Letter from Casablanca

by Antonio Tabucchi

  I considered that these were four qualities which I possessed unequivocally. It’s a pity that the principal of the school, terrorized because I talked to the boys about the Nude Maja, and the owner of the gallery, who thought only of fleecing the ladies from Varese, didn’t agree. Too bad for them.

  To say that Madame was charmante may seem trifling, but serves to convey the idea. If she was fifty years old, she carried her age in an excellent manner; if she was forty, she carried it with dignity. But I was inclined toward the first hypothesis. She had hair of a blonde so unnatural that one ended up by accepting it immediately, because blatant deceit is much more acceptable than pretended deceit. (At that time I had a whole theory based on the scale of deceit.) And, thank heaven, she didn’t have a permanent. On principle I had nothing against permanents, for goodness sake, but the fact is that my colleagues came to school with such painful permanents that I’d ended up detesting them.

  Madame began a very lengthy conversation in French. Evidently she used French to verify my knowledge of the language, as was requested in the advertisement, but in that regard I felt myself impregnable, thanks to Charleroi, even though I was careful not to say so. However, I did nothing to disguise my strong Belgian accent, even though it wasn’t difficult for me to do so: it was only a question of tonics and gutturals.

  We began with literature. Very discreetly Madame informed herself of my tastes, not without letting me know hers, in order to put me at ease, which were Montherlant of La reine morte (“so human and all-consuming,” she said) and the enchanting melancholy of Alain-Fournier. Pierre Loti, however, was not to be disregarded. He was redeemed, especially by his Rarnuntcho. She was sure that sooner or later someone would have done it, perhaps even an American critic: the Americans had an unquestionable flair for the rêpechages. To tell the truth, Loti brought back to me the memory of the stuffy smell of the classrooms in the Sacred Heart School in Charleroi, where Pécheurs d’lslande was one of the few reading books allowed, but I tried to agree. I had spent eight years erasing the school in Charleroi from my existence and it would not have been to Madame’s liking to bring those memories back to me. I could have aimed at the intellectual, risking Sartre, one of whose stories I had read (it was horrible, however) but I preferred to proceed cautiously and said Françoise Sagan who, after all, had something to do with existentialism. And then I mentioned Hemingway’s The Snows of Kilimanjaro (I’d seen the film with Ava Gardner) and Louis Bromfield’s Rain. Madame asked me if I knew the tropics. I said no, “unfortunately,” but that sooner or later I must; I had always lacked the opportunity. And then we went on to painting.

  Here I went on at great length because it was my field, and if I told some falsehoods it wasn’t entirely for “promotional” motives but only to embellish a little. I said that I’d graduated from the state institute of art two years before (which was true) but that Italy was intolerably narrow-minded. What was offered to a young artist in Italy? Substitute teaching in a middle school.

  Fortunately in the summer I could cultivate my interests by working in a local art gallery (I ardently hoped, while I said it, that she had never gone there); only that at the end of the tourist season the gallery closed and the town plummeted again into a cultureless void. And so, me voilà.

  I thought that the moment for more precise questions had arrived. In particular I feared that Madame would question me about my ability to type, an ability which I considered indispensable for every secretary. Mine was nonexistent. The rare times when I had to write a letter, down at the gallery, it took me all afternoon (I typed only with my right index finger) and even after much application the results were not very impressive. Instead, Madame didn’t seem in the least disposed to ask me “technical” questions. She seemed to have her mind very much occupied with painting, and it didn’t seem right to discourage her.

  At first we talked about Bonnard’s yellows—I don’t remember why, probably because of the autumn light and the golden spot of chestnuts that we could see on the side of the mountain across the lake. Then I grew crafty and went for the fauves, the “big game.” Matisse was out of the question, of course. I took that for granted. But personally I felt Dufy more, the Dufy of the seascapes, the geraniums, the palm trees of Cannes. —With Dufy—I said—the happiness of the Mediterranean sings on the canvas.—On the wall next to the desk in the salon of the “Palette of the Lake,” the owner kept a calendar which had a Dufy reproduction for each month. I was a veteran of thirty consecutive afternoons from five to nine (thirty-one for July and August) for every reproduction. In the summer months the “Palette of the Lake” never closed. Let’s say, to be more precise, that Dufy even came out of my ears. But in the gallery the view varied between the Dufy reproductions and the idiotic faces of the women who admired the daubs hung on the walls, and to whom, according to the owner, I had to direct welcoming smiles into the bargain. It’s logical that I preferred Dufy. I knew him from memory.

  I asked Madame what she thought of Bal à Antibes (it was the reproduction for June) with those splashes of blue and white for the sailors in the foreground in the midst of the turmoil of colors. And the light blue enchantment of La mer (July) with those sails (I really said this) like little bursts of laughter. And the harmony of the pastels in Plage de Sainte-Adresse, the 1921 one, I thought, (August) didn’t it make her think of a little symphony? Madame agreed. However, I said preemptorily, I thought Jardins publiques à Hyères (September) was unsurpassable. I found it “definitive.” For me, after that picture, Dufy did not exist any longer. (And this was the absolute truth.)

  The calendar had a certain effect, on Madame, who was not sparing of her compliments to me. And then—oh, well—I said with all the ease that the act seemed to merit that in order to study the fauves I had gone “on purpose” to Paris. Naturally, I refrained from saying that I knew Paris well, because all my knowledge resulted from a school field trip with the nuns when Papa was working in the mine at Charleroi. It had been a four-day bus trip, with brief stops for bread and bathroom, then on board again and another round of En passant par la Lorraine under the inflexible joy of Sister Marianne who, fearing long conversations and long silences, both messengers of mischief, resolved the dilemma with the jollity of a healthy song. Of Paris I retained the dreadful memory of the Musée de I’Histoire de France, of the Pantheon, of my feet swollen like hot water bottles, and of my first menstrual period, which had started after a memorable walk the second night of our stay. The last day Sister Marianne had piloted us to the Louvre for a fifteen-minute visit, just long enough to put our noses in front of Corot and Millet, and at the booth at the exit each one of us had had to chip in to buy a reproduction of The Angelus, which during the trip home Sister Marianne had then stuck up on the rear window of the bus. I was thirteen years old, I felt ugly, unhappy, and misunderstood, and for the entire trip I dreamed of a cruel vendetta: One day I would become a great painter with a grand studio in the Latin Quarter. Sister Marianne would come to beg me on bended knee to go and fresco the refectory of the school in Charleroi where the great artist had done her first work. But I would answer haughtily that it was just, not possible, I had to prepare for my triumphal exhibition at the Grand Palais, Paris rendered me homage, the whole world claimed my paintings, and even the President of the Republic would be present.

  —And Ikebana?—said Madame.—Do you like Ikebana?—I answered that “decidedly” I did not know him. (I felt stuck, and chose to be dry and definitive.)

  —A pity,—said Madame,—but it’s not important. I’m sure you will learn to love it. Please put the bottle of gin nearer to me and call to Constance to bring me another tonic water.—

  While she waited for the tonic water, Madame asked me absent-mindedly about my hobbies, if by chance I had a passion for oenology. Ah, yes? Splendid. She did not, she preferred cocktails. But the engineer, yes, her husband, had a passion for wines as a good Italian—an adoptive Italian, but Italian nevertheless—oh, for rare wines, of cours
e. She would have liked to learn something more about them, too, but she certainly couldn’t insist that the engineer give her lessons, he was always traveling, always so consumed by his business, poor dear. But, by the way, my French was excellent.

  I answered that yes, it was indeed true, my poor papa had taken my education very much to heart, in spite of not ever having a free minute in his life—he was in mining. The governess had required French, obviously, old, dear, austere Francine (I was slightly moved by her memory) who had been practically a mother to me. She was a Walloon. This unequivocal Belgian acccent that once I detested and that today I found delightful I owed to her. Oh, no, no, my mother didn’t leave me an orphan. It was only that Mama was so fragile, so delicate, and then her piano gave her no rest.

  Madame pushed the cart with the aperitifs toward my armchair and invited me to help myself.

  —And so school does not interest you? It is not your vocation?—

  I said that as far as a vocation was concerned, I might even have followed it, but I had been graduated for two years already, and it still fell to me to do substitute teaching. And, dear God, I was almost twenty years old. I explained the concept of substituting, which Madame appeared to totally ignore, and to be concise said that the following week, when the teacher I was substituting for had finished her maternity leave, the principal would tell me that the school was very grateful for my most valuable assistance, good day and goodbye. And while at one time the pregnant ladies to be substituted for had sprouted like mushrooms, nowadays people think twice before having children, what with the cost of living, just imagine. I don’t know if she kept abreast of the statistics relative to births in Italy.

  Dusk was falling over the lake, and from our position it really was a painting, anything but Dufy. The terrace overlooked the garden, full of lemon trees and cypresses, furrowed by the geometry of the boxwood hedges which outlined the pebbled avenues. The town, on the spur that jutted into the lake, was already in shadow, and on its roofs lingered vague streaks of pale blue light. The last light of day was for the landing stage opposite the gale and for the towers of the villa, which were warm yellow, toasted by time. The swallows made a marvelous uproar, going crazy low in the sky. Madaine was explaining to me that she was very much afraid of being bored during the winter, used as she was to Paris. She couldn’t say she exactly needed a secretary, let’s say rather a companion. Yes, some letters now and then to certain Swiss galleries from which she bought, and things of that kind. But fundamentally she was looking for a person of good taste with whom to exchange impressions, with whom to talk about intelligent matters. “Naturally,” she did not insist that I decide on the spot, I could give my answer tomorrow. But “naturally,” food and lodging. Would I like to have a look at my eventual bedroom? She called Constance.

  For all the rest of October Madame was very busy in planning a non-realistic Ikebana, an extremely delicate balance of autumn shades. The base was an antique gold-colored Belle Epoque vase, a 1906 glass, with a long, slender neck.

  Madame left the responsibility of naming the composition up to me. All the fanciful compositions were titled, because one of the purposes of Ikebana was just to solicit names, to make concrete in words the sensation that the composition had excited in our souls. What struck me the most in that composition was “its heart of light,” I said, and Madame affirmed that she couldn’t have found a better name herself. To tell the truth, I began to possess a certain competence in this area. I had literally devoured Ikebana: I’art des fleurs, Les fleurs et Vantique tradition japonaise, Ikebana et Hai-Kai, and finally La peinture japonaise, a magnificent volume on glossy paper, all reproductions. At night, on the advice of Madame, I read Kawabata, who was “so Zen from the first to the last page.” It bored me to death, with all those idiotic women gazing sadly at winter landscapes, but I refrained from saying so in order not to appear materialistic. Madame detested materialism, and Kawabata was “un petit souffle who caressed the plains of the soul.”

  With my October salary, which Madame insisted on paying in full even though I had not begun work at the beginning of the month, I bought myself a jacket of dark green buckskin, which I felt much in need of, and accessories in very red tortoise: powder box, comb, and cigar lighter combined. With advanced money I purchased a most elegant writing case, which seemed to me to be indispensable for a secretary of a certain level, and which contained a tiny silver papercutter, a lacquered fountain pen, a bottle of very blue ink, and a little packet of writing paper in splendid light yellow-colored rice paper with matching envelopes. I found that my room acquired a more intellectual aspect. I made some small changes in the arrangement of the objects. I moved the lamp made from the jade vase from the chest of drawers to the table near the window, I arranged next to it the objects I had bought, and I got a real desk. To finish it off, I arranged in broad view the Poésie complète by Vittoria Aganoor Pompilj and La vie des abeilles by Maeterlinck, which I had bought at a stall.

  At the beginning of November Madame entrusted to me two tasks which perfectly justified my acquisition of stationery. A catalogue had arrived from a gallery in Zurich in which two prints by Utamaro were mentioned without any specifications. I had to ask for information, dimensions, prices, possibly photographs. And then I had to go to a shop in Sanremo so that it would send us by its usual method the bulbs for transplanting indicated by such-and-such abbreviations in its catalogue.

  To the gallery in Zurich I wrote a stiff, polite letter, in elegant handwriting, on my rice paper. I begged them to be very detailed in their answer, to indicate the price in Swiss francs, to send at least two colored photographs measuring 16 by 24. Finally I let drop the possibility of an immediate purchase depending upon the quality of the works, and I carefully signed myself Lisabetta Rossi-Fini, secretary to Madame Huppert. I thought that for my signature I could quite rightly begin to use Mama’s last name and Papa’s, joined by a hyphen. After all, I was the daughter of them both; I did not use names that did not belong to me.

  At the shop in Sanremo, in addition to the bulbs, I ordered a dozen blue carnations which I’d seen in the catalogue and which had fascinated me. The carnation is a simple, popular flower which signifies frankness and sympathy. But that greenhouse variety of intense blue that faded into violet on its curly edges was truly unusual. They seemed exotic, mysterious flowers, something like orchids without possessing their cold vulgarity.

  In those days Madame was valiantly occupied in the realization of a Gashu, a traditional moribana, for which is necessary, more than the gifts of sensitivity and creativity, exact knowledge of the ancient Japanese painting which inspired the moribana. The moribana is a type of Ikebana created in a large, flat vase, usually rectangular or round. My collaboration on the moribana, to tell the truth, was limited to the search for the primary materials, given that I had to take a rather boring walk in the hills around the lake to search for walnut trees and juniper shoots. It had rained recently and the ground was not exactly ideal for sylvan strolls. Perhaps because of the pollen and the decaying leaves, I developed an annoying irritation of the ankles which caused me to scratch for a week.

  The gallery in Zurich answered by return mail. It sent the photographs of the Utamaros, regretting that the colors were not very true and that the shape was not what I had requested, but they were all that it had in its file. They showed two small water colors: one rather obvious female figure and one insect on a water lily pad, all in tones of green and brown, over which Madame enthused. The information from the gallery, in addition to the dimensions and prices, was as follows: “Utamaro, 1754-1806. Num. 148/a: Femme de Yedo, 1802 environ, gouache sur papier de Chine, etat de conservation parfait. Num. 148/b: Libellule sur nenuphar, 1790 environ, gouache sur papier de Chine, quelque legere tache d’humidite sur le dos.”

  It was pure chance that evening that, before going to bed, I glanced at the chapter in Peinture japonaise dedicated to the work and school of Utamaro. The first discrepancy with the Swiss ca
talogue to arouse my attention was the date of death, 1797, which I confirmed in Madame’s Larousse. I found it most peculiar that such a reliable gallery could make such a foolish mistake, and I set out to search further. Decidedly the gallery was not in luck. My book devoted ample space to a follower of Utamaro, a certain Torii Kiyomine (nineteenth century), rich in talent and in mellow drawing, but without the melancholy grace of the master, who had dedicated his painting to the life of the courtesans. I understood immediately that the Swiss had made an even graver blunder, and it did not seem opportune to drop the matter.

  That same evening at my desk I composed a masterpiece of a letter which the next day underwent Madame’s approval. Stating beforehand that the person for whom it was my duty to write was an international expert on Japanese painting and that the humble signer of the letter did everything possible to assist her in her research, I politely begged to observe the following: 1)I found it truly odd that Utamaro’s date of death, accepted by common consent, of the most authoritative contemporary scholars as 1797, had been arbitrarily shifted a good nine years. 2) Such an inaccuracy, which was evidently not a typographical misprint, provoked an even more lamentable error: the Maestro would have to have painted a work even though he was already deceased. 3) The female figure of No. 148/a in the catalogue, indicated as Femme de Yedo by Utamaro, was in reality a courtesan by Torii Kiyomine, as was attested (even for those unable to read the ideograms to the left of the figure) not only by the volute hem of the dress and the obviously nineteenth-century position of the figure, but the unequivocal high, black, wooden-soled sandals which emerged from beneath the kimono. I let it be understood rather wickedly that the clients of the gallery would certainly be alarmed about the guarantee of the works in their possession if they were by chance to become acquainted with such a deplorable blunder. I permitted myself to suggest, therefore, a prompt errata corrigé in the catalogue, which would reassure “all of us.” And finally I proposed the purchase, in addition to the authentic Utamaro, for which I was prepared to pay the fair price, of the courtesan by Kiyomine also, for half the requested price. I signed myself, with cordial regards, Lisabetta Rossi-Fini, secretary to Madame Huppert.