by Primo Levi
He distributed various Spemets to his closest friends. He noticed that no two images corresponded; in short, no real Timoteo existed. He also noticed that the Spemet possessed a distinct virtue: it strengthened long-standing, steady friendships, and quickly dissolved routine, conventional ones. Nevertheless, all attempts at commercial exploitation failed; the sales representatives were united in reporting that there were too few clients who were satisfied with their image as reflected on the foreheads of friends or relatives. Sales would still be meager, even if the price were cut by half. Timoteo patented the Spemet and nearly ruined himself for several years in an effort to keep the patent valid. He tried in vain to sell it, then he resigned himself, and went on making plain mirrors, of excellent quality, in fact, until he reached the age of retirement.
November 1, 1985
The Man Who Squeezed Through Walls
Memnone had lost count of the days and the years. He knew every wrinkle, crevice, and bump of the four walls within which he was locked up: he had studied them with his eyes by day, with his fingers by night. He went on running his fingers across the stone, from the floor up as high as his arms could reach, as if reading and rereading the same book: an alchemist always learns something from matter, and besides he had nothing else to read.
It was his art itself that had led him to prison. The guild was powerful, rigid in its orthodoxy, and recognized by the Emperor. Its dictate was clear: matter was infinitely divisible. Its image was water, not sand; to maintain that there were those ultimate grains, atoms, was heresy. Was it possible that those who spent their life dividing water would encounter a barrier in the end? Memnone had dared to think so, and had proclaimed, written, and taught this to his apprentices. He would not be released until he recanted.
He could not recant. His mind’s eye told him that matter was vacuous and scattered, like the starry sky. Minuscule grains suspended in space, guided by hatred and love. This was why they had walled him up alive: so that the ruthless solidity and impenetrability of the stone might speak to disprove him. But Memnone knew that the stone lied, and knew that this was the essence of his art, to prove the lie untrue. He remembered what he had seen in his workshop. Air, water, and sesame seeds can pass through a sieve. Air and water can pass through cloth, but sesame seeds can’t. Air can pass through leather, but water can’t. From a tightly sealed amphora neither air nor water can escape. But he was certain that a thinner air existed, an ether capable of going through fired clay, bronze, and the stone that buried him, and that his own body could become thin enough to penetrate the stone.
How? Homo est quod est, man is what he eats: obese and boorish if he eats lard, strong if he eats bread, placid if he eats oil, weak if he eats only turnips. Now, the food that was served to him through the spyhole was coarse, but he would be able to refine it. He tore off an edge of his cloak and filled it with the dirt that covered the ground; by expertly spreading it in graduated layers, he made a filter, according to a design that only he and Hecate knew. From then on, he filtered the slops, discarding the more solid parts. After some months, or perhaps it was a year, the effects began to be felt. At first it was only a great weakness, but then he noticed, in the light from the little window, that his hand was becoming more and more diaphanous, until he could make out the bones, which were faint as well.
He prepared for the trial. He pointed a finger against the stone and pushed. He felt a tingling sensation, and saw that the finger penetrated. It was a double victory: the confirmation of his vision, and the gateway to freedom. He waited for a moonless night, then pressed his palms as hard as he could. They went in, though with some difficulty; his arms went in, too. He pushed with his forehead: he felt it merge with the stone, as it moved forward very slowly, and at the same time he was overcome with nausea. It was a painful sensation; he was aware of the stone in his brain and of his brain mixed with the stone.
He concentrated his effort in his arms, as if swimming in pitch, through a buzzing that deafened him, and in a darkness broken by inexplicable flashes, until he felt his feet detach from the ground. How thick was the wall? Perhaps an arm’s length: the outer surface could not be far. He soon realized that his right arm had emerged: he felt it move freely in the air, but he struggled to extricate the rest of his body from the viscosity of the stone. He was unable to press against the wall from the outside: his hands got stuck again. He felt like a fly caught in honey, who in order to free one leg entangles two others, but he pushed hard with his legs, and at the first light of dawn emerged into the air like a butterfly from the pupa.
He dropped to the ground from a height of three arm lengths. He wasn’t hurt, but he was saturated with grit, stony, encumbered. He had to hide, quickly. He had trouble walking, but not just because of weakness and the exertion of the passage. Though his body was emaciated, its weight caused the soles of his feet to sink into the ground. He found grass, and things went better; then the pavement of the city again. He realized that, in spite of his fatigue, he was better off running, so as not to allow time for his feet to get stuck: to run, without ever stopping. Until when? Was this freedom? Was this its price?
He found Hecate. She had waited for him, but she was an old woman. She made him sit down and talk, and to his horror he immediately felt his buttocks merging with the wood of the chair. He found relief only in bed, with his weight evenly distributed on the feather mattress. He explained to the woman that he had to eat, to become thick again, to reestablish boundaries with the world; or would it perhaps be better to wait, in order to defeat his enemies with the evidence of the fact? Matter, including his own, was penetrable, therefore discrete, therefore made up of atoms: no one could contradict it without contradicting himself.
Hunger prevailed. Hecate brought Memnone food as he lay there: shoulder of mutton, beans. The mutton was tough, and impossible for him to chew. Jaw, meat, and mandible stuck to one another, and he feared that his teeth would fall out. Hecate had to help him, using the tip of the knife as a lever. Better milk, eggs, and fresh cheese for now: that worn-out body could not tolerate pressure; yet, after such a long abstinence, it was swelling with desire. Memnone drew the woman into the bed, undressed her, and explored her skin, just as he had explored the stone of the prison a few hours ago. It had remained youthful: he felt it soft and smooth, fragrant. He embraced the woman, joyful at his reawakened vigor. It was an unexpected effect, a marginal but happy result of his thinning, or perhaps a residual stoniness, the hard atoms of rock mixed with the atoms of his flesh and his unvanquished spirit.
Swept up by desire, he forgot about his new condition. He clasped the woman to him, and felt his own boundary melt into hers, their skin merging and dissolving. For a moment or for always? In a twilit awareness he tried to pull away and withdraw, but Hecate’s arms, much stronger than his, clamped shut. He felt again the vertigo that had come over him as he migrated through the stone: no longer nauseating now, but delicious and fatal. He dragged the woman with him into the eternal night of the impossible.
March 2, 1986
The Ant’s Wedding
JOURNALIST: Madam, I see that you’re very busy. I hope I’m not disturbing you: for someone like me, this is a rare occasion.
QUEEN: It’s what you call a scoop, right? Well, to begin with, get out from underfoot. I mean, move your feet. You’re destroying the hill: it will take at least three hundred ant-days just to repair the damage you’ve already done! Our mounds are perfect or else. We’re made that way, especially me. There, good girl. Now go on. Yes, go right ahead and tape. By the way, why no “Majesty”? What do you call your queens?
J: Forgive me, madam . . . er, forgive me, Your Majesty. I thought that—
Q: You thought wrong. Maybe because I’m a widow and I’m laying eggs? Well? That’s exactly why. Can you show me a human queen capable of doing that? Majesty! Of course I’m a majesty. Do you know how many eggs I’ve laid so far? A million and a half. And I’m only fourteen years old, and I only made love once.
J: Can you tell us something about your wedding?
Q: It was a splendid afternoon, full of colors, fragrance, and poetry: one of those moments when the world seems to sing. It had just stopped raining and the sun had come out again right away. And I felt a desire, an irresistible urge, the muscles of my wings so swollen I thought they would burst. Ah, when you’re young . . . My husband, God rest his soul, was very vigorous and appealing: his scent attracted me immediately, and mine him. He pursued me for a good half hour, insistently, and then, you know how we females are, I pretended to be tired and let him catch up with me, even though I, too, was a splendid flier. Yes, it was unforgettable, go ahead and write that in your newspaper: from above you couldn’t even see our anthills anymore, his and mine. And he, poor thing, delivered the packet to me and immediately dropped down, dead as a doornail; there wasn’t even time to say goodbye.
J: . . . the packet?
Q: A packet like few others, with more than four million little creatures, all viable. Since then I’ve kept it in my abdomen. A matter of turning the tap on and off, because we’ve incorporated them: three or four sperms for every egg, and when I want males all I have to do is shut off the duct. As for your system, believe me, we have never understood it. I mean, the honeymoon is fine, but then what do you need all those repeat performances for? All productive hours frittered away. You’ll see, in time you, too, will get to that point, just as you managed to achieve the division of labor: for the working classes fecundity is nothing but waste and demagoguery. You, too, should delegate it, you have kings and queens, or even just presidents; leave it to them, the workers should be working.
And why so many men? That fifty-fifty of yours is obsolete, let me tell you; it’s no accident that our regime has existed for a hundred and fifty million years, and yours not even a million. And ours has been tested, it’s been stable since the Mesozoic, whereas you change yours every twenty years at best. Look, I don’t want to interfere in your affairs, and I realize that anatomy and physiology are difficult to modify over a short period of time, but, even given the way things are with you, one male for every fifty females would be more than enough. Aside from everything else, you would solve the problem of world hunger.
J: And the other forty-nine?
Q: The best thing would be for them not to be born. Otherwise, it remains to be seen: kill them, or castrate them and make them work, or let them kill one another, since they certainly have a tendency to do so. Speak to your editor about it, write an editorial; it could become a bill to introduce in Parliament.
J: I will certainly talk to him about it. But you, Your Majesty, have you never regretted that afternoon, that flight, that instant of love?
Q: It’s hard to say. You see, for us duty comes first. And then, when all is said and done, I’m comfortable in here, in the warmth and darkness, at peace, surrounded by my hundred thousand daughters who lick me all day. There is a time for everything, one of your people said many centuries ago. I think he might even have been urging you to imitate us. For us, this is a strict rule: there is a time for eggs, a time for larvae, and a time for pupae; there is day and night, summer and winter, war and peace, work and fecundity. But above all there is the State, and nothing but the State.
Well, as for regrets, yes, of course. I told you, I was a great flier: perhaps that’s the reason my poor husband chose me in particular among the crowd of princesses swarming at sunset. There were so many of us we obscured the sun; from a distance, it looked like a plume of smoke rising out of the anthill, but it was I who flew higher than all the rest. I had an athlete’s musculature. And he pursued me, he entrusted to me that gift which contains all our tomorrows, and then, suddenly, down he went: I still see him now, he went into a spin and fell like a leaf.
J: And you, Your Majesty?
Q: The packet is a responsibility, and a heavy one: physically as well. I flew down, or, rather, I dropped down: partly from fatigue, partly from emotion. No longer a virgin aviatrix, but a widowed mother, pregnant with millions of children. The first thing to do, when one becomes a mother, is get rid of the wings; they’re frivolous, a vanity, and besides they’re not useful anymore. I immediately tore them off, and dug myself a niche, as we have always done. I was tempted to keep them in my cell as a memento, but then I thought that this, too, was vanity, and I left them there for the wind to carry off.
I felt the eggs maturing in me, dense as hailstones. When this moment comes, the wing muscles become providential in another way. I absorbed them, consumed them, incorporated them, so as to have nourishment to pass on to the eggs, to my future people. I sacrificed my strength and my youth for them, and I’m proud of it. I, I alone. There are species that keep as many as ten or twenty queens in their nest: it’s a disgrace that’s never been seen here. Just let one of my workers try and become fertile, she’ll find out!
J: I understand. Procreation is a highly demanding commitment. I can see why you claim a monopoly over it. Maternity is sacred, even among us, do you know that? Our news reports are full of horrors, but anyone who harms children is universally abhorred.
Q: Yes, yes. The eggs shouldn’t be eaten, it’s not a good thing. But there are situations where the sense of the State’s requirements must be followed, which is, after all, good sense. If food is scarce and there are too many eggs, moralizing no longer has any place. The eggs are eaten—I’d be the first to—and maybe even the larvae and the pupae. They’re nourishing; and if they’re left uncared for, because the workers are hungry and can’t work anymore, they’ll spoil, they’ll be good only for worms, and then we, too, will die. So what?* Without logic there is no government.
April 20, 1986
* Here and throughout Stories and Essays, an asterisk indicates that the word or phrase is in English in the original.
Force Majeure
M was in a hurry because he had an important appointment with the director of a library. He wasn’t familiar with that part of the city. He asked for directions from a passerby, who pointed him to a long, narrow alley. It was paved with cobblestones. M entered the alley and when he was halfway down he saw a burly young man in an undershirt coming toward him, perhaps a sailor. He noticed uneasily that there were no widenings or doorways: although M was slim, when their paths crossed he would be forced to endure a distasteful contact. The sailor whistled, M heard a bark behind him, the scraping of claws, then the hot animal’s panting: the dog must have been crouching in wait.
Both men moved forward, until they found themselves face-to-face. M hugged the wall to make room, but the other man did not do the same; he stood motionless, hands on his hips, completely blocking the way. His expression was not menacing; he seemed to be waiting calmly, but M heard a deep growl from the dog: it must be a large animal. He took a step forward, whereupon the other man placed his hands on the walls. There was a pause, then the sailor made a gesture with his palms facing the ground, as if he were caressing someone’s back or calming the waters. M did not understand. “Why won’t you let me pass?” he asked, but the other responded by repeating the gesture. Maybe he was mute, or deaf, or didn’t understand Italian; but still he should have understood, the question wasn’t all that complicated.
Without warning the sailor whipped off M’s glasses, stuck them in M’s pocket, and landed a punch to his stomach. It wasn’t very hard, but M, caught by surprise, backed up a few steps. He had never found himself in such a situation, not even as a boy, but he remembered Martin Eden and his fight with Cheese-Face, he had read Ettore Fieramosca, Orlando Innamorato and Orlando Furioso, Gerusalemme and Don Quixote, he recalled the story of Fra Cristoforo, he had seen The Quiet Man, High Noon, and a hundred other films, so he knew that sooner or later the time would come for him, too; it comes to us all. He tried to muster his courage, and responded with a direct jab, but he realized to his astonishment that his arm was too short: he hadn’t even managed to graze the face of his opponent, who held him off by placing his hands on his shoulders. Th
en he charged the sailor with his head down. It wasn’t just a question of pride and dignity, not just that he needed to get by: at that moment getting through that alley seemed to him a matter of life and death. The young man grabbed M’s head between his hands, pushed him back, and repeated the gesture of the two palms, which M glimpsed through a myopic haze.
It occurred to M that he, too, could wager on the element of surprise. He had never done any kind of fighting, yet something from his reading had stayed with him. From a remote past, a phrase read thirty years earlier in a novel about the wild north flashed through his mind: “If your opponent is stronger than you, stoop down, hurl yourself at his legs, and break his knees.” He backed up a few steps, curled into a ball, and, with a running start, rolled against the sailor’s sturdy legs. The latter lowered a hand, just one, stopped M effortlessly, grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him up with an expression of astonishment. Then he repeated the usual gesture. Meanwhile, the dog had approached, and was sniffing M’s pants with a menacing look. M heard a sharp clack of footsteps behind him: it was a gaudily dressed young woman, perhaps a prostitute. She passed the dog, M, and the sailor as if they were invisible, and disappeared at the end of the alley. M, who up until then had lived a normal life, marked by joy, tedium, and sorrow, success and failure, felt a sensation he had never experienced before, of being crushed, of force majeure, of absolute impotence, with no escape and no way out, to which the only reaction can be submission. Or death. But did it make sense to die in order to get through an alley?
All of a sudden the sailor grabbed M by the shoulders and pushed him down: his strength was truly extraordinary, and M was forced to kneel on the cobblestones, but the other continued to press down. M’s knees hurt unbearably; he tried to shift part of his weight onto his heels, which meant that he had to bend a little lower and lean back. The sailor took advantage of this: his vertical thrust became oblique, and M found himself sitting with his arms propped behind him. The position was more stable, but since M was now much lower, the man’s pressure on his shoulders had become proportionately more intense. Slowly, with convulsive, ineffective bursts of resistance, M found himself leaning on his elbows, then lying down, but with his knees, at least, bent and raised. They were made of hard, rigid bone, difficult to defeat.