Dissipatio H.G. by Guido Morselli (tohfa e dulha read online .TXT) 📗

friend, I have no one but you. Transference has nothing to do with it, and you know that. I am alone. The world is me, and I am tired of this world, this me. Show yourself, please.

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I burst into the vestibule of the Hôtel Victoria, scattering gangs of cats that were evidently up to no good. For two hours now I’ve been at work stacking up chairs, carpets, newspapers, anything I can find that’s combustible.

The Victoria took its name from the days when Queen Victoria, crowned empress of the Indies at the urging of her minister Disraeli, a Jew and an intemperate English nationalist, stayed here in 1890. With its bald domes, its hoary festive air of invitation, it’s a relic of colonialism at 1,200 meters above sea level. I’ve decided to rid the valley of this anachronism by setting it on fire. I am certainly no pyromaniac; just the opposite, I suffer from pyrophobia, and Karpinsky knew it. However, I’ve discovered a newborn hatred for the gouty little queen, Victoria, and it astonishes me that not just Lytton Strachey but the great Gandhi himself spoke so kindly of her.

At two fifteen PM exactly I light the avenging match. By two thirty, the sitting room has become a pyre, and I leave. I go out to wash off under the rain. I’m covered in ancient dust up to the armpits and sooty all the way to my ears. While I wash myself I notice that in the direction of the plain, to the north, the clouds are breaking, or lifting. The rain turns silvery. On that side, the heavens seem to look down on things attentively. On my works.

My friend, not tangibly present, not material, is nevertheless here; he reveals himself in strange and unexpected ways, but he’s here.

The bookstore in front of the station is the only shop not offering me anything, nothing I can use, nothing that has anything to do with me. Of all the successors, the worst of all possible successors has been chosen, or at least, the least bookish. I haven’t opened a book, old or new, for years.

It was he who guided me toward the bookstore. In the window, the usual vanity fiction, in four languages, the usual mass market nonfiction. In the center sits a tome with a pale-blue jacket trimmed in red. A Guide Bleu? I look again; it’s not the Guide Bleu. Where the title ought to be appear two lines printed in Italian. Ti aspetto. Non qui. He’s waiting for me, but not here.

It wouldn’t be hard to lay hands on the book, I’d simply have to break a window. But I don’t consider it. It doesn’t arouse my curiosity that the words are printed in Italian, which he didn’t speak, didn’t understand. Nor does it surprise me that I hadn’t noticed that book the couple of times I passed by the shop in these last few weeks. I have other questions to put to myself.

First of all, while he has kept his promise, will I be able to keep mine? He says, “not here.” And therefore certainly not at Widmad. So I will have to abandon the sole plan I’ve been able to make, or that instinct has imposed. (A defensive, or conservationist instinct—or the comfortable resumption of habit?) I’ll have to leave my trusted Widmad. Leave, for where?

Just the other day I swore to myself I would never go beyond Lewrosen again. Below Lewrosen. Not only was this commitment made completely freely, but there are also my inhibitions to consider. I cannot go back to my house up the mountain. I can no longer go, here in Widmad, to the southwest part of the town, where the skulls vanished, which means I’ll never get as far as the outdoor market, the wooden bridge, or the Zemmi, my beautiful creek.

I can no longer look at myself in the mirror. Because I am sure that fear has been engraved on my face. I carry it on me.

I no longer use the mirror, yet I still shave with care every morning. I’m beginning to reacquire a taste for personal cleanliness. Right now—it’s not raining—I’m in the pool with my swimmers; the water’s heated and I have soap and a sponge and I’m scrupulously washing myself. Soon I’ll get out of the pool and dust myself with some sweet-smelling talcum powder. Then on with the pantyhose, a (superfluous) garter belt decorated with pale-blue rosettes, and some gigantic lacy panties.

For a few days now, I’ve been wearing women’s underwear, obtained from the Grand Emporium.

My physical heft, which has grown, adapts pretty well to these unusual garments, although my muscles do swell the nylon of the stockings dangerously. When I undress in the evening I’m not troubled, either physically and psychically; those powerful, hairy legs look merely clownish beneath their black veil. I expect I’ll extend this style of dress to outerwear as well; women’s clothes are inviting, now that the foolish fad for female trousers has subsided, and they don’t weigh on you this time of year. I saw a white dress with red polka dots, an underskirt, and bolero. There’s nothing autoerotic about any of this, I might add; my sexuality has never seemed to me deviant, and anyway, for quite a while now it has languished, as it should.

If anything, I imitate the great Japanese actor Omagàta, who played only women’s roles, dressed as a woman. But there’s no hint of any kind of mental disorder in me; my reason is precise, vertical, unassailable. In my case, at present, madness is to be excluded. My reason calmly processes events and experiences, tries to extract ego-fundamentalist, ego-inflationist juices. Without any direct involvement on my part; I just let it act. I wouldn’t, however, exaggerate the importance of rational thought, which plays a consultative and representative role in human behavior. In me and in anyone, a healthy dose of illogic probably has beneficial effects, conveys immunity; it’s a normal defense mechanism, like antibodies.

19

REASON