by Primo Levi
Nothing is known about the mechanism by which the knall kills, or at least nothing about it has been published to date. Knall, in German, means crack, bang, crash; abknallen, in the slang of the Second World War, came to mean “kill with a firearm,” whereas the firing of a knall is typically silent. Maybe the name—unless it has a completely different origin, or is an abbreviation—alludes to the moment of death, which in effect is instantaneous: the person who is struck—even if only superficially, on the hand or on the ear—falls lifeless immediately, and the corpse shows no sign of trauma, except for a small ring-shaped bruise at the point of contact, along the knall’s geometric axis.
A knall can be used only once, then is thrown away. This is a neat, clean town, and knalls are not usually found on the sidewalks but only in the garbage cans on street corners and at tram stops. Exploded knalls are darker and more flaccid than unused ones; they are easily recognizable. It’s not that they’ve all been employed for criminal purposes: fortunately, we are still a long way from this. But in certain circles carrying a knall—quite openly, in a breast pocket, or attached to the belt, or behind one ear the way a pork butcher carries a pencil—has become de rigueur. Now, since knalls have an expiration date, like antibiotics or film, many people feel obliged to fire them before they expire, not so much out of prudence as because the firing of a knall has unusual effects, which, though they have been described and studied only in part, are already widely known among consumers. It shatters stone and cement and in general all solid materials—the harder the material the more easily. It pierces wood and paper, sometimes setting them on fire; it melts metals; in water it creates a tiny steaming whirlpool, which, however, disappears immediately. In addition, with a skillfully directed shot one can light a cigarette or even a pipe—a bravura move that, in spite of the disproportionate expense, many young people practice, precisely because of the risk involved. In fact, it has been suggested that this is why the majority of knalls are used for lawful purposes.
The knall is undoubtedly a handy device: it isn’t metal, and hence its presence is not detected by common magnetic instruments or X rays; it weighs and costs little; its action is silent, swift, and sure; it’s very easy to dispose of. Some psychologists, however, insist that these qualities are not sufficient to explain the knall’s proliferation. They maintain that its use would be limited to criminal and terrorist circles if setting it off required a simple movement, such as pressure or friction; however, the knall goes off only if it is maneuvered in a particular way, a precise and rhythmic sequence of twists in one direction and then the other—an operation, in short, that requires skill and dexterity, a little like unlocking the combination of a safe. This operation, it should be noted, is only hinted at but not described in the instructions for use that accompany every box. Therefore, shooting the knall is the object of a secret rite in which initiates indoctrinate neophytes, a rite that has taken on a ceremonial and esoteric character, and is performed in cleverly camouflaged clubs. We might recall here, as an extreme case, the grim discovery that was made in April by the police in F.: in the basement of a restaurant a group of fifteen twelve-year-old boys and a youth of twenty-three were found dead, all clutching in their right hand a discharged knall, and all displaying on the tip of the left ring finger the typical circular bruise.
The police believe that it’s better not to draw too much attention to the knall, because doing so would only encourage its spread: this seems to me a questionable opinion, springing, perhaps, from the considerable impotence of the police themselves. At the moment, the only means at their disposal for aid in capturing the biggest knall distributors, whose profits must be monstrous, are informers and anonymous telephone calls.
Being hit by a knall is certainly fatal, but only at close range; beyond a meter, it’s completely harmless, and doesn’t even hurt. This feature has had some unusual consequences. Movie-going has decreased significantly, because audience habits have changed: those who go to the movies, alone or in groups, leave at least two seats between them and the other spectators, and, if this isn’t possible, often they prefer to turn in their tickets. The same thing happens on the trams, on the subways, and in the stadiums: people, in short, have developed a “crowd reflex,” similar to that of many animals, who can’t bear the close proximity of others of their kind. Also, the behavior of people on the streets has changed: many prefer to remain at home, or to stay off the sidewalks, thus exposing themselves to other dangers, or obstructing traffic. Many, meeting face to face in hallways or on sidewalks, avoid going around each other, resisting each other like magnetic poles.
The experts have not shown excessive concern about the dangers connected with the widespread use of the knall. They would observe that this device does not spill blood, which is reassuring. In fact, it’s indisputable that the great majority of men feel the need, acute or chronic, to kill their neighbor or themselves, but it’s not a matter of generic killing: in every instance they have the desire “to shed blood,” “to wash away with blood” their own infamy or that of others, “to give their blood” to their country or other institutions. Those who strangle (themselves) or poison (themselves) are much less highly esteemed. In brief, blood, along with fire and wine, is at the center of a grand, glowing-red emotional nexus, vivid in a thousand dreams, poems, and idiomatic expressions: it is sacred and profane, and in its presence man, like the bull and the shark, becomes agitated and fierce. Now, precisely because the knall kills without bloodshed, it’s doubtful that it will last. Perhaps that’s why, in spite of its obvious advantages, it has not, so far, become a danger to society.
In the Park
It’s not hard to imagine who would be waiting for Antonio Casella on the pier: James Collins was waiting for him, in velvet trousers, tanned and relaxed. Antonio wondered whether it would be kinder to ask about the result of his conversation with the publisher or not, but James anticipated him:
“You were quite right—he rejected the manuscript. But he gave me such precise and encouraging suggestions that I immediately began to write again. No, not about you: it’s a somewhat fictionalized story about my inventions—their Entstehungsgeschichte, their origin, how they occurred to me. Besides, as I see it, it’s better for you this way: they told me that you made yourself into a character. Much better—you have a better chance of staying on for a while. My Antonio, in fact, was a little weak.”
Antonio listened distractedly: he was too intent on observing the landscape. The boat that brought him had made a long journey up a broad, clear river that ran between thickly forested banks. The current was fast and silent, there was not a breath of wind, the temperature was pleasantly cool, and the forest was as motionless as if made of stone. The water reflected the colors of a sky such as Antonio had never seen: dark blue overhead, emerald green in the east, and violet with wide orange stripes in the west. When the rhythmic rumble of the motor stopped, Antonio became aware of a faint thunder that seemed to saturate the atmosphere. “It’s the waterfall,” James explained to him. “It’s right on the border.”
They went along the pier, of rough square blocks, and set off together on a trail that wound its way up around the rampart from which the waterfall cascaded. They were hit by blasts of spray, and the sky was filled with intertwining rainbows. James had politely taken Antonio’s suitcase from him; it was very light. Majestic, exotic trees, of many different species, grew on both sides of the path. Flowers hung from the branches, yellow and flesh-colored—some even seemed made of flesh—and trailed in garlands to the ground. There were also fruits, long and rounded; the air held a light, pleasant but slightly musky scent, like that of chestnut blossoms.
At the bar marking the border, no one asked him anything: the two guards saluted him, a hand to their visors, as if they had been expecting him. A little farther on, Antonio entered an office where he was officially registered; a courteous and impersonal functionary checked off his name, handed him a ration card for food, clothes, shoes, and cigaret
tes, and then said:
“You’re an autobiographer, right?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“We know everything. Look!” He gestured behind him, where a card catalogue occupied an entire wall. “The fact is that at the moment I don’t have a single chalet available. The last one we assigned yesterday to Papillon. You’ll have to adjust to having a roommate for a few days—another autobiographer, of course. Here, there’s a place at 525, with François Villon. Mr. Collins will show you—it’s not very far.”
James smiled. “You’ll be amused. François is the most unpredictable of our fellow-citizens. He used to live with Julius Caesar, but he got out: he pulled some strings, and was assigned a custom, prefab house on the shores of Lake Polevoy. They didn’t get along: they quarreled because of Vercingetorix, then François courted Cleopatra intensely, in Shakespeare’s version, and Caesar was jealous.”
“What do you mean, in Shakespeare’s version?”
“We have five or six Cleopatras: Pushkin’s, Shaw’s, Gautier’s, and so on. They can’t stand one another.”
“Ah. And so it isn’t true that Caesar and Pompey are caulkers?”
“Who ever told you that?” asked James, in amazement.
“Rabelais II, 30. He also says that Hannibal is a chicken seller, Romulus a cobbler, Pope Julius II goes around selling pies, and Livia scrapes the verdigris from the pans.”
“That’s nonsense. As I told you back in Milan, here people either do nothing or do the job they were born to. Besides, Rabelais isn’t a character, and he’s never been here: what he says he must have heard from Pantagruel, or some other fibber in his court.”
They had left the waterfall behind and were advancing over a broad, slightly undulating plateau. Suddenly, with incredible speed, the sky darkened; within a few moments a violent whirlwind had arisen, and it began to rain and hail. James explained to Antonio that it was always like this here: the weather was never insignificant. There was always something that made it worthy of description. It was either dazzling with colors and aromas or shaken by raging tempests; sometimes there was scorching heat, at other times rock-splitting cold. Northern lights and earthquakes were frequent, and bolides and meteors fell every night.
They took shelter in a shed, and Antonio realized uneasily that someone was already there: uneasily because the someone didn’t have a face. Under his beret only a convex, spongy pink surface was visible, the lower part covered by a badly shaved beard.
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” said James, who had seen the horror appear on Antonio’s face. “There are a lot of them like that here, but they don’t last long. They are unsuccessful characters: sometimes they get by for a season, maybe even less. They don’t speak, they don’t see, and they don’t hear, and they disappear in the space of a few months. Those who do last, however, like (we hope) you and me, resemble the weather here—they have something singular about them, and so in general they’re interesting and sympathetic, even if they tend to repeat themselves. Here, for example: take a look through that window and tell me if you recognize anyone.”
Beside the shed there was a low wooden building with a thatched roof, and on the door hung a sign: on one side had been painted a full moon, and on the other a stormy sea from which emerged the broad back of a whale with its tall spout of vapor. Through the window you could see a smoky, low-ceilinged interior, illuminated by oil lamps: there was a table in the foreground, littered with mugs of beer, both empty and full, and around it four hot, excited figures. From outside one could hear only an indistinct roar.
Antonio, inspired by his ambitions as a reader, considered for a long time but couldn’t figure it out. “You’re asking too much. If I could at least hear what they’re saying…”
“Of course I’m asking too much. But it was only to give you a preliminary idea of our environment. The thin balding one with his back to us, who pays and doesn’t drink, is Calandrino;* opposite him, the fat greasy one, with the three days’ beard, is the Good Soldier Sweik, who drinks and doesn’t pay. The elderly fellow on the left, with the top hat and those tiny eyeglasses, is Pickwick, and the last, with eyes like coals, skin like leather, and his shirt unbuttoned, who doesn’t drink and doesn’t pay, doesn’t sing, doesn’t pay attention to the others, and says things that no one is listening to, is the Ancient Mariner.”
As suddenly as it had darkened, the sky cleared, and a fresh, warm wind arose; the wet earth exhaled an iridescent fog that the breeze tore to shreds, and it dried up in a flash. The two resumed their walk. On both sides of the street appeared, in no apparent order, thatched huts and noble marble palaces, villas great and small, shady parks, temple ruins, giant housing projects with laundry hung out to dry, skyscrapers and tin-and-cardboard hovels. James pointed out to Antonio the garden of the Finzi-Contini, the house of Buddenbrooks and that of Usher side by side; Uncle Tom’s cabin and the Castle of Verona with the falcon, the deer, and the black horse. A little beyond, the road widened into a small paved square, surrounded by dark, grimy buildings; through the entrances one could see steep, dank stairways, and courtyards full of rubbish, ringed by rusty balconies. There was an odor of boiled cabbage, of lye, and of fog. Antonio immediately recognized a neighborhood of old Milan, or, more precisely, the Carrobio, caught for eternity as it must have been two hundred years ago; he was trying in the uncertain light to decipher the faded signs of the shops when, from the doorway numbered vottcentvott, Giovannino Bongeri* himself jumped out, lean, quick, pale as one who never sees the sun, cheerful, chattering, and as eager for affection as an ill-treated puppy: he wore a tight, ragged suit, somewhat patched, but meticulously clean and pressed. He immediately addressed the two men with the ease of an old acquaintance, yet called them “Most Illustrious”: he made a long speech in dialect, full of digressions, which Antonio understood half of and James didn’t understand at all; it seemed that he had been wronged, and had been wounded, but not to the point of losing his dignity as a citizen and an artisan; he was angry, but not to the point of losing his head. In his speech, which was witty and long-winded, one heard, under the bruising grind of daily toil, poverty, and misfortune, genuine candor, solid human goodness, and ancient hope. Antonio, in a flash of intuition, saw that in the phantoms of that neighborhood lived something perfect and eternal, and that angry little Giovannino, the junkman’s helper, repeatedly beaten, mocked, and betrayed— son of the angry little Milanese Carletto Porta—was a purer, fuller character than Solomon in all his glory.
While Giovannini spoke, Barberina came to join him, pink and white as a flower, with lace cap and filigree hat pins, her eyes a little keener than honesty calls for. Her husband took her under the arm and off they went toward La Scala: after a few steps the woman turned and shot the two strangers an inquisitive glance.
Antonio and James started off again on a dusty path between bramble hedges: James delayed a moment to greet Valentino in his new clothes, playing on a stunted lawn with Pin di Carrugio Lungo.* A little farther on, the path followed a bend in a big muddy river. A rusty broken-down steamer was anchored near the bank. A group of white men were burying something in a grave dug in the mud, and an insolent-looking black man stuck his head up above the trench and announced, with fierce disdain, “Mistah Kurtz—he dead.” The tone of that voice, the setting, the silence, the heat, even the heavy swamp breath of the river were precisely what Antonio had always imagined.
He said to James, “It’s clear that one wouldn’t get bored here. But what about practical needs? If, for example, one had to have a shoe resoled, or a tooth pulled?”
“We have some modest social services,” James answered, “and the medical system is efficient, but with staff from the outside. It isn’t that there’s a shortage of doctors here, but they don’t practice willingly. Often they are of an antiquated school, or they lack the equipment, or, again, they ended up here through some famous mistake—precisely what made them problematic, and therefore characters. Besides, you’ll soo
n see that the sociology of the park is peculiar. I don’t think you’ll find a baker or an accountant; as far as I know, there’s one milkman, a single naval engineer, and a sole spinner of silk. You’ll look in vain for a plumber, an electrician, a welder, a mechanic, or a chemist, and I wonder why. Instead, in addition to the doctors I mentioned, you’ll find a flood of explorers, lovers, cops and robbers, musicians, painters, and poets, countesses, prostitutes, warriors, knights, foundlings, bullies, and crowned heads. Prostitutes above all, in a percentage absolutely disproportionate to actual need. In short, it’s better not to seek here an image of the world you left. I mean, a faithful image: because you’ll find one, yes, but multicolored, dyed, and distorted, and so you’ll realize how foolish it is to form a concept of the Rome of the Caesars through Virgil, Catullus, and Quo Vadis. Here you will not find a sea captain who has not been shipwrecked, a wife who has not been an adulteress, a painter who does not live in poverty for long years and then become famous. Just like the sky, which here is always spectacular. Especially the sunsets: often they last from early afternoon until night, and sometimes darkness falls and then the light returns and the sun sets again, as if it were granting an encore.”
James interrupted his lecture to point out to Antonio an edifice they were approaching:
“Sooner or later the Michelin Guide to the Park will come out, and you’ll see, this will have three stars.” It was a dazzling white villa, or maybe a tiny fortress, immersed in the thick foliage of an old forest: the outer walls had no windows, and were topped with a jagged edge that might be a battlement.