Giacomo Sartori - I Am God

Before a word has been exchanged, she’s understood that once again the problem is the diesel pump. The only good solution would be to go out and buy a new one. Instead, they try to revive it. As always, they work in silence, apart from “pass me this” and “pass me that.” Often they’re engaged, as now, in antiquarian mechanics, but it could also be the rebuilding of a collapsed wall, the replacement of a bent gutter, the pruning of a comatose apple tree, and other such bucolic operations linked to a lifestyle of semimystical autarchy. She helps him, and sometimes takes over where the problem is electronic (not this tractor) or even just involving very tiny screws. Often they lack the right equipment, but usually they find a solution. Much of their pleasure derives from that.

Once they’ve reassembled the pump the weary tractor starts up, expelling a plume of thoroughly unecological black smoke. Pleased with their success, he passes her a filthy rag to clean her hands, and, cigarette sinking into his large Indian beard, wipes his own on an old pair of underpants. They then go inside the wood-built part of the construction—to call it a construction is perhaps to exaggerate—that serves as kitchen and living room, [15] The original camper (back in the days of Ms. Einstein’s mother, there had only been that) had been absorbed into an eclectic heap of discarded materials, like a small fish trapped in the stomach of a bigger one. followed by the two big dogs, one with a long coat, one shorthaired, as well as the small addled dog and a cat of many colors. He offers her a beer, then settles into a yoga position to roll himself a joint, the laborer at last permitting himself a well-earned reward after a hard day’s work. She sits on the broken-down armchair and there they remain facing each other, not exchanging a word.

Under the porthole that gives onto the chicken coop (home to one lame and mangy duck) there’s an altar decorated with a string of colored lights like the ones you hang on a Christmas tree. Below the statue of a fat man bared to the waist sits an offering of overripe bananas and a pear in the final stages of putrefaction surrounded by a halo of happy, buzzing fruit flies. Thank heavens that slimy mess isn’t addressed to me , I say to myself. After years of ingesting psychedelics, her mother’s friend is now the follower of an orientalist-leaning cult. Brain fried by long sessions of transcendental meditation, he’s convinced that his lady friend has been reborn in India. Or rather, in his delirium she was first a red and yellow butterfly, and now (soul transposed with the ease with which you might move into a more comfortable apartment) she’s a woman with a red dot in the middle of her forehead. He has no doubts whatsoever, and even claims he sees her from time to time. It’s precisely to avoid listening to this lunacy that Ms. Einstein would rather not talk (and who could disagree with her?) but just sip her beer in silence.

As twilight fades to night he smokes another joint and she drinks a second beer and devotes her attention to the addled canine sex maniac, to whom she’s very partial. The animals each have their own seat on some chair or cushion, for this place belongs to them above all. They’re a bit puzzled, though, that food-wise nothing is happening, and seized by that restlessness that precedes a meal. Why aren’t these two amiable bipeds preparing something for us to chow down? they wonder (I can also read animal thoughts). Why aren’t they talking to each other the way humans do? When it’s pitch dark, she shakes her purple braids and bids goodbye to that derelict creature she calls father. A man who pays the rent by watering the garden and cleaning the pool for the ex-Communist wholesaler of organic bananas.

Mounting her bike now, she heads back into town.

The following Saturday around noon Casanova telephones the beanpole and, sounding distracted, proposes they meet for a drink that evening. She says she’d like that very much but she already has plans to meet up with his companion to save the besotted toads. The wind whistles right out of his sails; it seems that his wee friend has already contacted this girl (who’s been monopolizing his brain for three days) and co-opted her in that horny toad soap opera. He hadn’t expected a move of this kind. To gain time, he clears his throat and stammers out something unintelligible. Had his girlfriend divined something and deliberately tried to cross him? It doesn’t seem very likely, but he can’t dismiss that hypothesis. He’s struggling to regain his cocksure good cheer, and ends up telling her he’ll come along too; he’s crazy about anurous amphibians.

The beanpole shows up on her motorbike at the dirt lot where they’ve arranged to meet. It’s pitch dark and many toad-saviors are already milling around, each with a light beam projecting from their heads. The iguana-lover, she too wearing a miner’s helmet, explains why they’ve assembled: every year at this time the toads descend from the woods toward the lake on their ancestral path to reproduction, and come smack up against a road cutting across their way. It’s not even a heavily trafficked road, yet every time a ruthless toad-slaughter takes place. Until the corrupt politicians get their act together and build some tunnels under the asphalt, the only solution is to flag down the cars and give the toads a hand.

The lofty geneticist really likes the tiny zoologist’s joyous energy, her calm dedication (playful, weightless, and unpredictable as a leaf in the wind). It’s clear that she’s absolutely at ease here—with that delicious woodsy smell, the darkness swarming with animals and nocturnal insects—it’s her natural habitat, you might say. And from what she can see, all these people here look quite pleasant, people accustomed to doing good deeds. It occurs to her that maybe her lab isn’t the greatest place in the world, with those emaciated, semi-depressed colleagues. She’s used to electronic interactions, not encounters with bodies that exude all sorts of scents, and gentle exhalations that lightly brush a person’s cheek.

At some point Don Giovanni himself materializes out of the darkness and gives her a hug, eyes down in a pretense of shyness. In truth, he’s worried that in this pitch-black atmosphere his nonchalant charms may not be as effective as in a well-lit café with comfortable seating. And maybe a little concerned that this peculiar young lady may blab to his girlfriend about his phone call: a worry that makes her vaguely shadowy air seem even more mysterious and fascinating. Meanwhile, she’s so taken by this throng of affable militants that she completely forgot he was coming. To make up for it, she returns his embrace a little too energetically.

They take up their positions along the paved road and, her genetic acumen at work, our brainy scientist immediately notes that the wave of toads is in no way trying to dodge the cars. Programmed hundreds of millions of years before the first automobile, they’re instead mesmerized by the headlights, probably thinking they see pairs of giant fireflies preparing to mate. [16] As usual I’m presenting what I know for a fact as merely hypothetical, the way writers do to avoid looking too sure of themselves. Not a very brilliant solution, but it’s what they teach in “creative writing.”

Decked out with a lamp on her brow and a vest with reflector strips, she lends the others a hand, collecting the toads and stacking them neatly in the bucket she’s been handed. When it’s nearly full she gently empties it on the valley side of the road. Frequently, though, the dimwit drivers don’t understand, or pretend not to understand, and refuse to be guided zigzag down the road to avoid hitting those nasty little varmints (everyone’s free to have an opinion, God above all). Due to a pileup of the pulped brutes, stretches of the asphalt are spread with a layer of slippery mucilage, and the cars are skidding and sliding as if on ice.