23
AT THE SCAEAN GATE
1940
The Teutonic dream seemed to be drawing nearer: ‘The gates of Paris have been flung open,’ Major Carli said when they were already back in their bedroom.
‘And to think,’ his wife said, ‘that I’ve been dreaming the exact same thing for years now: it’s true, we wanted to go there by train, but the Germans have gone there with their cannons: that said, they still got there before we ever did!’ she angrily concluded.
She was wearing a pink nightgown.
‘It’s a matter of organization…’ the Major said. An athletic man, even if only of slightly above average height – hairy as a monkey, as his wife put it – and with a baritone-like voice. ‘Well, now you’ll see how our Duce, the giant, carries us there himself: war is at our gates.’
He was wearing flannel pyjamas with blue stripes on a bed of white, and his feet were bare.
‘Our heralded entrance into the war. But what are we at the gates of?’
The curtains had been parted to make way for the tranquil, African night.
‘At the gates of what?’ the Major replied, stretching his arms. Yet it wasn’t a sign of resignation, in fact he looked like he was concentrating, gathering his strength, like a diver before his great leap.
‘The abyss.’ she said.
‘So what will the outcome of war be?xcii Will we really WIN like all those gloomy graffiti on the walls are saying?’
‘Maybe we’ll end up winning by accident,’ the Major replied, while scratching his back. ‘The outcome of a war is sometimes as uncertain as an opera’s opening night: maybe the soprano will hit all the wrong notes, or the crowd might be in a bad mood.’
His wife pointed her index finger straight ahead, even though there was nothing there, and the wall in front of her was bare, nothing except a few old cracks.
‘Divine Providence seems to be in a bad mood, and it’ll take this patch of Africa away from us, and we’ll be tossed into the sea: back from whence we came,’ he concluded, rotating his raised arms.
‘If we lose the war,’ the Major said, his voice made hoarse by tears – he was a fine actor – ‘what will upset me the most is that I’ll become a prey for the victors, possibly some English lord.’
‘Oh, no, no: I don’t like them one bit,’ she retorted, with a touch of disdain.
‘I can’t for the life of me imagine who his successor will be…’
‘You’re such a fool,’ Carolina said, tugging at her husband’s hair, bending his head forward and planting a kiss on it: ‘it’ll be your own ghost.’
‘Of course… feelings are important – but so are our senses. Do ghosts have senses? Do you know if they do?’
The Major switched off the main light: the bedside lamp was already on.
‘Ghosts inspire so many upsetting images that our minds experience an orgasm, or something like that – all explanations concerning ghosts are a little confused.’
‘So,’ the Major said, grabbing a hold of his pillow, ‘does that mean we won’t need beds anymore? Dear me! What I don’t like about being dead is how little space there is inside a tomb – where people are placed on their own,’ he added, disconcerted.
‘You always complained of our little villa, which to be fair isn’t much to look at – and here you are mourning its loss already…’
‘The villa itself may not have been much, but look out of the window and see how vast the sea is, look up at the sky, even though it’s gone dark already. What will I look at once I’m inside my tomb?’
‘Are you afraid?’ Carolina asked, clutching her husband tight to her.
‘Dunno, afraid… When an actor belts out a speech, thundering about how he’s ready to die for his homeland – for an ideal, for his faith, for his wife or his beloved, or for honour – I instead wink at him conspiratorially in the dark: maybe he’s afraid, but he’s reciting those verses – or bits of prose – with such conviction that I, well, I believe him, while he doesn’t even believe himself. Together we make up a hero: but it takes two of us.’
‘So I must have two men… to make a single one?’
‘I see no homeland other than our conjugal bed, where you are, Carolina – and I’m ready to defend myself from my enemies right here instead of out there in the colonial desert!’
‘Am I worth all of Paris, darling? Tell me.’
The coupled remained locked in their mute embrace.
‘That said…’
‘I like my private life,’ the Major said, pointing his finger at himself, ‘which I would manage any which way I pleased.’
‘I’d like to hear you talk like this when we’re out strolling along the shore,’ Carolina replied, stroking her consort’s hairy chest with the flat palm of her hand.
‘If we win the war, Divine Providence will clear out path,’ the Major said, making strange, mysterious gestures, like priests sometimes do, ‘and we’ll make this into our biggest and richest colony, even greater than Rome’s Universal Empire.’
‘Will we have to talk in Latin?’ Carolina asked in an alarmed tone, laying her head against her husband’s navel, or the centre of the world as she put it, whereas it was an obligatory pit stop in her explorations of her husband’s rugged body.
‘I like dreams with lots of sounds in them,’ the Major explained, feeling a little ticklish.
‘At the opera, all you need are a few feet on the stage in order to recreate a castle, a city, or even the entire universe: why can’t we be happy with our little slice of Africa, why must we have it all?’
There was no answer.
Carolina insisted:
‘Why do we have to enter the war? Let others take care of it. I would be happy to make do with this bed right here.’
‘You don’t mean to suggest you want to deny the Duce his triumphal entry into Paris!’ the Major exclaimed at the top of his lungs, as though he was in the barracks at that moment, and was addressing a regiment.
‘Oh, right, the Duce – all our destinies are in his hands. Oh my god, Ettore, he’s your rival: are you going to kill him?’
‘Shh! There are spies everywhere.’
‘Under the bed?’ Carolina leaned out and looked at the floor, where there was a cheap carpet, from Monza.
‘I’m not willing to betray my oath,’ the Major declared with bitter conviction.
Carolina squeezed herself against him, desperate.
‘And what if everyone betrays him, darling, then what will you do? Will you betray him too?’
‘Sure, but I’ll laugh about it too.’
‘Everyone will laugh!’
‘Not at all! There are always heroes of freedom, democracy, good, evil, dreams, mud… but they always espouse something.’
‘And what do you gain by laughing about it?’
The Major held his wife’s dear, tiny face in his hands.
‘Dignity, Carolina,’ he said, with a firm tone, ‘I like the heroes who leave for war a little later than the others, reticently, as though they were scared, whereas their brothers march off, ardent with enthusiasm – who then quickly fall back if things start to go wrong, and who do so slowly out of fear they’ll get pinched and forced to foot the bill.’
‘You mean: in order not to have any regrets.’
‘If our bodies understand one another, it’s because our minds paved the path.’
‘Don’t forget about the heart,’ Carolina said, slapping her bejewelled hand on her husband’s chest, just like in those paintings of manneristic nudes, all the jewels were fake though. The Major often said that he liked to clutch Carolina’s thin wrists until he could almost feel them snap. ‘A pure pleasure,’ one of the ladies present during one of these confessions said. ‘What do you mean ‘pure’, my dear lady, what do you mean by ‘pure’?’ the Major had replied, almost screaming, convulsing as though he were rowing.
‘That said…’ Carolina reflected, ‘it seems truly miserable to be running after the Germans
to get to Paris on time: I would have preferred to get there by train, which tend to go fast enough as it is, but not as fast as bombs, and I would have preferred it if we’d paid for the ticket.’
‘Paying for your ticket in today’s world means paying in blood! Do you mean to suggest that we are preparing to commit a shameful act? But this is exactly what goes on at the stock market: everyone chases after the most lucrative companies…’ and the Major raised his arm in the air as though he were a stockbroker.
Carolina shrugged her shoulders.
‘You don’t seem all that sure to me, the comparison is a bit forced…’
‘You know, there are stories, events, characters, nations, worlds…’
‘All right: and then?’
‘…that drop into our individual lives like novels. Now our lives have been thrown into a novel that is greater than anything Tolstoy ever wrote and is bombastically entitled The World War.’
The Major sniggered. He had a healthy set of teeth, all white and strong.
‘So long as they leave us our conjugal bed, darling, even if our bed won’t fit on a single page!’ Carolina concluded, dejectedly.
‘The World War will be like the wind in the desert, it will sweep away everything in its path, carrying clouds of sand that it’ll deposit wherever it likes: and I am only one tiny grain of sand among many…’
‘This metaphor’s a little flat too.’
The Major shrugged.
‘You’re a demanding reader,’ he muttered.
‘Highly demanding, darling, just like in between the sheets, chéri. Where I’m never disappointed.’
‘One must go to war the way one goes to the opera: you must imagine that it’s a musical fable. Who goes looking for meaning and logic in operas? What meaning can one of Beethoven’s symphonies truly have?’
‘Do you think they’ve started to play symphonies at opera houses now?’
‘How would I know? After all, you never took me to Paris.’ Carolina complained, peevishly.
‘Why don’t you run off with the Duce? If you do, you’ll be there by tomorrow, and the Führer will be the third wheel, as if Paris was a seedy hotel and the Führer its doorman. But our bed is worth a lot more than Paris, just like Balzac’s city is infinitely richer than the modern city we see today.’
‘Here we go! Again with Balzac…’
‘All you need to do is think of yourself as a character in a book and you’ll never be able to get out of it. The World War is a novel in which we’ve been trapped: our destinies are inside its pages.’
The Major switched on the radio on top of the bedside table. The sounds of a well-known, heart-wrenching song began to spill into the room: One day you’ll come back a … – which was almost immediately interrupted so that an announcer could read out the following public announcement:
‘At this great moment in our Homeland and Nation’s history, it is necessary for foreigners and the unmindful alike to realise these simple and definitive facts:
‘First, for the past eighteen years, Mussolini’s Italy has conducted a peaceful political agenda – obviously, necessarily based on protecting its own interests – albeit one that was based on a far superior outlook on Europe’s problems and interests.
‘Second, Mussolini’s agenda was either directly or subversively opposed by both France and Great Britain. Their opposition, which has been so petty and small-minded, lasted for the entirety of these eighteen years.
‘Third, when the Italian people asked for lands to till, they were offered deserts instead. When Mussolini said that he wanted to resolve the Abyssinian question, they called it a bluff.
‘Fourth, everything that is Italian has been ostentatiously devalued by both the French and the British, both in our internal politics as well as on the international stage. To hear the French and the British speak, the Italian people should have been dead and buried for the past eighteen years. Yet today, by God, the Italian people are more alive and vital than ever before!
‘Fifth, the Italian people have reached the end of their patience. Things have gone too far: enough is enough. The Italian people destroyed the Habsburgs…’xciii
‘However…’ the Major said, and with a single motion, like slashing at something with his sword, he silenced the radio.
Silence re-emerged, like a shadow.
‘I’ll do my duty in the war – even the most stupid of men manage to do that, thereby at least reassuring themselves if no one else.’
‘Don’t stick your neck out too much, don’t overdo it.’
‘If I run away when the shots start firing, will you welcome me in your arms?’
‘I would always prefer to see you running forward. I don’t care for watching men’s backs!’ Carolina added, screaming this time. ‘Darling, do you remember that time when we were ready to set off for the ville lumière, and then, because of your mother’s pneumonia we had to settle for Ancona instead and were so gloomy about it?’
‘Are you looking for gratitude?’
‘Not in the slightest: but…’ and she swayed her head as though following some tune, ‘we’re stuck in a circle, your every movement is matched by mine and the distance never varies.’
‘By circle you mean our conjugal bed, right? You know, all the other officers think that victory is in our grasp – and it’ll be lightning-quick too: three months at the most, the pessimists say.’
‘You can’t rule out the enemy committing suicide, for their own, enigmatic reasons. If they kill themselves, we’ll take their place and rushing over we’ll yell about how we’ve won. What is truly embarrassing, however…’ and here Carolina lowered her voice, speaking in a hushed, confidential tone: ‘is that at the same time that a Germanic tribe is invading Gaul, we the August Roman Empire, resurrected by the Duce, are running after the barbarians instead of defending our transalpine province. What atonement will be demanded of us as a result? How will the Roman Emperors welcome the fallen down in Hades?’
‘The guilt will add to the frozen depths of the North, where we cannot take root, the sun makes us perpetually innocent, it washes our sins away like the confessional.’ the Major remarked, stretching.
‘You know… what I’ll miss most when you’re gone is having someone to talk to – with either my mind or my body,’ Carolina added, stroking her slender foot against his misshapen one.
‘But you’ll hear of extraordinary tales.’
‘You seem impatient to leave for the front. Are you getting bored here with me?’
Carolina distanced herself from her husband. The latter tentatively approached her and lay his head on her navel.
‘Our libretto is our bed. All that’s left is obedience, Carolina, the act of delegating one’s destiny to others.’
‘But that means you’re a Fascist, you want the Duce’s will to guide your destiny, you want him to take care of everything.’
‘Except making love to you.’ the Major said in a tender tone.
A pause.
‘These pyjamas, your nightgown, they’re screens and cloaks, they turn the entire scene into a labyrinth.’
‘I get the feeling that even when it comes to music you listen to it as if you were winding your way through a maze.’
‘Naturally.’
‘You can’t undermine everything I say by claiming that it’s obvious,’ Carolina said, spitefully switching the radio on the bedside table on again.
‘…the Italian people are the best judges of their own interests. All the Franco-English efforts, which to this day have tried to set themselves up as paladins against Italian aspirations by putting forward the various pros and cons of the situation in our new Europe, simply cannot be taken into consideration. The Axis of Rome-Berlin will dictate its own peace with the sharp blade of its victorious armies…’
‘That’s right,’ the officer commented, dismissing the voice and switching the radio off.
Then he scratched his knee – which, during one of her gatherings with her frie
nds, Carolina had called rock-like.
‘Talking helps to colour everything in: words trigger metamorphoses, like songs do.’
‘Oh… the power of artists: they make the libretto unintelligible by overlaying with sumptuous, seductive sounds. Why is every libretto so wretchedly gloomy – including the Duce’s speeches? Do you love me, Carolina?’
‘Who would I talk to otherwise?’
‘With my mute ashes.xciv Or rather, my deaf ashes,’ and here the Major raised his voice, ‘when I die I don’t want to hear any speeches or chatter at all, not even the victory speech in Piazza Venezia.’xcv
‘And what about me?’
‘Oh, we’ll let our bodies do the talking. As for our ashes, their intertwined shadows will talk to the darkness, and they’ll dance for all eternity.’
‘A fine thing to say, but just how do you produce shadows in the dark? The metaphor doesn’t work on an optical level.’
The wind, which had been blowing harshly all afternoon, carrying clouds of dust with it, finally died down.
‘How silent the night is, even the dogs are quiet. What could that mean? Are those dogs’ oracles heralding extraordinary events to come? Caesar’s death? Or is it that even dogs know when war draws near, that it will break out on the following day… and so they sit staring at the moon in silence, as though they wanted to run off to that distant satellite, and once there, start barking at the hubbub of war shaking the Earth down below?’
xcii Lines spoken by Amneris to Aida. Verdi.
xciii Author’s Note: Gli Annali dell’Africa Italiana, Volume 3, Issue 3.
xciv Author’s Note: ‘mute ashes’ or ‘cenere muto,’ from ‘In morte del fratello Giovanni’/‘On The Death of His Brother Giovanni’ a sonnet written by Ugo Foscolo in 1803.
xcv Square in front of Mussolini’s headquarters in Rome.
24
EVERYDAY LIFE
The Fourth Shore Page 37