The Watcher and Other Stories

by Italo Calvino

  Rather, sticking to texts that, even if you’re just leafing through them, always offer something that grips you, the Communist Amerigo Ormea took up Marx. And in the Youthful Writings he found the passage that goes:

  ...Man’s universality appears, practically speaking, in that same universality that makes all nature man’s inorganic body, both because nature is (1) an immediate means of subsistence, and because it is (2) the matter, the object, and the instrument of man’s vital activity. Nature is man’s inorganic body precisely because it is not his human body. To say man lives on nature means that nature is his body, with which he must constantly progress, in order not to die....

  Swiftly, he was convinced Marx could mean also this: once outside the society that makes men become things, the totality of things—nature and industry—becomes human, and even the handicapped man, the Cottolengo man (or, in the worst hypothesis, simply man), is restored to the rights of the human race as he makes use of this total body, this extension of his body: the richness of what exists (also “inorganic, spiritual nature,” he read earlier, perhaps through a residue of Hegelianism, that is to say, reasoned nature, as in science and art), what has become finally a general object of human conscience and human life. Can it also mean that “Communism” (Amerigo tried to make the word sound as if it were being uttered for the first time, so that it would again be possible to think, beneath the noun’s husk, of this dream of a death and resurrection of nature, a Utopia’s treasure buried beneath the foundations of “scientific” doctrine), that Communism will restore sound legs to the lame, and eyesight to the blind? Will the lame man then have many, many legs at his disposal to run with, so many that he won’t notice if one of his own is missing? That the blind man will have so many antennae to understand the world that he will forget he has no eyes?

  The telephone rang. Lia asked: “Well, where have you been all morning?”

  Amerigo had explained nothing to her, and he had no intention of doing so. Not for any special reason, but because there were some things he talked about with Lia, and some things he never mentioned! and this was one of the latter. “There’s an election on, you know,” was all he said.

  “Voting takes two minutes. You just go and vote. I’ve already been.”

  (For whom she had voted was a question Amerigo didn’t bother to ask himself, and to ask her would have cost him an effort, it meant mixing one kind of problem—his relationship with her—and another—his relationship with politics. However, this silence weighed on his conscience, both because of the party—every Communist’s duty was to make “grass-roots” propaganda, and he didn’t even try with his mistress!—and because of her; why did he never talk with her of the things that were most important to him?)

  “Well, I was busy. I’m one of the men who sit behind the table at the polls,” he said, feeling very annoyed.

  “Ah. I only asked because I wanted to plan this afternoon.”

  “Nothing doing. I have to go back there.”

  “Again?”

  “I’ve got myself involved.” And he decided to add: “The party, you know....”

  (Amerigo’s being a Communist meant no more to Lia than if he were the fan of one football team or another. Was this right?)

  “Why don’t you find somebody else to take your place?”

  “I told you: when you start, you have to stay to the end. It’s the law.”

  “Smart, weren’t you?”

  “Hm.”

  She was expert in making him nervous, this girl.

  “It’s the last day of your week. Oh, you know. You remember, I told you? The week of your horoscope...”

  “Lia, what’s my horoscope got to do with...”

  “A decisive week in your love life, other activities not advised.”

  “That magazine’s horoscope!”

  “It’s the best; it’s never wrong.”

  They began one of their usual arguments, caused by the fact that, instead of saying “Horoscopes are all lies,” which would have been natural for him, Amerigo became involved—thanks to his habit of looking at things from the adversary’s point of view and his aversion to expressing obvious notions—in a technical analysis of astrology, trying to prove to her that the very people who believed in the stars’ influence should find it impossible to trust horoscopes in newspapers and magazines.

  “No, listen: the birth hour isn’t only distinguished by the position of the Sun but...”

  “What do I care? For you and me, those horoscopes always hit the nail on the head!”

  “You’re irrational, Lia, you’re always irrational.” Amerigo was growing angry. “If you would just look at the planets with some logic. Take Pluto, which is supposed to...”

  “I’m basing what I say on experience, not on talk,” Lia answered furiously. There was no understanding each other.

  After the phone call, Amerigo sat down at the table and began to eat, the book open before him, and at the same time he tried to resume his interrupted thinking. He had come to a point, an opening tiny as a pinprick, through which he could see a human world of a structure so different that even nature’s injustices lost their importance, became negligible, and there was an end to that struggle for mastery which lies in charity, between those who offer it and those who receive it.... But no, he couldn’t find his place again, it was hopeless, he had lost the thread; it was always the same with that girl! Just the sound of her voice seemed enough to alter all the proportions around him, so whatever he happened to argue about with Lia (anything at all, some piece of nonsense, horoscopes, Colonel Townsend, the best diet for colitis victims) became of all-consuming importance, and he was engulfed body and soul in a quarrel which then continued as a soliloquy, an inner rage, accompanying him for the rest of the day.

  He realized that he had also lost his appetite.

  “Irrational, that’s what she is, that girl!” he repeated to himself, growing angry all over again, knowing, at the same time, Lia could be no other way and if she were some other way it would be as if she didn’t exist. “Irrational, prelogical!”—and he felt a double pleasure, reviving his own suffering at Lia’s way of thinking, and applying to it, cruelly, aggressively, the most elementary logic.

  “Prelogical, prelogical!” In his imaginary argument, he went on flinging this word in Lia’s face, and now he regretted not having said it to her: “Prelogical! You know what you are? You’re prelogical!” And he would have wanted her to understand at once what he meant, or rather, no: he wanted her not to understand so he could explain to her at length what he meant by “prelogical” and so she would be offended and so he could go on calling her “prelogical” and, at the same time, explain to her clearly why she had no reason to be offended, on the contrary, why “prelogical” in her case was the right word for her, because when she heard herself called “prelogical” she was offended as if “prelogical” were an insult, whereas instead...

  He threw down his napkin, rose from the table, and went to the telephone. He called her. He needed to quarrel again and to say “prelogical” to her, but even before he had said “Hello” Lia said in a low voice: “Sssh... be quiet...”

  Music was coming, muffled, from the other end of the wire. Amerigo had already lost his self-confidence. “Well... what is it?”

  “Sssh...” Lia said, as if she didn’t want to miss a note. “What record is it?” Amerigo asked, just to be saying something.

  “La-la-la... Can’t you hear? I gave you the same one.”

  “Oh, of course...” Amerigo said; he didn’t care. “Listen, I meant to tell you...”

  “Sssh,” Lia whispered, “I want to hear the end....”

  “You think I called you up to listen to a record over the phone? If that’s what I wanted, I could listen to one of my own without getting up from the table!”

  There was a silence at the other end of the wire; the flow of music had also stopped. Then Lia said, slowly: “...Ah. Your own records?”

  Amerigo
realized he had said the worst thing he could have said. He tried, swiftly, to remedy the situation: “Mine... I mean yours, the ones you’ve given me....”

  Too late. “Oh, I know... you don’t care who gave them to you....”

  This was an old question, unbearable for Amerigo. He had certain records, so what? They meant nothing to him, but once, for some reason he had told Lia he never tired of listening to them; nothing wrong with that; but when Lia learned, from a thoughtless remark of his, that the records had been given to him by one Maria Pia, she had blown the thing up in such a disagreeable way that they could never talk about it afterward without quarreling. Then she had given him some new records; and she wanted him to throw away the old ones. Amerigo had said no, on principle; he didn’t care about the records or about Maria Pia, that was all water under the bridge, but he wouldn’t allow objective facts like the music on a record to be linked with subjective ones like his feelings for the person who had given him the record, nor would he admit that he had to explain why he wouldn’t allow this connection: it was an intolerable business, and now it had trapped him once more.

  He was in a hurry, but he couldn’t cut her off without making matters worse. Especially since, this time, she was pretending to say the things he always said: “Oh, I understand, a piece of music is a piece of music, the memory of a person has nothing to do with it...” and he was trying to say the things that ought to please her: “But I listen to the records I like best, I mean the ones you picked out, don’t I?” So he couldn’t tell whether they were still quarreling or not.

  And Lia at a certain point put the record back on, and hummed the tune along with it, and at a certain point, Amerigo, aside, that is to the maid asking if she could clear away, said: “Just a moment, I have to finish the soup!” and then Lia laughed and said: “But you’re mad! Haven’t you finished lunch yet?” And so they said good-by and there was no doubt that they had made peace.

  The thought that preoccupied Amerigo during the main course was this: Hegel was the only one who had understood anything about love. He got up three times before finishing the dish in order to search among his books; but he had none of Hegel’s works in the house, just a few books on Hegel or with chapters on Hegel, and for all his leafing through them between mouthfuls—“The Desire for Desire,” “The Other,” “Recognition”—he couldn’t find the place.

  The telephone rang. It was Lia again. “Listen, I have to talk to you. I made up my mind I wasn’t going to tell you, but I will. No, not over the phone, it’s not something to discuss on the phone. I’m not yet sure, really, I’ll tell you about it when I’m sure, no, I’d better tell you now. It’s something important. I’m afraid it’s yes” (they spoke in clipped phrases: she, because she couldn’t decide to be frank; he, because the maid was in the next room—at one point he went and shut the kitchen door—and also because he was afraid he understood), “no use getting angry, Amerigo darling, if you’re angry, then you must have understood, well, I’m not a hundred per cent sure, but...” In other words, she was trying to tell him she was pregnant.

  There was a chair near the telephone. Amerigo sat down. He didn’t say anything, until Lia finally said: “Hello? Hello?” thinking they had been cut off.

  At times like this Amerigo would have liked to remain calm, master of the situation—he wasn’t a boy any longer!—to put up a reassuring front, a serene, protective presence, and at the same time be cold and lucid, the sort of man who knows what has to be done. Instead, he immediately lost his head. He felt his throat go dry, he couldn’t speak calmly, or think before he spoke. “Oh no, you must be crazy, how can you...” and he was immediately in the grip of rage, a precipitous rage that seemed to want to drive back, into nonbeing, the glimpsed eventuality, the thought that permitted no other thought, the obligation to act, to assume responsibilities, to decide another’s life and one’s own. He went on talking, inveighing: “You tell me like this? You’re so irresponsible! How can you stay calm?” until he provoked her indignant, wounded reaction: “You’re the irresponsible one. No, you’re right: it was crazy of me to tell you. I shouldn’t have said anything, I should have managed alone, and never seen you again!”

  Amerigo knew well that he was calling her “irresponsible” because that was what he wanted to call himself, he was angry only with himself, but at that moment his regret and his guilt were translated into an aversion for the woman in trouble, for that risk that could become an irrevocable presence, that could make an endless future of what now seemed to him a relationship that had already lasted long enough, something finished, relegated to the past.

  At the same time he felt constant remorse for his egoism, for having such a comfortable role compared to hers; and the girl’s courage seemed great to him, sublime, and now his admiration of this courage, the fondness for her uncertainty, so linked to his own, and his certainty that he was after all better than his first hasty reaction made him seem, that he could draw on a reserve supply of mature judgment and responsibility—all this led him to assume a completely different attitude, again with precipitate haste, and say: “No, no, darling, don’t worry, I’m here, I’m beside you, whatever happens...”

  Her voice melted quickly, seeking an expression of consolation. “Listen, after all, if...” And he was already fearing he had gone too far, perhaps making her think him prepared to have a child of hers, so without breaking off his protective pressure, he tried to clarify his intentions. “You’ll see, darling, it’ll be nothing.... I’ll take care of everything, poor sweetheart, don’t worry, in a few days’ time you won’t even remember...”

  At which, from the other end of the wire, came a shrill, almost strident voice: “What are you talking about? What are you going to take care of? What have you got to do with it? The child’s mine.... If I want to have a baby, I’ll have it! I’m not asking you for anything! I never want to see you again! My child will grow up without even knowing who you are!”

  This didn’t mean she really wanted to have the baby; perhaps she only wanted to release a woman’s natural resentment against the facility with which a man does and undoes; but she redoubled Amerigo’s alarm, and he protested: “No, no, you can’t... it isn’t right to have children like that, it’s not being responsible...” until she hung up as he was in mid-sentence.

  “I’ve finished, you can wash up,” he said to the maid. He went back and sat down by the bookcase and thought of when he had been seated there earlier, as if it were a remote time, serene, carefree. Most of all, he felt humiliated. For him, procreation represented, first of all, a defeat of his ideas. Amerigo was an ardent supporter of birth control, even though his party’s attitude on the subject was either agnostic or hostile. Nothing shocked him so much as the ease with which people multiply, and the more hungry and backward, the more they keep having children, not so much because they want them as because they are accustomed to letting nature take its course, accustomed to carelessness and neglect. But to maintain this show of detached bitterness and amazement, like some Scandinavian Social Democrat, toward the underdeveloped world, he had to keep himself blameless of that sin....

  Now, too, the hours spent at Cottolengo began to weigh on him, all that India of people born to unhappiness, that silent question, an accusation of all those who procreate. This sight, this awareness, he thought, would not be without consequences as if he were the pregnant mother, sensitive as a photographic plate, or as if atomic disintegration were already at work inside him and he could produce only disastrous progeny.

  How could he return to reading now, to universal reflections? Even the books open before him were his enemies: the Bible with that eternal problem of continuing, amid famines and deserts, the generations of a human race that wishes to save every drop of its seed, still unsure of its survival; and Marx, who also wanted no limitation of human semination, convinced of the earth’s infinite richness: forward, all was flowing fecundity, go on, hurrah! Both books were great counselors! How could anyone not unders
tand that the danger to the human race now was quite the opposite?

  It was late; they would be waiting for him at the polls; the others had to take their turn; he should hurry. But first he called Lia once more, though he still didn’t know what to say to her: “Lia, listen, I have to go out now, but look here, I...”

  “Sssh...” she said: the record was playing again as if that middle telephone call hadn’t existed, and Amerigo felt a spurt of annoyance (“There, for her it’s nothing, for her it’s nature, for her the logic of the mind doesn’t count, only the logic of physiology!”) and also a kind of reassurance, because Lia was really the same Lia as always: “Hush... you must listen to it to the end... And, after all, what could have changed in her? Not much: something still nonexistent, which could therefore be thrust back into nothingness (at what point does a being become a being?), a mere biological potentiality, blind (at what point does a human become human?), a something that only a deliberate desire to make human could add to the ranks of human presences.

  XII

  A CERTAIN number of the voters registered at Cottolengo were patients who couldn’t leave their beds or their wards. For such cases the law provides that some of the election watchers be chosen to set up a “detachment” of the polls which can go and collect the votes of the sick in their “place of treatment,” in other words, on the spot. They agreed to form this “detachment” with the chairman, the clerk, the woman in white, and Amerigo. They were issued two boxes, one with the blank ballots and the other to contain the ballots after they had been marked. They were also given a special folder, the register, and a list of the “voters in place of treatment.”

  They gathered up these things and went off. They were led up some stairs by a young man, one of the “bright” ones, tiny and squat, who, despite his ugly features, his shaved head, and the thick eyebrows which grew together, proved up to his task and full of concern; he almost seemed to have landed in there by mistake, because of his looks. “In this wing there are four.” They went in.