The Complete Works of Primo Levi

by Primo Levi

  “The most cheerful people on board were the children. It was complete bedlam, there weren’t enough seats for all of them—I think those airlines let them fly free. They were running around barefoot, chatting among themselves like sparrows, and playing hide-and-seek under the seats, so that every so often one of them would sprout up between your legs, give you a little smile, and run off. When the airplane flew over the Caucasus there were air pockets, and some of the adult passengers got scared and others got sick. The kids, however, just invented a new game: as soon as the airplane turned a little to the left, and tilted to the left, they all shouted and threw themselves against the windows on the left side of the plane; and on the right the same thing, so violently that the pilot felt the aircraft swerve and at first he couldn’t figure out why, and assumed there was some kind of engine malfunction; but finally he realized it was the kids, so he called the flight attendant and told her to quiet them down. It was the hostess who told me this, because, it being a long trip, we had become friends. She was beautiful, too, and wore a small pearl fastened through her nose. When she brought around the food tray, it had only what seemed like white and yellow ointments that made you queasy, but whatever, I ate them just the same, because she was watching me and I didn’t want her to think I was difficult.

  “You know how it is when you’re going in for a landing and the engines slow down a little, and the aircraft tilts forward so that it seems like a large, worn-out bird, then it starts its descent and you see the lights of the airfield below, the ailerons emerge and the airfoils rise up, and everything vibrates, so it feels as if the air has become rough? That’s what happened, but it was a terrible descent. Clearly the control tower hadn’t given us permission to land, because we began to fly around in circles, and either there was turbulence or the pilot wasn’t very good or there was some mechanical problem, because the airplane shook as if it were going over the teeth of a saw, and out the window I could see the wings flapping like a bird’s, that is, as if they were loose; and this went on for twenty minutes. It’s not like I was worried: I know this happens sometimes. But I thought back to it later—after what happened at the bridge. Anyway, by the grace of God, we landed, the engines died down, and the doors opened. When they opened, the cabin filled with what seemed less like air than like warm water, with a certain scent, which you smell everywhere in India: a heavy scent, a mix of incense, cinnamon, sweat, and decay. I had no time to waste, so I retrieved my luggage and went to find the small Dakota that was to fly me to the worksite. Fortunately, it was almost dark outside, which was for the best, because that airplane was a terrifying sight. When it took off it was even more terrifying, even if I hadn’t seen it—but there was nothing to be done, and besides it was a short trip. It was like one of those cars in an old Ridolini movie;4 but I saw that the other passengers were calm, so I stayed calm myself.

  “I was calm and happy because I was finally about to arrive, and because I was going to start a job that I knew I’d like. I still haven’t told you about it, but it was a great job. I had to put up a suspension bridge, and I’ve always thought that working on bridges is the most beautiful kind of work there is, because you can be sure that they won’t do any harm to anyone, in fact, they’ll do good, because bridges carry roads, and without roads we’d all still be savages; in short, I like bridges because they’re the opposite of borders, and borders are where wars start. Well, that’s what I thought about bridges, basically what I still think; but when I assembled that bridge in India I was sorry I hadn’t been a better student, because if I had studied more I probably would have become an engineer. But if I were an engineer, the last thing I’d want to do would be to design a bridge, and the last bridge that I’d want to design would be a suspension bridge.”

  I pointed out to Faussone that his comments appeared to be somewhat contradictory. He admitted that this was true, but that I should wait to hear the end of the story before judging him. It often happens that a thing might be good in theory but bad in practice, and that was the case here.

  “The Dakota landed in a way I’d never experienced before, and I’ve taken my share of flights. When it was in sight of the runway, the pilot flew very low; but instead of slowing the engines he pressed down on the gas, which made a horrible noise; he sped over the whole runway just two or three meters above the ground, zoomed up over the barracks, did a turn at low altitude, and then landed, skipping three or four times—like a flat stone on water. They explained to me that this was done to scare off the vultures, and in fact, as the airplane got close to the ground, I saw them there, in the floodlights, but I couldn’t figure out what they were, they looked like old women squatting—but then again I wasn’t surprised, because in India everything always seems to be something else. In any case, they weren’t particularly frightened: they shifted a little, hopping about with their wings half open, not even bothering to take flight, and as soon as the airplane came to a stop they gathered around it as if they were expecting something, only every so often one of them would give a quick peck to its neighbor. Those are some damn ugly animals.

  “But it’s pointless to start telling you about India, I’d go on for ever, and, besides, maybe you’ve been there. No? Well, you can read about these things in books, but how to wire the cables of a suspension bridge, you can’t find that in a book, or at least not what it feels like. So we arrived at the worksite’s airport, which was just a plot of packed earth, and they had us sleep in barracks. It wasn’t too bad, but it was hot. Now, I don’t want to go on and on about the heat, so just understand that it was always hot, day and night, you sweat so much over there that, if you don’t mind me saying so, you never have to go to the bathroom. So during the entire course of this story it was as hot as hell, and it’d be a waste of time to keep repeating this.

  “The next morning I went to introduce myself to the boss on the job. He was an Indian engineer and we spoke English, and we understood each other very well because the Indians, to my ear, speak English better than the English, or at least more clearly; the English just don’t get it, they speak quickly, chewing up all their words, and if you don’t understand something they act surprised and can’t be bothered to help. Anyway, the engineer explained the job to me, and then he gave me a type of netting to put under my helmet, because they have malaria over there, and in fact there was mosquito netting over the windows of the barrack. I saw that the Indian workers at the site weren’t wearing the netting, and when I asked him why, he said that most of them had malaria already.

  “That engineer was very worried; or, rather, I mean that I’d be very worried if I were him, but if he was, he didn’t show it. Speaking in a very calm voice, he told me that they had brought me on to lay the support cables on the suspension bridge. The biggest part of the job was already done: they had, over a period of time, dredged the riverbed at the five points where they would put the five piers. It had been a crazy job, because the river carries away a lot of sand, even when it’s low, so as soon as they dug a hole it would fill up again. Then they sank the caissons, and sent miners inside the cofferdams to dig out the rock, and two of them drowned, but ultimately the cofferdams were sunk and filled with gravel and cement, so anyway they’d finished the dirty part of the job. Listening to all this talk I started to get worried, because he referred to the two dead men like it was no big deal, a normal thing, and I started to realize that this was one of those places where you shouldn’t trust that others will behave prudently, where you have to look out for yourself.

  “I was saying that, if I were in the engineer’s place, I wouldn’t have been so calm; just two hours earlier, they had called to tell him about an unbelievable thing that was happening: now that they were finally finished with the piers, a flood was coming and the river was changing course; he said this in the way someone else might say the roast was burned. His reaction time must’ve been pretty slow. An Indian in a turban arrived in a jeep, and the engineer told me, very politely, that he’d see me again soon
, and that he was extremely sorry. I realized that he was going to have a look, so I asked to go with him, and he made a grimace that I didn’t understand, but finally he said yes. I don’t know how to explain it; maybe it was because he respected me, maybe because one should never refuse an offer of advice, or maybe it was simply out of politeness—he was very polite, but one of those guys who’re happy to let water find its own level. He also had a good imagination: while we were traveling in the Jeep, on streets that I can’t even begin to describe to you, instead of thinking about the flood he told me how they had put service bridges across the river (he called them chetuòks, or catwalks, but I don’t think any sensible cat would ever try to walk on them; more about them later). Someone else would have taken a boat, or fired a harpoon, the kind you use for whales; but this guy gathered all the children of the town and declared that a prize of ten rupees would go to the first kid who could fly a kite over to the other shore. One kid succeeded, the engineer paid him the reward—which was no big deal since ten rupees is just fifteen hundred lire—and then he knotted a thicker rope to the kite string and, proceeding in this manner, he wired the steel cables of the chetuòk. He had just finished telling this story when we arrived at the bridge, and came before a sight that was breathtaking, even to him.

  “The power of rivers is not something we think too much about back home. We were at a bend in the river, some seven hundred meters wide, which didn’t seem like a good place for a bridge, but apparently he had no choice, because an important railroad line needed to cross there. You could see the five piers in the middle of the current, and past them were the pylons built for the approach, which were smaller and lower, so as to connect to the flat land; support towers, each one about fifty meters high, had already been built on the five larger pylons; and trestles had already been laid horizontally between two of the piers, a light, provisional bridge, on which the actual span would be mounted. We were on the right bank, which was reinforced by a solid concrete embankment, but the river itself had retreated—overnight, it had begun to eat away at the left bank, where there was a similar embankment, and early that morning that embankment had collapsed.

  “There were a hundred Indian laborers around us, and none of them so much as blinked. They just calmly watched the river, sitting on their heels in that odd way of theirs—I don’t know how they do it, I wouldn’t be able to keep it up for more than two minutes, obviously they must learn how to do it as children. When they saw the engineer, they leaped to their feet and greeted him, putting their hands to their stomach—like this, as if they were praying—and bowing slightly, and then they sat down again. We were too low to get a good view of the situation, so we climbed a ladder that led up the scaffolding on the bank, and from there we could see the whole spectacle.

  “Below us, as I said, the water was gone. There was only black mud, which in the sun was already beginning to steam and stink, and within it was a confusion of uprooted trees, planks, empty barrels, and animal carcasses. The water was running against the left bank, as if it were trying to carry it away, and in fact, while we were standing there mesmerized, seeing this unfold without knowing what to do or what to say, we saw a piece of the embankment, about ten meters long, come loose, slam against one of the piers, then ricochet and fly downstream in the current, as if it were wood instead of cement. The water had already carried away a good portion of the left bank; it had poured into the breach and was flooding the fields on the far side, creating a round lake more than a hundred meters wide, and more water kept flowing into it—like an evil beast bent on destruction, whirling around with the river’s full power, and expanding before our eyes.

  “The current was carrying all kinds of things along with it—not just scraps but what appeared to be floating islands. Farther upstream the river must have passed through a forest, because some of the trees still had their leaves and roots, and there were even entire chunks of riverbank—and I have no idea how these stayed afloat—with grass, clumps of earth, freestanding plants and upturned plants, pieces of the landscape, in other words. They raced by at full speed, sometimes threading between the pylons and shooting down on the other side, other times hitting against the foundation and splitting into two or three pieces. The piers were obviously quite sturdy, because a whole tangle of planks, branches, and tree trunks had collected at the foundations, and you could see the power of the water, which piled up all this debris against the piers but could not topple them; it made a strange noise, like underground thunder.

  “I know, I said I was happy that I wasn’t the engineer, but, in his position, I think I would’ve tried to do a little more. I’m not saying that he could’ve done much there, on the spot, but I had the impression that, if it were up to him, he would’ve sat on his heels like his workers, and he would have stayed there, watching, for eternity. Since he was the engineer and I had just gotten there, I felt like it wouldn’t have been right for me to give him advice. Then again, since it was plain to see that he didn’t know what the hell to do, and was pacing up and down the shore in silence—spinning in circles, in other words—I summoned my courage and told him that, in my opinion, it’d be best to collect some stones and rocks, the larger the better, and lay them on the left bank; but we’d have to move fast, because even as we spoke the river carried away two more slabs of the embankment in just an instant, and the whirlpool in the lake kept spinning faster. The moment we got in the Jeep we saw a mass of trees, earth, and branches as big as a house—I’m not exaggerating—and it was rolling like a ball. It struck the bridge at the point where there was a scaffolding, and bent it like a straw and dragged it down into the water. There was really nothing to be done. The engineer told the workers to go home, and we returned to our barrack as well, so we could order the stones; but on the way there the engineer told me, in his typically calm voice, that there was nothing but fields, black earth, and mud in the area, so if I wanted a stone even as big as a walnut I’d have to go at least a hundred miles away to find it—as if the stone idea had been some craving of mine, the kind a pregnant woman gets. What I’m saying is that he was perfectly nice, but odd; he seemed to be playing rather than working, and he was starting to get on my nerves.

  “He went to telephone somebody, I have no idea who, probably a government official. He spoke Indian and I didn’t understand a word, but it seemed that he first had to speak to an operator, then the secretary of the secretary, and then the actual secretary; the man he was looking for never got on the line, and finally he lost the connection—in other words, it was kind of like here. But he didn’t lose patience, and he started all over again. While he was on hold with one of the secretaries, he told me that he didn’t think there’d be anything for me to do at the worksite for the next few days; I could stay there if I wanted, but he suggested that I take a train to Calcutta, so that’s what I did. I couldn’t really tell whether he suggested this out of kindness, or just to get me off his back; certainly nothing much came out of it. In fact, he told me right away that I shouldn’t bother trying to find a room at a hotel, and he gave me the address of a private home where I should go because the owners were his friends, and I would also appreciate it for hygienic reasons.

  “I’m not going to tell you about Calcutta—five days, and a waste of time. The population is more than five million and there’s horrible poverty, which you see right away. Imagine, as soon as I walked out of the station, and this was at night, I saw a family that was getting ready for bed, and their bed was inside a section of concrete pipe, one of those new pipes they use for sewer systems—four meters long and one meter in diameter—and there was a father, a mother, and three children, and inside the pipe they had put a nightlight and two pieces of cloth, one to cover one end and one for the other; but they were still lucky, because most people just slept on the sidewalk wherever they could find a spot.

  “It turned out that the engineer’s friends weren’t Indian but Parsi; the man was a doctor, and I felt comfortable with them. When they fo
und out that I was Italian, they welcomed me warmly, I’m not sure why. I didn’t know anything about Parsis—in fact, not even that they existed. To be honest, my ideas about them still aren’t too clear. Maybe, since you’re from a different religion, too, you can explain it to me.”

  I had to disappoint Faussone: I knew practically nothing about Parsis except the macabre aspect of their funerals, in which the cadaver, lest it contaminate earth, water, or fire, is not buried, submerged, or cremated but, rather, left in the Towers of Silence to be eaten by vultures. But I thought that these towers no longer existed, and hadn’t since the time of Salgari.5

  “Not so: they’re still there, my hosts told me all about it, but they weren’t religious themselves, and they said that when they died, they’d be put underground the normal way. The towers still exist, only they’re in Bombay, not Calcutta: there are four of them, each with its own platoon of vultures, though they’re used only four or five times a year. But they told me something else. A German engineer had come by with a bunch of prospectuses and got himself an appointment with the Parsi priests. He told them that his technicians had been working on a grill that could be placed at the bottom of the towers, a grill with electric resistors that burned the corpse very slowly—hygienically, and without flames or foul odors or contaminating anything. Leave it to the Germans, right? In any case, the priests talked this over, and as far as I know they’re still talking it over, because they have conservatives and liberals there, too. The doctor was laughing while he was telling me the story, and his wife interrupted to say that, in her opinion, nothing’s going to happen—not for religious reasons but because of the kilowatts available and the local bureaucracy.