Authors: Antonio Tabucchi
… and then it goes … I saw other riddles like bloomed flowers in an empty place, empty gowns laying claim to bodies turned to air, and I saw a girl’s heart forgotten in a cage, lion feces, the circus gone away, and time a fortress built of stone and stupor, and on the fortress walls a blind dove perched, but how do you decipher what heroes won’t tell, how do you defeat the sea if you’re free to sail but not to build a boat?… That long, annoying poem of Frau’s came back to me, but you don’t give a damn. I do, though: I’d like March sprinkles, but it’s August instead, she says, and there’s nothing you can do. And she’s right …
… I’m tired but I haven’t finished, let me rest a bit, but don’t go – stay – keep your ears open, it’s important, because there’s another future beyond the one I’ve told you, and Tristano had to choose. And in this other future there was, simply, freedom. Which is no small thing. Here’s what it looked like, up in the mountains, okay?… there were woods and a forked path and Tristano was standing in the middle of those woods, gun pointed, but he had only one gun sight, his gun fired in only one direction, it obeyed the laws of ballistics, and there’s no
guesswork to ballistics, because it depends on geometry, and there’s not much you can do about geometry, my dear writer: if an angle’s acute it’s acute and if it’s obtuse it’s obtuse, and you don’t want to fuss with angle apertures, it was truly a fork in the path, Tristano was at a crossroads, and this divided problem really came down to his rifle sight: point and pull the trigger one way, you stay in a classless society that suffocates you as a person, point and pull the trigger the other way, and the world keeps turning like always, with those who thrive and those who don’t, but hey, you’re on the side of freedom … it’s a matter of killing one or the other, and Tristano has to choose. And you know what he chose, because you know what freedom is, you’re a liberal intellectual, and you hold to your ideals, and this is why you were inspired by that interview a sneaky journalist got from Tristano, a few words, and they inspired your little book – sorry, that just slipped out – not little – short – of course it’s stupid measuring novels in meters, as if quantity counts for something, truth is, your eighty pages are worth more than bricks sold by the kilogram, it’s almost like you were right there at Tristano’s side, up in the mountains, right there that day – even better – you’re pointing the gun, you choose the direction, aim, fire. Bang. You picked democracy. Bravo. You made the same choice as Tristano, that’s why you’ve managed to get inside his head so well – such mimetic powers – you really seem to be Tristano, in my opinion you
are
Tristano, I don’t know why I’m telling you about him, you
are
Tristano, in your story, you wrote exactly what he did, you’re the one who suffered what he was going through, suffered
through it in first person, because you’re a gifted writer, that’s why I called you, in those few pages you were Tristano, a perfect Tristano, an exemplary Tristano, an indisputable Tristano that he never managed to be his entire life … How funny, in so few pages, you managed to be what a real person never was in his entire life, that’s also why your novel won a prize – it should – the truth should be prized, because the truth is concrete, like that wire-haired poet said, and the truth’s even more concrete when it’s black on white, that, yes, that’s true, you write the truth and sign it, and like Tristano, you understood the freedom you went looking for and finally found, because freedom’s something to hold dear, that’s for sure, and you wrote it down in black and white, and those are your words, the word is sacred, and so it must be free, but you know, my friend, there’s one detail you didn’t think of, and you’ll need to write this detail down, because I called you to my bedside just for that, and you came to my bedside just for that, because you’re curious and wanted to write Tristano’s real life, and I’d like to tell you this detail … Now then, someday, if one of those creatures you sit and watch on TV in your living room, one of those creatures that’s all skin and bones with a belly like a drum and eyes full of flies, if this creature steps right out of the television, materializes right in front of you, you know what you should tell him to really earn that prize you won? You don’t know, do you? I’ll tell you what you need to say. You need to say, speak, friend, speak – you’re a free man, your word is sacred – no one can destroy your word – and this is true freedom, this is why we’ve always fought, all
of us who love freedom, so you can speak, so you can express your free opinion – speak – my civilization will allow it, you’re here to speak, you have to speak, open your mouth, brush away the flies and speak, don’t give me that stupid look, do me a favor, forget that you’re malnourished for the moment, forget your dumb diseases, please – speak – forget you only have one kidney for a second, it’s common knowledge, organ trafficking … plus, what’s one kidney compared to freedom of speech, don’t waste this opportunity … your country’s hit rock-bottom, it’s an inferno, but a fiscal paradise for us … it’s a problem, I know … you’re being pillaged by our industries, your raw materials carried away … another problem the free world has to deal with … the free world backs a dictator who’s slaughtered thousands of citizens – better – it’s the free world who put that dictator in power, in place of the democratically elected president … a few of us, myself included, don’t entirely agree on this point, and that’s why I invite you to speak, speak, that’s why you came into this world, to speak, the word is sacred, you’re free to speak, you can trust us, I’m not just anybody: I’m a writer, and writers are very much aware of the meaning of free speech, you’re free to speak with me, this person talking to you has chosen freedom, has defended freedom, stop being catatonic – speak – it’s the opportunity of a lifetime, take advantage now – you might not get another chance – don’t think that they’re going to invite you to the broadcast transmission where the true meaning of freedom will be announced, you won’t get an invitation, but here we are, face to face, in my living room, I’ll consider reporting
what you said, at least one word, and if you don’t know how to say this word in your own language, because maybe this word doesn’t exist in your own language, then say it in English so the whole world will understand; in English, the word is
freedom
, say it with me –
free-dom
– got it?… Tell him this, writer. Now do me a favor, go to bed, I want to sleep now, too, I’m tired, I’m glad Frau gave you a room with a view, those towers are beautiful, framed by the window, they’re ancient, did you see how they float in the morning heat, they’re almost trying to pull away from the ground, to touch the sky, they’re ambitious towers, they were built in the Middle Ages, think of that – the Middle Ages – the Middle Ages means being in the middle of something, and what do you think they were in the middle of, what came before or what we are now, is there something in the middle between one thing and another? It’s night out, I can tell, because I can sense the light and then the stages of the light … stages of the dark, I mean … that’s what I know … Do you know the stages of the dark?
Today I’ve found another topic, tied to the transmission of the flesh. I’m having a philosophical moment, writer, I feel really good as a philosopher. The transmission of the flesh. You ever transmitted any? I’m sure you have, maybe into more than one uterus, that’s what you modern writers do, take a wife, get her pregnant, dedicate a book to her, because a wife is a wife a wife … and then you might take another … another child,
another dedication, various pollinations.… and meanwhile the printers are hard at work … the registry offices … because the human race can’t be wiped out … Cain’s line deserves to be transmitted … and so do the books the human race has come up with, otherwise, what’s the point of this spinning globe we wander?… The transmission of the flesh provides some kind of sense to this asteroid spinning on its axis where we reside, but don’t kid yourself – the world’s not turning – it’s just something thought up by some atheist scientist who believes in optical illusions: everything is fixed, was fixed from the start, in the sense that everything’s just the same, Ptolemy was a genius, everything is fixed, how it was created or blew apart on its own, everything was born and then stayed fixed in place, we’re the ones walking by, and we believe everything follows us while we walk, but everything’s been fixed in place from the very start, frozen like this noonday’s frozen and was frozen from the very start; do you hear the cicadas, feel the heat through the shutters, and that light inviting us to close our eyes, to abandon ourselves to the frozen ocean that pretends to move? And yet it does move … Illusions. Nothing moves, this noonday is fixed, had been, was, and will be. How many days have gone by since you came to write this voice of mine, how many days this August? No, don’t bother, he won’t last more than a month, the doctor said, whispered, really, to Frau in the hallway; I heard, the dying’s hearing is acute, he won’t last more than a month … That was early August, a Sunday, I remember it clearly because they started giving me morphine, morphine is Ptolemaic, it tends to stop
everything, it crystallizes, turns time to candied fruit … Now to the point: Tristano didn’t follow the obligatory path of the transmission of the flesh, he didn’t want to continue in another, he spread his seed on Rosamunda’s belly, and his one true love, with whom he’d wanted to share his seed, his Mavri, he abandoned on one of the Aegean islands, I’m speaking metaphorically of course, he abandoned her like Theseus abandoned Ariadne, not really knowing why, maybe because, like Theseus, he was a moron, I’m still speaking metaphorically, the myth doesn’t say this – I do – Theseus was a moron. And sometimes someone does something all the same and he doesn’t know why, he just does it, that’s all, and then he spends the rest of his life with it gnawing away at his conscience, while he beats his head against the wall, or against a vineyard stake, the way Tristano did …
… He’d go out in the garden at night, he’d wander through the fields and the vineyard, lie down on the bare ground, pile dirt on his forehead, his own personal mourning sign, even sprinkle a little dirt in his mouth, and he’d stare up at the heavens, as he lay sprawled out, frozen, in the middle of the fields, corpse-like, though at times he’d stretch his arms toward the moon, oh moon, he cried, moon, can you hear me, sweet moon, understand me, while you wander silently across the sky, then perch, listen, moon, what wandering will be my comfort, now that my horizon’s made up of endless hours and my time’s not done, moon, my time’s gone bad, moon, when I die there’ll be nothing;
my branch is dry, the seasons have passed, and the flower’s died instead – why, moon, why? – moon that stirs the sap in the stalks, that makes the oceans swell, that raises creatures on the earth, parchment moon playing a fiddle, crystal moon, saffron moon, can you cast your spell, is there any place in this world where invoking you like the priests of old might renew a broken stem?, or you, powerful Persephone, who control the shores of the underworld, give back the life your crippled husband stole from me, that he’s got in his smithy, he was a happy little boy who rode me piggyback under the pergola, laughing while he plucked down grapes, I loved him so, like a son, there were days in him that weren’t mine, and he didn’t have my skin color, his was more amber, and his hair was different, jet black, maybe from some unknown ancestors in Andalusia, but my gaze would have continued with him, a little of me still, he was all I had left of what I’d fought for, and you, moon, let this dirt put dirt in his mouth, I couldn’t even give him a burial, his body was scattered who knows where, torn apart by furies, he, too, was a fury, and I didn’t know, a beast, a beast, that boy who seemed so sweet, but I want him back, moon, please, I beg you, I’ll teach him what I didn’t know how to teach him, it’s my fault, moon, I’m the one who made a mistake, I missed out, moon, and now I miss him, can I go back?… Let me relive the time I wasted – I didn’t know, moon – I thought I knew it all, but I didn’t know a thing …
… I was saying … before I interrupted myself … now I’m better … I was telling you something but now I can’t remember, did you write it down or did you lose the thread like me? – don’t lose the thread – writers mustn’t lose the thread, otherwise they get off too easy, a jump in the story, an empty place … it’s a mystery, people will say, the mystery of things … or there’s no real conclusion, because you can’t unravel the knot, and then … open-ended, and problem solved. Bravo. Get me a little water, sorry to turn you into a nurse, get the glass with the straw, otherwise I’ll spill all over myself, don’t call Frau, she’ll interrupt us, and she’ll want me to sleep, when she gives me an injection, she says I have to sleep … the fool … there’ll be time enough to sleep; besides, injections have the opposite effect by now, they wake me up and I feel good, really good, I’m telling you, never better, light as a feather, no, I really am a feather … goodbye pain, goodbye guilty conscience, and who gives a shit if Tristano’s so tormented by his problem, stupid Tristano, so fixated, like a fetish, but you wouldn’t understand, you writers solve a problem with a snap of your fingers, a novel, a short story – olé! – like your book, how Tristano solves it in a snap, that thing over there … freedom … piece of cake, you know what he knew of freedom, you make him shift his gun sight just a few millimeters – and poof – he’s found freedom … but I’m afraid the problem’s not in the sight; you know, abstract is one thing, concrete’s another: this thing, this freedom, is something that needs to be applied, but how? – how does someone like you – a writer – apply it? I’ll tell you how … like casting out nines, or
like that elementary-school rule, changing the order of the factors doesn’t change the product, that’s how someone like you thinks, if something’s valid in one situation, it’s valid for them all, because mathematics is mathematics, I read your novel about Tristano closely, I liked it, the way you apply that little rule is brilliant, you verify the rule with two different characters, the man and the woman up in the mountains, they betray each other and then are more united than ever, they had to settle in, like casting out nines, so to speak: they changed the order of the factors and the product didn’t change. Ah, love, love … but no, my dear friend, there’s something you never considered … changing the order of the factors does change the product. It changes day for night. Because betrayal is transitive. That’s the truth. And being transitive touches others, it contaminates, circulates, expands with no logical form, no plan, no pattern … yes, there was a pattern early on, but at some point the original pattern dissolves, disintegrates, you can’t consult it anymore, it was clear once, discernible, visible like everything that’s visible, and then at some point it turns invisible, a shadow without limits, shapeless, like a cloud moving across the sun, forming a pool of shadow over the landscape, I’m not sure I’m explaining myself very well … Can you measure the perimeter of that shadow? You try, maybe you really labor over it, make these complicated calculations, you try to guess, and meanwhile the cloud’s slipping by, so strange how the shadow has shifted a little, is now over the meadow that was filled with sunshine just a minute before, but no, it’s no longer over the meadow, it’s over the hillsides,
go on, chase it, catch it, catch a tiger by the tail, the shadow of that cloud … That’s what Tristano would think when he started thinking about that shadow, but by the time he started thinking about it, it was too late, because the shadow would already be wandering around, minding its own business, in transit, going where it wanted. And where did this shadow come from? How did it start? How was it even possible? The sun was so bright, absolutely brilliant, bringing every edge into sharp relief, no chance for error, and suddenly here’s this shadow … and not only that, the weather forecast predicted continuing good weather, and Tristano himself had contributed to that report …