The Fourth Shore

by Alessandro Spina

  It seemed that tall, self-assured man was agonizing over something. He moved his arms, as though he was talking to someone – but there was nobody in front of him.

  He sat back down. He shut his eyes. Then once again, without opening his eyes, he raised his arms, like a clown or a bronze statue whose arms are always up in the air:

  ‘Keep reading, Professor!’

  ‘It is night, so arise, because the night is when lovers talk,

  Crossing the threshold of Friendship’s door.

  The night shuts all doors wherever it finds them,

  All except for Friendship’s door, which stays open at night.’

  ‘Naturally, God is the friend in question.’ the Professor added in a hushed tone.

  Lambertini made an irritated gesture.

  ‘Of course! I was just waiting for you to teach me that! Everything here speaks of God, the space, the emptiness, the sky, time, and all the history that burned to ashes…’

  Yet he then resumed his inquisitive stance.

  ‘Where did we get to? Are we still in the eleventh century or have we gone further?’

  He was holding some sand in his hand, which he slowly allowed to slip out of his fist, looking distracted. The Professor thought he was looking at an anthropomorphised hourglass.

  ‘Who knows?’ the latter said, somewhat embarrassedly. ‘It’s by Abu-Sa’id Abul-Khayr,xlvii but I don’t really know who he is.’

  ‘So we’ve gotten lost then!’ Lambertini concluded, mockingly. ‘We don’t know where we are anymore!’ and he raised his hands into the air again, like a blind man.

  During that afternoon, after the ladies had flicked through all their magazines (‘and scored a few points,’ as Lieutenant Rossi said, being a young man who knew a thing or two, having been born with the mind of an adult, just like an elf), the semi-naked ladies – some of whom were wearing straw hats, others wore brightly-coloured veils – all allowed the Professor to speak. One needed to reshuffle the cards in order to keep their husbands entertained: there were fifteen people and the scene was composed of several juxtaposed planes, some of which were secret, while others were singular or dual, if not plural.

  They were walking along the coast, heading west.

  ‘After the death of Alexander the Great, when his empire crumbled, it was Ptolemy II Philadelphusxlviii who gave the city the name of Ptolemais.’

  ‘What century was that, Professor?’ Lambertini interjected in an authoritative tone.

  ‘The third century before Christ.’

  ‘We’ve got a long way to go!’ Mrs Lozzi exclaimed, shaking her sandal, which was covered in wet sand, ‘to get to the present day…’ she explained to her friend.

  ‘It prospered during the Roman era…’

  ‘Why don’t you tell us a little about the monuments? Let us leave history to the side for now, it’s always the same,’ Mrs Lozzi said, bursting out in a laugh.

  Lambertini laughed too, but he appeared distracted.

  The Professor picked up his pace, as Rossi put it, whispering into a comrade’s ear, and sped through the classical era as though driving a Fiat.

  ‘Then the Vandals laid it to waste.’

  ‘What was there to destroy?’ Mrs Lozzi asked, looking at the bare landscape, where there was nothing beside the sky, sea and hills save for a few scattered hovels, some palm trees, and finally the lighthouse, which stood behind them atop a rocky promontory, like some solitary romantic character.

  ‘Then, well, Justinian came and raised some new walls,’ Lambertini concluded, as though talking to someone he’d met just the previous day and to whom he was now re-explaining himself.

  ‘Ptolemais was marked on all the ancient maps, even Muhammad al-Idrisi’s,’xlix the Professor announced, seizing Lambertini’s attention.

  ‘Are those the Justinian walls?’ Mrs Lozzi asked.

  ‘Don’t confuse those, signora, those are ours, we had them built in the early days of the occupation, when the revolt had broken out, almost twenty years ago.’

  ‘Using old stones, however!’ Mrs Lozzi exclaimed, who was keen to chat with the Major.

  They had arrived in front of a mausoleum, which was quadrangular, and hailed from the Hellenic era. It was situated just a few steps from the sea.

  ‘The frieze is Doric,’ the Professor said.

  ‘What about the base?’ Mrs Lozzi asked, who was increasingly fond of that long walk along the coast and through the annals of history: perhaps she had a third itinerary in mind.

  ‘The base,’ the Professor replied, ‘is a square piece of calcareous stone.’

  There were Greek tombs which had been hollowed out of the rock everywhere, with the names of the deceased still faintly visible. There were also numerous shards of unlaboured – yet nevertheless stylised – rock that rose naked out of the sand.

  Having retraced their steps and walked towards the interior, they reached the city’s ancient gate with its imposing square pillars; the gate stood between ‘nothing and nothing,’ as Mrs Lozzi put it, sounding ever more knowledgeable. They even visited the ruins of two Christian basilicas and the ancient Roman forum.

  At which point, the entire group’s cheer picked up – as if they’d suddenly reawakened and, having chased tiredness away, all the fatigue caused by the heat and all those thoughts, which were headed in god knows what direction – and they descended to a lower level. There was a vast cistern underneath the old Roman forum, which resembled an underground city, ‘it features twenty-one vaulted galleries,’ the Professor elaborated, ‘which are five metres tall, thirteen of which,’ he added, ‘are eighteen metres long and are lined up from east to west; while the others are situated on their sides, four one one and four on another, all eight of which are lined up from north to south and are fifty-two metres long. Inside the vaults, spaced out at regular intervals, are cylindrical openings which were used to air out the galleries as well as draw water…’

  ‘The light!’ Lambertini yelled.

  The group had scattered childishly around the galleries, some were running, others were hiding, others still were talking in whispers: their excitement was at its peak, and all those lights and shadows seem to lie at the very heart of the drama’s plot.

  Suddenly, all heard Lambertini’s booming voice yell from one of the galleries’ cavernous interiors:

  ‘Keep reading, Professor!’

  The latter recited the following from memory: ‘When the time for the prayer arrives, I perform a copious ablution and go to the place where I wish to pray. There I sit until my limbs are rested, then I stand up, the Kaaba straight in front of me, the carpet under my feet, Paradise on my right, Hell on my left, and the Angel of Death behind me; and I think that this prayer is my last.’l

  xxxviii Whenever Spina mentions ‘the city’, it is meant to indicate Benghazi.

  xxxix J. Goethe. Goethe’s Works, Volume III (Philadelphia: G. Barrie, 1885), p.119.

  xl Anonymous, Modern Universal History, Containing the Most Genuine Life of Mohammed, Vol II (G. Kearsley, 1762), p.403.

  xli Thomas Patrick Hughes, A Dictionary of Islam: Being a Cyclopaedia of the Doctrines, Rites, Ceremonies, and Customs, Together with the Technical and Theological Terms, of the Muhammadan Religion (London: W. H. Allen, 1885), p.324-325.

  xlii John William Mackail, Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology (London: Longmans, Green, 1906), p.289.

  xliii Sayings of the Prophet’s companions.

  xliv Haute époque is a term employed by antiquarians to refer to furniture and art dating to the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the 17th century. Not to be confused with Belle époque (1870-1914).

  xlv The Atheneum, Issue No. 520, Saturday, October 14, 1837.

  xlvi The followers of Arius (256–336) who was born in Ptolemais.

  xlvii Abu-Sa’id Abul-Khayr (967-1049): Persian Sufi poet, often compared to Rumi.

  xlviii Son of Ptolemy I, one of Alexander’s companions and the founder of the Ptolemaic dynasty
in Egypt.

  xlix Muhammad al-Idrisi (1100–1165): Arab Muslim geographer from Ceuta.

  l As-Sirāt, the bridge all Muslims must cross to reach Paradise.

  8

  MAIDAN AL MILHli

  ‘A man can only save himself through solitude and he only loses himself within that solitude.’

  ‘Why is that?’ a lawyer who was sat at the same table asked in an amused tone. They were at a café on Piazza del Re, which was once Piazza del Sale, a desolate square where a mountain of salt had reigned supreme prior to the Italian colonization, and where the delightful, shady Municipal Gardens now stood, whose beautiful oleanders were now in bloom.

  ‘Because only within solitude can a man fix the co-ordinates of conversation, whereas he would otherwise find himself trapped by the presence of the other. This is why marriages usually end in disasters,’ Fontanarosa said, taking his wife’s hand in his and planting a kiss on it, ‘loyalty doesn’t offend us, but following someone else’s co-ordinates, at which point – and I have no idea as to why this happens, perhaps the act of living together wears out both parties – these co-ordinates become only more restrictive over time and in fact they stiffen. There are times when I feel as though I might as well bid my willpower goodbye given that Anita has reduced me to an automaton. Conversations wear us out, whereas dreams nourish us, being solitary in nature.’

  ‘My husband is rambling…’ Mrs Fontanarosa, who was entirely unimpressed with her husband’s conversation, said. ‘He’s been talking his whole life and he still hasn’t taken a single step in the right direction…’

  ‘But you also said that a man can lose himself within that solitude…’ the lawyer observed. He was due to attend a hearing at the courthouse the following day in a case involving a couple, and he was wondering whether that officer might furnish him with some insights, if only to heighten the illusion, like at a theatre.

  ‘Of course,’ Fontanarosa said, his face growing sombre, ‘all because in the absence of someone else’s authority, the smallest mistake can swell to outrageous proportions and completely overwhelm one.’

  ‘My co-ordinates are good for something then!’ his wife interjected, wholly dispassionately.

  ‘Any mathematician will tell you that the tiniest error in one’s initial calculations can give rise to horrendous discrepancies.’

  ‘But I’ll be right there to fish you out of that mess,’ Mrs Fontanarosa proclaimed, placing her hand on her husband’s. She was wearing a blue crotchet blouse, which was softly wrapped around her figure in a spiral.

  The lawyer leaned his disappointed frame back: all conjugal drama resembled themselves, and yet none ever overlapped. Perhaps the Fontanarosas had cheated on one another, like the couple waiting for him at the courthouse, instead of sitting there with him at that café – in the evening, under a starry sky.

  Had the betrayal been caused by the boredom that had turned all to rot? Had it been caused by dreams? His wife was a woman he could put up with. I know how to deal with it, he calmly confessed. He was a wiry man who spoke in an easygoing manner. Whenever he noticed the possibility of a betrayal – of having an adventure, so to speak – he never hesitated. Out of boredom? Was he chasing a dream too? Not even close: knowing that he was an irremediably secondary character on the stage of life – life being a harsh school – if any opportunity whatsoever presented itself, he never had the time to think it through: his a priori assumption was that he could not miss out in it. ‘I’ll have all the time to think about it,’ he would tell one of his colleagues, in whom he confided, ‘later on, if only out of remorse.’

  He appeared to be a man who was ready to sign a pact with the devil: in fact, his adventures with a few loose women had given him the illusion of the devil’s presence, which had already altered his typically colourless complexion. The judges he worked with apparently hadn’t even noticed his psychological turmoil – let alone felt sorry for him.

  He envied those officers their uniforms, as though they were magical capes.

  He was talking passionately with someone whose features were uniquely blessed: he wasn’t intent on subjugating her mind, but rather her body – or at least figure out her secret price. Thus, he wasn’t sitting there waiting for the devil to offer him a choice of prey, but that the devil would make him worthy of receiving such a prize. No kind of possession is diabolical, only the vainly awaited metaphor he was expecting was diabolical; thus, each new adventure left him feeling disappointed: once it had vanished, he found himself staring into a mirror exactly like he had before he’d embarked on that adventure.

  ‘It’s as if he was the one who wanted to be someone’s prey,’ the friend in whom he confided bitingly remarked, confiding in his own turn to a group of colleagues assembled in the courthouse’s lively corridor, as they hurried from one hearing to the next.

  li Arabic: Salt Square: a square in Benghazi named after the salt-sellers who used to congregate there.

  9

  SHARKS

  One fine day, the nuns of the Sisters of Charity of the Immaculate Conception chased all the men out of their noble institute on the Corso Italia. While in previous years they had tolerated their presence up to the fifth grade, it had dawned on them that fatal liaisons could occur even at that age, and thus they had decided to come to the rescue, as a wit put it, ‘Maybe they happened to read some books that, while not being necessarily harsher than the Bible, knew enough about sin to demonstrate that its influence could corrupt ages previously deemed too innocent; only the devil exists, alongside his trusted servant, free will, which serves to keep one fully informed of sin.’

  It was still summer, and thus the ‘sudden attack had been carried out in the absence of all the schoolchildren: maybe they were afraid the children would rise up in revolt.’

  A tireless chatterer, he had been walking with a friend to Piazza XXVIII Ottobre,lii on which the Governor’s severe palace abutted, with its oval garden that sloped down towards a pool, at the centre of which was an ochre-coloured obelisk made of porous stone. Like horses racing around a track, the two friends walked around the oval garden despite the sun having reached its most blinding heights. At the top of the obelisk lay a bronze sculpture of a silphiumliii plant, just like on the face of ancient coins, a plant that has since been engulfed by the shadows of time: according to the ancient Greeks, it was that distant province’s chief source of wealth.

  The ostracisation decreed by the nuns proved difficult on Gioacchino. His father was Commendatore Clemente Vanzi, who was both stern and generous. No charitable organization had ever knocked on his door in vain – and it was a well-known fact that the Sisters tirelessly offered their help to the needy. This ensured that Gioacchino was treated with some special regard. Not that the grades on his report cards had risen thanks to that situation, in fact sometimes he was given grades that felt like a slap in the face. Nevertheless, he was constantly surrounded by a patient and warm environment, as though he was a part of the convent’s big family. Gioacchino had been enrolled at the establishment run by the Brothers of the Christian Schools,liv which had just moved to its new premises, which were a gleaming white, and militaresque.

  He found congenial classmates there, and he quickly appeared to have been bitten by the conversational bug, despite being usually considered taciturn at home. Whenever his mother went to inquire after his educational performance at school, she would be surprised when the teachers told her that sure, he wasn’t doing badly at all, but he was an incorrigible chatterbox who constantly distracted all the other boys.

  ‘Are you sure you’re talking about my son?’

  It seemed as if those who considered themselves to be religious thought that talking was their exclusive prerogative. Scolded by his mother for his behaviour, the boy burst out: ‘They’re the chatterboxes!’

  Nevertheless, the incident was subsequently avoided, given that Gioacchino didn’t appear to be too ill at ease there and his teachers didn’t seem to treat him too harshl
y. As for his mother, she didn’t agonise over the issue, given that maybe they were all chatterboxes.

  Occasionally she wondered why Gioacchino was so taciturn at home and yet so irrepressible at school, as the headmaster had put it, a religious man lacking any charisma and who was so boring that even she didn’t like him. She didn’t mention anything to her husband, who didn’t tolerate any problems in the family milieu and disdained any and all psychological difficulties.

  ‘In any case, it seems that his initiation rite – his passage from feminine society to male society – didn’t go as planned: the boy doesn’t seem to want to accept the Brothers as models to aspire to.’ His mother was at the hairdresser’s for her usual hair straightening session and was talking to a friend of hers. ‘I’m being careful not to annoy him too much: he’ll be in middle school next year, and maybe he’ll meet someone there who can shine a light on a plausible path for him in life.’

  ‘What about his father?’

  ‘My husband? Who would dare to want to be anything like him? One would need Hercules’ strength and King David’s boldness to match his heights… My husband would probably laugh the whole thing off, he’s such an inimitable character. The secret behind a great businessman is his faith in his own irreplaceability,’ she added, making a gesture with her hand that demanded obedience, just as when a singer put their hand on their breast at the opera. ‘Men are obsessed by role models: some don’t find any, like my son; others are simply hypnotised by themselves, and view themselves as incomparable paragons of excellence, just like my husband. Whereas we women have a carefree approach to life: the only role models we seek are in the pages of fashion magazines where models display the clothes they are wearing, and not their world views!’