I see. Sorry."
"Hello? Ah, you're the gentleman I met in the bookshop?" A different voice, hers, has taken over the telephone. 'Yes, this is Ludmilla. You have blank pages, too? We might have expected as much. Another trap. Just when I was getting involved in it, when I wanted to read more about Ponko, and Gritzvi..."
You are so happy you can't utter a word. You say: "Zwida..."
"What?"
"Yes, Zwida Ozkart! I would like to know what goes on between Gritzvi and Zwida Ozkart.... Is this novel really the kind you like?"
A pause. Then Ludmilla's voice resumes slowly, as if
----
she were trying to express something not easily defined. 'Yes, it is. I like it very much.... Still, I wish the things I read weren't all present, so solid you can touch them; I would like to feel a presence around them, something else, you don't quite know what, the sign of some unknown thing...."
"Yes, in that respect, I, too..."
"Even though, I don't mean to say.... here, too, the element of mystery isn't lacking...."
You say: "Well, look, the mystery, in my opinion, is this. It's a Cimmerian novel, yes, Cim-mer-ian, not Polish, and the title and the author aren't the ones they say. You didn't realize? Let me tell you. Cimmeria, two hundred and forty thousand inhabitants, capital Orkko, principal resources peat and by-products, bituminous compounds. No, this isn't in the novel...."
A silence, on your part and hers. Perhaps Ludmilla has covered the receiver with her hand and is conferring with her sister. She probably has ideas of her own on Cimmeria, that one. God knows what she'll come out with. Be careful.
"Hello, Ludmilla."
"Hello."
Your voice turns warm, winning, insistent. "Listen, Ludmilla, I must see you, we have to talk about this thing, these circumstances, coincidences, discrepancies. I'd like to see you right away. Where are you? Where would you prefer us to meet? I'll be there in a minute."
And she says, calm as ever: "I know a professor who teaches Cimmerian literature at the university. We could consult him. Let me telephone him and ask when he can see us."
Here you are at the university. Ludmilla has announced your visit with her to Professor Uzzi-Tuzii, at his department. Over the telephone the professor seemed delighted
----
to put himself at the disposal of anyone taking an interest in Cimmerian authors.
You would have preferred to see Ludmilla alone somewhere, or perhaps to pick her up at home and accompany her to the university. You suggested this to her, over the telephone, but she said no, no need for you to go out of your way, at that hour she would already be in the neighborhood on other business. You insisted; you don't know your way around, you're afraid of getting lost in the labyrinth of the university: wouldn't it be better to meet in a café a quarter of an hour before? This didn't suit her, either; you would meet directly there, "at Bothno-Ugaric Languages," everybody knows where it is, you only have to ask. You understand by now that Ludmilla, for all her mild manner, likes to take the situation in hand and decide everything herself: your only course is to follow her.
You arrive punctually at the university, you pick your way past the young men and girls sitting on the steps, you wander bewildered among those austere walls which students' hands have arabesqued with outsize capital writing and detailed graffiti, just as the cavemen felt the need to decorate the cold walls of their caves to become masters of the tormenting mineral alienness, to make them familiar, empty them into their own inner space, annex them to the physical reality of living. Reader, we are not sufficiently acquainted for me to know whether you move with indifferent assurance in a university or whether old traumas or pondered choices make a universe of pupils and teachers seem a nightmare to your sensitive and sensible soul. In any case, nobody knows the department you are looking for, they send you from the basement to the fifth floor,
"Hello? Ah, you're the gentleman I met in the bookshop?" A different voice, hers, has taken over the telephone. 'Yes, this is Ludmilla. You have blank pages, too? We might have expected as much. Another trap. Just when I was getting involved in it, when I wanted to read more about Ponko, and Gritzvi..."
You are so happy you can't utter a word. You say: "Zwida..."
"What?"
"Yes, Zwida Ozkart! I would like to know what goes on between Gritzvi and Zwida Ozkart.... Is this novel really the kind you like?"
A pause. Then Ludmilla's voice resumes slowly, as if
----
she were trying to express something not easily defined. 'Yes, it is. I like it very much.... Still, I wish the things I read weren't all present, so solid you can touch them; I would like to feel a presence around them, something else, you don't quite know what, the sign of some unknown thing...."
"Yes, in that respect, I, too..."
"Even though, I don't mean to say.... here, too, the element of mystery isn't lacking...."
You say: "Well, look, the mystery, in my opinion, is this. It's a Cimmerian novel, yes, Cim-mer-ian, not Polish, and the title and the author aren't the ones they say. You didn't realize? Let me tell you. Cimmeria, two hundred and forty thousand inhabitants, capital Orkko, principal resources peat and by-products, bituminous compounds. No, this isn't in the novel...."
A silence, on your part and hers. Perhaps Ludmilla has covered the receiver with her hand and is conferring with her sister. She probably has ideas of her own on Cimmeria, that one. God knows what she'll come out with. Be careful.
"Hello, Ludmilla."
"Hello."
Your voice turns warm, winning, insistent. "Listen, Ludmilla, I must see you, we have to talk about this thing, these circumstances, coincidences, discrepancies. I'd like to see you right away. Where are you? Where would you prefer us to meet? I'll be there in a minute."
And she says, calm as ever: "I know a professor who teaches Cimmerian literature at the university. We could consult him. Let me telephone him and ask when he can see us."
Here you are at the university. Ludmilla has announced your visit with her to Professor Uzzi-Tuzii, at his department. Over the telephone the professor seemed delighted
----
to put himself at the disposal of anyone taking an interest in Cimmerian authors.
You would have preferred to see Ludmilla alone somewhere, or perhaps to pick her up at home and accompany her to the university. You suggested this to her, over the telephone, but she said no, no need for you to go out of your way, at that hour she would already be in the neighborhood on other business. You insisted; you don't know your way around, you're afraid of getting lost in the labyrinth of the university: wouldn't it be better to meet in a café a quarter of an hour before? This didn't suit her, either; you would meet directly there, "at Bothno-Ugaric Languages," everybody knows where it is, you only have to ask. You understand by now that Ludmilla, for all her mild manner, likes to take the situation in hand and decide everything herself: your only course is to follow her.
You arrive punctually at the university, you pick your way past the young men and girls sitting on the steps, you wander bewildered among those austere walls which students' hands have arabesqued with outsize capital writing and detailed graffiti, just as the cavemen felt the need to decorate the cold walls of their caves to become masters of the tormenting mineral alienness, to make them familiar, empty them into their own inner space, annex them to the physical reality of living. Reader, we are not sufficiently acquainted for me to know whether you move with indifferent assurance in a university or whether old traumas or pondered choices make a universe of pupils and teachers seem a nightmare to your sensitive and sensible soul. In any case, nobody knows the department you are looking for, they send you from the basement to the fifth floor,
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