‘Nothing could be further from the truth. The most basic of mental functions, the one governing the search for food, is triggered by a lack, by absence. Every thought rises from what’s not there, by comparing something seen or heard with a mental representation of what is feared or desired. What do you think the difference is between you and me?’

‘There is nothing more disagreeable or in poor taste than resorting to quantitative and physiological arguments, but you force my hand. Man is the living being with the most significant brain, with the greatest number of circumvolutions, billions of neurons, internal connections, nerve endings. The human brain, consequently, in its capacity to think, is unrivalled in this world. I’m sorry, but these are facts.’

The tortoise: ‘If we are going to boast, I could bring up my record longevity, which gives me a sense of time you can’t imagine; or even my shell, a product that, in endurance and perfection of design, surpasses human works of art and industry. But this is beside the point, which is that Man, who bears a special brain, and is the exclusive user of language, still forms part of a greater whole, an entirety of living beings, each interdependent, like the organs of a single organism. Within that whole, the function of the human mind appears to be a natural device at the service of all species, responsible for interpreting and expressing the accumulated thoughts of other beings more steadfast in their reasoning, such as the ancient and harmonious tortoise.’

Mr Palomar: ‘I would be quite proud of this. But I’ll go even further. Why stop at the animal kingdom? Why not annex the plant kingdom into the I? Would Man be expected to think and speak for the sequoias, the thousand-year-old cryptomeria, the lichens, the fungi, the heather bush into which you, hounded by my arguments, now rush to hide?’

‘Not only do I not object, I’ll go a step further. Beyond the Man–fauna–flora continuum, any discourse presumed to be universal must include metals, salts, rocks, beryl, feldspar, sulphur, rare gases and all the non-living matter that constitutes the near-totality of the universe.’

‘That’s just where I wanted to take you, Tortoise! Watching your little snout poke in and out of all that shell, I’ve always thought you were unable to determine where your subjectivity ends and where the outside world begins: if you have an I that lives inside the shell, or if that shell is the I, an I that contains the outside world within it, then the inert matter becomes part of you. Now that I am thinking your thoughts, I realize we don’t have a problem: for you there’s no difference between the I and the shell, that is to say, between the I and the world.’

‘The same applies to you, Man. Goodbye.’

‘Dialogo con una tartaruga’

Written in 1977 and posthumously included in Romanzi e racconti, vol. 3: Racconti sparsi e altri scritti d’invenzione in the Meridiani series (Mondadori, 1994).