Message from the Shadows

by Antonio Tabucchi

  Copyright © Antonio Tabucchi

  English language translation © Anne Milano Appel, Martha Cooley, Frances Frenaye, Elizabeth Harris, Tim Parks, Antonio Romani, and Janice M. Thresher

  First Archipelago Books Edition, 2019

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  “Letter from Casablanca,” “Little Gatsby,” “Voices,” and “The Reversal Game” from Letter from Casablanca and “Little Misunderstandings of No Importance,” “Islands,” “The Trains That Go to Madras,” and “Cinema” from Little Misunderstandings of No Importance are reprinted with permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.

  Archipelago Books

  232 3rd Street #A111

  Brooklyn, NY 11215

  www.archipelagobooks.org

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request

  Distributed by Penguin Random House

  www.penguinrandomhouse.com

  Cover art: Mário Cesariny de Vasconcelos

  Ebook ISBN 9781939810168

  This book was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

  Archipelago Books also gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Lannan Foundation, the Nimick Forbesway Foundation, and the Carl Lesnor Family Foundation.

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  The Reversal Game

  Clouds

  Letter from Casablanca

  The Cheshire Cat

  Night, Sea, or Distance

  Message from the Shadows

  The Woman from Porto Pim: A Story

  Islands

  The Translation

  Wanderlust

  The Trains That Go to Madras

  The phrase that follows this is false: the phrase that precedes this is true

  Bucharest Hasn’t Changed a Bit

  Little Misunderstandings of No Importance

  Drip, Drop, Drippity-Drop

  The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico

  Against Time

  Little Gatsby

  Cinema

  Small Blue Whales Strolling about the Azores

  Yo me enamoré del aire

  Voices

  Postscript: A Whale’s View of Man

  The Reversal Game

  Le puéril revers des choses.

  – Lautréamont

  When Maria do Carmo Meneses de Sequeira died, I was looking at Velásquez’s Las Meninas in the Prado Museum. It was noon, July, and I didn’t know she was dying. I stood looking at that painting until a quarter past twelve, then I left slowly, trying to carry away in my memory the expression of the figure in the background, and I remember recalling Maria do Carmo’s words: the key to the painting is in that figure in the background – it’s a reversal game. I crossed the garden and took a bus to Puerta del Sol, had lunch at the hotel, a nice cold gazpacho and some fruit, and to escape the midday heat I went to lie down in the shadows of my room. The telephone woke me around five, or maybe it didn’t wake me, I found myself in a strange half-sleep, the city traffic humming outside, the air conditioner humming in my room, though in my consciousness this was a little blue tugboat chugging through the mouth of the Tagus at twilight, while Maria do Carmo and I watched. You have a call from Lisbon, the telephone operator said on the line, then I heard the electric crackling of the switch and a man’s voice, low and neutral, asking me my name, saying: this is Nuno Meneses de Sequeira, Maria do Carmo died at noon, the funeral will be tomorrow evening at five, I’m calling at her direct request. There was a click and I said: hello hello. They’ve hung up, sir, the operator said, you’ve been disconnected. I took the midnight Lusitania Express. I had only a small suitcase with the barest necessities, and I asked the concierge to hold my room for two days. The station was almost deserted at that hour. I hadn’t reserved a berth and the conductor sent me to the back of the train, to a compartment with only one other passenger, a snoring, fat gentleman. I resigned myself to a sleepless night, but to my surprise, slept soundly until the outskirts of Talevera de la Raina. Then I lay motionless, awake, staring out the dark window at the empty darkness of Estremadura. I had many hours to think about Maria do Carmo.

  2

  Saudade isn’t a word, Maria do Carmo used to say, it’s a category of the spirit, that only the Portuguese are able to feel, because they have this word in order to say they have it. A great poet said this. And then she’d start talking about Fernando Pessoa. I’d come to pick her up at her home on Rua das Chagas around six in the evening. She would be waiting for me behind a window. When she saw me turn onto Largo de Camões, she’d open the heavy front door and we would go down toward the port, wandering along Rua dos Fanqueiros and Rua dos Douradores. Let’s follow a Fernandian itinerary, she’d say, these were the haunts of Bernardo Soares, assistant bookkeeper for the city of Lisbon, semi-heteronomous by definition, this was where he practiced his metaphysics, right here in these barbershops. At that hour, Baixa was crowded with hurrying, shouting people, the navigation companies and commercial businesses were closing up their offices, and long lines formed at the tram stops, you could hear the cries of the shoeshine boys and newspaper vendors. We’d slip into the confusion of Rua da Prata, cross Rua da Conceição, and walk down toward the Terreiro do Paço, white and melancholic, where the first ferries crowded with commuters were sailing for the opposite bank of the Tagus. We’re already in an Álvaro de Campos zone, Maria do Carmo would say, in just a few streets we’ve passed from one heteronym to another.

  At that hour, the Lisbon light was white by the river and pink on the hills, the eighteenth-century buildings looked like an oleograph, and the Tagus was furrowed with boats. We’d walk on toward the first piers, those piers where Alvaro de Campos went to wait for no one, Maria do Carmo would say, and she’d recite some lines from the Ode Marítima, the passage where the outline of a small steamer shows on the horizon and Campos feels a flywheel begin to revolve in his chest. Dusk was falling on the city, the first lights were going on, the Tagus shone with iridescent reflections. There was a great sadness in Maria do Carmo’s eyes. Maybe you’re too young to understand, I wouldn’t have at your age, I wouldn’t have imagined that life was like a childhood game I once played in Buenos Aires. Pessoa’s a genius because he understood the flipping of things, of the real and the imagined, his poetry is a juego del revés.

  3

  The train had stopped, you could see the lights of the border town from the window, my travel companion had the surprised, uneasy expression of someone who’d been jarred awake by the light, the policeman carefully thumbed through my passport, you come to our country quite a bit, he said, what’s so interesting here? Baroque poetry, I answered. What’d you say? He murmured. A lady, I said, a lady with a strange name, Violante do Céu. A pretty lady? he asked slyly. Could be, I said, she’s been dead three centuries and always lived in a convent – a nun. He shook his head and smoothed his mustache in a knowing manner, stamped my visa, and handed me my passport. You Italians always love to kid, he said, you like Totò? A lot, I said, how about you? I’ve seen all his movies, he said, I like him more than Alberto Sordi.

  Our compartment was the last to be checked. The door closed with a thud. A few seconds later someone on the platform waved a lant
ern and the train started off. The lights went out again, only a pale-blue lamp remained, it was the middle of the night, I was entering Portugal as I had so many times before in my life. Maria do Carmo was dead, I felt an odd sensation, as though I were looking down from above at another me who, one July night, inside a compartment of a semi-dark train, was entering a foreign country to go and see a woman that he knew well and who was dead. I’d never felt this sensation before and it occurred to me that this had something to do with its reverse.

  4

  The game went like this, Maria do Carmo would say, we formed a circle, four or five children, we counted off, and the one whose turn it was went into the middle, he’d pick anyone he pleased and throw out a word, any word, mariposa, for instance, and the one chosen had to immediately say its reverse – not thinking it over – because the other was counting – one two three four five – and at five he won, but if you managed to say asopiram in time, then you were king of the game, and you went into the middle and threw your word out at whomever you pleased.

  As we walked up to the city, Maria do Carmo would tell me about her childhood in Buenos Aires as a daughter of exiles, and I’d imagine a courtyard outside the city, full of children, sad, impoverished holidays, it was full of Italians, she’d say, my father had an old gramophone with a horn, and he’d brought some fado records from Portugal, it was 1939, the radio was telling us Franco’s forces had taken Madrid, and my father cried and played records, that’s how I remember his last months, him in his pajamas, sitting in his armchair, silently crying, listening to the fados of Hilário and Tomás Alcaide, and I would escape to the courtyard and play the juego del revés.

  Night had fallen. The Terreiro do Paço was almost deserted, the bronze horseman, green from the salty air, seemed absurd, let’s get something to eat in Alfama, Maria do Carmo would say, arroz de cabidela, maybe, a Sephardic dish, the Jews don’t wring a chicken’s neck, they lop its head off and use the blood for the rice, I know a dive that makes it like no place else, it’s five minutes from here. And a yellow tram would go by, slow, rattling, full of tired faces. I know what you’re thinking, she’d say, why did I marry my husband, why do I live in that absurd mansion, why am I here playing the countess, when he arrived in Buenos Aires he was a polite, elegant officer, and I was just a girl, poor and melancholic, I couldn’t bear it anymore, staring out the window at that courtyard, and he took me away from all that grayness, from that house with its dim lights and the radio on at dinner – I can’t leave him – in spite of everything, I can’t forget.

  5

  My travel companion asked if he might have the pleasure of inviting me for a coffee. He was an overly polite, jovial Spaniard who often traveled on that line. In the dining car we chatted pleasantly, exchanged formal impressions, riddled with clichés. The Portuguese have good coffee, he said, but this doesn’t help them much, or so it would seem, they’re so melancholic, they lack salero, wouldn’t you say? I said that perhaps they’d replaced it with saudade, and he agreed, though he preferred salero. We only have one life to live, he said, one must know how to live it, dear sir. I didn’t ask him how he managed this himself, and we moved to something else – sports, I think – he adored skiing, the mountains, from this perspective, Portugal was truly impossible to stay in for too long. I objected that there were mountains here, too, oh, the Serra da Estrela! he answered, imitation mountains, to reach two thousand meters, you need to put up an antenna. It’s a maritime country, I said, a country of people who plunge into the ocean, they’ve given the world dignified, urbane madmen, slave-traders, and homesick poets. By the way, he said, what’s the name of that poet you mentioned tonight? Soror Vilente do Céu, I said, her name would be splendid in Spanish too, Madre Violante del Cielo, a great Baroque poetess, she spent her life exalting her desire for a world she renounced. She can’t be better than Góngora, right? he asked, worried. Different, I said, with less salero and more saudade, of course.

  6

  While the arroz de cabidela tasted refined, it looked revolting. It was served on a large terracotta tray with a wooden spoon, the boiled blood and wine forming a thick, brownish sauce; marble tables stood between a row of barrels and a zinc bar dominated by portly Mr. Tavares, at midnight a gaunt fado singer arrived, along with an old man carrying a viola and a distinguished gentleman carrying a guitar, the singer sang ancient fados, faintly, languidly, and Mrs. Tavares turned out the lights and lit candles on shelves, the customers there for dinner had already left, and only the regulars remained, the place filled up with smoke; after every finale came subdued, solemn applause, some voices called out Amor é agua que corre, Travessa da Palma, Maria do Carmo was pale, or maybe it was the candlelight, or maybe she was drunk, she had a fixed stare and enlarged pupils, and the candlelight danced in her eyes, she seemed more beautiful than usual, she lit a cigarette with a dreamy expression, all right, enough now, she’d say, let’s go. Saudade, yes, but in small doses, or it’ll give you indigestion. The Alfama district was half-empty, we stopped there at the Miradouro de Santa Luzia, by a pergola thick with bougainvillea, and leaned over the rail looking at the lights on the Tagus. Maria do Carmo recited “Lisbon Revisited” by Álvaro de Campos, a poem with a person standing at the same window from his childhood, but he’s no longer the same person and it’s no longer the same window, because men and things are changed by time; we started down toward my hotel, she took my hand and said: listen, who knows what we are or where we are or why we are, listen, let’s live life like a revés – take tonight – you must think that you’re me holding you tight and I’ll think I’m you holding me tight.

  7

  Anyway, my travel companion said, it’s not like I love Góngora, I don’t understand him – you need the right vocabulary – besides, I’m not cut out for poetry, I prefer el cuento, Blasco Ibàñez, for instance, do you like Blasco Ibàñez? A bit, I said, maybe the short story’s not my genre. Who, then – how about Pérez Galdós? Yes, I said, now we’re getting somewhere. The waiter, with a sleepy expression, brought us coffee on a shining tray, I’m making an exception for you gentlemen because the dining car is closed, that’ll be twenty escudos. In spite of everything, said my travel companion, the Portuguese are kind. Why in spite of everything, I said, they are kind – let’s be fair.

  We were going past construction sites and factories, it wasn’t full daylight yet. They wanted to be on Greenwich time, but in reality, according to the sun, it’s an hour earlier – say, have you ever seen a Portuguese bullfight? – they don’t kill the bull, you know, the toreador dances around it for half an hour, then makes a symbolic sword thrust, then in walks a herd of cows wearing cowbells, the bull joins the herd and everyone goes home, olé, now does that sound like a bullfight to you? Maybe a more elegant version of one, I said, killing doesn’t always mean slaughter, sometimes it only takes a gesture. Come on, he said, the battle between man and bull has to be mortal, otherwise it’s just silly playacting. But all ceremonies are a stylization, I objected, this one preserves only the shell, the gesture, which seems more noble, more abstract. My travel companion seemed to be contemplating. Well, perhaps, he said, sounding skeptical, ah, look, we’re outside Lisbon, we should go back to the compartment and get our luggage ready.

  8

  It’s rather delicate, we’ve been afraid to ask you, we’ve discussed it, you might find it somewhat inconvenient, I mean, the worst that might happen is they’ll refuse your entrance visa at the border, listen, we don’t want to keep anything back, Jorge was going to be the courier, he’s the only one with a UN passport, you know he’s in Winnipeg now, he teaches at a Canadian university, we still haven’t figured out how to replace him. Nine at night, Piazza Navona, on a bench. I looked at him, maybe I seemed confused, I didn’t know what to think. I felt slightly embarrassed, ill at ease, like talking with someone you’ve known a long time who suddenly reveals something unexpected.

  We don’t want to
involve you, it would have to be something exceptional, believe me, we feel terrible about having to ask, and listen, even if you say no, it won’t affect our friendship, so, just think about it, we don’t need an answer right away, just know you’d really be helping us out. We went for a gelato at a café on the piazza, we chose a small, outdoor table, at a distance from others. Francisco looked tense, maybe he was embarrassed, too: he knew this was something that even if I refused, I wouldn’t be able to forget about either, no, maybe he was afraid I might regret it. We ordered two coffee granitas. We were quiet a long while, slowly sipping our frozen drinks. There are five letters, Francisco said, and a sum of money for the families of the two writers arrested last month. He told me their names and waited for me to say something. I stayed quiet and sipped my water. I don’t think I need to tell you that the money’s clean, it’s from three democratic parties in Italy we contacted, who want to demonstrate their solidarity, if you think it’s fitting, I can arrange a meeting for you with representatives of the parties in question, they’ll confirm things. I said I didn’t think it was fitting, we paid, and walked around the piazza. All right, I said, I’ll leave in three days. He shook my hand briskly and thanked me, now remember what you have to do, it’s simple, he wrote a number on a ticket, when you arrive in Lisbon, telephone this number, and if a man answers, hang up, and keep trying until you get a woman on the phone, then you have to say: a new translation of Fernando Pessoa has come out. She will tell you how to meet, she’s the one who keeps the exiles in Rome in touch with their families back home.