Or: departure. Here is the aeroplane for New York. Disquisition on politeness. The Americans always have a toothbrush and a glass in their hand. In my opinion they are also computerized!! The Prof and the little monkey. A suitcase has disappeared. We talk about the expedition: was it worthwhile? What have we found out? They will tell us in Milan.
February 23rd
We get up not too early, at about ten o'clock; the Prof turns the TV on, I pack the suitcase, he changes channels, I have a bath, he smokes and thinks, I switch the TV off, he has a bath, and I look out of the window. We are ready and we go down; I walk down the staircases, he takes the lift. I sit down talking to the others, he arrives. At 2 pm we have the plane for New York. Just time to have a café at the hotel, then, with our car and a taxi we head to the airport. The journey is quite long. We are in the fast and the traffic in this beautiful city is chaotic. Flying over bridges and then down into the subways, following the bends and the long straight roads with their many lanes; there are also enormous green, flashing road signs which tell take the exit. We arrive at the airport at 1 pm. and meet Majorca with his family and Gianni Mangiali.
We are all waiting for the same aeroplane. We exchange friendly, greetings because we haven’t seen each other since the day before yesterday, then Tirelli and Sironi organise our tickets. Now the Plane is taking off. It is 2 pm. Goodbye sweet Miami.
The journey by plane from Miami to New York is not one to be recalled. A banal three hour flight spent mostly in meditation and staring, with a certain curiosity, at the American super-people.
After all that I have heard and read about this stars and stripes world, and now what I have seen, confirmed in my mind that we poor Italians are as far away from them as we are from the moon. The institutions and the life that these people lead seem so very different to ours; it is like comparing us with the Africans.
However, when you look and observe these Americans individually, you realize that they are human beings just like us; and they have many more faults because they have evolved quicker than we have. A poor man can make mistakes due to his ignorance; let’s say he puts his fingers inside his nostrils when he is in company, maybe in a crowded cinema, or while he is eating in a restaurant... or he puts his feet on the table because he does not know any better, he may not have received a proper education. Never-the-less he might be a very likeable person. But if the same mistakes are made by somebody who did receive an education, and a very good one, (as I assume all the “dummies” I have seen in America did), then behaving in this way may be normal in America, but to me it is disgusting.
I also noticed that the Americans are less talkative than we are (what an abnormality you Italians have, you speak for hours and are constantly moving your hands as you speak), they dress in an awful way and they always seem to have a toothbrush in their shirt pockets. The Americans must all have false teeth; I can’t imagine one without them! Maybe when they were kids, playing in those beautiful clean gardens which all look similar to the other, they may have fallen over and broken their teeth; poor little kids. When they are grown up you must pay careful attention because they always seem to have a glass in their hands. How can assembly line workers work and drink at the same time, I don’t understand. Maybe they can because they have three hands, and therefore are able to maintain their productivity at the same time! How lucky they are to have been born here!
And the women! I imagine that, if you take them to bed and remove their clothes, you will find somewhere on their body a push-button system where it is written; if you press button number 1 they start crying, if you press button number 2 they start laughing, if you press button number 3 they jump... and so on. A kind of internal super computer which calculates the time used and lists the number of different sexual requests.
However it is not true that black people don't travel together with white people; in the row of seats close to mine, two girls sit side by side; a quiet, pretty black girl, and an enormous blonde girl. The blonde, who looked like a whipped cream cake with a cherry on top, is smoking furiously and not saying a word to her compatriot. But who arrived in America first, the blacks or the whites?
Now the plane is flying above an enormous river; I look out of the window... it is really wonderful to be able to enjoy this beautiful scenery from above.
The Prof is catching up on his sleep, and Camilli is offering us all some sparkling wine.
Occasionally I hear, but a little far away from me, the laughter of the Maiorca sisters; they are both twenty years old and have their whole lives in front of them.
We continue like this for a while, get up, take a seat, look out of the window; because the aeroplane is full it is difficult to move and my legs are very stiff, I am very uncomfortable. Nearby an enormous blonde is about to suffocate me with all the smoke that is coming out of her rosy little mouth. Luckily the corridor divides us. Thanks! At last we get the order to fasten our seat belts. We slowly lose height; we are flying over an enormous geometric network made up of detached houses, all with small gardens in front of them. These are the suburbs of New York, which is still far away; it is the “satellite” city, a destination which is dreamed about by the whole of humanity who works in the eye of the cyclone during the day. Square cottages with square gardens, white cottages with green gardens and mailboxes standing like sentinels, all very clean; but be careful, a leaf has fallen on the green grassy carpet, what a pity! Cream, pop corn, Nabisco biscuits and Coke; enormous refrigerators, full with a thousand litres of everything… if a Biafra child could ever dream of such a thing , either through hunger or in the hope of a miracle, he would wake up in the morning and find that his eyes were bigger than his head. He would be absolutely amazed by it all.
There we are. Kennedy Airport. Exit. It’s 5 pm. An American lady asks if one of us could help her and carry a small monkey in a cage up to the exit. The Prof says he will.
Oh, what a nice Italian gentleman!
Now let’s go and see if our suitcases have arrived. NO! It is not necessary, Tirelli tells me, we will pick them up when we arrive in Milan. Well, maybe!! We take a bus to the Alitalia terminal and as soon as we arrive, we rush to the check-in counters where, my dear gentlemen, we find those kind, smiling and elegantly dressed employees in their nice blue uniforms representing our national airline; and they tell us that our flight has been cancelled. (This cannot be true, can it?).
And do you know why? No, please, tell us! It is because the mechanics, who service the Jumbos, are on strike at Malpensa Airport. Did you get that? And now what do we do? Good God, take it easy, it is simple; you take the Rome flight of course! We agree, we can’t say no. Maiorca, who had lingered by the American National Airline terminal to see if he could get the luggage coming from Miami, approaches and tells me that he saw a suitcase, probably mine or the Prof’s, because it had the Bocami logo printed on it, going up and down the conveyor belt... I should have known! I angrily go out, followed by the Prof, and look for a taxi to return there as quickly as possible, but there aren’t any. Not having the patience to wait, I look towards the distant building and start walking.
The Prof follows me. Thanks Prof, you are a friend. A delightful walk, through flowerbeds, over traffic islands, along pavements, pedestrian crossings, traffic lights, which are always red of course, between cars driven too fast and too near, etc. After a quarter of an hour we arrive; breathless. Through the windows of the building I see my suitcase quietly gliding over the belt, and I also see the police officers near the exit, checking documents and attaching stickers. Just like in all the airports in the world.
Now I need to have my suitcase back, but here lies the problem; being in a hurry, I left my passport and ticket in the other bag at the Alitalia terminal, therefore I should go back to get them. Then I wonder, what on earth should I tell these people as I’m not able to make myself understood? In short, even if I’m right, I can easily look as if I’m wrong; so I decide, together with the Prof, to go in, pick up the suitcase and then, with a polite thank you, leave. This is what I do.
Everything went as I had hoped. But now I wonder again, why did they just take this suitcase off and not the other?
What is it, an American mystery? No it isn’t! The Americans are always right, no mystery at all. The other suitcase had Milan written on it, but this one has Genova. And where is Genoa, in California? Maybe! But Milan is definitely in Italy.
We manage to get a taxi to take us back. We lounge about in the Alitalia waiting room, waiting for the Rome plane at 7.30 pm.
We are divided into smaller groups and time passes slowly. Somebody goes to the café, somebody looks at the window displays, somebody else buys something; and then, when the time of departure approaches, we all get together again to go through the barrier and to be checked by the electronic spy.
With Anglo-Saxon punctuality (we have to learn, no doubt about that) the Jumbo starts to taxi towards the runway.
By some strange coincidence I have the same seat as when we left, 24 C, and I hope it is a sign of good luck. In my row there are Tirelli and Sironi on the left, Mossatich and Camilli on the right of the corridor. The Prof has chosen a seat for smokers and is a long way from us. The Maiorca family too are far away. The 747 is almost full. There are many Italians from Sicily going back home, and a nice company of Americans going to Rome to see the Pope. I deduce from the Crucifix they wear around their necks that they are American Catholics.
Besides, each of them has a card attached to their suit, on which it is written where they come from and where they are going. Be careful not to get lost! The usual dreadful noise of the engines and the enormous cigar starts to rush down the runway at three hundred kilometres per hour, it increases speed and goes up, up into the sky; and then it takes a horizontal position at nine thousand metres and seems to relax. We unfasten our safety belts. Rest.
Dear Tirelli, I start saying, we are travelling towards Italy, from where we came with so much enthusiasm and desire to discover something, just a few days ago; in your opinion, what have we discovered? Are you satisfied with the expedition?
Was our trip to Bimini useful for sport, for science, or for something else? What did you think when you were organising everything in Milan with Fogar and the others? Many of the expedition answer this question of mine by saying that I am a pessimist, that I already know what I want to say. The Prof too tells me so, even though he knows better than me that there is little to say; the charts produced by the instrument from Miami to Bimini, and in Bimini, will be taken home by him (Bocami will gladly give them to him), he can keep them all his life on his bedside table, to evoke the spirits, he can study them as long as he wants, he can lose sleep over them, he can go over everything again and again with a fine tooth comb, but it won't change at all the judgment he gave right at the beginning, at the very moment the pen started to move!
And that is, nothing, zero, nothing at all. It is a design that could have been drawn anywhere in the world, with a puzzling, and absolutely stupid likeness. Tirelli, of course, will answer my question when he knows something for sure; and that will be when the analyses of the things found down there are completed at the Milan University.
February 23rd
We get up not too early, at about ten o'clock; the Prof turns the TV on, I pack the suitcase, he changes channels, I have a bath, he smokes and thinks, I switch the TV off, he has a bath, and I look out of the window. We are ready and we go down; I walk down the staircases, he takes the lift. I sit down talking to the others, he arrives. At 2 pm we have the plane for New York. Just time to have a café at the hotel, then, with our car and a taxi we head to the airport. The journey is quite long. We are in the fast and the traffic in this beautiful city is chaotic. Flying over bridges and then down into the subways, following the bends and the long straight roads with their many lanes; there are also enormous green, flashing road signs which tell take the exit. We arrive at the airport at 1 pm. and meet Majorca with his family and Gianni Mangiali.
We are all waiting for the same aeroplane. We exchange friendly, greetings because we haven’t seen each other since the day before yesterday, then Tirelli and Sironi organise our tickets. Now the Plane is taking off. It is 2 pm. Goodbye sweet Miami.
The journey by plane from Miami to New York is not one to be recalled. A banal three hour flight spent mostly in meditation and staring, with a certain curiosity, at the American super-people.
After all that I have heard and read about this stars and stripes world, and now what I have seen, confirmed in my mind that we poor Italians are as far away from them as we are from the moon. The institutions and the life that these people lead seem so very different to ours; it is like comparing us with the Africans.
However, when you look and observe these Americans individually, you realize that they are human beings just like us; and they have many more faults because they have evolved quicker than we have. A poor man can make mistakes due to his ignorance; let’s say he puts his fingers inside his nostrils when he is in company, maybe in a crowded cinema, or while he is eating in a restaurant... or he puts his feet on the table because he does not know any better, he may not have received a proper education. Never-the-less he might be a very likeable person. But if the same mistakes are made by somebody who did receive an education, and a very good one, (as I assume all the “dummies” I have seen in America did), then behaving in this way may be normal in America, but to me it is disgusting.
I also noticed that the Americans are less talkative than we are (what an abnormality you Italians have, you speak for hours and are constantly moving your hands as you speak), they dress in an awful way and they always seem to have a toothbrush in their shirt pockets. The Americans must all have false teeth; I can’t imagine one without them! Maybe when they were kids, playing in those beautiful clean gardens which all look similar to the other, they may have fallen over and broken their teeth; poor little kids. When they are grown up you must pay careful attention because they always seem to have a glass in their hands. How can assembly line workers work and drink at the same time, I don’t understand. Maybe they can because they have three hands, and therefore are able to maintain their productivity at the same time! How lucky they are to have been born here!
And the women! I imagine that, if you take them to bed and remove their clothes, you will find somewhere on their body a push-button system where it is written; if you press button number 1 they start crying, if you press button number 2 they start laughing, if you press button number 3 they jump... and so on. A kind of internal super computer which calculates the time used and lists the number of different sexual requests.
However it is not true that black people don't travel together with white people; in the row of seats close to mine, two girls sit side by side; a quiet, pretty black girl, and an enormous blonde girl. The blonde, who looked like a whipped cream cake with a cherry on top, is smoking furiously and not saying a word to her compatriot. But who arrived in America first, the blacks or the whites?
Now the plane is flying above an enormous river; I look out of the window... it is really wonderful to be able to enjoy this beautiful scenery from above.
The Prof is catching up on his sleep, and Camilli is offering us all some sparkling wine.
Occasionally I hear, but a little far away from me, the laughter of the Maiorca sisters; they are both twenty years old and have their whole lives in front of them.
We continue like this for a while, get up, take a seat, look out of the window; because the aeroplane is full it is difficult to move and my legs are very stiff, I am very uncomfortable. Nearby an enormous blonde is about to suffocate me with all the smoke that is coming out of her rosy little mouth. Luckily the corridor divides us. Thanks! At last we get the order to fasten our seat belts. We slowly lose height; we are flying over an enormous geometric network made up of detached houses, all with small gardens in front of them. These are the suburbs of New York, which is still far away; it is the “satellite” city, a destination which is dreamed about by the whole of humanity who works in the eye of the cyclone during the day. Square cottages with square gardens, white cottages with green gardens and mailboxes standing like sentinels, all very clean; but be careful, a leaf has fallen on the green grassy carpet, what a pity! Cream, pop corn, Nabisco biscuits and Coke; enormous refrigerators, full with a thousand litres of everything… if a Biafra child could ever dream of such a thing , either through hunger or in the hope of a miracle, he would wake up in the morning and find that his eyes were bigger than his head. He would be absolutely amazed by it all.
There we are. Kennedy Airport. Exit. It’s 5 pm. An American lady asks if one of us could help her and carry a small monkey in a cage up to the exit. The Prof says he will.
Oh, what a nice Italian gentleman!
Now let’s go and see if our suitcases have arrived. NO! It is not necessary, Tirelli tells me, we will pick them up when we arrive in Milan. Well, maybe!! We take a bus to the Alitalia terminal and as soon as we arrive, we rush to the check-in counters where, my dear gentlemen, we find those kind, smiling and elegantly dressed employees in their nice blue uniforms representing our national airline; and they tell us that our flight has been cancelled. (This cannot be true, can it?).
And do you know why? No, please, tell us! It is because the mechanics, who service the Jumbos, are on strike at Malpensa Airport. Did you get that? And now what do we do? Good God, take it easy, it is simple; you take the Rome flight of course! We agree, we can’t say no. Maiorca, who had lingered by the American National Airline terminal to see if he could get the luggage coming from Miami, approaches and tells me that he saw a suitcase, probably mine or the Prof’s, because it had the Bocami logo printed on it, going up and down the conveyor belt... I should have known! I angrily go out, followed by the Prof, and look for a taxi to return there as quickly as possible, but there aren’t any. Not having the patience to wait, I look towards the distant building and start walking.
The Prof follows me. Thanks Prof, you are a friend. A delightful walk, through flowerbeds, over traffic islands, along pavements, pedestrian crossings, traffic lights, which are always red of course, between cars driven too fast and too near, etc. After a quarter of an hour we arrive; breathless. Through the windows of the building I see my suitcase quietly gliding over the belt, and I also see the police officers near the exit, checking documents and attaching stickers. Just like in all the airports in the world.
Now I need to have my suitcase back, but here lies the problem; being in a hurry, I left my passport and ticket in the other bag at the Alitalia terminal, therefore I should go back to get them. Then I wonder, what on earth should I tell these people as I’m not able to make myself understood? In short, even if I’m right, I can easily look as if I’m wrong; so I decide, together with the Prof, to go in, pick up the suitcase and then, with a polite thank you, leave. This is what I do.
Everything went as I had hoped. But now I wonder again, why did they just take this suitcase off and not the other?
What is it, an American mystery? No it isn’t! The Americans are always right, no mystery at all. The other suitcase had Milan written on it, but this one has Genova. And where is Genoa, in California? Maybe! But Milan is definitely in Italy.
We manage to get a taxi to take us back. We lounge about in the Alitalia waiting room, waiting for the Rome plane at 7.30 pm.
We are divided into smaller groups and time passes slowly. Somebody goes to the café, somebody looks at the window displays, somebody else buys something; and then, when the time of departure approaches, we all get together again to go through the barrier and to be checked by the electronic spy.
With Anglo-Saxon punctuality (we have to learn, no doubt about that) the Jumbo starts to taxi towards the runway.
By some strange coincidence I have the same seat as when we left, 24 C, and I hope it is a sign of good luck. In my row there are Tirelli and Sironi on the left, Mossatich and Camilli on the right of the corridor. The Prof has chosen a seat for smokers and is a long way from us. The Maiorca family too are far away. The 747 is almost full. There are many Italians from Sicily going back home, and a nice company of Americans going to Rome to see the Pope. I deduce from the Crucifix they wear around their necks that they are American Catholics.
Besides, each of them has a card attached to their suit, on which it is written where they come from and where they are going. Be careful not to get lost! The usual dreadful noise of the engines and the enormous cigar starts to rush down the runway at three hundred kilometres per hour, it increases speed and goes up, up into the sky; and then it takes a horizontal position at nine thousand metres and seems to relax. We unfasten our safety belts. Rest.
Dear Tirelli, I start saying, we are travelling towards Italy, from where we came with so much enthusiasm and desire to discover something, just a few days ago; in your opinion, what have we discovered? Are you satisfied with the expedition?
Was our trip to Bimini useful for sport, for science, or for something else? What did you think when you were organising everything in Milan with Fogar and the others? Many of the expedition answer this question of mine by saying that I am a pessimist, that I already know what I want to say. The Prof too tells me so, even though he knows better than me that there is little to say; the charts produced by the instrument from Miami to Bimini, and in Bimini, will be taken home by him (Bocami will gladly give them to him), he can keep them all his life on his bedside table, to evoke the spirits, he can study them as long as he wants, he can lose sleep over them, he can go over everything again and again with a fine tooth comb, but it won't change at all the judgment he gave right at the beginning, at the very moment the pen started to move!
And that is, nothing, zero, nothing at all. It is a design that could have been drawn anywhere in the world, with a puzzling, and absolutely stupid likeness. Tirelli, of course, will answer my question when he knows something for sure; and that will be when the analyses of the things found down there are completed at the Milan University.
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