![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Dec. 5th, 2009 06:16 amFrom Calvino's great insomnia story from Marcovaldo, "2. Park-bench vacation":
In one corner of the square, under a dome of horse-chestnuts, there was a remote, half-hidden bench. And Marcovaldo had picked it as his own. On those summer nights, in the room where five of them slept, when he couldn't get to sleep, he would dream of the bench as a vagabond dreams of a bed in a palace. One night, quietly, while his wife snored and the children kicked in their sleep, he got out of bed, dressed, tucked his pillow under his arm, left the house and went to the square.
There it was cool, peaceful. He was already savoring the contact of those planks, whose wood - he knew - was soft and cozy, preferable in every respect to the flattened mattress of his bed; he would look for a moment at the stars, then close his eyes in a sleep that would compensate him for all the insults of the day.
Cool and peace he found, but not the empty bench. A couple of lovers were sitting there, looking into each other's eyes. Discreetly, Marcovaldo withdrew. "It's late," he thought, "they surely won't spend the whole night outdoors! They'll come to an end of their billing and cooing."
But the two of them were not billing or cooing: they were quarrelling. And when lovers start to quarrel there's no telling how long it will go on.
He was saying: "Why won't you admit that when you said what you said you knew you were going to hurt me and not make me happy the way you were pretending you thought?"
Marcovaldo realized it was going to last quite a while.
"No, I will not admit it," she answered, as Marcovaldo had already expected.
"Why won't you admit it?"
"I'll never admit it."
Damn, Marcovaldo thought.
In one corner of the square, under a dome of horse-chestnuts, there was a remote, half-hidden bench. And Marcovaldo had picked it as his own. On those summer nights, in the room where five of them slept, when he couldn't get to sleep, he would dream of the bench as a vagabond dreams of a bed in a palace. One night, quietly, while his wife snored and the children kicked in their sleep, he got out of bed, dressed, tucked his pillow under his arm, left the house and went to the square.
There it was cool, peaceful. He was already savoring the contact of those planks, whose wood - he knew - was soft and cozy, preferable in every respect to the flattened mattress of his bed; he would look for a moment at the stars, then close his eyes in a sleep that would compensate him for all the insults of the day.
Cool and peace he found, but not the empty bench. A couple of lovers were sitting there, looking into each other's eyes. Discreetly, Marcovaldo withdrew. "It's late," he thought, "they surely won't spend the whole night outdoors! They'll come to an end of their billing and cooing."
But the two of them were not billing or cooing: they were quarrelling. And when lovers start to quarrel there's no telling how long it will go on.
He was saying: "Why won't you admit that when you said what you said you knew you were going to hurt me and not make me happy the way you were pretending you thought?"
Marcovaldo realized it was going to last quite a while.
"No, I will not admit it," she answered, as Marcovaldo had already expected.
"Why won't you admit it?"
"I'll never admit it."
Damn, Marcovaldo thought.
