Page 60 - Sorrow of the Earth: Buffalo Bill, Sitting Bull and the Tragedy of Show Business

Ripe fruit falls, the grass withers, and then all that’s left is a little humus. But

it’s perhaps not nothing for one life to pronounce its verdict on another.

THERE REMAINS the little town of Cody, in its icy desert. Like a strange
memory set in the middle of nowhere, an enigma, and nobody knows what it
might teach us.

The town hasn’t prospered much since its creation. With its eight thousand
inhabitants, it serves as a stopover at the foot of the mountains. Today, next
door to the Irma Hotel, which still exists, a small museum exhibits a motley
collection of souvenirs: firearms, posters for the Wild West Show, Indian
objects, flora from the region and countless photographs of our hero. It’s a
rendezvous for all who love the Wild West. Cody is said to be the second

most important town in Wyoming, a state that’s half the size of France.
Tourists flock in droves to India and Rajasthan, others take off for Bergamo to
admire the Duomo and weep over Donizetti’s grave, but anyone who has
never seen Idaho Falls or a rodeo in Cody is an imbecile. There’s nothing to
beat munching a T-bone steak beneath a bison’s head, and then buying
country and western CDs in the local Walmart! Ah, Cody! You’re like
Buffalo Bill, a completely dead town. Yes, you’re just another kind of ghost!