“No, please, I beg you, Herrera, I’ll do what you want. But don’t say anything to Rachel, leave the boys alone.”
“But why? You don’t think they’d like to know that their father and husband isn’t the monster that some would have us believe?”
“No, no, please. No. Promise you won’t do it.”
“All right, all right, I promise, but don’t get excited. I won’t say anything. But you can’t go on avoiding them. Being ashamed in front of them. Leo, you don’t have anything to be ashamed of. Absolutely. The person telling you this makes his living by defending habitually devious sharks who should have a million things to be ashamed of but, God knows why, don’t even know what it means to blush.”
Herrera was preaching, as they say, in the wilderness. The problem was that Leo was that wilderness. The funny thing was that what had, in part, impelled Leo to go to Herrera was the conviction that he, better than any other, would be able to understand the shame that Leo couldn’t in any way purify himself of. Evidently Leo had calculated badly. Not only for him had things changed over time. They had for Herrera, too. He was no longer the despised dwarf he had been. Now he was a successful man. Through his virile charisma, through his satanic cleverness and his acrobatic eloquence he had made the world forget his height and his appearance. And, despite all his empathic capacities, how could that renowned lawyer imagine the life Leo had been leading? The abyss he had fallen into? The most recent period of his human experience (the only granted to him) was rigorously devoted to shame.
Did Herrera know anything about what it means to be aware that your sons are looking at you unperturbed while you’re on your knees in front of a man who is about to shoot you? What it means to imagine what your children are suffering because of you? But, so it is, Leo would never have been able to explain to a rational man that, when you are so involved with shame, the only thing you wish for is more of it. To bury yourself under it, like a man who has just been shot and every so often presses on the wound to feel where the pain is. That was why all that documentation was useful, all those scrupulously filed newspaper clippings: it kept him attached as tightly as possible to his shame, so that he wouldn’t forget it or underestimate it for a single instant.
Or maybe yes, Herrera was right. Maybe he was going mad? But was there anyone, at least in their world, who under those circumstances had more right to go mad?
The picture that I ruthlessly reproduce on the facing page managed to put Leo’s nervous system to a hard test.
It appeared suddenly in a couple of newspapers, accompanying articles discussing his affaire. Finally they have what they wanted, Leo thought, overexcited. They have their ace in the hole. Other evidence that had developed, other abominations were of no use. That photograph said all there was to say. That photograph could have served as a publicity poster for the campaign to raise public awareness whose final, by now obvious, objective was the elimination from the social organism of the bacterium Leo Pontecorvo.
Leo didn’t even know how they had dug up that photograph. He already heard it, the voice of the classic, very sensible simple soul (the world is full of them), who would reassure him by saying that it was no big deal. It didn’t show him naked, or dressed as a woman, or in dubious poses, or with a gun in his hand, not to mention drunk. It hadn’t caught him in a compromising position with Camilla, or engaged in any of the infinite number of corrupt acts that were attributed to him. Nothing like that. Why are you getting so excited? the very sensible soul would have asked, basically all this photo shows is a man mounted on a horse like a thousand other men who practice the anachronistic art of equestrianism. But it’s exactly that! Leo replied inwardly and at the height of agitation to the hypothetical sensible soul. That is the point. That is the secret. That is the low blow. It’s an insinuating, specious photograph, full of double meanings and false bottoms.
He, who now knew the system from the inside (that majestic and insidious incinerator), could conceive the iconographic power of a photograph like that. A power such that this time not even Herrera could minimize it. With his subtle intuition he would certainly understand.
“We’re back on this stuff? But didn’t you promise me that . . . ?”
“Yes, I know, and I swear I’ve kept it . . . rather, I’ve tried to. But it’s not so easy and maybe not even so intelligent to ignore this stuff. I have the right to check, to monitor. You can’t keep an eye on everything, and your colleagues can’t, either. I know, I know, all day they’re working for me. But these things they can’t understand. You’ll agree with me that it takes our intelligence, our upbringing, our maturity to understand certain things . . . ”
“Calm down, Leo, calm down, nothing is happening. Now I’ll give it a glance, as you say, just calm down a moment . . . ”
“Why are you telling me to calm down? I don’t want to calm down. I can’t calm down. How can I calm down when they continue to publish this kind of slander?”
“But what slander?”
So Leo put it down in front of him again. And Herrera, without losing control, resumed:
“Look, I’ve seen it. It’s a photograph, that’s all. Maybe it doesn’t show you at the height of your attractiveness. Maybe you’re not the most photogenic man in the world. But, good God, it’s a photograph. The photograph of a man on horseback dressed like a shit. I’ve seen a million. All you have to do is buy the magazine The Horse not to mention Show Jumping or Dressage, and you’ll find another thousand.”
This time that cynicism didn’t amuse him, that brisk irony didn’t make him feel at home or intimate. It made him indignant. And made his heart sink. Leo had no desire to joke; he wanted to be taken seriously. He expected a serious response. He was spending his last cent, reducing his family to poverty, to get serious answers. So he ought to give him a serious answer.
“O.K., sorry, no joking. I swear to you, my friend, that I can’t understand what you’re saying. I can’t understand why this picture should be more dangerous or more defamatory than all the ones that have been published so far.”
Was it possible that he didn’t understand? A man of his subtlety, his cleverness, his sensitivity didn’t understand. Probably to understand certain things you have to be in the middle, you have to be involved. Everything in life has a meaning. This entire tragedy has a meaning. Is it possible that you, Herrera, you, don’t understand it?
Leo really needed to believe in it. In the meaning of what was happening. But he didn’t know how to convince his lawyer that that photograph was connected to that notorious meaning. So he tried to calm down. Or, rather, to play the part of the man who is calming down.
“You’re sure there’s no way to make them withdraw this photograph? To get it pulped? I don’t know, charge them all with defamation?”
“You see? I don’t understand what you’re raving about. What’s happening to you? You’re losing control. I repeat: it’s a photograph. All you have to do is not look at it. Don’t buy the newspapers and don’t turn on the TV. That is the only prescription against paranoia.”
“So now you’re calling me paranoid? What does paranoia have to do with it? I’m paranoid just because I realize, because I register meticulously what’s happening? Everything that’s happened to me seems to you like paranoia? You know what I’m going through? Do you have any idea how alone I feel? Overnight I became a worm. A reject. No one is willing to grant me anything. You remember the conference at Basle, the one they invited me to? Well, yesterday evening a girl, a shit with a very polite voice, left a message on my answering machine. You know what she said?”
“How should I know? That they changed the time of the coffee break?”
“That at the last minute they had had to cancel the conference. That they were dismayed, they didn’t know how it could have happened, but that because of a regrettable series of circumstances . . . and all that other Swiss rubbish . . . ”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“What’
s the moral?”
“The moral, Herrera, is that they’re killing me. The moral is that for a while everyone has been killing me. Including the Swiss. But you know why they decided right now to finish me off?”
“Why?”
“But it’s so clear, holy Christ! Because they saw the photograph. Think about it, Herrera. I’ve thought about it, since last night I’ve been thinking about it, and it hangs together perfectly. This fucking newspaper is available in Basle, right? Of course it is, I found out. Evidently it ended up in the hands of some idiot bureaucrat. That bureaucrat showed it to the committee. And only then the committee decided. This photograph convinced them. I see them all in a little knot looking at it, commenting on it, judging it . . . I see it all.”
“And you don’t think they barred you because of everything that’s happened to you in recent months? When you told me about it you said you were surprised that they hadn’t revoked the invitation, with some excuse. And now, look: they’ve done it.”
“Yes, but why just now?”
“Because they’ve come back from vacation. Because the conference is approaching. Or because they only now remembered you. How should I know? And above all, who gives a shit? Do you really think that one of the organizers, after coming across this photograph by chance, had a revelation? And only then withdrew the invitation? This is what you’re telling me? This is your brilliant deduction?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, my friend, as you see, the stopper is out of the bottle . . . I told you not to read that shit. It’s that shit that is turning your brain to mush. You’re not the first I’ve seen reduced to this state. You’ve stopped thinking straight. I repeat: you’re not the first I’ve seen reduced like this. And I knew it might happen. Well, let someone help you who still has his feet planted on the ground: unbelievable as it may seem to you, this photograph says nothing more about you than any other I’ve ever seen. Yes, it’s true, it shows you in a sporting activity. Maybe the sport you’re engaged in isn’t among the most common, in fact, let’s admit, it’s a bit snobbish. Maybe this will make some people angry. Some working-class guy, some populist. Maybe the concierge will say to the butcher’s boy, ‘Just look at this shit of a pedophile, this thief, this loan shark, this shitty Jew with all his billions. I would’ve bet he’d go horseback riding dressed like someone going foxhunting.’ Yes, I don’t deny that that could happen. But between that and saying that this photograph is the product of a great plot intent on destroying you, well, there’s a big difference.”
Seriously, Herrera, the extremely intelligent Herrera, didn’t understand? And yet to him it seemed so obvious. Or maybe he absolutely understood. Maybe he understood and wanted to make him appear crazy. But of course: he’s not my friend, he’s not my ally. He was the one who broke off with me at the time. He was the one who at a certain point in our life decided he didn’t welcome my presence. It was my height, my look, my attractiveness, my self-assurance that irritated him. Made things difficult for him. Humiliated him. This guy has hated me since we were kids. How could I rely on him? How could I put my life, or what remains of it, in his hands, if what at the time for me was friendship was merely hostility for him? What for me was affection was for him envy. He’s drawn me into his trap by deceit. He’s bleeding me dry. And now he has awarded himself a front-row seat so he can enjoy the spectacle of my destruction. He was just waiting to see me reduced to this to enjoy his revenge completely.
And why? Because of an unfortunate remark that I let slip out when I was half drunk in front of that Valeria, or whatever her name was. If only he had explained what he felt. If only he had told me what he had inside. But not him. He was proud. He didn’t ever want to expose himself. Only at the end, when the situation had become untenable, then he kicked me out of his life. Like that, without warning, with a ferocity and a premeditation that left me breathless. Has he been lying in wait for me since then? Never underestimate the blasted rancorousness of a dwarf! Why should I be surprised? He has always been like that: eloquent and ambiguous. And now the moment has arrived to make me pay the bill. This nasty flea-bitten lawyer, whose stomach hair is longer than he is, pretends to help me, to be with me, while he is ditching me.
Until suddenly Leo had an illumination.
“You remember the question you asked Rabbi Perugia about Jewish iconoclasm? And you remember his answer?”
This sentence came out of his mouth before he even knew why.
“Now, what does Jewish iconoclasm have to do with it?”
“Come on, don’t look at me like that, don’t treat me like a madman, I’m perfectly lucid. You remember or not? Of course you remember, but you don’t want to give me the satisfaction. And to think that every time you argued with the rabbi I looked at you with such admiration. Maybe it didn’t show, but I was ecstatic. Your argumentativeness, your love for anything that wasn’t obvious, your ability to challenge those anachronistic superstitions . . . ”
“All right, all right. Thank you. I agree, it was amusing to make fun of that ninny, and attack his granite convictions, but I can’t understand what it has to do with that photograph and everything else that’s happening . . . And I don’t remember anything I asked the rabbi or any of his answers.”
But by that point Leo had lost the desire to explain to his friend. Or to remind Herrera what the callow Herrera had said to Rabbi Perugia so many years earlier, and above all what Rabbi Perugia had answered. That exchange between a stammering young rabbi and a thirteen-year-old gnome suddenly appeared to Leo so profound—such a definitive prophecy!—that to tell it would seem like a pointless violation.
Leo was in a trance now, placidly saturated with that memory: the long, boring lessons given by Rabbi Perugia to the meager group of preadolescents on Sunday mornings in the basement of the Tempio Maggiore. He remembered everything. The soccer games that preceded those exhausting immersions in religion, and in which Herrera gave evidence of all his bitter combativeness. The dusty neorealist air you breathed during those games—those battles!—in which the local, working-class Jews used their only encounters with Jews from middle-class families to thrash them. But also the dancing parties that followed the lesson and that usually took place at the Pontecorvo house. Gay little parties that Herrera stayed away from, out of timidity or pride or in order not to spoil them by his presence.
How was it possible that Herrera didn’t remember the morning, thirty-five years earlier, when, a few weeks before their bar mitzvah, he, Herrera, had asked Rabbi Perugia why God had refused to allow Jews the comfort of images? Why had that capricious bearded entity, with whom Herrera seemed to have a score to settle, forbidden his people to make a portrait of him? The Catholics are always painting their beautiful Jesus, glowing and trim, and we are not even granted a little holy picture. Why? Why?
A question typical of the boy Herrera. His typical idle curiosity of those years. The quibbling, the intellectual exhibitionism that were to make up for the physical disagreeableness. And at the same time a challenge with which he wanted to destroy everything around him. Which provoked in the other kids (especially the girls) distrust and incomprehension. And which went so well with the distrust that his body aroused in everyone.
Why was that horrible dwarf so interested in these things? How could it be important to know why God did not want to have his portrait done, if in a few hours everyone would be in the living room of the Pontecorvo apartment dancing to records that had just arrived from America? How could a boy of thirteen prefer those pompous questions to Glenn Miller, Cole Porter, Bing Crosby? Why, if none of them—dragged out of bed on Sunday morning for what they considered a supplemental ration of school, reserved for Jewish boys—gave a damn what the rabbi was saying about God and his whims, was Herrera so interested? Why did that ugly, timid child show such pugnacious energy only in soccer games and when he was argumentatively challenging Rabbi Perugia?
The curious thing is that, if Herrera’s verbose insistence was incomprehens
ible to his companions, it pleased the rabbi, who, in fact, said to him, “With that head you should be a rabbi!” To be answered by that extremely precocious thirteen-year-old: “But, I’m afraid that you, Rebbe, have too much faith in the Law of Moses to be a lawyer.”
Have too much faith? Come on, that’s not the way thirteen-year-olds talk. And yet that’s how Herrera talked. Like a novel.
Well, that time the captious eloquence that Herrera in the years to come would put in the service of his clients and make fruitful for his bank account, and now uninterested in persuading rabbis of the eternal Father’s inconsistencies, was fixed on the question of images. Why didn’t God want a portrait of himself? Herrera didn’t understand it. And who knows why Leo—although at the time he belonged to the category of sleepy slackers who, during the lessons, did nothing but stare at the clock, in the hope that the torture would end as soon as possible—realized that he remembered both the rabbi’s first answer, definitely ironic, “Well, maybe the Poor Old Man isn’t as vain as they say he is,” and the second, extremely serious: “Or maybe the Lord wants to teach us that the truth is everything that images don’t express.”
Persecution (9781609458744) Page 20