by Primo Levi
S. was confused: “But you’ve got to admit that one who is born sick or from malnourished parents—”
R. interrupted and said in a didactic tone: “If you are alluding to the problem of hunger, I must remind you that it’s been much exaggerated. It may be true that a large part of the human race has known hunger, but it’s not true that people die from it. You understand that in order to live one has to eat, and in order to eat one must desire food. Now, what is hunger but the desire for food? It has not been proved that satiety is a good thing. Rats that have been allowed to eat as much as they like have shorter lives than those kept on a controlled diet. The data on this are irrefutable.”
While R. was speaking, G. stood up and began to pace the narrow room. Then he stopped and said to his colleagues: “Will you step outside for a moment, please? I would like to speak with this gentleman alone for a couple of minutes.” He turned to S. and in a low, confidential voice continued: “It seems to me you’ve guessed it: someone somewhere made a mistake, and the terrestrial plans reveal a fault, a flaw of form. For about forty years they looked the other way, but now the problems are too many to ignore, and it can’t wait any longer. We’ve got to find remedies, and we need people like you. You’re surprised? I didn’t tell you this at first because I didn’t know you yet, and I wanted to verify a few things, but now I can tell you, we didn’t come to you as we go to everyone else. We’re not here by chance. You were brought to our attention.”
“I was?”
“Yes. We urgently need people who are responsible and competent, honest and courageous—this is why we have pursued you and keep pursuing you. We’re interested not in quantity but in quality.”
“So am I to understand that . . . I won’t be born at random, that my destiny is already determined, like a book that has already been written?”
“Every last one of your pages already written, you’re entirely determined down to the last letter . . . no, that I can’t confirm. You know, we do believe in free will—or at least we’re supposed to behave as if we believed in it—and so, for our purposes, every human is amply exposed to chance and to his own actions. But we can give you some excellent choices, give you good initial advantages, this we can do. Would you like to have a look? . . . This is you, you see? We’ll give you a healthy and agile body, and we’ll insert you into a fascinating context: in these quiet places where the world of tomorrow is being built, or into the past, which can be penetrated with new and marvelous instruments. And this is still you, here where wrongs are righted and where justice is done quickly and freely. Or here, too, where pain is soothed and life is rendered more tolerable, more secure, and longer. The real masters are you—not government leaders or military commanders.
“And now that we are alone I can—in fact, I must—show you the rest, the classified material, which you rightly sought numerous times to grab from my hands.”
Those images needed no commentary, nor the lure of animation: they spoke clearly for themselves. A multi-barreled cannon could be seen shooting into the dark, illuminating in its glare collapsed houses and factories in ruins; then piles of skeletal cadavers at the foot of a pyre, in a grim frame of smoke and barbed wire; then, in a tropical rain, a reed hut, and inside, on a bare dirt floor, a dying child; then a bleak expanse of uncultivated fields reduced to swamps, and forests without leaves; then a village, and an entire valley, flooded and buried by a gigantic mudslide.
There were many others, but G. pushed them aside and continued speaking: “You see? There are still a lot of things to straighten out, but none of these miseries will be yours. You won’t have to passively suffer evil. You, and many others, will be called upon to fight it in all its forms. Together with your human appearance, you will receive the weapons that you will need. They are weapons that are both powerful and subtle: reason, pity, patience, courage. You won’t be born the way others are born; your life will run smoothly, so that your virtues won’t be wasted. You will be one of ours, called upon to complete the work begun billions of years ago, when a certain ball of fire exploded and the pendulum of time began to swing. You won’t die. When you shed your human appearance, you will join us and become a soul hunter like us—provided you are content with a modest commission, on top of your expenses.
“There, I’ve finished. I wish you luck, both with your choice and beyond. Think about it, and give me an answer,” said G., placing the final images in the briefcase and closing it.
S. was quiet for a long time, so long that G. was on the point of asking for a response, when, finally, he said: “I don’t want to have advantages right from the start. I’m afraid I’ll feel like a profiteer and all my life I’ll have to bow my head before each of my friends who didn’t have the same privileges. I accept, but I want to be born randomly, like everyone else: among the billions of unborn without a fate, among those predestined to become servants or to fight straight from the cradle, if they even have a cradle. I prefer to be born black, Indian, poor, without amnesties or pardons. You understand me, don’t you? You yourself said that each man is his own creator: well, it’s better to be so fully, to build oneself from the roots. I prefer to construct myself alone, and to work up the anger that I will need, if I’m able. If not, I’ll accept the fate of everyone. The path of humanity, helpless and blind, will be my path.”
Red Lights
His was a quiet job. For eight hours a day he had to sit in a dark room where red indicator lights switched on at irregular intervals. What these signified, he didn’t know; it wasn’t his duty to know. Every time one switched on he had to react by pushing certain buttons, but he didn’t know what these meant, either. The task was not mechanical. He had to choose the buttons quickly, on the basis of complex criteria that varied each day and depended on what order and at what pace the lights lit up. In short, it wasn’t an idiot’s job but a job that one could do well or badly; sometimes it was even pretty interesting, the sort of job that allows one to pride oneself on one’s own readiness, ingenuity, and logic. As for the final result of his actions, however, he had no clear idea. All he knew was that there were about a hundred of those dark rooms, and that all the decision-making data converged in a sorting room somewhere. He also knew that his work was somehow judged, but he didn’t know if this was done in isolation or in combination with the work of others. When the siren sounded, other red lightbulbs on the door lintel would light up—the number was both an assessment and a final reckoning. Often seven or eight lit up; only once did ten light up, but there had never been fewer than five, so he had the impression that things were not going too badly for him.
The siren sounded and seven lights switched on. He went out, stopped a minute in the hallway to let his eyes adjust to the light, then went out to the street, got into his car, and started it. The traffic was already very heavy, and he had a hard time edging his way into the stream of cars driving along the boulevard. Brake, clutch, into first gear. Gas, clutch, second gear, gas, brake, back to first, brake again, red light. Forty seconds seemed like forty years, who knows why: time is never longer than when you’re sitting at a traffic light. He had no other hope, no other desire than to get home.
Ten traffic lights, twenty. At each one, a line of traffic longer than the one before, lasting three red lights, five red lights; then it was a bit better, the traffic more fluid than on the other side of town. A glance in the rearview mirror to confront the expression of petty anger and malevolent impatience on the face of the person in the car behind who wishes you didn’t exist; left blinker, when you turn left you always feel just a little guilty. You turn left cautiously: there’s the gate, there’s a parking space, clutch, brake, key, hand brake, alarm; for today it’s over.
The red light on the elevator beams; you wait for it to become free. The red light goes off; you push the button, the light comes back on, you wait for the elevator to come down. Half of your free time is spent waiting: is it really free time? Finally, in the correct order the lights went on for the third fl
oor, the second floor, the first floor, he read GROUND FLOOR and the door opened. Again red lights, first, second, up to the ninth floor; you’re there. He pressed the doorbell; no waiting now but he did actually wait a little, as he heard Maria’s placid voice say “Coming,” her footsteps, then the door opened.
He wasn’t surprised to see that the red light between Maria’s clavicles was lit: it had been on for six days and it was to be expected that its melancholy light would shine for a few more days. Luigi would have liked Maria to hide it, cover it up in some way. Maria said she would, but she often forgot to, especially in the house; or at other times she hid it badly, and one could see it glimmering under a scarf, or at night through the sheet, which was the saddest of all. Perhaps deep down, and without admitting it even to herself, she was afraid of the inspections.
He tried not to look at the lightbulb; in fact, he tried to forget about it. In the end, he asked quite a lot of Maria. He tried to talk to her about work, how he spent the day; he asked about her, her hours alone, but the conversation never came alive; it flashed for a moment and then fizzled, like a fire started with damp wood. The lightbulb, on the other hand, stayed on, its gleam steady and certain; it was the most oppressive of the prohibitions because it was in their house, in everyone’s house, a tiny but solid barrier erected during the fertile days between all married couples who already had two children. Luigi was quiet for a while, then said: “I’m . . . I’m going to get the screwdriver.”
“No,” Maria said. “You know that’s impossible, there’s always a mark. And then . . . and then if a baby is born? We already have two, do you have any idea how much they would tax us?”
It was clear that yet again they would be able to talk about nothing else. Maria said: “You know Mrs. Mancuso? You remember her, right? The woman who lives below, the really elegant one, on the seventh floor. Well, she asked to exchange the State model for the new IBM 520—she says it’s another thing entirely.”
“But it’s outrageously expensive, and in the end the result is the same.”
“Yes, but you don’t even know you’re wearing it and the batteries last a year. I’ve also heard there’s a subcommittee in Parliament discussing a model for men.”
“That’s ridiculous! With men the red light would always be on.”
“But no, it’s not that simple. The woman remains in charge, and she, too, would wear the lightbulb, but the blocking device is also worn by the man. There’s a transmitter, the wife transmits and the husband receives, and on the red days he’s blocked. In the end it seems right to me, much more moral.”
Luigi suddenly felt overcome by exhaustion. He kissed Maria, left her in front of the TV, and went to bed. He had no trouble falling asleep, but he woke up the next morning long before the red light on the silent alarm began flashing. He got up, and only then, in the dark room, did he notice that Maria’s light had gone out, but by now it was too late and he would be sorry to wake her. He checked the red indicator lights on the boiler, the electric razor, the toaster, and the alarm system; he then went outside, got in his car, and watched the indicator lights go on for the battery and the hand brake. He activated the left blinker, which meant that a new day was beginning. He left for work, and as he drove he calculated that the number of red lights in his day averaged two hundred—that was seventy thousand in a year, three and a half million in fifty years of active life. It then seemed to him that his skull was hardening, as if covered by an enormous callus, suitable for beating against walls, like a rhinoceros horn, but flatter and duller.
Vilmy
I had never been inside an old-style London apartment. I had met Paul Morris many times in Italy, the last time at a biochemical conference, and some years earlier (when he wasn’t yet married) in a very expensive hotel on Lake Maggiore. I expected his home to be luxuriously and tastefully decorated and, in fact, it was: fine Adam and Hepplewhite furniture, a few select paintings on the walls, many rugs, drapes, and tapestries, restful and subtle lighting. The dominant tones were gray-green, ivory, and lavender. Double glazing kept out the clatter and the murky air of St. James Square.
Paul, who is by now nearly fifty, appeared thinner and white-haired. He introduced me to Virginia, his wife: born in Hungary, not beautiful, but cultured and refined, and at least twenty-five years younger than him. Virginia is fluent in many languages, including Italian, and a subject does not exist upon which she is not able to speak eloquently. She was telling me about the adventures of one of her distant relatives, who travels the world as an expert for Unesco, when I saw a curtain move silently behind her. Silence, I must say, is a dominant characteristic of the Morris home. Not only do external noises not penetrate but those within are muffled, and it seems impossible even to produce a noise, either with your voice or otherwise. One feels reluctant to speak aloud, as in a church or a funeral home. The curtain pulled away from the wall, then fell back silently, and out came a lovely animal that at first glance I mistook for an English setter, but when it came closer to Virginia I saw from its stride that it wasn’t a dog. It’s rare for dogs to walk with such composure. They are too lively and curious, or they look around, wagging their tails, or they run, or wiggle their hips. Then, it is difficult for them not to make a racket with their paws on the floor, and even more difficult for them to ignore a stranger. Instead, this creature, covered in a shiny coat of black fur, moved with the nimble and hushed grace of a feline. Oddly, it stared fixedly at Paul, with its muzzle pointed in his direction, but went quietly toward Virginia; despite its bulk (it must have weighed at least nine kilos) it jumped lightly onto her lap and lay down. Only then did it seem to notice my presence, sporadically throwing me quick questioning glances. It had big blue eyes and long lashes, pointed, twitching, nearly transparent ears that culminated in two peculiar tufts of light fur, and a long, hairless, pale pink tail. I noticed that Virginia hadn’t moved, either to accommodate the animal or to push it away.
“Have you never seen one of these?” Paul asked me, my interest in the animal not having escaped him.
“No,” I responded, “only once some years ago on television.” I had immediately imagined that it was a vilmy. Recently, in fact, the newspapers had been writing about them again, because of the Lord Keith Lothian scandal, and they were the object of a new parliamentary inquiry, but at that time only a few dozen pairs had been imported.
“She’s called Lore,” Paul said, “and we’re very attached to her. You know, we don’t have children.”
“A female?” I asked, and caught Virginia throwing a quick, sharp glance at her husband.
“Yes,” Paul responded. “They’re more affectionate. This one is very dear, appealing, docile. It’s a shame she’s almost nine years old, that’s seventy in our years.”
“Won’t you breed her?”
“It’s not that easy,” Morris said, unable to hide his embarrassment. “There isn’t a black male in all of the United Kingdom. I’ve found out that the nearest is in Monte Carlo, but she’s already old, poor thing. He almost surely would reject her.”
“So then what about the milk . . .”
“They don’t have to be impregnated, didn’t you know? It’s a unique case among mammals. They only need to be fed well and regularly milked. Of course, they don’t make much.”
“Perhaps that’s lucky,” Virginia said unexpectedly.
As might be remembered, there had been much discussion about vilmy milk, but back then no one had very clear ideas on the subject. Paul explained to me that all the talk about a supposed hallucinogenic potency in the milk was without foundation. Nor was it an aphrodisiac, as many claimed, though they had never tried it or let themselves be convinced of it. And all those stories about its long-term toxicity, how it caused memory loss and early-onset senility, especially in “addicts,” and so on—those were all nonsense, too.
“There is only one truth,” he told me, “and it’s very simple. The milk of all mammals contains tiny quantities of N-phenyl oxytocin, an
d it’s to this substance that newborns owe their emotional fixation on their mothers, or the female who breast-feeds them. In the majority of animals, its concentration is low, and the effect is eliminated a few months after birth. In humans it’s higher, and the emotional relationship with the mother lasts many years. In the vilmy, it’s very high, twenty times higher than in human milk. Therefore not only are the puppies tied to the mothers by an almost pathological bond but anyone who drinks the milk feels its effects and changes his life.”
At these words, and I didn’t know whether it was in obedience to British custom or because she felt the conversation take a delicate turn, Virginia got up, bid me good night, kissed Paul, and withdrew. A few seconds later, as if waking from a dream, Lore lifted her head, stared for a while at Morris, then jumped down from the chair, went over to him, and rubbed her nose affectionately against his thigh. I noticed for the first time the curious mobility of the face of this animal. It has little in common with a human face, yet at any given moment its expressions are human-like, sometimes ironic, bored, alert, affectionate, joyful, hostile; but always languid, intense, and with a touch of fox-like cunning.
“And you . . . have you tried it?” I asked Paul, inadvertently lowering my voice.
Paul didn’t respond directly. “They’re incredible animals,” he whispered. “You see, they reciprocate or at least appear to reciprocate. Don’t try it, don’t let yourself be tempted. It’s a mistake, a mistake you will pay for dearly.”
“I’m not tempted, really, not even a little. Why did you do it?”
“Because . . . no, there is no because. Out of the desire for something new, out of curiosity, out of boredom, out of . . . let’s just say that at a moment when Virginia and I weren’t getting along owing to a certain matter—and she was right, but I didn’t want to admit it—instead, I wanted to do something spiteful to her. Maybe I just wanted to make her jealous. In any case, I tried it, that is a fact, and facts don’t change. That was two years ago, and I’ve become someone else.”