the ages or simply something that helped to understand something. But as he was accustomed to reason in images he went on picking from thinkers’ books the image-filled kernel, mistaking them for poets, in other words, or else he dug out science, philosophy,