Dissipatio H.G., Guido Morselli [ebook and pdf reader .txt] 📗

goats are grazing on the lawn of the Hôtel Kursaal. I’ve never met such a large group of these animals, even high in the mountains. At Claus where my valley ends on the plain, I walk around a factory. A sign in large letters on the fence says, Our detergents are 93% biodegradable. In the meantime, the factory workers and the customers are one hundred percent biodegraded. The ibex have noticed and are taking advantage.

Passing through the silent outskirts of Chrysopolis, I stop at the synagogue of the Community of the Temple, a famous heirloom left by Gropius among the houses in this neighborhood in the suburbs. I climb the stairs, wait. I don’t expect to talk to him; this new encounter with him will be mute. I just need to have him in front of me. He saw me leave (I say to myself), he can see me right now, he knows I’ve been called to meet him. The Community of the Temple advises, by way of a sign, that there is another synagogue available to would-be attenders, that of the Temple of the Son of Zion–Chief Rabbinate. Not far away.

But is it certain that Karpinsky— although he’s Polish and exhibits certain somatic traits—is Jewish?

Doubt broadens my research. I climb, under the rain, toward the center of town and turn onto Calvinstrasse. I recognize the Evangelical Methodist church, and others: this street is a great flowering of cultural devotion. I move on to the headquarters of the Society of Friends (Quakers). After pausing there for a bit, I proceed toward the Association of Reformed Christians. I don’t look at the venerable cathedral of the Great Monastery behind me; I don’t think my friend would have chosen the cathedral. Too well known, overrun with tourists. Apart from that exception, I finger one by one the rosary beads of the city’s sacred institutions. Église Évangélique Libre. Karpinsky, a foreigner, might have belonged to one of the odd denominations like the Assemblée Évangélique des Frères, or further along, the Église Biblique. No trace of Karpinsky. Or at least I don’t “hear” him.

I’m beginning to get tired, but I persist. I must find him, he can’t have deceived me.

I cross the first of the great avenues that lead down to the lake and enter the business district. If a wide array of religious denominations can be found in the residential areas, the financial and trade center offers no fewer:

United Lutheran Church

National Lutheran Synod

Church of St. Theresa

Chapel of the World Missions

Parish Church of St. Mark

Sanctuary of the Sacred Fount

Chiesa Parocchiale di Santa Maria del Popolo

Catholic-Christian Church of the Apostles (So there was a Catholic-Christian faith at Chrysopolis, as well as simple Catholic.)

Iglesia Evangelica Española

Church of Pius X

House of the Catholic-Christian Alliance

Piccola Basilica dell’Immacolata (A 1/16 scale copy of the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur in Montmartre, painted by Utrillo.)

The churches of St. Martin, Corpus Domini and St. Jeanne de Chantal

Church of the Adoration of the Sacred Heart (Built in the Secession style, it looks like a movie house. Not tremendously inviting for mystical purposes.)

The Chapel of Our Lady of Lourdes (“Sundays Only.” In compensation, there’s a real grotto next to it and even a real miniature waterfall.)

Russian Orthodox Church

Ukrainian Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection of Christ

Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, church and parish

Chapel of the Infant Jesus, of the Visitandine Sisters

Christ Church, Anglo-Catholic

Christ’s Chapel of the Free Christian Brotherhood

Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints

My hope, though waning, is slow to expire altogether. I visit these houses of worship one after another, contrite and dull as an Easter pilgrim to Rome.

I stand in front of closed doors, look around; then I concentrate, keep my ears open.

•

Melancholy, not bitter, the return to Widmad. My friend has been held up elsewhere; or else I misunderstood.

But a little irony about our fair city would not be out of place. It hosted, with careful deference and to its inestimable profit, the headquarters of fifty-six banks. (That was one bank for every 7,000 inhabitants while Paris had one for every 40,000 people, and London one per 50,000.) And, one eye on the stock market indexes, soul aimed toward the heavens, the banks were flanked by almost that many churches, adorned with domes and towers, marble floors and trim, and stained-glass windows rich in Biblical legends. A city devoted to Holy Plutocracy. Chrysopolis-Christopolis: I could call it that and any Max Weber could reconcile the contradictions. But I don’t have the heart to ironize, to intellectualize. Meditative, I drive my little wagon of the apocalypse over the smooth, silent, odor-free asphalt, the asphalt of eternity.

Waiting for Karpinsky? No, quite the contrary. It’s Karpinsky who’s waiting for me. It’s I who’s making him wait, misunderstanding his invitation. I’ve been searching for him in temples built of wood or of stone, when for him the divine is vast and free. In the clinic, the staff imagined he was a deacon or sacristan, a man who could go and take Communion in the eyes of a lover. He’s the one who’s waiting, he’s the disappointed one, disappointed by my conformism.

But not so disappointed as never to speak to me again. He’ll speak to me.

For the last time last night, I slept in the hall at the Mayr.

Today I’ll move to the station, beyond the station, to a freight train. Perhaps it’s my asceticism. But more than that, it’s the sound impulse that once led people to take refuge in trains when earthquakes or bombardments struck. The train represents a provisory solution, but also mobility, theoretical escape. At the Grand Emporium I find the necessaries to furnish my new residence. Among those necessaries, a portable typewriter. The car where I’ll be staying is one of those used to repair the lines (the symbolism didn’t fail to strike me), and in fact there’s another car ahead of it that’s full of bolts and railroad ties. My old goatherd’s hut was a palace by comparison, but there are some comforts. The rail workers had a kind of lodge