The Communist

by Guido Morselli

  He was on his way out of his room. “Unreadable.” He didn’t understand the word right off. He began to walk and think. The mystery resolved itself quickly and his good humor returned. Confound it, with that handwriting of his. He had copied out the article by hand, and the folks at the Press Office had given up trying to decipher it.

  Let’s see if the people at Moravia’s review were any better. No, they’re going to send it back to me, them too. He bought an envelope at a tobacco shop, addressed it to via degli Orsini, and sent it off. He also mailed two lines to Nuccia at via Ovidio. Two dignified lines radiant with seriousness and modesty. “Leaving with a party delegation for the USSR. I can’t say exactly when we’ll return. Regards from yours truly.”

  Comrade Cariboni Amoruso came along with them to Ciampino Airport on the morning of December 29. Feverish and stuffy-nosed, Adele had risen from her bed to accompany her husband to the gate. In the car was a heavy overcoat with a fur collar that Amoruso was lending to his friend. “You want to fly to Hyperborea in a raincoat? By now we have a wardrobe in common, so try this on!” The coat fit perfectly. Ferranini’s embarrassment amused Adele.

  “You’ll say I should have thought of it,” he said.

  “Don’t excuse yourself, Walter,” said Adele, serious once again. “Unfortunately we’re no longer used to men like you. You are a socialist of the old school.”

  •

  They flew into Leningrad after a night in Warsaw. Tired, they had shared a room. Amoruso had made an odd remark: “Now that it’s too late, I’m having qualms. I hope the shock won’t be too great for you.”

  Ferranini’s face clouded. “What do you mean.”

  “Well. The plane trip, the climate.”

  Ferranini, uncharacteristically, had eaten very little. Amoruso hadn’t eaten either. Fatigue.

  “Forget about your qualms,” he said. “I needed a change of scene badly.”

  As soon as they landed in Leningrad, he suggested they send a telegram of deferential regards to Comrade Togliatti.

  A second telegram went to Comrade Longo. Finally he felt he was getting possession of himself again. His relationship with the party: this was the true measure of his life force.

  The past few days had deeply shaken his composure. With the Mazzola episode, in his relationship with Nuccia Corsi, he had, without willing it, without even understanding it, allowed himself be put in a state of potential conflict. It was impossible to feel that all was well. Writing those telegrams had made him think of his father. Strange, he wasn’t susceptible to family memories. But there had been a reason. His father had once said of the Italian Socialists of his day, that they had “too many heads.” Even then, the party was infected by personalism.

  To call someone a socialist of the old school was no compliment if you knew (and Adele Cariboni Amoruso evidently didn’t know) what socialism looked like in Italy today. Millions of workers and one leader, a man who defended their rights with a firm hand, who embodied their ideals. And what a privilege.

  No sooner they arrived at the hotel than Ferranini wanted to go out again. He wanted to see the Academy of Sciences, which wasn’t far away. (They’d been taken to the Hotel Evropeiskaya.) Amoruso protested.

  “Now, at the worst time of day? Who do you think you’ll find at one in the afternoon? The celebrations start tomorrow morning. Time for a nap, my friend. We deserve it!”

  Amoruso awoke at 5:00 p.m., well rested, and came to check up on Ferranini in his room. He found him huddled in a chair next to the radiator. His eyes were swollen and his face greenish. He was shivering.

  “Don’t know, must be a bit of a fever.

  Amoruso took his temperature. One hundred and something.

  “Clothes off and let me have a look at you. It will be the first time I get to give you a proper examination.”

  He listened to his heart. He put on the blood-pressure cuff.

  “Well then,” he finally said, “the fever is nothing much, a rheumatological thing. As for the ‘pump,’ the organ itself, I’d say there isn’t anything structurally wrong with it at the moment, but there is a notable malfunction. Your extrasystoles are right out of a textbook. The heart compensates but has never returned to normal. In this context hypertension is significant, as is cardiomegaly.”

  He tried to laugh. “It’s been ten years since I learned my heart was too big and my blood pressure too high. Do you give me another ten?”

  “My lad, I order you to hold out for another half century. However, we need to figure out how far along things are. I’ll need an electrocardiogram when we’re back in Rome.”

  “I don’t believe in that stuff.”

  “I don’t believe in it much myself, but it factors into the decision. These febrile rheumatological fibrillations need to be controlled or they can weaken your heart permanently, and then it will be my fault that I made you come here at such a nasty time of year.”

  “I’ve been just fine recently.”

  “Recently means?.”

  “I don’t know. For three, four weeks.”

  Amoruso, his pipe, cold, clenched between his teeth, stared out the window, deep in thought.

  “Want to know my opinion?” He turned around. “About your health: you tried to cheat yourself out of it when you were young. I don’t know how; don’t know you well enough. But you must have done something; yours isn’t a congenital problem. And I’d rule out vices.”

  Ferranini laughed.

  “Vices? Mine are poverty and worries.”

  “You must have worked yourself close to death. Sometimes a person won’t look after himself for a year, maybe even two, three. And then he’ll think, Now I’ll be more careful. But certain errors exact a penalty. You’re the kind who says, Let time do what it will. What happens, happens; if I kick the bucket, so be it. And sometimes that’s a perfectly respectable way to operate. As a doctor, I disapprove; I think a man has a duty to live and if he’s ill, to get treatment.”

  “For whose sake?”

  “Yours, to begin with. And none of us is alone. Not even you, sorry. There’s someone waiting for you back in Rome. Your friend Corsi.”

  No response.

  “Oh by the way,” Amoruso went on, “I see you’ve remained true to your organizer ways. Nuccia Corsi told me she intended to join the party.”

  Ferranini rose from the bed where he had been examined, and sat down again in his armchair.

  “Ferranini? I’m speaking to you. You aren’t going to reply?”

  He didn’t insist. Walter’s silence seemed telling enough.

  •

  The conversation was livelier the following day when Amoruso returned to the hotel from the ceremony at the academy. Ferranini was waiting for him, his curiosity as feverish as he was. He leapt off the bed to welcome him.

  “Out with it, Amoruso. Tell me.”

  “First thing: it’s perfectly organized. Simultaneous translation on headphones in three languages, right off the bat. Remarkably serious, no rhetoric, no long official speeches. There were six hundred people present, divided into groups housed in various halls, and work began immediately, discussion of the different topics. This is not just a commemoration; it’s a real conference, with notes and reports being read. With debate.”

  Ferranini lit up with the other man’s enthusiasm. “And who’s here?”

  “People from England, India, Mexico. And not only delegates from our parties but bourgeois types, scholars, men of science (and women!). Mikoyan representing Khrushchev. Obviously the academy with all its members, hundreds from Moscow. Because these are the historic premises but the Academy of Sciences was transferred to Moscow back in ’32. I didn’t know that. Did you?”

  Ferranini didn’t mind boasting a little. “Hmm, yes I did know. Makes sense, Moscow is the brain of the Union. It’s logical. But keep going. What did you listen to?”

  “I found a group and listened to a presentation by a colleague, a doctor, who teaches pathology in Kiev. H
e said, ‘We must combat the theologizing of science. Scientific research must not become a surrogate of divine providence. The miracle-working capacity that some politicians attribute to researchers damages us. . . .’ This professor, name of Vinicenko, was somewhat polemical. He also said, ‘Science knows that nature places insuperable limits not only on humans today but on all future living human beings. Technology may seem to perform miracles, but we must remember that technology too acts within the sphere of scientific possibility, and it is ridiculous to believe it can do more.’ ”

  “The talks will be published, I imagine,” Ferranini interrupted. “Maybe right away. In that case, please make sure to bring them to me.”

  “Vinicenko says, ‘Communism knocks down the pillars of bourgeois society but the revolution only takes place in the social sphere. The founding works of socialism, ardent and fundamental as they are, never mention revolutionary struggles in other spheres. But there are other limits, other pressures, other hostile forces that are not social but alien to life. These counterforces limit all volition (including communist volition) and they cannot be pushed aside.’ ”

  “A reasonable line of argument,” said Ferranini.

  “But listen. Some Americans were sitting near me. They were smiling ironically, and one of them whispered, ‘The men of science are watering down the Communist wine.’ Which is pretty stupid, given that the limits Vinicenko was talking about are limits to capitalism as much as to revolution.”

  “Of course. And meanwhile, capitalism produces nothing in the social sphere.”

  “At the end of the session, there was a comment, too brief, by a Bulgarian named Arkanov. He took up Vinicenko’s points. I wrote down some of his remarks. He spoke of a ‘contradiction for which no simple dialectic solution exists: the confrontation between a living creature and the natural world, between the individual organism and its physical environment.’ He also said, ‘Life resembles a bubble of air in a liquid, it’s something unstable and improbable suspended in hostile conditions.’ Here’s something else: ‘If we’re optimists, we can say that the inorganic world and the physical world tolerate life. But often they seem to battle it.’ ”

  “This Arkanov, he’s a biologist?”

  “He teaches biology in Sofia. A young man, as small and dark as a Neapolitan.”

  “Was there any disagreement when he spoke?”

  “Not that I heard.”

  “And the other side says there’s no freedom of opinion in the Soviet Union.”

  In front of the mirror, Amoruso was trying on an Astrakhan that he seemed very pleased with. He’d just bought it.

  “You have to admit,” he replied, “there’s been a thaw. These are no longer the days when Comrade Stalin was an infallible pontiff, even in matters of physics and biology. But enough! Let me tend to your flu. Felled by the evil eye, weren’t you, my poor friend!”

  The fever hadn’t subsided, and Ferranini, very subdued, had stayed in bed. It was exhausting to speak, even to think. Much as he regretted missing the occasion—even more interesting than he’d expected—he was resigned to it now. His organism accepted the chance to rest without impatience; there seemed to be a bottomless well of fatigue in him.

  However, his friend’s sympathy annoyed him.

  “Poor Walter. The pilgrimage to the Holy Land has gone sour.”

  “What do you care?”

  He didn’t like to admit that, in truth, Amoruso was being very kind. He’d offered to keep him company and proposed they have their meals brought up. Ferranini had to stop him.

  That evening, Amoruso called Formia from Ferranini’s room. It was San Silvestro, New Year’s Eve, and he wanted to wish Adele a happy New Year. After twenty minutes, the call went through and Senator Adele answered in her small, high-pitched voice.

  “Antonino, take care. With the cold they have there. . . .”

  “Are you kidding? Everything is perfect in the socialist fatherland; the hotel is as warm as a greenhouse. We flew in on a giant Tupolev! And the congress is a real congress, a high-level one. So, you’ve recovered, brava. Okay, you were at Comrade Nenni’s house, with Comrade Pieraccini, Comrade Giolitti, good. A sort of select central committee, en amitié, excellent! Nothing new? Eh? Have no fear of the Circassian beauties, of the Georgians, I’m here with the austere Ferranini, who’s ever more austere; I’m in no danger. Off to a good night’s sleep. See what a rascal I am? Happy New Year, my dear.”

  Ferranini listened, scowling. Scratch a bourgeois and you find a bourgeois, he thought uncharitably.

  Having talked to his wife (some socialists, both of them!), Amoruso was in good spirits. He rang the bell to order champagne.

  “They used to say you drank the best French champagne in Petersburg. Let’s see about Leningrad.”

  “Technology and Labor” was the theme of the scientific discussion the following day.

  Kudirka, a Lithuanian and an engineer, was presiding. A few people spoke up to criticize the “industrial atomism” under way in the Soviet Union, which was disadvantageous for the workers. Soviet shoe manufacture, Kudirka observed, was normally divided between five or six large plants. The uppers came from specialized factories where they put together the vamps, quarters, et cetera that in turn came from other specialized factories, possibly situated hundreds of versts distant. Then the assembled uppers traveled for hundreds of kilometers to other yet other plants, and there finally the uppers met the soles.

  Disjointed like this in the name of productivity, labor became perverse. It lost its inbuilt efficiency, and the coarseness of the products confirmed this. We don’t notice this because today few of us remember the products made in the old way. Still, industry’s “objective degradation” would not be very important, if it weren’t connected to the worker’s estrangement from his labor, which depersonalizes labor and turns it into a subhuman activity.

  “Thus the Lithuanian. I didn’t agree with that point,” said Amoruso. The division or subdivision of labor is an integral part of the industrialization process that men are so proud of. An American from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology then spoke. My friends, he said, what you complain about in Soviet industry is just what we complain about in American industry.

  “Yes,” said Ferranini, “however, given that America is capitalist, it’s only logical that the workers are dehumanized.”

  “But not here, you mean? In this world, you can’t have everything. When industry develops so magnificently, you have to put up with the odd inconvenience. I’d like engineer Kudirka to come to the back streets of Naples to see our poor shoemakers at work.”

  Ferranini paid no attention. “And if you then consider,” he said in the abstracted tone of someone talking to himself, “that the workers are extraneous to the management of the enterprise for which they work—concretely extraneous, I mean. It’s not a pretty picture. The hardship typical of labor in all its forms is in no way compensated in industrial society. Whether or not it has been expropriated by capital.”

  “You don’t want the collectivity to be broken up into many tiny Central Committees?” said Amoruso. “As many as there are factories?”

  “I don’t want anything. What I say is: Either economic activity is managed by the workers, factory soviets, or internal committees, or the centralized bureaucracy takes care of it, which means we’re back to state capitalism. Or call it bureaucratic collectivism if you like.”

  “We are Marxists,” said Amoruso in unusually grave tones, “and therefore we trust in Marxism, we’re content to know it exists. What are we trying to say here, that society—contemporary society of whatever stripe, collectivist or capitalist—is sick, as our sociologists maintain? A fine discovery. What do we want to do, abolish industry? It’s not like we can go back to preindustrial days. The days of Dante and the guilds.”

  “There are those who speak of a postindustrial society,” Ferranini observed.

  “And what does that mean, ‘postindustrial’? They make
me laugh. A meaningless word that suggests overcoming reality. Reality cannot be overcome.”

  Ferranini was silent for quite some time, thinking about things, deliberating. His second visit to the Soviet Union (no less than the first) was truly a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. He wished it could be free of any doubts at all. He could not share Antonino Amoruso’s facile touristic zeal: everything is great, everything is wonderful.

  That night, at least, his fever declined. In a couple of hours, just the way it had first spiked. The following afternoon, overcoming his unease at the mere thought of the open air, he made himself go out.

  They arrived at the Academy of Sciences in a taxi that wove among the black ministerial Chaikas to set them down right at the door, under the columned portico of the grand building designed by Giacomo Quarenghi. Ferranini quickly inquired about comrades Vinicenko and Arkanov. They had already left. And Aleksandr Oparin and Bosciàn? They hadn’t come. That was a disappointment.

  However, before they returned to their hotel he did manage to persuade Amoruso to come with him to the Finland station. Comrade Lenin had arrived there in ’17, returning from Zurich across Germany aboard the legendary “sealed train,” and the small Bolshevik general staff, which was soon in violent conflict with Kerensky’s provisional government, had been there briefly. Lenin gave one of his decisive speeches standing atop an armored car parked right in front of the Finland station. On the way back the taxi driver drove down Liteiny Prospekt and stopped in front of the prison where Lenin had been held for three years before going into exile.

  Ferranini stepped out of the car, teeth chattering in the cold. For a few minutes he stood there in contemplation, his eyes trained on the aged, reddish building as the snow began to come down heavily. Amoruso the Communist stood by him, but Amoruso the medical man protested.

  “You’re convalescing! Can’t we perform our devotions without getting out of the car?”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Amoruso as the taxi started up again, “we must go to the Hermitage.”

  “Which is what?”