by Primo Levi
Since by now it was late, I took my leave of Simpson and thanked him for the demonstration, especially for the last tape, which had satisfied me deeply. Simpson apologized again for the accident: “One certainly needs to be careful, a simple mistake can have unthinkable consequences. I wanted to tell you what happened to Chris Webster, one of the Torec project team members, with the first industrial tape they were able to record: the theme was a parachute jump. When he went to check the recording, Webster found himself on the ground, a little battered and bruised, with a slack parachute next to him. Suddenly, the fabric lifted off the ground, inflated as if a strong wind had blown up into it, and Webster felt himself yanked off the earth and pulled slowly upward, the pain from his bruises having amazingly vanished. He rose calmly upward for a couple of minutes, then the rip cords gave a yank and the upward movement accelerated vertiginously, cutting off his breath; in the same instant, the parachute closed like an umbrella, folding in on itself many times lengthwise, and in a snap it rolled into a ball and stuck to his shoulders. While he was ascending like a rocket he saw the airplane right above him, flying backward with the hatch open: Webster passed inside headfirst and found himself in the cabin, trembling with fear for the imminent jump. You understand, right? He had put the tape into the Torec backward.”
Simpson affectionately extracted from me the promise of a return visit in November, when his collection of tapes would be complete, and we parted late at night.
Poor Simpson! I’m afraid it’s all over for him. After many years of faithful service to NATCA, the last NATCA machine has defeated him, precisely the one that should have assured him a relaxed and multifarious retirement.
He fought with the Torec like Jacob with the angel, but the battle was lost before it had begun. He sacrificed everything: the bees, his job, his sleep, his wife, books. Unfortunately, with the Torec you don’t build up an immunity: every tape can be used an infinite number of times and each time one’s actual memory is turned off, and a secondhand memory is activated which is then recorded onto the tape itself. This is why Simpson doesn’t feel bored during the sessions, but when the tape finishes he is oppressed by a boredom as vast as the sea and as weighty as the world, so all he can do is play another one. He graduated from his established two hours a day to five, then to ten, now to eighteen or twenty; without the Torec he would be lost, with the Torec he is lost just the same. In six months he has aged twenty years and has become a shadow of himself.
Between tapes, he rereads Ecclesiastes: it is the only work which still speaks to him. In Ecclesiastes, he told me, he finds himself and his condition: “All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full . . . the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing. The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun.” And more: “For in much wisdom is much grief; and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.” On the rare days when he is at peace with himself, Simpson feels close to the old king, just and wise, replete with knowledge and with days, who had seven hundred wives and infinite riches and the black queen’s friendship, who adored the true God and the false gods Ashtoreth and Milcom, and who expressed his wisdom through song.
But the wisdom of Solomon was painfully acquired during a long life full of good deeds and misdeeds; Simpson’s is the fruit of a complicated electronic circuit and eight-track tapes, and he knows it and is ashamed of it, and in order to escape the shame he dives back into the Torec. He’s heading toward death, he knows it and is not afraid: he has already experimented with it six times, in six different versions, recorded on six tapes with a black stripe.
Contents
LETTER 1987
Protection
Heading West
The Synthetics
Observed from a Distance
The Brokers
Red Lights
Vilmy
With the Best Intentions
Knall
Creative Work
Our Fine Specifications
In the Park
Psychophant
Recuenco: The Nourisher
Recuenco: The Rafter
His Own Maker
The Servant
Mutiny
Written on the Forehead
Best Is Water
They were a hundred men at arms.
When the sun rose in the sky,
They all took a step forward.
Hours passed, without a sound:
They didn’t bat an eye.
When the bells rang,
All of them took a step ahead.
So the day went, it was evening,
But when the first star blossomed in the sky,
All at once, they took a step ahead.
“Get back, get away, foul ghosts:
Back to your old night.”
But no one answered; so, instead,
They took a step ahead, all in a ring.
(TRANS. J. GALASSI)
Letter 1987
Dear Editor,
Your proposal to reprint Flaw of Form more than fifteen years after it was first published both saddens and cheers me. How can two such contradictory states of being exist together? I shall try to explain it both to you and to myself.
It saddens me because these are stories related to a time that was much sadder than the present, for Italy, for the world, and also for me. They are linked to an apocalyptic, pessimistic, and defeatist vision, the same one that inspired Roberto Vacca’s The Coming Dark Age.1 But the new Dark Age has not come: things haven’t fallen apart, and instead there are tentative signs of a world order based, if not on mutual respect, at least on mutual fear. Despite the terrorizing, if slumbering, arsenals, the fear of the “Dissipatio Humani Generis” (Guido Morselli),2 whether rightly or wrongly, has been subjectively attenuated. How things actually are, no one knows.
I am greatly cheered that the most neglected of my books will have another life. It’s the only one that wasn’t translated, that never won a prize, and that the critics were put out by, accusing it, precisely, of not being catastrophic enough. Rereading it now, I find, along with much that is naïve and many errors in perspective, something good. Synthetic babies are a reality, even if they have belly buttons. We have gone to the Moon, and the Earth seen from up there must be rather similar to the one I described; it’s too bad that the Selenites don’t exist, and never did. The distribution of aid to Third World countries often coincides with the situation I outlined in the two “Recuenco” stories. With the expansion of the service industry, the “red lights” have increased in number, and, in 1981, reports even appeared in the newspapers of a monthly sensor identical to the one I described. We are still far from any reality like the one in the story “With the Best Intentions,” but (“this retribution that you see is mine”3), after some hesitation, the telephone company assigned to me a number at my second residence that was the exact anagram of my number in Turin.
As for “Best Is Water,” a short time after its publication Scientific American reported a story about a slimy and toxic “polywater,” from a Soviet source, similar in many ways to the one I anticipated. Fortunately for everyone, the relative experiments were not reproducible and it all went up in smoke. It flatters me to think that this lugubrious invention of mine might have had a retroactive and apotropaic effect. Readers should therefore be reassured: water, even if polluted, won’t ever become viscous, and all the seas will preserve their waves.
PRIMO LEVI
Turin, January 1987
1. Roberto Vacca (b. 1927) is an Italian engineer, mathematician, and novelist. He is well-known for his forecasts and predictions using mathematical models. His 1971 novel, mentioned here by Levi, is about the collapse of modern civilization and is considered a classic of apocalyptic literature.
2. Guido Morselli (1912–1973) was an Italian novelist and essayist. His Dissipatio H.G. (Dissipation of the Human Race; published
posthumously in 1977) is a surrealist fantasy that takes place just after the human race has been wiped out, and is narrated by the sole survivor.
3. “Cosi s’osserva in me lo contrappasso,” from Dante, Inferno Canto XXVIII:142.
Protection
Marta finished cleaning up the kitchen, started the washing machine, then lit a cigarette and lay down on the couch. Distractedly, she watched a television show through the crack in her visor. In the next room Giulio was silent: he was probably studying, or writing an essay for school. The reassuring clatter of Luciano, who was playing with a friend, could be heard coming from the other side of the hall.
It was the advertising hour. A string of enticements, recommendations, and temptations streamed wearily across the screen: Buy exclusively the aperitif Alpha, only Beta ice cream; only Gamma polish for every metal; only Delta helmets, Epsilon toothpaste, clothes made by Zeta, scentless Eta oil for your joints, Theta wine. . . . Despite her uncomfortable position and the armor that irritated her hips, Marta eventually fell asleep, but she dreamed she was sleeping on the stairs of her building, lying crosswise, while next to her people went up and down paying no attention to her. The clanking of Enrico on the landing woke her. She was never wrong and was proud of the fact that she could distinguish the sound of his footsteps from those of all the neighbors. When he came in, Marta hurried to send Luciano’s friend home, and she set the table for dinner. It was hot, and, furthermore, it had been announced on the news that the micro-meteorite shower was in a period of limited activity, so Enrico lifted his visor, and the others followed suit. It was easier to bring the food to your mouth this way, rather than through the little star-shaped valve that always got dirty, and then stank.
Enrico looked up from reading the paper and announced, “I met Roberto on the subway. It’s been a while since we’ve seen each other. He’s coming over tonight with Elena.”
They arrived at about ten o’clock, after the kids had gone to bed. Elena wore a marvelous outfit made out of AISI 304 steel that had charming tiny bolts with milled heads, and nearly invisible argon welding. Roberto, on the other hand, wore a light armor of an unusual style with flanged sides, that made remarkably little noise.
“I bought it in March, in England, and yes, it’s stainless, holds up very well in the rain, has all the trimmings in neoprene, and you can take it off or put it on in fifteen minutes or less.”
“How much does it weigh?” Enrico asked, without much interest.
Roberto laughed, unembarrassed. “Ah, the Achilles heel. As you know, our aim is standardization, and here in the Common Market we have achieved it, but down there, with regard to weights and measures, they’re always a few steps behind. It weighs six kilos, eight hundred grams: that’s two hundred grams under regulation, but you’ll see that no one will notice. Or maybe, just to be legal, I’ll have them insert a little lead here behind the neck, where you can’t see it. Apart from this, all the thicknesses are in order, and in any case I always carry with me the certificate of origin and the dimensioned drawing right here in this cleft next to the registration number. Can you see? It’s made for that purpose—one of those little ideas that make life easier. The English are such a practical people.”
Marta couldn’t help giving Enrico’s armor a surreptitious once-over—poor guy would never go shopping in London. He still wore the old zinc-plated armor in which, many years earlier, she had met him: dignified, certainly, without a spot of rust, but what a lot of work the maintenance was! Not to mention the lubrication—no fewer than sixteen Stauffer lubricators, four of which were difficult to reach, and if you missed one, or skipped the Sunday lubrication, you were in big trouble, and the thing would shriek like a Scottish ghost. You were also in big trouble, however, if you overdid it, and then, like a slug, it left traces all over the chairs and couches. But Enrico didn’t seem to notice. He said he had a great affection for it, and any discussion of changing it was futile, even if, Marta thought, one could now find gear that complied with the law and was practical, almost elegant, and could be bought on an installment plan, so that you hardly noticed the cost.
She took a peek at her own image reflected in the mirror. She, too, was not the type of woman who spends the day at the beauty salon and the hairdresser, and yet she would have liked to update her wardrobe a bit, there was no doubt about it. At heart she still felt young, even if Giulio was by now sixteen years old. Marta distractedly followed the conversation. Roberto was by far the most brilliant of the four of them. He traveled often and he always had some new story to tell. Marta noticed with pleasure that he tried to meet her glance. It was a purely nostalgic pleasure, since their affair had occurred ten years ago now, and she knew nothing would happen to her again with him or anyone else. A closed chapter, if for no other reason than that irritating matter of obligatory protection: one never knew if one was dealing with someone old or young, with someone beautiful or ugly, and all encounters were limited to a voice and a flashing glance inside a visor. She had never been able to understand how a law so absurd could have been voted upon and passed—even if Enrico had explained to her many times that the micro-meteorites were a real and tangible threat, that for twenty years Earth had been crossing through a shower, and that one was enough to kill a person, piercing him straight through in an instant. She started, realizing that Roberto was talking about precisely that subject.
“So you believe it, too? Well, it’s no surprise if all you ever read is The Herald. Think about it rationally and you’ll realize the whole thing’s a scam. The cases of ‘heaven deaths,’ as we now call them, are ridiculously few, no more than twenty actually verified. The others are embolisms or heart attacks or other accidents.”
“No way!” Enrico said. “Just last week I read that a French minister went out onto his balcony for a second without his armor . . .”
“It’s all a fake, I tell you. The heart attack is increasingly common, and it’s a practice that serves no one. Our highly efficient system has simply tried to use it, that’s all. If the one whose time has come doesn’t have his armor on, it’s an MM, a micro-meteorite, and you can always find the appropriately compliant expert in the field to say so; if he is wearing his armor, then they call it a heart attack, and no one notices.”
“And all the newspapers go along with this?”
“Not all of them. But you know how it is, the auto market is saturated and the assembly lines are sacred. They can’t stop. So they persuade people to wear armor, and those who don’t obey are put in jail.”
These were not new ideas. Marta had already heard them, and more than once, but it was also true that even brilliant types like Roberto often found themselves short of conversational topics, and, in the end, repeating things that were already well-known was safe, and those long silences that made everyone uncomfortable were avoided.
“I, however,” Elena said, “must say that I like wearing the armor, and not just because the women’s magazines tell me I should. I really do feel good in it, just the way one feels good at home.”
“You like it because your armor is beautiful. In fact, forgive me if I haven’t told you so yet, but it’s marvelous,” Marta said sincerely. “I’ve never seen armor so well designed. It looks tailor-made.”
Roberto cleared his throat and Marta understood she’d made a gaffe, even if it wasn’t a terrible one. Elena laughed, with forgiving self-assurance. “It is tailor-made!” She shot a knowing glance at Roberto, and added, “He, you know, has certain friends in the armor business in Turin. . . . But that’s not why I said I felt good in it. I’d feel good in any armor. I don’t believe much in the MM story, in fact, not at all, and to hear that it’s all a scam so that General Motors can earn more money makes me seethe with anger, and yet . . . and yet I feel good in it and bad without it, and there are many like me, I guarantee you.”
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Marta said. “They created a need. It’s not the first time; they’re very good at creating needs.”
/> “I don’t think mine is an artificial need. If it were, tons of people would be discovered all the time not wearing armor, or with armor not in regulation. And they would never have passed the law, otherwise people would have revolted. Instead . . . it’s a fact: in it I feel . . . how to put it?”
“Snug,”* Roberto intervened, his voice tinged with irony. This must not have been a new topic of conversation for him.
“What do you mean?” Enrico said.
“As snug as a bug in a rug.* It’s difficult to translate, and even a little offensive, but not all bugs* are cockroaches.”
“In any case,” Elena resumed, “for me it’s like that. I find I’m snug,* like a cockroach in a rug. I feel protected, as if I were in a fortress, and at night when I go to bed I take it off reluctantly.”
“Protected from what?”
“I don’t know. From everything. From men, the wind, the sun, and the rain. From smog and contaminated air and nuclear waste. From fate and from all things that are unseen and unpredictable. From evil thoughts and from disease and from the future and from myself. If they hadn’t passed that law, I believe I would have bought myself armor all the same.”
The conversation was taking a dangerous turn. Aware of this, Marta steered it into more tranquil waters by telling a story about one of Giulio’s teachers, who was so cheap that, rather than throw out his thoroughly rusted armor, he painted it inside and out with lead, then came down with lead poisoning. Enrico then recounted the case of the carpenter from Lodi who went on a date and was caught in a downpour; his bolts became stuck, and the girl had to cut the armor off with a blowtorch and then send him to the hospital.