by Primo Levi
It was stunning to observe how these people, who spent half their life on the sea, had such confused ideas about the cardinal points and about distances; but anyway on one thing they all agreed, and that was that if you sailed south, some said a thousand miles, others ten times as far, you would come to a land that the sun had burned to dust, abounding in unknown trees and animals, and inhabited by fierce black-skinned men. But many were sure that halfway there you would come to a big island called Icnusa, the island of metals. About this island they told the strangest stories: that it was inhabited by giants, but that the horses, the oxen, and even the rabbits and chickens were tiny; that the women were in command and went to war, while the men watched the animals and spun wool; that these giants ate men, and especially foreigners; that it was a land of prostitution, where the husbands exchanged wives, and even the animals coupled randomly, wolves with cats, bears with cows; that pregnancy lasted only three days, then the women gave birth and immediately said to the child, “Get up, bring me the scissors and a light, so I can cut the cord.” Still others recounted that along the coasts there were stone fortresses, as big as mountains; that everything on the island is made of stone, the spear tips, the cart wheels, the women’s combs and sewing needles, even the cooking pots, and there are rocks that burn, and are kindled under these pots; that along the streets, watching over the crossroads, are petrified monsters, which are terrifying to look at. These things I listened to dutifully, but inside I split my sides laughing, because I’ve been around enough by now, and I know it’s the same the whole world over. When I return and talk about the countries where I’ve been, I, too, enjoy inventing oddities, and here they tell fantastic things about my country: for example, that our buffalo don’t have knees, and that to kill them all you have to do is saw at the base of the tree that they’re leaning against at night to rest—under their weight, the tree breaks, and they fall flat and can’t get up.
About the metals, however, they all agreed; many merchants and sea captains had brought from the island to the mainland cargoes of raw or refined metal, but they were a crude people and from their conversations it was difficult to understand what metal it was; also, they didn’t all speak the same language, and no one spoke mine, and there was a great confusion of terms. For example, they said kalibe, and there was no way to know if they meant iron or silver or bronze. Others called sider both iron and ice, and they were so ignorant as to maintain that ice in the mountains, with the passing centuries and under the weight of the rock, hardens and becomes first rock crystal and then iron ore.
Anyway, I was tired of women’s work and I wanted to go to this Icnusa. I sold the glassblower my share of the business, and with that money, plus what I had earned with the mirrors, I found passage on a cargo ship. But you can’t go in winter, there’s the north wind, or the mistral, or notus, from the south, or eurus, from the east; no wind, it seems, is good, and until April the best thing to do is stay on land, get drunk, bet your shirt at dice, and make the girls at the port pregnant.
In April we left. The ship was loaded with amphoras of wine; besides the captain, there was a crew chief, four sailors, and twenty rowers chained to the benches. The crew chief came from Crete and was a great liar: he told of a country inhabited by men called Big Ears, who have ears so large that in winter they wrap up in them to sleep, and animals with tails in front who are called Alfil and understand the language of men.
I have to confess that I had trouble getting used to living on a ship: it dances under your feet, it inclines to the right and the left, it’s hard to eat and sleep, and everyone steps on everyone else’s feet because of the lack of space; then, the chained rowers look at you so fiercely you have to think that if they weren’t chained they would rip you to pieces in a moment, and the captain told me that sometimes it happens. On the other hand, when the wind is favorable, the sails swell, the rowers lift their oars, and the ship seems to be flying, in an enchanted silence; you can see dolphins leaping out of the water, and the sailors claim they understand, from the expression of their muzzle, what tomorrow’s weather will be. That ship was well coated with pitch, and yet you could see that the hull was riddled with holes: from the shipworms, they explained. Also in the port I had noticed that all the ships were eaten away on the bottom: there’s nothing to do, the owner, who was also the captain, told me. When a ship gets old, it’s broken up and burned: but I had an idea, and for the anchor as well. It’s stupid to make anchors of iron: they get eroded by rust and don’t last two years. And the fishing nets? Those sailors, when the wind was good, cast a net that had floats of wood, and rocks for ballast. Rocks! If they had been of lead, they would have been four times less cumbersome. Obviously I didn’t say a word to anyone, but, you, too, will have understood, I was already thinking of the lead I would dig out of the belly of Icnusa—selling the bearskin before I had killed the bear.
We came in sight of the island after eleven days at sea. We entered a small port by means of the oars: around it were steep granite slopes, and slaves who were carving columns. They weren’t giants, and they weren’t sleeping in their own ears; they were made like us, and they and the sailors understood one another well enough, but their overseers wouldn’t let them speak. That was a land of rock and wind, which I liked immediately: the air was filled with the bitter, wild odors of grass, and the people seemed strong and simple.
The land of the metals was a two-day walk: I rented a mule and its driver, and this is really true, the mules are small (not, however, like cats, as they say on the mainland), but sturdy and tough; that is, there may be some truth in the tales, a truth hidden under veils of words, like a riddle. For example, I saw that the business of the stone forts was true: they aren’t really as big as mountains, but they’re massive, have a regular shape, and are made of precisely joined blocks; and what’s curious is that everyone says “They’ve always been here,” and no one knows by whom, how, why, or when they were built. That the islanders eat foreigners, however, is a big lie: in stages, they led me to the mines, without any fuss or secretiveness, as if their land belonged to everyone.
The land of metals is intoxicating: as when a bloodhound enters a forest full of game, and bounds from scent to scent, quivers all over, and becomes almost dazed. It’s close to the sea, a line of hills that become rocky at the top, and near and far, up to the horizon, plumes of smoke from the foundries can be seen, with people hard at work all around, free men and slaves. And the story of the rock that burns is true—I couldn’t believe my eyes. It’s a bit difficult to light, but then it produces a lot of heat and lasts a long time. I don’t know where they bring it from, in baskets on the backs of mules: it’s black, oily, fragile, not very heavy.
I was saying, though, that there are marvelous rocks, certainly heavy with unknown metals, which appear on the surface in traces of white, violet, blue: in that earth there must be a fabulous tangle of veins. I would have happily gotten lost, tapping, digging, and testing: but I am a Rodmund, and my rock is lead. I immediately set to work.
I found a deposit on the western border of the country, where I think no one had ever searched: in fact there were no shafts or tunnels or dumps, or even any signs on the surface; the rocks that were visible looked like all the other rocks. But just a little below, the lead was there, and this is a thing I’ve often thought about: we searchers believe we’ve found the metal with our eyes, experience, and talent, but really what guides us is something more profound, a force like the one that guides the salmon to go back up our rivers, or swallows to return to the nest. Perhaps we are like diviners, who don’t know what guides them to the water, but something does, and twists the rod in their fingers.
I can’t say how, but there was the lead; I felt it under my feet, dark, poisonous, and heavy, for two miles along a stream in a wood where, among the lightning-struck trunks, wild bees nest. Within a short time I bought slaves to excavate for me, and as soon as I had a little money saved I also bought a woman. Not to carouse with: I cho
se her with care, looking not so much at beauty, but making sure she was healthy, broad-hipped, young, and cheerful. I chose her so that she could give me a Rodmund, and so our art won’t perish; and I didn’t waste time, because my hands and knees have begun to tremble, and the teeth are loose in my jaws, and have turned blue like those of my great-grandfather who came from the sea. This Rodmund will be born at the end of next winter, in this land where palm trees grow and salt condenses, and at night you hear the wild dogs baying as they track the bears, in the village that I founded near the stream of the wild bees. I would have liked to call it, in my language—which I am forgetting—Bak der Binnen, which means “River of the Bees”: but the people here have accepted the name only in part, and among themselves, in their language, which now is mine, they call it Bacu Abis.
Mercury
With my wife, Maggie, I, the undersigned Corporal Abrahams, have lived on this island for fourteen years. I was garrisoned here: it seems that on a nearby island (I mean “the nearest”: it’s northwest of this, not less than 1200 miles, and is called St. Helena) an important and dangerous person had been exiled, and they were afraid that his supporters might help him flee and take refuge here. It’s a story I’ve never believed: my island is called Desolation, and never did an island have a better name; so I’ve never understood what an important person like that would come looking for here.
The rumor was that he was a renegade, adulterer, papist, agitator, and blowhard. As long as he was alive, there were twelve other soldiers with us, young and cheerful fellows, from Wales and Surrey; they were good farmers, and gave us a hand with the work. Then the agitator died, and a gunboat came to take everyone home; but Maggie and I thought about certain old debts, and we preferred to stay here and take care of our pigs. Our island has the shape that is drawn on the following page.
It’s the most solitary island in the world. It’s been discovered more than once, by the Portuguese, by the Dutch, and, even earlier, by a savage people who carved signs and idols into the rocks of Mount Snowdon; but no one ever stayed, because it rains half the year here, and the soil is good for nothing but sorghum and potatoes. Yet those who content themselves certainly won’t die of hunger, because for five months of the year the north coast is teeming with seals, and the two little islands to the south are crowded with seagulls’ nests: all you do is take a boat, and you’ll find as many eggs as you like. They taste of fish, but they’re nourishing and they satisfy hunger; besides, everything here tastes of fish, even the potatoes and the pigs that eat them.
On the eastern slopes of Snowdon grow ilexes and another plant, whose name I don’t know: in autumn it produces fleshy blue flowers, with the odor of unwashed people, and in winter hard acidic berries that aren’t good to eat. It’s a strange plant: it sucks up water from deep in the earth and regurgitates it as rain from the tops of the branches; even on dry days the forest floor is damp. The water that rains down from the branches is good to drink, and in fact helps fluxion, although it tastes of moss: we collect it, using a system of gutters and tubs. This forest, which is the only one on the island, we named the Weeping Forest.
We live in Aberdare. It’s not a city; there are only four wooden huts, two of which are falling apart, but one of the Welshmen, who was, in fact, from Aberdare, insisted on the name. Duckbill is the far north of the island: the soldier Cochrane, who suffered from homesickness, went there often and spent the days in the salty fog and wind, because it seemed to him that he was closer to England. He also built us a lighthouse, which no one ever bothered to light. The place is called Duckbill because, seen from the east, it has the shape of a duck’s bill.
The Island of Seals is flat and sandy: the seals come there in winter to give birth. The cave Holywell was named by my wife; I don’t know what she found there. In certain periods, when we were alone, she went there almost every evening, with a torch, and it’s almost two miles from Aberdare. She sat there spinning or knitting, waiting for who knows what. I asked her, more than once: she told me a confusion of things, that she heard voices and saw shadows, and that down there, where not even the roar of the sea penetrated, she felt less alone and more protected. I was afraid, rather, that Maggie was tending toward idolatry. In that cave were boulders that resembled figures of men and animals: one, at the back, was a horned skull. Certainly those shapes were not made by human hand—and so by whom? I, for my part, preferred to keep clear of it, and also because sometimes in the cave dull rumblings could be heard, like colics in the guts of the earth, the floor was warm under your feet, and from certain cracks, at the back, came gusts smelling of sulfur. Anyway, I would have given that cave a different name, but Maggie said that the voice she claimed to hear would one day utter our destiny, and that of the island, and of all humanity.
For several years, Maggie and I were alone. Each year, at Easter, Burton came by in his whaler, bringing provisions and news of the world, and loading on the small amount of smoked lard we produced; but then everything changed. Three years ago, Burton disembarked two Dutchmen. Willem was still almost a child, timid, fair, and pink; he had a silvery wound on his forehead that looked like leprosy, and no ship wanted him on board. Hendrik was older; he was thin and gray-haired, with a wrinkled brow. He told a dubious story of a brawl in which he supposedly bashed in the head of his quartermaster, and on account of which the gallows awaited him in Holland; but he didn’t talk like a sailor, and he had the hands of a gentleman, not someone who bashes heads. One morning a few months later, we saw smoke rising from one of the Egg Islands. I took the boat and went to investigate: I found two shipwrecked Italian sailors, Gaetano from Amalfi and Andrea from Noli. Their ship had broken up on the cliffs of Erpice, and they had saved themselves by swimming. They didn’t know that the big island was inhabited; they had lit a fire of brush and guano to dry off. I told them that in a few months Burton would come by and could take them to Europe, but they refused, in terror. After what they had seen that night, they would never set foot on a ship again, and it took me a lot of effort to persuade them to get into my boat and cross the hundred ells of sea that separated us from Desolation. For their part, they would have remained on that wretched cliff eating seagull eggs until the time of their natural death.
It’s not that there is a shortage of space on Desolation. I settled the four in one of the huts abandoned by the Welshmen, and they had room enough, especially since their baggage was modest. Only Hendrik had a wooden trunk, locked shut. Willem’s wound was not leprosy: Maggie healed it in a few weeks, with poultices of an herb she knows. It’s not really cress but a fleshy grass that grows on the edge of the forest and is good to eat, although it can give you strange dreams; we call it cress anyway. In truth, she didn’t heal the wound with poultices alone; she shut herself in the room with him and sang what sounded like lullabies, with pauses that seemed to me too long. I was happy and calmer when Willem was cured, but right afterward another annoying business started up, with Hendrik. He and Maggie took long walks together, and I heard them talking about the seven keys, Hermes Trismegistus, the union of opposites, and other obscure things. Hendrik built himself a strong cabin, without windows, carried his trunk to it, and passed entire days there, sometimes with Maggie: you could see smoke rising from the hearth. They also went to the cave, and returned with colored rocks that Hendrik called cinnabar.
The two Italians worried me less. They, too, looked at Maggie with shining eyes, but they didn’t know English and couldn’t speak to her: besides, they spent their days jealously watching each other. Andrea was devout, and soon filled the island with saints of wood and fired clay: he gave Maggie a terra-cotta Madonna, but she didn’t know what to do with it and stuck it in a corner of the kitchen. In other words, it would have been clear to anyone that for those four men four women were needed; one day I assembled them and, without mincing words, said that if any one of them touched Maggie he would end up in hell, because it’s wrong to desire someone else’s woman, and I would send him to hell myself,
at the cost of ending up there, too. When Burton came by, with the hold full of whale oil, we solemnly charged him to find us four wives, but he laughed in our faces: what were we thinking? That it would be easy to find women willing to settle amid seals, on this forgotten island, to marry four good-for-nothings? Maybe if we could pay them, but with what? Certainly not with our sausages, half pork and half seal meat, that had a stronger stink of fish than his whaleboat. He left, and immediately raised the sails.
That very evening, a little before nightfall, we heard a loud thunderclap, as if the island itself were being shaken to its roots. In a few minutes the sky darkened, and the black cloud that covered it was illumined from below as if by a fire. First we saw red flashes shooting into the sky from the summit of Snowdon, then a broad, slow flow of burning lava that descended not toward us but to the left, southward, whistling and cracking as it dripped from ledge to ledge. After an hour it reached the sea and was consumed, roaring and releasing a column of steam. None of us had ever thought that Snowdon might be a volcano: and yet the shape of its summit—a circular cone at least two hundred feet deep—might have led us to suppose it.