The Pacific and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF

looking closely, take control of the many contradictory currents that had been set in motion within me.
    Though a dozen people who had paused to listen formed a semicircle about the two performers, many more passed indifferently in both directions, as if they were busy with things of paramount importance, or were deaf, or viewed the soprano and guitarist as beggars. It was hard to tell the nationalities of those who had gathered. There are so many foreigners in Venice, especially around the Accademia at this time of day, and these days clothing is so universal that Eskimo children (in summer) dress like the youth of Palermo. It was women, mainly, who were watching, and, except for me, not one man unaccompanied by a woman. Only a few people of the twelve or so had cameras, and only one, an Englishman in a blue blazer, with blond hair and that masterful English bearing that Italians find entertaining even though they consider the same quality in Germans insufferable, was in the process of taking a photograph. He was next to his wife anddaughters, who were truly beautiful and as tall as giraffes. Otherwise, the cameras remained sheathed.
    The guitarist had a weak chin but strong eyes. His hair was pulled back, and rested at the base of his neck. It was so evenly dark that I thought it was either wet or dyed. If he had been there all morning it couldn’t have been wet—it didn’t look wet—but why would so young a man color his hair, unless he were not as young as I thought, and was perhaps considerably older than she, who surpassed him in promise and in youth. He wore black pants and a white shirt open at the collar, with the sleeves rolled up just beyond his elbows. A superb musician, he was playing from music set before him on a chrome stand. Deeply intent, he appeared to be suffering immensely, and never looked at the crowd, although he graciously acknowledged the few contributions tossed into the guitar case.
    As a longtime impresario, I could see at a glance that he was a fine fellow who would treat me like a snake. I knew beforehand the full spectrum of his suspicion, anger, contempt, rage, helplessness, resignation, and grief. If things went the way all forces pushed them, he would come against me and fight hard until he realized that I was the representative of both inevitability and his own desires. For, after all, what were they hoping for on that street corner if not to be discovered by an impresario of La Scala? They were not singing just for bread and wine. In that regard, I noticed that they had no bottled water, and though they were in the shade, it was very hot. Everyone in Venice that day was drinking water from plastic bottles, and they had none. It made me wonder what people did in the previous ages of man. Not so long ago, it was possible to exist in the summer without carrying around a plastic bottle full of water, but perhaps people were unhappier then, though I know that I myself was not. (We used to drink from fountains and taps, and we didn’t get typhoid. Well, some of us did.)
    If she had not been beautiful, she would have been beautiful nonetheless. I don’t know how she would be judged by common standards. For me it was impossible not to be enthralled as she sang an aria from
La Clemenza di Tito
, the first performance of which occurred in September of 1791, three months before Mozart died, and which was undoubtedly one of the many songs that carried him aloft. I am constructed so that when I heard her singing this, Ireacted very strongly, which was unfortunate for me and for my fortunes, but fortunate in a far greater sense. It did, however, complicate things. A lifetime has taught me not to fall in love with a woman just because transcendent music is flowing from her breast. The men who fall in love with Rosanna this way are such idiots, and I’ve always been in a position to see this clearly. Perhaps I’m an idiot, too, for to add to the many difficulties I was experiencing in regard to