The Complete Works of Primo Levi

by Primo Levi

  “Very beautiful, and also very responsive,” said Giuliana.

  “Yes,” Giorgio said, “but the weird thing is that you never know what to call these creations. They’re always ineffable.”

  Miranda said that it was better that way. It would be very unpleasant to find oneself represented by a wooden spoon or a pipe or a carrot. Giorgio added that, if you actually thought about it, it couldn’t be otherwise: “These creations . . . well, they don’t have a name because they’re individuals, and there is no science, that is, no classification, of the individual. In them, as in us, existence precedes essence.”

  The Anna-cloud had pleased everybody except Anna herself, who was in fact quite disappointed.

  “I don’t think of myself as that transparent, but maybe it’s because I’m tired tonight and feel a bit out of sorts.”

  Ugo provoked the growth of a polished, black wooden sphere, which upon closer scrutiny turned out to be made up of about twenty pieces that fit together with exact precision. Ugo took it apart but then couldn’t put it back together again. He made a pile and said he would try again the next day, which was a Sunday.

  Claudio was shy, and agreed to try it only after much encouragement. Once again, at first, nothing appeared on the tray, but an odor both familiar and unexpected was detectable in the air: we had difficulty identifying it, but it was definitely a kitchen smell. Right afterward we heard a sizzling sound and saw that the tray was covered in a boiling, smoking liquid. From the liquid emerged a flat, gray polygon that beyond any reasonable doubt was a large Milanese cutlet with a side of fries. There were stunned comments, because Claudio is neither a gourmand nor a voracious eater—in fact, we used to say about him and his family that they lacked proper digestive systems.

  Blushing, Claudio looked around him with embarrassment.

  “How red you are!” Miranda exclaimed, at which Claudio turned nearly purple. Then she added, turning to us, “There’s nothing symbolic here. It’s obvious that this thing is ill mannered and wanted to offend Claudio. To tell someone he is a cutlet is to insult him. These things are to be taken literally and I knew that sooner or later it would pull a fast one. Alberto, if I were you I would return it to whoever gave it to you.”

  In the meantime, Claudio had pulled himself together enough to speak. He said he hadn’t turned red because he was offended, but for a different reason, one so fascinating that he thought he might tell us about it, even if it was a secret he had never told anyone, not even Simonetta. He said that what he had was not exactly a vice, or a perversion, but, well, a uniqueness. He said that ever since he was a boy he’d had little interest in women. He didn’t feel close to them or attracted to them, he didn’t even see them as creatures of flesh and blood, unless he observed them, at least once, in the act of eating. He would then feel an intense affection, and almost always fell in love. It was clear that the Psychophant wanted to allude to this. In his opinion, it was an extraordinary instrument.

  “Are you in love with me, too?” asked Adele seriously.

  “Yes,” Claudio answered. “It happened that night we all ate dinner—fondue with truffles—in Pavarolo.”

  Adele, too, was a surprise. She had barely put her finger on the button when a clear pop was heard, as when a bottle is uncorked, and on the tray appeared a tawny mass, shapeless, stumpy, slightly tapered, made of rough, brittle material, dry to the touch. It was as big as the entire tray, and even extended somewhat beyond it. Three white-and-gray spheres were stuck in it. We immediately recognized these as three eyes, but nobody dared to say so, nor did anyone make any comment, since Adele has had a difficult, complicated, and painful existence. Adele was disconcerted. “That’s me?” she asked, and we realized that her eyes (the real ones, I mean) were full of tears.

  Henek tried to come to her rescue. “It’s impossible for the device to tell you who you are, because you’re nothing. You and everyone, we all change from year to year, hour to hour. So who are you? Who you think you are? Or who you want to be? Or who others think you are? And what others? Everyone sees you differently, everyone creates his own personal version of you.”

  Miranda said, “I don’t like this contraption, because it’s a busybody. In my opinion, what’s interesting is what one does, not who one is. A person is the sum of his actions, past and present, nothing else.”

  I rather liked the device. I didn’t care if it told the truth or lied. It made something out of nothing, invented, found, like a poet. I put my hand on the plate and waited without distrust. A shiny grain appeared on the tray, and grew to form a cylinder the size of a thimble. It continued to grow and soon gained the dimensions of a tin can, and then it became clear that it was, in fact, a can, and more precisely a can of paint, its exterior printed with bright-colored stripes. Yet it didn’t seem to contain paint, because it rattled when you shook it. They urged me to open it, and inside there were different things that I lined up in front of me on the table: a needle, a seashell, a malachite ring, various used tickets from trams, trains, ferries, and airplanes, a compass, a dead cricket and a live one, and a small ember, which, however, died out almost immediately.

  Recuenco: The Nourisher

  Sinda got up at daybreak to take the goats out to pasture. Around the village, in the radius of a two-hour walk, for many years not even a blade of grass had grown, only cacti and brambles, so bitter that even the goats refused them. Sinda was only eleven years old, but in the village only he was still allowed to go to the pasture. The others were either too young or too old, or sick, or so weakened that they were barely able to drag themselves as far as the stream. He took with him a gourd filled with a watercress infusion and two pieces of cheese, which had to last him until evening. He had already rounded up the goats in the square when he saw Diuka, his sister, coming out of the hut rubbing her eyes. She wanted to come to the pasture with him. He thought how little cheese he had, but he also thought how long the day would be, how far the pasture was, and how the silence up there was too deep, so he took her with him.

  They had been climbing for an hour when the sun rose. There were only twenty-eight goats, all the village had. Sinda knew it, and he also knew how to count them. He kept an eye on them to make sure they didn’t wander off and get lost or become lame down by the crags. Diuka followed him silently. They stopped every once in a while to gather blackberries and a few snails awakened by the night’s dew. Eating snails was prohibited, but Sinda had already tried them many times and had never gotten a stomachache. He had taught Diuka how to extract them from their shells, and he was sure that she wouldn’t betray him.

  There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, but a blinding haze lay motionless. There was no wind (there was never any wind), and the air was hot and humid like a brick oven. They proceeded along the path, crossing the ridge that bordered the valley, and then they saw the sea, shrouded in mist, placid, shiny, and far away. It was a sea without fish, good only for salt. The saltworks had been abandoned for ten years now, but it was still possible to collect salt, although it was mixed with sand. Sinda had been there once with his father, many years ago. One day his father had gone hunting and never returned. Now the salt was brought every so often by merchants, but since there was nothing in the village to exchange it for, they hardly ever came anymore.

  Sinda saw something in the sea he had never seen before. He first saw it right on the horizon line, a small bright hump, round and white, like a tiny moon. But it couldn’t be the Moon, the real one, because he’d seen it, almost full, its edges clear, go down only about an hour ago. He pointed it out to Diuka, but without much interest. There are many things in the sea, which both had heard described around the fire: ships, whales, monsters, plants growing up from the sea floor, ferocious fish, even the spirits of the drowned. Things that come and go and don’t concern us because the sea is all vanity and evil appearance. It is a vast clearing that seems to go everywhere but goes nowhere. It appears to be smooth and solid like steel armor, and yet it can’t hold yo
u up, and if you venture there, you will sink. It’s water and you can’t drink it.

  They continued walking. By now the steepest part of the climb was over and the pasture was visible, just a little higher than they were, an hour’s walk. The two children and the goats continued along a well-beaten track, amid a yellow cloud of dust, horseflies, and the smell of ammonia. Every so often, Sinda observed the sea on his left and realized that the thing he had seen was changing its appearance. It was now closer, far away from the horizon, and looked like one of those globular mushrooms that you find beside the path; if you touched one, it burst open and blew out a puff of brown dust. The thing actually must be quite big, and looking at it more carefully you could see that its edges were blurred, cloud-like. In fact it seemed to be boiling, and was continually changing shape, like the foam on boiling milk when it’s about to overflow, and it kept getting bigger and nearer. Just before they got to the pasture, and the goats had already scattered to graze upon some flowering thistles, Sinda realized that the thing was traveling straight toward them. He then thought of some of the stories he’d heard from the elders, which he had only half believed, as if they were fairy tales. He told Diuka to keep an eye on the goats and promised that he or the others would come before nighttime to get them, and he ran back toward the village. From the village, in fact, the sea wasn’t visible. It was blocked by a chain of steep cliffs, and Sinda ran because he hoped and feared that the thing was the Nourisher, which comes every hundred years and brings both plenitude and destruction. He wanted to tell the villagers so they could prepare themselves, and he wanted to be the first to bring the news.

  There was a shortcut that only he knew about, but he didn’t take it, because it would have cut off his view of the sea too soon. Just before Sinda reached the ridge, the thing had become breathtakingly enormous. The top of it was as high as the sky, and water was pouring out of it in torrents toward the bottom, and more water gushed upward, toward the top. You could hear a sort of continuous thunder, a roar-peal-whistle that stopped the blood cold in your veins. Sinda paused for a second, feeling the need to throw himself to the ground and pray, but he plucked up his courage and rushed down the slope, scratching himself on brambles, stumbling over rocks, falling and picking himself up again. He no longer saw anything, but he still heard the thunder, and when he reached the village everyone heard it, but they didn’t know what it was. But Sinda knew, and he stood in the middle of the square, half crazed and bleeding, gesturing to the villagers with his arms to come and listen to him, because the Nourisher was coming.

  At first only a few came, then all. Many—too many—children came, but it wasn’t they who were needed. The old women, and the young women who appeared old, came to the thresholds of their huts. Men came from the vegetable gardens or fields with the slow, listless pace of those who know only the hoe and the plow. And finally Daiapi also came, the one Sinda had been waiting for most eagerly.

  But even Daiapi, the oldest villager, was only fifty years old and so couldn’t know firsthand what should be done to prepare for the Nourisher’s arrival. He had only vague memories of the memories, only slightly less vague, that had been passed on to him by who knows which Daiapi, and then consolidated, reinforced, and distorted by endless repetition in front of the fire. The Nourisher, and this he was sure of, had come to the village other times—twice, three times, or even more—but of those earlier visits, if indeed there had been any, all memory was lost. But Daiapi knew for certain, and along with him everyone knew, that when it comes, it comes like this: suddenly, from the sea, in the midst of a whirlwind, and it stops only for a few seconds, throwing food from above, and it is necessary to be ready in some way, so that the food isn’t scattered. He also knew, or thought he knew, that it crosses mountains and seas like lightning, drawn by those who are hungry. For this reason it never stops, because the world is endless, and hunger is found in many places, all distant from one another, and as soon as hunger is satisfied it sprouts again, like weeds.

  Daiapi had little strength and little voice, but even if he’d had the voice of a monsoon he couldn’t have made himself heard over the din coming from the sea, now filling the valley, and making them all think they had gone deaf. With gestures and by example, he made sure they all brought outside every receptacle they could find, large or small. Then, while the sky was darkening, and the plain was swept by a wind that had never been seen before, he grabbed a pick and shovel and began to dig feverishly, and was soon imitated by many. They dug with all their might, their eyes full of sweat and their ears full of thunder, but they succeeded, barely, in digging out a big pit in the square, the size of a tomb, just as the Nourisher came over the hills like a cloud of clashing iron, and hovered over their heads. It was bigger than the entire village, which lay in its shadow. Six steel trumpets, aimed at the ground, vomited out six hurricanes, on which the machine was supported, almost motionless. But the air hurled to the ground swept up the dust, rocks, leaves, fences, roofs, and flung them high and far. The children fled or were blown away like chaff. The men resisted, clinging to trees and walls.

  They saw the machine descend slowly. In the middle of the yellow whirlwinds of dust, someone claimed he saw human figures leaning over from above and watching; some said two, others three. A woman asserted that she heard voices, but they weren’t human; they were metallic and nasal and so loud they could be heard above the clamor.

  When the six trumpets were a few meters from the tops of the huts, six white hoses emerged from the belly of the machine, dangling in the void. And then suddenly food burst from the hoses in white jets, heaven’s milk. The two central hoses ejected it into the pit, but at the same time a deluge of food fell at random over the entire village, and also outside it, where all had been pulverized and swept away by the wind from the trumpets. Sinda, in the middle of the confusion, had found a trough, which the animals had once drunk from. He dragged it under one of the hoses, but it was filled in a second, the liquid overflowing onto the ground and getting all over his feet. Sinda tasted it: it seemed to be milk or, actually, cream, but it wasn’t. It was thick and bland, and made him feel immediately full. Sinda saw that everyone was gulping it down, collecting it from the ground with their hands, with shovels, with palm leaves.

  A noise echoed in the sky—perhaps it was the sound of a horn, or a command given by that cold mechanical voice—and suddenly the flow stopped. Right afterward, the thunder and the wind swelled beyond measure, and Sinda was knocked down and rolled across the sticky pools. The machine rose up, first perpendicular, then at an angle, and in a few minutes was hidden by the mountains. Sinda got up and looked around. The village didn’t seem to be his village anymore. Not only was the pit overflowing but the milk ran thickly down all the sloping streets, and streamed off the few roofs that had survived. The lower part of the village was flooded. Two women had drowned, as well as many rabbits and dogs, and all the chickens. Floating on the liquid were hundreds of flyers, all the same: at the top left was a round sign, which perhaps represented the world, and it was followed by a text divided into paragraphs, and repeated in different alphabets and different languages, but no one in the village knew how to read. On the other side of the paper there was a ridiculous series of drawings: a skinny, naked man; then a cup; then the man drinking from the cup; and finally the same man, no longer skinny. Underneath, there was another skinny man, next to a pail; then the man drinking from the pail; then the same man lying on the ground, his eyes wide open, his mouth gaping, and his stomach exploded.

  Daiapi immediately understood the significance of the drawings, and called everyone to the square, but it was too late. Over the next two days, eight men and two women died, swollen and bruised. An inventory was taken, and it was observed that, not counting the milk that had been lost or mixed with dirt and muck, enough still remained to feed the entire village for a year. Daiapi ordered that jars be boiled and goatskins sewn, because he was afraid that the milk in the pit might become contaminated if i
t remained in contact with the earth.

  Sinda, stunned by all he had seen and done, lethargic because of the milk he had drunk, only remembered after nightfall that Diuka was still with the goats in the mountain pasture. He left at dawn the following morning, taking with him a gourd filled with food, but he found the goats scattered; four were missing, as was Diuka. He found her a little while later, injured and frightened, at the foot of a cliff, along with the four dead animals. The wind of the Nourisher had blown them down there when it passed over the pasture.

  Some days later, an old woman, cleaning up the sun-dried cakes of milk in her courtyard, came across an object she had never seen before. It shone like silver, and was harder than flint, a foot long, narrow and flat. At one end it was rounded to form a disc with a large hexagonal indentation; the other end was in the form of a ring, its hole was two fingers wide, and it had the shape of a twelve-pointed star. Daiapi ordered that a stone tabernacle be built on the erratic boulder near the village, and that the object be kept there always as a remembrance of the day the Nourisher came.

  Recuenco: The Rafter

  Suspended a few meters above the waves, the platform slid along quickly, with a faint vibration and hum. In the cabin, Himamoto slept, Kropivà minded the radio and wrote, and Farnham was at the controls. Farnham was the most bored, because piloting a rafter means piloting a big nothing: you have to be at the wheel but you’d better not touch it. You watch the altimeter, and the needle never moves a thread; you monitor the gyrocompass but it’s still as stone. When the course needs to be changed (which hardly ever happens, because a rafter always goes straight), the others over there deal with it. All you have to do is watch for one of the yellow emergency lights to go on, but Farnham had been cruising on rafters for eight years, and he’d never seen a yellow emergency light go on, nor in the pilots’ canteen had he ever heard tell of one lighting up. In short, it was like being a night watchman. It was as boring as knitting and wasn’t man’s work. In order not to fall asleep, Farnham smoked one cigarette after another and recited a poem aloud. It was more a ditty than a poem, condensing into easy-to-remember verses all the protocols to be followed in the unlikely and even laughable case that the yellow lights actually lit up. All the pilots were required to memorize the emergency ditty.