How to Travel With a Salmon and Other Essays (13 page)

The real trouble starts when you consult the manual (what I now have to say applies to any manual for any kind of computer program or device). A computer manual appears to be a plastic container with sharp corners, which you must not leave within reach of the children. When you slip the contents out of this container, they seem to be a number of booklets bound in reinforced concrete, and therefore impossible to transport from living room to study. Their titles are conceived in such a way as to prevent you from understanding which should be read first. The less sadistic firms usually give you only two; the more perverse organizations offer as many as four.

Your immediate impression is that the first manual explains things step by step, for the retarded, while the second is addressed to experts, the third to professionals, and so on. Wrong. Each booklet says things that the others do not say; the things you need to know at once are in the manual for engineers, the information for engineers is in the manual for the retarded. Moreover, on the assumption that in future years you will amplify the manual, they are bound in loose-leaf style, with three hundred sheets or more.

Anyone who has handled a loose-leaf notebook knows that, after it has been consulted once or twice, apart from the difficulty in turning the pages, the rings bend out of shape, and soon the binder explodes, shedding leaves all over the room. Human beings accustomed to seek information are used to dealing with objects called books, perhaps featuring pages with color-coded edges or indentations, as in address books, so that readers can promptly find what they need. The authors of computer manuals are unaware of these humane conveniences and supply objects that last about eight hours. The only reasonable solution is to dismember the manuals, study them for six months under the guidance of an Etruscologist, condense them into four file cards (which will be enough), and throw the originals away.

1985

I have received a letter on paper headed Ordre Souverain Militaire de Saint-Jean de Jérusalem—Chevaliers de Malte—Prieuré Oecuménique de la Sainte-Trinité-de-Villedieu—Quartier Général de la Vallette—Prieuré de Québec. The letter contains an invitation to become a Knight of Malta. I would have preferred a brief directly from Charlemagne, but I immediately reported the matter to my children, to let them know their father wasn't just any old dad. Then I looked over my shelves for the volume of Caffanjon and Galimard Flavigny,
Ordres et contre-ordres de chevalerie,
Paris, 1982, in which a list of pseudo-orders of Malta is published, circulated by the authentic Sovereign Military and Hospitaler Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Rhodes, and Malta, whose headquarters is in Rome.

There are another sixteen orders of Malta, all having practically the same name, except for very slight variations; and all repudiate or recognize one another in turn. In 1908 some Russians founded an order in the United States, which in recent years has been headed by His Royal Highness Prince Roberto Pa-ternò II, Ayerbe Aragona, Duke of Perpignan, Head of the Royal Houses of Aragon and the Balearic Islands, Grand Master of the Orders of the Collar of Sant'Agata dei Paternò and of the Royal Crown of the Balearics. But a splinter order broke off from this one in 1934, when a Dane founded a rival order, giving its chancellorship to Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark.

In the 1960s a defector from the Russian branch, Paul de Granier de Cassagnac, founded an order in France, choosing as its protector King Peter II of Yugoslavia. In 1965 the ex-king Peter II of Yugoslavia quarreled with Cassagnac and founded in New York another order whose grand prior, in 1970, was Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark, who then left that order for the Danish one. In 1966 the chancellor of this order was a certain Robert Bassaraba von Bran-covan Khgimchiacvili, who was, however, expelled, and who consequently founded the order of the Ecumenical Knights of Malta, whose Imperial and Royal Protector was then to be Prince Enrico III Costantino di Vigo Lascaris Aleramico Paleologo del Monferrato, heir to the throne of Byzantium, Prince of Thessaly, who was later to found yet another order of Malta, the Priorate of the United States, whereas Bassaraba, in 1975, tried to establish his own Priorate of the Trinité de Villedieu, the one to which I would have belonged, but his attempt failed. I then found a Byzantine protectorate, an order created by Prince Carol of Rumania after he broke off from Cassagnac's, a Grand Priorate of which one Tonna-Barthet is the Grand Bailiff, while Prince Andrew of Yugoslavia—former Grand Master of the order founded by Peter II—is Grand Master of the Priorate of Russia (but then the prince withdrew and the order changed its name to Grand Royal Priorate of Malta and of Europe); an order created in the seventies by a Baron de Choibert and by Vittorio Busa, Orthodox Archbishop Metropolitan of Bialystok, Patriarch of the Western and Eastern Diaspora, President of the Republic of Danzig
(sic),
President of the Democratic Republic of Byelorussia and Grand Khan of Tartary and Mongolia, Viktor Timur II; and an International Grand Priorate created in 1971 by the above-mentioned Royal Highness Roberto Paternò with the Baron-Marquis of Alaro, of which another Paternò became Grand Protector in 1982: head of the Imperial House of Leopardi Tomassini Paternò of Constantinople, heir of the Roman Empire of the East, consecrated legitimate successor of the Apostolic Catholic Orthodox Church of the Byzantine Rite, Marquis of Mon-teaperto, Count Palatine of the throne of Poland.

In 1971 my order appeared in Malta, born of a schism within that of Bassaraba, under the exalted protection of Alessandro Licastro Grimaldi Lascaris Commenius Vingtmille, Duke of La Chastre, Sovereign Prince and marquess of Déols, and the Grand Master now is the marquess Charles Stivala de Flavigny, who after the death of Licastro recruited Pierre Pasleau, who assumes the titles of Licastro as well as those of His Grace the Archbishop Patriarch of the Catholic Orthodox Church of Belgium, Grand Master of the Sovereign Military Order of the Temple of Jerusalem and Grand Master and Hierophant of the Universal Masonic Order of the Ancient Oriental Rite and the Joint Primitive Rite of Memphis and Misraim.

I replaced the volume. Perhaps it, too, contains false information. But I realized that a man has to belong to something, if he doesn't want to feel like nothing. Italy's notorious P2 Lodge has been dissolved, while the Opus Dei has lost all secrecy and is now on everyone's lips. I have made my choice: The Italian Recorder Society. One, True, Ancient, and Accepted.

1986

In the old days, on receiving the mail in the morning, you opened the sealed envelopes and threw away the unsealed ones. Now the organizations that used to send unsealed envelopes send sealed ones, even by special delivery. You open the letter eagerly, only to find some absolutely trivial invitation. Especially irritating, because the highest-tech envelopes now have systems of hermetic sealing that resist letter-openers, teeth, jabbing knives. Traditional glue has been replaced by quick-setting cement, the kind dentists use. Luckily we are still safe from promotional schemes, as they always betray themselves with words like "free offer" on the outside, in gold letters. I was taught as a child that when you are offered something free, you should promptly call the police.

But the situation is getting worse. In the past you opened telegrams with real interest, ripping the envelopes in your haste: either they brought some piece of bad news or they informed you of the sudden death of a long-forgotten uncle in America. Now, if someone has a message of no interest to communicate, he sends you a telegram.

Telegrams fall into three categories. The imperative: "You are invited to attend important conference day after tomorrow on cultivation lupins in Apulia Undersecretary Ministry of Forests presiding please telex immediately time of arrival" (then comes a series of acronyms and numbers occupying two pages, in which naturally, and happily, the name of the pretentious sender is lost). The taken-for-granted: "As per previous agreement we confirm your participation conference regarding treatment of paraplegic koalas, please fax immediately." Of course, there was no previous agreement, or perhaps the preliminary invitation is still en route, via ordinary mail. But when the letter does arrive, it has been superseded by the telegram, already discarded, and the letter then follows it into the wastebasket. Finally, there is the third, enigmatic category: "Roundtable on computer science and crocodiles postponed as announced please confirm availability new dates." What dates? What availability? Wastebasket.

Now, however, the telegram has been made obsolete by the invention of overnight express delivery. In this method, which costs sums that would make Tina Brown blanch, the envelope can be opened only with the help of barbed-wire cutters; and once opened, it still does not disclose its contents immediately, thanks to the barrier, composed of various strips of Scotch tape, that must be overcome. Sometimes this system is employed purely for snobbish reasons (like the ceremonies of ritual consumption studied by Mauss); all there is, in the end, is a little note that says "hi" (but hours are spent in hunting for it, because the original envelope is the size of a garbage bag, and not everyone has the long arms of a Mr. Hyde). More often the envelope has a black-mailing function, and also contains a coupon for your reply. The sender is suggesting: "To say what I have to say to you I have spent an outrageous sum of money; the speed of delivery expresses my anxiousness; since there is a prepaid reply, if you don't answer you are a scoundrel." Such arrogance deserves punishment. Nowadays I open only the express envelopes that I myself have asked, by telephone, to be sent to me. The others I throw away, but even then they are a nuisance, because they clog up the basket. I dream of carrier pigeons.

Often telegrams and express envelopes announce awards. In this world there are honors and prizes that everyone is pleased to receive (the Nobel, the Golden Fleece, the Garter, the Irish Sweepstakes) and others that require nothing but acceptance. Anyone who has to publicize a new brand of shoe polish, a retarding condom, or some sulfurous mineral water, organizes an award. It is not very easy to get a board of judges together. What's difficult is to find winners. That is to say, they could be found easily if the prizes went to young people at the beginning of their career, but in that case press and TV wouldn't cover the event. So the winner, at the very least, must be Mother Teresa. But if Mother Teresa went to collect all the prizes she is awarded, the death rate in Calcutta would soar. The telegram announcing the prize, therefore, must assume an imperative tone and hint at severe sanctions in the event of refusal: "Happy to inform you that this evening, within one hour, you will be given the Golden Truss stop your presence indispensable in order to receive unanimous vote of unbiased jury otherwise must regretfully honor someone else." The telegram presupposes that the recipient will leap to his feet, screaming, "No, no! It's mine! Mine!"

Oh yes, I almost forgot. There are also those postcards that arrive from Kuala Lumpur signed "George." George who?

1988

The fax machine is truly a great invention. For anyone still unfamiliar with it, the fax works like this: you insert a letter, you dial the number of the addressee, and in the space of a few minutes the letter has reached its destination. And the machine isn't just for letters: it can send drawings, plans, photographs, pages of complicated figures impossible to dictate over the telephone. If the letter is going to Australia, the cost of the transmission is no more than that of an intercontinental call of the same duration. If the letter is being sent from Milan to Saronno, it costs no more than a directly dialed call. And bear in mind that a call from Milan to Paris, in the evening hours, costs about a thousand lire. In a country like ours, where the postal system, by definition, doesn't work, the fax machine solves all your problems. Another thing many people don't know is that you can buy a fax for your bedroom, or a portable version for travel, at a reasonable price. Somewhere between a million five and two million lire. A considerable amount for a toy, but a bargain if your work requires you to correspond with many people in many different cities.

Unfortunately, there is one inexorable law of technology, and it is this: when revolutionary inventions become widely accessible, they cease to be accessible. Technology is inherently democratic, because it promises the same services to all; but it works only if the rich are alone in using it. When the poor also adopt technology, it stops working. A train used to take two hours to go from A to B; then the motor car arrived, which could cover the same distance in one hour. For this reason cars were very expensive. But as soon as the masses could afford to buy them, the roads became jammed, and the trains started to move faster. Consider how absurd it is for the authorities constantly to urge people to use public transport, in the age of the automobile; but with public transport, by consenting not to belong to the elite, you get where you're going before members of the elite do.

In the case of the automobile, before the point of total collapse was reached, many decades went by. The fax machine, more democratic (in fact, it costs much less than a car), achieved collapse in less than a year. At this point it is faster to send something through the mail. Actually, the fax encourages such postal communications. In the old days, if you lived in Medicine Hat, and you had a son in Brisbane, you wrote him once a week and you telephoned him once a month. Now, with the fax, you can send him, in no time, the snapshot of his newborn niece. The temptation is irresistible. Furthermore, the world is inhabited by people, in an ever-increasing number, who want to tell you something that is of no interest to you: how to choose a smarter investment, how to purchase a given object, how to make them happy by sending them a check, how to fulfill yourself completely by taking part in a conference that will improve your professional status. All of these people, the moment they discover you have a fax, and unfortunately there are now fax directories, will trample one another underfoot in their haste to send you, at modest expense, unrequested messages.