The Fourth Shore

by Alessandro Spina

  Why did I meet him? Why did I meet him? The Colonel’s wife asked herself, despairing, while her heart melted into tears. In the meanwhile, an officer had sat himself next to Cossa, and was explaining to him how that comrade of theirs prepared his filters. While we talk to others, Cossa thought, we feel more intensely alone. And if this conversation doesn’t take a distressing turn, it’ll be quite pleasant. This comrade’s conversation protects me and shields from the indiscretions of others. His thoughts suddenly turned to Pietro again, who having picked up all the odds and ends belonging to that herb-rolling officer, had gone into the kitchen. What should I do now? He would have liked to follow Pietro into the kitchen. Instead, he lingered impatiently while waiting for the other to finish speaking. There are those who are greedy for time, who live it out in a solemn way, who spend a minute as mindfully as though it were a gold doubloon. Then there are others who crush it under the weight of facts, and the busier and more industrious they are, the more they feel that their time has been hollow and meaningless. I prefer squandering time: for instance, while I wait here for this fool to stop talking, even though I would much rather stand up and go to the kitchen. Not doing what I want to do makes me aware of the passing of time, a feeling that usually makes people impatient, but since I do not suffer from impatience in the slightest, I actually find it very pleasurable. Now I can feel the passing of time like sand through my fingers, whereas whenever what I want to do and what I am actually doing overlap, time becomes imperceptible. Barring off the path of life with his conversation, this chatterbox caused a traffic jam. While stuck in this traffic jam, I am experiencing life intensely (or rather, more intensely). The kitchen where Pietro has (probably) fallen asleep, while I sit here listening to this chap, has now been brought into sharp relief, and given Pietro, while he stands next to the window (I am certain that he’s standing next to the window, every time I entered that kitchen I always found him next to the window), such an intensity of meaning that I would vainly search for, if I could get up right now and step inside that kitchen.

  While he lingered, wrapped in his thoughts, cradled by his comrade’s conversation, Cossa observed Luisa, Captain Carli’s wife, who was sat in a corner leafing through a magazine in order to decorously uphold her silence. She was the victim of a prank. Ursula had decided that she had to find Pietro a girlfriend (the fact she’d made love to him herself didn’t mean anything to her). She had chosen Luisa because, as Luisa herself had put it, she didn’t have anyone. Thus, she had employed any pretext available to send Pietro to Luisa’s house at all times of day – in fact, at some rather odd hours – while simultaneously telling everyone that they were lovers. On seeing him entering and leave her house all the time, nobody entertained any further doubts in that regard. Pietro, who knew all about that prank, was very embarrassed by it. Luisa had noticed Pietro’s embarrassment whenever he came to see her. At which point she would become very deferential and would use all her courtesy to try to put that poor boy at ease – he would then feel even more embarrassed. Ursula no longer needed any pretexts to dispatch Pietro to Luisa’s house. Luisa had taken over that task, and if Pietro tarried in showing his face, she would go look for him herself. Naturally, she was sensitive to Pietro’s incredibly handsome looks, and she never failed to attend Ursula’s tea parties, when she would find herself unable to tear her eyes off him (Ursula would comb his hair before said parties, she found grooming her husband’s adjutant incredibly amusing). Yet Pietro’s embarrassment in Luisa’s presence made his handsomeness touching, almost pathetic – and Luisa was very drawn to the pathetic. Did he love her? Luisa asked herself that every day. What did Pietro feel for her?

  Who or what could give her such an answer? What do yes or no really mean? Whenever she looked at him, her eyes probing him for answers, Pietro would turn suddenly pale, lowering his gaze and sighing, fiddling with the buttons on his uniform. What do yes or no really mean, what does love mean, how do people interpret it? When she was at home, Luisa’s gaze was always directed towards the street. And whenever she saw him approaching her house, she would run off to ensure she looked presentable, even though she’d already prepared herself for his arrival. While standing in front of her mirror, she would only grimace, being far too confused to attempt fixing a loose lock of hair or ribbon. When she heard the doorbell ring, she would sit down. She would sit down to prevent herself from running over to the door. Then she would suddenly stand up, run panting down the stairs and open up, so they could both stand there, while he stared at his feet and she gazed upwards at the sky, waiting for the spirits to return. This would carry on until Pietro opened his mouth and told her that the Major’s wife wanted a needle, or a croquis, or that she wanted to know whether they would be going to the Officers’ Club that evening. Luisa would slowly climb the stairs while the adjutant remained on the ground floor. Luisa was perfectly aware where she kept her needles, or what specific croquis Ursula was after. However, she was in no hurry. Once she’d arrived upstairs, she would lean against a wall and slip into a reverie. Whenever she returned downstairs, Pietro would take the needle or croquis, allowing their hands to touch lightly, at which point Pietro would give her a military salute while Luisa gave him a slight nod of her head. What is love and how do people interpret it? What do yes or no really mean? Go ahead and ignore reality, Luisa thought to herself, ignore what can or cannot happen, sacrifice all the opportunities that reality seems to have placed before you – reality is only doing that in order to blackmail you – ignore all that filthiness that usually goes with love. That filthiness is always easy to pursue – Ursula being a perfect example of that – even without being in love. I don’t need anything. Except maybe silence, just like now. All I want is to sit here on my own, safely ensconced behind this magazine. I don’t give a damn about reality, I detest it. Pietro can be anyone’s lover for all I care. Yet what would he mean to them? What does Pietro mean to them compared to what he means to me? If we hold the two ends of a needle just for a moment, our hearts bleed. Ursula, who has certainly gone to bed with him, would have been left entirely indifferent by the whole experience, and she would have to employ all of her genius in order to feel any kind of emotion, while if we found one another standing face to face, even the tiniest of non-events leaves us feeling overwhelmed. This particular thought buzzed around all the others in the manner of a large fly, pestering Luisa: Are you afraid of reality? No, she finally replied, regaining her self-confidence, I know nothing can give me what I want, reality is for people who lack all imagination. People of this sort usually only allow their imaginations to take a few, measly steps – while when it comes to people like us, reality only blocks our imaginations, it debases our dreams, our encounters, and even love itself! Why is Cossa looking at me?

  Is it true that Luisa is in love with Pietro, like Ursula says? And yet I kept an eye on them, and they didn’t exchange a single word all evening. Have they made love? Because so many stories have been told about Pietro in this regard that I no longer know what to believe. What does this woman love about Pietro, if she loves him at all? This woman is brave enough to keep quiet, while I need someone to talk to me in order to do the same. After all, her silence is more meaningful than mine. Will I find it possible to overcome the barrier standing between me and life, to cross the river of suicide that separates me from real life? What price will such a possibility exact? What made this possible for Luisa? Or did I begin my suicidal vocation from a disadvantageous position? What is love? Have I ever experienced it? Will I be able to answer that question myself or am I only capable of making an inventory of all these questions that torture me? Do these questions really torture me or are they merely a symptom of my curiosity? Outside of suicide, what is serious about me, what are the real, sincere questions I am asking myself?

  At that exact moment, the officer who’d been chatting with him stopped speaking. Cossa had voyaged in the dark, and he had no idea what the other officer, once the magic had started, had actually said
to him. Yet crashing against the man’s sudden silence, Cossa woke up; and since the dam which had kept him contained had now been removed, he forgot about all the questions he would have attempted to answer if that chatterbox had preserved the silence around him, protecting his isolation in the way that magazine defended Luisa’s. He stood up. He turned the hands of his soul’s clock back, and stepped inside the kitchen where Pietro had fallen asleep. And as he was now performing an action which corresponded to a past desire – he had, in fact, been very distracted when his fellow officer had been speaking to him – he could observe himself fully, as though the action he was about to perform had already been accomplished by someone else. The detachment that this created allowed him to analyze himself with clinical objectivity. Why did you go to the kitchen? There he is, snoozing next to the window. Everything is precisely in its proper order, just like you had anticipated. When faced with such conformity, what is one to do? Why does the meaning of our actions disappear even before we’ve fully accomplished them? And what is – what makes Pietro so wonderful?

  I want to understand the mystery surrounding this adjutant, around whom the entire house revolves! I want to cut right to the heart of that mystery, which the others don’t seem to perceive beyond the fascination it exerts on them – he was thinking with the same Don Quixote-like attitude with which he had earlier crossed the room. I want to bring the light of reason into the semi-obscurity surrounding Pietro, in the kitchen where he shuts himself away to sleep next to the window. I want to understand if his seductive powers are owed to his extraordinary beauty, his stupidity, or the purity that keeps his beauty stupid; or, if stupidity has a limit, meaning Pietro is capable of understanding he is loved and adored – but also despised – and a shadow of his wounded humanity sometimes fell over his face, and which also settles (for instance) over my heart. It is the same shadow of sadness that I saw on his face tonight when he opened the door to let me in, and which I’ve often mulled over in my head.

  Pietro is asleep. He’s so handsome when he sleeps. Ursula apparently often goes into his room to watch him sleep while she knits. Did Pietro dream? And if he did, what did he dream about? Why does he always linger by that window? What does he see in that night, what does he see when he dreams? Even now that he looks as though he’s sleeping, he’s abandoned his beauty and left it behind for all to see, like a lifeless body so that people – like me? – who love to watch him sleep can admire it. Pietro lives hidden inside his dreams, and I am very curious about that secret life (or am I jealous?). Pietro’s true beauty lies in his humanity, which is concealed by his (physical) beauty. I understand him when I feel upset and perturbed by the sadness that suddenly engulfs his features. He can immediately make me aware of a feeling, and when that feeling fades, and I start to think again, everything becomes garbled up again and I can’t understand anything anymore. Intelligence is a highly valued trait, but it comes with limited powers. Intelligence can be a terrible obstacle to knowledge. Intelligence constructs its own world and then superimposes it on reality, believing the former could help illuminate the latter, but in the end it only distorts that reality. Intelligence is useless unless it functions in tandem with another intelligence, in a world achieved through reason. But, lo and behold: stupidity is already an insurmountable wall; and feelings remain a mystery. Intelligence does not dwell in the world that it has created. Yet our ultimate humanity, the meaning of our life, the unanswered whys of most of our actions, strength, depth, character, flavour, limits, the roots of our emotions – all remain unintelligible and it despises it all for being unable to comprehend them. Intelligence does not bring a man out of his shell, in fact, it imprisons him in the world it has created for him. Intelligence can reveal how extraordinary it is through the sheer magnificence of its creations, and for the acrobatic leaps that it is capable of performing in that very world. If we instead try to evaluate intelligence according to the function most appropriate to it, that is of penetrating a given reality – oh what a useless, imprecise instrument, oh what a mess, what impotence – simply consider my little performance here, consider how much useless effort I wasted erecting an edifice on top of Pietro’s slumber and his dreams, look at how intact and impenetrable his sadness – or how he lives his dreams – remains to me.

  In the meanwhile, Cossa watched Pietro as he slept, just like Ursula did whenever she knitted. Yet just as there was much to laugh about on Ursula’s account, it was also the reason why he could watch the young man sleep as long as he did. Without this precedent, without being able to mock Ursula, he wouldn’t have hesitated and he would have left immediately. And in order to prove to himself that he still had all his wits about him, to satisfy the needs of reason by interrupting a contemplation that grew deeper and more relaxed as the memory of Ursula faded away, he called out: ‘Pietro!’ Yet by attempting to prove his resolve, he only betrayed himself. Hearing a different tone than he was used to in that voice, one neither angry nor disdainful, nor ironic or authoritarian, Pietro didn’t stir, but instead kept dreaming, or looked as though he’d kept on dreaming, and it was only when the officer shook him lightly by the shoulder that Pietro regained his wits and jumped to his feet: ‘Yes, sir, lieutenant!’ he exclaimed. Cossa was holding a glass of cognac in his hand, he had chanced across a full one and had started sipping it while he was watching Pietro sleep. ‘It tastes quite strange,’ he said, putting the glass down on the table. Pietro picked it up and downed it in a single gulp.

  ‘My cognac!’ a girl exclaimed on entering the kitchen at that exact moment. ‘My elixir! Pietro, what have you done?’

  She ran back into the sitting room to tell everyone that Pietro had drunk her elixir. She had slammed the door behind her. Lieutenant Marchi crossed the same threshold a moment later: ‘We’ve got to go, Cossa,’ he said, ‘it seems our orders have arrived and we’re due to leave tomorrow at dawn. The war has begun.’

  The young officer who had announced the news stood in a corner. It appeared settled that the regiment to whom Boninsea, Cossa, the Major and Lieutenant Marchi belonged to would be leaving at dawn. The war would probably break out soon. In a matter of a few hours, or a few days. France had given up, and Mussolini wanted to take full advantage of that. The declaration of war would be greeted with statutory enthusiasm, but at that exact moment, since the final decision hadn’t yet been taken, they all felt guilty and anxious: just like death, war forced one to rethink life. The Major was the first among them to recover from this, and he was the first to start chatting; in fact, although he’d spent a great deal of time prior to that huddled up and worried in a corner, he now appeared to have regained his vitality. At that precise moment, he did not consider that he could well die in that war. However, they had resolved a great problem for him: how he should live. This was why he felt in high spirits. The others’ expressions betrayed their fears over their destinies (Will I survive, Lieutenant Marchi asked himself, will I outlive this war?), the Major’s face beamed with great confidence. On top of that, he burst into a huge laugh, which annoyed everyone else.

  Everyone except Mrs Boninsea, who hadn’t heard the Major. She lingered immobile in the middle of the sitting room. All her thoughts spilled in tears. The lights were going out in the great theatre of the world: And when four or five years from now they’ll switch them on again, I’ll be an old woman! With a single gesture, Mussolini, like a greedy croupier, had taken her last years away from her, scooping up those casino chips she’d risked with such fear and hesitation.

  Standing next to her, by the window, was Anna, the Major’s daughter, who was biting her lip, angry at the prank which had been pulled on her. She was sixteen: Must the war really break out now of all times?! Mussolini had set her back by three or four years, even though she was finally old enough to go to the club, she would be forced to stay at home, now that she was finally old enough to have an officer accompany her on her walk down the main boulevard, there soon wouldn’t be any officers left in town, and I’ll be fourte
en again! She was in the grips of despair.

  Once the coming of the war had been announced, which would probably be officially declared in the coming hours, Luisa had left her magazine behind; if the latter had proved an effective shield in protecting her from the chatter of Ursula’s guests, it would no longer suffice, the war had splintered that shield, exposing her to the shocks of life. War! Now Pietro wouldn’t go see her anymore, and Pietro would leave along with all the others. The idea of having to say goodbye to him that very evening – and here of all places, with everyone present – was breaking her heart. They probably wouldn’t see one another until the end of the war. Which was the same as saying: In heaven! Luisa stood up. Her heart really was breaking now. She had always despised reality, but if she despised it, it was also because she was happy with what she had, since reality was abundant enough as it was for a sensible soul such as hers. In fact, for her to understand and accept reality, it was necessary for reality not to run her over, but rather to barely graze her as it flew by; it did not please her to be in the eye of life’s storm, but rather she wished she could observe a sleepy, peaceful, familiar landscape from behind the safety of a window – the same window that Pietro appeared in once a day, almost every day. Those few seconds for her were enough – searching for a needle for Ursula while Pietro waited downstairs – to feel her heart swell, leaving it worn out and exhausted for the rest of the day. How could she possibly survive the war’s vicissitudes? She could barely tolerate life in the colony, which everybody complained about due to how boring it was, and everyone there seemed impatient and crazy to her. They set everything they found and lived in on fire, as if it had nothing to do with them, but it was instead a novel or a play. Were they completely insensitive? Or was she the one who was truly impatient and restless, so much so that she could never endure anything, except the tiniest of emotions – Pietro appearing at the end of the dusty road – had he also become unbearable to her? If peace-time scared her, how could she possibly put up with war, which frightened everyone who found peace boring? The mere news that all the regiments still stationed in the city would have to leave for the front had thrown her soul into confusion, so much so that she suddenly – like a scream – recognised a feeling she had never thought herself capable of, which she had hitherto been certain she would never experience during the course of her life. A feeling which had never even occurred to her: regret – for never asking that boy whether he loved her or not! She lingered in the middle of the sitting room, but nobody paid her any mind. The rivers have run dry, the roads have been blocked, the doors shut, the windows bricked up, everybody keeps what they already have, and what failed to happen will never happen – she stammered on in this manner inside her mind, until she could no longer see anyone around her – it’s over, over, over!