Calvino is a famous Italian novelist and a legend in the European literary world.

The sentence you wrote should be selected from one of his novels. I have read his "Our Ancestors" series, "The Path to the Spider's Nest" and "The Castle of Crossed Destinies", but I have never seen this sentence, sorry.

If you particularly want to know the meaning of this sentence, I suggest you go to the original text. Because it is difficult to guess the meaning of any words without context. If you are just curious for a moment, I advise you to forget it. His novels are very difficult to understand, and in the later stages they will be like a bible.