Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories - Italo Calvino [68]
I can't prevent the slow tentacles of my mind from advancing one hypothesis at a time, exploring labyrinths of consequence that magnetic memories would run through in a nanosecond. It is from my computer that Skiller is expecting a solution, not from me.
Of course each of the four catastrophic characters appears better suited to be perpetrator of some of the abominable deeds and victim of others. But who can rule out the notion that the most improbable alternative might be the only one possible? Take what you would suppose to be the most innocent of the twelve relationships, that implied by seduction. Who seduced whom? I have to work hard to concentrate on my permutations here: a flow of images swirls unceasingly in my mind, breaking up and re-forming as though in a kaleidoscope. I see the long fingers of the fashion model with their green and purple varnished nails skimming the listless chin, the grassy stubble of the slummy young aristocrat, or tickling the solid predatory nape of the Uzbek champion who, aware of a remote and pleasant sensation, arches his deltoids like a purring cat. But immediately afterwards I also see the volatile Ogiva allowing herself to be seduced, captivated by the taurine flattery of the middleweight or the consuming introversion of the feckless youth. And I can also see the old widow, haunted by appetites that age may discourage but not extinguish, painting her face and dolling herself up to lure one or the other of her male prey (or both), and overcoming opposition very different in terms of weight but equally feeble in terms of character. Or I see her herself as the object of a seduction whose perversity might be due to youthful lust's readiness to confuse life's seasons, or alternatively to sinister calculation.
Until finally, to complete the picture, the shadow of Sodom and Gomorrah unleashes the whirligig of loves between the same sex.
Does the range of possibilities shrink a litde for the more criminal deeds? Not necessarily: anybody can knife anybody else. Already I can imagine Belindo Kid being treacherously skewered in the back of the neck by a switchblade that slices through his spinal cord the way the toreador's sword dispatches the bull. Behind the perfectly aimed blow we might find the slender, bracelet-tinkling wrist of an Ogiva seized by cold and bloody frenzy, or Inigo's playful fingers, rocking the dagger to and fro by the blade, then flinging it through the air with inspired abandon along a trajectory that strikes its target almost by chance; or we might find LandLady Macbeth's claw, shifting the curtains of the bedrooms at night as she imposes her presence on the sleepers' breathing. Nor are these the only images that throng my mind: Ogiva or Widow Roessler slaughter Inigo like a lamb, knifing through his windpipe; Inigo or Ogiva grab the big knife the widow is using to slice the bacon and hack her to bits in the kitchen; the widow or Inigo dissect Ogiva's nude body like surgeons while she struggles {tied up and gagged?) to escape. Then if Belindo had found the knife in his hand, at a moment of exasperation perhaps, or perhaps when someone had stirred him up against someone else, he could have had all the others in pieces in no time. But why should he, Belindo Kid, go for a knifing, when both the copybook index and his own motor sensory circuits offer the possibility of strangling, something far more congenial to his physical tendencies