Read Online City by Alessandro Baricco - Free Book Online

since it’s involuntary—revelatory memory / lying on the doctor’s couch we have sold off the epiphanic flashes from the underground like depressing regurgitations from the personal and individual subconscious / we have consigned them to a soothing remedy, as if they were kidney stones, to be expelled, pissed away in a pee of memories, memories / memory / diuresis of the soul / unpardonable cowardice / as if—Prof. Martens asserted in his lecture No. 14, leaving the lectern and going over to Gould— as if the man who stands bewitched by the spike heel, a black spike heel, were at that moment himself: and had his
own
biography, and his
own
memory. This is the lie. The eyes that see the flashes are unique terminals for the world. They are combinations of things that have happened, objective constellations of possibilities meeting in a single moment in the same place. There is nothing subjective. Every flash is an instance of objectivity. It is the authentic that disfigures the real think of it, what wonderful eyes, capable of being real and that’s all, eyes without history afterwards, only afterwards, then it’s history listen to me, afterwards, only afterwards, then it’s story the ambition to render that flash eternal converts it to a story, as far as it can think of the mind that can do it how much lightness, and strength, to hold a flash suspended for the time necessary to see it melt into a story that would be to coin stories,
that
is what one should know how to do, listening as long as necessary, waiting for the clearing hidden in the piercing glare, greeting the step and the measures, the breath, the pace, walking its paths, breathing its tempos, until you have, in hand, in the voice, that instant opening up into a place, and
softened
in the curved line of a story, to the straight line of a story
sharpened
can you imagine a more beautiful gesture? Prof. Martens asserted in Lecture No. 14. Professor Martens was Gould’s instructor in quantum mechanics. He had a passion for bicycles, though he fell off frequently, because of ear lesions that hadn’t healed properly. One of his ancestors had fought in the battle of Charlottenburg, and he had the evidence. He said.

7
    Another good scene was the menu scene. In the saloon. Not the menu. The scene. It took place in the saloon.
    Where a whole great confusion of things was dancing around—voices, noises, colors—but don’t forget, said Shatzy, the stink. That’s important. Keep in mind the stink. Sweat, alcohol, horses, rotten teeth, pee and aftershave. Got that? She wouldn’t continue until you swore you had that firmly in your mind.
    In the beginning it was all between Carver, the guy who worked in the saloon, and the stranger, the one who’d been at the Dolphin sisters’. Whenever Carver talked, he dried glasses. No one had ever seen him wash one.
    â€œAre you the stranger?”
    â€œWhat’s that, a new brand of whiskey?”
    â€œIt’s a question.”
    â€œI’ve heard some more original.”
    â€œWe keep the good ones over here, for the customers with money.”
    The stranger places a gold piece on the bar and says:
    â€œLet’s see.”
    â€œWhiskey,
señor
?”
    â€œDouble.”
    Shatzy said that there was still some stuff left to record, but essentially it was almost perfect. The dialogue, she meant.
    â€œDo you folks always shoot people who show up in town?”
    â€œDolphin sisters, eh?”
    â€œTwo ladies. Twins.”
    â€œThat’s them.”
    â€œNice pair.”
    â€œNever seen anyone use a rifle like them,” Carver says, and starts drying another glass.
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œYou haven’t heard the story of the jack of hearts yet?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œThey’re famous, on account of that story. It goes like this. They stand forty paces away from you, you throw a deck of cards in the air, they