Dear Piero Bianucci,1
You will be surprised to receive a letter from an admirer, so quickly and from so far away. We know your silly notions about the speed of light; where we are, a modest one-time supplement to the TV subscription fee is all it takes to be able to send and receive intergalactic messages in real time, or almost. As for me, I am a great admirer of your TV programs, and especially of the ad for tomato puree. I wanted to tell you that I was very enthusiastic about your program last Tuesday, where you spoke about the Cepheids. In fact, I was pleased to learn that you call us that, because our sun is indeed a Cepheid; I mean, it’s a star much bigger than yours, and it pulsates regularly, with a period of five days and nine hours, Earth time. It is, to be precise, the Cepheid of Cepheus—what a coincidence! But before I embark on describing our way of life* I want to tell you that my girlfriends and I really like your beard. The men here don’t have beards—in fact, they don’t even have heads. Our men are ten or twelve centimeters long and look like your asparagus, and when we want to be inseminated we put them under our armpits for two or three minutes, as you do with thermometers when you take your temperature. We have ten armpits: we are all built with binary symmetry, so that our width is the golden section of our radius. This is unique in our galaxy, and we’re very proud of it. Males cost from twenty to fifty thousand lire depending on their age and condition, and they don’t bother us much.
By the way, don’t get your hopes up: our temperature varies, around −20°C in winter, 110°C in summer—but we’ll become friends anyway. I heard that you are an astrophile, and this made me . . . [indecipherable] because my friends and I also spend many evenings in the posterior hemisphere contemplating the starry sky; we enjoyed locating your sun, which, seen from here, is a little shy of the seventh magnitude and lies in a constellation we call Jadikus (it’s a kitchen utensil). Almost all of us, except for a few who love solitude, live in the anterior hemisphere, because it has more light and a better view. After all, our planet isn’t big: changing hemispheres is a short trip of three or four kilometers that can be made on foot, or by swimming in the rivers when they’re not frozen or dry.
We are also far from our sun, so it’s rare for the rocks to melt, except for sulfur. When I spoke of summer and winter, I was referring to the pulsations of our sun. It wouldn’t be easy for you people to adapt. There is a law-enforcement agency for the distracted and for the habitually late; sirens blare in all the towns and villages, and we have to burrow underground within half an hour. Each of us takes along her males. They say it’s quite a spectacle, but only the girls from law enforcement can see it, with periscopes, from inside their adiabatic observatories: apparently the sun swells before your very eyes, and in a few minutes the sea starts to boil. It’s a sea of water and sulfur dioxide, with iron salts—aluminum, titanium, and manganese—dissolved in it. We also have an armor made of iron oxide and manganese, and we change it when it gets too tight. We never go into the sea, because we are alkaline and the water is acid and would dissolve us. That happens sometimes: those who are tired of life throw themselves deliberately into the sea. It’s not a very deep sea, and when the sun swells it evaporates in a few hours; it turns into an ugly expanse of gray and brown salt and all the water goes up into the sky to form a mist over the sun.
The summer lasts two of your days; we spend it sleeping and laying eggs. Our optimal temperature is around 46°C, so that if you and I were to meet during the pleasant season we could even touch; I’d like that, but it probably won’t happen because . . . [indecipherable] aren’t here yet. Then the heat gradually subsides, rain pours down, hot and then warm, and the grass starts to sprout again. It’s the season when we all go out to pasture and exchange news. Last fall one of my friends told me that she saw a supernova; there hadn’t been one in a while and she urged me to let you know about it. From your perspective, it should be in the neighborhood of Scorpio; if you pay the one-time tachyonic subscription you can see it in ten days, otherwise you’ll have to wait 3485 years.
At the end of autumn, everything freezes: the sea with all its salts, the grass trapped in the rain and the dew, as well as everyone who remains outside. Winter is pleasant: our caves are well heated, we eat canned food, we get inseminated three or four times by various males, to set ourselves apart a little, but also because it’s fashionable; we make music with our stridulating organs, watch all the TV in the universe, and organize literary prizes. Three years ago I even won a prize. It was for a very sexy short story, about a girl who had bought a male with her first paycheck and then she fell for him and didn’t want to exchange him or have him pulped. I wrote it in 2.36 seconds. We do everything pretty quickly.
Your TV show is one of the most popular, especially because of the purees, which are of great interest to us. If you are able to submit your one-time payment and respond in a reasonable time, please send me the formula for your most important: (a) anti-fermentatives; (b) anti-
parasitics; (c) anti-conceptions;* (d) anti-aesthetics; (e) anti-Semitics; (f) antipyretics; (g) antiquarians; (h) antihelminthics; (i) antiphons; (j) antitheses; (k) antelopes.
As a matter of fact, we of the eighth planet of Delta Cepheid are also exposed to many dangers and threats from which we need to protect ourselves. In particular, regarding points (c) and (h), there was much discussion in my den last winter, because the TV commercials weren’t clear. At any rate, my friends and I would like to get the local chemical industry to produce them so we can try them—we had the impression that they could provide relief for some of our ills.
Cordially yours, . . . [signature illegible] and friends
Delta Cep./8, d.3º a.3,576.1011
Translated by Primo Levi
L’Astronomia, no. 54, April 1986
1. Editor in chief of the newspaper La Stampa, author of numerous popular science books, and creator and director of a science program on Italian TV.
* Here, and throughout Uncollected Stories and Essays: 1981–1987, an asterisk indicates that the word or phrase is in English in the original.