Numbers in the Dark

ITALO CALVINO – THE FLASH

It happened one day, at a crossroads, in the middle of a crowd, people coming and going.  I stopped, blinked: suddenly I understood nothing. Nothing, nothing about anything: I did not understand the reasons for things or for people, it was all senseless, absurd.  And I started to laugh.

         

What I found strange at the time was that I'd never realised before.  That up until then I had accepted everything: traffic lights, cars, posters, uniforms, monuments, things completely detached from any sense of the world, accepted them as if there were some necessity, some chain of cause and effect that bound them together.

      

Then the laugh died in my throat, I blushed, ashamed.  I waved to get people's attention and "Stop a moment!" I shouted, "there is something wrong! Everything is wrong! We are doing the absurdest things. This cannot be the right way. Where can it end?"

        

People stopped around me, sized me up, curious. I stood there in the middle of them, waving my arms, desparate to explain myself, to have them share the flash of insight that had suddenly enlightened me: and I said nothing. I said nothing because the moment I had raised my arms and opened my mouth, my great revelation had been as it were swallowed up again and the words had come out any old how, on impulse.

        

"So?" people asked, "what do you mean? Everything is in its place. All is as it should be. Everything is a result of something else. Everything fits in with everything else. We can't see anything absurd or wrong!"

      

And I stood there, lost, because as I saw it now everything had fallen into place again and everything seemed natural, traffic lights, monuments, uniforms, towerblocks, tramlines, beggards, processions; yet this did not calm me, it tormented me.       

"I'm sorry," I answered. "Perhaps it was I who was wrong.  It seemed that way. But everything is fine.  I'm sorry," and I made off amid their angry glares.

Yet, even now, every time (often) that I find I don't understand something, then, instincitively, I am filled with the hope that perhaps this will be my moment again, perhaps once again I shall understand nothing, I shall grasp that other knowledge, found and lost in an instant.