The Complete Works of Primo Levi

by Primo Levi

  “Yes, and also nil inultum remanebit.1 But doesn’t the file only deal with the standards of acceptability for new employees?”

  “Not only. At the very end there is a provisional rule that prescribes testing for ‘all the units in use’ within ninety days of the specification’s entering into force.”

  “So you think the Honorable Peirani has managed to fire himself?”

  “It’s probable. I know that type of person: he’s a perfectionist. Or rather, he was, because—you saw him—he’s now rather an old fogey.”

  “I recognize that kind of person, too: the ‘right or wrong, my country,’* obedience until death, model-citizen type. But didn’t he stop to consider that it might not make sense to require the same services from a twenty-five-year-old ‘unit’ as from a sixty-year-old one?”

  “Yes, he considered it. Read here, at point 1.9. ‘Retest. In dealing with an item that is subject to deterioration, the testing of which at points 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 must be repeated every twentieth year from the date of employment. The dimensions and weight tolerance limits shall be maintained without variation. The minimum requirement for intellectual quotient (4.2.01), for short-term memory (4.2.04), for medium- and long-term memory (4.2.05), for leadership aptitude (4.4.06), for the yield point in hot and cold conditions (5.2.02), for meteoropathy (5.3.11), and for emotional stability (7.1.07) shall be decreased by 35 percent. The maximum limit of reaction times will be increased by 50 percent (7.3.01), as will all thresholds of sensory perception (7.5.03)’ . . . I’m reading at random; you know it goes on for a page and a half. . . . Ah, listen to this: ‘The Schmaal test for tractability doesn’t need to be repeated since that trait tends to spontaneously increase with time.’ Fantastic, isn’t it?”

  Renaudo was baffled. “The test for tractability, that’s easily passed, but I’d like to see what happens when one is tested for heat resistance! On the other hand, if it’s expected, it would be fine. Yes, I agree, we’re not really at risk, but I’m back in the thick of it in another way. I’m now responsible for the review, and I’m still in my trial period, and I wouldn’t want to—”

  “If it’s scandal you’re afraid of, don’t worry, you keep out of it. There are a hundred ways to make a plant sprout: even ways that are discreet, silent, and anonymous. I’ll see to it myself, and gladly, I assure you. All that’s needed is a bit of initiative on my part, a little offhand word dropped in the hallway. . . .”

  “And . . . sorry, why are you doing this? Do you really want the Honorable Peirani’s hide?”

  “Yes, that, too. But then . . . well, tell me the truth. Are you enthusiastic about this system? Do you like navigating among the Decretals?”

  “I don’t like it. But your way, we’ll just get another Decretal, and it will be the most ferocious of all. Better to have a bison buried in the sand than a bison ready to charge.”

  “A superficial and myopic point of view. One must look further into the future, at the cost of some risk and inconvenience: to explode the systemic contradictions, as they say. And I’m attracted by the elegance of the game, its justice and economy. The Decretals will destroy themselves. By your hand, if you like. If not, by mine.”

  The notice put up on the bulletin board seemed the most innocent thing in the world. It simply said that all employees were required to appear within a month at the Testing Office for instructions, but within a few hours the atmosphere in all the offices and in all the departments was suffocating. The Management was submerged in hundreds of requests for extensions; on the same bulletin board, flyers appeared advertising athletic clubs and institutes for further education, for both heated and cold swimming pools, for Romanian and Bulgarian cures, for accelerated evening and correspondence courses.

  A few days later, again on the same bulletin board, a very dignified open letter appeared which said:

  “Subject: Specification No. 366478.

  “I, the undersigned, the Honorable Vittorio Amedeo Peirani, declare myself aware that I no longer possess the requirements conforming to the specification above noted: I refer in particular to points 5.3.10 (resistance to moisture), 4.2.04 (short-term memory), and all of subsection 3.4 (fatigue resistance test). I therefore submit my resignation, with a heart full of sadness, but consoled nevertheless by the knowledge that I have dedicated thirty-eight years of my life and energy to the consolidation of a system I believe in. I recommend to the gentlemen in Management not to deviate from the line of conduct that until now has been followed with regard to the techniques of standardization, and I hope that my colleagues and successors will make every effort to avoid repeating the regrettable negligence and oversights that have delayed every fundamental aspect of the Specification in question for many years.”

  As Peirani wished, the system, in fact, endured. In the Company where this episode took place, it remains in force to this day, and copiously proliferates, as is well-known, in all the numerous branches of human industry, and in every part of the world in which man has become a maker, and in which normalization, unification, programming, standardization, and the rationalization of production have become fundamental considerations.

  1. All hidden things will be revealed/nothing will remain unavenged. Lines from the thirteenth-century Latin hymn “Dies Irae” (Day of Wrath).

  In the Park

  It’s not hard to imagine who would be waiting for Antonio Casella on the pier: James Collins, in velvet trousers, tanned and relaxed. Antonio wondered whether it would be kinder to ask about the result of his conversation with the publisher or not, but James anticipated him:

  “You were right—he rejected the manuscript. But he gave me such precise and encouraging suggestions that I immediately began to write again. No, not about you: it’s a somewhat fictionalized story about my inventions—their Entstehungsgeschichte, their origin, how they occurred to me. Besides, as I see it, it’s better for you this way: they told me that you made yourself into a character. Much better—you have a better chance of staying on for a while. My Antonio, in fact, was a little weak.”

  Antonio listened distractedly: he was too intent on observing the landscape. The boat that brought him had made a long journey up a broad, clear river that ran between thickly forested banks. The current was fast and silent, there was not a breath of wind, the temperature was pleasantly cool, and the forest was as motionless as if made of stone. The water reflected the colors of a sky such as Antonio had never seen: dark blue overhead, emerald green in the east, and violet with wide orange stripes in the west. When the rhythmic rumble of the motor stopped, Antonio became aware of a faint thunder that seemed to saturate the atmosphere. “It’s the waterfall,” James explained to him. “It’s right on the border.”

  They walked down the pier, of rough-hewn boards, and set off together on a steep path that wound its way up around the rampart from which the waterfall cascaded. They were hit by blasts of spray, and the sky was filled with intertwining rainbows. James had politely taken Antonio’s suitcase from him; it was very light. Majestic, exotic trees, of many different species, grew on both sides of the path. Flowers hung from the branches, yellow and flesh-colored—some even seemed made of flesh—and trailed in garlands to the ground. There were also fruits, long and rounded; the air held a light, pleasant but slightly musky scent, like that of chestnut blossoms.

  At the barrier marking the border, no one asked him anything: the two guards saluted him, a hand to their visors, as if they had been expecting him. A little farther on, Antonio entered an office where he was officially registered; a courteous and impersonal functionary checked off his name, handed him a ration card for food, clothes, shoes, and cigarettes, and then said:

  “You’re an autobiographer, right?”

  “Yes. How did you know?”

  “We know everything. Look!” He gestured behind him, where a card catalogue occupied an entire wall. “The fact is that at the moment I don’t have a single chalet available. The last one we assigned yesterday to Papillon.
You’ll have to adjust to having a roommate for a few days—another autobiographer, of course. Here, there’s a place at 525, with François Villon. Mr. Collins will show you—it’s not very far.”

  James smiled. “You’ll be amused. François is the most unpredictable of our fellow citizens. He used to live with Julius Caesar, but he got out: he pulled some strings, and was assigned a custom, prefab house on the shores of Lake Polevoy. They didn’t get along: they quarreled because of Vercingetorix, then François courted Cleopatra intensely, in Shakespeare’s version, and Caesar was jealous.”

  “What do you mean in Shakespeare’s version?”

  “We have five or six Cleopatras: Pushkin’s, Shaw’s, Gautier’s, and so on. They can’t stand one another.”

  “Ah. And so it isn’t true that Caesar and Pompey are caulkers?”

  “Who ever told you that?” asked James, in amazement.

  “Rabelais II, 30. He also says that Hannibal is a poulterer, Romulus a cobbler, Pope Julius II goes around selling flatbread, and Livia scrapes the verdigris from the pans.”

  “That’s nonsense. As I told you back in Milan, here people either do nothing or do the job they were born to. Besides, Rabelais isn’t a character, and he’s never been here: what he says he must have heard from Pantagruel, or some other fibber in his court.”

  They had left the waterfall behind and were advancing over a broad, slightly undulating plateau. Suddenly, with incredible speed, the sky darkened; within a few moments a violent whirlwind had arisen, and it began to rain and hail. James explained to Antonio that it was always like this here: the weather was never insignificant. There was always something that made it worthy of description. It was either dazzling with colors and aromas or shaken by raging tempests; sometimes there was scorching heat, at other times rock-splitting cold. Northern lights and earthquakes were frequent, and bolides and meteors fell every night.

  They took shelter in a shed, and Antonio realized uneasily that someone was already there: uneasily because the someone didn’t have a face. Under his beret only a convex, spongy pink surface was visible, the lower part covered by a badly shaved beard.

  “Don’t pay any attention to him,” said James, who had seen the horror appear on Antonio’s face. “There are a lot of them like that here, but they don’t last long. They are unsuccessful characters: sometimes they get by for a season, maybe even less. They don’t speak, they don’t see, and they don’t hear, and they disappear in the space of a few months. Those who do last, however, like (we hope) you and me, resemble the weather here—they have something singular about them, and so in general they’re interesting and sympathetic, even if they tend to repeat themselves. Here, for example: take a look through that window and tell me if you recognize anyone.”

  Beside the shed there was a low wooden building with a thatched roof, and on the door hung a sign: on one side had been painted a full moon, and on the other a stormy sea from which emerged the broad back of a whale with its tall spout of vapor. Through the window you could see a smoky, low-ceilinged interior, illuminated by oil lamps: there was a table in the foreground, littered with mugs of beer, both empty and full, and around it four hot, excited figures. From outside one could hear only an indistinct roar.

  Antonio, inspired by his ambitions as a reader, considered for a long time but couldn’t figure it out. “You’re asking too much. If I could at least hear what they’re saying . . .”

  “Of course I’m asking too much. But it was only to give you a preliminary idea of our environment. The thin balding one with his back to us, who pays and doesn’t drink, is Calandrino;1 opposite him, the fat greasy one, with the three days’ beard, is the Good Soldier Schweik, who drinks and doesn’t pay. The elderly fellow on the left, with the top hat and those tiny eyeglasses, is Pickwick, and the last, who has eyes like coals, skin like leather, and his shirt unbuttoned, who doesn’t drink and doesn’t pay, doesn’t sing, doesn’t pay attention to the others, and says things that no one is listening to, is the Ancient Mariner.”

  As suddenly as it had darkened, the sky cleared, and a fresh, warm wind arose; the wet earth exhaled an iridescent fog that the breeze tore to shreds, and it dried up in a flash. The two resumed their walk. On both sides of the street appeared, in no apparent order, thatched huts and noble marble palaces, villas great and small, shady parks, temple ruins, giant housing projects with laundry hung out to dry, skyscrapers and tin-and-cardboard hovels. James pointed out to Antonio the garden of the Finzi-Contini, the house of Buddenbrooks and that of Usher side by side; Uncle Tom’s cabin and the Castle of Verona2 with the falcon, the deer, and the black horse. A little beyond, the road widened into a small paved square, surrounded by dark, grimy buildings; through the entrances one could see steep, dank stairways, and courtyards full of rubbish, ringed by rusty balconies. There was an odor of boiled cabbage, of lye, and of fog. Antonio immediately recognized a neighborhood of old Milan, or, more precisely, the Carrobbio, caught for eternity as it must have been two hundred years ago; he was trying in the uncertain light to interpret the faded signs of the shops when, from the doorway numbered vottcentvott, Giovannino Bongeri3 himself jumped out, lean, quick, pale as one who never sees the sun, cheerful, chattering, and as eager for affection as an ill-treated puppy: he wore a tight, ragged suit, somewhat patched, but meticulously cleaned and pressed. He immediately addressed the two men with the ease of an old acquaintance, yet called them “Most Illustrious”: he made a long speech in dialect, full of digressions, which Antonio understood half of and James didn’t understand at all; it seemed that he had been wronged, and had been wounded, but not to the point of losing his dignity as a citizen and an artisan; he was angry, but not to the point of losing his head. In his speech, which was witty and longwinded, one heard, under the bruising grind of daily toil, poverty, and misfortune, genuine candor, solid human goodness, and ancient hope. Antonio, in a flash of intuition, saw that in the phantoms of that neighborhood lived something perfect and eternal, and that angry little Giovannino, the junkman’s helper, repeatedly beaten, mocked, and betrayed—son of the angry little Milanese Carletto Porta4—was a purer, fuller character than Solomon in all his glory.

  While Giovannini spoke, Barberina came to join him, pink and white as a flower, with lace cap and filigree hat pins, her eyes a little keener than honesty calls for. Her husband took her under the arm and off they went toward La Scala: after a few steps the woman turned and shot the two strangers an inquisitive glance.

  Antonio and James started off again on a dusty path between bramble hedges: James delayed a moment to greet Valentino in his new clothes, playing on a stunted lawn with Pin di Carrugio Lungo.5 A little farther on, the path followed a bend in a big muddy river. A rusty broken-down steamer was anchored near the bank. A group of white men were burying something in a grave dug in the mud, and an insolent-looking black man stuck his head up above the trench and announced, with fierce disdain, “Mistah Kurtz—he dead.” The tone of that voice, the setting, the silence, the heat, even the heavy swamp breath of the river were precisely what Antonio had always imagined.

  He said to James, “It’s clear that one wouldn’t get bored here. But what about practical needs? If, for example, one had to have a shoe resoled, or a tooth pulled?”

  “We have some modest social services,” James answered, “and the medical system is efficient, but with staff from the outside. It isn’t that there’s a shortage of doctors here, but they don’t practice willingly. Often they are of an antiquated school, or they lack the equipment, or, again, they ended up here through some famous mistake—precisely what made them problematic, and therefore characters. Besides, you’ll soon see that the sociology of the park is peculiar. I don’t think you’ll find a baker or an accountant; as far as I know, there’s one milkman, a single naval engineer, and a sole spinner of silk. You’ll look in vain for a plumber, an electrician, a welder, a mechanic, or a chemist, and I wonder why. Instead, in addition to the doctors I mentioned, you’l
l find a flood of explorers, lovers, cops and robbers, musicians, painters, and poets, countesses, prostitutes, warriors, knights, foundlings, bullies, and crowned heads. Prostitutes above all, in a percentage absolutely disproportionate to actual need. In short, it’s better not to seek here an image of the world you left. I mean, a faithful image: because you’ll find one, yes, but multicolored, dyed, and distorted, and so you’ll realize how foolish it is to form a concept of the Rome of the Caesars through Virgil, Catullus, and Quo Vadis. Here you will not find a sea captain who has not been shipwrecked, a wife who has not been an adulteress, a painter who does not live in poverty for long years and then become famous. Just like the sky, which here is always spectacular. Especially the sunsets: often they last from early afternoon until night, and sometimes darkness falls and then the light returns and the sun sets again, as if it were granting an encore.”

  James interrupted his lecture to point out to Antonio an edifice they were approaching:

  “Sooner or later the Michelin Guide to the Park will come out, and you’ll see, this will have three stars.” It was a dazzling white villa, or maybe a tiny fortress, immersed in the thick foliage of an old forest: the outer walls had no windows, and were topped with a jagged edge that might be a battlement.

  “Seen from the outside it doesn’t look like much, but you should see the inside. I’ve been there for a few small jobs—as I told you, plumbers are scarce, so I do my best—and I could tell you some stories. Do you know, the management has been trying to please the proprietress for six hundred years, without success? Only now, with modern technology—”

  “Excuse me,” Antonio interrupted, a bit annoyed, “but if you told me who the proprietress is, don’t you think I would enjoy your discourse more?”

  “Oh, I thought I’d told you. It’s Beatrice, damn it. The angelic, monstrous Beatrice, who wants everyone at her service, never goes out, speaks to no one, eats only pre-frozen nectar and ambrosia, and, with the protection that she enjoys, there is no hope of getting rid of her, not now or in the foreseeable future. As I was just saying, only now, with the advent of plastics and electronics, have the directors managed to satisfy some of her whims. Look inside: it’s a concentrated version of the Fair of Milan, without all the commotion, of course. She walks only on polyurethane foam, a meter thick, like a pole vaulter: barefoot, naturally, and swathed in nylon veils. No daylight: only neon, in pink, purple, and sky-blue; an orgy of false skies made of methacrylate, false fixed stars made of Hastelloy, false music of the spheres performed on an electronic organ, false closed-circuit TV visions, false pharmacological ecstasies, and a Prime Mover of Pyrex that cost three million lire a square meter. In short, she is unbearable. But when you’re a character from Dante, you’re untouchable here. In my opinion, it’s a typical mafioso setup: why should Paolo and Francesca continue to make love undisturbed (and not only in the whirlwind, believe me), while the Poor Lovers have endless difficulties with the park guards? Why is Cacciaguida in the chalet at the top of the hill and Somacal,6 who’s been through so much, down in the hut that never gets the sun?”