Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories - Italo Calvino [79]
INTERVIEWER: Our thanks to …
NEANDER: … then you give it litde taps like this, clink! clink! and you split off tiny tiny splinters, clink! clink! and you see how that leaves lots of tiny tiny teeth, clink! clink!
INTERVIEWER: Yes, we've understood that perfecdy. On behalf of our listeners let me thank…
NEANDER: Understood what? Now you can hit it here once: clonk! and then afterwards you can hit it again the other side, clunk!
INTERVIEWER: Clunk, exactly, let's move on to another…
NEANDER: … that way you can hold it properly in your hand, this stone, now it's worked both sides, then the real work starts, because you get another stone and you put it on the big stone, clank!
INTERVIEWER: And so on, very clear, what matters is how you begin. Let's move …
NEANDER: Oh no, once I've begun, I don't want to stop, there's always a stone on the ground that looks better than the first one, so I throw away the first and get this other and clank! clank! and lots of the splinters flying off you chuck and lots are even better to work, so I get going on those, clink! clink! and it turns out I can have all these stones come out just how I want and the more nicks I make the more other nicks I can make, where I've made one I make two, and then in each of these two I make another two, and in the end the whole lot breaks to bits and I chuck it in the heap of the broken splinters which is growing and growing on this side, but on the other side I've got a whole mountain of rocks still to be turned into splinters.
INTERVIEWER: Now that Mr Neander has described for us this frustrating, monotonous work…
NEANDER: Monotonous! You're the one that's monotonous! Do you know how to make nicks in stones, you, nicks all the same, do you know how to make the nicks monotonous? No, so what are you talking about? I know how to do it all right! And ever since I started, ever since I saw I've got the thumb for it, you see this thumb? this thumb that I put here and the other fingers I put there and in the middle there's a stone, in my hand, gripped tight so it can't slip out, ever since I saw that I was holding the stone in my hand and hitting it, like this, or like that, well since then what I can do with the stones I can do with everything, with the sounds that come out of my mouth, I can make sounds like this, aaa, ppp, nynyny, and so I never stop making sounds, I start speaking, I never stop speaking, I start speaking about speaking, I start working stones I can use for working stones, and meantime it occurs to me to think, I think of all the things I could think when I think, and it occurs to me I'd like to do something to have others understand things, paint some red stripes on my face for example, no reason in particular, just to let the others know I've put some red stripes on my face, and I think I'd like to make my wife a necklace of boar's teeth, no reason in particular, just to have people know that my wife has a necklace of boar's teeth, and yours doesn't, I don't know what you think you have that I didn't have, I had everything I wanted, everything that was done afterwards, I'd already done, everything that was said and thought and meant was already there in what I said and thought and meant, all the complication of complication was already there, I only have to pick up this stone with my thumb and the hollow of my hand and the other four fingers that fold over it, and everything's already there, I had everything that others had later, everything others knew and could do later I already had not because it was mine but because it was, because it was already, because it was there, whereas later others had it and knew it and could do it less and less, always a bit less than what might have been, than what there was before, what I had before, what I was before, I really was there then in everything and for everything, not like you, and everything was in everything and for everything, everything you need to be in everything and for everything, even everything wrong that came later was already there in that