The Complete Works of Primo Levi

by Primo Levi

  In a few days we got a soap of tantalum, put it in some paint, and tried it on the E. coli: it worked, the goal was achieved.

  We, in turn, sent a large sample of paint to Di Prima, so that he could distribute it to his customers and give us an opinion. The opinion arrived two months later, and was highly favorable. He, Di Prima, had painted himself from head to foot, and then spent four hours under a ladder, on a Friday, in the company of thirteen black cats, without coming to any harm. Chiovatero also tried it, albeit reluctantly (not because he was superstitious; rather, because he was skeptical), and he had to admit that a certain effect was undeniable: in the two or three days after the treatment, all the traffic lights he came to were green, he never got a busy signal on the telephone, his girlfriend made up with him, and he even won a modest prize in the Lottery. Naturally it all came to an end after he took a bath.

  As for me, I thought of Michele Fassio. Fassio is an old schoolmate of mine to whom mysterious powers had been attributed since adolescence. He was blamed for endless disasters, from failed exams to a bridge collapse, an avalanche, even a shipwreck; all due, in the stupid opinion of first his fellow students and later his colleagues, to the penetrating power of his evil eye. I, of course, didn’t believe this nonsense, but I confess that I often tried to avoid running into him. Fassio, poor fellow, ended up believing it himself, in a way; he never married and he led an unhappy life, of privation and solitude.

  I wrote to him, with all the delicacy I was capable of, that I didn’t believe in this type of foolishness, but that he might; that, as a result, I couldn’t believe in the remedy I was proposing, but it seemed to me that I owed it to him to mention it just the same, if only to help him recover his self-confidence. Fassio answered that he would come as soon as possible: he was willing to submit to a trial. Before proceeding with the treatment, and at the urging of Chiovatero, we tried to understand in some degree Fassio’s powers. We managed to ascertain that in fact his gaze (and only his gaze) possessed a specific effect, noticeable under certain conditions even in the case of inanimate objects. We asked him to stare for several minutes at a particular point on a steel plate, which we then placed in the salt-spray chamber; after a few hours we noted that the point Fassio had stared at was clearly more corroded than the rest of the surface. A polyethylene thread, stretched tight, consistently broke at the point where Fassio’s gaze hit it. To our satisfaction, both results disappeared when we coated the plate and the thread with our paint, or when we interposed between subject and object a glass screen previously coated with it. We were further able to ascertain that only Fassio’s right eye was active; the left, like both of my eyes, and like Chiovatero’s, exercised no measurable action.

  With the means at our disposal, we were unable to carry out a spectral analysis of the Fassio effect except in a crude way; it is probable, however, that the radiation under examination has a maximum in the blue, with a wavelength of around 425 nm. Our comprehensive paper on the subject will be out in a few months. Now, it is known that many of those who wish to cast the evil eye wear blue-tinted lenses, and not dark ones, and this can’t be a coincidence but must be the fruit of long experience absorbed perhaps unconsciously and then handed down from generation to generation, as in the case of certain folk remedies.

  Considering the tragic conclusion of our tests, I have to explain that the idea of painting Fassio’s eyeglasses (they were ordinary reading glasses) was neither mine nor Chiovatero’s but came from Fassio himself, who insisted that the experiment be made right away, without even an hour’s delay: he was very impatient to be released from his grim power. We painted these glasses. After thirty minutes, the paint was dry. Fassio put them on and immediately fell lifeless at our feet. The doctor, who arrived soon afterward, tried in vain to revive him, and spoke vaguely of embolism, heart attack, and thrombosis: he couldn’t have known that the lens over Fassio’s right eye, concave on the inside, must have instantaneously reflected that thing which he could no longer transmit, and concentrated it, as if with a burning glass, on a point situated in some unspecified but important corner of the right cerebral hemisphere of the unhappy and blameless victim of our experiments.

  Sisters of the Swamp

  Gentle sisters, I wouldn’t claim the right to address you if I weren’t compelled by the gravity of the moment, and by the tenuous authority that comes to me from being the oldest among you and the oldest inhabitant of this swamp.

  You know how much Providence has favored us up to now. In my long life I’ve known very different swamps, solitary and remote swamps, which a warm-blooded creature entered only on occasion and by exception, so that the wretched tenants considered themselves content when they could steal a drop of blood from the frogs or the fish—cold, slimy, thin blood. I’ve seen other swamps, visited by savage, fierce people, who protested against our bite, even though it’s as light as a kiss, and pulled our defenseless bodies off themselves, unconcerned if in doing so they tore them, and perhaps at the same time tore their own skin. It’s different here, or until now it has been: don’t forget that.

  Don’t forget the generous and subtle design of Providence, which forces the Peasant to ford these waters twice a day, to reach his fields at dawn and return home in the evening. And remember also that the Peasant’s constitution could not be better suited to us, since he has been endowed by nature with a rough, thick skin, insensitive to our prick; a simple and patient mind; and, at the same time, blood miraculously rich in vital nutrients.

  It’s about this blood that I must speak to you, my silent and pious sisters. Ours, as you know, is a well-ordered republic: to each of us, according to our deserts and our needs, our Assembly has assigned a carefully chosen and limited area of the Peasant’s skin, and it has been kind enough to assign to me, your Elder, the hollow of the knees, where the skin is thinnest, and where the popliteal vein pulses close to the surface. Now, certainly you will not have forgotten what we are taught in the first years of school, and that is that this vein is the most accurate gauge of the blood pressure in a man’s body. Well, no more compassionate lies, dear sisters: this pressure is rapidly falling. We, all of us, have overstepped the mark, and it’s time to take measures.

  Understand me: I do not wish to reproach you, I who have been ahead of you all, the greediest of all; but hear what I have to say. Merciful God has called on me to change my life, and I will change it, I have already changed it; may He do likewise with you.

  It’s not a reproach, I tell you; only a fool could doubt that it is our natural right to suck blood, from which our race gets, above all, its name and its glory. Not only a right but a clear and strict necessity, given that our bodies, in millions of years of addiction to this essential nutriment, have lost all capacity to search, capture, digest, and assimilate any inferior substance; that our muscles are so weakened as to prohibit the slightest effort; and that our brains—which attain perfection if we turn to the contemplation of the Entelechy, the Paraclete, and the fifth Essence—are, on the other hand, dull and unfit for the trivialities of concrete action.

  We are thus incapable of procuring for ourselves any substance more unrefined than blood: all other nourishment, besides, would be poison for us, who, unique in Creation, have been able to free ourselves from the necessity of evacuating daily wastes from our intestinal canal, because our miraculous food neither contains nor generates waste. Isn’t this the most eloquent sign of our nobility? Who could refuse to acknowledge in us the crowning achievement and height of Creation?

  Our bloodsucking is therefore necessary and good, but it’s foolish to overdo it, as every excess is foolish. It has been painful to me to note how some among you are in the habit of gorging yourselves to the point of jeopardizing our envied capacity for swimming halfway out of the water, so that you are reduced to floating inert, with your stomach indecently swollen, until your laborious digestion is completed. And that’s not all, for I’ve learned of some who died from the sudden cracking of the integuments.r />
  Yet this is not what I would speak of. These transgressions, if shameful, are of individual interest, and are followed by natural and hence just sanctions. No, I mean to warn you of a much more serious danger: if we persist in our error, if we continue to satisfy ourselves today without thinking of our tomorrow, what will become of us? Who or what will we suck when the Peasant becomes bloodless? Will we return to the unpleasant serum of carp and toads? Will we suck one another? Or will we see ourselves forced to pass through an eternity of hunger, darkness, and premature death, waiting, that is, for evolution to renew us (at what cost, sisters!), restoring to us the positive and active faculties that today we detest and mock in the vile species on which we are nourished, such as beavers and men?

  Therefore I urge you, meek sisters: revive your sense of proportion and your horror of the sin of gluttony. Never has the survival of the Peasant, and hence our own, been dependent on your restraint as it is today, on the moderation you will learn to display as you exercise your right.

  A Will

  My beloved son, the signs that my mortal life is coming to an end will not have escaped you: the blood runs pale and slow through my veins, the strength I once had in my wrists is failing. You will find this letter among my papers, together with a holographic will; this, too, is a will. Do not be deceived by its brevity. Every word you read is saturated with experience; I have erased, one by one, the meaningless words, with which I was so prodigal in life.

  I have no doubt that you will follow in my footsteps, and become a tooth-puller as I was, and as your forefathers were before me. If you don’t, it would be a second death for me, and a mistake for you: no other art in existence comes close to ours in relieving the pain of humans, and in grasping their valor, their vices, and their vileness. It’s my intention here to tell you of its secrets.

  CONCERNING TEETH. In his wisdom God created man in His image and likeness, as you read in the Sacred Scriptures: observe, in His likeness, not His identity. The human figure differs from the divine in some aspects, and primary among these is the teeth. God has endowed man with teeth more corruptible than any other part of him so that he doesn’t forget that he is dust, and so that our profession may prosper. Note, therefore, that the tooth-puller who abandons his office is an abomination to God, in that he gives up a privilege bestowed by Him.

  Teeth are made of bone, flesh, and nerve; they are divided into molars, incisors, and canines; a nerve joins the canines to the eyes; in the most recessive molars, which are the wisdom teeth, there often lurks a nasty little worm. You can find these and other qualities of the teeth described in the lay books, and there’s no need for me to dwell on them here.

  CONCERNING MUSIC. That Orpheus with his lyre tamed the beasts and the demons of the abyss, and calmed the waves of the stormy sea, you will have learned from your teachers. Music is necessary to the practice of our work: a good tooth-puller must bring with him at least two buglers and two drummers, or rather two bass drum players, and it’s good if they all wear splendid livery. The more energetic and robust the fanfare that spreads through the square where you work, the more respected you will be, and by so much your patient’s pain will diminish. You must have noticed this as a child, watching my daily work: the cries of the patient are no longer heard, the public admires you devoutly, and the clients who await their turn lose their secret fears. A tooth-puller who works without a brass band is as unseemly and vulnerable as a naked human body.

  Now listen to what I tell you in my dying prediction: a day will come when this marvelous quality of music will be rediscovered by the proud and foolish class of doctors, and they will adduce subtle arguments to explain the physical reason. Beware of doctors: in their pride they disdain the fruit of our experience, and barricade themselves as if in a fortress with the sterile dictates of their Aristotle. Avoid them, as they avoid us.

  CONCERNING ERRORS. Don’t forget, son, that to err is human, but to admit one’s error is diabolical; on the other hand, remember that our profession, by its intrinsic nature, is prone to errors. You will therefore try to avoid them, but in no event confess to having extracted a healthy tooth; rather, take advantage of the din of the orchestra, of the stunned patient and his very pain, his cries, and his convulsive agitation, to immediately extract the diseased tooth. Remember that a quick and direct blow to the back of the head quiets the more unruly patient without suffocating his vital spirits and without being perceived by the audience. Remember as well that, in these circumstances or other, similar ones, a good tooth-puller always takes care to have his carriage ready, not far from the stage, with the horses harnessed.

  CONCERNING PAIN. May God keep you from becoming insensitive to pain. Only the worst of us are so hardened that we laugh at our patients when they suffer at our hands. Experience will also teach you that pain, though perhaps not the only information of the senses that can be doubted, is certainly the least dubious. It’s likely that that French sage whose name escapes me and who declared that he was certain he existed inasmuch as he was sure he was thinking didn’t suffer much in his life, because otherwise he would have constructed his edifice of certainties on a different foundation. In fact, often those who think aren’t sure they’re thinking, their thought wavers between awareness and dream, it slips between their fingers, refuses to be grasped and fixed on the page in the form of words. But those who suffer, yes, those who suffer have no doubts, those who suffer are, alas, always certain, certain they are suffering and ergo exist.

  It’s my hope that you will become a master in our art, and will never have to be the passive object of it; but if ever it should happen to you, as it did to me, the pain of your flesh will provide you with the brutal certainty of being alive—you’ll have no need to draw on the springs of philosophy. Therefore hold this art in esteem: it will make you a minister of pain, it will make you the arbiter of bringing an end to a long-term pain of the past by means of a short-term pain in the present, and of preventing a long-term pain of tomorrow, thanks to the ruthless stabbing inflicted today. Our adversaries mock us, saying that we are good at transforming pain into profit. Fools! This is the highest praise of our mastery.

  CONCERNING SMOOTH TALK. Smooth talk, also called salesmanship, leads clients who are wavering between current pain and fear of the forceps to a decision. It is of the highest importance: even the most inept tooth-puller manages well or badly to pull out a tooth; excellence in the art is, instead, manifested fully in smooth talk. This should be uttered in a loud, firm voice and with a cheerful, serene expression, as of one who is sure, and spreads assurance around him; but, apart from this, there are no set rules. According to the mood you detect among the bystanders, it can be playful or serious, noble or vulgar, verbose or concise, subtle or crass. In any case it should be mysterious, because man fears clarity, mindful perhaps of the sweet obscurity of the womb and of the bed in which he was conceived. Remember that the less your listeners understand you, the greater the trust they will have in your wisdom, and the more music they will hear in your words: that’s how the common folk are made, and the world is nothing if not common.

  Therefore weave into your patter words from France and Spain, German and Turkish, Latin and Greek, no matter if they’re fitting or pertinent; if you don’t have any ready, get used to coining new ones on the spot, ones that have never been heard before; and don’t be afraid that an explanation will be asked for, because that never happens—not even the fellow who climbs confidently onto your platform to have a molar pulled will find the courage to interrogate you.

  And never, in your discourse, call things by their name. Don’t say “teeth,” but “mandibular protuberances,” or some other oddity that comes to mind; not “pain” but “paroxysm” or “erethism.” Don’t call money money, and you certainly won’t call the forceps a forceps; rather, don’t name it at all, not even by allusion, and don’t let either the public or, especially, the patient see it, keeping it hidden in your sleeve until the last minute.

  ON
LYING. From what you’ve read up to now, you will be able to deduce that lying, a sin for others, is a virtue for us. The lie is one with our profession: for us it’s proper to lie, with our tongue, our eyes, our smile, our dress. Not only to deceive our patients; we aim higher, you know, and our real strength is in our lies, not in our wrists. With lying, patiently learned and piously practiced, if God helps us we will reach the point of ruling this country and perhaps the world; but this will happen only if we learn to lie better and for a longer time than our adversaries. You may see this, not I. It will be a new golden age, in which only in cases of extreme need will we still be persuaded to pull teeth, while pious lying, exercised by us to perfection, will be abundantly sufficient for the governing of the state and the administration of the republic. If we prove capable of this, the empire of the tooth-pullers will extend from east to west, to the most remote islands, and will never end.