Pitigrilli: Cocaine

He then pressed the button again.

That evening Tito dined at Poccardi’s and bought himself an orchestra stall at the Boîte à Fursy, where he picked up the latest tune. He went back to his hotel whistling it.

To the Hotel Napoléon.

Remember that you’re staying at the Hotel Napoléon, he said to himself. In an unheated, back room on the fourth floor, it’s true, but it’s also true that you’re staying at the Hotel Napoléon.

He unpacked his bags, arranged his toilet articles on the washstand, put his shirts, socks and vests in the drawers and hung his jackets on the clothes hangers in the wardrobe. There was even a telephone in the room.

What a shame I’ve no one to ring up, he said to himself. To have a telephone and no one to ring up is sad. But not having anyone to ring up is not sufficient reason for not using the thing.

He picked up the receiver and asked for a number, the first that came into his head.

He did not have long to wait. A female voice replied.

“Is that you?” Tito said. “What did you say? Madame… Good, it was you I wanted to speak to. I must warn you that your husband knows everything. That’s all I have to say, and it’s no good pressing me for details. All I have to say is that your husband knows every thing. No, no, it’s no good pressing me for details. No, I’m not Giacomino… Well, since you have guessed it — yes, I am Giacomino. Goodnight.”

And he replaced the receiver.

“Who on earth is Giacomino, I wonder?” he said to himself with a smile. “And I wonder who she is.”

His face suddenly darkened.

“Poor creature, that was a dirty trick I played on her,” he murmured with genuine regret. “I’ve given her a bad night. Perhaps I’ll get her into serious trouble. I’ll ring her again and tell her… But I don’t remember the number. So much the worse, or so much the better. Perhaps I’ve done her a good turn.”

And he laughed again.

He undressed and put his watch, money and a small golden box on the table. He opened the box. It was nearly empty; during the two intervals at the theater he had inhaled a few grams to celebrate his getting a job on that great daily The Fleeting Moment , and little more than a gram was left. He poured it on to the back of his hand and inhaled voluptuously.

He took the last things from his suitcase: his pajamas, a Bible, and a revolver. He put on his pajamas and put the Bible on the commode.

They say that all good men should have a Bible at their bedside, he told himself. I’ve never read it, but I always have it by my bedside.

He got into bed, drew the bedclothes up to his mouth, and switched off the light.

The fresh, volatile odor of cocaine descended to the very bottom of his lungs. How cold one’s feet get in this hotel, he grumbled, and curled up.

With his head on the pillow he could hear the beating of his heart.

My heart has started racing, he said to himself, it’s chasing my nose that has run away. I’m going to be a huge success on that newspaper. I’ll be editor within a year. Then I’ll marry a politician’s daughter. And I’ll be a deputy. A deputy at the Palais Bourbon. And from there I shall make speeches: “And believe me, Alcibiades, it is better to associate with one of those not unwilling youths than with the hetairae of Athens…”

But why had a phrase from Plato’s Symposium that he had picked up years ago at school, heaven knows when or why, suddenly returned to his mind?

And how cold his legs were.

His heart quieted down, but his imagination still ran riot. His brain was like a carnival in a madhouse; his closed eyes saw a blue darkness in which cold sparks ignited and exploded. Each split into two, then each half again divided. One of the sparks expanded like unraveling thread and throbbed with amoeba-like movements, invading his whole field of vision and flooding out all the darkness. His closed eyes were full of light.

And in that light a mobile, elastic circle formed and grew into a square, then into a rectangle, then into a parallelepiped; a black parallelepiped with one golden side and then two and then three; it was a book, the Bible.

The Book of Genesis — what a jester, what a great humorist God is, Tito said to himself, while his heart beat loudly in the bed, which was as resonant as a resonance chamber. What a jester, what a humorist God is.

God said: “Let there be light

Let there be heavens

Let there be grass

Let there be trees

Let there be the sun

Let there be the stars for when there’s no gas

Let there be gas for when there are no stars

Let there be reptiles

Let there be birds

Let there be farmyard animals

Let there be wild animals for the menageries

Let there be male human beings

Let there be female human beings…”

And then He told them to have children, authorizing them to lord it over the fish in the sea, the birds of the air and the beasts that wander over the face of the earth. All he had to do was to say: “Let there be stars” or “let there be crocodiles,” “let there be Mediterranean monk seals” — or porcupines — and all those creatures came into existence ready-made and complete at the mere sound of their names.

If that was how it was done the Creation was not very hard work. Nevertheless on the seventh day He felt He needed a rest.

What a jester God is, Tito went on. No doubt it was He who created such blessings as water to make the grass grow, grass to fill animals’ bellies, animals to fill men’s bellies, women for men to keep, the serpent to cause trouble to both sexes, truffles to slice and serve with lobsters, the sun to dry washing, the stars to shine on poets, and the moon so that Neapolitan songs could be written about it. But it strikes me as strange that things should have emerged from nothing at the mere sound of their names. I think the Almighty likes parlor tricks and arranged the whole thing beforehand, that like a good conjurer He had His boxes with double bottoms and His glasses prepared in advance, and that His bravura in seeming to create everything out of nothing in six days was a piece of American-style ballyhoo designed pour épater les bourgeois.

But He had a trick up His sleeve.

To give life to man He breathed the breath of life into his nostrils.

I believe He did this, not to give him life, but to inject into him an artistic assortment of germs. Adam in fact lived for only 930 years, though he could have lived much longer.

God began on a lavish scale, creating the stars with their huge orbits, the sun with its eternal light, and innumerable species of plants and animals. He acted entirely regardless of expense. But to make woman He performed the niggardly act of using one of Adam’s ribs.

What a humorist the Almighty is.

He knew from experience that when you see a “no smoking” notice you have an irresistible desire to light a cigarette. He regretted the excessive favors granted to Adam and his wife and wanted to withdraw them without making a bad impression, so He applied to the serpent, suggesting to it that dirty trick with the apple that we all know about. And the serpent fell in with the idea.

The serpent acted in league with God, and the whole thing was a put-up job.

And the fruit of that fruit was the following: the eyes of Adam and Eve were opened and they saw that they were naked; so they sewed themselves suits made to measure of fig leaves. But how did they know they were naked if they had never seen themselves with clothes on?

Next morning the Lord called on Adam who, always the perfect gentleman, put all the blame on his wife.

In slightly cowardly fashion God caused the apple to be paid for dearly by inventing morning sickness and labor pains. So women with a retroflexed uterus will know whom to thank for it, since the Lord said: “Thou shalt bear thy children in pain; the earth shall bring forth thorns; thou shalt gain thy daily bread with the sweat of thy brow and that of thy baker, and thou shalt pay dearly for it, because the American exchange rate is fantastic.”