Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories - Italo Calvino [86]
Certainly I can't claim as much. If I am in such a hurry to phone you after a few hours apart, it's not because there's something vital I forgot to tell you, nor am I impatient to re-establish that intimacy broken off at the moment of my leaving. If I tried to tell you something of the kind, I would immediately sense your sarcastic smile, or hear your voice icily calling me a liar. You'd be right: the last hours before I leave are full of silences and uneasiness between us; so long as I'm at your side the distance is insuperable. But that's precisely why I can't wait to call you: because it's only in a long-distance call, or better still an international call, that we can hope to achieve that state usually defined as ‘togetherness’. That is the real reason for my journey, for my constant hopping about the map, the secret justification I should say, the one I give myself, without which I could only think of my professional activities as inspector of the European operations of a multinational company as a meaningless routine: I leave so as to be able to phone every day, because for you I have always been, as for me you have always been, at the other end of a wire, or rather a coaxial copper conductor cable, at the other pole of a tenuous modulated-frequency current that flows through the subsoil of the continents and across the ocean bed. And when we don't have this wire between us to make contact, when it is our lustreless physical presence that occupies the sensory field, immediately everything between us becomes commonplace superfluous automatic, gestures words facial expressions reciprocal reactions of pleasure or intolerance, all that direct contact can transmit between two people and which as such can also be said to be transmitted and received to perfection, always bearing in mind the rudimentary equipment human beings have at their disposal for communicating with each other; in short physical presence may be a wonderful thing for both of us, but hardly to be compared with the vibrational frequencies you get through the electronic switching system of a great telephone network, nor with the emotional intensity such frequencies can arouse in us.
The more the exchange is precarious, risky, insecure, the stronger the emotions are. If we are not satisfied with our exchanges when we are together, it is not because they are going badly, but because they are going how they have to go. Whereas now I find myself holding my breath as yet again I grind out the series of numbers on the rotating dial, draw in through my ear the ghosdy sounds that surface in the receiver: a drumming engaged signal in the background, so vague as to have me hoping it's a chance interference that has nothing to do with us; or a muffled sputtering of charges that could be heralding the success of a complicated operation or at least an intermediate phase of that operation, or once again the ruthless silence of darkness and the void. In some unidentifiable point of the circuitry my call has lost its way.
I pick up the receiver and get the dial tone again, then with redoubled slowness repeat the first numbers of the code, numbers that do no more than find a way out of the city network, then the national network. In some countries there's a special tone at this point to let you know that the first part of the operation has succeeded; if you don't hear the trill of a little musical jingle there's no point in going on with the other numbers: you have to wait for a line to come free. At home they sometimes give you a very short whistle that comes at the end of the code, or halfway through: but not for all codes and not on every occasion. In short, whether you've heard that litde whisde or not you can't be sure of anything: when they give the all-clear signal the line may be deaf or dead, or it may turn out to be unexpectedly live without having given any signs of life earlier on. So it's best not to be put off whatever happens, to dial the number down to the last digit and wait. Assuming that the engaged signal doesn't explode halfway through, to tell you