by Primo Levi
They were just attempting to get in touch with Achtiti, to negotiate their freedom in exchange for the candles, when they heard a big ruckus outside their prison. Soon afterward the door was opened, amid incomprehensible shouts, and Achtiti gestured to them to come out into the dazzling light of day: the boat had arrived.
The farewell was neither long nor ceremonious. Achtiti immediately stepped away from the prison door; he squatted on his heels, turning his back to them, and remained unmoving, as if turned to stone, while Siriono warriors led the two men to the bank of the river. Two or three women, laughing and shouting, exposed their stomachs in their direction; all the others in the village, even the children, swung their heads, singing “Luu, luu,” and held out their hands, limp and as if detached, letting them dangle from their wrists like overripe fruit.
Wilkins and Goldbaum had no baggage. They got into the boat, which was piloted by Suarez himself, and begged him to leave as quickly as possible.
The Siriono are not invented. They actually exist, or at least they did until around 1945, but what we know of them leads us to think that, at least as a people, they will not survive for long. They were described by Allan R. Holmberg in a monograph, Nomads of the Long Bow: The Siriono of Eastern Bolivia: they lead a subsistence-level existence, which alternates between nomadism and primitive agriculture. They are not familiar with metals, they do not possess terms for numbers higher than three, and although they often have to cross swamps and rivers, they do not know how to build boats. They do know, however, that at one time they were able to do so, and the story is handed down among them of a hero who had the name of the Moon, and who had taught their people (then much more numerous) three arts: to light fires; to carve out canoes; and to make bows. Of these, only the last survives; they have forgotten even the method of making fire. They told Holmberg that in a time not too far back (two, three generations ago, around the time when among us the first internal combustion engines were invented, electric light became widespread, and the complex structure of the atom was beginning to be understood), some of them knew how to make fire by twirling a stick in a hole in a piece of wood. But at that time the Siriono lived in another land, with a desertlike climate, where it was easy to find dry wood and tinder. Now they live among swamps and forests, in perpetual dampness. Since they could no longer find dry wood, the method of the stick in the hole could no longer be practiced, and was forgotten.
Fire itself, however, they kept. In each of their villages or wandering bands there is at least one old woman whose job it is to maintain a live spark in a brazier of tufo. This art is not so difficult as that of lighting a fire by means of rubbing sticks, but it’s not elementary, either: especially in the rainy season, the flame has to be fed palm flowers, which are dried in the heat of that flame. These old vestals are very diligent, because if their fire dies they are put to death: not as punishment but because they are judged to be useless. All the Siriono who are judged to be useless because they are incapable of hunting, sowing, and plowing with a wooden plow are left to die. A Siriono is old at forty.
I repeat, they are not invented. They were reported on by Scientific American in October 1969, and they have a sinister renown: they teach us that not in every place and not in every era is humanity destined to advance.
1. The Siriono are an Indian people who live in the tropical forests of eastern Bolivia.
The Molecule’s Defiance
“I’ve had it,” he said to me. “I need a change. I’ll quit, find some ordinary job, maybe unloading stuff at the wholesale market. Or I’ll leave, go away—on the road you spend less than you do at home, and you can always find some way of earning money. But I am not ever going to the factory again.”
I told Rinaldo to think it over, that it’s never a good idea to make a decision in the heat of the moment, that a factory job isn’t something to throw away, and that in any case it would be better if he told me the story from the beginning. He is enrolled in the university, but he does shifts at the factory. Shift work is unpleasant—every week your schedule changes, and the rhythm of your life, too, so you have to get used to not getting used to things. In general, middle-aged people manage this better than the young.
“No, it’s not a question of shifts. It’s that a batch spoiled on me. Eight tons to throw away.”
A batch that spoils is one that solidifies halfway through the preparation: the liquid becomes gelatinous, or even hard, like horn. It’s a phenomenon that is called by fancy names like “gelatinization” or “premature polymerization,” but it’s a traumatic event, an ugly sight, not to mention the money that’s lost. It shouldn’t happen, but sometimes it does happen, even if you’re paying attention, and when it happens it leaves its mark. I told Rinaldo that it’s useless to cry over spilled milk, and immediately I regretted it—it wasn’t the right thing to say. But what can you say to a decent person who has made a mistake, who doesn’t know how he did it, and who carries his guilt like a load of lead? The only thing to do is offer him a cognac and invite him to talk.
“It’s not because of the boss, you see, or even the owner. It’s the thing in itself, and the way it happened. It was a simple procedure, I had already done it at least thirty times, so that I knew the formula by heart and didn’t even have to look at it. . . .”
I, too, have had batches spoil in the course of my career, so I know very well what it’s like. I asked him, “Isn’t it possible that’s the problem, the cause of the trouble? You thought you knew it all by heart, but you forgot some detail, or made a mistake in a temperature, or added something you weren’t supposed to?”
“No. I checked afterward, and everything was normal. Now the lab is working on it, trying to figure it out. I’m the accused, but still if I made a mistake I’d like to find out. I really would. I’d prefer it if someone said to me, ‘You idiot, you did this and that which you shouldn’t have done,’ rather than sit here asking myself questions. And then it’s lucky that no one died—no one was even hurt—and the reactor shaft didn’t get bent. There’s only the financial damage, and if I had the money, I swear, I would happily pay.
“So. I had the morning shift. I had come on duty at six, and everything was in order. Before going off, Morra left me the instructions. Morra is an old guy, who worked his way up; he left me the production note with all the materials checked off at the right times, the cards for the automatic scale, so there was nothing out of the ordinary—he’s certainly not the type to leave a mess, and he had no reason to, because everything was going well. Day was just breaking: you could see the mountains, almost close enough to touch. I glanced at the thermograph, which was functioning properly; there was even a bump on the curve at four in the morning, registering fifteen degrees higher. It’s a bump that appears every day, always at the same time, and neither the engineer nor the electrician has ever understood why—as if it had taken up the habit of telling a lie every day, and, just as with liars, after a while no one pays attention anymore. I also glanced inside the reactor through the spyhole: there was no smoke, there was no foam, the mixture was beautifully transparent and circulating as smoothly as water. It wasn’t water; it was a synthetic resin, of the type that is formulated to harden, but only later, in the molds.
“Anyway, I was feeling calm, there was no reason to worry. I still had two hours to wait before starting the tests, and I confess that I had other things on my mind. I was thinking . . . well, yes, I was thinking about the chaos of atoms and molecules inside that reactor, as if every molecule were standing there with its hands outstretched, ready to grasp the hand of the molecule passing by to form a chain. There came to mind those great men who guessed the existence of atoms from common sense, reasoning on matter and void, two thousand years before we appeared with our equipment to prove them right. And—because when we were camping this summer my girl made me read Lucretius—I also remembered Corpora constabunt ex partibus infinitis,1 and the guy who said, ‘Everything flows.’ From time to time, I looked throu
gh the spyhole, and it seemed to me that I could see them, all those molecules buzzing like bees around a hive.
“So, everything was flowing and I had every reason to be calm, although I hadn’t forgotten what they teach you when you’re entrusted with a reactor. And that is, that everything is fine as long as one molecule connects to another as if each had only two hands: they’re not supposed to make more than a chain, or a rosary of molecules—it can be long, but only a chain. And you have to keep in mind that, among the many molecules, some have three hands, and there’s the rub. In fact, they are inserted on purpose: the third hand is the one that is supposed to catch hold later—when we decide, not when they do. If the third hands grip too soon, every rosary joins with two or three other rosaries, and in the end they’ve formed a single molecule, a monster molecule as big as the whole reactor, and then you’re in a fix. Goodbye to ‘Everything flows’—nothing flows, everything is blocked, and there is nothing to be done about it.”
I was observing him as he talked, and I refrained from interrupting him, although he was telling me things I already know. Talking was doing him good: his eyes shone, perhaps partly because of the cognac, but he was calming down. Talking is the best medicine.
“Well, as I was saying, every so often I glanced at the mixture, and I was thinking about the things I was telling you, and also about others that had nothing to do with this. The motors were humming calmly, the cam was rotating slowly, and the needle of the thermograph was drawing on the face an outline that corresponded to the movement of the cam. Inside the reactor the agitator was turning regularly and you could see that the resin was slowly becoming thicker. Already around seven it was beginning to stick to the walls and make little bubbles: this is a sign that I discovered, and I also taught it to Morra and the guy on the third shift—it’s always someone different, so I don’t even know his name. Anyway, it’s a sign that the heating is almost done, and that it’s time to take the first sample and test the viscosity.
“I went down to the floor below, because an eight-thousand-liter reactor isn’t a toy, and it sits a good two meters below the floor; and while I was there, fooling with the discharge valve, I heard the motor of the agitator change tone. It changed just a little, maybe not even by a sharp, but this is a sign, too, and not a good one. I threw away the sample and everything, and in an instant I was upstairs with my eye glued to the spyhole, and it was a really hideous sight. The whole scene had changed: the blades of the agitator were slicing a mass that looked like polenta and was rising right before my eyes. I stopped the agitator, since by now it was useless, and stood there as if spellbound, with my knees shaking. What to do? It was too late to unload the mixture, or to call the doctor, who at that hour was still in bed; and, besides, when a batch spoils it’s as if somebody had died: the best remedies come to mind afterward.
“A mass of foam was rising, slowly but relentlessly. Coming to the surface were bubbles as big as a man’s head but not round: deformed, in all shapes, with the walls striped as if with nerves and veins; they burst and immediately others appeared, but it wasn’t like beer, where the foam subsides, and rarely overflows the glass. This mass kept rising. I called, and several people came, including the head of the department, and they all said what they thought but no one knew what to do, and meanwhile the foam was only half a meter below the spyhole. Every time a bubble burst, bits of spit flew out and stuck under the glass of the spyhole and smeared it; soon you wouldn’t be able to see anything. By now it was clear that the foam wasn’t going to subside: it would keep rising until it clogged all the cooling pipes, and then goodbye.
“With the agitator off, it was quiet, and you could hear a growing noise, as in science fiction films when something horrible is about to happen: a murmur and a rumbling that kept getting louder, like an upset stomach. It was my eight-cubic-meter molecule, with the gas trapped inside it, all the gas that couldn’t get out, that wanted to emerge, give birth to itself. I could neither run away nor stand there and wait: I was terrified, but I also felt responsible; the mixture was mine. By now the spyhole was blocked, all you could see was a reddish glow. I don’t know if what I did was right or wrong: I was afraid that the reactor would burst, and so I took the wrench and removed all the bolts on the hatch.
“The hatch rose by itself, not suddenly but gently, solemnly, as when tombs open and the dead rise. A slow thick stream came out, disgusting, a yellow mass full of lumps and nodules. We all jumped back, but it cooled right away on the floor, as if it had sat down, and you could see that the volume wasn’t so great after all. Inside the reactor the foam subsided about half a meter, then stopped and gradually hardened. So the show was over; we looked at one another and our faces were not a pretty sight. Mine must have been the ugliest of all, but there were no mirrors.”
I tried to calm Rinaldo, or at least distract him, but I’m afraid I didn’t succeed, and for good reason. Among all my experiences of work, none is so alien and inimical as that of a batch that spoils, whatever the cause, whether the damage is serious or slight, if you’re guilty or not. A fire or an explosion can be a much more destructive accident, even tragic, but it’s not disgraceful, like a gelatinization. The spoiled batch contains a mocking quality: a gesture of scorn, the derisiveness of soulless things that ought to obey you and instead rise up, defying your prudence and foresight. The unique “molecule,” deformed but gigantic, that is born and dies in your hands is an obscene message and symbol: a symbol of other ugly things without reversal or remedy that obscure our future, of the prevalence of confusion over order, of unseemly death over life.
1. De rerum natura, I:615: “[the smallest] bodies will be composed of infinite particles.”
The Valley of Guerrino
To return on foot or bicycle to a mountain valley, one of those we have passed through quickly dozens of times in a car or by public transportation, is an undertaking so very rewarding, and at so little cost, that you have to wonder why so few decide to do it. Usually, they keep to the upper valley, the high sites of tourism; the lower valley remains unknown, and yet it is here that nature and the works of man bear the clearest and most legible imprints of the past.
In one of these valleys the memory of Guerrino, for those who know how to track him down, is still very much alive: Guerrino, the wandering hermit, who died around 1916, no one ever knew how. Only the old people remember him now, and their memories are faded, thin, often reduced to a single episode or a single quotation, just like the memories the old preserve of those who in their youth were old. But the tangible memories, the ones that Guerrino scattered with regal extravagance throughout that valley, even in its most isolated branches, and in the two neighboring valleys: those are vivid and eternal, accessible to anyone—to anyone, I mean, who still knows how to travel like a pilgrim, and has preserved the ancient talent for looking around and examining things and people with humility and patience. In addition, his name survives in some similes of local usage, which, soon fated to be extinct, are by now clichés and barely understood by the young people. In that valley some still say “ugly as Guerrino,” “poor as Guerrino,” and also “do a Guerrino-style favor,” to indicate a well-contrived and elaborate retaliation; but they also say “free as Guerrino.” And yet among those who still use such expressions few know that the free and poor Guerrino really existed, and even fewer have any concrete memory of him.
No one knows anything about his youth anymore, or whence he had turned up in the valley, because he was Piedmontese but not indigenous. He is recalled as a thickset man, with hollow cheeks and a prominent jaw, and a scruffy, tangled gray beard; he was dirty and unkempt, solid on his muscular legs. He always wore, summer and winter, the same coat, of a vaguely military cut, and a pair of frayed, threadbare black velvet pants, barely held up by the belt that he wore under his obese belly, and which helped to hold that up as well. Like a Cynic philosopher, he carried all his possessions with him: these consisted of the tools of his trade as a painter of Madonnas (jars
of oil paints and tempera, brushes, putty knives, scrapers, trowels), an elongated two-wheeled cart that he used to carry this equipment and sometimes to sleep in, and a savage wire-haired farm dog that hauled the cart and was perpetually chained to it. When they relocated, he followed on foot, with his gaze on the sky and the mountains, because he was a stern and hypochondriacal man, but a lover of creation.
His profession was to paint frescoes in churches, chapels, and cemeteries. On occasion, he also did secular decoration and restored plaster, stonework, and roofs, but he agreed to these jobs only if he was hungry or if they kindled his imagination. If he had no desire or need for them, he sat at the tavern drinking in silence, or on the banks of the river smoking his pipe.
There are countless paintings of his in the valley. They aren’t signed, but it’s easy to identify them by the heavy outlines, the predominance of warm tones, reds and violets, and for a peculiar stylization and symmetry of the figures. He had the blood of a painter: if he had studied, or at least had had the chance to see great works of other times, his name would not be forgotten. Still, at least one of his works should not be forgotten, a Last Judgment painted on the pediment of a small church buried amid the larches. It’s designed with an expert sense of balance, and a crude, forceful precision, and is crowded with weird, macabre symbols, which, on the border between piety and irony, sprout like monstrous jewels amid the bodies of the innumerable souls who have risen from the burned and devastated earth: lilies and artichokes, small humpbacked skeletons, cannons, phalluses, a big hand with the thumb cut off, a gallows, a sea horse. One of those souls wandering around in desperate search of their own body is a diaphanous phantom, its blind eyes turned to the black sky; it is donning its newfound skin with the ordinary motions of someone putting on a jacket.