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What strange animals penguins are. Impenetrable and haughty.
The cruelty of enforced seclusion, which today seems unbearable to me, did not affect me then.
I was just trembling with impatience.
Finally, I saw them.
That tank at the Genoa aquarium has stayed in my memory.
Only much later, the memory of the penguins I saw was overlaid, without my wanting, by that of the penguins I heard. Equally haughty and impenetrable. Equally enchanting in their dual life.
In my mind, I have sewn together different fragments.
It's hard to talk about it.
In that display case, which lies dusty in my memory, there are five small sound universes.
It is always a surprise to dust them with my hand and find them still vibrant and colorful, untouched by time.
Words are certainly not suitable for describing them.
For others, those colorful clouds are just the five studio albums of the "Penguin Cafe Orchestra."
For me, they are primarily auditory softness.
Whoever thought of and recorded them, when and how, are things that don't really matter to me.
The vibrant air of those melodies, their perfect balance between the cultivated and the popular, their unmistakable playfulness: that's what interests me.
Each of these small universes, at first glance so similar, vibrates in an imperceptibly different way; like variations on the same theme, like evolving portraits of the same penguin.
Even when they remain buried for a long time, in that too remote place — even when for years I don't find myself, in the vain attempt to admire them better, fogging up the glass with my breath — their flavor does not abandon me.
Yes, their flavor.
How to describe it? Is there really a suitable way to describe it?
Words are not suitable, period.
More appropriate signs would be needed, means more akin to the intangible nature of these five universes. But not words.
Perhaps a box of Giotto crayons would suffice, some rough sheets of paper, ample arrays of tubes, a palette of watercolors less worn out than mine. Or better yet, three or four old and fragrant bottles of Windsor & Newton colored inks and porous paper.
The brilliance of those melodies, their life, how to transform them into static results, forms now condemned to silence? Impossible, without betraying their nature.
There.
On closer inspection, the case is a tin box. Inside, five candies.
The first is rhubarb and honey, my favorite.
The second is aniseed. Aromatic and persistent.
The third has an indecipherable taste. It tastes of distant lands.
The fourth is intoxicating and somewhat overwhelming, halfway between lavender and hawthorn.
The last one is the bitterest. It has a thousand shades, a thousand elusive details, a thousand overlapping and intersecting textures. Yet the taste is simple and clear.
What is surprising about this last one, however, is above all the wrapper: when unrolled, with a slight rustle, it reveals a tightrope-walking penguin, framed by a caption: “Union Cafe.”
A penguin magically in balance, between joyful melancholy and melancholic cheerfulness.
The two sentiments seem the same, yet there is an unbridgeable distance between them.
Precisely in that space — between joyful melancholy and melancholic cheerfulness — lives (or rather, alas, lived) the melody of that tightrope-walking penguin.
Soon it will fall. Suddenly.
And not being able to fly, it will no longer be able to twirl back on its wire.
Who will ever be able to restore its magical balance?
No one, I fear. At least not with the same grace.
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