The Fourth Shore

by Alessandro Spina

  Those papers had nothing to do with colonial life, which had begun when, as a newly-married man freshly armed with a degree, he had accepted an offer of work from that hospital in Africa. In fact, just like his marriage, Africa had also kept him away from those papers.

  Now the velvet cloth with golden rickracks had been thrown on top of a chair and the trunk was finally open, a metal box full of letters, all of which were bound by a singular passion, a longing…

  Sacrifice? Was he carrying out a ritual? What possible meaning could he draw from erasing all the traces of a relationship, especially now that his brother was dead? What did his brother have to do with it all anyway? He had never learned anything regarding its contents, despite having been its loyal custodian.

  It was as if the calendar wanted to make fun of him. The word end – which had been written so many years prior to that moment, before his blessed marriage, his career – appeared to have run away: the letters were there and they were reclaiming the present.

  Ruffatto sat down and started reading.

  When he returned home that evening, there was an unusual pallor to his face, and the boys welcomed him boisterously.

  His wife noticed his troubled state of mind, but she didn’t say anything, packing up an entire house must have been exhausting, and it wasn’t the right moment to discuss the contents of that trunk – truth be told, the thought of that trunk didn’t even cross her mind.

  Ruffatto listened carefully to all that his boys were telling him, displayed amazement at each object he was shown, his amazement being both ironic and loud, since the game of exaggerations is inexhaustible and makes everything precious, even unique.

  Later that night at dinner, a friendly couple had been invited over and so the boys had calmed down a little, but the festive echo still reverberated throughout the house, even the newcomers – an army doctor and his wife – felt it.

  Only little Stefano with his mercurial genius had understood that his father was absent, empty.

  Affectionate at times and capricious at others, and always unpredictable, Stefano was ever careful to reaffirm his will in front of his brothers, especially when around his father, who probably favoured him above the others because he needed more protecting, but on that night it was Stefano who was protecting his father, even though he didn’t know why.

  The eight people in that room took up all the available space and the table had been extended to make room for the guests. Yet it seemed as though six of them were on one plane, while Doctor Ruffatto and his bespectacled clone were on another. It was if the boy had wanted to show his father that he was acquainted with suffering too.

  Or better yet, what it means to suffer over dreams. It was as if he too had re-read those three hundred letters from the past, to take his leave from every single one of them, forever.

  7

  PTOLEMAIS

  The beach umbrella was blue with stripes of white. A breeze rose from the sea, the current of an invisible river, which had either evaporated under the sizzling sun, or laughed the sun off entirely. The party had reached Tolmeita, the ancient Ptolemais, roughly a hundred miles east of the city.xxxviii

  There was a white lighthouse on the top of the little rocky promontory.

  A soldier had died a month earlier while taking a dip with a friend west of the lighthouse, in a seemingly tranquil bay where the undercurrents often carried one far from shore. That stretch of water was treacherous even for the local fishermen’s ships.

  The beach was deserted: the umbrella stood out like a sail.

  It was said that there was an ancient theatre lost somewhere amidst those barren hills, but nobody knew its exact location, since the excavations hadn’t gotten underway yet. After pondering the matter, Professor Berioli said that the theatre ‘couldn’t be anywhere else’. He had offered to act as a guide for the party, but nobody had wanted to follow him: he was a boring man, read extensively and indefatigably, and ceaselessly quoted the authors he’d read.

  ‘He has such a sepulchral mind,’ Mrs Lozzi said, ‘who brings books to the beach? Does anyone go swimming completely clothed?’

  ‘You’ll see, you’ll see, he knows everything by heart.’

  ‘I would love to test him.’

  The Professor had disappeared, only to show up again two hours later. It was midday by then. Yes: the location of the theatre in those hills was just as he’d guessed down below. His sandals were dusty, he looked like a wayfarer from the old fairy tales.

  ‘So, you share the same rare and exalted tastes of the Greeks when it comes to locations, eh?’ an officer attached to the party mockingly said in a loud voice, he had just graduated from the Military Academy of Modena.

  ‘We will never again attain the heights reached by Greek knowledge,’ the Professor modestly replied, ‘if anything, I can only brag about having been educated by them just a little.’

  ‘As for me,’ Major Lambertini said, both solemnly and menacingly, ‘I was educated by the Romans.’

  It was an invocation of Fascism, but it only served to generate a great deal of embarrassment, nobody ever understood what that officer really meant whenever he spoke, the truth was always theatrical, as if it was a quality to be attributed to a specific character. Only that he had forgotten to let everyone know which character his mind had summoned at that moment.

  Perhaps the Professor already knew that, since he nodded at that remark, rather than being frightened by the Major’s threatening tone.

  ‘Anyone who wants to play at acting can go up there – so long as you leave us in peace down here.’ Mrs Lozzi said. She had been the last to slip into her bathing costume, but not without first going through the very time-consuming poses and rigmaroles involved when revealing one’s nakedness – it looked like a ballet.

  ‘What if my head isn’t at peace?’ Major Lambertini asked, pained.

  ‘Then throw it away,’ Mrs Revelli said, ‘throw it right into the sea.’

  Lambertini vanished into the sea.

  ‘It would have been far better if he’d thrown that sandal-wearing Professor into the water.’ Mrs Lozzi confided to her friend, in hushed whispers, ‘One never knows how to… handle these men, nor, by extension, how to chase after them. Sometimes I dream about stupid, mute, deaf and handsome men – in other words a man fit only for the darkness of one’s bedroom.’

  The Professor, whom everyone had forgotten about, cut in.

  ‘In Goethe’s Torquato Tasso, when the poet asks the Princess if she considers all men to be ‘unfeeling, wild and rude,’ she replies: Not so! But ye with violence pursue/A multitude of objects far remote.’xxxix

  ‘What a bore!’ Mrs Lozzi exclaimed, having lost her patience.

  Lambertini called out from the sea, making it look as if the current was dragging him away. He faked everything, even being in danger.

  ‘You’re such a comedian!’ Mrs Lozzi yelled from the shore, while smilingly replying to the Major’s call, all the while baring her body, which was still seductive and alluring, under the sun (as if it had nothing better to do than illuminate her).

  ‘You can go ahead and read out loud Professor, the ladies have gone in the water,’ Major Lambertini said.

  The first picnic, a light one, had come to an end.

  He was sat on a deck chair, over which he’d draped a brightly coloured towel.

  The Professor was wearing shorts, which looked faded, and a white shirt, which was all creased. He was the only one who wasn’t in a bathing costume. He scanned his surrounding, suspiciously.

  He read in a low voice, as if looking to isolate himself:

  ‘The Khalif, likewise, during his residence in Egypt, the present year, erected a tower, or castle, on mount Al Mokattam, which he called Kobbat Al Hawa, the tower of desire; and permitted two of the gentlemen of his bed-chamber, who were Christians, to build a church, denominated first from them the church of the two gentlemen of the bedchamber, and afterwards the church of the Romans, upon a spot of gro
und at a small distance from it. He also erected a Mikeas, or Mikias, or measuring pillar, in order to determine the gradual increase of the Nile, at Shurat, a place belonging to the village of Banbanudah, in the country of Al Sa’id, Thebais, or the upper Egypt; and repaired another of the pillars at Akhmin, in the same region, which was gone greatly to decay.’xl

  ‘What century are we in?’ Lambertini asked.

  ‘The twelfth.’

  ‘Go ahead and read, Professor.’

  Berioli had the habit of writing down phrases which he collected here and there into notebooks that were considerably smaller than the kind used by scholarly types – he taught at the Regio Liceo Ginnasio Giosuè Carducci. It was as though he dreamt of reducing an entire library to microscopic proportions. It struck Lambertini as a funereal dream, like the ones the Pharaohs used to have, who wanted representations of the entire cycle of life painted on the walls of their tombs, or maybe even as a vainglorious dream, one shared by those who sought the formula to transform base metals into gold. His taste for the bizarre had been piqued.

  ‘I wanted to outrun my desire for you,

  but my desire carried the day’

  ‘It’s such an absolutist dream, it’s unacceptable, it’s sheer blackmail,’ Lambertini exclaimed, standing up. ‘Who said that?’

  ‘Al-Mutanabbi, a poet of the tenth century.’

  ‘Right. I had thought it was some librettist from the mid-eighteenth century. If it’s from the tenth then it’s fair enough…’

  He sat back down.

  ‘Keep reading Professor!’

  ‘The dress of the bride, during this procession, entirely conceals her person. She is generally covered from head to foot with a red cashmere shawl; or with a white or yellow shawl, though rarely. Upon her head is placed a small pasteboard cap, or crown. The shawl is placed over this, and conceals from the view of the public the richer articles of her dress, her face and her jewels, etc., except one or two ‘kussahs’ (and sometimes other ornaments), generally of diamonds and emeralds, attached to that part of the shawl which covers her forehead. She is accompanied by two or three of her female relations within the canopy; and often, when in hot weather, a woman, walking backwards before her, is constantly employed in fanning her, with a large fan of black ostrich feathers, the lower of the front of which is usually ornamented with a piece of looking-glass. Sometimes one zeffeh, with a single canopy, serves for two brides, who walk side by side.xli‘

  ‘And what’s a kussah?’

  The Professor seemed reticent.

  ‘But this is an eighteenth century Englishman describing a bride’s bathing rituals!’

  Lambertini didn’t press the issue.

  The modern women were in the water, far away, growing smaller and smaller in the distance, until one could only see their heads.

  ‘Keep reading Professor!’

  ‘Often I sang this, and even out of the grave

  will I cry it: ‘Drink, before you put on

  this raiment of dust.xlii

  ‘This is Julianus Aegyptus, we’re in the Justinian era (527 to 565), the very same Emperor who had the walls of Ptolemais rebuilt – can you see them down there? It seems the walls had almost been entirely destroyed by Khosrow I, before the time of the Arab invasion. Have you seen the mausoleums strewn along the coast?’

  ‘I don’t want to see anything, keep reading Professor!’

  ‘The Prophet said: If anyone introduces an innovation, or gives shelter to a man who introduces an innovation, he is cursed by Allah, by His angels, and by all the people.

  ‘The Prophet said: the innovators are the worst of all of God’s creation.

  ‘The Prophet said: the innovators are the dogs of the inmates of hell.

  ‘Al-Hasan said: The most detestable creatures are those who seek the most insidious answer to blind the servant of God.

  ‘Al-Hasan said: The more innovators redouble their zeal to save God, the further they leave Him behind.

  ‘Muad said: The hand of God lies upon the community, when a man separates from it, God abandons him.

  ‘Al-Fudayl said: Do not trust the innovator and do not seek his advice in your affairs, and do not sit with him since whoever sits with an innovator – Allah will cause him to become blind.

  ‘Al-Fudayl said: O Allah do not let any innovator give me anything so that my heart should love him.’xliii

  Lambertini remained quiet.

  Standing up in the sea, the two ladies were admiring two slender officers as they swam in butterfly strokes, their arms rhythmically leaving the water in unison while kicking their legs like frogs. Their performance struck Lambertini as failed attempt at flight, and most ungraceful. The spitting image of this entire century, he thought to himself, vexed.

  The sand on the beach was scorching.

  ‘You won’t sleep where you like on the day that you die.’

  ‘You made this one up, didn’t you?’ Lambertini exclaimed, pointing his finger at the Professor.

  ‘No, no… I just don’t know whether it’s a proverb or whether I lifted it from a book, I don’t even know if it’s a sacred saying…’

  ‘If you can’t give me the century it was written in, then don’t even mention it at all: anything that isn’t signed is a fake.’

  They lingered in silence.

  Someone from the group – there were five or six couples – shouted something at them from the shiny, wavy water.

  ‘Yes!!!’ Lambertini shouted, even though he hadn’t understood a word they’d said. He then made a sweeping gesture with his arm, as if he’d just caught something in the air.

  ‘Keep reading Professor!’

  ‘A demon lurks inside solitary travelers.’

  ‘What century? What century? The tenth?’

  ‘No,’ the Professor said, as though he were some antiquarian in his shop, frustrated by his customer’s inability to grasp the quality of an object from the Haute époque:xliv ‘it’s from the ninth.’

  The waves washed ashore in a sweet and mellow way, not too dissimilarly from the conversation taking place.

  They looked like a book-cover to Lambertini, who felt that he was holding the precious, invisible book in his hand. The swimmers lay even further away, their voices could no longer be heard, and one could only see their gestures, as though it was a series of muted paintings. That moment already felt like the memory of a distant past, and the world assumed the slow rhythm of memory.

  ‘Keep reading, Professor!’

  ‘The portion of the earth which is inhabited is reported to be estimated at a hundred years’ march, that is to say, eighty years for the countries inhabited by Gog and Magog, sons of Japheth, son of Noah, a region (Siberia) which, situated at the northern extremities of the earth, is bounded by the sea of darkness. Fourteen years are required for the countries occupied by the Blacks, which comprise all that is beyond Mogreb, (Western Barbary), and extend along the same ocean.

  ‘And finally, the six remaining years’ march are required for the countries of Northern Africa, Egypt, Syria, Arabia, Persia, the land of the Turks, that of the Khazars and of the Franks, China, India, Abyssinia, the country of the Selavonians, that of Rome, as far as the great city of Rome, and other countries; in one word, all the countries occupied by infidels.’xlv

  ‘Africa has taught me that space is an immense proposition,’ Lambertini said, melancholically.

  ‘Well, that’s exactly the same lesson reading imparts,’ the Professor muttered in a low voice.

  ‘Do you think you’ll discover something here?’ Lambertini asked, growing annoyed.

  ‘He had stood up and was waving strange signals to the bathers out at sea as they bobbed up and down.’

  ‘Why didn’t Khosrow’s armies reach these shores?’

  ‘It appears that the entire Persian army vanished on one occasion while crossing the desert between Egypt and Cyrenaica.’

  ‘Do you think we’ll share their fate?’ Lambertini asked, his tone seri
ous, as though subjecting himself to a difficult trial: world-wide war was at their door. It was as though he was petitioning a saint inside an empty church.

  ‘I don’t know anything about war,’ the Professor answered, lowering his gaze.

  ‘Caution is cowardly.’

  ‘Yet arrogance is a sin.’

  ‘There you go: drop it all into the hands of the army… Picture yourself as a Greek hiding inside his Justinian walls as he sees Khosrow’s armies on their way. A picture as strange as the surrounding plain, where five hundred people lived, at most, as if it was one of history’s theatres. But of course: the desire to miniaturise an entire library in your notebook is a similar game to the one they played in those times, which involved putting everything in a single place, just like they did here.’

  ‘It seems that during the Christian era the citadel was home to an important movement of heretics.’xlvi

  ‘The stones are characters themselves. I tried to explain that to Lozzi.’

  ‘Is that the blonde?’

  ‘Occasionally, I feel as though I was the sun,’ Lambertini said, ‘who rises alone each morning, looks at the world, observes the ruins of times, and then vanishes, still alone. Do you think I’ve stretched that metaphor too far?’

  ‘Anyone used to reading isn’t surprised by much.’

  ‘I’ve never been able to find an answer to this question: what do you wish to see when you open your eyes? If you were to answer that question I assume you would say a library as big as the world, everything is inside books.’

  ‘What has already existed anyway, time resides within books, that’s not much of a discovery.’

  ‘Nothing, that’s what I see.’

  ‘What about the rest of you?’ one of the ladies in the sea shouted, ‘Aren’t you coming in?’

  ‘The landscape’s beauty, with the Greek temples’ white ruins, the Justinian walls, Khosrow’s shadow, the Christian heretics, the Arab invaders, the mausoleums carved out of porous stone on the shores, the theatre buried in the hills, etc., etc., the landscape’s beauty is a bookish beauty.’ Lambertini leaned his head over. ‘Tell me, did you like that last thought at least?’