Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories - Italo Calvino [71]
I must admit, I don't really like this Skiller. A web of complicity stretches out wherever he ties his threads; if he really did have so much power over Widow Roessler's boarding house, if he was the factotum, the deus ex machina, if nothing happened between those walls but that he knew about it, then why did he come to me for a solution to the mystery? Why did he bring me the charred copybook? Was it he who found the copybook in the ruins? Or did he put it there? Was it he who brought this mass of negative information, of irreversible entropy, he who introduced it into the house, as now into the circuits of the computer?
The Roessler boarding-house massacre doesn't have four characters: it has five. I translate the data of insurance agent Skiller into holes on punchcards and add it to the other information. The abominable deeds could be his doing as much as any of the others: he could have Blackmailed, Drugged, Induced to Suicide, etc., or better still he could have made somebody prostitute themselves or strangle someone and all the rest. The billions of combinations multiply, but perhaps a shape is beginning to emerge. Merely for the purposes of a hypothesis I could construct a model in which all the evil stems from Skiller, before whose entrance on the scene the boarding house basked in Arcadian innocence: old Widow Roessler plays a Lied on her Bechstein which the gentle giant Beiindo humps from room to room for the sake of the tenants' enjoyment, Ogiva waters the petunias, Inigo paints petunias on Ogiva's head. The bell rings: it's Skiller. Is he looking for a bed and breakfast? No, but he has some useful insurance policies to offer: life, accident, fire, house and contents. The conditions are good; Skiller invites them to think it over; they think it over; they think of things they never thought of before; they are tempted; temptation starts its trail of electronic impulses through the channels of the brain… I'm aware that I am undermining the objectivity of the operation with these subjective dislikes. In the end, what do I know about this Skiller? Perhaps his soul is without stain, perhaps he is the only innocent person in the story, while all the data depict Widow Roessler as a sordid miser, Ogiva as a ruthless narcissist, Inigo as lost in his dreamy introversion, Beiindo as condemned to muscular brutality for lack of alternative role models … It is they who called Skiller, each with a sinister plan against the other three and the insurance company. Skiller is the dove in a nest of serpents.
The computer stops. There's an error, and the central memory has picked it up; it cancels everything. There are no innocents to be saved, in this story. Start again.
No, it wasn't Skiller who rang at the door. Outside it's drizzling, there's fog, no one can make out the visitor's face. He comes into the passage, takes off his wet hat, unwraps his woollen scarf. It's me. I introduce myself. Waldemar, computer programmer and systems analyst. You're looking well, you know, Signora Roessler? No, we've never met, but I remember the data on the analogical-digital convertor and I recognize all four of you perfectly. Don't hide, Signor Inigo! You're looking good, Belindo Kid! Is that purple hair I see peeping over the stairs Signorina Ogiva? Here you are all together; good: let me explain why I've come. I need you, yes, you, just as you are, for a project that's kept me nailed to my programming console for years. During office hours I work freelance for clients, but at night, shut up in my laboratory, I spend my time researching a system that will transform individual passions - aggression, private interest, selfishness, various vices - into elements necessary for the universal good. The accidental, the negative, the abnormal, in a word the human, will be able to develop without provoking general destruction, by being integrated into a harmonious