Sometimes there is a story that takes my breath away at the sheer delight of the writer’s imagination. This Calvino story is such a one. It is story about the Moon, with a love triangle providing the narrative. Calvino takes an old scientific theory that there was a time when the Moon was very close to the Earth and suggests it was so close you could row out to the celestial body and climb up to it on a ladder. Calvino is wonderfully exact about the mechanics of clambering onto the Moon’s surface, which the narrator says is scaly and smells faintly of fish.
“The only odd thing was that when you raised your eyes you saw the sea above you, glistening, with the boat and the others upside down, hanging like a bunch of grapes from the vine.”
Great use of ‘only’ there. This story is like a Chagall painting, charming, strange, surreal, particularly when Captain Vhd’s wife, with her long silvery arms, is stranded on the moon playing slow arpeggios on her harp. Joyous.
First published in Calvino’s collection Cosmicomics in Italian in 1965 and in English in 1968. It is now available as a Penguin Modern Classic
A Personal Anthology 