Authors: Antonio Tabucchi
… Hello? Who is this?… He blew up … What are you saying?… I’m saying your boy blew up, don’t you understand Italian … Who are you?… Never mind, I’m someone who knew him better than you did, but enough with the questions, listen and be quiet, listen now, he had the thing in his bag, and it blew up between his legs, the idiot, not too sharp your boy, he was all talk, plenty of philosophizing, the sun setting on the West, the decline of our civilization, but with some small jobs you need a brain, you need real smarts, one time maybe he did it all right, but that was just a matter of leaving it and getting the hell out of there, not handling anything, and that spot was easy, you just dropped the bag and left … listen, you bastard, you shot at us years ago, but we forgive you, we like you all the same, respect you, in our way, at least you didn’t go on some transcendent quest to India … you listening?… you’re tough, we know that, and you loved your boy, we loved him, too, we assigned him the role of Saint George slaying the dragon, the idiot democrat with communist
leanings … listen, do something for me, he must have left a bunch of evidence lying around, a tad disorganized, your boy, all talk, and we put too much trust in him … you listening?… listen up, do me a favor, go to his room and have a good look around, there must be datebooks, notepads, take it all and burn it, and especially if you find anything referring to this bad ass we all called
omaccio
, with the initials om,
o
as in Otranto and
m
as in Milan – got it? – take it all and burn it – you don’t want your good little boy to be exposed, right? – not with that bag that blew him up, balls first … listen now, do what I tell you … click … Youuu youuu youuu … end of call, got it, writer? End of call, for Tristano … Keep that lamp lit on the dresser, the one with the shade with the glass droplets, and lay a handkerchief over the top, I don’t want to be here in the dark tonight, yes, I’ll say it’s night, though it might be morning, but that’s your problem, for me it’s night. Good night.
… and I saw my entire life reduced to that insect, a minuscule, complicated instrument for flight and hibernation, the buzzing rage and fragile beating of wing casings and filthy feet, I tossed it all into the gutter, bits of rubber, smell of burning cork, that’s all that ties me to this world … You know what I’m referring to, it’s that piece Frau tortured me with, it didn’t just come to me, it’s because Tristano started getting letters, one after another, a steady stream. But I don’t feel like talking about
that now, I don’t feel like saying anything – but stay here anyway – please – stay here anyway and I’ll have other things to tell you … you have to be patient. Be patient.
… Could you explain a bit more, said Doctor Ziegler, about what you mean when you say you feel as if everything has stopped? Tristano was sprawled in the wicker chair, one arm dangling, the other covering his eyes from the noonday sun: it’s like this afternoon, he said, everything has stopped, don’t you feel it?… a stillness has settled over everything, wiped out space and time, like with some medieval paintings when you see a saint in rapture, under his own mystical spell, an eternal moment … any sound at all now and the glass bell covering the countryside will crack; a rooster might crow, a dog might bark, and the spell will be broken … okay, what I mean is I have these moments when I feel like it feels this afternoon … everything has stopped … and I feel like I’m stopped in the middle of time that’s stopped, as if I’ve been momentarily transported to another world. Even Doctor Ziegler had stopped pacing back and forth on the porch, he’d stopped beside Tristano, hands behind his back, deep in thought. Go on, Herr Tristano, go on … Or maybe I’m feeling other things, Tristano continued, like I’m dreaming though I’m awake, and forgotten memories from long ago start coming back … memories I didn’t even know about … they well up so fast and flash before me like a movie projected on a wall, and it’s my eyes doing the projecting. And what do you
feel? Doctor Ziegler whispered, can you tell me? Tristano was quiet. Ziegler waited patiently. If you feel like sighing, the doctor whispered, then sigh … don’t breathe in, sigh, sighing is what our bodies invented for expelling that diffuse, insidious anxiety from the pneuma that the British call
spleen
… yawning serves the same function, though less extreme, for common boredom, but yours is a different kind of boredom … it’s a weariness of being … so sigh, Herr Tristano. Tristano breathed deeply, and he let out a long, weak sigh, as though releasing evil humors composed of air. Go on, Doctor Ziegler said. What I was referring to, Tristano said, was a very intense sense of nostalgia … too intense … devastating … but it’s not nostalgia exactly, more of a yearning, something frightening, more abstract, because nostalgia implies the object you have nostalgia for, and the truth is I don’t feel nostalgia for the images flashing before my eyes like a film; often, they’re memories that don’t matter, banalities buried in my memory because they’re banal, and so they carry no nostalgia … no, the nostalgia I’m feeling is outside, unrelated to those images, I’m not sure I can explain: it feels like they’re not the cause of this nostalgia but that this nostalgia is a condition, and without it I couldn’t see them … so this isn’t really nostalgia, it’s a vague restlessness that’s also become a fear of sorts, but mixed with the absurd, and inside this sense of the absurd there’s a terror that’s destroying me, as though my body’s convulsing and about to blow apart, you must have seen in the movies how they’ll bring down old city-buildings so another can go up, they collapse in on themselves, crumple, implode … that’s how I feel … my body’s
imploding, and I feel terribly cold, my hands and feet are freezing and that’s when I get a splitting migraine: ferocious, unbearable. Doctor Ziegler was sitting on the low wall by the pots of lavender, he’d plucked a flowering sprig and was brushing it over his face, breathing in the smell now and then.
Angor mortis
, the doctor murmured, that’s what they called it in the ancient world … you’ve described the most complicated symptoms of the migraine aura, Herr Tristano, cluster headaches, probably, and they never just come on their own, when these empresses come calling, they’re preceded by an ambassadorship of the most distinctive creatures, a madhouse of heralds, trumpeters, courtiers, female dancers, shouting street vendors, fire eaters, tightrope walkers … if I were to take a census of all the different kinds of auras preceding headaches, I’d be here until evening, and I’d have to insist, Herr Tristano, that you invite me to stay for dinner … I think tonight we’re having rabbit with rosemary, Tristano answered, it’s a dish that Agostino’s wife prepares that’s just sublime, and maybe Frau will make a chocolate cake. Doctor Ziegler removed the white coat he always wore, even when he saw his patient at home, and he hung it on a hook on the pergola. Chocolate’s not recommended for headaches, he said, but I love it and you can avoid it, rabbit on the other hand will be fine for us both, since it’s white meat.
You came here to gather up a life. But you know what you’re gathering? Words. No – more like air, my friend – words are sounds composed of air. Air. You’re gathering air.
The rabbit with rosemary was really quite good, Doctor Ziegler said, but this chocolate cake … we have cakes like this where I come from, but this one is something else again, maybe it’s the ground almonds … you can certainly have a little, Herr Tristano, nothing’s going to happen if you do. Tristano could tell what Doctor Ziegler really wanted to ask, and so he brought it up, to avoid any awkwardness: I did invite Frau to eat with us, he said, but she refused, said she was tired … the truth is, she isn’t tired, but I don’t want you to think she’s avoiding you, either, Doctor – quite the contrary – she respects you a great deal: the truth is, I’ve put myself in your hands because she advised it, I mean it … the real reason is she’s afraid we’ll start speaking in German, which would only be natural, it’s your language after all, and I don’t mind speaking it, either … you see, Doctor, Frau … I understand her, she came here when she was just a little girl, and it’s not that she’s lost her German, but she’s had to use Italian her whole life … I don’t know what it is that keeps her from speaking German with a German, it’s as if she has to get over some kind of hurdle, as if she’s ashamed … she only speaks German with me, but imagine this, if someone annoying drops by, someone unexpected, then Frau will speak to him in German, and you should hear how good her German
is then, and she’ll pretend she doesn’t know any Italian. Herr Tristano, Doctor Ziegler said, I’ll allow one more bite of cake, I’m sure you’ll sleep better tonight, you’ll have no unwelcome visitors … but I promised you a list of the symptoms leading up to the arrival of the empress, as I call her, it’s an endless list, so I’ll try to be succinct … but first, this strange term, aura … it comes from an ancient physician, Pelope, who was Galen’s teacher … he was the first to note the physical phenomenon generally signaling the onset of the seizure, a sensation that starts in the hand or foot and seems to rise toward the head. One of his patients described it as feeling like cold vapor, and since the general belief during that period was that blood vessels contained air, he thought the problem had to be vapor in the limbs that was then carried back in the veins and he called it
pneumatickè
aura, an immaterial vapor … Herr Tristano, when you say a star fell on your head one August night, you were really telling me the truth with that metaphor of yours … that star didn’t just fall on your head, it entered inside your head, I’m sure of it … you started seeing brilliant intermittent lights with your eyes closed, zigzagging electricity, flashing lights that no doubt looked like continuously transforming mosaics, like a kaleidoscope, am I right? Tristano, silent, gave an imperceptible nod. It’s the most common aura, Ziegler continued, light effects like fireworks going off inside your eyes, and even things, objects, seem to have glowing outlines, or they’re bright, anyway, am I right?, as though they’re encircled by an electric wire and you can see the electricity running through them … but the aura
symptoms, before the empress arrives and while she’s visiting, are endless … sensory hallucinations of various kinds, emotional disturbance with extreme yet indefinable emotions, impossible to describe, to communicate to others … something like ecstasy, that some even find pleasurable … who knows, perhaps many mystics suffer from terrible headaches … plus visual disorders, perceiving objects and figures as distorted, or the magnifying of an image, from what I can tell … the person in front of you looks like he’s shrinking, or growing, growing all of a sudden, in front of you, like you see in certain documentaries on plant growth, you must have seen them, a camera lens is trained on a flower bud for a week, and you watch the flower blooming in a few seconds because the image has been sped up … Lewis Carroll suffered from terrible migraines and described these optical distortions extremely well with his Alice … for that matter, he was also a mathematician, and he understood logic, he knew how to talk about his symptoms logically, even if we find his logic fantastic … and then there are hallucinations of sound … noises, hissing, buzzing, muttering that can be dim or crystal-clear, it all depends, it might be the rumbling of thunder or the roar of a fountain … but it might also be voices, many voices … the most common case histories include familiar voices, those voices that are or were a part of our life, or that we’ve listened to so much they’re stored up in our warehouse of memories … but they can also be completely unknown voices, artificial voices that our brain invents, generates. Doctor Ziegler paused. These cases are rare, complicated, Herr Tristano, I don’t want you to
worry, usually they occur in migraines associated with epilepsy, but they can also occur in non-epileptic subjects, very acute forms that cause convulsive seizures … however, there is some scientific debate on the matter, and in fact, some maintain that it’s not convulsions that bring on the headache but the other way around … by now, Tristano was on his third piece of cake. I don’t think chocolate has much to do with it, either, he said … but the symptoms I described this afternoon, memories that just come rushing out of nowhere, experiences that rush by like a movie, what can you tell me about these, Doctor Ziegler? They might belong to the category of déjà vu, the doctor answered, I’m inclined to think they belong to the category of déjà vu, in a more complex clinical context, of course, but I’d say they belong to that family of temporal confusion … there have been theories advanced concerning both the physiological and the psychological bases of this phenomenon that we’ve all experienced, if only momentarily, the feeling that we’re reliving something for the second time … there seems to be a delay between our perception of something and the transmission of that perception to the brain – it’s a millionth of a second delay, of course – but our brain thinks that years have passed, the brain’s already lived through this thing – am I making myself clear? But why this should occur is still a mystery … An important physiologist defined déjà vu as a distortion of the cataloguing of time in the nervous system … such a beautiful definition. Freud, on the other hand, explored déjà vu in his studies of
Unheimlich
, what’s referred to as the uncanny, because the experience of the uncanny does indeed
often accompany déjà vu, though it’s hard to say if it follows or precedes the incident … to Freud, déjà vu is the return of the repressed experience, which feels unwarranted, like a betrayal, and so provokes this sensation … And what theory do you support? Tristano asked. Doctor Ziegler helped himself to more cake, but to be polite, left the last bite for Tristano. Cool country air spilled in through the wide-open windows. Doctor Ziegler was preparing to leave. Since I first met you, he said, and you started this type of hybrid analysis with me, I’ve grown ever more convinced that the two theories aren’t mutually exclusive – actually in patients like you they can be the perfect marriage … good night, Herr Tristano, try to get some rest.
I must have had a dream, I dreamt about Tristano … or maybe it was the memory of a dream … or maybe the dream of a memory … or maybe both … Ah, writer, such a rebus … Do you ever keep a recording device with you? Sorry to bring this up, but I’ve begun to suspect you might have a little recorder in your pocket. But did I already ask you that? Maybe I already asked you that. Well, if you have one, turn it off, I don’t want my voice to linger; besides, you shouldn’t record a dream, you have to listen and then rewrite it, just listen, listen close and then rewrite it, that’s the start of literature, telling someone else’s dream, I’m sure it’ll come to you, you’ll work it out in your imagination, and I’m also leaving you the point of view … we’ll do it this way, the point of view is mine – well, Tristano’s – because
he’s the one who lived it, but I dreamt it from my point of view and now I’m telling you, and then you’ll tell it, and so … you, I’m sure, know these tricks better than me, but I once read a book on the topic, a manual, I’ve always liked manuals; you’d be surprised: for someone you consider a man of action, I’ve read an awful lot of manuals in my life … how to perfect your dance technique, how to learn the art of chess, how to paint with watercolors, how to use the stars to guide you, how to scale the Alps … how to screw up your entire life and not even know it … If you really think about it, the point of view belongs to the dream, in the sense that it’s the dream’s point of view, not mine, not Tristano’s, because you can’t control dreams, just like you can’t control the heart, you have to live dreams the way they want to be lived, and this dream wanted me to dream Tristano, like so: Tristano was flattened out in the shrubs, I don’t like that word, flattened, but if I’m not mistaken that’s what you use in your novel, and Tristano is surrounded by thick brush that stretches all the way to the woods and the mountainside. And his finger’s quivering on the trigger of the submachine gun, and through the sight, he fixes his right eye on the farmhouse door, because he knows the Germans will have to leave by that door, as will the traitor who brought them there. Boom, boom, boom goes Tristano’s heart, and this pounding seems to carry all the way to the versants of the valley … sorry for that word, versants, it’s an Alpine word, ugly, don’t you think?, I hope you’ve never used that word … and it feels like the beating of his heart echoes off these versants, magnified, boom, boom, boom … and in the
strange logic of dreams, though it’s so real, Tristano sees the traitor his bullet’s waiting for, the traitor is at the door, smiling and nodding for him to come inside. And Tristano obeys the relentless logic of dreams, gets to his feet and approaches … and only as he’s crossing the clearing does he realize that this traitor isn’t the school janitor, this traitor has the face of a woman, and he knows this woman, even if she is wearing a German uniform and has a wisp of hair on her forehead, imitating some cocky-looking guy … It’s Marilyn, it’s Marilyn … Tristano wants to scream, he pulls out his knife, holds it up, waves it as though to stab that cross-dressing traitor, then he slows down, like slow-motion in a movie, because in that moment the film of Tristano’s dream is slipping into slow-motion, and his hand moves slowly, ever so slowly, one centimeter at a time, gently, a graceful arc, almost tender, almost a graceful dance, the blade in that hand that will tear into the traitor’s lungs and bring on the death the traitor deserves, but with the logic of dreams, Tristano’s hand falls to the traitor’s shoulders, about to stab, and then the hand drops the knife and is resting on Rosamunda’s bare shoulders, drawing her into an embrace, because that’s how dreams go, writer, they take you where they please, and now he’s dancing with her, that rugged mountain clearing has become a drawing room flooded with music, an Italian garden viewed from the windows, he’s dancing, holding Rosamunda who’s dressed like a German soldier, her breasts pressed to his chest, her nipples like stone … her arms are draped about his neck, and she’s caressing him, Clark, she whispers, her tongue flits into his ear,
Clark, my darling, you’re the only one I ever loved, the others were just my being wicked, just my need for some male company, some reassurance when you were on your missions, down in the valley … Tristano has his arms around her waist, and he’s stroking her, and then she takes his hand, guides it toward her stomach, lower, to her groin, and now Tristano feels something hard beneath those soldier’s trousers, a male organ, an erect male organ, and she wants him to stroke it, she’s whispering in his ear, her voice hot, sensual, Tristano, the commander’s sent me, he’s not dead at all, that was all a joke, come play with us, darling, he can’t do it anymore, but he still loves me, and for him to do it he needs to watch someone strong like you, please, love me, and the poor commander will also play his part, I left him in the farmhouse on the mountain, he looked dead, but he wasn’t, he’s been there, growing old, he’s waiting for us, come join us, we’ll make a nice threesome, I promise. Twilight’s fallen, how strange, it was dawn in the mountain valley, and suddenly it’s twilight, but Tristano smiles at the woman who’s stepped outside the farmhouse, the knife he was holding has turned to a wildflower, she waves for him to come inside, come on, come on, Tristano … Tristano steps through the doorway and reenters the dream he was dreaming the moment before, behind that door he doesn’t find the rooms of a rustic farmhouse, there are people dancing in a drawing room, and beyond that room is an elegant garden that seems like the garden of a Tuscan villa, with cypress trees and boxwood hedges, and people holding glasses, and waiters in white jackets, Tristano is back at a
garden party
with the German officer who’s now his valet, no longer Marilyn, an older gentleman, face withered, skin peppered with age spots, who whispers a German name that Tristano doesn’t recall, the man has a monocle over his right eye and a stiff leg, maybe a false leg, who knows. In his dream, Tristano thinks that many German aristocrats lost a leg in the first world war, and then he thinks that this German might start dancing on the table, but that’s from reading books and watching movies, and dreams aren’t innocent … instead, with the unsurprised surprise of dreams, the German baron with the monocle starts speaking in English, says
I’m American
, and then he whispers other things lost in the murmuring of the guests,
freedom
…
freedom
… please, let me introduce you to the other guests, and his voice is icy, metallic, creaking like his false leg … What a nightmare … but it’s not a real nightmare, because I’m awake now, so I’m not telling you my dream, I’m telling you something I see, now and then this something will let go of me, like now, I’ve escaped, but then it sucks me back in as if I’m really living it, look, I’m not telling you my nightmare, it’s something real, I’m in the midst of it, must be all those drugs together, and then my head’s exploding, just exploding … Tristano, honey … He turned around: Marilyn was at the back of the garden, and she was dressed like a little girl, with bows in her pigtails, she was lying in the grass, her skirts pulled up to her belly, legs spread, behind her was a seaport with the words
freedom harbor
written out, and beside her was some stranger, balding, squat, round-faced, smiling, join us, this pipsqueak muttered, this is the revolution, but
Tristano didn’t understand … what’s that? This chubby pipsqueak asked if he knew how to shoot a gun, we need sharp guys like you, don’t bother with those idiots and their parties, we’re using them, they’re useful, and the worse they are the better, explain it to your boy, Rosamunda, what kind of a partisan is he, anyway? – join us, Tristano, it’s time to kill – haven’t you figured that out yet? – explain it to him, Marilyn, tell him it’s time to kill … his voice lingering like an echo, kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiillll. Someone tapped his shoulder, a tall man, ugly, with a huge nose and a crooked smile, let me introduce you to the head of state of the sunken republic, Big Nose whispered in Tristano’s ear, he has very close contacts who can provide all kinds of services, treat him with the proper respect, he’s got more dead enemies on his conscience than there are grapes in a vineyard. Then Big Nose and the decorated military man took him by the elbows and steered him toward the huge barbecue pit blazing on the far side of the garden, gathered around this pit was a group of maybe ten little old men with white eyebrows carrying plates and nibbling on sausages, the air smelled entirely different in this part of the garden, more of a country fair, a sausage festival, with a tune playing that seemed familiar to Tristano but that he couldn’t place, coming from an old gramophone by the braziers. Cloned Mr. Presidents of the future republic, shouted Big Nose, it is my distinct privilege to present to you a great national hero, a man who drove out the invader – celebrate him now, before he kicks you in the ass! The ten little old men started joyfully skipping about, tossing their sausages in the air, singing the anthem
along with the gramophone,
si è cinto la testa, si è cinto la testa
! But at that moment, out from the bush popped a squat bulldog of a fellow in a double-breasted jacket, who stomped arrogantly over to Tristano and said, friend, don’t listen to the proletarian revolutionaries, don’t listen to these old farts from the retirement home, listen to me, I’m the one who’s going to be in charge, the founder of the Pippopippi Republic, you want to be appointed manager of a top-notch program? The squat fellow licked his lips and out shot a chameleon-like tongue that washed his entire face clean. I’m your future, my dear partisan, he said, his tone of voice brooked no reply, I’m the reason you fought in the mountains, if you didn’t know it, so listen up, I’m going to tell you one thing and one thing only because I have a bass dinner waiting for me that my cook prepared, so here it is: Christ brought too many people from the East to our door, he was a Bedouin, he rode along on a donkey just to annoy to us – we’re a car-based civilization …