The Complete Works of Primo Levi

by Primo Levi

  “All right. Which friend did it hurt me the most to leave? When I tell you, it’ll knock your socks off. Because, first of all, he got me in pretty big trouble; and second of all, he wasn’t even a Christian. In fact, he was a monkey.”

  My socks remained on my feet—partly because of an old habit of self-control, which makes secondary reactions precede the first, but also because Faussone’s prologue had blunted the surprise. (I must have said already that he wasn’t a good storyteller—he’s more accomplished in other fields.) On the other hand, it wasn’t that surprising: everyone knows that the greatest friends of animals—those who best understand them and are best understood by them—are loners.

  “For once, it wasn’t a crane. I’ve got plenty of other stories about rigging cranes, but I don’t want to bore you with them. This time it was a derrick. You know what a derrick is?”

  All I had was an idea I’d got from books: I knew that they were truss towers, and that they’re used to drill oil wells, or perhaps to extract oil; in any case, if it was of interest to him, I could give him precise information about the origin of the term. Mr. Derryck, a man of expertise, conscientiousness, and great piety, lived in London at the end of the sixteenth century and was for many years Her Royal Majesty’s executioner; he was so conscientious, and so enamored of his profession, that he endeavored constantly to perfect his instruments. Toward the end of his career he perfected a new kind of gallows, a truss, tall and slim, which allowed the hanging, “tall and short,” to be visible from a great distance: this became known as the “Derryck gallows,” and then, more succinctly, as the “derrick.” Later, by analogy, the name was given to other structures, all in the form of trusses, destined for more obscure uses. This is how Mr. Derryck won that particular, rare form of immortality that consists of losing the initial capital letter of one’s surname: an honor shared by no more than a dozen illustrious men in history. But Faussone should continue with his story.

  Faussone endured my frivolous interruption without so much as batting an eye. He had assumed a distant attitude, however; perhaps he’d been made uncomfortable by my having used the remote past tense, as one does during a history examination. Then he continued:

  “That may be true, though I’ve always thought hanging people the normal way worked just fine. In any case, this derrick was nothing special—twenty meters high, a drilling derrick, the kind that, if you don’t find any oil, you dismantle it and carry it on to the next spot. As a rule in my stories, the weather’s always too cold or too hot; but this time we were in a clearing in the middle of the woods, and it was neither cold nor hot, though it did rain the whole time. But it was a warm rain, and you couldn’t even really call it unpleasant, because it doesn’t rain very often there. You strip down to your boxers, the way the locals do, and if it rains, well, let it rain.

  “As for the rigging, it was a joke: there was no need for a professional rigger, any day laborer without a fear of heights could’ve handled it. I had three of them—laborers—but what bums, my God! Maybe they were malnourished, fine, but all they were good at was sitting on their cans, from morning to night; they didn’t even respond when spoken to, it’s like they were asleep. The fact of the matter is that, for the most part, it was up to me to figure out everything: the generator, the connections, even how to make myself some dinner at night in the hut. But what worried me more than everything else was what they call the equipment, which I didn’t realize was so complicated. You know, that business with all the pulleys and the worm screw, which lowers the milling cutter—assembling a thing like that is not a job for someone in my field. It seems easy, but inside there’s this whole feed contraption, which is electronic and self-regulating, and then there are the controls for the mud pumps, and the steel tubes that descend into the well, one after the other, are screwed on underneath; in other words, the whole thing is like a movie you’d see . . . well, at the movies. Like one of those films about Texas. I’m not saying it’s a bad job, however. You see, I didn’t realize it, but you have to drill about five kilometers down, and even then you don’t know whether you’ll find oil.”

  Since we had finished our vodka tea, and Faussone’s story showed no sign of getting started, I mentioned offhandedly that I had a fermented cheese and some Hungarian salami in my room. He wasn’t shy about it (he never was: he says it’s not his style), so our tea turned into a dinnertime snack, while the orange light of the sunset gave way to the luminous violet of a northern night. A long sweep of land stood in stark contrast against the western sky, and above this, just over the ridge and parallel to it, lay a thin black cloud; it looked as if a painter had made a false stroke, and then tried it again in the space right above. It was a strange cloud and we discussed it; Faussone convinced me that it was the dust kicked up into the still air by a distant herd.

  “I wouldn’t know how to tell you why contracting jobs are always in stupid places: they’re either hot, or freezing, or too dry, or it’s always raining—like the place I’m in the middle of telling you about. Maybe we just don’t adapt well, those of us from the civilized world, and when we happen to end up in a place a little out of the way, we suddenly feel like we’re at the end of the world. But everywhere there are people who are happy in their own country and wouldn’t want to switch places with us. It’s a question of habit.

  “Well, in that country I was telling you about, the people aren’t easy to make friends with. I have nothing against blacks, of course, and in other areas I’ve found some who are smarter than us, but down there it’s another thing altogether. They’re deadbeats and bullshit artists. Only a few of them speak English, and I couldn’t understand their language; they don’t drink wine, never even heard of it, and they’re jealous of their women, though I can’t imagine what they’re thinking, because the women are small, with short legs, and stomachs that come out to here. They eat things that would disgust you—I’ll spare you the details because we’re eating. In short, if I tell you that down there the only friend I made was a little monkey, then you’ll have to believe me when I say that I had no alternative. The monkey wasn’t even a particularly good monkey—he was one of those with fur around the head and a face like a dog.

  “He was curious, he came to watch me work, and right away he taught me something. I already said how it was always raining—well, he sat in the rain in a particular way, with his knees raised, his head on his knees, and his hands crossed over his head. I saw that, in this position, with all his hair combed down over his face, he was barely getting wet: the water dripped down his elbows and his back while his stomach and face stayed dry. I tried it myself, taking a break from my bolts, and I have to say that if you don’t have an umbrella it’s your best option.”

  I thought he was joking, and I promised him that, if ever I found myself naked in a tropical rainstorm, I’d make like the monkey, but he flashed me an angry look. Faussone never jokes, and if he does, he jokes with the heaviness of a turtle. And he doesn’t like anyone else making jokes, either.

  “He was bored. During that season the females live together in a pack, along with an older, strong male who leads them and has sex with all of them, and woe to any young monkey that happens to come near—the older monkey will jump on him and scratch him. I understood this situation well because it was a bit like mine, though I was single for other reasons. As you know, in situations like this, when you have two guys alone together, both feeling melancholy, it’s not long before you’re buddies.”

  A thought crossed my mind: the two of us were alone together, both feeling melancholy. I’d taken the place of the monkey, and I felt a rapid surge of affection for my distant opposite number, but I didn’t want to interrupt Faussone.

  “. . . except he didn’t have a derrick to build. The first day he was there alone watching, yawning, scratching his head and his belly like this, with his supple fingers, and he bared his teeth. It’s not like when a dog does it—with monkeys it’s a sign of friendship, but it took me a few days to f
igure this out. The second day he circled the box of bolts, and since I didn’t shoo him away, he’d pick one up once in a while, testing it with his teeth to see if it was good to eat. By the third day he’d figured out that every bolt goes with a nut, and he didn’t really make any more mistakes after that—the half-inch bolt went with the half-inch nut, the three-eighths with the three-eighths, and so on. But he never quite figured out that all the bolt threads turned to the right. Even much later, he still didn’t understand it; he tried it this way and that way, haphazardly, and when it worked and the nut was screwed on, he jumped up and down, clapping his hands on the ground, making faces, and generally seeming pleased. It’s too bad us riggers don’t have four hands, or even a tail. I was boiling with envy: as soon as he worked up a little confidence he was climbing up the truss like a bolt of lightning, clinging to the struts with his feet, head down, and in that position he’d be screwing in the bolts and making faces at me.

  “I could’ve watched him all day, but I had a deadline to meet—no way around it. I was doing my best to get on with the work between rainstorms, with little help from my three worthless assistants. The monkey could have helped me, but he was like a child, so the whole thing was a game to him. It wasn’t going to happen. After a few days I gestured for him to bring up to me certain crossbeams, and he would fly down and then up, but he’d always bring me only the parts for the top, which were painted red so that they could be seen by airplanes. They were also the lightest; you see, he understood what was going on, he wanted to play, but he didn’t want to tire himself out. But don’t think for a second that the three blacks did much more, and at least he wasn’t afraid of falling.

  “Working steadily, I finished setting up the haul-off unit. The first time I revved the two motors, he was a little scared on account of the noise and all the wheels moving by themselves. By that point I’d given him a name: I’d call him, and he’d come. It might’ve helped that I gave him a banana once in a while but, anyway, he came. Then I attached the control panel, and he watched as if enchanted. When the red and green lights lit up, he looked at me inquisitively, like he wanted to know how it all worked, and if I didn’t pay attention to him he’d cry like a baby. So I have to take the blame for what happened next. Well, here, there’s no way around it, the fault was mine. I do remember thinking, after all, that he was enjoying those buttons a bit too much. What am I trying to say? I was such a moron that, on the last evening, it never occurred to me to disconnect the fuses.”

  A disaster was looming. I was going to ask Faussone how he had managed to commit such a serious oversight, but I restrained myself, so as not to spoil the story. In fact, as there is an art of storytelling, codified through thousands of trials and errors, there is also an art of listening, just as old and noble, though, as far as I know, it has never been given a set of rules. And yet every narrator knows from experience that the listener makes a decisive contribution to the story: a distracted or hostile audience enervates any lecture or lesson, while a friendly public helps it along. But the listener also shares some responsibility for the work of art that is every narrative: you observe this when you’re speaking on the telephone and you freeze up, because you can’t see the reactions of your interlocutor, who, in that case, is reduced to expressing his interest with the occasional monosyllable or grunt. This is also the main reason that there are so few writers—writers, after all, being people who tell stories to an incorporeal audience.

  “. . . no, he didn’t manage to destroy it completely, but he came pretty close. While I was fiddling with the electrical contacts—because, you know, though I’m not an electrician, a rigger needs to deal with everything that comes up—and especially afterward, when I was testing the controls, he didn’t miss a move. The next day was Sunday, and the job was finished, and we needed a day of rest. In short, when Monday came and I returned to the worksite, it looked as if someone had given the truss a slap: it was still standing upright, but it was totally crooked, with its grappling hook stuck in the base like a ship’s anchor. And he was sitting there, waiting for me—he had heard me arrive on my motorcycle. He looked quite proud of himself; who knows what was going through his head? I was pretty certain that I’d left the equipment hauled up at the top, but he must have lowered it, all he had to do was press a button, which he’d seen me do a number of times on Saturday; and then he must have made it swing, even though it surely weighed a few hundred kilograms. And while swinging, the hook must have caught on a strut, as it was one of those safety hooks, with a carabiner and a spring catch, which locks when it closes on something—this is the problem with safety precautions. Anyway, maybe he had understood that he was making trouble, and had pushed the lift button, or maybe this only happened by chance, but the whole truss had been put under stress. Just the thought of it gives me chills even now: three or four crossbars had fallen, the whole tower had been jarred violently, and luckily the safety switch had kicked in, otherwise it’d be goodbye to your executioner from London.”

  “So it wasn’t such a serious catastrophe after all?” As soon as I had uttered these words I realized, from my own anxious tone, that in fact I sympathized with him—the adventurous little monkey—who probably had been trying to emulate the wonders that he had seen performed by his silent human friend.

  “That depends. Four days of work for the repairs, plus I was fined a good amount of money. But while I was there, trying to fix everything, his attitude changed; he was all weepy, his head slumped between his shoulders, and he watched everything from afar; whenever I went over to him he’d run away. Maybe he was afraid I’d scratch him, like the old alpha male, the keeper of the females. . . . Well, what more do you want to know? That’s the end of the derrick story. I fixed the thing, had all the tests done, packed my bags, and left. As for the monkey—well, even though he had caused me all that trouble, I would have liked to take him with me, but then it occurred to me that he might come down with consumption here, they wouldn’t have let me keep him in the pension, and he would have been quite a present for my aunts. It didn’t matter anyway—damned if he ever showed his face again.”

  The Sassy Girl

  “Are you kidding me? No, I go wherever they send me—sure, even in Italy, but they don’t usually send me anywhere in Italy because I know my trade so well. Don’t get me wrong, I just mean that I can handle pretty much any situation, so they like to send me abroad, and around Italy they only send the young, the old—the guys they’re worried might have a heart attack—and the deadbeats. Besides, I like it better this way myself: you see the world and you always learn something, and you get to stay far away from the boss.”

  It was Sunday, the air was fresh and smelled of resin, the sun never seemed to set, and the two of us had started off through the forest, hoping to reach the river before dark. Whenever the wind stopped rustling in the dead leaves, you could hear the river’s powerful, tranquil voice, which seemed to come from every point on the horizon. You could also hear, at intervals, now near and now far, a light but frenetic tapping sound, as if someone were trying to hammer tiny nails into the tree trunks with tiny jackhammers. Faussone had explained that the noise was made by green woodpeckers, which we also have in our country, but it’s illegal to hunt them. I asked him if his boss was really so insufferable that he felt he had to travel thousands of kilometers just to avoid seeing him, and Faussone replied no, as a boss he was actually pretty “good,” a word that in Faussone’s lexicon had great significance, meaning, cumulatively: compliant, nice, experienced, intelligent, and courageous.

  “. . . but he’s one of those guys that could tell cats how to climb—you know what I mean? He’s always getting in your face, you know? He doesn’t leave you alone. And if your boss doesn’t leave you alone then forget about it, you lose the taste for the job, and you might as well go work at Fiat, because at least then when you get home at night you can put on a pair of slippers and get into bed with your wife. It’s tempting, you know: there’s always risks inv
olved, especially when they ship you off to certain countries. No, not this one: everything’s rosy here. But it is tempting, the idea of hanging it all up, getting married, and no longer living the life of a Gypsy.” He repeated, meditatively, “Yeah, it’s certainly tempting.”

  It was clear that the pronouncement of this theory would be followed by a practical example. Sure enough, after a few minutes, he started up again:

  “Yeah, as I was saying, this one time the boss sent me to a job in Italy, rather, southern Italy, because he knew it was going to be a tough one. If you want to hear the story of a dumb assembly job, and I know some people like hearing about the misfortunes of others, then listen to this, because I’ve never seen another rigging job like it, and I wouldn’t wish it on any rigger. The reason for this, more than anything else, had to do with the client. He was a good guy, don’t get me wrong, he offered me some wonderful dinners and even gave me a bed with a canopy on top, because he wanted to make sure that I felt like a guest at his house, no matter the cost. But he didn’t understand the slightest thing about the job, and, as you know, there’s nothing worse than that. He was in the salami business and he’d made some money in it, or maybe he had been receiving money from the development fund for southern Italy, I don’t know; all I know was that he had got it into his head to make metal furniture. Only idiots think it’s good to have a crazy client, who lets you do whatever you want. It’s just the opposite: a crazy client gives you nothing but trouble. He doesn’t have the right equipment or the right supplies, at the first sign of trouble he freaks out and wants to cancel the contract, and when things go well he gets too involved and wastes your time. Right, so this guy was like that, and I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, because on the other end of the telex there was my boss, breathing down my neck. He was sending me a telex every two hours, to check up on how my work was coming. You’ve probably seen the way every boss, once he passes a certain age, develops his own neuroses—and mine had a lot. The first, like I told you, was the biggest one: he wanted to do everything himself, as if a rigger could rig anything sitting behind a desk, or glued to the telephone or the teletype machine—think about that for a second! A rigging project is a job that each person has to study by himself, using his own head or, even better, his hands: as you know, it makes a difference whether you’re seeing things from your armchair or from a tower forty meters above the ground. But he had other neuroses, too. Bearings, for instance; he only wanted bearings made in Sweden, and if he found out that someone had used any other type on a job, his face would turn different colors and he’d start jumping this high in the air, even though he was usually a pretty calm guy. It was silly anyway, because on jobs like the one I’m telling you about—where you have a long conveyor belt, slow and light—any bearing would have worked fine, even those bronze bushings that my godfather used to make, one at a time, with a little elbow grease, for the Diatto and the Prinetti automobile plants, in his workshop on Via Gasometro. Well that’s what he called it, but now it’s Via Camerana.