Summary:
Chapter 7
The reader is sitting in the cafe waiting for Ludmilla to arrive when he hears his name being called. A waiter says he has a phone call; it is Ludmilla saying she can't come to the cafe but inviting him to her house. The reader goes to her house, thinking to himself that he shouldn't snoop around.
The narration turns directly to the actual reader for the first time in quite a while. While the narrator has still been using second person ("you") whenever referring to the reader, the narrator acknowledges the difference between that character, "a general male you" (141), and the actual reader "directly to you who appeared already in the second chapter" (141). The narrator speaks explicitly about why certain characters have been named, saying that the character of the reader has not been named so that the actual person reading the book can identify with him. In contrast, Ludmilla has been given a name, making her separation from the reader clear.
Suddenly, however, the narrator starts to refer to Ludmilla, or "Other Reader" (141), using the second person. The narrator questions how much can be found out about Ludmilla by looking around her house. The narrator picks through Ludmilla's kitchen in detail, drawing conclusions such as "It is clear that when shopping you succumb to the lure of the goods on display and don't bear in mind what is lacking at home" (143). The narrator moves on to the rest of the house, looking at trinkets, photographs, furniture, and plants. Finally, the narrator turns to Ludmilla's books, which do not seem to be ordered in any particular way except perhaps chronological based on which books have been most recently acquired and read. The narrator surmises that Ludmilla is not someone who rereads books and has a habit of reading multiple books at once.
The reader hears a sound, and the narrator switches back to using the second person to refer to him. The sound turns out to be Irnerio, the young man who helped the reader find Professor Uzzi-Tuzii's office. The reader is disgruntled by how comfortable Irnerio seems in Ludmilla's apartment, and begins to think even more than before that there may be a romantic relationship between them. Irnerio says he is looking for a book. When the reader questions why he would be looking for a book if he supposedly un-learned how to read, Irnerio responds that "It's not for reading. It's for making." (149). Irnerio explains that he uses books to make art pieces, and he usually uses books Ludmilla has no use for. Irnerio examines the books on Ludmilla's shelves, searching for one that speaks to him. The reader asks what Irnerio does while Ludmilla is reading, and Irnerio says he watches her, which makes the reader even more jealous.
Irnerio chooses a book that he likes: the book the reader got from Mr. Cavedagna. The reader protests, telling Irnerio to take a different book by Flannery. Looking closer, the reader sees the title "In a network of lines that..." and exclaims that he didn't expect Ludmilla to have a copy of the same book. Irnerio says that the book isn't Ludmilla's and that he wants nothing to do with the book. Taking the book from the reader in disgust, he opens a little door and throws the book into a small room. The reader goes inside the room and finds a desk, a typewriter, a tape recorder, dictionaries, and a file. The first page of the file reads, "Translation by Ermes Marana" (151).
The reader reflects that he had thought he was forcing Ludmilla into Marana's letters because of his romantic interest in her; now it seems that Ludmilla and Marana really have been involved. Irnerio says that Marana "was here" but "shouldn't come back here again" (151). Irnerio clearly has strongly negative feelings about Marana, and it seems from what Irnerio recounts that Ludmilla does too. He tells the reader that Ludmilla was so unhappy when Marana was there that she stopped reading and then ran away. When the reader asks where Ludmilla would go if Marana showed up again, Irnerio says that she would go to Flannery in Switzerland. She seems to view Flannery as something of an antidote to Marana.
Suddenly, Ludmilla arrives. The narration cuts to later, when the reader and Ludmilla sit together having tea and Irnerio has disappeared. The reader makes his jealousy of Irnerio and the other men in Ludmilla's life clear, and she tells him that if he thinks he will ever have a right to make a jealous scene, "It's best not even to begin" (153). The reader moves to sit next to her on the sofa, taking hope from the fact that she said "To begin" (153). The narration jumps again, this time to Ludmilla and the reader in bed together. The narrator says that the two characters who have each been referred to in masculine and feminine second person singular can now be referred to collectively in the second person plural; their sexual union makes them "a single subject" (154). The narrator then vividly describes their sex as reading one another. When the heat of the moment has died down, the reader considers what it would be like living with Ludmilla, reading in bed next to one another before going to sleep.
The reader finally gets to tell Ludmilla about the new book he was given by Mr. Cavedagna. He makes a misstep when he says, "It's a book of the sort you like: it conveys a sense of uneasiness from the very first page" (157). She curtly corrects him, saying, "I like books...where all the mysteries and the anguish pass through a precise and cold mind" (157). She tells him to bring her the book to see for herself, but when the reader goes to get the book, he finds that it is gone. The narrative skips to explain where the book has gone, saying that the reader will find it later as part of a sculpture at one of Irnerio's art shows. The reader says that he noticed Ludmilla has a copy of the book anyway, and when she opens it the reader can see the inscription: "To Ludmilla...Silas Flannery" (158). Ludmilla says she thought it had been stolen from her. She gets angry when she finds out Irnerio showed the reader the room with Marana's translation materials. The reader realizes quickly that Marana was jealous of Ludmilla's open and trusting relationship with books, causing him to pursue falsification of literature.
Looking at the book, the reader realizes that it is indeed different than the copy given to him by Mr. Cavedagna. Ludmilla declares that it is a fake because it has come from Marana, and the reader, knowing that the copy from Mr. Cavedagna also came through Marana's hands, says that they may both be fakes. The reader suggests that they can only get clarity by asking Flannery himself. The reader begins to read the book in his hands. The narrator notes that the reader was actually wrong when he said the books are exactly the same; the titles actually differ by one word.
In a network of lines that intersect
The narrator of this story, like the story In a network of lines that enlace, is a paranoid, intelligent man. He begins by waxing philosophical on the nature of mirrors and kaleidoscopes, with which he has been fascinated since adolescence. He gives the history of kaleidoscopes, back to the invention of the polydyptic theatre in 1646, which could "transform a bough into a forest, a lead soldier into an army, a booklet into a library" (162). The man says that he has used this same principle to become a wealthy businessman. He can create large profits by metaphorically reflecting money and hides deficits "in the dead corners of illusory perspectives" (162).
The wealthy man now wishes to do the same for himself; he wants to multiply his image and thereby hide and protect his true identity. He fears being kidnapped, so he orders multiple cars identical to his and hires bodyguards and stand-ins who look like him to drive around at different times to elude any enemies who might wish to attack him. He is having an affair with a woman named Lorna behind the back of his wife Elfrida, and he ironically tries to protect himself and Lorna from being found out by hiring multiple other women to have pretend affairs with. The narrator says that Elfrida avoids his collection of mirrors and refuses to follow his paranoid desires for her to publicize her movements.
The narrator decides that his identical cars, body doubles, and fake mistresses aren't enough to prevent an attack, so he begins to organize groups of criminals to conduct fake kidnappings of his body doubles. The takes things a step further by joining up with another criminal organization to found an insurance company against kidnappings. However, getting wrapped up with multiple criminal organizations and an insurance company gets the narrator in over his head; he becomes aware that there is a plot to really kidnap him and ransom the capital of the insurance company.
The narrator tries to foil the real plan to kidnap him by creating a fake kidnapping to happen beforehand. However, he is bested by a "counter-counterplan" (167) and taken forcefully back to his house. The true kidnappers lock the narrator in a room in his house that he has entirely covered in mirrors. Lorna, the narrator's mistress, lies naked and bound on the floor of the room. The narrator rushes to unbind her limbs and remove a gag from her mouth. Rather than being grateful, she yells at him and digs her nails into his face.
The narrator's wife Elfrida enters the room and tells the narrator that she has saved him. Since the door has closed and the room is covered with mirrors, Elfrida cannot find the way out. The narrator sees that Elfrida is holding a gun. He also sees parts of his mistress and wife reflected in the mirrors and has trouble separating what belongs to whom. The narrator seems to lapse into insanity, thinking to himself that he has lost himself and yet also managed to become whole.
Chapter 8
Rather than returning to the narration of the Reader, as usually occurs in numbered chapters of If on a winter's night a traveler, Chapter 8 is made up of entries from the diary of Silas Flannery. These entries complement the knowledge gleaned from the letters sent from Ermes Marana to Mr. Cavedagna. Flannery begins by talking about the woman he sees reading every day in a deck chair, who we know to be Ludmilla. He envies her attentive reading, both because he is in a long stretch of writer's block and because he feels he has lost his personal joy in reading since becoming a writer. Sometimes Flannery pretends that what he is writing up in his room is what Ludmilla is reading outside. He believes this seriously enough to hastily write a sentence and then go to his window to watch her reaction. At other times, he is more melancholy, believing that she is reading "my true book, the one I should have written long ago, but will never succeed in writing" (170). At yet other times he feels as Ludmilla and his other readers are watching him while he writes, and this pressure makes him feel even more blocked from writing.
Flannery struggles with what he should be writing. He wishes he himself could disappear so that his writing would simply be dictated by "The spirit of the times" (171). Adding to this, he describes wanting to write that which "already exists...the equivalent of the unwritten world translated into writing" (171). On the other hand, he also feels that he must write "what does not and cannot exist except when written" (172). Breaking from such lofty, metaliterary thoughts, Flannery considers a butterfly that lands on his book and considers how using metaphor to compare the butterfly to a crime would shape one's perception of both the crime and the butterfly.
He has an idea for a story of two writers who spy on one another. One writer is a productive writer, while the other is tormented. When the tormented writer watches the productive writer, he feels contempt for the low style of the productive writer's works but also envious as the other writer's confidence and prolificness. When the productive writer watches the tormented writer, he feels admiration and envy for how intellectual the tormented writer's works are. Both of the writers spy on a woman reading a book, and both think she must be reading a book by the other writer. Both writers now write books trying to imitate the style of the other so that they can give it to the woman. Flannery comes up with multiple endings to the story including the two books ending up exactly the same or the two books being combined by a gust of wind to create a single fantastic novel.
Flannery abruptly shifts from these potential book endings to a book which he has read in which the author used the phrase "It thinks" every time other authors might have written "I think" (176). Building on his earlier idea of writing from the collective unconscious, he contemplates what life would be like if one could say "It writes" or "It reads" (176).
A poster hangs on the wall above Flannery's desk. The poster is of Snoopy from the Peanuts cartoons sitting at a typewriter and typing the cliché opening sentence "It was a dark and stormy night..." (176). Flannery is alternately convinced that a cliché opening sentence is the best way to begin a novel and furious at the poster for mocking his writer's block.
In an attempt to fix his writer's block, Flannery decides to copy the beginning of a famous novel—Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. In the excerpt, a young man named Raskolnikov walks the streets of Russia alone, thinking about his fear of running into his landlady. Flannery is tempted to simply keep copying from the novel, envying copyists for being able to enjoy the best parts of both reading and writing.
Flannery writes that he was contacted by a translator, clearly meaning Ermes Marana. The translator tells him that his works are being illegally translated and shows him what is supposedly a Japanese translation of one of his works. However, Marana explains that the book he is showing him is not actually a story Flannery has written; it is a novel by someone else wrote in Japanese mimicking Flannery's style. The publishing house then added Flannery's name to boost sales. Flannery suspects that Marana is involved with this falsehood and asserts that he will sue anyone involved with the production of these fake translations. Marana tells Flannery his ideas about "literature's worth l[ying] in its power of mystification" (180). He tells Flannery that he could be a great, even perfect faker, making him "the ideal author" in Marana's eyes.
Flannery is conflicted about this because he still thinks he must try to leave his identity out of his writing as much as possible. He considers the career of a ghostwriter, whose identity is multiplied by existing in the books of many different authors and yet who remains anonymous. He also considers that if it is impossible to leave the self out of writing, perhaps the book he is supposed to write is a diary of his memories, desires, and thoughts, like what the reader is currently reading. He seems to find some relief from his writer's block by realizing he does not have to write one perfect book but can write a whole library of books that can balance and even contradict one another.
Flannery recounts a story of the writing of the Koran. There were two mediators between Allah, or God, and the book itself: Mohammed, the prophet whom God communicated with, and his scribe named Abdullah. In the story, Mohammed leaves a sentence half finished as he dictates God's teachings and Abdullah automatically finished the sentence for him. Mohammed accepted this end to the sentence, shocking Abdullah and causing him to lose his faith in the divine nature of the document. However, Flannery thinks that Abdullah should have recognized his role up to that point in shaping the message from God. Mohammed realized the influence the scribe had throughout the writing process and so was not worried by the scribe finishing the sentence. Flannery comes up with a variation on this story in which Abdullah makes a mistake while writing. Mohammed sees this mistake but does not ask for it to be changed. Abdullah is again scandalized, which Flannery says is misguided because "it is on the page, not before, that the word...becomes definitive" (182-183). Flannery breaks out of this thought by noticing the butterfly again resting on his book.
While out for a walk, Flannery runs into a group of boy scouts arranging pieces of canvas on the ground to signal flying saucers. They tell Flannery that UFO observers think UFOs have been flying nearby recently because a famous writer is living in the area. According to them, aliens want to use this author, presumably Flannery himself, to communicate through. They suggest that the book the writer produces after coming out of his writer's block will communicate whatever the aliens intend to. Flannery asks how the aliens would communicate to this writer, and the scouts say that he wouldn't even be aware of it. When he leaves the scouts, Flannery is skeptical, but he does entertain the idea that they could be right.
A girl comes to visit Flannery saying that she is writing a thesis on his novels; she is revealed to be Ludmilla's sister Lotaria. Flannery does not agree with Lotaria's methods of reading books, saying, "I believe she has read them only to find in them what she was already convinced of before reading them" (185). In response, Lotaria calls Flannery's preferred way of reading "passive...escapist and regressive" (185), saying her sister reads the same way. Flannery thinks to himself that Ludmilla is his ideal reader. The narration is broken by a short scene in which Flannery sees a man escaping through his study's window. He remarks that he sometimes finds pages are missing from his manuscripts and that other times he finds his manuscripts changed. Returning to the subject of Lotaria, Flannery describes the process through which Lotaria analyzes books. Instead of actually reading them, she feeds the entire text into a machine that ranks the words by frequency. She then looks at the words that are repeated most frequently, as well as the words used only once, and draws conclusions from these lists of words. After discussing this with Lotaria, Flannery feels even more blocked when writing, imagining every word he writes being tallied.
One day, Ludmilla visits Flannery. She tells him that she's read all of his novels and that he is her ideal model of a writer. She compares his writing to various natural processes, particularly focusing on the metaphor of him producing books "as a pumpkin vine produces pumpkins" (189). Flannery asks if she is mad at her sister, and Ludmilla replies that she is mad at someone else: Ermes Marana. Ludmilla tells Flannery about Marana's deception and falsification. She says that she is happy that Flannery is an ordinary person, as she had predicted from reading his novels. Flannery gathers agitatedly that she sees him as "an impersonal graphic energy, ready to shift from the unexpressed into writing an imaginary world that exists independently of me" (190). Suddenly, Flannery approaches her romantically. Ludmilla cries out and struggles away from him. She tells him that she could make love to him, but she views him and the author Silas Flannery who she has read as two separate people. Flannery feels stripped of his ego, but he doesn't know if this is positive or negative. When Ludmilla leaves, he rushes to the window to look for the woman who reads outside, wondering only then if it might be Ludmilla herself.
Ludmilla seems to visit Flannery frequently after that day. She tells him about his ideal book and he tells her about the woman he spies on. Flannery confesses that his manuscripts seem to be changing and disappearing and asks Ludmilla whether Marana is to blame, but she does not give a clear answer. Flannery suggests that his true vocation may be authoring apocrypha—a term used both for secret books of religious sects and texts falsely attributed to an author. He considers joining Marana in his quest to "flood the world with apocrypha" (193) but does not know where to find him. Abruptly, Ludmilla tells him that she is leaving.
After Ludmilla leaves, Flannery talks to the boy scouts again, thinking to tell them that the book they seek is the one the girl outside is reading. When he looks out for her, he finds her missing, suggesting further that the girl was Ludmilla all along. However, when he looks elsewhere with his spyglass he sees a man reading intently. Flannery tells the boy scouts that the book this man is reading is the one they are looking for.
In Flannery's next entry, he describes being visited by a reader who has found two copies of "In a network of lines that et cetera" (194). It is clear that this is the reader from the numbered chapters of If on a winter's night a traveler. He describes being ambushed by the boy scouts who stole his book. Flannery tells him not to worry because it was a fake book from Japan. When the reader says that he liked the book and wanted to continue reading it, Flannery says that he can give him the source: On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon by Takakumi Ikoka. Flannery secretly knows that the book he is giving the reader has nothing to do with In a network of lines that intersect. The reader tells Flannery that he is setting off to South America to find Marana, and Flannery does not tell him that he believes Marana to be living in Japan. The conversation ends with the reader describing his problem of only getting to read the beginning of books. Reflecting on this, Flannery thinks that he might write a book just like If on a winter's night a traveler. In his mind, the book ends with himself and Ludmilla getting together and the reader becoming involved with Lotaria.
On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon
A young Japanese man walks outdoors with his boss, Mr. Okeda, discussing whether it is possible to "distinguish the sensation of each single ginkgo leaf from the sensation of all the others" (199). Mr. Okeda encourages the narrator in this pursuit of isolated sensations. Mr. Okeda's youngest daughter Makiko comes out to serve tea to both men, and the narrator gazes with interest and some lust at Makiko's neck and back. That afternoon, the narrator and his boss go for a walk again, this time with Makiko and the boss's wife Madame Miyagi as well. Madame Miyagi sees a flower floating in a lake, and the narrator kneels and reaches out to pick it for her. Madame Miyagi and Makiko both crouch behind him and at the same moment he feels the nipples of both women touching his back. The boss witnesses this touching but does not comment upon it, emboldening the narrator to try to squeeze Makiko's breast when pulling his hand back with the flower. He misses the breast, falling to the side and placing his hand in the lap of Madame Miyagi, who seems to welcome the touch. As the narrator and his boss walk later in the day, they again talk about the separation of sensations, and the boss seems aware that the narrator is really speaking of touching his wife and daughter. The narrator, feeling somewhat uncomfortable, changes the subject by talking about the isolation of sensations while reading.
It is revealed that the narrator is a young academic and actually lives in the house with Mr. Okeda and his family. In the days after the incident with the flower, the narrator is often left home alone with Makiko and Madame Miyagi. The narrator is conflicted because he feels that continuing to work closely with Mr. Okeda is holding back his career. However, he wants to remain in Mr. Okeda's house because of his attraction to his wife and daughter. This very attraction causes the narrator to not get much work done; he tries to find ways to interact with Makiko, but finds himself more and more spending private time with Madame Miyagi.
This goes on for weeks, into the autumn. One evening, the narrator and Makiko discuss the best place to watch the moon through the trees. The narrator suggests that the best place is on the path under the ginkgo tree, implying that he would like to meet Makiko there that night. Makiko suggests that watching from the lake is preferable, and the narrator directly tells her that he would like to meet her there and that the location "stirs delicate sensations in my memory" (205). She is alarmed by his forwardness and looks at him in silence. Trying to break the awkwardness, the narrator makes a strange, aggressive face at her. Makiko jumps back and leaves the room.
The narrator follows Makiko out of the room, but upon entering the next room finds Madame Miyagi arranging branches in a pot. The narrator is aroused by the sight and gets an erection, and Madame Miyagi toys with his emotions by touching him with a flower. The narrator, supposedly accidentally, slips his hand into Madame Miyagi's kimono and onto her breast. Madame Miyagi pulls out the narrator's penis. The two characters touch one another sensually experimentally. Suddenly, Makiko appears in the doorway dressed in a loosely tied silk dressing down. The narrator calls her name, and at that moment Madame Miyagi pulls him to the ground and forces him to enter her. Makiko watches her mother and the young man "with attraction and disgust" (208). As Madame Miyagi orgasms, the narrator sees that another person is standing in the doorway: Mr. Okeda. The narrator sees in Mr. Okeda's face that he does not care about this romantic encounter or any that take place in the future. The narrator makes himself separate the sensations he is feeling to delay his own climax. He moans the name Makiko into Madame Miyagi's ear and thinks of the way he will describe the encounter to Mr. Okeda by comparing it to falling ginkgo leaves.
Analysis:
While it has long been clear that the reader of If on a winter's night a traveler is assumed to be male, as discussed in the analysis of Chapters 1 and 2, it is significantly reinforced in Chapter 7. Calvino writes, "It is time for this book in the second person to address itself no longer to a general male you" (141). Just as Calvino explicitly stated the gender of the reader for the first time in relation to Ludmilla (after meeting her for the first time at the bookshop), it is again when the reader comes in close contact with Ludmilla (visiting her house for the first time) that Calvino reinforces the reader's maleness. Interestingly, directly after acknowledging that the book has only been written in a way that acknowledges male readers, Calvino focuses on the writing technique he has purposefully used to create identification between the book's reader and the main character: "This book so far has been careful to leave open to the Reader who is reading the possibility of identifying himself with the Reader who is read: this is why he was not given a name" (141). This statement does not acknowledge the experience of non-male readers, who have been caught between identification due to Calvino's chosen narrative voice and lack of identification due to his specification of the reader's gender.
Following Calvino's statement about his choices to use the second person and not give the reader a name, one of the biggest shifts in If on a winter's night a traveler occurs. Calvino switches which character is the focus of the second person narration, meaning the book's actual reader is asked to suddenly inhabit and identify with a completely different character: Ludmilla. Calvino's original choice of second person narration was already nontraditional, jarring the reader into hyper-awareness of an author's power over a reader's experience. This shift, almost exactly halfway through the book, serves to remind the reader not to get comfortable. This type of metaliterary play is a key feature of postmodern literature.
In Chapter 7, while Calvino uses the second person to focus on Ludmilla's character, he playfully draws out how authors characterize characters through the objects in their lives. For example, of the food in Ludmilla's kitchen, the narrator gathers, "It is clear that when shopping you succumb to the lure of the goods on display and don't bear in mind what is lacking at home" (143). Later, when viewing Ludmilla's books, the author conjectures, "Obviously you have the habit of reading several books at the same time...your mind has interior walls that allow you to partition different times in which to stop or flow" (146). In a metaliterary sense, the way the narrator vividly describes and then analyzes the objects in Ludmilla's apartment shows how an author plants symbols in a novel to create characterization. Within the text, these details also further Ludmilla's characterization as a fickle and mysterious woman.
All of the stories-within-a-story in If on a winter's night a traveler parallel one another in some ways. All of the stories have a male narrator who is paranoid, obsessed, or caught up in mysterious circumstance. However, two of the stories are particularly related, as suggested by their similar titles: "In a network of lines that enlace" and "In a network of lines that intersect." First, it is useful to analyze the words that distinguish the stories from one another. The word "enlace" gives a sense of entanglement, while "intersect" merely means that two things touch; in other words, "intersect" does not signify such a lasting connection. This could be read as foreshadowing that the plot lines and characters in the first story will be more closely entangled than the plot lines and characters in the second story. However, the opposite seems to play out when the reader compares the stories. While of the stories both focus on an obsession with repetition or duplication—of a phone ringing in the first story and of images in the second—the narrator of the second story seems to get much more tangled in his obsession. While the first story ends with a fairly positive outcome, the second story ends with things more tangled than they began. This underscores Marana's belief, and one of the motifs of If on a winter's night a traveler, the lack of significance of titles and authors.
Chapter 8 is another frame story chapter of particular significance. While the narrative point of view shifted in Chapter 7 such that the second person narration referred to Ludmilla, Chapter 8 departs entirely from the second person. The chapter is written in first-person narration, which is more traditional for a novel, and is written from the perspective of popular author Silas Flannery. The chapter primarily concerns questions of the role of an author in producing their work. Flannery wonders if he should merely communicate what is present but unwritten in society or if authors are supposed to use their identity and experiences to purposefully impact the world. His distress grows as he interacts with others who perceive his works in different ways, including Lotaria who analyzes his works without even reading them and the scouts who see his work as so thoughtless that aliens might use him as a channel through which to communicate. Flannery's conflict is used to demonstrate the many pressures that go into writing and publishing books, in contrast to the way some readers might assume (as Ludmilla naively does) that books simply spring forth naturally.
