Pastorale
Written by Treti Galaxie on the occasion of Davide Sgambaro’s exhibition Pastoral.
The faun enters the bar, greets everyone with a big smile, and gestures to order a small beer. With a quick backward leap, he perches on the ice cream fridge.
“So I said, why swerve when you can go straight? I saw them down there at the end of the road, two lights, and I thought, for sure it’s two bikes riding side by side, for sure it’s two centaurs talking to each other. Then it hit me—brilliant idea! I’ll play a prank on them. You know, I’ve got plenty of imagination. I told myself, I’ll zip right between them and give them a scare. So I turned off my headlights, because when the lights are off, danger can’t see you—if you catch my drift. I turned off the lights and said, why brake when you can accelerate? And so I sped up, and when I got close, ready to pass between them, I realized they weren’t the lights of two mopeds. They were the headlights of a truck, a giant one, maybe a tanker or something. It was right in front of me, and bam, I slammed into it. Lucky for me, I was so drunk I didn’t feel a damn thing.”
The faun lifts his sunglasses and rests them on his horns. He smooths his goatee, coughs, and slides a Chesterfield between his lips. Striking a match on his hoof, he lights the cigarette. He takes a couple of drags, head bowed, the ember hidden in his palm. He stands up, sets the cigarette upright on the counter by its filter, and with effort climbs back onto the ice cream fridge.
“What was I saying? Yeah. You know the secret? Small beers. It sounds counterintuitive. But—hey, what do you want, kid? What? A Calippo? You want a Calippo? You know what they make those with? Rat fat. You eat rat fat? No? Then you don’t eat a Calippo either. Get lost. Anyway, I was saying, why take the small glass when the big one’s right there? A small beer—few people know this—stays fresh while you’re talking. The liter glass? Sure, it looks good, even the medium one does, but if someone already knows you and you want to have a serious conversation, you go for the small one. It stays cold, and you don’t end up drinking that warm, flat bottom that tastes like donkey piss. Where was I? Yeah. The truck. So, I wake up at dawn in a ditch. A ditch beside the road. I pull myself up by my tail—if you know what I mean. I check myself out, not a scratch on my hooves. Nothing. Lucky, the drunkard’s fortune. Then I look around. No scooter, no truck. Nothing. Just a stain on the asphalt, like oil. I go closer to look, and as I’m staring at it, for some reason, I think of this TV show I saw the day before. Why forget when you can remember? On the knight’s channel, there was this special where they showed what the Mona Lisa looked like without the Mona Lisa—like, everything behind her, but without the girl in front. And I thought, what the hell? You make me suffer, you show me an Italian masterpiece stolen by the frog-eaters, and then you take away the Italian girl in the picture too? What more do you want from me? You’d say, why look when you can close your eyes? Why remember when you can forget? And yet, as I’m there, hunched over that oil stain—it’s like one of those that make rainbows—bent forward like I’m about to puke, thinking about the Mona Lisa’s background, I get this weird feeling. Why lie when you can tell the truth? In that oil stain, like a black mirror, something was off. I ran my hand over it, then the other. Nothing. I blew on it. Nothing. In that shiny surface, there were trees, a few clouds. Everything. Except me. I wasn’t there. Then I thought, if this means something, and maybe it really did mean something, I wasn’t there to listen to it. Got it? So I stomped on it with my hooves and went back to town. Screw it. Why realize something when you can pretend it doesn’t exist?”
The faun’s smile fades as he slides down from the ice cream fridge. He sighs, lights a Chesterfield, takes two drags, and places it upright next to the small column of ash left from the previous one. He looks up at the hundreds of other columns of ash stacked on the counter, the shelves, the tables, the chairs, the jukebox, the pool table, the floor. He puts his sunglasses back on, twirls his finger in the air to offer a round of vodka, and leaves the bar.
