by Primo Levi
“Then, since he was an engineer, he was also obsessed with metal fatigue—he saw it everywhere and I think that he even had dreams about it at night. It’s not your field, so you might not know what it is. Well, let me put it this way: it’s unusual. In my whole career I’ve never seen a single certified case of metal fatigue; when a piece breaks, the owners, directors, designers, and the workshop heads all always say that there’s nothing for them to do about it, that it’s the fault of the rigger, who’s far away and can’t defend himself, or of random electrical currents, or of fatigue, and they wash their hands of it, or at least they try to. But don’t let me lose my train of thought. That boss’s strangest neurosis was this: he was one of those guys who, before they turn the page of a book, they lick their finger. I remember that my elementary-school teacher, on the first day of school, taught us not to do that, because of the germs. I guess this guy’s teacher never taught him that, because he was always licking that finger of his. Well I noticed that he licked his finger whenever he wanted to open anything—his desk drawer, a window, the door to his safe. One time I saw him licking his finger before opening the hood of his Fulvia.”
At this point I realized that it wasn’t Faussone who was losing track of the story but me—what with the “good” but inexperienced client and the “good” but maniacal boss. I asked him to be clearer and more concise, but now we had come to the river and we paused for a couple of seconds without talking. It was less a river than a bay: it flowed with a solemn swishing noise along the shore—a high bank of brittle, reddish earth—and we could barely see the opposite side. Small waves, transparent and clean, broke against the riverbank.
“Okay, I might have gotten a little lost in the details, but you can be sure, it was a stupid job. First of all, the workers down there, needless to say, are completely inept: maybe they’re good with a hoe, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it, because they seemed to have about as much energy as a flock of sheep; they were constantly calling in sick. But the worst thing was the quality of the materials: there weren’t many types of bolts and nuts available in town, and the ones there were would make even a dog sick. I’ve never seen crap like that before, and I don’t just mean in this town—where, when it comes to shoddiness, they don’t screw around—but even that time in Africa I told you about before. It was the same deal with the base plates: it was like they’d measured them with their fingers; and every day it was the same song and dance: hammer, chisel, pickax, break up everything and then pour on the quick-setting cement. I clung to the teletype machine, because even the telephone only worked when it felt like it, and after fifteen minutes the little machine was banging away, as teletypes do, like they’re always in a hurry, even when they’re writing out some bullshit, and on the paper it said: ‘Despite our advice you have evidently used materials of indeterminate origin,’ or some other such nonsense that had no basis in reality, and I felt myself going stiff. I’m not just saying that: I really felt my elbows slowly hardening, and my knees, too, and my hands drooping and swinging like a cow’s udders, until I wanted to give up the whole profession once and for all. I’ve felt like that plenty of times, but that time worse than others, and, as you can imagine, I’ve had my share of bad jobs. Has that ever happened to you?”
Of course! I explained to Faussone that, at least in times of peace, that’s one of the fundamental experiences of life: being at work and yet not being at work. It’s likely that, at least in other languages, this stiffening sensation, which debilitates and hinders the workingman, can be described in more poetic terms, but I don’t know of any stronger way to put it. And I pointed out to him that, in order to feel that way, you didn’t even need to have an annoying boss.
“Yeah, but that guy, forget about it, he would have tried the patience of a saint. Believe me, it’s not like I take any pleasure in ragging on him, because I told you he wasn’t so bad. It’s just that he hit me in my weak spot—my love of work. I would have rather he fined me or, I don’t know, maybe even given me a suspension, instead of those few words, put down so casually, but when I stopped to think about it, I felt like I’d been skinned alive. It was as if all the problems of the job, and not only that one, were my fault, just because I hadn’t wanted to use the Swedish bearings. And yet I had in fact used them—it wasn’t my money, after all! But he didn’t believe me, or at least he pretended not to believe me; anyway, after every telephone call from him I felt like a criminal, even though I had put my entire soul into the job. But I put my soul into every job, you know, even the stupid ones; actually the stupider they are, the more I put my soul into them. For me, every job is like a first love.”
In the soft light of the sunset we headed back, along a path barely visible through the thickness of the forest. Against all his instincts, Faussone stopped talking, and walked silently at my side, with his hands behind his back and his eyes fixed on the ground. Two or three times I saw him draw in his breath and open his mouth as if to begin speaking again, but he seemed indecisive. He resumed only when we were in sight of the guesthouse:
“Can I tell you something? There was one time that boss of mine was right. Or sort of right. It was true that on that job there were a lot of problems, like the fact that we couldn’t find the right materials, that the Commandant—yes, the salami guy—was always wasting my time instead of giving me a hand. It was also true that we didn’t have a single laborer worth two cents; but if the work was proceeding poorly, despite all those delays, the fault was partially mine. Actually, it was the fault of a girl.”
He had actually said ’na fija, or una figlia, “a daughter”; and in fact, in his voice, the term “girl” would have sounded a little forced, but no more forced or affected than “daughter” would seem if you read it here. This information, however, was surprising. In his other stories Faussone had presented himself as impervious—a man of few sentimental attachments, the kind who doesn’t “chase after girls,” but whom girls chase after—though he doesn’t really care, he picks this one or that one without giving it much thought, and keeps her only for the duration of his project; then he bids her farewell and leaves. I waited for him to continue, with anticipation and suspense.
“You know, there’s a lot of stories that go around about the girls of that region, that they’re small, fat, jealous, and only good for having kids. This particular girl was my height, with brownish-red hair; she stood as straight as a board and was about as sassy as any girl I’ve ever met. She drove a forklift, actually—that’s how we met. Next to the conveyor belt that I was assembling there was a track for trucks: just barely room enough for two to pass at the same time. I saw a truck coming down it, driven by a girl, carrying a load of steel pipes that were sticking out a little, and coming in the other direction was another truck, this one empty, and also driven by a girl. It was clear they wouldn’t be able to cross at the same time, one of the two would have to back up until she reached a place where the road was wider, or the girl with the steel pipes could stop and remove her cargo and then reload them more tidily. No, they both planted themselves right there and started yelling insults at each other. I could tell right away that there was some bad blood between the two of them, and I was happy to wait patiently for them to finish, because I had to pass, too. I had one of those little trucks that you steer with a rudder shaft, loaded up with those famous bearings, and God forbid that it overturned and my boss found out.
“So I wait five minutes, then ten, but nothing happens, those girls are still at it, like they’re out in the middle of the street. They were arguing in their dialect, but you could understand most of it. At a certain point I decided to get involved, and I asked them if they would please let me pass. The larger of the two—the girl I mentioned before—turns to me and goes, very calmly, ‘Hold on, we’re not done yet’; then she turns toward the other one, and just like that, coolly, she says something that I wouldn’t dare repeat to you, but I swear it made my hair stand up straight. ‘Okay,’ she says to me, ‘now you can pas
s,’ and just like that she goes full speed in reverse, giving such a close shave to the columns and the supports of my conveyor belt that I froze. When she got to the end of the passage, still going in reverse, she took a turn that not even Niki Lauda could pull off, and instead of looking where she was going she was staring right at me. Christ, I thought to myself, she’s a madwoman. But I had already figured out that the whole scene had been performed for my benefit, and a little while later I also learned that the reason she was acting so crudely was that she had been watching me for a number of days while I was putting the air bubble on the brackets. . . .”
That expression sounded strange to me, so I asked him to clarify. Faussone, annoyed, explained in a few dense words that an air bubble is a type of level that contains liquid with an air bubble in it. When it’s perfectly horizontal, the bubble is properly aligned, and that’s how you know the surface on which it’s resting is flat.
“So if someone says, ‘Put the air bubble on that,’ that’s what they’re talking about. But let me continue, because the story about the girl is more important. The point was that she had understood me—she understood that I like people who are decisive and know their trade, and I could tell that she was into me, and was trying to strike up a conversation. So we started talking, and it wasn’t at all difficult—I mean, we slept together and it seemed natural, nothing unusual. But there’s something else I wanted to tell you. The nicest moment, the moment when I said to myself, ‘I’m never going to forget this, not even when I’m old, or when I’m on my deathbed,’ and I wished time would stop right then, like a motor cutting out—well, it wasn’t the moment we went to bed. It was before that. We were in the cafeteria of the Commandant’s factory. We were sitting near each other, we were done eating, we were talking about this and that—actually I remember I was telling her about my boss and his odd way of opening doors—and I put my hand on the bench to my right, and there was her hand, and our hands touched, and hers didn’t move; she just left it there for me to pet, like a cat. Let me tell you, everything that happened later was very nice, too, but it didn’t mean as much.”
“And where is she now?”
“You really have to know everything, don’t you?” said Faussone, as if it had been my idea for him to tell me the story of the truck driver. “What do you want me to say? It’s a tug-of-war. Marry her? I can’t marry her: first of all there’s my job, second because . . . well, before getting married, you need to think it through, and for a girl like that—she’s good, needless to say, but she’s also as cunning as a witch. I’m not sure if I’m explaining myself. But to let bygones be bygones, or forget all about her—that wouldn’t be right. Every once in a while I go to my boss and ask to be sent back to that region, with the excuse that I have to make some repairs. And one time she showed up in Turin, on holiday, wearing faded cutoff jeans, accompanied by a boy, one of those guys with a beard up to his eyes, and she introduced me to him as if it were no big deal; so I also acted like it was no big deal. I felt something like mild heartburn, in the pit of my stomach, though I didn’t say anything because that was our arrangement. But you’re something else, aren’t you? Making me tell you things I’ve never told anyone before.”
Tiresias
It’s not normally like this: normally Faussone dives into a story about some adventure or misadventure, and rattles off the whole thing without taking a breath, in that haphazard manner of his to which I’d become accustomed by now, without allowing himself to be interrupted, except for brief requests for explanations. This being the case, he seems better suited to monologues than to dialogues, and for the most part his monologues are overloaded with his repetitive tics and his particular language, which to me comes across as rather gray; I suppose it’s the gray of our country’s fogs, or perhaps the gray of the sheet metal and steel pipes that are effectively the heroes of his stories.
That night, however, it seemed that things might unfold differently: he had had quite a lot of wine, and the wine—a terrible, cloudy wine, viscous and sour—had altered him. It hadn’t dulled his wits, and, besides, anyone in his line of work shouldn’t leave himself open to surprises (as he said himself)—one must always be on guard, like the secret agents you see in films—nor had it obscured his lucidity. But it had stripped him of something. It had cracked his protective armor. I’d never seen him so taciturn, but, oddly enough, his silence, instead of making him seem distant, brought us closer together.
He emptied another glass, without enthusiasm or enjoyment, but with the bitter resignation of someone forced to take his medicine: “. . . so are you writing down these stories that I’m telling you?” Perhaps I would, I told him; I wasn’t bored with writing, writing was my second profession, and I was just at that moment giving serious consideration to the possibility of making it my first, or even sole, profession. Did he not want me to write down his stories? On other occasions the idea had made him happy, even proud.
“Right. Yeah, well, don’t pay attention to that, not all days are the same, you know, and today, well, today is ruined—one of those days when nothing goes right. There are some days when you can even lose the will to work.” He was silent for a long time. Then he said:
“Yeah, there are some days when everything goes haywire; and it’s all very well to say that you’re not responsible, that the whole design is screwy, that you’re tired and, besides, the devil’s wind is blowing. All true, but the grief that you feel right here, nobody can fix that. So then you start questioning yourself, you even ask questions that make no sense, like, for example, what are we doing here in this world? And if you think about it for a second, you realize that we’re not in this world to rig trusses, if you know what I’m saying. I mean, when you suffer for twelve days, putting all your energy and skills into a job, sweating, freezing, and cursing, and you start having doubts, they begin to gnaw at you, and when you take a good look, sure enough, the job is out of whack; you don’t believe it because you don’t want to believe it, but then you look again and all the dimensions are off—then, my friend, what do you do? That’s when you have to change your mentality, and you start to wonder whether the whole thing is worth the trouble in the first place, and that it might be best to take on some other line of work. But then you start thinking that every job is the same, and that the whole world is out of control—even if we’ve now figured out how to go to the moon—and it’s always been out of control, and no one can fix it, especially not some rigger. Yes, well, you get thinking about this sort of thing. . . . But tell me, do other guys worry about this sort of thing?”
How intransigent is that optical illusion that makes our neighbor’s problems seem less bitter than ours, and his profession more lovable! I responded by saying that it’s difficult to make comparisons; however, having done work similar to his, I could concede that it’s advantageous to work sitting down, at ground level, in a warm place; yet, besides this, and supposing I was permitted to speak on behalf of all writers, I’d say that we have bad days, too. In fact they happen to us more often, because it’s easier to tell whether a piece of metalwork is “on the air bubble” than a written page. You can write a page, or even a whole book, with a feeling of great enthusiasm, and only at the end do you realize it’s no good, that it’s a mess, foolish, derivative, lacking, excessive, useless; and then you get sad, and start having the very same ideas that he was having that evening, and you wonder whether it’s time to change not just your career but the air you breathe and your skin, and maybe you even think about becoming a rigger. But it can also happen (and it happens often) that when you write useless, foolish things, you don’t realize it and don’t want to realize it. This is quite possible, because paper is an excessively tolerant material. No matter what absurdity you write, it never protests: it’s not like the wood you use for scaffolding in a mining tunnel, which creaks when it’s overloaded and is about to collapse. In the writing trade, the instruments and the alarm signals are rudimental: there’s nothing equivalent to a squar
e or a plumb line. If a page doesn’t work, the reader knows it, but by then it’s too late, and nothing good’s going to come out of it, especially since that page is your work and yours alone—you have no excuses or pretexts, you’re entirely responsible for it.