The Nocturnal Library

by Ermanno Cavazzoni

  “When Natale was finally obliged to give in, he simply muttered, ‘I was sure it was Fischietti, I was sure it was Fischietti.’ “So it was said of him that the exam would have been magnificent if an artificial and overly protracted calm, together with a poor state of health and lack of sleep, had not suddenly caused a lesion to the optic thalamus and impaired his ability to perceive distinctions. And from that moment, he no longer distinguished between sleep and wakefulness, and called sleeping insomnia. This is the truth, please believe me; I know this because I am his old friend Fischietti.”

  On hearing this talk of exams and almost identifying myself with the description of this unfortunate case, panic compounded my cold sweat: I desperately needed to read more and find something reliable and weighty which could come to my assistance.

  “All right, all right,” I said, “these matters do not concern me. Please do not complicate the little remaining time I have. I too am like a condemned man; give me a book,” I begged, “give me a book on the twentieth century.”

  I had heard the chimes for two o’clock and all my teeth had come together in a chorus of excruciating pain. It felt like I had nails in my mouth and a hammer was banging them into a knotty piece of wood.

  “If you’re in such a hurry,” Accetto said more deferentially than before, “we’re already in the right area.”

  And indeed he was back again in a flash with a book, if it could be so described, that was in a worse condition than the previous one. It resembled a collection of papers gathered up from the floor, somewhat haphazardly piled together and bound by a string attached to a cross.

  Perhaps it had once been a book with a title, but now the spine had been gnawed at and you could have no idea of what it was. There were pages in a different format, some smaller and others that were sticking out. I knew very well that this was one of the books that he fobbed off on anyone, particularly the ill-prepared. And he did say, “This book is in great demand, and can be found in every reading list. Please, make yourself comfortable here.” He gave me a higher table than the others and even a bigger chair. No one was seated there, and although the difference was one of just a few centimetres, it dominated a large part of the reading room.

  The pages were not in order and the numbers were entirely random. There was one page, upside-down and more yellowed than the others, which clearly came from another book. Who knows if by some fortuitous chance this was not exactly what I was looking for? In the absence of anything better to do, I put my faith in fate and took a look at it, a little nervously.

  The death sentence in America

  A serial killer called Joss was informed of his death sentence in prison. He was a large and effeminate man. He immediately became very pale, and even his eyes dulled.

  His expression was that of a deaf man who, although he can hear nothing, can vaguely guess at the meaning of words from movement of a person’s lips. “What?” he said and at the same time turned up one of his cards.

  Then something inexplicable happened to him. He started to shudder and they thought he was sobbing, but it was actually some kind of convulsive laughter, so acute that his flabby face trembled and he had to steady his solar plexus with his arms. He got his breath back and started to writhe with tears in his eyes and the resonant spasms of someone guffawing and enjoying himself. He looked at the upturned card during the brief moments of respite, and then that terrible laugh would take possession of him again; it had become a cough with exhalations that seemed to say, “What? What?” Believing this behaviour to arise from some misunderstanding or that the prisoner really was deaf, the court official reread the sentence, which was very simple and to the point. This only redoubled the prisoner’s hilarity and his “What?” After this and a few moments of perplexity, the official took off his glasses and in a low voice read the ruling he held in his hand to himself again and again, as though he were studying it. Very gradually his face betrayed a smile of slight amusement and questioning sympathy for this Joss, who was now bent double and seemed to find the whole thing increasingly hilarious.

  At this stage the prison guard, as with a contagion, fell victim to a senseless and sympathetic attack of giggles, followed by full, out-and-out laughter. Thus they were all three in stitches a few minutes later, without any apparent reason, and Joss more than anyone else. And when another guard put his head round the door to his considerable surprise, convulsions resumed with such force and uproar that this fourth man and the fifth whom curiosity had placed just behind him also by reflex joined in the carnival without asking themselves why, and did so with such abandon and perhaps even excessive readiness that they rolled around the floor, slapped each other on the shoulder and leant against the wall like drunkards. The court official cried out “God… God…” between his raucous laughter, and then had to sit down. Now and then he would lift the sheet of paper as though to beg for a brief respite, but this only revived the full force of the exaggerated and epileptic hilarity, even in the two men who didn’t know why they were laughing.

  Mr Joss was bent double with his forehead resting on the metal table no longer conscious of what was going on; occasionally he would beat his fists on the table and wobble like a gelatinous pudding. Then they saw him lift his eyes and look around. He was not red, but pale and puffy, his normally sleek hair dishevelled. The others were still prey to their unjustifiable laughter, but already showing signs of delirium: the oldest guard had the twisted expression of someone suffering a stroke and his left arm was struggling to stay up in the air; his colleague was at the climax of an asthma attack, but could not stop laughing; and the third one, also gasping for breath, seemed on the point of losing his senses.

  It then appears that Joss noticed the official lying back on his stool and wheezing, the court ruling lying on the floor, playing cards strewn across the cell and, who knows, the cell door open, as well as the washbasin with its hand towel, his unlaced shoes, a few obscene words written on the wall, a cigarette butt in the ashtray and then the ash; taking in all these muted mundane things in a flash, he felt himself once more within that vice of convulsed hilarity, but this time he was fighting for his last breath.

  His crumpled throat emitted two hisses searching for air, setting off yet another renewal of laughter amongst the others; on the third cavernous hiss – a furious paroxysm of despair – he was suddenly stilled, strangled by the final, fitful regurgitation.

  Of the three guards, one was left with a damaged lung, and the other two even more obtuse and sullen than they had been before. The court official never recovered: his career ended there, as he himself asked for early retirement. From time to time, he would suffer a fit of trembling and enfeeblement that had all the appearance of soundless laughter.

  They never came up with a rational explanation for this case, nor did they identify any similar psychic developments.

  Joss ended up like a dead man with his head resting on the table and the two of spades clasped in his hand, but completely unconscious and unresponsive to any stimulus. Given the vegetative state in which he lived from that moment, his execution was postponed sine die.

  His brain had burnt out, and his laughter appears to have acted like the visible signal of a high-voltage electric current. It is difficult to say what was the initial trigger, because the expert called in by the court was able to ascertain that the words used in the ruling were completely devoid of any hint of humour, nor was he able to identify any symbolism or some ironic or comedic element in that playing card: the two of spades.

  As for the guards, one was retired for reasons of partial disability, and the other two were transferred and demoted. However they both justified themselves by repeatedly claiming that there was something powerful in the air, something truly inexplicable that you breathed in as soon as you went into the cell. One said that it was an odourless laughing gas that Joss was letting out, and the other that there was a fast-acting virus or spore or, in any case, micro-organisms of some kind that were lying in wait on J
oss or his various possessions and furnishings.

  Supposedly these micro-organisms were disturbed and stirred up by the reading of the sentence, just as though they were sneezing powder. Always supposing that this was not simply the effects of the very idea of the electric chair on minds already inclined to irrational euphoria and merriment.

  Chapter E

  While I was reading awed and heated because I saw this as a portrait of myself, I was also involuntarily witnessing another spectacle that was uninterruptedly taking place around me. One of the two attendants was slowly inserting a chicken feather into the nose of a reader who was propping up his head with his hand and his elbow on the table. He was quietly snoozing away in the position of someone who appeared to be reading. So, as one tickled him with a feather, the other adopted a jocular air and going up very close observed the man’s face and his instinctive grimaces of discomfort. Eventually the poor fellow exploded in an uncontrolled sneeze that sprayed the book and the table. The two attendants bent low and laughed moronically. Accetto came running over and quietly berated him while hitting him on the forehead whenever he let his eyes close and returned to his slumbers. To hit the man he used an ink pad, which between blows was employed in wiping the book dry. I could see the two attendants hiding behind him and using the opportunity for pouring ants down the back of his neck as soon as he lowered his head, so that the ferocious itchiness woke him up and made him scratch the offending area. He would also slap the back of his neck, while Accetto continued to point out each little drop of spit one by one and punctuate this with further blows to his forehead, as though to stamp it on his brain.

  Meanwhile Fischietti, having discovered someone else asleep next to him, lit up with an expression of spiteful contentment and knocked away the supporting arm with a sly blow, so that the sleeper’s head fell with a loud crack on the wooden tabletop. Now awake, he massaged the painful haematoma on his forehead. On impact, his head must have crushed a Palomena Viridissima otherwise known as a stink bug, which true to its name was giving off a foul and pestiferous smell.

  Those two liked to wander amongst the desks like a couple of schoolboy scamps, and torment everyone in turn.

  They had tied some rope to a chair and positioning themselves a little way off, they started to pull the chair back with its load, a scholar who was sleeping oblivious to it all, until of course a stronger pull on the rope caused the chair to fall, the scholar with it like a pile of rags from which a head rolled out. And the head hit the floor with a sound that would make you think it had cracked in two.

  The learned man got up on his feet with some difficulty, rubbing the back of his head as he did so. He lifted his chair while all around those woken by the creaking noises and the crash checked out their own chairs and swung them backwards and forwards to find out whether they were solid or unsafe.

  But the two tormentors had already moved elsewhere to persecute other people, and as I was seated higher up, I could see them and could not take my eyes off them. Like two shadows, they squeezed glue into a sleeper’s ears and covered his eyes with adhesive paper. They worked together very quietly and enjoyed every moment of it. Then they placed a strip over his mouth and a clothes peg on his nose. The fellow became red in the face and desperately struggle for air, unable to hear, see, breathe or understand what was happening. Perhaps he thought he was dying or already dead, as he madly tore the sticky material from his face. He might have cut a ridiculous figure, but he disturbed me because no one was safe in there with those two around. A moment of inattention or weakness sufficed to have them around you, while Accetto controlled them from a distance.

  I saw for instance that in passing they pricked a sleeping man with a pin and he, wounded in his nightmare, emitted a silent scream: with his staring eyes he looked around and they bowed to him in unison like two good little boys out for a stroll. They struck another on the back of the neck with the sharp edge of a ruler, a torment that in truth was usually inflicted by Accetto himself. They would stop behind a chair and light a match under someone’s ear to see them leap from their chairs with a hand on their smoking lobe, unable to understand how this could have occurred. But the pain filled their eyes with tears. This matchstick trick was widely used and very cruel: they also put lighted matches between a victim’s fingers and ran off. The unlucky reader would scream, cry and moan for a considerable period of time. Careful not to burn the building down, they chose people with little hair which they then set fire to, causing a sudden bluish blaze that quickly went out leaving bald and blistered skin that seemed still to fry in its rawness. Victims thrashed around and waved their arms; they rubbed the blisters and smoking remains where the final embers burnt out. You could hear them mutter their smarting complaint like babies, and return to their reading with an afflicted soul.

  They used noxious creatures that brought out great itchy swellings. They kept them in their pockets in jars which they took out and shook to enrage them, and then they applied them to the neck or the cheek, or they emptied them down a sleeve, the neckline or into the hair. I even saw them inciting a small neurasthenic dog to attack a barefooted reader. The animal took the victim’s toes for something hostile and factious. It could be heard snarling and wrestling under the chair, and everyone withdrew their feet in fright. They placed someone’s foot in a sack with an enraged cat. I don’t know where they got it; perhaps they kept it solely for this purpose. They went on all fours under the table, while Accetto supervised them from a distance, and they lost no time in grabbing the foot and tying it in.

  The terrified reader fell down from his chair and attempted to undo the laces, while the cat could be seen leaping about and tormenting the unlucky foot with its claws and its teeth.

  The attendants had a predilection for feet, with or without shoes, especially if left hanging loose and almost forgotten. For example, they slipped under the table and hit them with a hammer, or I have seen them spread black tar over a shoe and set light to it. If made of leather or wool, the shoe became a fireball which the owner vainly beat on the ground, desperately screaming for help as the shoe could not be removed by hand. Everyone around was also woken, but I noted that no sense of solidarity existed between them. I have seen the fire spread to the trouser leg burning away all the hairs as far as the knee. Someone who had no laces kicked off his shoe into the air, which flaming like a ball of Greek fire landed on the head or the book or, in any case, in the vicinity of another reader, spraying him with boiling lapilli and causing pandemonium, given that these bomblets landed indiscriminately even on those who had not momentarily fallen asleep. If, however, the fire landed on a book and set it on fire, the reader, irrespective of whether they were young, old, innocent or guilty, was thrown out and obliged to pay for the loss, failing which Accetto would confiscate a coat, jacket or pyjama as security. I have seen him manhandle and insult a reader as though he were a common thief, while his two attendants laughed and fired elastic bands at the wrongdoer. He happened to be a professor of numismatics who had taken a flaming shoe to the shoulder and then seen his book consumed by fire in front of his very eyes. Accetto took away his coat and also wanted to remove his old-fashioned nightshirt. The professor resisted weakly and was embarrassed by the commotion and the fact that he was the centre of attention.

  The attendants burnt a reader’s eyelashes and eyebrows with a lighter, and then set fire to his beard, before immediately abandoning the scene. The man was like someone who had returned to the world after a long holiday; he rubbed his cheeks covered in carbonised hair and grumbled in a low voice. But it was with their lighter that these two really ran wild, and you could see the smoke rising wherever they went. Here you could see a scholar with his sleeve on fire and there another’s clothes smouldering and producing a dense black cloud if they were wearing synthetic fibres. To avoid suffocation, the reader was obliged to remove his clothes and end up in socks and girdle or little more. And red with embarrassment, given that underwear is never in fashion and never t
hat decent.