The Loneliness of the Spider

Chapter 8

I wander lazily around the house. I pass the fruit basket. I take a bite of an apple but I realize I don"t want to eat it. I throw it in the basket and cover it with the remains of dinner. Giulia could find it and start with the same old story of the poor countries. I go to the bookcase. I bend my head to one side and scroll through the titles. I take a book at random and read a few lines. I sigh and go back to the bedroom. Giulia has gone to sleep. The air touches her lips and disperses into the emptiness of the room. I lie down next to her and cross my hands behind my head. On the ceiling, at the point where it meets the wall, I notice some stains. At one time I would have found them bohemian. I went hand in hand with decadence. Not anymore. Maybe I"m burnt out and I hadn’t even noticed. Like Noam Chomsky"s frog. It is work that buckles us, that subjects us to sterile logics of survival. For years I have been looking for a philosophical passage in world literature that discourages its practice, but to no avail. In other words, the plan of a rebellion tout court has failed. As a result I write. That is what I do. I follow the crime news for a local newspaper. Sassari is a sleepy city but every now and then something interesting happens: r***s, robberies, throat cutting. I can’t complain. In my spare time, I express myself on other fronts. I invent stories. Erotic tales that unfold against the backdrop of a horror scenario. Not that it"s a genre that the public likes very much, but even Poe broke certain templates typical of the time. Giulia says it"s stuff for sick people. She says it"s deplorable that I give birth to such insane settings. I don"t know what gets into her. It’s clear that it’s my gray area that emerges, my dark side. Cain’s fruit germinated in the enchantment of a Zen garden. There are people who spend their lives building a model of irreproachable life, who do their utmost so that no one, not even the Creator, can make a single criticism about their conduct. Simple people, buttoned-up, who go to church on Sundays to pray to their god to keep them on the straight and narrow. Then, one morning they get out of bed and the mechanism has jammed. A clank rings cheerlessly between the walls of the brain and everything goes haywire. It"s the wolf. The wolf that finds a light at the bottom of the cave and opens its benumbed jaws. So they grab the hammer and kill their wife and children. Just like that. They officiate the cruelest of misdeeds, a mess of courage and turpitude. Then they go to sleep. No regrets, no pain, with splashes of dried blood still dotting their face. I don"t think I would ever arrive at doing such a thing, hurt someone, I mean, but I know I have certain impulses. They’re part of my nature. It’s an outlet, the writing, the sphincter from which I purge the rotten that I have inside.

In my youth I read Shakespeare. I still remember Hamlet’s warning when he tells Laertes on Ophelia"s tomb: "Take your fingers from my throat, for though I am not rash, yet I carry with me something so dangerous that your prudence should fear it." That"s what I mean. That thing that’s there sleeping, and whose mere presence should strike fear in others. Someone said that in the span of a lifetime every man faces a handful of seconds of authentic madness, a portion of time in which he could perform a heinous act: a murder, a suicide, a m******e. At that moment you need quick reflexes, not get carried away. The wolf is cunning. And doesn’t give discounts.

I light a cigarette. I turn to look at Giulia, as the smell of burnt tobacco spreads through the room. She’s beautiful. Of an allure that doesn’t excite but pervades you like a delicate perfume. Things are not going well lately. It was different before. We were different. We thought we could make progress. Such as having a child. A human being who carried our very feet and our very hands around the world. A shape of eyes to outlast the ridiculous space that life grants us. In the end, however, nothing came of it. We would get a dog, maybe. One day. Nothing is certain.