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Chapter 2 Gatto's Letters

November 11

November 11 Thursday

November 11,

Thursday.

Dear Smith,

I'm now settled in the hotel.

The Grand Hotel Plaza,

room 333, third floor.

Yes, Smith,

I can hear you taunting me.

Don't picture great luxury.

Here, in this province,

the hotels are called "Plaza'" when they are located in the town square.

Think rather of an almost solid cube, of a giant block of concrete,

some sort of giant safe in which I'm being kept.

Bleak hallways, faint lights forty-year-old furniture.

Nothing to do with the Plaza Hotels you know, Smith.

This is another world, very different from yours.

Me, however, being here makes me feel good. I'm almost like a monk in a monastery.

You'll wonder what I'm doing locked up in here.

The answer is obvious, Smith:

Guasco.

Fom the moment I found out that this damn dodger was running things, I feared the worst.

When I got there I found him in high spirits, surrounded by his new henchmen, like an Indian chief.

You know Guasco.

As soon as he arrives at a new place, he has everyone at his beck and call.

I almost had to insist that he let me see the scene of the episode.

He insisted.

"Everything's under control, Everything's under control".

He let me see the tree for a few minutes and then he sent me away.

"The guys need to work".

The usual manipulative psychopath.

He made it clear right away that he was in charge,

that he would handle the episode,

and that I had to take care of the collateral instances.

For him, the main event,

and for me, the addenda and parallel stories.

For him, the glory.

For me, the shade of room 333 at the Hotel Plaza.

So here I am, Smith.

Once again confined to a hotel room with a mystery to solve.

Always the same.

This is the thing.

No one knows how that car got there.

One of Guasco's gauchos kept saying “witchcraft ", “witchcraft",

and I'd say he was right.

The thing is that while Guasco's cranes lowered the car,

several people appeared wandering across the neighboring fields.

They wandered like sleepwalkers,

or as if they were hallucinating.

It reminded me of a cluck of chickens in a coop when the fox is on the loose.

They had gone completely mad.

Yet a more detailed analysis revealed that what they wanted was to get to the car.

They felt the car was theirs, and it seemed they wanted to get to it to get on with their trip.

I immediately understood that those lunatics,

and the car on the tree were connected phenomena.

And that the only way to understand the episode was by studying them.

They had been there, Smith.

And it was probably what they saw that had made them go mad.

Strange as it may seem, only those characters know the secret.

They are the key pieces of the puzzle into which I suddenly find myself locked.

To tell the truth,

it doesn't seem it will be an easy task to get information from them.

We'll have to wait.

In a few hours, the matter got even more complicated.

At a horse breeding farm, surrounded by horses...

and quite removed from the area where the other lunatics appeared,

an individual of Italian origin was found,

yet he did not seem to show any kind of dementia beyond almost absolute amnesia.

The Italian claimed he did not know where he was or why he was there.

His Spanish was rustic and extravagant.

When the name of the place where he was was mentioned,

he claimed to have never heard of it.

The same happened with the province, and even with the country.

He said the landscape reminded him of places where he had been before,

but he mentioned places in Italy, France, Switzerland...

and other European countries.

This last character intrigued me more than the others.

Since we couldn't understand very well what he was saying,

we sent out for someone who spoke Italian.

One of the women in Guasco's team turned out to be a paleolinguist,

an expert in linguistic phenomena.

She interviewed the Italian for a long while...

and concluded that he spoke some kind of dialect from the north of Italy,

in which she detected numerous archaisms,

which she ventured were expressions that dated from the 18th century.

The linguist claimed to be interested in the case

and promised to dedicate some time to it.

She spent almost an hour with the patient.

With her, the Italian seemed very comfortable,

and to be completely hones, the same seemed to happen to her.

If one didn't know the situation,

it could be construed as that of a couple in the middle of a romantic encounter.

For now, they were taken (my four mad men and the Italian)...

to a psychiatric colony outside town.

Guess what, Smith.

In the distribution of tasks,

I got the Italian

and the four mad men.

That asshole Guasco kept saying:

"Gatto's four mad men! Gatto's four mad men!"

I hate him.

So that's that, Smith.

A new madhouse for my collection.

I haven't been there yet.

Tomorrow the specialist who runs the colony

a woman named Magdalena or Margarita, is picking me up.

As you can see, this is only just beginning, Smith.

It's all a mess and it'll take time.

Let's be patient.

A warm hug,

Gatto.

November 12

November 12 Friday

Hello?

Yes, yes, they told me. I'm coming.

November 13

November 13 Saturday

November 14

November 14 Sunday

November 15

November 15 Monday

November 15

Monday

Dear Smith,

Lots of news.

There is a new character in the plot.

He has no name yet,

and I don't know much about him either.

He doesn't seem too interesting,

but I've been obsessed with him these last few days,

And yet I'm still far from understanding who he is

and the role he plays in all this.

Let's start from the beginning.

Friday morning Guasco calls me.

He tells me they have been going over the car,

and that they have concluded that there's someone missing.

That none of the mad men that appeared were the driver or the owner of the car.

That the driver is nowhere to be seen,

it's as if he was swallowed up by the earth.

That I have to find out who he is.

I ask him, "What about the mad men?"

He tells me, "This is more important. Everything depends on this."

He tells me he will send me a box of things.

The guy's things.

Or what he thinks are the guy's things.

Two hours later, I get the box.

Basically, there are some books, a map and a notebook full of notes.

A red notebook.

That red notebook, Smith,

has been my whole life for the last four days.

The red notebook is organised as a diary.

As a travel diary.

Apparently this guy, together with the others,

had been traveling the provincial roads for months,

it remains unclear for what purpose.

What I can understand so far is that it has something to do with trees.

On the first pages, it talks about trees all the time:

"Trumpet trees, oaks, cockspurs, coral trees, jacarandas,"

as if this guy and his henchmen were taking some kind of inventory,

or took pictures or something of the sort.

It is unclear what they are doing with the trees,

their end does not appear to be very scientific.

It is also unclear if his companions share this obsession with him,

or if they are just going on without a clear purpose.

The others don't seem very interested in the trees.

But for our man, on the contrary, they are an obsession.

Most of the time he talks about trees as if they were people.

He is upset or fascinated by them.

Well, are we ready?

I'm ready.

- What? - I'm ready...

What?

I'm ready!

Okay. Let's take advantage of this wind.

Sound is recording?

Every once in a while,

among the notes,

I find scenes that seem to correspond to films,

but nothing in the notes suggests this is a script

or anything resembling a script.

I'm no film specialist, but I highly doubt these kinds of notes

could be used to organize a film shoot or any thing of the sort.

It's the fifth. Five.

Ombú, third, fifth. Are you ready?

I don't think that's how movies are made.

Besides, it usually describes situations that take place in other countries,

in Canada and the woods of North America,

and I don't see why a film maker would be interested in topics so remote.

The conclusion I've reached

is that these are scenes the character saw on television

in one of the countless hotels where he spent his nights,

and that, for some reason, noted down.

Horror and suspense scenes,

from some B-movie from the 50s or 60s.

A load of crap.

- Okay? - I'll say when to cut!

It's only the two of them!

Only the two!

I don't want to argue. Let's see.

There.

Place it over here. Place here what we...

Stream, first? Yes, there's no microphone.

Not the others!

Stop arguing. The others have to go!

- What shall I do? - You are here. You stay still.

There we see the girls, right?

Perfect. Let's go.

You shut up and get out of here! You come here.

Always the same with you, coward!

Do what you have to do; direct the scene...

I can't take it anymore. Listen: take them away.

Take the two girls who aren't shooting.

Further on, the character's notes become more and more enigmatic.

There are more frequent references to four women.

He sometimes calls them "the girls"...

and sometimes "the witches".

And this? Why does she have this?

Why?

Take this off.

Move forward...

You stay still there.

You look straight right there. Okay?

I need silence!

You get on screen when I tell you.

When I tell you!

Hey, we are shooting. Can you park over there?

Stay still right here.

Perfect. Why are you wearing this?

No. Take it off.

Let her use it. It's only a big close up.

Why "let her use it"? How "let her use it "!?

Attention! The car is coming on screen again!

Lets mark with the clapperboard. Let's shoot quickly because it's gonna rain.

Sound?

Camera?

Sound is recording. Silence, please!

Can everyone be silent?

The clapperboard didn't sound.

Then we add it in post-production. Quickly, it's gonna rain.

Quickly!

Quickly, then!

It is not entirely clear what the character's relation to them is.

It is evident that there is trust,

that he has spent a lot of time with them,

and that they have even joined him on one of his trips,

Up the hill!

It's okay there?

In a straight line towards the depression.

She didn't understand.

In a straight line towards the depression!

The depression!

When the hill goes down!

It is unclear why, for what purpose these women served in his activities.

His feelings towards them are confusing.

At times he seems fascinated by them,

he loves them and thinks of them as if they were flowers;

at others he appears to suffer, abhor them,

fear them, or be drained, devastated by them.

To the left!

Left, left, left.

No!

Right, right! To the other side!

Right!

To the other side! Left or right?

Left!

Can you learn which one is the left and which is the right?

Come on! Walk!

Hurry up!

Which one is the right?

- The other side! - Let her walk wherever she wants!

He never uses names, never refers to any of them in particular,

as if the four were a single thing,

as if he had the same relation with the four of them.

Exactly the same.

Do you understand me, Smith?

At one point I decided to try to individualize them,

to detect the particularities of each.

I named them A, B, C and D.

It was no use.

It made no difference.

Sometimes he appeared to be talking about A, and was talking about C

Sometimes he said of B the same things that, pages later, he'd say about D.

Do you see the problem, Smith?

It's not as if one were his wife, his lover, his neighbor and his aunt.

Nothing of the sort, Smith.

The four were the same thing.

The four were one.

Who are they, Smith?

And who is this kind of Sultan who appears to have devoted his life to them?

What strange mystery is this one, Smith?

Tell me the truth.

Isn't this something that can drive a man mad?

Speaking of mad men:

the following day, Dr. Mónica Market...

or Müller...

came to pick me up and drove me to the psychiatric colony.

On the way, she told me her story.

She had come to the colony as a resident doctor, when she was eighteen.

Her idea was to spend a few months there...

and then move to a less remote place,

a big city where she could find better career prospects.

According to her, the day she got to the colony, she felt she was entering a jail,

and that she was the only prisoner.

She thought, "This is the saddest place in the world".

She thought, “I cannot spend another day here.

"I'll request my transfer first thing tomorrow".

But the first day somehow passed,

and she told herself,

"I will put up with the compulsory three months and then I'm out of here."

"Three months, not a single day more".

She spent those three months counting the days, awaiting the end of the nightmare.

When the last day came, she inexplicably decided to stay.

"Don't ask me to explain why", she told me.

"I just told myself: three more months".

Those three months led to three more, and then to more.

She's been there for twenty years and she no longer thinks of leaving.

"It's not that I no longer find it sad", she says.

"But it's my life now.

"It's my house,

"more than any other place".

Good, we've arrived, it seems.

This is the experimental pavilion.

Your patients are locked in there.

Alright, let's go face them then.

To tell you the truth, she appears to be home,

among those lunatics and those phantasmagoric pavilions,

she looks happy.

Come. They are here.

Now I'll show them to you.

Once in the colony, she shows me the mad men from the car.

It was a very peculiar scene,

and whereas they all appeared to have fallen

into the same phrenopatic disorder triggered by some kind of violent emotion,

each case showed different manifestations.

One of them,

a sixty-year-old with a big nose,

suffered delirium and roamed around in spasms, moving like a large bird.

Another one, a squat, robust young man,

suffered from a strange case of non-congenital cretinism with oligophrenia.

His face seemed fixed in a frightful grimace,

similar to the Oni, the popular Japanese demon.

However, despite his menacing appearance,

this mad man showed a sweet and kind demeanor,

and seemed determined to make friendly contact with animals and plants.

At the other end, the third one,

suffered from a strange paranoid mania...

that prompted him to constantly give orders...

to subordinates only he could see,

and to confront equally invisible enemies and threats.

The last one, victim of a strange case of nervous stupor,

appeared to be bound to a wheelchair,

but the physical exam showed

there was no actual reason that prevented him from walking,

and that he only resorted to it as a strange form of obsession.

The patient, absorbed by melancholy most of the time,

only seemed relieved when he was in the wheelchair,

and the doctor, after a series of attempts,

ended up consenting to that strange monomania

that appeared to make him so happy.

According to the doctor, at first the mad men were aloof and untrusting,

and had even attempted to flee the colony,

unsuccessfully.

Now, according to her,

they were calmer, better adapted, almost happy.

Finally, the doctor takes me to see the Italian.

In a subtle, imprecise way, the doctor is transformed when she talks about him.

She shows an enthusiasm that is missing when she talks about the other mad men.

But at the same time, she looks more distant,

more cautious, as if she were keeping a secret.

For a while, we observe the Italian through the one-way mirror.

The doctor is right:

he doesn't look crazy.

His movements lack the boorish, automatic rigidity

of schizophrenic or psychotic patients.

The Italian is graceful, even elegant.

I suggest to the doctor, "A case of sudden melancholia?"

"Look at him now", she tells me.

It's already happened with three nurses.

They are all crazy about him.

A case of compulsive satyriasis?

Could be.

Or maybe he's just an attractive man.

I swear she said that.

I don't know whether in jest or earnest, but that's what she told me.

You don't need to make the joke, Smith.

I'll do it for you.

Gatto smells a rat.

So, that's the way things are, Smith.

Gatto smell a rat.

It's 9 AM here, and I have to keep looking for my missing character.

I still have to go over another half of the red notebook and tons of books.

I'll get to it.

Send my regards to your beautiful wife.

Yours,

Gatto

PS: the other day I saw on TV a program about carnivore plants.

They mentioned the case of the Giant nepenthes in New Zealand.

Weren't you involved in that research?

Can you believe the coincidence?

Gatto.

November 16

November 16 Tuesday

Hello.

Hello.

Who are you?

My name is Gatto.

Hi, Gatto.

Do you know who I am?

You are Susana, right?

No, no. That's not right.

Venus...

Venus, yes.

That's good...

Yes...

Gatto, you're going to kiss me.

No... I don't think so, no...

Yes, you're going to kiss me.

No... Thank you, but, no. I'm not going to kiss you.

Yes, you're going to kiss me. You're going to give me lots of kisses.

November 17

November 17 Wednesday

November 18

November 18 Thursday

Thursday.

Dear Smith,

You have no idea how happy I was at receiving your letter,

and how much it helped me.

I don't know how you do it, but you always seem to be ahead of everything and to know it all.

Do you have a crystal ball, Smith?

Do you know me that well to guess every one of my moves?

I celebrate our close friendship, Smith.

The day you turn against me, I will be lost.

As you imagined,

the next day I went back to the psychiatric colony.

I arrived early, without telling the doctor.

I wanted to see things with my own eyes...

and I felt the doctor was hiding something from me.

I was there at the break of dawn,

and I can assure you it was one of the most bizarre things I've seen in my life.

You are right, Smith:

you don't fool with mad men.

Got a fag?

Yeah, sure...

They call me "La Gringa". You'?

- What do they call you? - Sorry?

You? What do they call you?

No... Anything.

What do they call you?

They don't call me anything.

I'm just Gatto.

Ohh...

They call you "The Cat".

No, no... My name's Gatto.

They call me "La Gringa".

Got a fag?

You have one in your hand.

Have you realized who you are?

You are someone very peculiar.

Your experience is very peculiar.

What do you mean...?

Have you heard of the god Mercury?

Yes, of course.

The god Mercury is very peculiar.

He's a very interesting god.

Super interesting.

Do you know him or not?

Mercury, of course.

- The messenger of the Gods. - The messenger of the Gods.

It kills me,

it kills me.

He's super-interesting.

Give me fag, Mercury.

Now it turns out I'm Mercury...

You are Mercury.

You are the god Mercury.

Hey!

What are you doing here? What did we talk about?

What did we talk about?

Nothing, I felt like smoking and I asked for a fag.

Well, there's your fag.

Go, it's your bath time.

No, no bath... No bath, no, no... A fag.

Go take a bath, and I promise you a fag. Come on...

Come!

Come! Bath time. Come!

Doctor Olsen! You go take a bath, now.

One, two, three.

What did she call you?

Me?

Mercury.

She's been onto the subject of gods for a month now.

She was doing fine...

until she read a book about Greek mythology and she lost it.

Now she thinks all the inmates are gods.

She's given god names to everyone.

Now go and get that off their minds...

Oh, wow.

Okay.

The nurse told me the story of La Gringa.

Her name was Brenda Olsen.

and she was an anthropologist.

She had spent twenty years living in the Amazon jungle among a head-shrinking tribe...

and had written the most comprehensive treatise

on the religious beliefs of the Amazonian peoples to date.

Back in the country, she had specialized in medicinal roots,

recording and documenting her mystical trances.

At some point, she started mixing roots...

with leaves and resins from European and American plants.

It was from one of those trips that she never returned.

For a while I tried to make conversation with the nurse

so that I could bring up the Italian.

Nothing.

She insisted with the subject of the Gringa and her gods.

Apparently, it all started with a very mean nurse,

very jealous, very bossy, very fond of gossip and payback.

A nurse everyone feared.

As it seems, in those times La Gringa...

was busy with some book about general mythology,

one by Graves or Grimal,

and started to accuse the nurse of behaving like the goddess Hera,

daughter of Saturn and wife of Zeus.

Soon, she turned from resembling Hera to being Hera.

In a few days, she convinced all the inmates

and assigned their god to each character in the colony.

Artemis,

Dionysus,

the three Graces,

Aeolus,

Mars,

Pan,

Hephaestu,

Apollo.

The maniacal procedure had no limits.

An old physiotherapist was Zeus.

An obscure old haematologist, Pluto.

A young woman who worked in the fire department, Minerva.

Some were more arbitrary than others,

the guy who cleaned the swimming pool was Neptune.

The delivery guy who brought sparkling water to the colony twice a week, Uranus.

Finally, I asked about Venus,

whether there was a Venus.

She seemed worried.

And there's no Venus?

Yes.

- Where is that bitch? - Any problem?

Walter! Have you seen Susana?

Oh, Susana is lost!

Don't be smart...

What a mess...

If she escapes and gets to town, it'll be a disaster.

- Venus? - Yes. Come. Come with me.

Susana!

Come with me, Gatto.

That's how it is.

Everyone turns a blind eye.

But then...

They come and complain.

It turns out I am responsible.

For a couple of hours, I went with the nurse from one place to another,

looking for this Venus woman.

I thought it was easy to get her to talk.

I asked her about the Italian,

if he wasn't a god too.

At first, she played dumb;

I let her be and a short time later, she talked.

"The doctor is no fool", she said.

"She wants him all for herself".

The doctor is no fool.

She wants him all for herself.

In what sense?

Don't make me talk, look...

If there's something I don't like, it's gossip...

Come this way.

Sit down here.

Let's...

hear you a bit.

Well, very well.

Take off your clothes, please.

Very well...

Let's see...

I need you to stand up straight, please.

Good...

Let's see...

Open vour mouth, please.

Breathe...

Can vou give us a minute, darling?

Just a minute, darling...

Excuse me.

Mirta...

It's me, Monica. Open up.

Mirta, open up.

The nurse described to me a succession of orgies,

love encounters that took up entire nights

athletic feats of lechery and sin.

Apparently, the Italian had started some sort of erotic revolution at the colony,

and, for some reason,

there wasn't a single woman who hadn't had a sexual encounter with him,

or who didn't plan to have it.

They all dreamt of him,

enjoyed him,

and they shared him democratically.

And the Italian agreed, with pleasure, to these parties.

Pleased, as if he were happy to be able to entertain them all.

As if he was a toy they had chosen,

and with whom they could serve themselves as they pleased.

With Doctor Miller, it was something different.

According to her, the doctor was crazy in love with the Italian,

she wouldn't'think of anything else,

and did all in her power to keep him apart from the rest of the women in the colony,

whether sane or insane.

It was clear that the nurse was jealous, and that she spoke out of spite,

but I couldn't help feeling that part of what she was saying was true.

You can't work like this, under these conditions.

Then they come and tell me I don't know what... Everyone shirks responsibility.

Everyone washes their hands of it.

When she left me alone and went looking for Susana somewhere else on the premises,

I felt exhausted, Smith.

I stayed for a long time sitting on a bench, my head spinning,

as if I were a teenager

who had just finished reading a picaresque novel from the 18th century.

Hello.

I had had enough of the psychiatric colony,

and I thought of the hotel bedroom as a refuge; almost like a heaven.

Next to the loonies' Olympus,

next to the libertine Italian and his lovers,

the stories of that poor stranger,

with his trees and his four girlfriends...

seemed to me like something out of a fairy tale.

However, strange things began happening there too.

The first thing I discovered was that the guy's notes reached a specific date.

September 21.

Spring Day.

After that, a load of nonsense about trees...

a string of disjointed words...

a series of scribbles...

which, for some reason, made me think of an ant.

After that, the style of the diary seems to change,

and new problems come up.

Reviewing the stranger's notes,

I discover that in the red notebook there are some names...

and, next to them, places.

Names of people, often foreigners, and next to them, addresses:

Road so and so, mile so and so.

Next to that, sometimes, numbers.

20. 30. 70. 100.

At some point I discover that among the belongings that Guasco sent me...

there's a map.

I open it.

Guess what I find, Smith?

Yes, you guessed right.

The same names and the same places written down.

"Okay", I think.

The story takes a turn.

Some shady business?

Some sort of trafficking of something?

I spend close to two hours analyzing the names,

searching for a clue,

trying to decipher anything.

At last, I find the solution.

No trafficking,

no mystery.

The guy was simply involved in an online system which sold second-hand books...

and seized his loafing around the roads as an opportunity to buy cheap books.

The Internet, Smith.

The Internet.

The map, the foreign names,

the names in Spanish,

they were just the places where he went to get the books,

the name of the old man who sold them,

the name of the author.

That's how he spent his time, from tree to tree.

"Is that all this idiot was?" I asked myself...

"An Internet book collector?"

For lack of any other clue,

I started following the trail of books this clown was buying.

At first, he bought science books about trees:

guides, botany manuals, technical books.

At some point, he starts searching for books about superstitions:

healing properties, magic trees, stuff like that.

He spends a brief period looking for books about sorcery, magic and the occult.

but it's clear he gets scared.

In the notebook there are many notes about the subject,

but he never reaches too far.

He barely scratches the surface:

The Tetragrammaton, the magic square, some druid spells,

in short, things you and I hare seen hundreds of times.

A lot of Cyprian of Carthage,

a lot of Paracelsus,

and that kind of literature for amateurs.

He has a phase tracking sorcery in the classical texts.

Pliny,

Dioscorides,

The Golden Ass by Apuleius,

Virgil's Eighth Eclogue,

Cicero's Divination,

Erichtho's episode in the Pharsalia,

Saint Isidore of Seville...

and Rabanus Maurus.

At some point, he records strange experiments with the books

and the townsfolk of the towns he visits,

as if he wanted to find something in them,

as if the two worlds,

the one in the towns and the one in the books,

were in some way linked.

I'll ask him.

Wait here.

LUCAN'S PHARSALIA

It makes no sense.

I think we have to wait until they stop for lunch, or...

Don't they stop for a nap?

Please, go...

Go ask them to stop...

- Look towards the lens. - It makes no sense.

It makes no sense.

Tell her to hold the cigarette higher...

You don't know what my policy is. Let's record sound.

I'm going to read a text.

I'm going to read a thing and you look directly to the camera's lens.

Okay?

It's useless.

I'll record. But it's useless.

Are you shooting the clapperboard?

It's a useless sound.

Pharsalia, Erichtho Episode, 1. Camera?

Could you stop for a minute?

Two minutes maximum.

- Action! - It's too dark.

Did you mark the clapperboard? I'm not even recording.

- I'll start reading. - Well, we'll use the camera sound.

Camera sound!

These sinful rites and these her sister's songs

Abhorred Erichtho, fiercest of the race, spurned for their piety, and yet viler art

Practised in novel form.

To her no home beneath a sheltering roof her direful head

Thus to lay down were crime: deserted tombs

Her dwelling-place, from which, darling of hell, she dragged the dead.

Nor life nor gods forbade but that she knew the secret homes of Styx

And learned to hear the whispered voice of ghosts at dread mysterious meetings.

Never sun shed his pure light upon that haggard cheek

Pale with the pallor of the shades, nor looked

Upon those locks unkempt that crowned her brow,

in starless nights of tempest crept the hag.

Out from her tomb to seize the levin bolt; treading the harvest with accursed foot

She burned the fruitful growth, and with her breath poisoned the air else pure.

No prayer she breathed nor supplication to the gods for help

Nor knew the pulse of entrails as do men who worship.

Funeral pyres she loves to light and snatch the incense from the flaming tomb.

The gods at her first utterance grant her prayer for things unlawful, lest they hear again

Its fearful accents: men whose limbs were quick with vital power she thrust within the grave

Despite the fates who owed them years to come the funeral reversed brought from the tomb

Those who were dead no longer; and the pyre yields to her shameless clutch still smoking dust

And bones enkindled, and the torch which held some grieving sire but now, with fragments mixed

In sable smoke and ceremental cloths singed with the redolent fire that burned the dead.

But those who lie within a stony cell untouched by fire,

whose dried and mummied frames no longer know corruption

limb by limb venting her rage she tears, the bloodless eyes

Drag from their cavities, and mauls the nail upon the withered hand: she gnaws the noose

By which some wretch has died, and from the tree drags down a pendent corpse, its members torn

Asunder to the winds: forth from the palms wrenches the iron, and from the unbending bond

Hangs by her teeth, and with her hands collects the slimy gore which drips upon the limbs.

Where lay a corpse upon the naked earth on ravening birds and beasts of prey the hag

Kept watch, nor marred by knife or hand her spoil, till on his victim seized some nightly wolf;

Then dragged the morsel from his thirsty fangs; nor fears she murder, if her rites demand

Blood from the living, or some banquet fell requires the panting entrail.

Pregnant wombs yield to her knife the infant to be placed

On flaming altars: and whene'er she needs some fierce undaunted ghost, he fails not her

Who has all deaths in use. her hand has chased

From smiling cheeks the rosy bloom of life; and with sinister hand from dying youth

Has shorn the fatal lock: and holding oft in foul embraces some departed friend

Severed the head, and through the ghastly lips,

Held by her own apart, some impious tale dark with mysterious horror hath conveyed

Down to the Stygian shades,

to the shades of Hell.

Cut. Done. Thank you. Good.

Did it work?

- The light disc got onscreen. - How did it get onscreen?

The sound didn't work anyway.

Very good. Thank you.

Enough.

Done.

- But, what about the light disc? - It happened.

But then it's useless.

Well, then we'll take it out in post.

Why do we have this light disc?

- Was the sound good? - No, no. It doesn't work.

What do you mean "It doesn't work"?

No, I warned you before.

You didn't ask me for sound,

you didn't clack the clackerboard.

There's a construction site next to us.

Why did we film if the sound wasn't good?

Appreciate that I recorded sound, because you didn't ask me if sound was recording

and nothing we are doing makes any sense.

The last three days were useless...

It doesn't make sense to have a sound director if the sound won't work.

That's what I think.

I don't know why you want sound when, in the end, everything will have voice over.

To tell you the truth, Smith,

I don't fully understand what our guy was trying to achieve with these games.

In any case, they don't last long,

it shows he doesn't achieve anything,

or that he gets bored of them.

Then, he plunges himself into fantasy literature.

He spends a fortune there.

He hoards as many as he can:

The Castle of Otranto,

Melmoth the Wanderer,

Vathek,

The Monk,

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa,

several small books by Nodier and Cazotte,

Chesterton

Stevenson,

Edgar Allan Poe,

Hoffmann,

Chamisso,

Lane's Thousand and One Nights,

Ann Radcliffe,

Sheridan Le Fanu,

some Jules Verne (though not much),

some Gautier, Nerval, Meyrink,

The Food of the Gods by Wells,

Maupassant's Le Horla,

Conan Doyle's terror short stories,

more Buzzati than Calvino,

a lot of Gogol.

At some point he comes across a batch of Machen and buys it

He reads The Three Impostors, The Terror,

The Great God Pan,

The White People.

For a week, he does nothing but buy Machen's books in every town he goes to.

Until he finds one that changes everything.

Hello?

Oh, uhh...

Yes. Tell her I'll be down in a while.

No, no. Sorry, sorry, not a while, tell her I'll be right there...

November 19

November 19 Friday

For a week, he does nothing but buy Machen's books in every town he goes to.

Until he finds one that changes everything.

Smith, things have happened since yesterday.

I don't know whether to pick up where I left or continue on...

For a week, he does nothing but buy Machen's books in every town he goes to.

Until he finds one that changes everything.

The book in question

is Machen's translation of Giacomo Casanova's memoires.

Casanova, Smith.

The famous Venetian adventurer,

famous for his numerous romantic conquests

for his escapades from one country to the next in 18th century Europe.

Spy, professional gambler, expert in fortune-telling and cabala.

In short, Casanova.

You already know who Casanova is, Smith.

I don't need to explain it to you, or do I?

The truth is that upon the appearance of that book,

our rascal becomes obsessed with Casanova.

He reads Machen's translation from cover to cover

and starts searching for books about Casanova in every town.

He marks the books, tags them, underlines them.

He transcribes whole pages into his notebook.

It's as if all that time he had been in a predicament,

and Casanova's appearance had brought the solution.

I want to try and be accurate in this sense, Smith.

I have read many times the notes our schmuck took about the Casanova texts;

I saw the phrases he underlined and the fragments he highlighted.

What conclusions did I draw?

Not many.

Just a couple of things.

This guy doesn't highlight any of the great moments on the life of the adventurer:

None of his stellar feats,

neither his escape from the Piombi prison,

nor his love with Henriette,

or his encounters with Voltaire or Mozart.

Nothing to do with that.

Instead, slight moments of truth,

whispered confessions of weakness and dispair,

hidden comments which show the chevalier de Seingalt...

as fragile, as vulnerable, almost as melancholic and reflexive.

Those secret fingerprints,

for our character, seem to be like treasures.

He underlines many things, he fills it with exclamation marks and even cheers:

Come on! Yes! That's it! Good!

As if Casanova were a boxer,

and he, the seasoned old man, training him.

Until a point where something happens,

something important for this story, Smith.

As I see it, at some point in his pursuit of Casanova,

after weeks of buying cheap little books,

low quality editions and dubious translations,

our man hits upon something that thrills him.

In the notebook, next to the town and the name in question,

the guy writes down "I found it".

In a small town, in a long-forgotten second-hand shop, a book in French appears.

A big book, and pretty expensive,

in which he longs to find something.

Something that doesn't appear in the other ones.

As soon as he has it in his hands,

he checks it to make sure it is the right one.

He quickly finds what he's looking for.

The fragment is highlighted with large signs,

underlined from start to finish, and next to it,

in big letters, reads the word "Eureka".

It is a story known among scholars of the work of the Venetian

as "The Spiders' Episode".

I did some research, Smith.

It is a little-known episode that appears published in very few places...

and that later disappears mysteriously from the anthologies.

All the experts on Casanova who have read it highlight its importance.

It is, they say, the closest to a fable or moral

in the whole of the Venetian libertine's life.

Others, many others,

say it's apocryphal,

that Casanova would have never written something like that

and that is why the fragment is no longer published.

I offer you a summary.

It's like this, or something like it:

Passing by through Budapest,

Casanova meets a Romanian or Russian countess,

called "Fifi",

who immediately calls his attention.

Casanova is determined to conquer her.

By means of some scheme which is uninteresting to narrate,

he manages to meet with her alone.

He tries to seduce her.

She seems attracted to him, but at the last minute she refuses herself to him.

The next day, when the sun rises,

the countess sets off on a trip.

Desperate, heartbroken, he sets off west, to Italy.

On the way, n Trieste, he attends a theatrical representation.

There, he falls for the main actress,

known as "The Colombetta",

famous for her intense record as courtesan and expert lover.

"The Colombetta" notices his presence.

After the performance, through a messenger, she sends him a lock of hair.

Casanova burns with passion and desire.

Casanova visits her in her chamber.

She's waits for him, naked, willing to become his.

She seduces him and encourages him to love her, verging on impudence.

Towards the end,

she refuses herself to him.

She tells him she is not free...

and that she will only be his...

if he helps her to rid herself from someone whose name can't be revealed.

She gives him a letter and an address.

In Rhineland or Alsace.

Casanova,

maddened with love,

accepts the errand.

He sets off right away.

He crosses the Alps in the middle of winter.

Caught in a storm, he takes refuge in a tavern.

There, he spends a week.

Drinking by day and sleeping in a stable.

Casanova occupies his time describing the vulgarity of the regular customers,

his feelings, loneliness and seclusion.

He only appears to be redeemed by the sight of a young innkeeper...

everyone calls "Mausi".

Casanova compares her to a flower in the middle of swamp.

With a swan among vultures.

With a star glowing in the middle of a storm.

Quickly, Mausi falls prey to him.

She takes care of him

She brings him water, beer, bread, cheese.

Casanova notices that the innkeeper knows nothing of love.

And he takes his time,

certain he will make her his anytime.

But the days go by, and the moment doesn't come.

When it's time to leave,

Casanova discovers it is he who is madly in love with the little innkeeper,

and not the other way around.

She, at the last minute,

refuses to sacrifice her virtue.

And asks him to return.

Tells him that he will only have her if he returns.

A few days later, in Bohemia,

Casanova is robbed by a group of highwaymen.

Once again, like so many other times, he is ruined.

He wanders aimlessly across the grey deserted grassland.

In the distance, he starts hearing cannon fire,

and he discovers he is in Silesia, a few miles away from the line of fire.

He takes refuge in a small Polish garrison located on the way to the battlefront.

There, he meets a colonel who is in charge of the garrison:

the legendary Count Branicki.

He, of course, knows the name of Casanova.

And he invites him to play Pharaoh in the officers' tent.

In the tent, during the game he meets the Colonel's daughter,

Countess Branicka.

The Colonel's daughter is different from any other woman...

the Venetian has ever met before.

And he dedicates several pages in his memoires...

to the thrill and astonishment with which he contemplates her

as she moves among the troops, smoking, betting and cursing like a man.

Casanova notices a danger.

Branicki takes care of his daughter zealously,

watching her all the time.

This is not the first time Casanova comes up against a jealous father or husband.

But, even so, the moment to make her his never arrives.

Casanova narrates a series of encounters in the bivouacs,

very charming and colourful,

but which never lead anywhere.

Something always happens.

Every time, Count Branicki noses in at the worst possible time.

The night arrives when the garrison has to leave.

The Count has triumphed.

She is irredeemably slipping away.

Casanova vows himself to travel across Europe, until he makes her his.

If need be, take up arms.

If need be, go to war.

Casanova discovers himself at the limit of his strength.

Over a month, four times he has fallen in love.

Four times he has been on the verge of triumph.

Four times the prey has escaped at the last moment.

He decides to go back to Fifi.

He rides for three days and nights up to Budapest.

When he arrives, Fifi isn't there.

He only finds a letter from her, asking him to visit her in Venice.

Everyone knows -and so does Fifi-

that Casanova cannot enter Venice after his escape from the Piombi prison.

For this reason, he decides to wait for her in Bolzano and kidnap her.

In Bolzano, he rents a princely palace, which costs him 30,000 sequins.

There he waits for Fifi,

who never arrives.

In her place, the one who shows up is The Colombetta,

who is on tour with her troupe.

Casanova instantly recovers the lost fire.

The Colombetta has him falling for her completely.

He prepares the moment in which they are to unite with delicacy,

with detail and with the subtle precision of a watchmaker.

At the decisive hour, when the fire is about to consume him,

when the banquet is ready,

when his virility is a beast about to reach its prey,

The Colombetta,

with a random excuse,

refuses herself to him.

And so on, ad nauseam.

It would be pointless to describe all the adventures that follow.

Suffice it to say that for months, even years, Casanova lives enslaved,

maddened with love for these four ladies,

from whom he only receives promises.

Some kiss,

some letter promising eternal passion,

and little more.

Amidst the whirlwind, the adventurer declares

that he has never suffered more in all his gallant years.

But he hasn't felt more desire either, nor has he lived more intensely.

Finally, after whole years of epic and frustrated love stories,

Casanova discovers the truth:

the four sources of both his joy and misfortune...

knew one another.

They were part of a secret society of sorcerers called "The Spiders".

In all those years, the tireless seducer had been nothing but an instrument to them,

a messenger, an unconscious tool for their misdeeds.

He had never mattered.

"I've never been anything to them", Casanova finally confesses.

"I, who have always been the lead actor, was for them but a secondary character.

"An extra,

"a detail".

It is precisely there,

after that phrase,

where our unknown man has handwritten, in big letters,

"Eureka".

"Eureka" what, Smith?

"Eureka" what?

I will continue writing tomorrow.

It's already late today and so much is going on

that I'm way behind with all the things I have to tell you.

I haven't even told you of the biggest mystery.

I will just tell you one thing, Smith.

I think I've come across an Ullmann piece.

Just as you hear it.

Don't ask me where it's come from, but I'm pretty sure it's authentic.

As you can see, nobody knows where this whole business will lead us.

November 20

November 20 Saturday

Yes.

I would like to send a confidential telegram.

Yes.

Potomac Institute for Psychic Research,

Washington DC.

Doctor Carlos Smith.

Write:

"Smith, I need you. Stop.

"I need you to come. Stop.

"I think we are looking at a Code Four. Stop.

"I repeat. Code Four. Stop.

"Signed: Gatto".

Please, it's urgent.

I'll wait for the call, thanks.

Hello?

Yes...

What?

He appeared?

Are you sure it's him?

Okay, sure.

I'm on my way.

A DAY IN THE COUNTRY

Excuse me.

Excuse me.

Uhh, well.

Well.

Well.

That's it.

Now comes "Une Partie de Campagne" (A Day in the Country),

then the "Captives"...

and that's it.

It's over.

It's all over.

Oh, one thing. In episode five, the girls don't appear.

They come back in the Captives.

The truth is that it's a bit strange,

but well,

at the time we thought it was interesting.

Well, I'm off now.

Well, it's been a pleasure to have had you with us for...

Well, all those hours...

There it is.

Well,

see you around,

as they say in Mexico,

"Chau".

Episode V

Episode VI

...We spent a long while watching her.

She didn't look like anything we had seen before.

The little mestizo girl breathes heavily,

as if she were looking at the devil.

The Girl's mother looked at me in terror: What was that?

Where did it come from, that strange machine resembling a giant metal insect?

Never again, in all those years following this adventure,

did I come across anything like that.

Finally, the machine seemed to move.

Slowly, some of the chimneys started to release a dark, dense steam.

Then came a long, opaque buzz, like that of a train engine.

In a few minutes, the machine was covered in smoke,

until the chimneys, the rigging and its complex hoist system disappeared.

When the smoke cleared, the machine was no longer there.

My comrades and I stayed for a long while in silence.

Finally, the creole one, as if she were a croag... (illegible)

encouraged us to continue.

Come on, she said, I don't like these mountains.

I'd like to reach the river before sunset.

Around six in the evening, we stopped to eat.

The mestizo girl and her mother said it was a sacred place, a sort of sanctuary.

It reminded me of the megalithic monuments I had seen in my childhood,

on the coast of Cornwall, in the south.

We decided to spend the night right there.

The mestizo girl's mother kept a fretful face, of concern and alarm.

That night, I barely slept.

The girl's mother didn't either.

She kept that vigilant attitude throughout the night,

alert to the smallest whisper, hearing things none of us could even perceive.

No doubt her ear had adapted to silence

in the countless nights spent in that solitude,

waiting, fearing the arrival of the savages.

Finally, while the others were sleeping, she told me in a whisper:

"I hear the water. The river is not far".

At around midday, the river finally appeared.

A remarkable episode took place then:

As soon as we crossed, as if they were a welcoming committee,

two, three, four horses appeared.

They came to receive us, friendly,

and we couldn't help but regard them as a good omen.

They walked alongside us, silent, for a long while.

There it is, the young creole told me, We have crossed.

We are saved. It's over.

We walked for one or two hours. A while later, we found a pond and we bathed.

The little creole didn't want to,

shy, as if she feared being naked in front of us.

Finally, joy overcame fear, and the four of us swam together, for a long while.

At sunset we reached the last hill.

In front of us appeared the immense flatland,

the first villages, the cultivated fields, the known world.

Behind us, the mountains, and behind them, the terrible Desert.

The time had come to say good-bye.

Mother and Daughter continued Eastward together, towards the Headquarters.

I saw them walk away like two small white dots.

What may have become of them and their sad lives?

And those little ones in their wombs, daughters to the same father?

One of the many stories we'll keep seeing for years to come in these cruel lands.

The creole one seemed terrified.

She said she would try to reach Pergamino

where, according to her, she still had family left.

I heard that some years later,

she went back to the Desert, this time of her own free will.

I stayed for a long while staring at the horizon.

A strange melancholy started to grow and, though I tried to scare it away,

it remained there, like a storm cloud, for months.

Ten years I had spent in the Desert, among savages,

far from all the things I loved and believed in.

"You never forget the Desert", one of the old ladies had told me

back in the camp site, during the first days of my captivity.

After a while, I also left.

Fragments from “Memoirs of an Englishwoman Taken Prisoner

in the South American Flatlands" by Sarah S. Evans, rural teacher.

Thomas Stone & Co. Exeter, United Kingdom, 1900.