The writer on Tuesday 21 June in Seregno will read on the stage of the review conceived and directed by Elisabetta Sgarbi a passage omitted from her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Here we anticipate it
Here we publish the passage that the writer Andrew Sean Greer will read this evening in Seregno as part of the La Milanesiana festival: it is a previously unpublished chapter, omitted from the novel with which he won the Pulitzer Prize, Less (La nave di Teseo, 2017 ). In September La nave di Teseo will publish the author’s new novel, Less si perduto, at the same time as the United States. Tonight’s meeting, entitled The art of losing, will take place in Seregno (province of Monza and Brianza), at the San Rocco Theater, at 9 pm, with an introduction by Elisabetta Sgarbi. Among the other guests, the writer Alessio Forgione, the American novelist Lisa Halliday, the essayist and biographer Enrico Rotelli, to close with the live acoustic concert by Vasco Brondi. The Milanesiana, conceived and directed by Elisabetta Sgarbi, dedicated this year to the theme of Omissions and foresees events in 20 cities.
There he is, Arthur Less, standing on the main avenue of Ho Chi Minh City, Saigon. Red like a shrimp.
The hot day: the sun burns above him veiled by a smoke of humidity; air pale apricot. On his sweat-soaked chest and back, like he’s been pierced by an arrow, and he’s deciding what to do. Which is better: splash from one patch of shade to another or move as slowly as possible? Better the cricket or the iguana? As he stands there boiling on the sidewalk, the question begins to take on ultra-metaphorical connotations. The parrot or the sloth? The hare or the tortoise? It happens to novel writers.
This part of the itinerary frightened him very much. If Morocco had been a pleasure trip, and India a creative getaway, well, I work here. A men’s magazine full of fashion, cosmetics, fitness in deshabill, with a largely gay readership, which also aspires to a comradely heterosexual allure, from a club for men only, entrusted him with the task of telling the secret nightlife of modern Saigon. But Arthur sweaty, fifty, gay and not cool at all. How will he ever be able to infiltrate that circle a mystery. But he needs that money – after his delightful trip to Morocco, his bank account is as dry as a desert canyon. But I will face this problem tomorrow; today’s challenge is to find a barber before leaving the pens.
Arthur Less not made for high temperatures. a delicate machine, and when the thermometer rises above 25 degrees, his system begins to go haywire. Small smudges appear (an astonished expression, a short-term memory gap), the fine movements begin to trudge with respect to intention, and he finds himself sucked into his lost body as a teenager from decades ago, with his glasses falling out. on the ground, beatings on doorposts and footsteps tripping up the stairs. But the most dramatic effect can be seen on the skin: red spots appear, first heart-shaped in the original (but not current) position of his, and carnations on the cheeks, and small compositions on the ears, and a shiny pink-geranium on the front – a desert in bloom. Strangers begin to worry. You took a good burn today! they comment. They weren’t even burn experts; a reaction to heat, he explains, not a sunburn; a kind of skin cry. Smile of the stranger. And then, those times that it really burns itself: the excruciating pain, the red gives maximum alert in the point that it has missed, usually the drawing of a demonic hand. People frown, worried. So, the clothing he bought for Vietnam – and followed him around the world – consists of a head-to-toe navy blue linen outfit. The burqa of the Nordic race.
It takes him two hours to find a barber that doesn’t look like a brothel. Not that really are brothels, of course, but Arthur Less can’t get the idea out of his head that they might… And not that he’s particularly against brothels; only, as a gay male, he would feel very uncomfortable to be in it for some case. He once went to visit a friend in the Caribbean, and the guy had given him a date in a bar in town, without telling him it was a brothel. The friend was very late, and the barman didn’t want to sit him down if he didn’t book a few laps on the track with the girls. Try to imagine Arthur Less dancing with a Dominican girl to the notes of Muskrat love. When his friend finally arrived, he was with some friends over there; he had apologized for the delay: they had had to wait for a cake to finish cooking in the oven. The mother of one of them had prepared it for her to take to the brothel as payment. They had brought out the cake (chocolate), the girls had been thrilled and had offered Arthur Less a slice as well. He had refused; he felt that if he accepted her he would be forced to dance Muskrat love again. The local guy had disappeared into the back yard. Less’s friend had offered a round of drinks. The jukebox had resumed playing Muskrat Love, and he had found himself forced to dance anyway.
For lunch, the hotel doorman suggested, the best banh can be found at the lesbian bakery. Less nodded without understanding and limited himself to thinking: Heaven knows what it means, I know who will find out there, who understands us. He walks the long hot and tiring blocks to the address they gave him, and, miracle, he finds it. Indeed, quite a lesbian bakery.
The barber who identifies all carved wood and brass, with framed posters by Mark Twain and Hemingway. I wonder why. It smells like dog hair and sterilant liquid. An elderly man makes him sit in a barber’s chair of the past, he cuts his hair, defines his beard with a straight razor and then covers his face with a warm cloth. Less welcomes the choice. When the cloth is removed, instead of the old man’s face is the face of a young woman. He whispers something in his ear. Eventually, a brothel.
(translation of Elena Dal Pra)
June 20, 2022 (change June 20, 2022 | 21:28)
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