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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.