The Complete Works of Primo Levi

by Primo Levi

  This plain strewn with comic or ribald anecdotes is illuminated by an oblique, livid light, like a petrified lightning flash, and it vanishes in the direction of a stormy horizon over which towers the statue-like figure of the Redeemer. The Redeemer has thick gray hair and beard, staring eyes, and in his hand he grasps a sword that looks more like a knife. It’s a self-portrait.

  All of Guerrino’s pictures contain at least one portrait, and many contain more than one. They are crude but full of expression, some almost caricatures. They stand out from the other faces—which are, instead, stylized, all alike, without life, without creative tension—and each of the portraits has its story.

  Like many of his more illustrious fellows, Guerrino drew his clients. If they paid him and treated him well, he gave them a halo and draped them in saints’ robes. If they didn’t pay much, or made a fuss, or stood watching while he painted and criticized his work, in the blink of an eye he thrust them up on the crosses of the two thieves, or into the garments of the scourgers of Our Lord: but it was them, recognizable from a distance, except that they had a more bestial expression—a nose like a pig, or the ears of an ass. In one cemetery niche there is a Crucifixion in which the man who is hammering has the head of King Umberto, and the priest who watches, impassive, has, under the papal tiara, the face of Leo XIII.

  There’s another painting of his that the old inhabitants of the valley are very proud of. It’s a Nativity, rather dull and conventional, of the type that can be seen by the hundreds throughout Italy, except that the ox has almost human features; in fact, it’s the cruel, ingenious caricature of a physiognomy that is still quite common in the valley. According to the story that’s been handed down, it’s a portrait of the mayor. He had come to see the finished work; he took the liberty of saying that oxen don’t look like that in the least, and he didn’t even offer Guerrino a drink, as is customary. Guerrino didn’t answer (it seems that he almost never opened his mouth), but in the middle of the night, which was a moonlit night, he got up, barefoot, so that not even a dog barked, and in a few minutes had painted the head of the mayor in place of the ox’s muzzle; but he left the horns. In fact the colors and shadings of this head are harsh and clumsy: it couldn’t have been easy to distinguish the jars of paint by the light of the moon. And the mayor must have been a man of spirit, because he left things as they were, and as they are still.

  Guerrino loved to represent himself in the guise of St. Joseph; there is even a Holy Family, in the upper valley, in which the worker saint holds a brush in his right hand, in place of the hammer or saw, and in the dark background of his shop one can glimpse a trowel—the small wooden board, with a handle on one side, that’s used to smooth plaster. Other times, as I’ve mentioned, he didn’t hesitate to give his own features to Christ himself: in a votive chapel there’s a sturdy, wrinkled Christ Mocked, with broad shoulders and wide cheekbones, wolflike eyes beneath bushy brows, and a thick gray beard. He’s firmly planted on the floor, on legs as solid as columns, and looks at his persecutors as if to say: “You’ll pay for this.”

  In truth, if the identification with Joseph is justified only in small measure, that with Christ is offensive. Guerrino must have been a fellow to handle with care: according to all the testimony that has been gathered, he drank, was quarrelsome and vindictive, had a ready knife, and liked women. Of course, this last quality isn’t a defect; all great men, of every time and place, have liked women, or at least some women, and a man who doesn’t like women, or for that matter doesn’t like men, is unhappy and basically a harmful individual. But Guerrino liked women only in a certain way: he liked them too much and liked them all, so that there is no village or neighborhood where one or more of his presumed children are not pointed out to strangers. Then, to speak plainly, he must have liked young girls especially, and this, too, can be read in his murals: his Madonnas (they are his most successful creations, very sweet, solemn yet lively, often precise and clear against formless or unfinished backgrounds, as if all his will and inspiration had been concentrated on their face) are different from one another, but all have surprisingly childish features. In fact, it’s rumored that Guerrino condensed into a portrait each of his innumerable encounters, and that none of his female figures are stylized: each was supposedly a souvenir, perhaps a reward enjoyed or requested, the gift of a satisfied man; or perhaps, on the other hand, only an item, one more point, a notch in his faun’s calendar. Exploring the valley, I noticed that there are often insignificant frescoes, by another artist or some unknown hand, to which a female head has later been added or superimposed, often out of place or off the subject. I found one in a stable in Inversini, by itself in the middle of a moldy wall. Maybe it was the site of the encounter.

  In the village of Robatto, at the confluence of two streams, there’s a Madonna enthroned with child and saints, against a blue sky that time has faded to green. In this sky four little angels appear, following a well-known and stale model, but one of these has the sensitive face of a girl, her gaze turned downward, her lips sealed in an inscrutable smile that evokes ancient funerary images that Guerrino absolutely couldn’t have known. Kneeling in the foreground, in profile, is a muscular saint with a gray beard who holds up a sheaf of grain pointing toward the angel’s face: saint and angel, full-bodied against the stylized background, bear the robust sign of Guerrino’s hand. Two of the child Madonnas have black faces, like the Madonna of Oropa, which Guerrino might well have known, and that of Częstochowa; this, it is said, is the basis of a remote myth, Etruscan rather than Christian, in which the Mother of God is confused with Persephone, the goddess of the Underworld, signifying the cycle of the seed, which every year is buried, dies, and is resurrected as fruit, and of the Just One, who is sacrificed and resurrected for our salvation. Under the effigy of one of these mournful virgins Guerrino wrote a sibylline saying: “Tout est et n’est rien.”

  The contrast between the sweetness of his works and the barbaric roughness of his ways is astonishing. It is rumored that these encounters, the source of his airy images, were little more than rapes, frightening assaults in the depths of the woods or in high meadows, under the bewildered gaze of the sheep and amid the furious barking of dogs. He was certainly not alone: the ambush of the shepherdess is the dominant motif of popular culture in these valleys; the shepherdess shows up as the paramount sexual object, and at least half the songs sung here develop, in different variants, the theme of the shepherd girl glimpsed, desired, won, or of her seduction by a rich man who comes from the city, or by the stranger who dazzles her with his exotic magnificence.

  I was told a poignant story about Guerrino. When he was already in his forties, he fell in love with a beautiful young woman; he fell in love without ever speaking to her, or touching her, or even seeing her close up, only looking at her in the window. The window was pointed out to me, and also the woman: in 1965 she was a serene, wrinkled old woman with delicate features and pale eyes; she wore with tranquil dignity the noble white hair of a former blonde. From the window, she had constantly refused him. She had spent her entire life refusing him, first as a girl, blushing and smiling, then as a bride, finally as a widow, and he had spent his life repeating his hopeless call. When Guerrino came through that village, he stopped at her window and cried, “Madamina, I’m here again”; she never got angry but answered, “Go away, Guerrino, go on your way,” and he went, taciturn and alone. Many think it was because of that woman, and that obstinate, intractable, undying love, that Guerrino became Guerrino. This woman, his true woman, Guerrino never painted.

  As I said, the painter of Madonnas disappeared around the end of the First World War. No one remembers his last name, and even his name is dubious: “Guerrino” could be a nickname, as is common here, so searching in the archives looks like a hopeless undertaking. About his end there exists only one trace. Old Eliseo, formerly a poacher, today a game warden, told me that around 1935, in a cave, or rather in a crevice once frequented by miners of quartz, he had found
the skeletons of a man and a dog, and on one of the rock walls an unfinished drawing, which to him seemed to portray a large bird in a fiery nest. He hadn’t reported it, because at that time he was in debt to the law. I went back there with him as my guide, but found nothing.

  The Girl in the Book

  Umberto was not so young anymore. He had some trouble with his lungs, and the doctor had sent him to the seaside for a month. It was the month of October, and Umberto hated the sea; he hated the in-between seasons, solitude, and, above all, illness. So he was in a vile mood, and it seemed to him that he would never get better, that in fact his illness would get worse, and he would die there, on sick leave, among people he didn’t know—die of dampness, of boredom, and of the sea air. But he was an obedient man, who stayed where he was put; if he had been sent to the seaside, it was a sign that he ought to be there. Every so often he took the train and returned to town to spend the night with Eva, but he left again the next morning, sadly, because it seemed to him that Eva was doing fine without him.

  When one is used to working, it’s painful to waste time, and in order not to waste too much time, or not to feel that he was wasting it, Umberto took long walks beside the sea and through the hills. Taking a walk is not like taking a trip: on a trip you make grand discoveries; on a walk you may make many discoveries, but they are small. Tiny green crabs wandered about the cliffs, not walking backward, as they are said to, but, rather, sideways, in a comical manner: endearing, but Umberto would rather have cut off a finger than touch one. Abandoned mill wheels, around them still visible the circular track where the mule had walked, who knows how many years earlier and for how many years. Two extraordinary inns, where you could get wine and homemade pasta that you wouldn’t dream of in Milan. But the most curious discovery was La Bomboniera.

  La Bomboniera was a tiny white square two-story villa, perched on a rise. It did not have a front, or, rather, it had four, all identical, each with a door of polished wood and with intricate decorations and plasterwork in an art deco style. The four corners were topped by graceful little turrets that had the shape of tulips but in fact were bathrooms; this was indicated by four ceramic pipes that, crudely set into the walls, descended to the ground. The windows of the villa were always darkened by black-painted shutters, and the plate on the gate bore an impossible name: HARMONIKA GRINKIAVICIUS. The plate itself was odd, too: the exotic name was surrounded by a triple ellipse on which, from the outside in, were the colors yellow, green, and red, in sequence. It was the only note of color against the white plaster of the villa.

  Almost without realizing it, Umberto got in the habit of passing La Bomboniera every day. It wasn’t uninhabited; an old woman lived there, occasionally visible, who was neat and spare, with hair as white as the villa and a face slightly too red. Signora Grinkiavicius went out once a day, always at the same time, whatever the weather, but for just a few minutes. She had well-made but old-fashioned clothes, an umbrella, a wide-brimmed straw hat with a black velvet ribbon that tied under her chin. She walked with small, decisive steps, as if she were in a hurry to reach some destination, yet she always took the same route, returned home, and immediately closed the door behind her. She never appeared at the windows.

  From the shopkeepers he couldn’t get much information. Yes, the woman was a foreigner, a widow for at least thirty years, educated, wealthy. She did many charitable deeds. She smiled at everyone but spoke to no one. She went to Mass on Sunday morning. She had never been to the doctor or even to the pharmacist. Her husband had bought the villa, but no one remembered anything about him anymore—maybe he hadn’t even really been her husband. Umberto was curious, and, besides, he suffered from his solitude; one day he got up his courage and stopped the woman, on the pretext of asking her where a certain street was. She answered in a few words, precisely and in good Italian. After that Umberto couldn’t think up any other ploys with which to start a conversation. He confined himself to contriving to run into her on his morning round and greeting her; she responded with a smile. Umberto recovered and returned to Milan.

  Umberto liked to read. He came across a book that appealed to him: it was the memoir of an English soldier who had fought against the Italians in Cyrenaica, had been taken prisoner and interned near Pavia, but then had escaped and joined the partisans. He hadn’t been a great partisan; he liked girls better than guns, and described several slight, happy love affairs, and a longer, stormier one, with a Lithuanian refugee. In this episode the Englishman’s story proceeded from a walk to a trot and then a gallop: against the tense, dark background of the German occupation and the Allied bombardments, he depicted wild bicycle flights on shadowy roads, in defiance of patrols and curfew, and daring adventures in the underground of smuggling and the black market. A memorable portrait of the Lithuanian emerged: tireless and indestructible, a good shot when necessary, extraordinarily vital; a Diana-Minerva grafted onto the opulent body (described in detail by the Englishman) of a Juno. The two possessed souls got lost and found in the valleys of the Apennines, impatient with discipline, today partisans, tomorrow deserters, then partisans again; they consumed dinners in huts and caves at dizzying heights, followed by heroic nights. The Lithuanian was depicted as a lover without equal, impetuous and refined, never distracted; polyglot and polyvalent, she knew how to love in her own language, in Italian, in English, in Russian, in German, and in at least two others, which the author skipped over. This torrential love affair rolled on for thirty pages before the Englishman troubled to reveal the name of his Amazon: on the thirty-first he remembered, and the name was Harmonika.

  Umberto started and closed the book. The name could be a random coincidence, but that odd surname and the colored circles that surrounded it returned to the screen of his memory; the colors must have a meaning. In vain he looked through the house for some reference book. The next evening, he went to the library, and found what he wanted to know: the flag of the short-lived Lithuanian Republic, between the two world wars, was yellow, green, and red. Not only that: under “Lithuania” in the encyclopedia his eye fell on Basanavicius, the founder of the first newspaper in the Lithuanian language; on Slezavicius, prime minister in the twenties; on Stanevicius, an eighteenth-century poet1 (where does one not find an eighteenth-century poet!); and on Neveravicius, the novelist. Was it possible? Possible that the taciturn benefactress and the bacchant were the same person?

  From that moment on Umberto could think only of finding a pretext for returning to the seaside, going so far as to hope for a mild recurrence of his pleurisy; he couldn’t come up with anything plausible, but he made up some nonsense for Eva and went off one Saturday, taking the book. He felt cheerful and intent, like a hound on the trail of a fox; he marched from the station to La Bomboniera at a military clip, rang the bell without hesitation, and immediately launched into his subject, with a half lie fabricated on the spot. He lived in Milan but was from Val Tidone: he had heard that the signora knew that area, he felt nostalgic, and would love to talk with her about it. Signora Grinkavicius looked better when viewed close up; her face was wrinkled but fresh and well modeled, and a laughing light shone in her eyes. Yes, she had been there, many years before; but he, where had he heard all that?

  Umberto counterattacked: “You are Lithuanian, right?”

  “I was born there. It’s an unhappy land. But I studied elsewhere, in different places.”

  “So you speak many languages?”

  The woman was now visibly on the defensive, and she turned obstinate: “I asked you a question, and you answer me with another question. I want to know where you heard about my affairs. That’s legitimate, don’t you think?”

  “From this book,” Umberto answered.

  “Give it to me!”

  Umberto attempted a parry and retreat, but with little conviction. He realized at that moment that the true purpose of his return to the coast was precisely that: to see Harmonika in the act of reading the adventures of Harmonika. The woman grabbed the book, sat do
wn beside the window, and became engrossed in her reading. Umberto, although he had not been asked, sat down, too. Over Harmonika’s face—still youthful but red, because of all the burst capillaries—he saw the movements of the soul pass like the shadows of clouds on a plain swept by the wind: regret, amusement, irritation, and other, less decipherable sensations. She read for half an hour, then without speaking held the book out to him.

  “Is it true?” Umberto asked. The woman was silent for so long that Umberto feared she was offended, but she smiled and answered:

  “Look at me. More than thirty years have passed, and I am different. Memory, too, is different. It’s not true that memories stay fixed in the mind, frozen; they, too, go astray, like the body. Yes, I remember a time when I was different. I would like to be the girl in the book; I would be happy also just to have been her, but I never was. It wasn’t I who attracted the Englishman. I remember that I was malleable, like clay in his hands. My love affairs . . . that’s what interests you, right? Well, they are fine where they are: in my memory, faded, withered, with a trace of perfume, like a collection of dried flowers. In yours they have become shiny and bright like plastic toys. I don’t know which are more beautiful. You choose. Come, take your book and go back to Milan.”

  1. In fact, Stanevicius lived from 1799 to 1848.