Blindly (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

by Magris, Claudio

  The door’s opaque panes do not reflect an image; if I bring my face close to the glass I don’t see anything, just the griminess of time. I remained in there, seated—Jason remains in Corinth, sitting in his palace, it’s Medea who leaves.

  Life is there, beyond that wall of water, but how to get across it? I grab on to the figurehead floating among the waves, I clench those breasts eaten away by the water. In the fury of the sea’s cross-currents the slamming of the waves comes from all sides. That time in Turin—no, in Milan, I think—the first time I got cuffed by the Party, because when we were putting out that newspaper of ours, La Rivoluzione antifascista, I thought it was only right that socialists too should have a say, I knew that the Party’s views were the most clear-headed, but at that moment I thought it would be good if we all shook hands against the Fascists who were picking us off like fish. The important thing was for all the fish to get together to rip open the net and free the sea of nets. When the Political Bureau accused me of allowing opposing ideologies to penetrate the workers’ movement it didn’t seem fair to me, but I accepted it and obeyed, so as not to sow more discord among the fish, which only benefits the fishermen and their nets.—“As old as Methuselah, all those brain wrinkles could use a face-lift, my friend! Enough of these qualms, these nostalgic longings of an old dodderer, these megalomanias! They’re only rules of the game, forget right or wrong—not aut aut, but rather vel vel, if you remember your Latin.”—An old trick, my dear friend, the police who butter you up and wink at you, it doesn’t work with me ... Giuseppe Boretti even protested against me in our newspaper, but he was a comrade of the highest order. I saw him die in Spain in the hills beyond the Ebro, lucky him, dying for freedom, while I—

  I what, Doctor? You should know, it’s you who’s supposed to do an analysis, diagnosis and case history and then explain it to me. No, it’s on Elba that I met Boretti; he’s the one who told me about the dissension with the socialists, rebuking me for saying that he was wrong and so was the Party when he said that Social Democracy was Social Fascism and that it was good that the Nazis had done away with it because that way, having defeated Fascism and Nazism, we would be able to build communism straight away. I thought it was a crime to tear each other to pieces like chickens, but to avoid contributing to the dismemberment even more, in my own small way, it seemed appropriate to obey the Party and say it was right even if it was wrong.

  Did I feel humiliated, because of this? It just goes to show that all of you here have no idea what slavery is, freedom, the struggle, what it means to fight for the dignity of everyone, even those you don’t know, even that of your enemies who will one day be your brothers—you know it, deep down in your heart you’re sure of it, even when they make you drink castor oil—it doesn’t matter much if you live to see that day or die first in their prisons. We also addressed that appeal to our Blackshirt brothers; they too could have become free men, able to die with us for liberty. Even Pietro Iacchia had been a Fascist from the very beginning and later died at the gates of Majadahonda, in Garibaldi’s Communist ranks.

  His death and ours, to silence those who shouted Viva la muerte. The Resistance always defeats empires. In Spain not even Napoleon and his Marshal Marmont had been successful. Adonde vayas, Marmont, where are you off to, Marmont? we once sang. No pasarán, they shall not pass! The bodies of comrades are a towering wall, the rocky cliff against which the sea’s fury breaks. So then why, in Spain, tear each other to pieces and thereby let death pass?

  The air is dark, the sea surges, from the portholes battered by the waves you can’t see a thing; I swim and swim, but after a while you can’t go on anymore, you go under, into the water and into the darkness. And yet, and yet—the light of those days, hunted pursued lacerated, that autumn in Turin, where I went ... There, now I remember, where I went to maintain contacts between the Party and what was left of the Justice and Liberty group after the arrests in May of 1935.

  That autumn in the streets of Turin, distributing clandestine pamphlets, delivering letters, organizing meetings, re-establishing connections in the factories and schools, ready to close ranks, to continue on when a comrade was seized and to keep your head when it was you who got hooked. No, the beatings when they caught me with the leaflets and sent me to Fossano did not dim the red of that autumn on the hill, which I could see as I walked the streets of Turin, wide, straight tree-lined avenues that cut through the city and led you away, toward open space, a nice square geometry, grey like all structural works, an orderly march toward the future.

  In Guadalajara too, later on, the battalion closed ranks against the red that was inflaming the world, opposing it with another red—that of the flag, of leaves, of fire, of grapes harvested without fear. Yes, we were masters, that autumn in Turin—hounded hunted imprisoned but free, oblivious to that fear that makes you a slave to yourself, to your ego, domineering and quavering like all bosses. There, along those avenues, with my false papers in my pocket, I breathed deeply; the wind that blew across my face came from the mountains, from a world pure and strong as the one we were creating, and the splotches of red on the hill were glasses of new wine on the table of a pub where we had feasted, the rising sun dazzled our eyes as it rose on the grand and terrible world that would become good.

  Yes, sooner or later war would come, we knew it would come, but we also knew that once we had created a new world, one that would re-emerge from the deluge, there would be no more wars ... What confusion, these verb moods and tenses that no longer apply, those aborted future perfects, those subjunctives in conditional sentences that are no longer hypothetical but by now only worn and unreal. The water rises, surges into my mouth and throat, I can’t breathe, help me, carry me to shore, give me artificial respiration, the words are repeating on me, revolutionreactionsocialfascism, what nausea this phlegm and this brine, the land is spinning the sea pitching even the sun and the stars and history are spinning and men are vomiting, what relief, there, it’s over, I’m feeling better, I’m sorry.

  Once, when I got these chills, I would wrap myself in the fleece that we had captured and that reddish cloth kept me warm. But now the fabric is all tattered; look how many holes, it must be the moths, or that it’s too old, losing its reddish fur and falling apart, the wind blows through the blanket on all sides, you can’t navigate with a sail that has holes in it, I’d like to see how it would have been if the sail had gotten torn at Cape Horn and the gusts blew through it like gunshots through a shirt.

  21

  FORGET THE FLEECE and blankets and the flag, only Maria was able to dispel my fear, with that breast that sheltered me from the sea’s fury. In those eyes I could see my face, now the mirrors are blank. Do you know, by any chance, where Comrade Cippico—ipiko (also Cipico)—ended up, consenting to the Party’s decision to leave Maria on the other side of that border, to abandon her to the revenge of the executioners of Goli Otok, after she had risked everything for me? Yes, I know, this happened afterwards, long after Milan and Turin and Fossano and Guadalajara and all the places where they sent us off to—in an absolute afterward, after my life, because when I remained silent at the Party’s decision I disappeared. Nowhere to be found. Displaced Person. Even the label of displaced person came much later on, but for you, not for me. For the dead there is no before and after; in Hades all the shades simultaneously are and are not, the Argo and the Punat and the Woodman and the Nelly pitch up and down on the same dark sea, moving neither forward nor backward.

  My ship cut straight through the waves when Maria was at the prow. When they told me to throw the figurehead into the sea, I obeyed. I severed her off with the stroke of an axe and let her fall into the water, to lighten the ballast and make the ship sail faster. The waves carried her away. Yet once she went away, the ship was suddenly heavy. A deadly calm held it stock-still in the waters and we galley slaves spared no effort, plunging the oars into the oppressive waters. Every now and then I looked for you, I dove down into the dark depths where I had let you
fall, slimy algae entangled my arms and hair and covered my eyes, only wrecks came to hand, forgetting Eurydice a filthy Orpheus emerged, went dutifully back to the oars and, when ordered to from the bridge, obediently began singing the glories of the venture, for the crew’s edification.

  What right do I have then to complain about ending up in the waters of Goli Otok dredging up sand and stones? Our Argo was headed for the isle of the dead and I lent my efforts to hold the tiller. Goli Otok, the isle of us living dead. When in earlier times, instead, I set off by boat from Port Arthur, Down the Bay, to go and bury some of my fellow convicts on the Isle of the Dead—that island was actually called that—I was relaxed and spirited at the stern; I wasn’t going there to die, like later on, but to write inscriptions and epitaphs for those who had died, a scribe instead of Charon’s passenger. Jack Mulligan, the glory of heaven awaits those who have known darkness on earth. Timothy Bones, I have sinned more than His Majesty’s judge who sent me down here knows, but another judge sees that my life was not just base actions. Sarah Eliza Smith ...

  A fine thing, composing burial inscriptions. Not even difficult; the themes are conveniently available and all you have to do is put them together. The sea, sin, repentance, divine mercy. Then, in one line or two at the most, you have to hit on something that is unique to that deceased, the card he happened to draw. For Tim Bowley, for example, the stone he threw at the king’s head, for someone else perhaps a big meal. Mary, did you really have to do that to me? It sounds good. I also liked to oversee the lettering, telling the stonecutter how to divide the sentence into several lines; I later published each text in the newspaper, in a column for which they paid me another two shillings. Like Robertus Montanus, in that youthful comedy of mine which, to tell the truth, I no longer remembered, but which my biographers, especially Stephenson and Clune, treat with respect. He too, having many years of study at Oxford, makes a living writing tombstone inscriptions for his fellow townsmen.

  They were beautiful days, those days we went to the Isle of the Dead. The waters in the bay calm, a little rippled; I took deep breaths of the fresh air and felt like I was honouring those dead more than Reverend Knopwood who always mumbled the same hurried prayer, whereas I made an effort to find new words each time. Well, more or less the same words, but combined a little differently, and for those rogues it was overdoing it besides. When we passed below Puer Point, where all those child convicts hurled themselves into the sea when they couldn’t stand it anymore—and it didn’t take long, in that horror, for them to give up—I didn’t feel that way anymore, I felt like I too could no longer stand it and it seemed like an enormous volcano were suddenly emerging from the waters and making everything explode in a red sea of flame.

  Even the leaves on the hill in Turin, those days, were red. I was still alive, in those days. In the mouth of the dragon, but the dragon, it was certain, would have to succumb to our sword, and I would return to Maria with the golden fleece, pallet of our blissful nights. I was also alive in Santo Stefano, near Fossano, in jail but free, by God, my own master—I felt at home among those comrades, I saw with my own eyes how life can and should be when you are together and what matters isn’t your little niggling fears but life, which is yours only if it belongs to everyone and you are ready to risk and lose it—I recalled Father Callaghan, who in catechism class told us that those who try to save their life will lose it and those who are willing to lose it will save it. So you live it fully even if you happen to draw the losing card, because the game goes around and the bottle on the table also goes around and the friends at that table are a fine bunch. Well, in jail we didn’t have either cards or wine, they confiscated even the parcels we received from our families—they received actually, I had no one, but everyone shared everything. The Party even had to recommend not overdoing the equality and remind our prison’s collective that there might be different needs and that it is not contemptible to smoke a cigarette by yourself even if someone else doesn’t have one.

  What freedom, Doctor, not like in here! Yes, because we weren’t thinking about our own freedom, to get out of prison and go take a stroll, but about that of everyone, freedom too is yours only if it belongs to everybody. Megalomanias, you say, romantic national-popular delusions of grandeur from bygone days? Yes, stating them now, as I do for you, because it’s sad that none of you know and don’t remember anything anymore. But to achieve and experience them, as we did at one time ...

  We never spoke about personal sorrows and difficulties, let alone in our letters home, so as not to give the censor who read them the satisfaction of delighting in those weaknesses. But mainly not to burden the families with our problems, not to make our destiny weigh heavily on a mother, a woman or children, who should live their own lives and not ours in chains. I had no one but I wasn’t aware of it, because I too was accustomed to not talking about sorrow and by never mentioning it I forgot about it.

  Even being transferred was a sorrow, a farewell to your comrades. Ponza, Ventotene, Fossano, Procida, Civitavecchia, Pianosa, Volterra, Piacenza—you go up one step after another, those prisons are stations of progress, you go up with your head held high, it’s our common journey, the Milky Way of our peregrination toward salvation. You stop at a hostel and if you can’t resume the journey you pass your knapsack to someone else.

  22

  YES, DOCTOR, I lied as well. Well, lied—my autobiographer embellished things a little, as almost always happens when you write. I saw my autobiography in the back of that antiquarian bookstore on Salamanca Place—and I immediately read it with enthusiasm, it’s understandable. I hardly expected it to be a trite copy of real life. Otherwise why would I have read it, just to find out things I already knew? It was the rest that interested me.

  It’s true that during the return journey from Hobart Town to London on the Alexander, once we rounded Cape Horn I headed directly for Rio de Janeiro, despite the scarcity of water and provisions on board, but I wasn’t the one who decided it, it’s the winds that drove me on that course. We sailed along the coast of Parama; brushwood and lichens amid the brackish muddy sludge, says the ship’s log. It takes little effort to run into a ship of Admiral Villeneuve’s Franco-Spanish fleet and seize it; with a lightning-swift manoeuvre that takes advantage of the only bit of wind, we approach quickly, leap over the side and board it before the Spaniards can fire off a single shot, sailors and soldiers surprised at their stations, not yet mustered for sword combat. The sabres rise and fall, they flash like rays of sunlight dancing on the water and deliver stabbing blows against the ships’ broadsides. A Spanish officer in front of me, run through by a pike, falls slowly to the deck, opening his mouth and frantically gulping air.

  The ship was sold in Santa Catharina. That’s right, I confirm. The port is teeming with slaves, their backs shiny and resinous, white eyes gleaming among red kerchiefs and filthy tatters. The red shawl, a flower blooming in the evening, full lips laughing. Now I seem to remember—for that matter, why would one write unless it’s because he forgets, and therefore to rediscover forgotten things? And even if I don’t remember having written it myself, this page that someone is now shoving under my nose, so vivid and lush ... I would like to see things this way, but—but yes, on the other hand, this must have been exactly how it was, the honeysuckle winding around the locked gates and white columns of a patio. Evening enveloped us, in that garden, in the green dusk that fell before darkening the streets, birds flew swift and grazing like arrows, stars emerged suddenly among the branches and plummeted down, enormous white cut flowers. Beyond the gates and on the facades of the buildings the light of the dying day, of oil lamps and candles resisted the advancing shadows, opening luminous gaps and rents, gleaming window slits, in the looming wall. In the garden however the darkness swallowed everything; a giant flower opened, a black corolla into which everything rushed headlong.

  And that woman hiding behind the yellow flowers of the ipé tree, concealing her face and large slanted eyes from the light
of the moon and that of the building’s windows which pursued her, like a harpoon pursues a fish to snatch it from the dark waters ... why is there nothing further written, what do I do, now, that rosy foot darts like a fish, disappears into the depths, and she too slides into a ravine of darkness, a black dew rests on those leaves and on those flowers—hibiscus, white, violet and pink quaresmeiras, colourless in the night—a coconut, my head, opens, inside there is only darkness, which expands and swallows things up ...

  What really happened that night, in that darkness? Nothing? What happens to a man is always too much, the hold jam-packed with things sinks to the bottom and down there you don’t stop and take inventory. The Admiralty’s records, in any case, can be trusted. So then, after stopping over in St. Helena, where the news of Austerlitz had just arrived, on June 26, 1806, the Alexander puts in at Gravesend, on the Thames.