Fat Thursday
February 17, 1977
Another half day of school!
Professor Umberto Bedeschi was sure this was not a good thing. His students were not grasping their functions at all and they were unlikely to meet the curriculum’s requirements for trigonometry. As for his science students, they were hardly up to par in geography: they still described nations based on the colors used on the map.
“You mean the big fat pink one next to the long yellow one?”
As he trudged down the town’s ancient decumanus, he pulled his cape closer around him against the bleak February day. Here and there confetti had been scattered on the wet, gray pavement; this year the palette was jewel tones of luminous tangerine, pure ultramarine, vibrant canary and luscious chartreuse. Some years the confetti all came out in pastels, some years, there were just primary colors. Prof. Bedeschi would never forget ’44 when there really hadn’t been enough of anything to warrant celebrating Carnival. All the same someone had made confetti with an odd mixture of pink, black, gray, and white: the colors of the daily papers and sports sheets. That was a grim attempt at cheerfulness, like treading on licorice and cow's lungs.
Professor Bedeschi never had understood Carnival. He had no idea why anyone would want to dress up like a harem girl or a pirate. It was hard enough to keep body and good suit together; why waste your time on something so frivolous that lasted only a day or a week? But he knew he was a member of society and that he had to respect the calendar. Carnival had no angle for him to ply math or science with so he just gave in and ate the cold fried noodles and sweet tortellini. It would have been nicer if they served them hot though.
Professor Bedeschi lived alone. He was an orphan and had no relatives. He complained to his students:
“You laugh, but when you finish school and get home, you have a hot meal waiting for you. All I get is sliced bologna. Cold bologna.”
At this, the class discretely stifled its laughter. His students actually did like him very much though they did not take him as seriously as he thought proper. He always took them to the most interesting places on field trips and he was a grumpy sport at their constant jibes. Professor Bedeschi didn’t realize that he was really funny. He was so earnest and well intentioned that irony sat beyond the pale of his comprehension, and he was always coming out with “Bedeschi-sims” that his students circulated. One day on a field trip to the foothills, he had started his lesson by bending over and saying: “Let’s take a rock, any old rock.” He looked at the rock and realized that it was a piece of terracotta covered with slime mold. As he slung it over his shoulder, he retorted: “But not this one.”
The students smirked and suppressed their laughter all over again. They didn’t really care that he had mistaken a piece of clay for a stone and they never knew it. He was just always paradoxically contradicting himself and missing his doubles entendres.
When he got to school this Fat Thursday, he entered the faculty room, hung his Homburg hat on the rack, and unwound his old fashioned, full circle, knee-length cape with grey rabbit fur collar, from around his portly frame. The cape had been his uncle’s and there was nothing warmer to wear on a glum foggy morning like this. Indeed, the fog had been so thick that droplets had formed all over the cape which now was actually dripping onto the floor. Wet fog, that was what they called it, but he knew it was actually a low lying cumulus cloud that rose from the ground into the sky no more than a few hundred meters.
The French teacher was the only other teacher in the faculty room, wearing a long but tight pink skirt suit and emerald silk blouse. Her bright red hair set off her dazzling white skin and large blue eyes. Livia Carlonie was a beautiful Frenchwoman, young and vivacious. She was almost as good a teacher as Bedeschi was. He thought she would have been a better one if she wasn’t always giving in to the students’ whims to go out and get ice cream or put on shows in the parish’s tiny auditorium.
The students loved her rather more than they loved Bedeschi, but then she was interested in them as people already filled with life, and not as vessels to be filled with knowledge. When the girls had problems with their boyfriends, Livia was always willing to spend an extra fifteen minutes after school to speak with them and see what they thought and what could be done. Today she had placed a large mound, covered in tin foil on the center of the table in the teachers’ lounge.
“Plofessol! You should be ze filst! Happy Fat Zulsday!”
With a flourish she pulled off the foil to reveal a heaping hill of crepes. She took one of the bright scarlet paper napkins she had brought and picking through the mound, selected one for Plofessol Bedeschi and handed it to him.
“Oh, it’s still warm!” Professor Bedeschi quickly took a bite and smiled.
“Of coulse, it is walm. I put zem in ze o-ven zis morning and zen wlapped them in a blanket so zey would stay hoat. Zat one is youl favolite, no?” Livia knew Professor Bedeschi was partial to the delicious sheep’s ricotta cheese that the local farmers made.
“It must have taken you hours to make this pile of crepes!”
"Oh, only three, but ze musical prográmme was on last night and so I stood in ze kitchén and watched it while I turned zem out. When you know what you are doing, crêpes are not velly difficult to make. I could fold zem up blindfoldéd I am sure. Here, try zis one. It’s my favorite.”
Bedeschi bit into the crepe she had just handed him. This one was sweet, tangy, and delicious.
“What is it?”
“Ze best. It is nothing but plain old glanulated sugár and a squilt of lemon juice. Oh, if only it tasted zat good on a piadina.”
“Don’t spout rubbish. Nutella on a piadina. Now that’s an abomination! I wonder who ever thought it up.”
“Oh, some spoiled little Italian child. But zey like it and as long as we don’t have to eat it, it will be fine. So Plofessol, what are you going to dress up as today?”
“Oh, the usual psychotic fogy that I dress up as everyday.”
“But plofessol, you are neither a fogy nor a psychotic! You are just a sweet old man, a bit of a bear, but . . . “
“Don’t you start that sweet old man on me stuff. I am not old. I’m only sixty-three and in the prime of my life.”
“You’re right, You are in ze prime of your life. Would you like anozér crepe?”
Livia Carlonie adored Professor Bedeschi. He was so smart and cantankerous. He was the only person at the faculty meetings who ever made her smile, because he was the only one who baldly pointed out brought up the obviousness of the latest ministerial foolishness or another faculty member’s outright stupidity. The other teachers, especially the women, got furious at him for being so, so, so reasonable and straightforward and unwilling to take sides in any of their myriad, futile disputes about what should and should not be done at school. He always pointed out that until the curriculum was completed, there wasn't much sense about worrying about anything else, and since the curriculum was almost never completed, it was useless for them to discuss whether their complaints should be sent first to the teacher’s union or to the local government. Professor Bedeschi was only interested in one thing: making sure his students had sufficient notions (abstract knowledge would have been asking too much) about Mathematics and Biology and Physics and Chemistry and Geography to pass their high school boards.
The other teachers started to file into the faculty room, bearing bags with sodas and potato chips and little cakes they had made or bought yesterday. The students were yelping and hooting in the halls, half of them wearing masks and squirting shaving cream from canisters at one another. Professor Bedeschi went to the door of the faculty lounge, pulled his waistband up to his ribcage and stuck his finger in his ear. The students stopped dead in their tracks under his glower and quietly made their ways to their rooms. The bell rang and the teachers streamed out with the class rolls in their hands and determined looks in their eyes.
Professor Bedeschi was carrying the solar system under his arm. He walked into the class, put it on the teacher’s table and turned the little handle linked to the chain that made the earth revolve around the sun and the moon revolve around the earth.
“Boys and girls!:” he exclaimed. “Look here! The cosmos, this model of the cosmos shows you that the cosmos is really nothing more than a great twisting of the balls!”
His students could hardly hold back on this one, full of spirits as they were for Fat Thursday. They exploded in laughter. The rest of the lesson went downhill from there. The students’ hormones were bouncing out of control, and all the sugared food that they ate during the break left them positively hilarious. Professor Bedeschi harrumphed and groaned and threatened and came close to swearing throughout the morning. There was no way he was even going to get even the smallest of axioms into his students’ heads today, even with a brick and a funnel.
Livia Carlonie was sympathetic.
“Plofessol, really. It is Fat Zulsday after all. We do have velly good students, you know zat. Zey do study hard and of course zey want to play hard too.”
“Play play play. That’s all they think about is playing.”
“No, zere is ze play zis evening! You are coming aren’t you.? It will be velly velly amusant.”
“No, I have to prepare my lessons for tomorrow.”
“But Plofessol, all work and no play . . . “
“Makes Jack a wise boy!”
“Plofessol, really. You must come. Zere is a little surprise just for you. Ze students will be heartbrokén if you do not see zeir little divertissement teatrale ce soir. Please reconsider.”
“Well, I might. But right now I have to get to the market before it closes or I am not going to have anything to eat for lunch.”
Livia went over to the table and wrapped up four of her crepes in the aluminum foil.
“Here, you put a little pat of buttèr in a pan and drop zem in over low heat. Zey will be quite delicious. And come to zink of it, here are four more for your supper so you can come to the play. A ce soir!"
Professor Bedeschi tromped through the damp streets in his grey and black cape. The shop windows were slick with condensation inside, and in the main square small tots dressed as Supermen and princesses and Zorros and lions and flowers giggled and ran after one another. Professor Bedeschi stopped at the newsstand under the town hall to get a copy of Scientific American, which had just come out in an Italian edition this year and then he continued under the frescoed portico to a smaller square with an ancient marble eagle sitting on top of a globe. He took the smallest side street and stopped at the first big door which he opened and walked in. The courtyard was muddy and uninviting with barren trees and two cars parked under it. He passed the inner door and walked up to his apartment, three rooms on the second floor.
He laid the magazine on the credenza beside the stove and he heated the crepes, and ate them standing up right out of the pan while he read about the effects of marijuana on the brain. He drank one glass of red wine, and then sat in his easy chair to continue reading about differential refraction of pigments in the restoration of paintings from the eighteenth century. He took off his shoes and pulled a blanket around him as the light faded and he read on about the new particle accelerator they were planning to build in Switzerland. Then he fell asleep.
He laid the magazine on the credenza beside the stove and he heated the crepes, and ate them standing up right out of the pan while he read about the effects of marijuana on the brain. He drank one glass of red wine, and then sat in his easy chair to continue reading about differential refraction of pigments in the restoration of paintings from the eighteenth century. He took off his shoes and pulled a blanket around him as the light faded and he read on about the new particle accelerator they were planning to build in Switzerland. Then he fell asleep.
As important as science was, very few people in his little town cared anything about it, and three-quarters of the ones who knew anything about science were doctors, and almost all of them were doctors who had studied with Bedeschi at the Classical Lyceum. Indeed, doctors were just about the only people who ever made intelligent conversation, and Professor Bedeschi had just about given up on intelligent conversation.
So, he read continuously: that was about the only thing that gave him any real satisfaction. He did not care for painting or politics, he did not enjoy concerts and sports, and he was perfectly comfortable all by himself alone in his rooms, soaring through the universe on the articulate wings of science and discovery, guided by logic and mathematics. He shuddered at the freezing cold of absolute zero and reveled in the heretofore secret illuminations of infrared light that were just beginning to be understood. The last time he had sat in front of a television for more than fifteen minutes was when the Americans finally put those two characters on the moon. Professor Bedeschi was the only person in the room who understood: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” for though he did not speak any foreign languages, he could read French and English and German (and Sir Isaac Newton in Latin for that matter).
But he knew that one of his tasks was putting up with the vapid conversation of his students and their parents. After all, it did give him a job and the means to earn enough money to buy the cold bologna that he ate every day and heat his house and purchase the books that he wanted to read. They were a silly lot, most of them, and their intentions were never as good as they supposed but he had learned early on that logic and reasoning in discourse did not propel his social relations forward. “They complaisantly ascribed to Fate that which was simply the result of their own incompetence in reasoning:” he had read somewhere. People were mainly interested in what they thought and they believed and had very little room for considering other things. Bedeschi had occasionally run across a student, but only three or four in his forty years of teaching, who was bright enough to grasp that what kind of world really existed beyond their little town by seashore with peaceful citadel from the Venetian period. These students invariably left. Two of them had written him letters their first years at the university and then just one or two when they finally made it – abroad. Then they were swept away in the great world that you could not touch with your hands. Though they never forgot him, and he knew that, they neglected him, for horizons they could not physically see with their eyes.
Professor Bedeschi awoke in the darkness. It must have been seven o’clock and the room was warm. Outside the trees were immobile, no bird sang, and one of the cars was starting up in the courtyard. He heard steps overhead; the young couple upstairs must have just come home from work. He sat and thought, he sat and pondered, he sat and reflected.
“Fat Thursday! Hah! Fat Thursday is about nothing. Fat Thursday has no foundation in history or religion. It’s just another invented excuse not to think. Not to ponder. Not to reflect. Half its importance is due to Venice’s recent bid to reinstate its historical Carnival from the 17th centurty, a way to convince the tourists to come and celebrate and spend money. What are they celebrating? The fact that they’re not working? The fact that they look silly? The fact that they’re in a city without cars?
The doorbell rang. Professor Bedeschi turned on the light and walked to the door. When he opened it, there stood Livia Carlonie in an overcoat with orange chiffon leggings poking out the bottom, her feet shod in slippers with upturned toes and bells on them. Her red hair was surmounted by a tiny magenta tarbush with turquoise chiffon drapes falling from it over her overcoat.
“Plofessole Bedeschi, I hope I am not disturbing you.”
“Well of course you are, but that’s all right. Do you need something, Professoressa Carlonie, ma Odalisque de Godo? A hookah? A pasha? A camel?”
“Plofessole, I have my cigalettes and my pasha Francesco is downstairs waitìng for me with ze camél. I just wanted to make sure zat you are coming to ze students’ show zis evening. It is velly important. Evelyone will be there and if you are not there, why you will be the sore thumb zat is not sticking out. If you do not come, zey will be disappointed.”
“Disappointed? Why should I worry about their being disappointed? Do they worry about disappointing me?”
“Plofessole, you know zey do. Zey are not perfect and zey are young and zey make many mistakes. Zat is why zey are in school, zat is why we teach them, and zat is why you must come. You will see; zey will not disappoint this evening. I promise.”
Livia looked Professor Bedeschi straight in the eyes and gave him a smile that made her eyes sparkle.
“Eight-zirty in the San Rocco Parish theater. And of course we go out for pizza afterwards if you are hungry. Have you warmed up your evening crêpes? Since you do not have to cook this evening, zere is no good reason for you to be late.”
Livia very quickly pushed her head inside the door and gave Professor Bedeschi two quick kisses as light as dragonflies on each cheek and then fled down the stairs, her chiffon drapery floating around her in the dingy hall light.
Professor Bedeschi arrived at the parish theater resplendent in his wool cape and Homburg hat, at precisely 8:25. The Latin teacher came over and escorted him to the front row, where all the teachers, every last one of them, were seated and animatedly chatting. The other 200 spectators were parents and friends, and a few students who were not actually taking part in the show. Three loud knocks hushed the audience quickly, and the lights went down. Livia Carlonie, with veiled mouth and exposed midriff, wiggled onto the stage in her harem girl outfit.
“Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome! No, no, no, no, no. We are not doing Cabaret, but of course ze idea is zat we are doing a cabaret. A scholastic cabaret! Of course, we will begin with ze most important subject: French letters and French culture. Gaston! Gaston! For our first number, Gaston will read Le Chason de Roland Please give him a warm welcome”.
Out came Roberto Ricci, in a white shirt buttoned up to the collar, no tie, and his trousers hitched up somewhere around his spleen, thus displaying his white socks and high top tennis shoes laced above the ankle. He was wearing a thick pair of black glasses and his hair was slicked down the middle with a big cowlick sticking up in the back. He droned in a high nasal whine and by the time he had gotten to the second line, some of the students in the audience had started to whistle and scream: “Culture, shmulture! Ou sont les jolies jeunes filles? Nous voulons de la culture française du ventieme siecle!”
Livia stepped out from the wings, hands on her hips, exaggerated cat eyed glasses perched on the edge of her nose.
“Clochards!”
The students in the audience started to clap and chant: “ Musique, musique, musique . . .”
Livia threw her papers up in the air and asked the crowd: “Ou voulez- vous allez avec tout ce bruit? Aux Folies Bergère?”
“Oui, oui, oui, oui, oui, oui,! Aux Folies Bergère!”
“Oh bien, pour vous, les Folies Bergère. Voila’!”
The curtain parted to reveal several couples seated at cafe tables, drinking ginger ale that looked like champagne. Mauro Missiroli came center stage in an ancient tuxedo and welcomed the crowd. “I have the pleasure to present to you, for the first time on the stage, la fabuleuse, la merveilleuse, Josephine Baker!”
The speakers came on and Edith Piaf started to belt out “Milord.” The beaded curtain behind the customers parted and in slinked Sonia Bolzano, her face blacked up and a big red lipsticked mouth, her hair in a turban and her body sheathed in a black leotard and tights. She would have appeared completely naked had it not been for a rather sparse belt made of real bananas hanging from her waist. Sonia was one of those tall girls that is ashamed of her height and tries to hide it by hunching her shoulders to try and look shorter. She kind of disappeared in class among all the students, because she tried not to stand out, literally. But onstage as Josephine Baker she was quite obviously a very handsomely made young lady. She danced around, the men in the onstage audience pulled at her bananas and the audience tittered. At the end she took her bows and the onstage audience stood and fox-trotted to La Vie en Rose as the lights went down and the curtain closed. Livia came out again.
Livia appeared once again on stage. “Oh, so you like ze funny stuff? Well, let us see what we can find to counterbalance this. Which subject is next? Second period, zat means Italien. And we have prepared for you ze last ten cantos of Dante’s Paradiso!”
The audience moaned and catcalls issued from different corners in the dark.
“Very well. Let us do something a little bit more, modern. The opening of Manzoni’s The Betrothed!!
The catcalls got louder and the whistles became deafening.
“Oh very well, we will try two shorter poems, And we will make one of zem funny. The second one. But you must be respectful and listen to ze first one with attention.”
The curtain opened onto a darkly lit stage, with a table and a chair and a candle. Massimo Dragoni’s head was nestled between his arms on the table and he slowly lifted his head and looked far beyond the audience, far into the recent past. He took a deep breath and began:
“Silvia, do you still recollect that time
of your mortal coil when
beauty shone in your laughing, fugitive eyes . . .”
A hush fell over the crowd, for every one of them knew the poem. Many of the adults and the students had learned it by heart, and Massimo’s rendition of the alternating loose eleven-syllable and seven-syllable lines was delivered in Tuscan style with low dramatic whispers his adolescent’s voice cracking over the poet’s agony and anger at Silvia’s premature death. He slowly moved around the stage, his movements always perfectly underlining the subtle beauty of the Italian language’s highest poetic expression. He came to the last line:
“…And with your cold hand
You pointed to cold death and a naked tomb,
You pointed to cold death and a naked tomb,
in the distance.”
At this, he collapsed to his knees and buried his head in his hands.
The audience went wild and clapped and yelled: “Bravo! Bravo! Bis! Bis! Bis!” As the applause started to subside, a hunched over woman in black with white hair and a black kerchief over her hair came clomping down the aisle from the back of the auditorium, muttering in dialect and complaining about everything.
“Who are you?”
“Whoja think I am? I’m his muse!”
She was holding a bowl with a brownish liquid in it and she mounted the stairs with difficulty, muttering as she mounted each step. When the audience looked at the stage now, they saw Alessandro Fogli dressed as a little boy in smock and short pants, seated at the table with a scowl on his face. The old hag placed the bowl before him, and Alessandro nasally recited another, less known poem.
“O melodious muse! make Helicon breathe,
And with a laurel crown your cithara wreathe.
Of No Gods must you sing, nor of Heroes sere
But solely must you my broth with affront smear.
My verses will you, my broth, measure
Pronouncing my abomination with great pleasure. . .
Even Professor Bedeschi chuckled at this, with the rest of the audience. Alessandro finished:
". . . Truth it is, but mortals who quest for health, will
Gladly abandon such food to poor men ill.
Each morning doth it seem a noisome puzzle
That such loathsome broth with spoon, must I guzzle.”
Leopardi’s “muse” returned to the stage brandishing a wooden spoon in her hand on her hip. She peered into the bowl as Alessandro jumped away and she pursued him down the aisle, waving the spoon in the air and smacking him across the buttocks.
Livia returned to the stage with cat-eyed reading glasses dangling on a jeweled strand. “And now, we have everyone’s favorite "Les Mathematiques!”
The audience sighed inaudibly. Nobody likes mathematics. But the new math teacher was in her first year out of teaching school and she was young and pretty and nobody wanted to offend her: she was a little skittish as well as she came from the wings and she stood before the crowd and began to speak: “As you all know the basis of arithmetic is . . . rules. Two plus two is four. Four plus four is eight and so on. Almost everybody hates rules, especially if they are applied to them, but rules like rulers, make it possible for us to have straight lines that we can repeat over and over again until we have pattern. The lines need not however, be on paper. Sometimes, we the lines are found in . . .”
At this the stage darkened and the audio hiccoughed twice before it came on:
“…Music.”
Pachelbel’s Canon in D slowly began its first “First Melodic line” and Silvia Fariselli walked onto the stage in red rights and top in perfect time to the music turning and smiling. Then Marina Lugaresi entered in an orange outfit when the second line started. Silvia’s and Marina’s simple stylized movements clearly represented the musical lines. Then came the third student in yellow, the fourth in green, and the fifth variation, in blue. As the six and seventh and eight lines came in indigo and purples and black, the stage was ablaze with color and movement as each student repeated his or her melodic line and choreography seven times until the last chord sounded and the lights dimmed.
The audience burst into applause. As Livia came out again, smiling and waving her papers.
“Oh, it seems you like les mathematiques! Well, now, let us try something more difficult. “Oh, so you liked zat! Very well! Now we shall move on to the next subject: Greek or Latin first?!”
The audience politely grumbled.
“Oh, you don’t like Greek? But it is a wonderful language.”
“But none of us speak Greek! How will we understand what is happening?”
Zat is a problem. A big one. Well, we were going to do ze scene from Oedipus where Jocasta hangs herself and Oedipus pulls out his eyes, in Greek of course, but if zat does not suit you, we will have to improvise something else. How many of ze adults remember zeir Greek aortas and copulas?”
Not even Professore Bedeschi raised his hand.
“Very well, we shall simply do Latin declensions.”
The audience shifted its place in its seats.
“Now now now, come come come. I am certain we can find something amusing in Latin.
“Yeah the bell at the end of class!” boomed a voice from the back of the auditorium.
“Somma – I know zat was you and zat was not a nice zing to say.”
“Oh Professoressa, Latin and Greek, they’re so boring. They’ve got nothing to do with life today.”
“The Classics have nothing to do with life? Why zey are the very foundation of how we behave and act. Zey are the cornerstone of every human tragedy, even today. But I suppose we could try and update things a little bit. So, let us combine Latin and Greek and go back to ze very origin of ze Latins separating from the Greeks.”
The curtain opened again and there in classical tunics and laurel wreathes stood Arrigo Dorigo and Alberto Smeraldi arguing. Arrigo was holding an enormous gold apple.
“I tell you Paris, you can get whatever you want as long as you pick the right goddess.”
“But how am I to know which one I want?”
“I tell you what. We’ll have a little beauty contest.”
At this the curtain at the back of the stage was raised to reveal Laura Pietropaoli, Paola Chiarini and Barbara Montanari standing in togas, high heeled shoes and tiaras on their upswept hair.
“Vavavoom! I’ll take all three.”
“No , no, no. We have to evaluate their grace, like the three graces. So first we have to evaluate their grace and poise in different situations. Let's start with the table. Goddesses, please! What do you offer us for dinner?
Laura came forward. Wearing thick glasses and tripping on her toga, she landed at Paris
The audience gulped.
Next came Paola, slinking forward on eight inch heels, her make up perfect. “Oy, yes Oy am Venus, de Goddess of Love! And so I offer youse guys dat dish which most makes men love their broads: raw mountain oysters!”
Paris and Leander looked at one another and sighed.
Barbara now came forward, her large brown eyes smiling. “I am Juno the Goddess of the hearth and home. And I know what you will most enjoy.” From behind her back she whipped out a big pizza and a six pack.
“Is not this that which you most desire as you watch the perilous battles between the great black and white Juventus and the evil and snarling red and blackMilan
“Is not this that which you most desire as you watch the perilous battles between the great black and white Juventus and the evil and snarling red and black
“Yeah. She’s really got me. Let’s go with Juno.”
“Wait Paris
Venus waved her hands frenetically. “I know, I know, I know, I know. It’s simple: makeup, hairdo, and shoes!”
“Nope, sorry about that. Well Juno, what do you say?”
“That’s easy: the keys to the car, the bank account number, and a rolling pin to hit your husband over the head with!”
“Let’s hear what Minerva has to say.”
Minerva came forward with regal grace: “That is easiest of all: a benevolent smile, a generous nature, and an open mind.”
“Well, that would be pretty hard to top! I guess it’s going to be Minerva!”
“Wait, Paris
Minerva stepped forward. Her head was tilted to the left in profile, she held her shield resolutely, and tapped the ground three times as she proclaimed: “The greatest wisdom, the vastest knowledge and the highest grade in the nation on your Regents Examinations.”
“Why bother listening to the other two? That’s pretty hard to top.”
“Wait Paris, you’ve got to hear all three of them.”
Juno stepped forward and pulling her arms up under her breasts that hung from her frame like a balcony, she too struck a pose in regal profile and proclaimed: “What men have gone to all lengths for: all the power, and glory, and money in the world!”
“Of course, I needed to wait. You can’t really argue with that. I’ll take that.”
“Now Paris
“Venus, Schmenus. She hasn’t got the brains of a mosquito. What on Earth could she possibly offer me?”
“You won’t know unless you listen.”
“Oh very well.”
Paola Chiarini had not much of a regal air as she slithered forward, but her allure was undeniable. As she turned toward Alberto, she twisted her bust so that in profile it was greater even than Juno’s and as she reached back behind her neck, she exclaimed: “Noble Paris, if you will gift me dat golden apple, I will gift to you, de one thing you most desire!”
“DE Love of DE MOST beautiful woman in de Woild. Hell-bent of Troy
At this she flung her arms into the air like Marilyn Monroe in Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend. Her toga slipped from her frame and there she stood, most of her fleshly glory uncovered with the exception of a gold bikini.
Alberto and Arrigo staggered backwards and fell on their butts at the display of so much beauty.
“Gilded apple, hell, I’ll give her a Golden Watermelon for that!”
The curtain closed as the audience hooted and Livia came back onto stage, laughing herself. It took the crowd (and her) a while to calm down; the Latin and Greek Professores were both still doubled over and guffawing.
“And ze real reason it is funny, is zat it is all true! But now we will turn to something that is really a little serious: History:” The curtain opened to reveal the inside of fishing and hunting hut with a woman propped up in bed.
“Giuseppe, Beppe,. Pepi. My noble husband, where are you?”
Graziella Boldrini delivered a dramatic monologue of Giuseppe Garibaldi’s wife Anita Garibaldi as she lay dying in a small hut near the town. Realizing she was neither forsaken nor forgotten, Anita traced her husband’s deeds of bravery and cunning and finally clutching the headboard, wavering in her night gown she raised her fist and hurling it at the ceiling and shrieked” “VIVA LA REPUBBLICA ITALIANA!” and then collapsed lifeless on the grimy coverlet.
The audience was moved by the performance, as most of them had really forgotten what great deeds Garibaldi had done, and how devoted Anita had been to him. Livia came back on stage
“And now we have ze grand finale! Everyone at ze Classical Lyceum knows zat letters are ze basis of our study, ze basis which we zen use to understand ze world around us. But Homer and Leopardi and Plautus and Racine and Gucciardini cannot really tell us how things actually work, how ze world actually moves. Ze students, oh zey read Newton
The curtains parted and a large scroll bearing the motto: “FELIX QUI POTUIT RERUM COGNOSERE CAUSAS” rolled down from the rafters. Next, a spotlight illuminated the left wing, opposite Livia who was standing stage right. A large piece of dark fabric swirled from offstage and a round bump three feet off the ground appeared just beyond the curtain. It slowly proceeded into the light, followed by the rest of the body, wrapped in a full circle cape and wearing a gray Homburg hat. The musical background was Gounod’s Funeral March of a Marionette (which everyone in the audience immediately recognized: it was the music that opened the Hitchcock Hour (Doo dooot, do do do do, do Doot) and it played as the figure advanced, (Doo dooot, do do do do, do Doot. Doo dooot, do do do do, do Doot).
“Boys and Girls! Boys and Girls! Since I will be speaking in scientific terms, at the beginning, you won’t understand me very well.”
The audience chortled. The other teachers sneaked sideways glances at Professore Bedeschi to see his reaction to Enrico Traversa’s perfect imitation of him. Professor Bedeschi’s jaw had dropped.
“It rarely happens that a person cannot follow me, but usually it’s because he’s got indigestion. Let’s just run through the whole gamut and give you some basic notions. Aristotle knew everything, a little like Perry Mason who never made a mistake. This evening we will walk together, not with the feet of our legs, but with the feet of our brains.”
“Physics”
“No one has ever seen atoms and electrons, but we have full guarantees that they exist. The atom. Pretend you are seeing the public gardens with a big pond in the middle and lots of flowerbeds all around it where there is a sign that says ‘Don’t walk on the grass.’ Electrons travel at a speed of 3,000 kilometers an hour, so I would say they are pretty fast. Today, there is a kind of molecular tailor that practically makes up bespoke molecules.”
“If I touch a red hot iron, I feel that it burns. My milk does not change color. If you want to make some broth on Mont Blanc , you just can’t. There are many combustibles which generate heat, let’s take one, any one as an example, such as gunpowder.”
“Chemistry"
“This water has a soapy taste but I would not suggest you drink it because it is caustic soda.”
“Chloric acid will ruin your underclothes in a very brief period.”
“Don’t just take any old element, because you might invent some new formulas.”
“And now we have to be very very careful, so that we don’t mix up the caps of these two bottles, otherwise the content of this one will turn red (He screws it on and its contents turn red). Let’s put this one away.”
“The civilization of a nation can be defined by the quantity of sulphuric acid that it uses. They used to put yellow phosphorus in matches, and it’s poisonous so it used to be that girls, used to eat whole boxes of match heads for various kinds of personal disappointments.”
“If you take one of those cheap plates they sell at the market on Saturday and take the patina off its surface, you will see that it is porous and absorbs saliva.
“Even if there are chemical fertilizers, the best fertilizers are always animal excrement, and if a factory could produce them, it would make a fortune.
“Those glues that little boys use to glue models together contain trichloroethylene or chloroform. Trichlorothylene is more commonly used, because with chloroform, the worker would risk falling asleep on the job.
“Sugar has a particularly sweet taste. Under Napoleon, sugar cane was a colonial possession. Napoleon set up a blockade and if Europe wanted sugar in its coffee, it had to find something else, and it discovered the sugar beet.
“Nitroglycerin is a dangerous explosive; dynamite is safe.
“It would not be unusual for whale blubber to have entered your homes and you didn’t realize it.
“This gas is poisonous, whereas this other one is just unbreathable. Poison is a substance that is far from good for your health.
“A nurse will not let you breathe ethyl alcohol, because she would risk going to jail.
“Formic acid is made from red ants. But that is no surprise, because before the dawn of chemistry, chemists did this and many other things.
“When I was a boy, another boy fainted at school and the teacher rubbed his face with some acetic acid diluted in water but since she hadn’t diluted it enough, it took the skin off his nose. But he woke up right away.
“If I gave you a chemistry test now, it would be a real problem. Sometimes I’ve done it in the past and I had to throw them all away.”
“Zoology"
“Bacteria consume their lives very quickly, they practically die.
“If you take a chicken’s intestines, some fresh ones, and you put some gum arabic gum in them and tied it up in them and then you let them soak, you will see that they swell until they explode.
“When the moth is born, it finds its meal ready and waiting.
“Malaria used to be a social disease.
“The tapeworm is a rather small animal, which ends up in an animal’s body and lives off the fat of the land. Instead the animal that is hosting it, gets to feeling mopey and often dies.
“These crustaceans have feet they walk with, and feet as they say, to eat with.
“The fly has a kind of proboscis that rests on a grain of sugar, and I might add, on things which are not exactly sugar.
“The cell, you night say, makes its own spare parts by itself.
“It’s better to leave wasps alone because they are armed.
“The grey rat is the uncontested dominator of the basement.
“Natives in Africa put out these kinds of upside down straw cones so that the wild bees build their honeycombs there, they basically offer them lodging in exchange for honey. If the queen bee dies, the hive practically becomes an orphan. Are insects intelligent? No. For example, the bee is no more intelligent than a squid.
“Ants take the aphids, they raise them and then they suck on them until they get drunk. The anthill is thus destined to die because they are having a round-the-clock hoedown.
“This suborder of insects are so-called grave digging insects, they bury dead animals to feed their larva. They are what you could call undertakers.
“These are insects who when they sense danger, they pretend they are dead or change colors so that the animal who wanted to eat them is flabbergasted and leaves them alone.
“What a disaster it would be if all of a salmon’s eggs hatched because there wouldn’t be any room in the sea for ships and ocean liners.
“The war was a very proficuous time for fish.
“You said that amphibians can live both in water and on land. For example, is a good swimmer an amphibian? Because if I throw him in the lake, he doesn’t exactly drown. Amphibians such as the frog must always have naked skin, because for example if you paint them, they die. If fashion were interested, they would even make shoes out of toad skin, if it could be tanned.
“The iguana is a completely harmless animal, whose only shortcoming is that its meat is edible. The water snake is perfectly not poisonous. The viper’s poison must not be underestimated, but it should not be taken all that much into consideration either. The chameleon is wall eyed at will. I don’t know if you remember those prehistoric reptiles with a big body and a tiny head which definitely didn’t enhance their wittiness. I certainly could not do as the lizard does, and reproduce my tail.”
“When the little egret is frightened, it vomits everything it has eaten, so sometimes hunters in their dinghies, find frogs being vomited on them. Animals such as the chicken which has a long life cycle, have a great deal of experience and they know they have everything to fear from men. Turkeys
“Physiology"
"Girls who pluck out their eyebrows may have this drawback: their sweat ends up in their eyes. If you keep pulling out the hairs, sometimes you pull out the bulb, for example there are certain ladies who shave their eyebrows and when they have plucked them hundreds and hundreds of times, they end up a little mangy.
“There are workers who have their nails split in two, and this means they have had some sort of accident. A man’s brain and an animal’s brain are two little big telephone switchboards that are the same size. But one has all of its wires stuck together, whereas they other one has many fewer. That must be because there were not enough numbers, and adding more would have been useless.
“Children’s bones are not as long as adults. This skeleton is a man, he was not really very big, well, a little bit.
“When someone wants to eat and talk at the same time, sometimes little pieces of food come out of the nose. This means that the nose and the mouth can communicate with each other.
“We are not used to not breathing.
“Woman’ is a subject that we can dwell on for a quite a long time.”
“Mathematics"
“Five and three . . . seven!
“Sociology and Anthropology”
“Slaves were a good investment for the Romans because they produced work.
“I don’t know if you’ve never heard of them, but in India there is a caste of big merchants in Bombay that when they die, they have themselves placed in a kind of tower where they are eaten by ravens who are just sitting around waiting for the opportune moment to have a buffet supper al fresco.
“Biology"
“The thyroid is the star of the glandular constellation. People who have a glandular dysfunction have a face that looks stupid, and they will believe anyone. In detective movies they’re the big lugs that will do anything.
“The eye’s lens is like peeling a pumpkin seed, or shooting a bean. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed but in a sad film, before you start to cry you blow your nose because tears first come out your nose.
“These are called sphincters, which prevent things from coming out when we don’t want them to. There’s nothing to laugh about here! On the other hand, we have to do it all by ourselves.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed it, but men have lots of tiny hairs in their ears. Ear wax has a quite a pronounced bitterness and the insects that manage to get past the hairs, get stuck in it.
“Urine has a characteristic straw yellow color and a taste that is rather salty.
“Red corpuscles do not live all life long.
“Our stomachs digest even if we don’t want them to.
“What is the difference between a man and a machine? If you take the wheel off a locomotive, it will not grow back. Instead, if you cut the leg off a man . . . . no listen, if you cut off his hair, it grows back. If you cut a main’s hair, it grows out, whereas I have never seen a car break down and reproduce its own ball bearings.
“In a certain sense, we have our sacroiliac down low whereas hens have them up high.
The impressionist turned to one of the boys in the audience.
“Matteuccio, are you your brother‘s brother?”
“Yes, professor.”
“Oh, you can tell by your gestures”.
“Astronomy"
“There is a little bit of history to tell about the sun. The sun is nothing more than a sort of subatomic oven. The stars are in their death throes, they practically go into a coma. There are thousands and thousands of stars in the sky, or even better, there are millions and millions of stars, or a little more than that.
“Venus produces this sparkle.”
Out of the wings floated the model of the solar system. The impressionist held it up, made it rotate, and stated:
“The cosmos is nothing more than a great twisting of the balls.”
The audience roared at this last comment, which Bedeschi had just made this morning. Umberto Bedeschi stared in disbelief, tugging at the hairs in his ears. He was furious and embarrassed: the whole school was laughing at him. Now everyone was clapping their hands and chanting:
“Pro-fes-so-re! Pro-fes-so-re! Pro-fes-so-re!”
Livia saw the look in his eyes and at a glance she understood his dismay. She slinked over to him in her harem outfit.
“Plofessole, now, you really cannot be angry, can you?”
“Of course I am! They’re making fun of me, they’ve made me the laughingstock of the whole school.”
He motioned to stand up and leave, and Livia grabbed him by the arm and pointed him towards the stage, pulling his left ear towards her mouth.
He motioned to stand up and leave, and Livia grabbed him by the arm and pointed him towards the stage, pulling his left ear towards her mouth.
“Plofessole, don’t you understand? Imitation is ze sincerest form of flattery. If you ever had any doubts before, now you know one thing for certain. Your students not only adore you, which is not easy because you are an old bear, you know zat. Not only do zey adore you, zey actually listen to what you say and remember it and repeat it. Zat’s the most any teacher could possibly expect, now isn’t it?”
Bedeschi stared Livia straight in the face. She was right. In the meantime she had gotten him up onto the stage and everyone in the audience was standing and shouting and clapping. The impressionist raised his hands:
“Friends, Ravennates, Countrymen! Lend me your ears. I present to you our longest standing teacher, the very foundation of the Classical Lyceum, straight from the knees of Plato and Aristotle - Professore Bedeschi!
Everyone stood up. Everyone applauded raucously; everyone was smiling. Umberto Bedeschi looked out over the crowd of students and parents and teachers and brothers and sisters and boyfriends and girlfriends, half of whom he had taught, and that included the parents. Even the janitress was there, snug in a smart tailored suit. This was his own little cosmos, revolving around him with its twisting balls. Livia circled around him once and then leaned up on her tiptoes and gave him another quick peck on the cheek. He waved once and Livia escorted him off stage.
“You’re a good sport, Plofessole.”
“You’re pretty sharp. And you’re pretty, too. I think you’re the only person that could have convinced me to walk up onto that stage.”
“If I hadn’t, ze students would have hoisted you on zeir shouldels and waltzed you around ze room. I was only plotecting your dignity!”
“My dignity! And that impersonation, repeating all of my blunders, was that also protecting my dignity?”
“Oh no, Plofessole. That was to let you see how much you are appreciated. It’s not easy to tell you, you know. You’re a cranky walrűs some days and you don’t seem to want to hear compliments. So no one ever tells you. But evelything has to come out eventually, it builds up you see, and zis is something you must understand. Not only bad things zat are repressed, need to come out. Ze good things do too. Now, are you going to join us for a pizza?”
Umberto Bedeschi wanted to go back to his room and read the Scientific American more than anything else. Then he thought about having something to eat, and the only thing he had at home was bologna. Cold bologna.
“Oh, all right. As long as the pizzas are hot, I guess I can go.”
Livia called for her boyfriend who came and wrapped her coat around her orange chiffon filmy white shoulders. She thrust her left hand into the arm of her boyfriend’s overcoat and her right hand up and under Bedeschi’s full circle cape until she found the crook of his elbow. They walked out, through glistening silver and gold streamers littering the wet pavement and fresh topaz and emerald and amethyst and sapphire and citrine confetti brightly shining against the glittering diamantine jet asphalt on the floor of the night.
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