The Complete Works of Primo Levi

by Primo Levi

  The sailor gave a sigh, like someone who has to call upon every ounce of patience, grabbed M’s heels, one at a time, and stretched his legs out flat on the ground, by pressing down on the kneecaps. So this was the meaning of that gesture, M thought: the sailor wanted him laid out flat, subdued; he would not tolerate resistance. The man chased the dog away with a sharp command, took off his sandals, and, holding them in his hand, began to walk along M’s body as if it were a balance beam in a gym: slowly, arms outstretched, staring straight ahead. He placed one foot on the right tibia, then the other on the left femur, and on to the liver, the left thorax, the right shoulder, and finally the forehead. Then he put on his sandals and went away, followed by the dog.

  M got up, put his glasses back on, and straightened his clothes. He took a quick inventory: were there extra advantages that someone who has been trampled on could derive from the situation? Compassion, sympathy, greater attention, fewer responsibilities? No, because M lived alone. There were none, nor would there be any; or if there were, they would be minimal. The match had not corresponded to its models: it had been unbalanced, unfair, and dirty, and had dirtied him. The models, even the most violent, are chivalrous; life is not. He set out for his appointment, knowing that he would never again be the man he had been before.

  July 27, 1986

  A “Mystery” in the Lager

  In November 1944, we had a Dutch Kapo who as a civilian had played trumpet in a cabaret orchestra in Amsterdam. As a Musiker, he played in the camp’s band, and was therefore an anomalous Kapo with dual roles: after the prisoners marched by on the way to work, he had to come down from the platform, put away his trumpet, and run after the formation to take his place. He was a vulgar man but not particularly violent, well fed, foolishly proud of the more or less clean striped pajamas to which his function entitled him, and very partial to his Dutch subjects, of whom there were four or five in our squad of about seventy prisoners.

  When New Year’s Day approached, these Dutchmen decided to prepare a celebration for the Kapo, to further ingratiate themselves and, at the same time, thank him. Obviously, food was scarce, but one of them, a graphic artist by profession, found a piece of paper torn from a cement bag, painted it front and back with linseed oil to make it look like parchment, frayed the edges, drew a Greek key pattern around the border using red-lead paint stolen from the worksite, and copied out a little poem of good wishes in beautiful calligraphy. Naturally it was in Dutch, a language I don’t know, but through one of memory’s curious rescue operations I still remember some of the lines. Everyone signed it; even Goldbaum signed it, though he was not Dutch but Austrian. The fact surprised me slightly, then I didn’t think about it again, swept up with the others in the dramatic events that marked the dissolution of the Lager a few days later.

  Goldbaum’s name came up again briefly in the course of an encounter that I described in The Periodic Table. By some improbable twist of fate, I had found myself, after more than twenty years, in correspondence with a German chemist, one of my bosses from that time: he was plagued by guilt, and was asking me for something like forgiveness or absolution. To demonstrate that he had had a humane interest in us prisoners, he cited episodes and individuals that he might have found in the many books published on the subject (or in my own If This Is a Man); but he also asked me for personal news of Goldbaum, who was certainly not named in any book. It was slim evidence, but concrete. I responded with what little I knew: Goldbaum had died during the terrible march that transferred the prisoners of Auschwitz to Buchenwald.

  The name came up again a few months ago. The Periodic Table had been published in England, and a certain Z. family, from Bristol but with branches in South Africa and elsewhere, wrote me a complicated letter. An uncle of theirs, Gerhard Goldbaum, had been deported, they did not know where, nor had they had any further news of him. They knew that the probability of an actual coincidence was minimal, since the last name was very common; nevertheless, one of the granddaughters was prepared to come to Turin to speak with me, to find out if by chance my Goldbaum might be their lost relation, whose memory they seemed very fond of.

  Before answering, I tried to marshal what I could remember about Goldbaum. It was not much: we were in the same squad, ambitiously called the Chemical Kommando, but he was not a chemist, nor had we been particularly friendly. Nevertheless, I had a vague recollection connecting him to a privileged position similar to mine, I having been recognized as a chemist (in actuality quite late), he in some other technical specialization. His German was fluent; undoubtedly he had been a cultured, well-educated man. I reread the German chemist’s letters, and found a fact that I hadn’t remembered: the Goldbaum he remembered was a sound physicist; like me he had been tested, and then assigned to an acoustics laboratory.

  The circumstance called to mind a coincidence that I had forgotten: in Solzhenitsyn’s The First Circle, strange, specialized camps are described, in particular one whose prisoner-engineers are assigned to research a sound analyzer “commissioned” by Stalin’s secret police for the purpose of identifying human voices in wiretaps. These Lagers became widespread in the Soviet Union after the war. Now, in April 1945, that is, after the liberation, I had been invited to talk with a very kind Soviet official: he had learned that as a prisoner I had worked in a chemical laboratory, and wanted to know how much food the Germans gave us, how closely they watched us, if they paid us, how they prevented theft and sabotage. It is therefore quite probable that I modestly contributed to the organization of the so-called Soviet saraski, and it’s not impossible that Goldbaum’s mysterious work was that described by Solzhenitsyn.

  I replied to the Z. family that I would be going to London in April—it wasn’t necessary for them to travel to Italy, we could see each other in England. Seven of them came to the meeting, representing three generations; they crowded around me, and immediately showed me two photographs of Gerhard, taken around 1939. I was dazzled: at a distance of nearly half a century, the face was his. It corresponded perfectly with the one that I, unknowingly, bore stamped in the pathological memory that I preserve of that period. At times, though only as far as Auschwitz is concerned, I feel like a brother of Ireneo Funes, “the memorious” (el memorioso) described by Borges: the man who remembered every leaf of every tree that he had seen, and who said, “I have more memories in myself alone than all men have had since the world was a world.”1

  No further proof was needed. I said so to the granddaughter, the family leader, but the pressure, instead of slackening, intensified. I am not speaking metaphorically: I was supposed to talk to other people as well, but the Z. family had encapsulated me, as leukocytes surround a germ, pressing around me and barraging me with questions and information. Questions I could not answer, except for one: no, Goldbaum must not have suffered much from hunger; the very fact that I had immediately recognized him in the photograph attested to it. The signs of extreme hunger, unmistakable and well-known to me, were absent from my mental image of him; his work must have spared him that suffering at least, until the final days.

  The puzzle of Holland was also solved. It was further confirmation: the granddaughter told me that at the time of Austria’s annexation Gerhard had fled to Holland, where, having mastered the language, he had worked at Philips until the Nazi invasion. He joined the Dutch resistance; like me, he was arrested as a partisan, and later recognized as a Jew.

  The affectionate, tumultuous Z. clan was dispersed with some difficulty by an improvised “duty calls,” but before leaving the granddaughter gave me a parcel. It contained a woolen scarf: I will wear it next winter. For now, I’ve put it in a drawer, feeling like someone who has touched an object fallen from the cosmos, like lunar rocks, or like the vaunted “objects” produced by spiritualists.

  August 10, 1986

  1. “Funes, the Memorious” is a story in Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges (New York: Grove, 1962; translated by Anthony Kerrigan).

  Time Checkmated

  GRAN
D DUCHY OF NEUSTRIA

  CENTRAL PATENT OFFICE

  Patent Application No. 861731

  Class 23d, Group 2

  Date of application: February 2, 1984

  I, Theophil Skoptza, born in Obikon on July 31, 1919 Anno Lucis, a rural policeman by profession, hereby submit an application for the issuance of a patent on the invention described below.

  THE STATE OF THE ART

  It is known from common experience that the passage of time, as it is perceived by any individual, does not coincide with that indicated by so-called objective instruments. According to my measurements, a minute spent in front of a red light is on average eight times as long as a minute spent in conversation with a friend; twenty-two times as long if the friend is of the opposite sex. A TV commercial for this Grand Duchy is perceived as five to ten times as long as its actual time, which is rarely more than a minute. An hour spent in conditions of sensory deprivation acquires erratic values that can vary from a few minutes to 15–18 hours. A night spent in a state of insomnia is longer than a night spent sleeping, though up to now, as far as I know, no quantitative research has been carried out. As everyone knows, subjective time lengthens enormously if clocks or chronometers are consulted frequently.

  Just as common is the observation that subjective time seems longer during disagreeable experiences or conditions such as a toothache or a migraine, seasickness or a long wait, and so on. By contrast, because of the malignity inherent in human nature and in the human condition, it seems brief, to the point of vanishing, under conditions of the opposite type.

  THE INVENTION

  The invention is protected by the registered trademark PARACHRONO, which also covers grammatical derivatives. It presupposes normal physiological conditions on the part of the subject, and consists of injections of extremely low doses of rubidium maleate into the fourth cerebral ventricle. The operation is neither risky nor painful, and harmful side effects have not so far been reported, with the exception of a slight sense of vertigo in the first days following treatment. After a latent period of several days, the patient is able to voluntarily intervene in his own subjective sense of time. Not only can he make it conform to the objective duration; he can actually reverse the phenomenon, that is, extend the time of pleasant experiences at will, and shorten the duration of painful or troublesome ones. In the latter case, it should be noted that muscular activity, memory, attention, and perception remain unexpectedly intact; this distinguishes the method described here from techniques such as narcosis, hypnosis, coma, or induced catalepsy, as well as from time machines, which up to now have been invented only by fiction writers.

  EXAMPLES

  EXAMPLE 1: H.D., age forty-nine, messenger and driver. He was compelled by his job to spend hours in line at the Registry Office, which in this Grand Duchy is particularly inefficient. After parachronal treatment he reports seeing the line in front of him shorten at a pace that he estimates as three persons per second, so that he has the impression of having to run to reach the window without missing his turn. He has grown taller, his gray hair has gone back to its original color, and he has successfully devoted himself to the study of the Urdu language.

  EXAMPLE 2: L.E., age nineteen, student. After undergoing treatment with parachrono, she no longer experiences anxiety about exams, and as a result has been relieved of a particular anguish (caused specifically by the long wait) that rendered her incapable of answering the questions and caused her countless failures, even though she was extremely well prepared and had an IQ of 148.

  EXAMPLE 3: T.K., age thirty-five, lathe operator, unemployed, currently in custody awaiting trial. He has served thirty-five months of detention, estimating the time as four days. He reports seeing the day dawn suddenly, and seeing night fall just as suddenly, “after a few seconds.” Nonetheless, he has read the complete works of Ken Follett while in prison, and remembers the contents quite well.

  EXAMPLE 4: F.B., worker, age twenty-four. By her own admission, she has a difficult temperament, and reacted angrily when her boyfriend arrived for their dates twenty or thirty minutes late. She underwent parachronia and now she doesn’t notice his lateness; it has become imperceptible, and their relationship has recovered, to their mutual satisfaction.

  EXAMPLE 5: T.S., age sixty-four (I myself). After undergoing the treatment, I happened to discover a small porcini mushroom that had just emerged from the undergrowth. I immediately put myself in a state of parachronia, and after waiting three days and three nights, which to me seemed no longer than half an hour total, picked a mushroom weighing 0.760 kilograms; indeed, I saw the mushroom literally grow before my eyes.

  EXAMPLE 6: G.G., age twenty-four, has a degree in Neustrian literature but is temporarily a housepainter. Treated with rubidium maleate on July 25, 1982. During the first, long-desired intimacy with the woman he loved, he was able to instantaneously put himself, at the peak of orgasm, into a state of parachronia, that is, to perform on himself the operation that turned out so badly for Faust. He reports maintaining his excitement for a time that he estimated to be thirty-six hours, though his normal orgasms do not last objectively more than five to seven seconds. He emerged not only rested and lucid but full of positive energies: he is currently preparing for a solitary winter ascent of the south wall of Aconcagua. Moreover, he reports that his partner, though she was not aware of anything at the time, has decided to undergo parachronia in my laboratory as soon as possible.

  CLAIMS

  1.A method of accelerating, slowing down, or arresting the subjective time of the subject ad libitum, characterized by the fact that psychophysiological modification is obtained by introducing the organic salt of an alkaline metal into the organism.

  2.A method as described in the preceding claim, characterized by the fact that said introduction occurs by injection into the fluid contained in the fourth cerebral ventricle.

  3.A method as described in the preceding claims, characterized by the fact that the injected substance (recognized as the most active among the many that were tested) is rubidium maleate.

  4.A method as described in the preceding claims, characterized by the fact that the quantity of active principle used varies between 2 and 12 picograms per kilogram of the subject’s body weight.

  September 12, 1986

  The Machine Gun Under the Bed

  At the time of the Republic of Salò, my sister was twenty-three years old. She was a partisan courier, which involved a variety of assignments, all of them dangerous: the transport and distribution of clandestine publications, arduous bicycle trips to maintain communications, dealing in the black market, and even hosting and caring for wounded partisans or, a frequent occurrence, those who “couldn’t take it anymore.” She was a good courier because she was strongly motivated: both her fiancé and I had been deported, and for all intents and purposes had disappeared from the face of the earth (her fiancé never returned). Her militancy did not arise solely from political motives, but was a retaliation and a revenge.

  She had to be constantly on the alert, and changed her residence frequently; in fact, she didn’t have a permanent residence. She lived awhile here and awhile there, sometimes in Turin with friends who were not suspect, who took her in willingly or unwillingly, sometimes in the country with my mother, who was in hiding, and also continually on the move. She was a young woman averse to violence; nevertheless, in June 1945, that is, following the liberation, she had a Beretta submachine gun hidden under the bed. On being asked, she tells me that she no longer remembers where it came from, or which group it was intended for: perhaps it needed repair, then had simply been left there. There were so many other things to think about. . . .

  Now it happened that a certain Cravero came to see her. I mentioned the episode in The Truce: Cravero was a professional thief whom I had lived with for a few months in Katowice after the arrival of the Russians. He had been the first to attempt repatriation on his own, and he was the bearer of a letter of mine, which was in itself a good thi
ng (it was the only news of me that reached Italy in the eighteen months of my absence); what was not so good was that he tried to extort money “to go back to Poland to look for me,” and, when he was not successful, he stole my sister’s bicycle at the foot of the stairs. He eyed the carelessly hidden machine gun and made a cautious offer, which my sister wisely refused.

  After that strange visit, and after reading my letter, my sister got the idea of going to ask for news of me at the Polish Military Command in Milan. I should explain that this unit was the “Anders Army,” that band of courageous desperadoes whom the Allies had rescued from the Soviet prison camps, then rearmed and reorganized. So there was bad blood between them and the Russians. Perhaps somewhat allergic to the name Levi, they received her with distrust and disbelief. If I were in the hands of the Russians, I would not be in Poland, and if I were in Poland I would not be in the hands of the Russians; besides, they themselves had difficulty communicating with their country. My sister, who doesn’t give up easily, was not satisfied, and two days later she went to the Soviet Military Command. Here she was received a little more cordially, but all the same she was unable to get anywhere. The official on duty told her that if I was in Soviet hands I had nothing to fear, that in the USSR foreigners enjoyed the greatest respect, but that, alas, given the difficulties of communication, it was not possible for them to put her in touch with me, much less concern themselves with my repatriation. She should wait and not lose faith.