A Tranquil Star (8 page)

I talked about it with Chiovatero, who is a serious and capable fellow. At first he turned up his nose, then he thought about it, and proposed starting simply; that is, trying the paint on cultures of
E. coli
bacteria. What did he expect? That the cultures would multiply more than the controls or less? Chiovatero was annoyed, and told me that it was not his habit to put the cart before the horse (implying, by this, that it was
my
habit, which, for goodness' sake, is absolutely not true), that it remained to be seen, that you had to start somewhere, and that “the load adjusts along the way.” He obtained the cultures, painted the outside of the test tubes, and we waited. None of us were biologists, but no biologist was needed to interpret the results. After five days, the effect was obvious: the protected cultures had developed in size at three times the rate of the controls, which we had coated with an acrylic ostensibly similar to the one from Naples. We had to conclude that this paint “brought good luck” even to microorganisms: an irritating conclusion, but, as has been authoritatively stated, facts are obstinate. A more thorough analysis was required, but everyone knows what a complex and uncertain enterprise the examination of a paint is: almost like that of a living organism.
All those fantastic modern devices—the infrared spectrum, the gas chromatograph, NMR—are helpful to a point but leave many angles unexplored; and if you aren't lucky enough to have a metal as the key component, all you can do is use your nose, like a dog. But in this case there
was
a metal: an unusual metal, so unusual that no one in the laboratory knew from experience how it reacted. We had to burn almost the entire sample to obtain a quantity sufficient for identification; but finally we did and it was duly confirmed, with all its characteristic reactions. It was tantalum, a very respectable metal, with a name full of meaning, never before seen in paint, and thus surely responsible for the property that we were looking for. As always happens once you've made a finding and confirmed it, the presence of tantalum, and its specific function, began to seem gradually less strange, and, finally, natural, just as no one is surprised anymore by X rays. Molino pointed out that the most acid-resistant reaction vessels are made with tantalum; Palazzoni recalled that tantalum is used to make surgical prostheses that absolutely can't be rejected; and so we concluded that it is an obviously beneficial metal, and that we had been foolish to waste so much time on analyses. With a little common sense we should have been able to think of it right off.

In a few days we got a soap of tantalum, put it in some paint, and tried it on the
E. coli
: it worked, the goal was achieved.

We, in turn, sent a large sample of paint to Di Prima, so that he could distribute it to his customers and give us an
opinion. The opinion arrived two months later, and was highly favorable: he, Di Prima, had painted himself from head to foot, and then had spent four hours under a ladder, on a Friday, in the company of thirteen black cats, without coming to any harm. Chiovatero also tried it, albeit reluctantly (not because he was superstitious; rather because he was skeptical), and he had to admit that a certain effect was undeniable: in the two or three days after the treatment, all the traffic lights he came to were green, he never got a busy signal on the telephone, his girlfriend made up with him, and he even won a modest prize in the lottery. Naturally it all came to an end after he took a bath.

As for me, I thought of Michele Fassio. Fassio is an old schoolmate of mine to whom mysterious powers had been attributed since adolescence. He was blamed for endless disasters, from failed exams to a bridge collapse, an avalanche, even a shipwreck: all due, in the stupid opinion of, first, his fellow-students and, later, his colleagues, to the penetrating power of his evil eye. I, of course, didn't believe this nonsense, but I confess that I often tried to avoid running into him. Fassio, poor fellow, ended up believing it himself, in a way; he never married and he led an unhappy life, of privation and solitude. I wrote to him, with all the delicacy I was capable of, that I didn't believe in this type of foolishness, but that he might; that, as a result, I couldn't believe in the remedy I was proposing, but it seemed to me that I owed it to him to mention it just the same, if only to help him recover his self-confidence. Fassio answered that he would come as soon as
possible: he was willing to submit to a trial. Before proceeding with the treatment, and at the urging of Chiovatero, we tried to understand in some degree Fassio's powers. We managed to ascertain that in fact his gaze (and only his gaze) possessed a specific effect, noticeable under certain conditions even in the case of inanimate objects. We asked him to stare for several minutes at a particular point on a steel plate, which we then placed in the salt-spray chamber; after a few hours we noted that the point Fassio had stared at was clearly more corroded than the rest of the surface. A polyethylene thread, stretched tight, consistently broke at the point where Fassio's gaze hit it. To our satisfaction, both results disappeared when we coated the plate and the thread with our paint, or when we interposed between subject and object a glass screen previously coated with it. We were further able to ascertain that only Fassio's right eye was active: the left, like both of my eyes, and like Chiovatero's, exercised no measurable action. With the means at our disposal, we were unable to carry out a spectral analysis of the Fassio effect except in a crude way; it is probable, however, that the radiation under examination has a maximum in the blue, with a wavelength of around 425 Nm. Our exhaustive paper on the subject will be out in a few months. Now, it is known that many of those who wish to cast the evil eye wear blue-tinted lenses, and not dark ones, and this can't be a coincidence but must, rather, be the fruit of long experience absorbed perhaps unconsciously and then handed down from generation to generation, as in the case of certain folk remedies.

Considering the tragic conclusion of our tests, I have to explain that the idea of painting Fassio's eyeglasses (they were ordinary reading glasses) was neither mine nor Chiovatero's but came from Fassio himself, who insisted that the experiment be made right away, without even an hour's delay: he was very impatient to be released from his grim power. We painted these glasses. After thirty minutes the paint was dry: Fassio put them on and immediately fell lifeless at our feet. The doctor, who arrived soon afterward, tried in vain to revive him, and spoke vaguely of embolism, heart attack, and thrombosis: he couldn't have known that the lens over Fassio's right eye, concave on the inside, must have instantaneously reflected that thing which he could no longer transmit, and must have concentrated it, as if with a burning glass, on a point situated in some unspecified but important corner of the right cerebral hemisphere of the unhappy and blameless victim of our experiments.

Nicola would happily have stayed home, and even in bed until ten, but Stefania wouldn't hear of it. At eight, she was already on the phone: she reminded him that he had been making excuses for far too long. Sometimes it was the rain, sometimes it was the contestants, who were mediocre, sometimes he had to go to a meeting, and sometimes there were his silly humanitarian excuses. Noticing in his voice a shadow of reluctance, or, perhaps, only of a bad mood, she ended by telling him outright that promises are made to be kept. She was a girl with many virtues, but when she got an idea in her head there was no way around it. Nicola didn't recall having made her an actual promise. He had said, vaguely, that yes, someday they would go to the stadium—all his colleagues went, and also (alas!) all her colleagues. Every Friday they filled in betting forms for the gladiator contest,
and he had agreed with her that one shouldn't set oneself apart, give oneself the airs of an intellectual; and then it was an experience, a curiosity that, once in your life, you needed to satisfy, otherwise you don't know the world you're living in. Yet now that it had come to the point, he realized that he had made all those speeches with some mental reservation—he had no desire to actually see the gladiators and never would. On the other hand, how to say no to Stefania? He would pay dearly, he knew: with insults, sulks, rebuffs. Maybe even worse—there was that fair-haired cousin of his…

He shaved, washed, dressed, went out. The streets were deserted, but there was already a line at the store on Via San Secondo. He hated lines, but he got on the end of it just the same. The advertisement was hanging on the wall, in the usual garish colors. There were six entrants; the names of the gladiators meant nothing to him, except that of Turi Lorusso. Not that he knew much about Lorusso's technique; he knew that he was good, that he was paid an enormous sum, that he slept with a countess, and perhaps also with the relevant count, that he gave a lot to charity and paid no taxes. While Nicola waited his turn, he listened in on the conversations of his neighbors.

“If you ask me, after thirty years they shouldn't allow it anymore…”

“Of course, the acceleration, the eye aren't what they used to be, but, on the other hand, he has experience of the arena that…”

“But did you see him, in '91, against that madman who drove the Mercedes? When he threw the hammer from
twenty meters and hit him straighton? And remember the time they ejected him for…?”

He bought two tickets for the grandstand: it wasn't the moment to worry about cost. He went home and telephoned Stefania: he would pick her up at two.

By three the stadium was full. The first entry was scheduled for three, but still at three-thirty nothing had happened. Near them sat a white-haired old man with a deep tan. Nicola asked him if the delay was normal.

“They always make you wait. It's incredible—they act like prima donnas. In my time it was different. Instead of foam-rubber bumpers there were beaks—no nonsense. It was hard to escape without injury. Only the top players managed it, the ones who were born with combat in their blood. You're young, you don't remember the champions who came out of Pinerolo's stable, and, even better, Alpignano's. Now, can you believe it? They're all from reformatories or from the New Prisons, or even from the prison for the criminally insane: if they accept, their sentence is commuted. It's laughable now, they have insurance, disability, paid holidays, and after fifty fights they even get a pension. Oh, yes, there are some who retire at forty.”

A murmur rose from the bleachers, and the first man entered. He was very young: he appeared confident but you could see he was afraid. Immediately afterward a flame-red Fiat 127 came into the ring; the three ritual honks of the horn sounded, and Nicola felt the nervous grip of Stefania's hand on his biceps; the car aimed straight at the boy, who
waited in a slight crouch, tense, legs wide, gripping the hammer convulsively in his fist. Suddenly the auto accelerated, its tractor wheels spewing two jets of sand in its wake. The boy dodged and struck a blow, but too late: the hammer just grazed the side, denting it slightly. The driver must not have had much imagination; there were several more such charges, extremely monotonous, then the gong sounded and the round concluded with no decision.

The second gladiator (Nicola glanced at the program) was called Blitz, and he was stocky and smooth-skinned. There were several skirmishes with the Alfasud compact car that he had drawn as an adversary; the man was skillful enough and managed to keep wide of it for two or three minutes, then the car hit him, in first gear but hard, and he was thrown a dozen meters. His head was bleeding; the doctor came, declared him incapacitated, and the stretcher-bearers carried him off amid the catcalls of the spectators. Nicola's neighbor was outraged. He said that Blitz, whose real name, by the way, was Craveri, was an impostor, that he got himself injured on purpose, that he should change careers—in fact, the Federation should change careers for him: take away his license and put him back in the ranks of the unemployed.

In the case of the third, who was also up against an economy car, a Renault 4, he pointed out that these cars were more dangerous than the big heavy cars. “If it was up to me, I would make them all Mini Morrises. They have acceleration, and they handle well. With those monsters of 1600 and up, nothing ever happens. They're fine for newcomers—just
smoke in their eyes.” At the third charge, the gladiator waited for the auto without moving: at the last instant he threw himself flat on the ground and the car drove over him without touching him. The spectators shouted with enthusiasm; many of the women threw flowers and purses into the arena, and even a shoe, but Nicola learned that that move, though it looked impressive, wasn't really dangerous. It was called “the Rudolf,” because a gladiator named Rudolf had invented it: he had later become famous, had had a political career, and was now a big shot on the Olympic Committee.

Next, there was the usual comic interlude: a duel between two forklifts. They were the same model and color but one had a red stripe painted on it and the other a green stripe. Because they were so heavy, they were difficult to maneuver, sinking into the sand almost up to their hubs. In vain they tried to push each other back, with their forks entwined like battling stags; then the green stripe disentangled itself, backed up rapidly, and, making a tight turn, butted the side of red with its rear. Red yielded but then quickly went into reverse and managed to lodge its fork under the belly of green. The fork rose, and green swayed and then fell on one side, indecently exposing its differential and muffler. The audience laughed and applauded.