by Primo Levi
The doorbell rang and Antonio felt relieved: whoever it was would be an escape, an excuse. At that hour, he wasn’t expecting anyone, so it was almost certainly a pest, but even the most gruesome pest would be helpful to him, would come between him and that sheet of paper, like a referee separating two boxers between rounds of a match. He went to answer the door. It was a young man, skinny, of medium height, his clothes refined, his eyes lively behind his glasses. He carried a leather satchel and spoke with a slight foreign accent.
“I’m James Collins,” he said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you in person.”
“How may I help you?” Antonio asked.
“Perhaps I haven’t made myself clear, or perhaps you didn’t hear my name: I’m James Collins, the one from your stories.”
In fact, several years earlier, Antonio had published a successful collection of short stories in which the protagonist was named James Collins: he was an inventor, highly intelligent and a bit eccentric, who created extraordinary machines for an American company. These machines, which were always beyond the limits of the credible, though only by a little, set in motion events that were at first triumphant, then catastrophic, as was common in science fiction stories. Antonio felt surprised and irritated.
“So? Let’s assume you are James Collins—though it seems to me that it’s up to you to prove it—what do you want from me? In the first place, by your own admission, you are nothing more than a fictional character and have no right to interfere with people who are actually flesh and blood; secondly, you will remember perfectly that in the final story you die. I agree that perhaps this was not generous on my part, that perhaps I could have shown you a little more gratitude. But you have to understand, we all must die, characters or not, and, furthermore, the way that story was constructed, I had no other decent way of ending it. You simply had to die. I had no choice. Any other ending would have been considered a cheap trick, a device allowing you to reappear in another series of stories.”
“Don’t worry, I have no reason to hold a grudge against you. The question is entirely irrelevant: once a character has been created and proves himself to be alive and kicking—as is my case, thanks to you—he may die or not in the book, but he is welcomed into the National Park and stays there as long as the book survives.”
Antonio, who was an occasional visitor to those places where literary prizes are given, had already heard about this National Park business, but always in rather vague terms. Curiosity beginning to get the better of his irritation, he decided to let James come from the hallway into his office and offered him a seat and a cognac. James told him he had obtained a brief leave of absence. He described the Park as a well-equipped place in a verdant and hilly area with a mild climate. The guests were housed in small, prefabricated one- or two-bedroom units. Mechanical vehicles were forbidden, so one got around either by foot or on horseback. This prohibition ensured that the more ancient guests weren’t put at a disadvantage, such as, for example, the Homeric heroes, who would have found it quite awkward to drive a car or ride a bicycle.
“It’s generally not a bad idea, but a lot depends on who’s near you, because, as I said, it’s difficult to make long trips. Unfortunately for me, I live near Childe Harold, the one Byron made famous, and a fully arrogant bore, and it’s better to keep your distance from Panurge,1 who lives not far off, even if he is a likable fellow. Actually, almost all the characters of renowned authors tend to put on a lot of airs. Officially, of course, everyone is equal, but in fact even in that place it’s all a question of patronage, and someone like me, for example . . . well, forgive me if I say so, your book had a reasonable success, but it’s not as if it can be compared to Don Quixote or anything . . . and then you’re still alive. . . . In other words, we modern characters, especially of living authors, we’re at the bottom of the heap. We’re the last to be provided with clothing and shoes, the last to be allotted horses, the last in line for the library, the showers, the laundry . . . well, one must have a good deal of patience. It’s been a pretty difficult integration. As you know better than I do, my professional specialization is very precise—in the blood, you might say—and I know my products well, but in that place what am I supposed to do all day long, for goodness’ sake? Yes, I go from one to the next trying to sell the stuff I build on the sly, pencil sharpeners, safety razors, nail scissors—just the other week I sold a hot water bottle to Agamemnon. I do it to keep in practice, but it doesn’t give me any satisfaction. To pass the time, I also write.”
Antonio was observing his visitor carefully. As soon as he managed to interrupt him, he said, “You . . . well, it might seem strange to you, but I didn’t imagine you exactly like this.”
James laughed heartily. “Oh, great! And how did you imagine me?”
“Much taller, blond, with a crew cut and flashy clothes, and you smoked a pipe incessantly.”
“I’m sorry. If you wanted me to look like that, all you had to do was describe me that way when you had the chance; you should have been much more explicit at the time. Now what’s done is done, and I am who I am, by God; don’t get any ideas about changing me, since, as I’ve already told you, you couldn’t anyway. A character is like a child—when he’s born, he’s born. If you’re really so keen on it, invent another character, as tall as you like, with the pipe and everything. If you do a good job, I give you my word, I won’t be jealous, and I myself will see to it that he gets properly settled into one of the recently built houses that are larger and less damp. I’ll treat him like a brother, but leave James Collins alone.”
Antonio willingly accepted this offer of responsibility and let the subject go. “Let’s forget I ever mentioned your appearance. As for your suggestion, who knows, I may take you up on it. By the way, if I understood correctly, you enjoy a certain reputation around that place, a certain authority? You’ve been able to make the others appreciate you, I mean, even if . . . um . . . I’m not yet dead?”
“To a certain extent, yes, I have. But it’s not a question of clout. It’s that I make myself useful. For example, I look after the maintenance of the stoves and the kitchen fireplaces; it used to be Captain Nemo and before that Gulliver, but they only made a mess of things. Now everything runs smoothly. I don’t earn much, but I’ve made myself indispensable, and so would be able to obtain some modest advantage for a colleague. By the way, do you know who I’ve taken on as my assistants? Caliban and Frankenstein’s monster.”
“Wonderful!” Antonio said. “Robust and reliable people.”
“They learned the job instantly—one does the plumbing and the other the welding. But don’t get the wrong idea; those who actually want to do something are few. For the most part, the others, since they are, in fact, characters, have a particularly established mind-set and are therefore deadly boring. They say or do only one thing, and always the same one, the one that made them famous. Polonius preaches to the wind, Trimalchio stuffs his face—not that the rations are so plentiful, but he manages, maybe by fasting for three days in order to gorge himself on the fourth. Thersites cackles, and the Unnamed2 is converted once a day. In short, the days drag on like this in a rather predictable way—if one doesn’t know how to take some initiative, it’s not much fun. However, there is an advantage: we don’t have that nuisance you have of everyone—rich and poor, noble and plebeian, famous and obscure—being inescapably compelled to die, and, moreover, almost always in an unpoetic and uncomfortable way. In that place it’s different. Even there some do pass away, but there’s nothing macabre or tragic about it; it happens when a work falls into oblivion, and so, naturally, its characters suffer the same fate. It’s not like that stupid and brutal practice of yours, always unexpected, always catastrophic. Among us, those who die—it happened recently to Tartarin, the poor guy—don’t actually die. No, they lose breadth and weight day by day; they become hollow, transparent, light as air, ever less substantial, until no one is aware of them anymore, and everything goes on as if they didn’t exist anym
ore. In other words, it’s tolerable: a clean, sterile, painless passing away—a little sad, but complete in itself, fitting.
“We also have another advantage. Even though marriages exist among us of the everlasting kind, those acclaimed, so to speak, and by their nature indissoluble—Bradamante and Ruggiero, Paolo and Francesca, Ilia and Albert3—it is far more common for one to get him- or herself a casual partner, no strings attached, for a few months or a couple of years or a hundred. It’s a nice custom, and also very practical, because couples who are badly matched break up immediately. But don’t get the idea that it’s easy to predict who should be with whom. The most incredible combinations happen: recently Clytemnestra went to live with that ruffian Egidio, and there’s nothing here to object to except for the age difference, which has been widely commented upon. But would you believe it if I told you that Ophelia got tired of Hamlet’s indecisiveness and has been living for twenty years with Sandokan, and they get along very well together? Or that as soon as Lord Jim arrived, he immediately fell in love with Electra, and they are a couple? As for Hans Castorp, in the past few months the gossip throughout the entire Park has revolved around him: he abandoned Madame Chauchat, with whom he has lived since 1925, had a brief affair with the Lady of the Camellias, and has now married Madonna Laura.4 He always did like French women.”
As Antonio listened, he experienced various and conflicting emotions. James’s story fascinated him the way a fairy tale might, and at the same time reawakened in him a pressing professional interest—lacking in ideas as he was, this National Park would have made a stupendous short story—as well as aroused deep satisfaction and intimate pleasure. James Collins was a nice guy, spoke with precision and coherence, was alive beyond all doubt, and, despite certain discrepancies in his physical appearance, Antonio had created him. He had extracted him out of nothing, like a son—actually, more than a son, because he hadn’t needed a wife—and now there he was in front of him, near and vital, and they spoke to each other as equals. He had the desire to start again right away, to get back to writing stories with a renewed vigor, to splatter the pages with an abundance of characters, another ten or twenty or fifty, who would then, like James, show up to keep him company and provide him with confirmation of his power and productivity. He then remembered that he hadn’t yet formulated the question that had been rooting around in him since the beginning of the visit—though it wasn’t surprising, since James had been speaking almost without interruption and didn’t seem the type to be easily cut off midsentence.
He filled James’s glass, and while he drank, Antonio said: “You haven’t told me yet why you’re here. Surely it doesn’t happen very often that a character leaves the Park to go in search of his author. By now I’ve had quite some experience with authors and their characters, but I’ve never heard of anything of this sort before.”
James skirted the issue a bit. “First, I should explain to you about ambigenes. If you think about it, our category is not that well defined. There are many cases in which the subject is both a person and a character. We call them ambigenes, and there is a committee that decides whether they should be admitted to the Park or not. Take, for example, the case of Orlando, yes, the one from Roncesvalle: his real existence has been historically proved, but the character prevails in such a large measure over the person that he was accepted into the Park without discussion. The same happened for Robinson Crusoe and for Phaedo.5 For St. Peter and Richard III there was some controversy; instead, and luckily for all, Napoleon, Hitler, and Stalin were rejected.”
“It’s interesting,” Antonio said, “but I still don’t see the connection between your visit, the Park, and this story about the ambigenes.”
“I’ll explain. You see . . . you are an ambigene.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. I, myself, made you an ambigene. I wrote some stories—they’re here in this envelope—that have you for a protagonist. I didn’t do it out of revenge, or out of gratitude. It simply happened that in the Park I find I have a lot of free time—every evening, actually. As you might imagine, the nightlife isn’t much to speak of, since there’s not even electric light. I was curious about you, I knew you well, and so I wrote about you. I hope you won’t be displeased.”
“True stories?” Antonio asked, swallowing hard.
“Well, more or less, yes. A little embellished: you’re in the profession, so you know what I mean. Here’s one: ‘On a Cruise: Antonio and Matilde’—”
“Wait a minute! What was I doing with this Matilde? I’m married, and you know it, and you also know that I’ve never had anything to do with any Matilde, either before my marriage or after.”
“But, hold on, what did you do with me? Didn’t you write anything you wanted to?”
“Sure, but I . . . well, I exist and you don’t. I invented you, from the first page to the last, whereas I was alive before your stories and can prove it. All you have to do is call the Bureau of Vital Statistics.”
“Doesn’t it strike you that I also exist?” James said cynically. “I don’t see how Vital Statistics makes a difference—a muddle of bureaucrats and wastepaper. What counts are the testimonials, and you have written a good number with your own hands, and the general consensus is that they are valid. It would be rather awkward for you to prove that James Collins doesn’t exist after taking five hundred pages and two years in order to show that he does exist. As for that Matilde, relax, I don’t intend to hurt or embarrass you; in fact, this is actually one of the reasons I’m here. I wanted to have you read these stories so that you could cut out what you don’t like. However, don’t come to me and say that you’re free to do with me as you please, but I’m not to do the same with you—that is sophistry of the highest order. I am bound to make your character consistent with your person, and so were you, once you had conceived me. So, are you sure of your consistency with regard to me? Have you never had any doubt whether it was permissible or not to have me die in that fine way—yes, a morphine addict thrown into full withdrawal, don’t pretend to have forgotten—when up until halfway through the novel you described me as young and healthy, levelheaded, and in control of myself? You had every right to give me a drug-related death but, and you’ll pardon me if I tell you so openly, you should have thought of it earlier. And if you really had the urgent need to get rid of me, you could have had me die in ten other, less arbitrary ways. I’m telling you all this not in order to argue but to convince you that we are alike.
“So, to conclude, here’s the manuscript, if you want to have a look. As I’ve tried to demonstrate to you, I’m not obligated to show it to you, but I’m doing so just the same, for your peace of mind, and because I very much want your opinion; if I need to cut something, I’ll cut it. In order to do this they gave me a leave of three days plus two. They only give it in rare cases—for example, to characters who have suffered serious offenses perpetrated by their authors, and who want an explanation. But, as far as I know, my case is unique: even if many of them in that place write, it never occurred to any of them to write about their own author.”
“Do I have to I read it here, in your presence?” Antonio asked with concern.
“I would prefer it. The stories aren’t long—you could read them in three hours. You see, I’m in a hurry to have your opinion, and I don’t have much time. I would then like to request an appointment with your publisher.”
Shocked by the impudence of this last sentence, Antonio began to read, while the other drank, smoked, and scrutinized his face for any traces of a judgment.
From the first page, he realized that the stories were weak, and he felt some relief, because he had no desire to wind up in the Park. No, there wasn’t any danger of that. James Collins might have defined him as an ambigene, but there wasn’t any comparison between the fullness of his real life and the confused and inconsistent fables that James had based upon him. No committee would have any doubts, and, besides, a character like this one, far from becoming immortal, would
disappear within an editorial season.
He read all the stories, and his initial opinion was confirmed. He gave them back to James and told him openly what he thought of them. “I would advise you to stop writing. You have another career, right? Well, that one is sure to give you more satisfaction than this. I’m not saying this for my benefit, or for the benefit of the other Antonio that you’ve tried to create. I’m saying it for you. You are an inventor. I say give up your literary ambitions and be an inventor. Go right ahead and meet with my publisher, if you want, but you’ll see, he’ll just tell you what I told you.”
James was very upset. He picked up the manuscript, said a curt goodbye, and left.
This episode marked a crucial point in the career of Antonio Casella. Not right away, but many years later, when his hair had turned white, and the sheets of paper in front of him were even more insistent on remaining white, like his hair, his opinions and his aspirations changed. He began to think that he wouldn’t mind having a place in the Park, especially if it was combined with a reasonable hope of immortality. He well knew, however, that in order to accomplish this he couldn’t count on his colleagues, and even less on his characters. So he devised an idea for doing it himself. He would write his own autobiography, and write it with such vividness, color, and richness of detail that any and all doubt on the part of the committee would be extinguished.