The Fourth Shore

by Alessandro Spina

  The Colonel’s wife was waiting for him to start talking again, she had been waiting for thirty-five years for someone to talk to her again in that way. In those few minutes it took Cossa to gather his thoughts, she didn’t show the slightest impatience: in fact, she liked even more when he seemed distracted, when he simply followed his train of thought, and forgot to speak, when his face grew more open and intense, allowing her to understand him more than when she lingered in silence when he spoke, even though she truly loved to hear him talk.

  ‘I witnessed an injustice and it troubles me,’ Cossa picked up again, employing an actor’s tone, ‘we often demean with our admiration those who would instead wish to be questioned and understood, our respect and admiration merely conceal our indifference, we pick a flower and tread on the plant; I feel I played my part in this injustice tonight, and instead of whispering these thoughts to you, I would like to scream so loud that even the deaf would hear me.’

  The Colonel’s wife looked at him, both excited and frightened: would he really start screaming? She decided she would echo his scream, even though she didn’t know what he was talking about and which point he wanted to make.

  ‘But who would understand? Who would be ready to take the first step towards redressing this injustice? It would imply a new way of thinking, a new way of feeling, and people aren’t up to that task, either they can’t or they don’t want to, and if that’s the case why not say it? Why should one fear expressing romantic thoughts, given that admiring someone’s beauty and respecting someone’s soul can only be reconciled in love.’

  That word so resonated in myriads of different, intense ways throughout the Colonel’s wife’s soul that Cossa deemed it useless to carry on that conversation, and instead he let that word linger in her ears without bothering her by taking his leave or making up an excuse, and so he left, for the second time.

  A grave injustice had therefore been committed in the Major’s house, which served as a temple of Pietro’s beauty. It was a prison in which the flower of his soul was being unfairly made to wilt away. Having left the Colonel’s wife behind, Cossa crossed the room with the fervour of a Don Quixote, even though he thought so himself. Yet on finding himself face to face with Pietro once again, he laughed: two abstractions, beauty and the soul, were substituted by a person, Pietro.

  And whenever one compares what one had imagined with what is really there, the fragile designs of our imagination against reality’s sculptural evidence, the comparison favours the latter, until one felt entirely ridiculous. Cossa hadn’t yet reached that point. Talking passionately while employing an actor’s tone, he had managed to express himself, something he couldn’t manage to do without that reserve. Yet it was this very reserve that was now defending him from reality’s attacks: as a matter of fact, during his conversation with the Colonel’s wife, he hadn’t wanted to interpret reality, but to substitute it, like any good thespian. Or rather, having downgraded reality to a pretext, he would place a second reality next to it, one peopled by characters called beauty, soul, injustice and rebellion, meaning that this second reality was free to completely disregard any attacks from that first reality since the contact between them was both decisive and irrevocable. Nevertheless, Pietro, who was now suddenly standing before him again, absorbed by the task of looking after the Major’s guests, had aroused these considerations (meaning the interpretation of reality) in him, as well as the creation of a new, independent reality – Pietro immediately surmised that Cossa’s laughter was directed at him, even though he had no idea what kind of cartwheels he’d had to in order to catch his attention. He suddenly transformed into what Cossa imagined him to be, his soul flitted away the moment it had captured the other’s attention, freeing his beauty to shine even brighter. Pietro, who had struck Cossa as a simple soldier when he’d first laid eyes on him, was now being divided into those two components which Cossa’s imagination had previously reduced him to. Neither the first nor last were confirmation that reality offered the imagination – in finding itself spied upon and in fleeing away, that departing soul had left a painful expression on Pietro’s face. I must save that man, the lieutenant thought, feeling thespian-like again, even though he was no longer performing before the audience of the Colonel’s wife’s eyes, sighs and desires. I must restore this man’s dignity, given all the offenses caused not only by Ursula and her friends, but also by the Major (if what Marchi said is true) and myself. Pietro must rise above the pitiful solitude in which he lives, and he must be able to have his hopes and illusions, just like anybody else – do I have any? – and he must also stop being the humble guardian of his beauty. This transformation must first occur in the souls of others before it can take place in his – shall I lead by example?

  ‘Idiot!’ the Major, an incredibly irritable man, shouted, calling for Pietro a second time. The latter hurried over to serve him, but as he didn’t know what the Major wanted, and since he was carrying a tray of pastries, he offered him one. The Major let out a hearty laugh and with a lightning-quick gesture, he tipped the tray onto the floor. The atmosphere was tense. Pietro was falling headfirst into the void created around him by everyone’s curiosity, their need for entertainment, and their disdain. He knelt down to pick up the pastries. Some had even fallen between the Major’s feet. Pietro drew close to them, but the Major instead gave him a furious kick, which ended up hitting the open-palmed hands Pietro had raised to defend himself, and he fell on his back, his mouth agape. The Major always enjoyed toeing the line, yet once he finally crossed that line (for example by kicking his adjutant), all his irritation remained intact – which was why he was laughing, as though he’d just absorbed all the vexation he’d wanted to inflict on Pietro. The Major found himself face to face with the desire to kick somebody (it was both a temptation and a warning) – he would have liked to kick Pietro’s face, but he couldn’t, which was why he had done so right away; but all he had gotten out of it was a profound sense of annoyance, an even gloomier despair. If he was looking for an infraction of the rules, this was a really paltry one, the Major confessed to himself, while his eyes – which had shone excitedly a moment earlier in the heat of the challenge – now looked disheartened by their own boldness, because if one gives in to an urge that nevertheless fails to satisfy, it proves demoralizing. One must try harder and commit to compromising oneself further, until there is no escape, until one finds oneself in an experience where there is no way out. Is war the experience I’m looking for? Dissatisfaction and the inability to adapt to one’s life (or of finding and accepting compromises) was leading everyone onto the path of war. I’ll wind up killing a man on the street, just the first man who passes by, that is if war doesn’t create the kind of opportunities that my desperation is craving. As though life had trampled on some of the pages of his youth, possibly because all of his life had turned out contrary to his wishes, even though everyone was daunted by his willpower, the Major’s dreams (and even war is a dream, because it seeks the solution to all problems from a diverse, collective reality, the fulfillment of all of one’s desires, the most complete manifestation of oneself) were that of an adolescent: that a man should resolve to do things with absolute passion, that one should face one’s experiences without considering failure, except the ultimate failure, that one could hold all of one’s cards in one hand, either to keep multiplying them forever, or to lose them on one’s last hopes. Yet this was exactly the reason why war was looming, why war was brewing, for the ways in which one wanted to justify that war didn’t ultimately satisfy the very reasons why it was being clamoured for. I despise Mussolini’s stupid war to steal a strip of desert away from the English, he pondered, while looking into the void of Pietro’s mouth as the latter knelt at his feet, and to kick the French out of Nice and Tunis – if we’ll go to war it should be either for total annihilation or a complete renewal. And if Italy winds up annexing Tunisia, Nice, Corsica and Savoie, and if we’ll drive the English off a few beaches and into the sea, what will I hav
e gained out of it? How will my life change? Will it be easier to live? Will I – once I’ve helped throw a few Englishmen off some beaches – know how to live? As for Pietro, that kick to the mouth had left him feeling just as deluded: the Major had humiliated him, but what did it matter, how would that evening be any different from all the others that had come before it? He was the same Pietro as always, more humiliated perhaps, but still the same man, in the same situation, with the same thoughts, and even his life was the same, even though – when the Major had shouted – he had experienced a sharp sense of fright as though it were an enormous sense of hope, maybe over the course of that soiree which Ursula had organised, his life would be hurled (by someone else of course, given that Pietro was a pessimist, and didn’t believe in the virtues of his own willpower, or capabilities, and whenever he said yes to the Major, it wasn’t because he was a soldier and the latter was his superior officer, but because everyone had their own destiny and his was to simply say yes) beyond the riverxii from whence he would never return. Was he also thinking of murder, and that he would be its victim just as the Major would be its perpetrator? Instead they had both been tricked in the same way and with the same gesture, everything had been mediocre and their lives had gone back to square one, the unruly hopes of arrogance and fear having been betrayed, they were incapable of realizing themselves, even though thanks to that kick, which one had vulgarly given the other out of sheer caprice, and which the other had accepted with senseless submissiveness, both men had managed to profoundly express themselves.

  Cossa was tired and he would have wanted to go home, but he had been the last to arrive and thus didn’t want to be the first to leave. Thoroughly rebellious, when it came to relationships with other people and with society at large, he was a conformist at heart. He pushed his conformism to the limits in order to please others, possibly even cater to their stupidity, and this in turn led the others to call him splendid. He admired the Major’s strength, which allowed him to throw himself into the thick of the action, and to dominate it: whereas he would just stand there, frozen, feeling that he could only ever be a spectator, as had been the case when the Major had kicked Pietro. In fact, instead of intervening, as his thought a moment earlier had led him to suppose that he would, he had instead gone out onto the veranda, finding that scene distasteful, and experienced a kind of regret over those pointless hours he’d been forced to live. Once again, as though answering a call, his thoughts turned to the definitive gesture the writer had made when she’d wound up in that river.

  Even though – and he demonstrated this when he re-entered the room a few moments later – he was capable of overcoming emotions, or at least hiding them, the Major was drinking alone in a corner, with a gloomy sadness imprinted on his face, as though he’d been the one who’d received that kick instead of giving it.

  Cossa approached a group of his fellow soldiers and was surprised to see Pietro among them. He was at the centre of the circle standing next to an officer Cossa wasn’t acquainted with. Amidst the confusion of tins, herbs and filters, Cossa immediately realised that none of these items belonged to the Major’s house, and in fact he noticed a small suitcase propped against Pietro’s feet. He had already caught wind of this new obsession making the rounds of local drawing rooms, which had just been brought into the country by the officer who was now standing in the middle of the circle.

  Magic, like war, is a way of shuffling the deck, to overcome the obstacles that left us to drown, romantic unruliness against the wise, prudent life, a leap into the unknown, a re-evaluation of passion, ideals, sacrifice and risk. While this desire for war runs through our minds, with so much hope being placed on magic, our moral structure announces it has failed.

  A girl facing him gripped an elixir of love. Perhaps she wanted to employ the elixir’s deception to resist the science of cautiousness, of matrimony and all of her mother’s conventions, the imaginativeness of courage, love and passion. The world is suffering under the weight of its rationality; having banished the irrational from our lives, we shall now drown in war, and beg magic to give us the breath of life. Guilty?

  Cossa sat in a corner and opened a book, the first one he chanced across: La Rochefoucauld. Cossa was lazy and didn’t read much. The pleasure he derived from literature rarely rewarded him for the effort it took to read it in the first place. If what he happened to be reading stopped interesting him as soon as he shut that book, he would walk away disappointed, thinking the author had deceived him. He loved La Rochefoucauld because he could talk about himself with the author by way of their common interests. On these occasions, reading became a way to transcend his solitude.

  Cossa felt a warm gust of breath – maternal, and even sensual – breeze past him. The ambiguous feeling it engendered left no doubt that it was the Colonel’s wife. He felt her hand slip off his shoulder to turn the pages of the book still in his hands, until it stopped and her finger pointed to a passage: ‘Love alone has caused more evils than all other passions put together. Nobody would be capable of listing them all. One must nevertheless recognise that love has also produced some of life’s greatest blessings. Thus, instead of speaking ill of love, let’s keep quiet, let us fear and respect love forever.’ While he read, he also thought: It really is curious how this woman has noticed how extraordinary these words are when written by a man such as him, how pathetic it is to be kept company by all these other thoughts. Yet blocking the path to such considerations was a question: Are you sure that the Colonel’s wife read this passage and attributed it to La Rochefoucauld, instead of finding it in a collection of thoughts that were both difficult and incomprehensible to her, finding only one single thought among them that she could adhere to – in other words, she found some quote by Rousseau or Lamartine that suited her purposes? But why had the Colonel’s wife showed it to him? What meaning had she assigned to that particular passage? Cossa tilted his head upwards to look at her. Seen from below, she had assumed otherworldly dimensions, she looked like one of those allegorical figures that people Tiepolo’s ceilings. Yet just as was the case with those figures, any interpretation put forward might be the right one: Time, Virtue, Moderation, Glory, Wisdom – any of them would do. Thus, the Colonel’s wife was merely a golden cloud hovering above his head, he could interpret her whichever way he liked, he could look at her as a woman sensitive to literature and the complexities and finesses of the soul, or he could see her as a colour-blind woman who could have a man dressed entirely in black standing in front of her and still only spot the pinkish hue of his clasps, or, finally, as his third alternative, he could see her as a sensual woman who nonetheless employed third parties (in this case, La Rochefoucauld) to voice her flirtatiousness, probably out of shame. Naturally, he could ask her about it, and he knew he would be shrewd enough to unmask her. But was it worth the effort? Wouldn’t the Colonel’s wife subsequently lose all her appeal? That golden cloud would flatten into such a banal figure. Even though you’re waiting so anxiously, I’ll spare you: I’ll let you shine on that ceiling instead of dragging you down with a string.

  What is he thinking? the Colonel’s wife asked herself in the meanwhile. What thoughts are running through his head? After he read out those lines, he turned to look at me – and I suddenly felt in the grips of vertigo when I saw my reflection in the abyss of his eyes. There was even a shade of irony in his gaze, and it is this very irony that keeps me suspended in the air. How long will this misunderstanding last? Why are you looking at me?

  Look at that idiot, Ursula mused while she observed them, she’s lost all restraint, she’s madly in love. And Eugenio is so lazy that he’s fully capable of becoming her lover! When he eventually realises that it’ll be too complicated to slip out of her grasp, he’ll wind up becoming her lover!

  Ursula is watching us, Cossa noted. Is it jealousy? Oscillating between irony and jealousy, her gaze envelops us, my dear Colonel’s wife. Using her jealousy to prop you up, you feel closer to me. She finally found the courage
to trust her feelings at the age of fifty, but she has simultaneously lost faith in her virtues and powers of seduction. You would find the strength to leave your husband tonight and run away with me, if you could only be sure that I loved you in return. On the other hand, if the girl who was laughing while holding that elixir of love found herself in the exact same situation, she would debase such a beautiful adventure with all the rules her mother had inculcated her with! The result is always the same: impotence. O, why does nobody have any virtues anymore, why does no one trust their natural gifts and talents, why aren’t we capable of heeding our impulses? Everything is always wretched and miserable.

  The Colonel’s wife straightened herself with a sigh: a shadow of sadness fell on Cossa’s handsome face. He’s sad and I’ll never know why. He’s sad and I probably wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Why did I run into him?

  ‘A curious thought,’ Cossa commented, casting judgment on the entire scene. ‘Do you not think it’s true?’ the Colonel’s wife asked him, as if she hadn’t showed it to him in order for him to see how curious it really was. ‘What are you discussing?’ Ursula asked, drawing closer. Yet instead of stopping, she passed them by: she wasn’t interested by what those two could possibly be discussing in the slightest. The Colonel’s wife asked herself whether it was decent of her to spend all that time with that young man. She looked at him as though imploring his aid. Yet Cossa was still observing Pietro, who having entered the circle that surrounded the officer-magician, was picking up everything around him and stuffing it back into that little suitcase, which he then deposited in the waiting room.