by Primo Levi
“Not really, at least not as far as I’m concerned . . .”
“Sure, I may have a few of the details wrong, but the essence is the same, don’t deny it. You’ve avoided any struggle in life, you’ve never had a fistfight, and the desire to have one remains into old age. Ultimately, this is why you accepted Mussolini; you wanted someone tough, a fighter, and though he actually wasn’t one, he wasn’t stupid, either, and so acted the part as well as he possibly could. But let’s not digress: do you want to see what it’s like to have a fistfight? Here, put on the helmet and then you’ll tell me.”
I was sitting down, the others were standing around me. There were three of them, wearing striped shirts, and sneering at me. One of them, Bernie, spoke to me in a language that I realized, thinking about it later, incorporated thick American slang, but at the time I had no trouble understanding him, and I spoke that way, too; actually, I even remember some phrases. He called me bright boy* and goddam rat,* and, patiently and cruelly, went on making fun of me for quite a while. He made fun of me because I was a Wop,* and more precisely a dago;* I didn’t respond, and kept drinking with studied indifference. In reality, I felt both anger and fear; I was aware that the scene was fake, but the insults burned me, and then the fakery itself reproduced a situation that wasn’t new, even if I had never been able to get used to it. I was nineteen years old, stocky and tough, and I truly was a Wop, the son of Italian immigrants; I was profoundly ashamed of it, and at the same time I was proud of it. My persecutors were authentic persecutors, my neighbors and enemies since birth: blond, Anglo-Saxon, and Protestant. I hated them and also, on some level, admired them. They had never dared to confront me openly: the contract with NATCA offered them a magnificent opportunity, along with impunity. I knew that they and I had all been signed up for a recording, but this didn’t detract from our reciprocal hatred one bit; actually, the fact that we had accepted money to beat each other up doubled my resentment and anger.
When Bernie, mocking my language, said, “Mamma Mia, Pappa Pia, Baby’s got da diarrhea!” and blew me a ridiculous kiss off the tips of his fingers, I grabbed a beer mug and flung it in his face. As I watched him bleed, I was filled with wild exultation. I immediately knocked over the table, and, holding it in front of me like a shield, tried to get to the exit. I took a punch in the ribs; I dropped the table and hurled myself at Andrew. I hit him on the jaw; he flew backward and came to a stop, dazed, against the bar, but in the meantime Bernie had revived, and he and Tom backed me into a corner under a hailstorm of punches to the stomach and gut. I lost my breath, and could make them out only as indistinct shadows, but when they said to me, “C’mon, baby, ask for mercy,” I took two steps forward and made as if I were about to fall, but instead threw myself at Tom with my head down like a charging bull. I threw him to the floor, tripped over his body, and fell on top of him; while I was trying to get back up, I took a furious uppercut to my chin, which literally lifted me off the ground, and I felt as if my block had actually been knocked off. I lost consciousness, coming to with the sensation of a cold shower on my head, and then it was all over.
“That’s enough, thanks,” I said to Simpson, as I massaged my chin, which, who knows why, still hurt a little. “You’re right, I wouldn’t have any desire to do that again, not in real life, or virtually.”
“Me neither,” said Simpson. “I used it only one time and it was enough for me. But I think that an authentic Wop might experience a certain satisfaction, if for nothing more than the opportunity to fight one against three. In my opinion, NATCA made this tape for them; as you know, that company doesn’t do anything without market research.”
“I actually think they made it for the other guys, for the Blond Anglo-Saxon Protestants, and for the racists in all races. Think what a refined pleasure it is to feel the pain of someone who you want to make suffer! Anyway, enough of that. What are these tapes with the green stripe? What’s meant by ENCOUNTERS*?”
Mr. Simpson smiled. “It’s a perfect euphemism. Even for us, censorship is no joke, you know. They’re supposed to be ‘meetings’ with illustrious personalities for clients who want to have brief conversations with the Earth’s greatest. And there are actually a few: look here, ‘De Gaulle,’ ‘Francisco Franco Bahamonde,’ ‘Konrad Adenauer,’ ‘Mao Tse-tung’ (yes, yes, him, too; it’s hard to figure out the Chinese), ‘Fidel Castro.’ But they only function as a cover; for the most part they contain something else entirely—they’re sex tapes. The meetings exist but, let’s just say, in a different sense. Look, there are other names you’d rarely see on the front page of a newspaper . . . Sina Rasinko, Inge Baum, Corrada Colli . . .”
At this point, I began to feel myself blush. It’s an annoying defect that I’ve had since adolescence: all I have to do is think, You’re going to blush, aren’t you? (and no one can stop us from thinking), and the mechanism kicks in. I feel myself turn red, which makes me even more ashamed, and redder still, until I begin to sweat profusely, my throat dries up, and I’m unable to speak. The trigger this time happened to be the name of Corrada Colli, the fashion model made famous by a notorious scandal, for whom I suddenly realized I had lascivious feelings, never before admitted to anyone, including myself.
Simpson was watching me, wavering between amusement and alarm. In fact, my state of embarrassment was so evident that he couldn’t have decently pretended to be unaware of it. “Don’t you feel well?” he finally asked me. “Would you like to get some air?”
“No, no,” I said, panting, while my blood flowed tumultuously to its most profound extremities. “It’s nothing. It happens to me a lot.”
“You aren’t trying to tell me,” Simpson said, stunned, “that Colli’s name has reduced you to this state?” He lowered his voice, “or maybe you were also involved in the scandal?”
“Of course not, what are you thinking?” I protested, while the whole phenomenon repeated itself, with redoubled intensity, shamelessly exposing me.
Perplexed, Simpson kept silent: he pretended to look out the window, but shot me a glance now and again. Then he decided: “Listen, we’re among men, and we have known each other twenty years. You’re here to try the Torec, right? Well, then, I have that tape. If you want to satisfy your craving, don’t hesitate, just say so. Obviously, it will remain between us; furthermore, look here, the tape is still in its original wrapping, sealed, and I don’t even know what it contains exactly. Maybe it’s the most innocent thing in the world; but in any case there’s nothing to be ashamed of. I believe no theologian could find anything to object to: you’re hardly the one committing a sin here. Go ahead, put on the helmet.”
I was sitting on a stool in a theater dressing room, my back turned to the mirror and the dressing table, and I had a vivid sensation of lightness. I realized right away that this was because I was wearing very little clothing. I knew I was waiting for someone. In fact, there was a knock at the door and I said, “Come in.” It wasn’t “my” voice, and this was natural; instead, it was a woman’s voice, and this was less natural. While a man entered, I turned toward the mirror in order to fix my hair, and the image was hers, the same one, Corrada, seen a thousand times in the glossies: her eyes bright like a cat’s, her triangular face, the black braid coiled on top of her head with perverse innocence, her clear skin; but I was inside that skin.
In the meantime, the man had entered: he was of medium height, olive-skinned, jovial. He had a mustache and wore a casual sweater. I felt a sensation of extreme violence toward him that was of a distinctly divided nature. The tape imposed upon me a series of passionate memories, some full of mad desire, others of rebellion and resentment, and he, whose name was Rinaldo, figured in all of them; he had been my lover for two years, was cheating on me, had finally come back, and I was crazy about him. At the same time my true self bristled at this twisted idea, rebelled against this impossible, monstrous thing that was about to happen, now, immediately, there on the couch. I was suffering acutely, and I vaguely perceived myse
lf fussing with the helmet, in a desperate attempt to get it off my head.
As if from a distant planet, Simpson’s placid voice reached me: “What the hell are you doing? What’s happening? Wait, let me do it or you’ll rip out the cord.” Then everything went dark and silent. Simpson had turned off the power.
I was enraged. “What kind of joke is this? And you the one playing it on me! Your friend, fifty years old, married with two kids, guaranteed heterosexual! That’s enough, give me my hat and you keep your witchcraft!”
Simpson looked at me, mystified; then he quickly checked the title of the tape and turned as pale as wax. “You’ve got to believe me, I would never do such a thing. I had no idea. It was a mistake: inexcusable, but a mistake. Look here. I was convinced that the title was ‘An Evening with Corrada Colli,’ and instead it’s ‘An Evening of Corrada Colli.’ It’s a tape for women. As I told you earlier, I’ve never tried it.”
We looked at each other with mutual embarrassment. Even though I was still very upset, at that moment Simpson’s suggestion as to the possible didactic applications of the Torec came to mind, and I had difficulty repressing a bitter laugh. Then Simpson said: “And yet, if it hadn’t been a surprise, if you’d known what to expect, it might actually have been an interesting experience. Unique—no one has ever had it, even if the Greeks said Tiresias had the capability. Those guys already knew everything: just think, recently I read that they had already thought of domesticating ants, as I’ve done, and of speaking with dolphins, as Lilly did.”
I responded curtly: “Not me, I don’t want to try it. You try it, if you want to, then tell me about it.” But both his mortification and his good faith were so apparent that I was sorry for him; as soon as I felt a little reassured, I tried to make peace and asked him: “What are these tapes with the gray stripes?”
“You’ve forgiven me, right? Thank you, and I promise I’ll be more careful. That is the EPIC series, a fascinating experiment.”
“EPIC? You mean they deal with those things you Americans like so much, war, the Far West,* the Marines*?”
In the spirit of a good Christian, Simpson ignored the provocation. “No, they have nothing to do with the epic. They are recordings of the so-called Epicurus effect: they’re based on the fact that the termination of a state of suffering or need . . . But no, look: do you want to give me a chance to redeem myself? Yes? You’re a civilized man; you’ll see that you won’t regret it. Furthermore, this tape, ‘Thirst,’ I know well, and I can assure you there will be no surprises. I mean, yes, there will be surprises, but decent and honest ones.”
The heat was intense: I found myself in a desolate landscape of brown rocks and sand. I had an atrocious thirst, but I wasn’t tired, nor did I feel distress. I knew that this was a Torec recording, I knew that behind me there was a NATCA Jeep, that I had signed a contract, that by contract I hadn’t been able to drink for three years, that I was a chronically unemployed man from Salt Lake City, and that very soon I would be able to drink. They had told me to proceed in a certain direction, and I walked: my thirst had already reached a state in which not only my throat and mouth but also my eyes had become dry, and I saw huge flashing yellow stars. I walked for five minutes, stumbling over the rocks, then I saw a sandy space surrounded by the ruins of a stone wall; at the center was a well, with a rope and a wooden pail. I lowered the pail and pulled it up full of clear cold water. I distinctly knew that it was not water from a spring, that the well had been dug the day before, and that the water tanker that had filled it was parked in the shade of a cliff not far off. But my thirst existed, real and ferocious and urgent, and I drank like a calf, immersing my entire face in the water: I drank for a long time, through my mouth and nose, stopping every so often to breathe, pervaded by the most intense and simple of pleasures conceded to the living, that of restoring one’s own osmotic tension. But it didn’t last long: I hadn’t drunk even a liter before the water no longer gave me any pleasure whatsoever.
The desert scene then vanished and was replaced by another scene, quite similar: I was in a canoe in the middle of a scorching sea, blue and empty. Here, too, I felt my thirst, and the consciousness of the artifice, and the certainty that water would come, but this time I asked myself from where, because around me nothing could be seen but sea and sky. Then a hundred meters from me a midget submarine emerged with NATCA II written on it, and the scene concluded with a delicious drink. I then found myself successively in a prison, in an armored car, in front of a glassblower’s kiln, tied to a stake, in a hospital bed, and every time my brief but agonizing thirst was more than compensated for by the arrival of iced water or other drinks, in ever more varied circumstances, and for the most part artificial or childish.
“The structure is a bit monotonous and the direction is weak, but the aim is without a doubt achieved,” I said to Simpson. “It’s truly a unique pleasure, vivid, almost intolerable.”
“Everyone knows it,” Simpson said, “but without the Torec it wouldn’t be possible to condense seven satisfactions into a twenty-minute show, eliminating all danger, and almost every negative aspect of the experience: that of the long torment of thirst, inevitable in nature. This is why all the EPIC tapes are anthological, that is, they are made of compilations; in fact, they make use of a disagreeable sensation, which is better if brief, and one of alleviation, which is intense but brief by nature. Other than thirst, there are various tapes planned for the cessation of hunger, as well as at least ten types of pain, both physical and spiritual.”
“These EPIC tapes,” I said, “are confusing to me. Perhaps there’s something valuable to be extracted from the others in roughly the same way that you can get something significant out of a sports victory, or from a natural spectacle, or from physical love. But here, from these frigid little games at the expense of pain, what can you wring out of them besides canned pleasure, an end in itself, solipsistic and solitary? That is to say, they seem to me to be a kind of abdication; they don’t seem to me to be ethical.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Simpson said, after a brief silence, “but will you still think so when you’re seventy? Or eighty? And does a paraplegic, someone who is bedridden, someone who lives to die, think as you do?”
Simpson then briefly showed me the so-called SUPEREGO tapes (rescues, sacrifices, the recorded experiences of painters, musicians, and poets at the height of their creative effort), with a blue stripe, and the tapes with yellow stripes, which reproduce mystical and religious experiences of various denominations: regarding these, he told me that some missionaries had already requested tapes in order to give converts a taste of their future life.
As for the tapes from the seventh series, with a black stripe, these were difficult to categorize. NATCA randomly heaps them all under the heading SPECIAL EFFECTS: the majority were experimental recordings pushing the limits of what is possible today in order to demonstrate what would be possible tomorrow. Some, as Simpson told me earlier, were synthetic tapes, that is, not recorded from life but constructed with special technologies, image by image, frame by frame, in the way you construct synthetic music or animation. With this process, sensations that had previously been inconceivable or nonexistent were created; Simpson also told me that in one of the NATCA studies a group of engineers was working on taping an episode from the life of Socrates as seen by Phaedo.
“Not all of the black tapes,” Simpson said to me, “contain enjoyable experiences. Some are dedicated exclusively to scientific purposes. There are, for example, recordings made about newborns, about neurotics, about psychopaths, about geniuses, about idiots, even about animals.”
“About animals?” I repeated in astonishment.
“Yes, about superior animals, with nervous systems similar to ours. There are tapes of dogs—‘Grow a tail!’* says the catalogue enthusiastically; tapes of cats, of monkeys, of horses, of elephants. For the time being, I only have one of the black-stripe tapes, but I recommend it to you as a way to end the evening.”
I veered windward, lowering myself just above a long mountain ridge, and cruised from south to north skimming along the earth: my large shadow was now preceding me, mowing down at high speed patches of earth covered in grass and soil, stones and snow. A sentry marmot whistled two, three, four times, before I could see it. In the same instant, I spied some wild oat stems quivering below me: a hare, still in its winter coat, desperately bounded toward its burrow. I gathered my wings into my body and fell upon it like a rock: it was less than a meter from its refuge when I was on top of it, spreading my wings to brake the descent and drawing out my claws. I seized it in full flight, and regained altitude only by using the momentum of the dive and without flapping my wings. When the initial impetus had slackened, I killed the hare with two thrusts of my beak. I now understood what it was I “must do,” the sensation of tension had ceased, and I directed my flight toward the nest.