De Italiaanse schrijver en vertaler Aldo Busi werd geboren op 25 februari 1948 in Montichiari, Brescia. Zie ook alle tags voor Aldo Busi op dit blog.
Uit: Standard Life of a Temporary Pantyhose Salesman (Vertaald door Ercole Guidi)
“Swallowing and by now lost, he had said:
“Why, you too remind me of a childhood friend of mine. Now he’s in the slammer, in Hong Kong, or Bangkok, I’m not sure which. I knew you couldn’t be him.”
“Cut it out, will you? It happens.” And that is all he says. To him the conference is over and it has lasted all too long.
Angelo is standing there, awkward, half-stooped over those jagged implants of osseous death and lineaments dug out of a schoolbag, reduced into a little heap of suppressed yearnings, which from clear and easy now deafen one another into a slush of fury and humiliation wherein he again becomes confused, murky and fetid to himself. Angelo says without drawing breath:
“Well, if I’m not that friend of yours so much the better. A pretext to get to know each other now.”
It is incredible this unfortunate capacity of formulating perfect phrases, without the smears of an exhausted or excessive irony, when perhaps something muttered, indistinct, which may elicit sympathy or compassion or a releasing laughter, might prove a better bet.
The other cuts him short:
“But I don’t care to know you. You never happened to take somebody for someone else? So beat it, you hear me?”
“It was you who disturbed me, not I.”
“Hey, I don’t feel like talking anymore, all right?” and he turns the other way, toward a man and a woman to whom he smiles annoyed, as if to say «they always come my way».
Angelo had remained there, gazing at the water, not knowing what fish to catch in it.
Not knowing whether he should say good-bye or leave or just stand there, distended with convoluted breath. To have quicker reflexes, and more spunk: to fling himself onto him and rough him up.”
Aldo Busi (Montichiari, 25 februari 1948)