by Primo Levi
At this point I noticed that Faussone, despite the wine and his bad mood, had become attentive. He had stopped drinking and—though his expression was usually thick, fixed, and less animated than the bottom of a frying pan—he was now regarding me with a look that was somewhere between mischievous and malicious.
“All right, that’s a fact. I never thought of it like that. Just think, if no one had ever invented those monitoring instruments for us and the work had to go forward just the same, then we’d have to make it all up as we went along: it’d be enough to drive you crazy.”
I acknowledged that, indeed, writers’ nerves did tend to be weak, but it’s difficult to determine whether the nerves weaken because of writing, and the aforementioned absence of sensitive instruments that might evaluate the quality of the written work, or whether the writing profession simply attracts people who are predisposed to anxiety. Unquestionably, however, many writers are neurasthenics, or at least they become that way (it’s always difficult to diagnose “occupational diseases”), and many others end up in a mental institution or some equivalent, and not only in this century but in many centuries past; there are also a lot of writers who don’t exhibit any obvious signs of illness, but who live badly, get depressed, drink, smoke, don’t sleep, and die young.
Faussone was beginning to enjoy this game of comparing the two professions; it wouldn’t be like him to admit it, since he’s normally so sober and composed, but you could see it from the fact that he’d stopped drinking, and his period of silence had come to an end. He replied:
“The fact is that people talk a lot about work, but those who talk the loudest are the ones who have never tried it. If you ask me, this issue of skittish nerves affects everyone these days—not just writers and riggers but people in all lines of work. You know who it doesn’t affect? Janitors, clock-watchers, assembly-line workers—because they send everyone else to the mental asylum. Speaking of nerves: don’t think for a second that when you’re up there in the sky, all by yourself, and a wind blows, and the tower hasn’t yet been reinforced and it’s bobbing like a toy boat, and the people on the ground are the size of ants, and you’re holding on with one hand and you have the wrench in the other; and you wish you had a third hand to hold the blueprint, and maybe also another, number four, to shift the catch on your safety belt—well, like I was saying, don’t think for a second that this is soothing on the nerves. To tell the truth, I can’t think off the top of my head of a single rigger who’s ended up in a mental asylum, though I know of many, including friends of mine, who have gotten ill and had to change professions.”
I had to admit that with writers there are, in reality, very few occupational illnesses—partly because, generally speaking, the hours are flexible.
“You mean there aren’t any,” he rudely interrupted. “You can’t get sick from writing. At most, if you write with a pen, you can get a callus. And as for occupational hazards—well, don’t even get me started.”
He had made his point, all right—I admitted it. Then, in the same polite tone, Faussone, in an unusual flight of fancy, said that it was like trying to figure out whether it was better to be born a man or a woman. The only person who could know the right answer would be someone who had tried both ways. At this point, though I realized it was a low blow on my part, I couldn’t resist the temptation to tell him the story of Tiresias.
He seemed somewhat uncomfortable when I informed him that Jupiter and Juno, besides being husband and wife, were also brother and sister—they usually don’t make a point of telling you that at school, but there was surely some significance to it. He did display interest, however, when I told him about their famous argument—about whether the pleasures of love and sex were more intense for woman or man. Oddly enough, Jupiter awarded the prize to woman, Juno to man. Faussone interrupted:
“Exactly, it’s like I was saying before: to decide, you’d need someone who had tried out being both a man and a woman; but there’s no one like that, even if, every once in a while, you read in the newspaper about that navy captain who goes to Casablanca to undergo an operation and then gives birth to four children. If you ask me, those are just journalists’ tales.”
“Probably. But at that time it seems that there did exist a suitable judge. His name was Tiresias, a wise man of Thebes, in Greece, to whom, many years earlier, a strange thing had happened. He was a man, a man like you or me, and one autumn evening, which I imagine was as damp and gloomy as this one, while walking through the forest, he came across a tangle of snakes. He looked more closely and realized that there were only two snakes, but they were both very long and thick: one was a male and the other a female (you can already see that Tiresias was an acute observer, because I don’t know how he was able to tell a male python from a female, especially at night, and if they were so entangled that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began)—and the male and female were having sex. Tiresias, because he was scandalized, or envious, or simply because the two animals were blocking his way, raised his walking stick and brought it down heavily on the pile of snakes; then he felt a great jumbling sensation, and was transformed from a man into a woman.”
Faussone, who always got worked up by notions of humanistic origin, sneered and told me that one time, not far from Greece—in Turkey, to be precise—he, too, had encountered a tangle of snakes in the woods; there weren’t two of them, however, but many, and they weren’t pythons but garden snakes. It certainly seemed as if they were having sex, in that odd way of theirs, all twisted up, but he had nothing against it and he let them be: “But now that I know the trick, the next time it happens, who knows, I might just have to try it myself.”
“Anyway, it seems that this Tiresias was a woman for seven years, and he had his share of feminine experiences. But at the end of those seven years he again came across the snakes. This time, knowing the trick, he hit them with his stick on purpose, so as to be turned back into a man. Evidently, having experienced both sides, he found manhood to be more advantageous. Yet in that debate I was telling you about he said that Jupiter was right, but I couldn’t tell you why he said that. Perhaps he found it better to be a woman, but only for sex and not for the rest, because otherwise he would have remained a woman—that is, he wouldn’t have delivered that second blow. Or maybe he was just worried about what might happen were he to contradict Jupiter. But he got himself in trouble anyway, because Juno was offended—”
“Yeah, never get between husband and wife—”
“—she was so offended that she blinded him, and Jupiter couldn’t do anything about it, because apparently there was a rule at the time stating that when a god cursed a mortal, no other god, not even Jupiter, could reverse it. The best Jupiter could do was give Tiresias the ability to see into the future. But, as you can tell from this story, it was too late.”
Faussone was fiddling with the bottle and he had a vaguely annoyed air about him. “It’s a good enough story. You learn something new every day. But I don’t quite get what it has to do with me. You’re not trying to tell me that you’re Tiresias, are you?”
I hadn’t anticipated a personal attack. I explained to Faussone that one of the great privileges of a writer is the ability to maintain a level of imprecision and vagueness, to say and yet not say, to invent freely without worrying about being prudent—because the pylons we build do not carry high-tension cables, if they fall no one dies, and they don’t even have to hold up against the wind. We’re ultimately an irresponsible bunch, and you’ll never see a writer be brought to trial or end up in prison because his structures fell down. But I also said that—and maybe I hadn’t realized it until I was telling him the story—I did feel a little like Tiresias, and not simply because of my double identity. A long time ago I, too, had stumbled into the middle of a fight between gods; I, too, had come across snakes in my path, and that encounter altered my condition, giving me the strange power of words; and since then, appearing as a chemist before the eyes of the world, yet
feeling the blood of a writer in my veins, I felt as if I had two souls in my body, which is one too many. But I said he shouldn’t take this very seriously, because the whole comparison was a stretch; to work to the fullest extent of one’s ability, or even beyond one’s ability, is our profession’s true reward. Unlike riggers, when we manage to transcend our limitations and pull off impossible combinations we’re happy and we receive praise.
Faussone, to whom I had told all my stories on other evenings, neither raised an objection nor asked me any additional questions, and anyway it was now too late to go further into the matter. Yet feeling emboldened by my expertise in both Venuses, and despite the fact that he was quite visibly sleepy, I tried to explain to him that on good days all three of our professions, my two and his one, could provide satisfaction. His profession and the chemistry profession that resembles it because they teach you how to be whole, to think with your hands and with your whole body, and not to capitulate before ruinous days and formulas you don’t understand, for there will come a time when you do understand them; ultimately they teach you to know the material and stand up to it. And writing because it yields—rarely, but once in a while—some moments of creation, as when a current passes through a cold circuit and a lamp goes on, or a rotor moves.
We agreed that we had many good things in common. The advantage of being able to evaluate ourselves without having to depend on others, and seeing our selves reflected in our work. The pleasure of watching your creation grow, stone by stone, bolt by bolt, solid, essential, symmetrical, and well suited to its purpose, and when it’s done you can look at it and think that it might outlive you, and that it might be of use to someone you don’t know and who doesn’t know you. Maybe you’ll be able to come back and see it in your old age, and it will seem beautiful to you, and it won’t really matter if you’re the only one who finds it beautiful. And you’ll say to yourself, “There may be no other person in the world who could have pulled this off.”
Offshore
“Sure I’m young, but I’ve seen some dark things in my time, and they’ve always had something to do with oil. You’ll never see oil being found in a nice place like, say, San Remo or the Costa Brava; at least not anymore—only in disgusting, godforsaken places. All the worst things that have ever happened to me happened while I was searching for oil. What made matters worse was that I could never put my heart into it, because everyone basically knows that oil’s going to run out and it’s not worth the trouble. But you know how it is: if you sign a contract, it doesn’t matter where they send you, you better go. Then again, to be completely honest, I was happy enough to go off on this particular job, because it was in Alaska.
“I haven’t read too many books, but as a child I read everything that Jack London ever wrote about Alaska, and not just once, either. Those books gave me an idea of the place, but after I went there—and I’m sorry to have to say this in front of you—I began to lose faith in the printed word. I mean, I was expecting to find myself in a land of snow and ice, of midnight sun, of sled dogs and gold mines and maybe even bears and wolves that chase after you. That was the idea I had of the place, I was carrying it around with me almost without realizing it, so when they called me into the office and told me that there was an opening to go to Alaska for a rigging job, I didn’t think twice before I signed the contract. There was also the matter of a special hardship allowance, and then I’d been in the city for three months and, as you know, I don’t like city life. Or, rather, I like it for three or four days, I take a walk, maybe check out a movie, I look up some girl and go see her, maybe I decide to see her again, so I take her to dinner at Il Cambio and feel like some kind of hot shot. Sometimes I also go visit those two aunts of mine on Via Lagrange that I told you about the other time. . . .”
I could’ve sworn that he hadn’t told me about these aunts—at least he hadn’t described them. There then transpired a brief squabble in which each of us tried politely to insinuate that the other one hadn’t been paying attention, until Faussone settled the argument unceremoniously.
“It doesn’t matter. I have these two churchgoing aunts. I go sit in their nice living room and they give me chocolates; one is clever, the other not so much. But I’ll tell you about them some other time.
“So I was talking about Alaska, and how I don’t like being in the city. That’s because, you see, I’m the type of guy that can’t just do the minimum. Yeah, like those motors with malfunctioning carburetors that you have to keep revving so they don’t quit, even if you risk burning the ignition. After a few days in the city all kinds of bad things start happening to me: I wake up in the middle of the night, I feel like I’m coming down with a cold but I never actually get sick, I feel like I’ve forgotten how to breathe, I get headaches and footaches, when I go out in the street I think everyone’s watching me—I feel lost, in other words. One time I even went to see the company doctor, but he just made fun of me. He was right, because I knew what was wrong with me: I wanted to leave. So the time I’m telling you about, I signed the contract without asking too many questions. I was just happy to have a new job, a project on which I’d be working in partnership with Americans, and I figured they’d give me the rest of the information once I got to the site. So just like that I zipped up my bag—I keep it ready to go—and I got on a plane.
“There’s nothing really to say about the trip: jet lag used to bother me, but now I’m used to it. I made my three flight changes, I slept during the flights, and when I arrived I was as fresh as a rose. Everything went as planned, a representative from the company was waiting for me in a Chrysler as big as a boat and I felt like the Shah of Persia. The representative took me to a restaurant for shrimp—they’re something like our prawns, and he told me they were a regional specialty—but there was nothing to drink; he explained to me that his religion forbade alcohol, and with his immaculate manners he made it clear to me that, out of concern for my eternal soul, I shouldn’t have anything to drink, either; he was a nice enough guy, but that’s what he was like. Over shrimp he explained the job to me, and it seemed a job like any other. Well, you know how representatives are, they’re great at handling people, but when it comes to work, forget about it. I once quarreled with one because he didn’t understand anything and he was promising the client impossible things. You know what he told me? That in our line of work you had three options: you could understand what was going on, you could understand it poorly, or you could understand nothing at all, but to understand it well you needed to be an engineer. And rather than have a poor understanding, it was best to understand nothing, since that way you’d always have an excuse if things didn’t work out. Good logic, huh?”
Since I have friends who are corporate representatives, I did my best to defend them, saying that it’s a delicate job, that it’s often worse if they know too much because then they lose business, and so on, but Faussone wouldn’t listen to reason.
“No, I’ve never met a single one who understood a thing, or who even made an effort. Some of them pretend to understand, but they’re the worst of all. Don’t talk to me about them—representatives—unless you want an argument. Believe me, all they’re good for is handling clients, taking them to nightclubs and soccer games, and that’s not so bad because sometimes they take us along, too, but as far as understanding the job, give me a break, they’re all alike, I’ve never met one who had any idea of what was going on.
“Well, this man tells me that I’m there to finish the rigging of a derrick at a worksite forty kilometers away, and then load it onto boats, to be carried out to sea, to a shoal not too far from the coast. If the derrick was going to be loaded onto a boat, I figured it couldn’t have been anything special; and I almost began to get angry, because they had made me travel halfway around the world for this. But I didn’t say anything to the representative—it wasn’t his fault.
“It was night now, so he says his goodbyes and tells me he’ll pick me up from the hotel at eight o’clock the next morning t
o take me to the site. The next morning everything’s going fine; I did have to eat shrimp for breakfast, but of course I’d seen worse. Everything’s fine, like I said: he arrives at eight, punctual, in his Chrysler, and we leave, and pretty soon we’re outside the city, because it was a small city. It wasn’t exactly a ‘Burning Daylight.’2 I’d never seen such a melancholy place. It looked like Séstrier in the off-season; I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, but there was a dirty, low sky, so low that it looked like you could touch it—at times we did touch it, because when the road went up an incline we drove right into the fog. A cold, moist breeze was blowing, it slipped under your clothes and put you in a bad mood, and in the fields all around us grew a hard, short black grass that resembled drill bits. There wasn’t a soul in sight, just large crows, the size of turkeys: they watched us pass and shuffled their feet without flying away, as if they were laughing at us. We went up a hill, and at the top Mr. Compton showed me the worksite—it emerged from the gray air at the edge of the sea, and it took my breath away. Look, you know I don’t like to exaggerate, but we were ten kilometers away and it was as if we were already there: it looked like the skeleton of a whale, long and black, lying along the shore, already completely rusted because in that part of the world iron starts to rust within minutes, and the thought that it was my responsibility to erect the thing in the middle of the ocean—I almost pitched a fit. Anyone can say, ‘Go build a derrick.’ You remember that other time, the time with the monkey, when you told me about the London executioner and all that? Well, figure that tower was twenty meters high, which is a pretty good height, take it from me; this structure, though it still wasn’t close to being finished, already extended two hundred and fifty meters along the ground. To give you an idea of what I’m talking about, that’s like from here to that green fence over there, or from Piazza San Carlo to Piazza Castello. Work never scares me, but on that occasion I said to myself, ‘Your time has come.’