Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories - Italo Calvino [90]
All at once three or four pieces of ice break off and fall into the sink, before I have time to turn the tray right way up they all tumble down drumming on the zinc. I grope around to grab them and put them in the ice bucket, now I can't find the cube that got dirty on the floor, to save them all I'd better wash them one by one, with warm water, no, with cold, they're already melting, a snowy lake is forming in the bottom of the bucket.
Adrift on the Arctic Sea the icebergs form a white embroidery along the Gulf Stream, pass beyond it, head down towards the tropics like a flock of giant swans, block harbour mouths, sail up river estuaries, tall as skyscrapers they drive their sharp spurs between skyscrapers, ice rasping on walls of glass. The silence of the northern night is broken by the roar of cracks that yawn to swallow up entire cities, then by the hiss of ice slides that deaden muffle soften.
I wonder what she's getting up to in there, so silent, no sign of life, she could have given me a hand, couldn't she, very nice, didn't even occur to her to ask: would you like me to help? Thank heaven I've finished now, I'll wipe my hands with this kitchen cloth, but I wouldn't want that kitchen cloth smell to linger, better wash them again, now where can I dry them? The problem is whether the solar energy accumulated in the earth's crust will be enough to maintain body heat throughout the next ice age, the solar heat of the Eskimo bride's igloo alcohol.
Off back to her then so we can drink our whisky in peace. See what she's been up to in here, without making a sound? She's taken her clothes off, she's naked on the leather couch. I'd like to go over to her but the room's been invaded by ice: dazzling white crystals piled on the carpet, on the furniture; translucent stalactites hang from the ceiling, weld themselves into diaphanous columns, a vertical sheet of solid ice has formed between her and me, our two bodies are prisoners in the thickness of the iceberg, we can barely see each other through a wall all sharp spikes glittering in the rays of a distant sun.
The Call of the Water
I move my arm towards the shower, place my hand on the knob, turn it slowly, rotating to the left.
I've just woken up, my eyes are still full of sleep, but I am perfectly aware that this gesture I'm performing to start my day is a decisive and solemn act, one that puts me in touch with both culture and nature together, with thousands of years of human civilization and with the birth pains of those geological eras that gave our planet its shape. What I expect most from the shower is that it confirm my mastery over water, my membership of that part of humanity which thanks to the efforts of previous generations has inherited the prerogative to summon water to itself with the simple turning of a tap, my privileged state of living in a century and a place where one may enjoy the most generous abundance of clean water whenever one likes. And I know that in order for this miracle to be renewed every day a series of complex conditions have to be met, so that turning on a tap can never be a distracted, automatic gesture, but requires concentration, mental participation.
There! In response to my summons the water climbs the piping, surges in the siphons, raises and lowers the ballcocks that control the flow into the cisterns, as soon as a pressure-change attracts it it rushes there, sends out its message along connecting pipes, spreads out across a network of collectors, drains and refill tanks, presses against reservoir dams, runs out from purifiers, advances along the entire front of the pipelines that bring it towards the city, having collected