The Complete Works of Primo Levi

by Primo Levi

  Yet this rigor is coupled with an amusing freedom in the design of the book. It would be more correct to say that the book does not have a design: one subject arises from another, discursively, as when friends are gathered around a fireside. From the House we move on to Bricks, to Tiles, and by analogy to Braziers, Fire, and various ancient (but not too ancient!) methods of lighting fires. From Weights and Measures we move to certain remote bureaucratic customs, to equipment for writing, inks, seals, and so on. The author has no fear of digression; in fact he finds these his truest inspiration, in the affectionate descriptions of family rituals, holidays, obsolete traditions. See, for example, the pages where, from a technological description of bells, he goes on to speak, with anxious nostalgia, of the various ways they were rung, the Gaudietta, the Concent, the Melodia: extinguished voices, artificially revived.

  Who today would know how to prepare a quill pen? One drawing illustrates the seven steps, and another demonstrates the Sharpener, a multipurpose tool that was used uniquely to cut the quills and sharpen them; we also learn that, because of their different curvature, the most valuable feathers were those taken from the left wing. Feathers from the right wing hampered writing, because their end came too close to the writer’s eyes. Immediately afterward are listed no fewer than ten indispensable accessories for the scribe, from the portable inkwell to the “dustbox,” the precursor of blotting paper; it, too, was rendered superfluous by the invasion of the ballpoint pen.

  Browsing the six hundred entries in the book, we learn that in a not so distant time copper eyeglasses were used in cases of emergency. These were domes of copper with a tiny hole, which, reducing the light to the pupil, reduced in equal measure all the defects of vision: if the illumination was good, it allowed one at least to thread a needle. We can also find equipment and rules for games that have disappeared, like spinning a top, tipcat (cirimela), and peashooting.

  We learn that the blacksmith had available at least three types of nails for horseshoes: normal nails, nails for climbing, and nails for ice. Often before setting off on a long uphill, the carter himself had to replace one with the other, as we do now with snow chains. We read with nostalgia and curiosity hundreds of recipes for simple dishes, and of these no fewer than a dozen have to do with wafers (Canëstrej), in which the fundamental ingredient to be added to the flour ranges from chocolate to garlic; also described and illustrated is the wafer iron, an essential piece of equipment for making them.

  Recipes, kitchen equipment, and edible plants occupy a hundred pages, and more than a hundred are described: it’s interesting to see among them many “weeds,” like plantains, and one thinks back to the skinny girl Manzoni mentions, who steals from the cows wild grasses, “on which hunger had taught her that men, too, could live.” That was a time of famine, but there was almost always famine. A portrait of a time when the kitchen was the heart of the house and meals were a ritual emerges from these passages more vividly than from a direct description: a time when the rhythm of life was poorer than ours, more precarious, but also more convivial and more human.

  It’s fortunate that before the darkness of oblivion (of dësmèntia) descends, the shapes of oil lamps have been recorded, along with the belts for threshing, sundials, wine kegs, and hundreds of other objects molded by the experience of many centuries, which now have disappeared or are disappearing. Our hands reside not only in the illustrious works of individual creativity but also in these humble tools that were the companions of our forefathers on the road of life.

  La Stampa, March 22, 1981

  1. From “La signorina Felicita ovvero la felicità,” a poem by Guido Gozzano (1883–1916).

  Bureau of Vital Statistics

  There were four elevators, but one, as usual, was out of service. It wasn’t always the same one and even the sign hanging on the door wasn’t always the same. This one, for instance, said “Out of Service”; others might say “Not Working” or “Broken” or “Don’t Touch” or even “Back Soon.” Maybe it was the doorman, or the superintendent, who changed the signs according to some vaguely ironic whim. There were lines in front of the three other elevators, and this, too, happened every day, at the beginning and at the end of the workday. If his office hadn’t been on the ninth floor, Arrigo would have taken the stairs; sometimes he did anyway, for the exercise, but that morning he felt a little tired.

  The elevator finally arrived, and it was already full of employees coming from the basement and the subbasement. Arrigo made his way in energetically but without shoving. The elevator rose, stopping with a jerk at every floor, and people got on and off, greeting each other distractedly. On the ninth floor, Arrigo himself got off and punched his time card. For two years now there had been a time clock on every floor. It had been a sensible innovation. Previously, there had been only one, on the ground floor, which always caused a terrible bottleneck, partly because there was little discipline, and people tried to push in front of you. In the office, people were already at their desks. Arrigo sat at his post, pulled the color photograph of his wife and their little girl out of the top drawer, and from the second drawer took writing supplies and the index cards left over from the previous day. This was the result of one of the boss’s obsessions: at the end of the day, all the desks had to be cleared. Who knows why, certainly not for cleaning, because the desks were cleaned only two or three times a year: if you didn’t want dust on your desk, you had to clean it yourself.

  Arrigo’s job was administrative in nature. Every day, he received a packet of index cards from the floor above. Each card contained the name of a human being and the date of his or her death; Arrigo had only to specify the cause. He would often get angry, for various reasons. The expiration date wasn’t always the same: it could be years ahead, or months or days, for no apparent reason, and he felt that this was an injustice. Nor did it seem reasonable that there were no rules regarding age: some days he was handed hundreds of cards for newborns. Then, the boss complained if Arrigo kept to generic formulas: the man must be a sadist or a fan of crime news. It wasn’t enough for Arrigo to write “accident.” He wanted all the details and was never satisfied. He always demanded a correlation between the data on the cards and the cause of death, and this often embarrassed Arrigo.

  The first index card of the day wasn’t a problem. It bore the name of Yen Ch’ing-Hsu, fifty-eight years old, single, born in Han Tou, where he still resided, dockworker, no illnesses to speak of. Arrigo had no idea where Han Tou was: if he were to check the atlas every time, he’d never get anything done. Yen still had thirty-six days to live and Arrigo imagined him against the backdrop of an exotic sunset, sitting on a roll of cable before a turbid sea the color of a ripe banana; he was exhausted by his daily work, sad and alone. A man like this doesn’t fear death and doesn’t seek it, either, but he may act carelessly. Arrigo thought about it for a moment and then had him fall from a scaffold: he wouldn’t suffer much.

  Pedro Gonzales de Eslava didn’t give him much trouble, either. In spite of the pompous name, he must have been a poor devil—he drank, had been involved in many fights among illegal immigrants, was forty-six years old, and had worked on half a dozen farms in the far south. He had five more months and would leave behind four children, who, however, lived with his wife and not with him. The wife was Puerto Rican, like Pedro; she was young, and she also worked. Arrigo consulted the medical encyclopedia and came up with hepatitis.

  He was studying the third index card when Fernanda called him on the phone. She had seen in the paper that Metropolis was playing at some art house cinema; why not go see it tonight? Arrigo didn’t like being interrupted at work and was noncommittal. The third index card was fairly obvious; everyone knows what happens to a man who races motorbikes. No one was forcing him to do it; he had only to choose a different profession—in cases like this, there’s no need to have scruples. But he felt obliged to provide the details of the fatal accident and the hospital record.

  He had no sympathy for Pierre-Je
an La Motte. He was born in Lyon, but at the age of thirty-two he was already a full professor of political science at the University of Rio: evidently he was a man with connections. He had only twenty days to live, though he was in excellent health and played tennis every morning. Arrigo was racking his brains for an appropriate cause of death for La Motte when Lorusso came by and invited him to go for coffee. Arrigo went down with him to the vending machines on the fourth floor. Lorusso was dull. He had a son who wasn’t doing well in math, and Arrigo thought that, with a father like that, it would certainly be strange if the son were a prodigy. Then Lorusso started to complain about his wife, who spent too much money, and about the heat that didn’t work.

  The coffee machine didn’t work well, either. Lorusso banged on it and at long last it spat out two cups of coffee, pale and insipid but boiling hot. As Arrigo forced himself to gulp down the coffee, scalding his throat, Lorusso talked on about the paycheck that always came late and the deductions that were always too high. Finally, back at his desk, Arrigo squashed Pierre-Jean like a worm: brain hemorrhage—that’ll teach him.

  At around ten, Arrigo was finished with the cards left over from the previous day, but the office boy had already put the new cards on his desk. The first was all crumpled, maybe by the dating machine: he could make out only that it was for a person of the female sex, by the name of Adelia. Arrigo put the card aside, so much the better for Adelia: it’s always useful to gain time. At any rate, he might decide to write a report: more and more often it happens that the first card of each packet is damaged . . . a regrettable occurrence . . . will maintenance please take care of it . . . sincerely yours. Instead he paused over the next card. Karen Kvarna, age eight, born in Slidre, a mountain village in the heart of Norway. Karen, only child, illnesses N.A. (not available), student, was to die the following day. Arrigo was stuck. He imagined her flaxen-haired, kind, cheerful, serene, against the backdrop of solemn, immaculate mountains: if she had to die, then it would be without him, he would not take part in this. He grabbed the card and knocked on the boss’s door: he heard a grumbled “Come in,” entered, and said that it was a disgrace. That the work was poorly organized, that the purchase of the randomizer had been an idiotic idea, that the cards were full of mistakes—for example, this one right here. That they were all sheep and careerists and no one dared protest and no one took the job seriously. That he had had enough, that he couldn’t care less about promotion, and that he wanted to be transferred.

  The boss must have been expecting a scene from Arrigo for quite a while, because he gave no sign of surprise or indignation. Perhaps he was even glad to be rid of a programmer with such an unstable character. He told Arrigo to stop by again the next day. And the next day he gave him his transfer orders and made him sign two or three explanatory documents. Thus Arrigo found himself demoted from grade 7 to grade 6 and transferred to a small office in the attic of the building, in charge of determining the shape of the noses of newborns.

  La Stampa, June 21, 1981

  Let’s See What Has Come True

  In my view, science fiction can and should invent everything. That is its vocation, and to impose limits on its truthfulness would mean trimming its wings. The only acceptable limits are those of the comic force of the inventions, not whether they are possible or realizable. In short: in the future science fiction can offer us anything—plants that learn to speak, machine-man hybrids (maybe even fertile ones), new ways in which word or thought is made flesh directly in a fact or an object, inversions of past and future, of folly and wisdom, of internal and external, and so forth—provided the subject is stimulating, pithy, and above all new, which is not a little to ask.

  By way of comparison, and also of provocation, I would propose shifting the question to a neighboring terrain, and ask what science and technology, as opposed to science fiction, can still invent. Here we’re talking about serious prophecies, and prophecy is always a dangerous art. Thus prophets in all eras have prudently adopted two wise precautions: they have used obscure language (which gives them the further advantage of making them seem inspired), and they have placed their predictions not in the near future but, rather, in a distant or indefinite future, such that possible challenges will find them dead.

  Years ago, and with the proper dose of humor, a very serious physicist and technician made an attempt at this sport: Arthur C. Clarke, who is also the author of some classics of science fiction. I cite here his predictions, formulated around 1960, along with a note on the state of the art in effect today.

  Predicted for 1970:

  Space laboratories. The first, Spacelab, may be launched into orbit in 1982.

  Moon landing. This has happened, a year early.

  Translation machines. They haven’t yet been perfected; the ones in existence are rudimentary.

  Efficient batteries. They exist, but for now are a little too expensive.

  Language of cetaceans. As far as we know, the investigations stopped after Lilly’s early results with dolphins. They have an intelligence comparable to that of dogs, and a language that seems quite evolved; but I don’t think it has been deciphered yet.

  Predicted for 1980:

  Planetary landings. It hasn’t happened, and doesn’t seem close at hand; but planetary exploration at a distance is yielding surprising results.

  Personal radio. I don’t know what Clarke was thinking of; I imagine it’s something that could be easily realized, but maybe it’s better to leave it where it is.

  Exobiology. This is the biology of extraterrestrial life-forms. For the moment we know nothing. Analysis of soil from Mars has been disappointing; on the other hand, large organic molecules have been identified in space, possible forerunners of life.

  Gravity waves. Studies are under way, with controversial results.

  As a curiosity, I would recall that Clarke situates around 1990 the production of energy from nuclear fusion. The world has a desperate need for this prediction to come true.

  Tuttolibri, January 3, 1982

  Our First Ancestors Weren’t Animals

  Quest for Fire, by J. Rosny, is a novel of adventures that take place in prehistory, when man knew how to preserve fire but not yet how to light a fire. It’s a French book (La guerre du feu) from 1911, which when I was a boy seemed wonderful to me, and it still seems quite wonderful today. It’s almost a fable, without didactic presumptions: ingenuous, graceful, literarily skillful. Its characters, especially the three who set out to conquer fire, are intelligent and courageous, and loyal to their tribe, like Homeric heroes, although perhaps a little too monogamous, polite, and clean for their era.

  The film that was made from it, and which I hurried to see, is guilty of the opposite sins. It’s not at all naïve. Of course, it’s hard to remain ingenuous when tens of millions of dollars are at stake, but it could have been polite, and the progenitors of this film were scarcely that; as for the characters, they appear surprisingly amazed and dirty. Our ancestors were not supposed to be gentlemen, and they certainly didn’t wash often, but, given that they had learned to wear the skins of the animals they killed, it’s not credible that they hadn’t also invented a way of fastening them around their hips: I don’t mean for purposes of modesty (though that must have been invented fairly soon) but for protection from the cold.

  Garments like the ones we see in the film are pointless; they serve only to convey to the spectator the redundant notion that these savages were very savage. I think it’s likely that they possessed a certain physical nobility—precisely because they were animal-like. Here, instead, they are unpleasant and ridiculous ogres: they move with a clumsiness that doesn’t seem compatible with hunting; they hardly ever run, and when they do they are slow and unsteady. But perhaps the fault lies with the actors, whom the scientific consultants have forced to go barefoot on all terrains without giving them sufficient training.

  A few words should be said about the consultants. Anthony Burgess, who already has on his conscience A Clockwo
rk Orange, was not ashamed to appear in the credits as the author of the dialogue: now, there is no dialogue—there are only shouts, grunts, and vague verbal cues from which a single clearly articulated word emerges, atra, evidently meaning “fire.” Burgess didn’t work too hard; but maybe he was paid by the piece. Nor was Desmond Morris ashamed to be cited as a consultant for the movements. Morris had already seemed a little dubious in his famous book The Naked Ape (which is man); and here his dubiousness is confirmed.

  Of course, pornography is an art of all times and all places, and so we may think that it responds to a human need. It’s silly and pointless to try to repress it. The way should be open to pornographic films and books, but both should be taken as such, for connoisseurs and experts. Normal commercial practice, and good sense, prohibits us from selling vinegar with a label that says oil and vice versa. Morris has done this, disappointing enthusiasts on both sides, anthropologists and lovers of porn.

  Ultimately, the characters do not move in interesting ways: the only amusing gestural sequence may be the one in which the protagonist, returning from the victorious expedition, “recounts” his adventures sitting beside the fire that he himself has recaptured. He encountered mammoths, and he imitates their curved tusks by holding under his chin the skull of a goat with twisted horns; with his hand and forearm he imitates the movements of the proboscis. His listeners understand and laugh. But Morris, in keeping with the vocation mentioned above, has introduced another gestural theme: there is a woman, a little less prehistoric than the other characters, who teaches the foreigner the “correct” position for coupling: these foreigners, it seems, had never thought of it. He learns rapidly and, in so doing, becomes civilized.