An Italian who owns a villa in Riva on Lake Garda and can live very comfortably on the interest from the estate his father left him has, according to a report in La Stampa, been living for the last twelve years with a mannequin. The inhabitants of Riva report that on mild evenings they have observed the Italian, who is said to have studied art history, boarding a glass-domed deluxe boat, which is moored not far from his home, with the mannequin to take a ride on the lake. Described years ago as incestuous in a reader’s letter addressed to the newspaper published in Desencano, he had applied to the appropriate civil authorities for permission to marry his mannequin but was refused. The church too had denied him the right to marry his mannequin. In winter he regularly leaves Lake Garda in mid-December and goes with his beloved, whom he met in a Paris shop-window, to Sicily, where he regularly rents a room in the famous Hotel Timeo in Taormina to escape from the cold, which, all assertions to the contrary, gets unbearable on Lake Garda every year after mid-December.

Impossible

IMPOSSIBLE

A playwright whose plays have been performed in all the major theaters made it a matter of principle not to go to any of these productions, and for years, enjoying greater and greater success, he was able to hold fast to this principle. He had resolutely rejected all invitations from theater managements to see their productions, leaving most of their requests unanswered. Besides, there was nothing he hated more than theater managers. One day he broke with his principle and went to the Düsseldorf theater—considered at the time one of the best houses, which, in the nature of things, means that the Düsseldorf theater was in fact one of the best theaters in Germany—and saw his latest play being performed there, not, in the nature of things, on the opening night but at the third or fourth performance. After he had seen what the Düsseldorf players had made of his play, he filed a complaint in the Düsseldorf court that had jurisdiction over such matters, and this was enough to have him committed, before the trial took place, to the famous Bethel lunatic asylum in nearby Bielefeld. He sued the manager of the Düsseldorf theater for the return of his play, which meant nothing short of demanding that everyone involved in his play in any manner whatsoever produce and return anything that had the least connection with his play. Of course he also demanded that the people in the audiences, nearly five thousand of them, who had already seen his play return to him what they had seen.

Feeling

FEELING