Free Cocaine by Pitigrilli Page B

pair of galoshes on my head, enabling me to splash about with my head in the puddles of the sky while rain and light come up to me from below. Instead of admiring flowers and plants, I want to see them buried, with their roots exposed to the winds; instead of effects I want to see causes, instead of consequences I want to see origins. I’m much more interested in the roots of daisies than in their corollas.
    Surgeon: For an astronomer like you that’s a bit much.
    Astronomer: Astronomers are nothing but poets manqués, because instead of studying qualities and their distortion they concentrate on the exact study of quantities, which is absurd.
    Kalantan, the beautiful Armenian lady: Nevertheless you’re held in high esteem . . .
    Astronomer: Yes, because we use huge telescopes, write numbers thirty digits long, calculate in sextillions and write unintelligible formulas. But what is the actual use of measuring the distance of the stars?
    Kalantan: If only you made mistakes in your measurements and forecasts. The infuriating thing about you is your accuracy.
    A gentleman with the face of a chronic cuckold came in. After the usual exchange of courtesies, he sat on the floor and went to sleep with a cushion between his legs, just like an emigrant with his bundle.
    Kalantan: He always goes to sleep.
    Retired cocotte: Who is he?
    Kalantan: A big business man.
    Tito Arnaudi: But how does he manage to look after his business?
    Kalantan: He has a partner.
    Surgeon: How he must fleece him.
    Kalantan: No, the partner’s his wife’s lover, and she keeps an eye on the business and sees he doesn’t do any dirty work, at any rate so far as the business is concerned.
    This information raised a laugh, based partly on amusement and partly on malice.
    A flunkey brought in a big silver tray with about twenty champagne glasses full of fruit and offered one to each guest. Another flunkey offered each guest a small golden spoon.
    “Fruit salad,” Pietro Nocera explained to Tito Arnaudi, helping himself to a strawberry that sparkled with tiny crystals of ice and was soaked in champagne and ether.
    By now the smell of ether had spread through the room; the condensed vapor frosted the outside of the glasses.
    A third flunkey went round with a small cubical silver box, one side of which was perforated; from it he shook into each glass some white powder that dissolved in the liquid.
    The invisible violinist played laments as heart-rending as those of a troubadour imprisoned in a dungeon for some crime of love. The weak, tremulous light, the velvety carpets, the soft cushions, the circular walls, the men in black, the almost silent women gave an air of solemnity to the pagan ceremony; the men sat with legs crossed in the Turkish fashion, holding their glasses and sedately and impassively sipping the subtle, alcoholized mixture of sweet and pungent fruit.
    On a tripod taller than a man’s height there was a Chinese jade vase with a big bunch of violet carnations and black roses (they looked as if they had been skillfully made of wrought iron) carnally perfumed with ambergris; they let out a cry of picturesque immodesty.
    The notes of the invisible violin were like drops of dew slipping along a silk spider’s web in the sun.
    Tito Arnaudi: And who’s the man that looks like a convalescent cuckold?
    Pietro Nocera: He’s an antique dealer. He and the other two who look like incurable sentimentalists are three ex-lovers of the lady of the house. They’re called the mummies’ gallery, because their volcanic lover has made them literally useless from the love-making point of view. It seems that in that connection the lady once said: What does it matter to me if a man is of no use to other women after he has been useful to me?
    Tito Arnaudi: What rubbish. Do you believe that excess can lead to —
    Surgeon: And why shouldn’t it? Look at the tortoise. It lives for a hundred years, but makes love only once a year.
    Painter: I don’t envy it. So