Chromosome 11

The next mornig a lonely traveller alighted from the first train. He looked around, enraptured by that foggy wilderness. Left the luggage on the foot-path, he went into the baths; he couldn't see the strange still creature that the two non-living beings formed since the night before; a creature made of light and darkness; but he could see the effects that their meeting caused at that too modern building. He knew how that island was subject to the earthquakes, however, and he perceived, in that very moment and place a sense of perfect balance, between the human cleverness and the strenght of nature, as his ignorance supposed. So he saw an image of serenity, when his countenance reflected in the splints of mirror and he told himself: "Welcome to Japan, you'll be for a long time here".

Almost two years later, that same traveller is awakened from his recurrent daydream, by the first snow-flakes on his face. He was lieing in ambush there, since that early morning; the hunger and the chill have numbed him, so he pulls out from his bag something to crunch. He has to do it very slowly and silently, in order to not disturb and alarm the female snow monkeys (Macaca fuscatus) and their puppies, plunged into the puddle of warm and smoking water. If it was as in his first year of permanence, when he followed and observed always the same group, where he was accepted and recognized at last, he could do eveything naturally, but to approach and observe a new group, especially in wintertime, when they are more weak and vulnerable, therefore more sospicious, is an hard work that compels him at long permanences outside, stretched out in that wet snow. He remembers one year ago, eleven months after his arrival, he had to communicate his intentions: come back or to make longer his temporary stay. He was undecided, the initial excitement for that adventure was decreasing; strangely that first winter, thoretically the harder season, after ten months of exploring wild life, revealed him all the tedium of that voluntary hermitage. The only one thing to do was to go out and, run along few minutes of gentle slope to the nearest warm source, sit down on a great rock together the males, acquired member of the group. Even to write out his report was hard; nothing of significative was really happening, nothing that the scientific community didn't know.

He was really discouragd about the value of his own experience here when, a night a tree gave him a meaning. His slumber, since few days, was restless. He was incessantly thinking to his girlfriend, always unwilling their separation, he thought she was agitated waiting for the moment to meet him again, then, suddenly, she appeared into a dream: he was lieing in the pallet when he heard an improbable shouting, opened his eyes, he was incapable of manteining them open; the light was dazzling. Opening them again slowly and watching between his fingers he was able to see the origin of all these muddle: upon the little table, at the center of the woody cottage where he lived, where usually was a little bonsai; the only living being that kept him company, since he was supplied every month by means of an helicopter; there was a real tree, but made of light. Roosted on its branches were the female monkeys of his group, at the foot of it was his girlfriend, she was pointing at him and denigrating him by means of those little cries that him, after a long time spent with those animals, wasn't able to interpret yet. The monkeys seemed very amused by her speech and laughed rudely, showing their gums, like Chita in the worst Tarzan movie. He couldn't bear it longer, thus he stood up and suddenly all the females disappered.

There were only him and the tree of light. From its branches, now, hung down some stripes of silk, as like the prayers stirred by the wind of the Buddhist tradition. He closed to them and was surprised to be able to read the japanese signs; in the biggest stripes he read:

"All what counts is what you will never possess", the left over said:

"Only the love you will be able to give will counts"

"The most sacred part of you, that is God, is not your, but the same for everyone"

"The land that you will busy yourself to enclose and defend, was here before the father of your father and will be here after the son of your son"

Now he was gasping in his own sweat and lit the gas-lamp: to see the habitual bonsai in his place was reassuring, the dream was really ended now, but he was resolute: he would be here for a long time. The day after he met for the first time that albino monkey that he is still following now, one year later. Just like all the albinos he had not a group, but he was temporary tolerated by the others and immediately he understood that they were sharing the same destiny and felt sympathy for it. For the first time he had the impulse to give a name at a monkey. He was not a biologist; he accepted that work 'cause he liked mountains, living outdoor and animals, and it was well remunerate; but he remembered by his secondary-school studies that in the humans the albinism come from an anomaly of the chromosome eleven, so C11 was the name that he decided to give it. He remembers how many night and days he spent camping outdoor, on the snow, for not loosing the moment of its departure, and when it happened he was ready to begin his roaming life.

And now it is still here, not far from him, sitting on a rock, aparted from every scheme, indifferent to the scrupulous vigilance of the males and the maternal care of the females. His sterility allowed itself to be concerned of something else. What great reports about it he could have write, but now there was no world outthere for him. They are here, while he is ending his snack, the elegant white monkey gazed the top of the mountains as if it was able to pierce the low strata of clouds that was following in light snakes, as he was waiting for something. The slight restlessness caused by the snowfall is diminishing when an unexpected new agitation spreads into the flock, only C11 remains calm, as he was waiting for something: in fact, just a moment later a far but deafening crash breaks the harmony of that animated water-colour. The whole group of apes flees between cries of different tones, to the closer pinewood, as they were flying a great peril; only C11 suddenly starts towards the origin of the rumor, towards the hidden ridge, as attracted by the happenig that it was waiting for.

Confused by the uproar of the group, when he has the spirit to watch the white ape's behaviour it is too late, it is already at the limit of the glade. Forgetting every caution, he wears the snow-shoes and without any baggage, he starts the pursuit accompanied by the males of the group that cry toward him and throws him some empty pine-cones and branches. He knows it will be impossible to reach it, especially ascending he is too fast for him, but he is so able to recognize its tracks, like they were finger-prints, that doesn't despair to find it before the night sinks.

After a hour the fast pursuit was still in process; him, like a bloodhound, is following nose to ground, the footprints, his gait with snow-shoes is so speed that he seems to slide on the white surface nonchalant of the uprooted shrubs and the broken branches after his passage. His fury is so contrary with that landscape so delicate and silent; it looks like painted in diluited Indian ink with a thin softly brush; that shadowless brightness gives a flat vision where the not whitened objects lose their colour, as like they would not to give out a note that could take away from that melting monotony.

But then, come into a narrow gorge, he realizes that the slope is extreme for continuing with that footwear, and he has to continue on his feet; his hurry becomes worry, he is sinking to his knees into the mantle of snow, every step is slowly and tiring, a gust of wind makes him shudder with cold, he's moist with perspiration. In a moment of clear-headedness, the eyes get accustomed at the few diluited ink of that gorge, he sees how the wind has there, accumulated the snow only in the part where he's climbing; the other side of the declivity is rocky and almost clean. It's time for a pause, in spite of himself,: he sits down on a rock free from snow and admires the landscape. He always feels admiration for the rough balance that, now, the wavering clouds, after have gathered the hardness from the stones, the resin from the pines bark and the thin voice of the silence, are bringing to his nostrils as an impalapable softness; the snowfall is reducing its intensity and the wind is increasing its, clearing the air. The rocky wall over him is step by step more steep and his eyes try the easier way for climbing, it is clear for them, hoping its the same used by C11 that has left no tracks in the snowed side; the underlying valley covered by the fresh fallen snow, has the appearance of a gigantic icing, where the trees, around that the fog has frozen, seem made of sugar, ready to eat. The thought of eating recalls himself how he has been improvident; his experience had to teach him how is dangerous to adventure in high mountain letting all the baggages down at the valley. His stupidness and his hunger make him more vulnerable then the lichens attached at the stone between his thighs. Nature supplies them with unconsciosness and yet he cannot give up to think if these creatures so silently and immovable had awareness of themself and of their destiny of suffering, would not they let to die, or would they resist 'till the next springtime. Also his existence could apear, at the sight of urban people an existence of privations, he limits his human contacts at a monthly neutral report, but it was of his choice: but is every creature that has fully awareness of itself, really liberty to decide his destiny? Is the istinct more effective then intelligence, how will be the promise of happiness fulfiled?

He notices that he is philosophizing and it's the last thing that he needs in this moment. The only surviving that he has to gather about is his. With consummate experience he feels his pockets and founds some food, a frontal electric lamp and an aluminium camping out lenght; it would be enough to resist a night at high altitude. He decides to not eat anything waiting for the time he will be arrived. Right, arrived, but where? He swallows a portion of clean snow and climbs up to the limit of gorge, where he arrives few minutes later. He hopes it is the right way, 'cause at first the snowfall and then the wind have clean all the tracks. He looks at the snow crest, it is broken: surely C11 has passed through it. Good, but it will not be easy having not four hands, do the same thing. It would be easier with telescopic rackets, but they are still down, at the valley, he has to succed with his two legs, but the slope is closer 45 degrees and the snow crusty, every step is a disappointing slide; after an half hour of attempts he is demoralized and breathless. Some long sights at the landscape, breathing deeply, don't gave him the expected prick; what before was harmony, now is perceived as an empty and far bewitching image, more or less the same for many people that, sitting into their warmed comfortable rooms, exclaim: "How I'd like to be there, outside !" If they could know how is hard and cold here, that its not an holliday living here, that it is principally perseverance. The beauty is nomore a question of viewing, but to be able to read the imperfection and the temporary as source of surviving, and yet, in that moment he's envying them and their comfortable chairs near the fire-place. He is close to abandon, but he knows that over that point there's a plan and then the way for the top will be easy, not considering the unknown condition of the snow; however it's essential to join the plan if he doesn't want to loose the macacque. He rubs himself with some snow and in a last desperate effort he can hoist himself to the plan, getting confused stretched out into the snow, he seems a swimmer in solid water.

When he can to go up for a breath of fresh air, he's astonished. The light is more clear that he had imagined being into the gorge and it means that he as a longer time to look for the tracks, and he sees a thing that he didn't remember by his reconnaissance of the summer before: a building in excellent condotion and it means he has the chance to dry and to refresh himself into the winter room, before to look for the tracks. He stands up and notices that the snow is still to his knees, it will be hard to walk to the top of the crest, he comes near the building and after the momentary enthusiasm he notices something strange; he remembers well that place, it was in the wilder part of the island and no one building was there; more, in no one place of the world could exist an alpin refuge made in that manner. It looks like made of icing, with a tiny fountain in the garden, playground toys and dwarfishes statues that the snow has not covered. In any case he has no choice, if it's a mirage of his tiredness, he will to camp outdoor, then he will decide what to do. Arrived at the low woody gate, persuaded to pass over it, he hears a latch go off; the door of the buildng opens and a thin pale tiny girl goes out under the arcade. He stops to look at her: how can she to resist outdoor in her summer flowered cloth, how can someone to live in that climate without heating, 'cause he has not seen any smoke come out from that house. He moves an arm and calls the girl, in order to attract her attention, but in that moment the white ball that she's clinging to her body slides down and she finds it difficult to keep that again, so he decides to ring the little bell over the gate. In the exact moment of his touching it, the garden becomes animated: water jets by the fountain and the statues start to move describing a circle and spinning on themself, like the animated clockwork devices of the Mitteleurope towns, he remembers the one in a square of Strasbourg. They don't let any track of their passage on the snow as if they were floating on it, it would be amusing, if it would not be grotesque, and in fact a hysterical laugh is his reaction when a dwarfish comes to stand before him and open his mouth lowering a mobile mandible. Always laughing he looks at the girl that has kept her white plasic ball again, also her laughs. He puts his sight on the hostile host who prevents him to come into the garden and not even now he is conscious of the danger that this opened snare ment. Suddenly it sinks into his groin and get off.

Cadenced and harmonic waking up, the ceiling seems huge, the sweet and tepid softness of the mattress makes him be at his own ease; he doesn't know where is lieing, not even what really happened to him, but he feels so satisfied and fresh as so as it was the day that he was waiting for since ever. He could fall asleep again if he wasn't bothered by that alternating of low and high sounds, like a conversation between a sub-woofer and a ringing cellular telephon, like a track of Alva Noto, the german artist that he liked a lot in the normal world, but arrhythmical. When he tries to move , just to look for the origin of that sound, the acute pain between his legs makes to come into his mind his injury, his sweetness starts to wane and he begins to pay attention to each paticular: a foot bumps into a big and projecting object that seems a valve, so he supposes to be on a water-mattress, but before to lift up the blanket, his touch is made curious by the surface of that mattress, it's not rubber and it's not cloth. That is human skin ! Alarmed he arises and turns around, ignoring any pain, his eyes cannot believe what they are seeing: the distance between the walls is enormous and every object is so great, but, principally, he was sleeping onto the naked tit of a giant woman. She is uttering that deep sound that he heard, talking affably with the tiny pale girl that was standing down there, close to bed, and is answerig with that sharp voice like a squeaking. He could see her just leaning out of bed, 'cause she's as little as a doll, smaller then he judged her under the arcade. Him, man of the mountains for the first time suffers for giddiness, he lies down again, discouraged and icredulous.

If she looks like a tiny doll, his condition is not different; a sexless doll for bed. This humiliating and reassuring situation cannot be his destiny, he's a man, he has a purpose, he has no time to waste: he doesn't know how many time was passed, but in any case he knows that he has to move if he wants to attain his aim. Suddenly, with a great effort of will, he jumps out of bed. He falls down on knees and elbows, the ache is almost unbearable and a great wet stain enlarges on his pants; he can't believe this is not just a nightmare, but every sensation is so spotless, as if the unreality was raping him doggy style. As soon as he collects himself, he turns toward the females to see their reaction, they're no more talking, but don't try to pursue or to catch him, they confine themselves to watch him with consenting eyes. He feels strangely disappointed; this sensation to be prisoner that he had, the foretaste of a fihting to obtain his freeedom had the taste of an amorous contest that he is going to leave, with his manhood, in that house. But he has chosen since one year and his new condition will surely not be an obstacle for the chaste brotherhood with C11. He crawls on all four toward the door and while he's thinking how it will be hard to stand up for opening it; everything here is proportionate at the giant woman; a chair moves from its place and sieges the handle. Him, used and equiped to fight against the elements and the hunger feels himself so inadequate for this one, irrational and deprived of any intimacy. He hears a rustle behind his back and turns towards the females again; the giant woman is getting out of bed, her nudity is as elegant as her gait, he would never have attemped to escape, he feels so ridiculous and infantile, so, making an attempt to strike an attitude, waiting for a merited and liked punishment, he stands up in front of her. She passes beyond him without a glance, takes the chair and puts it back to its place, then she opens the door and begs him to go out; as before, his sensation of disappointment is great, he would sleep again on her breast, feel its warmth, while the passage outthere is so cold and dusk. Irresolute, he hears a laugh at his back and recognizes it; it was the signal for his castration, and he has the same cold sense of dismay when the tiny pale girl pushes him so he falls in the corridor, down on his knees and elbows again, and the door closes forever back of him.

The sense of danger is palpable here as so as the cold is. He feels the presence of the wild beast and his heart doesn't slacken its pase when his eyes accostum to darkness: he supposed it, the ball is in the corner, ready to strike again. Crawling on all four he starts to scour the corridor, runned after by that object, a normal rubber beach-volley ball, so safe in the normal world it revealed here all its bright perfection, an affront at the incompleteness of the human senses. Its presence and consequent impossibility to not watch it, was an opened door for madness. He can't bear its closeness and enters in the nearest room, hoping to let it out, he's sweating and panting, but his breathing stops when he looks at the walls. They're exactly a photograph reproduction of the surrounding outdoor, even the air looses its indoor smell and has the cold and wet fragrance of those uninhabited summits. This clears his mind, he would to start again the search, but that spotless globe is always on his tracks; kicking he bangs the door so that it stays in the corridor while he has time to plan an escape. This bang is fatal, he has not reckoned that the realism of this room is not limited at the appearance, a rumble echoing with the walls, precedes of little istants an avalanche hurling from the declivity of the mountains, that runs over him burying before he has the time to reach the door again.

This could be the end, he knows. Immobilized into a niche of ice, unable to understand the high and the low, he spits out the snow that occludes the respiratory ducts. One cannot suppose how dark can be under that white mass, but relly he could not see any part of his body, he feels just his hands, feet and ears start to become aching because of freezing: he hasn't eaten since that morning and lost a lot of blood, his weakness manifests itself with tremblings in all the muscles of his body that try in this way to warm itself. The smell around him tells that fortunately he has urinate into the niche, this will produce warm and oxigene, just a few minutes longer time to try to survive. He tries to dig for air with the same desperate impetuosity that allowed him to overcome the crest, but now he doesn't know the right direction and the snow is more firm that one can imagine seeing that cloud of powder to slide down. The adrenalin starts to work, he feels nomore pain, he knows that soon he will fall into a definitive sleep, he spends all his last energies digging softly with nails because he can move just his forearms.

At least he can't keep up his eyes wide and in the darkness a white shape is closing, out of focus. Step by step the image is more bright: the shape is himself, he's arriving at the seaside of a wild island,dressed in a long white tunic. He's walking on the sea without to sink and when he reaches the dryland, he stands up calling, with persuasive voice, the inhabitants hidden into the bush. Amazed and frightened they come out, first the males, while females and children stand aside, and with circumspection touch him, offer him some gifts; they understand he's just a man, a peaceful man, so also the females and the pupils are called to welcome him and he is surrounded by a jubilant crowd, wreathes of flowers are at his neck, sweet drinks and ripe fruits are on an improvised table, while the more sturdy young boys build in few minutes a wooden throne for him. He feels so honoured that want to reciprocate them revealing his secret for controlling the passions and the elements: he frees himself from that enthusiastic embrace, takes two children by the hands and takes with them a walk over the water. This prodigy makes those simple people even more devoted; many kneel to him, someone point at the throne as his natural destination. He appeases everybody with a wide gesture of the hands then, raising up the edge of the spotless tunic, he show them his sexless body. Cries of anger and terror rise up from the whole group, the mothers carry their sons on their arms and with all the females, the elder and the childrens, look for a safe shelter into the bush behind the shore, while the same vigorous boys that made the throne keep him at bay, striking and shoving with long cudgels. While he is trying to give and demand explanations, and to ward off the blows, some male elders come back bringing with them a young girl, they throw her close to him then insulting and spiting upon them, all the members of the tribe disappear into the thicket. From her despearte weeping he realizes that this is for her a condemnation: he doesn't know her fault, but all the tribe, her included, conceives to share one's life with a eunuch as a misfortune. He's not of the same opinion and tries to soothe her telling that she is free to go away when she wants, but when she lifts her face towards him, he finds himself in front of his girlfriend, whose only fault was to have loved him. Now is him to feel at fault, he would apologize for his behaviour, but not even she recognize him.

She, astonished, transfigures into a dazzling light. He closes and opens the eyes again and again, this light is real, someone is digging, freeding him by the snow, by a little perforation he can see, against the light, the shape of a monkey head and never he has found the bad breath of a ape so pleasing. Chromosome11, he knows they had to meet somewhere, before the night sinks. In few minutes all his body is free, al his limbs are rigid, but he can, doing his best, to sit up. The door of the room is wide open and the wild beast still outthere, hidden in the dusk, he feels so vulnerable in this moment, but C11 jumps into the hole where he's sitting and picks up between his legs a black ball, then presents it to him; this obscure globe of anti-matter smells of urine and placenta, he touchs it finding its surface so warm and reassuring, recognizes in it his source of safety in that ice-grave. Guided by the hand of his white brother, that keeps in the other one the black ball, he comes into the dark passage. He can feel the hostile presence of the white globe at their back, but at once the corridor begin to go up, by progress more steep so much that he has to let the hand for helping himself in the climbing. The wild beast, althought it feels the victim unarmed and does its best, continually rolls down. The white ape reaches the door at the end of the passage, opens it and steals away. The bright light that invades the passage is not enough to lighten its entirety, he cannot see the end, the corner of the wild beast remain hidden in the shadow, then, in a moment also him is out.

C11 is already disappeared, lefting plain tracks in the top snow-field; he knows this place, it is really close to the top, but in confirmation he looks the altitude up in the altimeter. The answer is :"FULL", it would mean that he is over 13.120 feet and it's impossible, because in that region no one peack is over 9.600, but it should not be the first time that a change of athmospheric conditions makes the instrument out of order; what really amazed him is the hour: it is almost midnight and the light is that of the midnight sun in the artic regions. On istinct he raises his eyes up, the vault of heaven is clear, each star set into his place in the black sky. The air is still and he's freezing, before to move he runs through all his food, thus starts anew the pursuit of C11 and of the source of this mistery. He can choose the pace, the light is very good, the tarcks are evident onto the virgin surface of the snow-shelf and moreover the way for the top is fixed. He sees that peack towers above the table-land parceled in two planes, contained into a rocky cluster, that he's running along slowly, because he is experienced enough to know how the perspective is deceptive into the mountains and it's phisical conditions are not quite good, it's already a miracle that he can walk standing up.

With difficulty he climbs over the first plateau and faces the steep ascent joining it with the second, his mind is free from every expectation and nothing could surprise it, concentrated as he is about his effort. He stops a moment to get his wind back and looks down at the underlying plateau, noticing the arabesques drawn by the boulders fallen down from the surrounding rocky walls; like the japanese ideograms he never understood their meanings, but he was sure they have one.

He continues his walk and reaches finally the high plateau under the peack, his mind is shacky, he thought to have seen all the endurable today, but to discover that the source of that uncommon luminosity is the tree of light of his old dream is too much also for him. It is standing over a gigantic erratic block in the middle of the plane; step by step he comes near it, the light becomes blinding, he has got to wear his sunglasses to carry on and notices that something is moving, imprisoned between the block and the tree. It will mean to lengthen the road, but his curiosity prevails and closer the stone he sees himself naked and still male to move and to breathe with difficulty, almost pressed under the weight of the plant. He couldn't bear anymore that vision and disgusted goes further; left the block at his back he can see, with clearness also without shades, the origin, the alpha of this event: where untill today was the rocky wall where passed the normal way to reach the peack, now is a pass, a breach towards east; a view on a pink promise of a glad new life.

The white macacque was sitting on the edge of the new precipice, keeping the black globe at the tip of its outstretched arms, it was watching the panorama trough the ball. Slowly and without breathing he arrives behind it and falls on his knees, trying to look throgh that betilo; the black meteors, talking balls, that the people of the Middle East venerated in the ancient times. C11 turns toward him, his red brilliant snout is enraptured, he can read in its eyes all the absolute joy of that new world, but nothing through the globe; as so as the members of his species he has lost the ability to remember the future.

The glance of the monkey becomes interrogative, him, with a gesture of his head voices a denial, thus it resumes its ascetic position. There is nothing to do anymore here, he sadly accounts it. It's time he comes back at the society of the progressive apes (Homo sapiens sapiens); he 's resolute. He begins the descent that will go to the world where he started almost two years ago, he has not seen the new world but has read in the eyes of Chromosome11 the hope and the joy for it, and his mutilated body will be the evidence of this novelty deep into his heart: every creature can face any suffering sustained by the promise of a better life. But just now he's going into the white, into the fog, into the dusk of the sleeping valley and he shudders when the two snaplinks at his saash bump one against the other, giving out a sound that his faintness identifies like the one that in his teenager readings was, with the call of the nightjars, presage of misfortunes: "Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!"

appendix: 'The great card-shaper'

This is the fourth and last part of a series that for its own nature can't have a name. I'm not talking about a sequence or a chronology, in fact every tale can exist in a separate manner. What joins them is the deception, I could entitle:

'Did you never...' as 'Unresolved injustices'

'The lonesome cowboy' as 'The right question'

'Of the patent for the method to walk on water' as 'Fully aware'

'Chromosome 11' as 'Prisoner of life' ,

but this could be an help only if you think that a conjurer is just a great card-shaper.