Fantastic Tales

by Iginio Ugo Tarchetti

  Her jealousy never slept. Her principal occupation was discovering that, despite external appearances, I myself was aging. I truly believe that the poor thing sincerely loved me from the depths of her heart, but no woman in the world ever had a more tormenting mode of showing tenderness. She was consumed with finding wrinkles in my face and something halting or decrepit in my step, while I displayed only that exuberant vigor which appears in a youth of twenty. At no time did I dare court another woman. On one occasion, fancying that a girl in the village had looked on me with favorable eyes, she conjured me to cover my head with a gray wig.

  The constant theme of her conversation was this—that although I looked so young, I possessed something that would cause me to age suddenly, and she maintained that the worst symptom was precisely my healthy appearance. My youth was an illness, she said, and I would always have to be prepared, if not for a sudden and terrible death, then at least to awake some morning with a wrinkled face, stooped shoulders, and all the signs of advanced years. I expressly let her natter away, and her conjectures often delighted me. Her warnings hung over my incessant meditations concerning my condition, and I took a passionate, if painful, interest in listening closely to everything that her spirited subtlety and excited imagination suggested to her on this topic.

  Why should I dwell on these minute circumstances? We lived in this way for several long years. Ortensia became paralytic and could no longer rise from her bed; I sat up with her and nursed her like a mother. She grew peevish and always harped upon one string: how long I would survive her.

  The awareness that I had scrupulously performed my every duty to her was a precious source of consolation to me. She had been mine in youth and was also mine in age; and finally, when I flung some lumps of earth on her corpse, I wept in the realization that with her I had lost all that really kept me connected to life.

  Ever since then, how many were my cares and misfortunes, how few and vain my joys! I pause here in my story. I will pursue it no further. A sailor without rudder or compass, tossed on a tempestuous sea, a traveler lost on a limitless heath, without landmark or sign to guide him—such was I, more lost, more hopeless than either of them. A nearing ship, a glimmer from a distant cottage could yet save them, but I had only one hope, always desired and always ungranted—perhaps never to be granted—the hope that I would die. Death! Severe and mysterious friend of man. Why have you refused your refuge to me alone among all mortals? Oh! If only the sweet silence of the grave, the summoned peace of the tomb, would stop this thought from burning my brain, this heart from beating with emotions varied only by different forms of pain!

  Am I immortal? I return to my question. In the first place, is it not more likely that the alchemist’s drink possessed the virtue of conferring longevity, rather than eternity? Such is my hope. And then it is worth recalling, on the one hand, that I drank only half of the potion he had prepared. Was not the whole necessary to complete the spell? To have drained half of the elixir of immortality is to be but half-immortal—my “forever” is thus truncated and nullified.

  On the other hand, however, who can number the years in a half-eternity? I often do my utmost to imagine by what rule the infinite may be divided. Occasionally, I fancy that age is overtaking me. I have found a gray hair. Madman! Do I complain? Yes, the fear of age and death often sends a chill to my heart, and the more I live, the more I am terrified of death, even when I feel that I abhor life. Such an enigma is man—born to die—and yet struggling, as I do, against the immutable laws of his nature.

  But this very anomaly of feeling tells me that I can die: the alchemist’s drug will be unable to withstand the test of fire, the sword, or the fury of the waves. I have fixed my gaze on the blue depths of some placid lake or on the tumultuous rushing of some mighty river and exclaimed: peace inhabits only these waters. All the same, I have turned my steps elsewhere, to live yet another day. I have asked myself whether suicide could be a crime for someone to whom the gates of another world can be opened only by this means. I have taken every risk, except that of putting my life to the test, except that of becoming, like a soldier or a duelist, a cause of my own and my fellow mortals’ destruction. But they are not my fellows. The inextinguishable power of life in my mechanism and their ephemeral existence place us as far apart from one another as the poles. I cannot lift a hand against the vilest or the most powerful among them.

  Thus have I lived for many years—alone and bored with myself—longing for death and yet always living—a mortal immortal. Neither ambition nor avarice has ever invaded my spirit, and the passionate love that consumes my heart, never to be returned—I never discovered an equal affection to which I could devote myself—remains there only to torture me.

  On this very day, I have devised a plan by which I shall put an end to everything, without making myself my own executioner, without making myself a Cain—it is an expedition that a mortal frame could not in any way survive, even if animated by the youth and strength that still reside in mine. In this way shall I put my immortality to the test: if this test prevails, I shall find peace forever; if it yields, I shall become an object of wonder and be considered one of the great benefactors of the human species.

  Before I depart, a miserable vanity has induced me to pen these pages. I do not want to die without leaving a name behind me. Three centuries have past since I drank that fatal potion; another year will not elapse before, encountering gigantic dangers, struggling against the germs that death holds within itself, harried by privation, exhaustion, and battle, I shall abandon this body—prison too narrow for a soul that yearns for freedom—to the destructive elements of air and water. But if I am permitted to survive, my name will be recorded as one of the most famous among the sons of men; and having completed my mission, I shall adopt more resolute means. By scattering and annihilating the atoms that compose my mechanism, I shall set free the life that lies imprisoned within and is so cruelly hindered from soaring above this dismal earth to a world more congenial to its immortal essence!

  [1865]

  The Letter U

  (A Mad man’s Manuscript)

  U! Have I written this terrible letter, this frightening vowel? Have I delineated it precisely? Have I traced it in all its awful exactitude—its fatal outline, its two detested shafts, its abhorrent curve? Have I carefully inscribed this letter, whose sound makes me shudder, whose sight fills me with terror?

  Yes, I have written it.

  And here it is again:

  U

  And again:

  U

  Look at it, stare unblinkingly at it—do not tremble, do not blanch—muster up the courage to bear the sight of it, to observe all its parts, to examine all its details, to conquer all the horror that inspires in you…This U!…This fatal sign, this odious letter, this dreadful vowel!

  Have you seen it now?…But what am I saying?…Who among you has not seen it, written it, pronounced it millions of times?—I know this, but I shall ask you all the same. Who among you has examined it? Who has analyzed it? Who has studied its form, expression, influence? Who has made it the object of his inquiries, pursuits, vigils? Who has been absorbed by it every day of his life?

  Because…in this sign you see only a meek letter, innocuous like the others; because habit has rendered you indifferent to it; because your apathy has deterred you from studying its features more accurately…Yet I…If only you knew what I have seen!…If only you knew what I see in this vowel!

  U

  Now consider it with me.

  Look at it carefully, look at it attentively, dispassionately, stare!

  And so: what have you to say about it?

  That line which curves and forks—the two shafts that look at you unmoving, that look at each other unmoving—the two dashes that cut them off inexorably, terribly—that lower arc, on which the letter rocks back and forth, sneering—and, on the inside, that blackness, that
void, that horrible void staring from the opening of the shafts, rejoining and vanishing in the infinity of space…

  But this is still nothing. Steel your nerves!

  Redouble your powers of intuition; hurl yourself into your most penetrating gaze.

  Set out from one of the two ends, follow the outer edge, descend, approach the arc, pass beneath it, ascend, reach the opposite end…

  What did you see?

  Wait!

  Now make the journey in reverse. Descend the entire length of the line—descend with courage, vigorously—reach the base, halt, stop a moment, examine it attentively; then reascend to the point whence you set out in the beginning…

  Do you not tremble? Grow pale?

  It is still not sufficient!

  Rest your eyes for a moment on the two dashes that cut off the shafts; look from one to the other; then look at the entire letter, look at it in one glance, examine it from every angle, grasp it in all its expressiveness…and tell me if you are not paralyzed, if you are not vanquished, if you are not annihilated by this sight?!?!

  Look.

  I write all the vowels here:

  a e i o u

  Do you see them? Do they look right at you?

  a e i o u

  Well, then?!

  But it is not enough just to see them.

  Now listen to their sounds.

  A—The expression of sincerity, frankness, a slight but pleasant surprise.

  E—kindness, tenderness expressed in a single sound.

  I—What joy! What intense, profound joy!

  O—What surprise! What wonder! And what a welcome surprise! What frankness in that letter, clumsy but manly!

  Now listen to U. Pronounce it. Draw it from the depths of your thoracic cavity, but pronounce it carefully: Yu! Yuh!! Yuhh!!! Yuhhh!!!!

  Do you not shudder? Do you not tremble at this sound? Do you not hear the roar of the wild beast, the moan uttered in pain, all the voices of suffering, shaken nature? Do you not sense something obscure, profound, infernal in that sound?

  God! What a terrible letter! What a dreadful vowel!!

  * * *

  —

  I want to tell you my life.

  I want you to know how this letter drove me to crime and to an ignominious and unmerited punishment.

  I was born doomed. A terrible sentence weighed on me from the first day of my existence: my name contained a U. This fact is the source of every misfortune in my life.

  At seven years old, I was sent to school.

  An instinct, the causes of which I had not yet grasped, prevented me from learning that letter, from writing it. Every time they made me read the vowels, I stopped, unwillingly, in front of U; my voice failed me, an indescribable panic possessed me—I could not pronounce that vowel!

  Writing it was worse! The hand that wrote the other letters so confidently convulsed and trembled whenever I set about to write this one. First the shafts converged too much, then diverged too much; sometimes they formed an upright V, sometimes they were overturned: Ʌ. I was unable to trace the curve in any way, and often I managed only to form a confused, meandering line.

  The teacher gave me the ruler across the knuckles—I grew bitter and wept.

  One day, when I was twelve years old, I saw a colossal U written on the blackboard, like this:

  U

  I was sitting in front of the blackboard. That vowel was there, and it seemed to be watching me, staring at me, challenging me. Somehow I was suddenly emboldened: I was certain that the moment of truth had arrived! That letter and I were enemies; I accepted the challenge, rested my chin on my hands, and began to look at it…Several hours passed as I sat there, poised in contemplation. It was then that I understood everything, saw everything I have now told you or at least tried to tell you, although to tell it exactly would be impossible. I divined the reasons for my repugnance and hatred; and I planned a fight to the death with that letter.

  I began by taking as many of my schoolmates’ books as I could and crossing out every U I saw. It was only the beginning of my vendetta. I was expelled from school.

  Nonetheless, I returned later. My teacher’s name was Aurelio Tubuni.

  Three of them!! I abhorred him for this. One day I wrote on the blackboard: Death to U! He saw himself as the object of that threat. I was again expelled.

  I was permitted to return a second time. I then proposed, as a research topic, a project relating to the abolition of this vowel, to its banishment from the letters of the alphabet.

  I was not understood. I was branded a lunatic. My schoolmates, having thus become aware of my aversion to that vowel, began a terrible war against me. I saw, I found U everywhere: they wrote the letter all over my books, the walls, the benches, the blackboard—my notebooks, my papers were covered with it. Nor could I defend myself against this bitter, atrocious persecution.

  One day in my pocket I found a card on which a long row of them was written in this infernal number:

  I was enraged! The sight of U arrayed in this guise, placed in this awful gradation, pushed me to the edge. I felt the blood rushing to my head, confusing my thinking…I ran to school, and having seized one of my schoolmates by the throat, I would have surely choked him to death if he had not been removed from my hands.

  It was the first crime that vowel provoked from me!

  I was stopped from continuing my studies.

  Then I began to live by myself, to think, meditate, work by myself. I entered a new sphere of observations, a more elevated, more active sphere: I studied the relations that linked the destiny of humanity to this fatal letter. I found every thread, discovered every cause, intuited every law; and during five long years of labor, I wrote and produced a voluminous work wherein I proposed to demonstrate that every human calamity proceeded from no other cause than the existence of U and from the use we make of U in writing and speech, but also that it was possible to suppress it, to discover a remedy and prevent the evils that threaten us.

  Would you believe it? I could not find the means to bring my work into the world. Society refused my offer of the only cure that could still save it.

  When I was twenty years old, I burned with love for a young woman, and my love was reciprocated. She was divinely good, divinely beautiful. We fell in love at first sight, and when I could speak to her, I asked, “What is your name?”

  “Ulrica!”

  “Ulrica!—U.” A U! It was horrible. How could I subject myself to the constant, dreadful violence of that vowel? My love was everything to me, but I nevertheless found the strength to renounce it. I abandoned Ulrica.

  I tried to cure myself with another emotional involvement. I gave my heart to another girl. Would you believe it? I later learned that her name was Giulia. I parted company with her as well.

  I had a third love. My experience had made me cautious: I inquired about her name before I gave her my heart.

  Her name was Annetta. Finally! We prepared for the wedding; everything had been arranged, settled, when, as I was examining her birth certificate, I discovered, to my horror, that Annetta was no more than a pet name, a diminutive of Susanna, Susanetta, and what is even more horrible, she had five other Christian names: Postumia, Uria, Umberta, Giuditta, and Lucia.

  Imagine how I felt myself shudder when reading those names! In an instant I tore apart the nuptial contract, confronted that perfidious monster with her ruthless betrayal, and left that house forever. Heaven had saved me once again.

  But alas! I could no longer love, my sensibility was exhausted, debilitated by so many terrible experiences. Chance brought me back to Ulrica. The memories of my first love were reawakened, my passion was rekindled with new fervor…I still wanted to renounce her affection, and the happiness that this affection once again promised me…but I did not have the strength—we were m
arried.

  At that moment, my struggle commenced.

  I could not tolerate her bearing a U in her name, could not call her by that word. My wife!…My companion, the woman I loved—with a U in her name?!…She who had already made such a terrible purchase in mine, since there was even one in my surname!

  It was impossible!

  One day I told her, “My beloved, you see how terrible this U is. Renounce it! Shorten or change your name!…I implore you.”

  She smiled and did not reply.

  Once again I told her, “Ulrica, your name is unbearable to me…it makes me ill…it is killing me! Renounce it.”

  My wife smiled again, the ingrate! She smiled!…

  One night I felt myself possessed by a strange frenzy: I had had an upsetting dream…A gigantic U was sitting on my chest and embracing me with its two immense, supple shafts…squeezing me…crushing and crushing me…I leapt from the bed, incensed. I seized my hefty sword cane, ran to a notary, and told him, “Come, come with me this instant, you must draft a formal writ of renunciation…”

  The wretch resisted. I dragged him from me, dragged him to my wife’s bed.