English translation copyright © 2018 by André Naffis-Sahely
First Skyhorse edition © 2019
First English translation printed in 2018 by Darf Publishers, UK.
Originally published by Morcelliana in 2006 as I confini dell’ombra.
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Print ISBN: 978-1-628-72836-1
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-628-72839-2
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
Translator’s Note
Author’s Note
Officers’ Tales
New Officers’ Tales
Twenty-Four Colonial Tales
Translator’s Note
This middle section of Alessandro Spina’s The Confines of the Shadow: In Lands Overseas, is set in the nervously restless years prior to the outbreak of World War II, a time when the Italian colonists in Libya’s cities of Tripoli and Benghazi felt more confident than ever in their courageous industriousness as they attempted to refashion the inhospitable African land beneath their feet into a replica of their beloved motherland. A few exceptions aside, all the stories in Colonial Tales are set in Benghazi during the 1930s and early 1940s and – unlike in the other instalments of Spina’s eleven-volume epic – all of the characters are Italian. Not a single Libyan makes an appearance here and that is the point: it is part of Spina’s pointed critique at colonial Italy’s refusal to even acknowledge its native subjects. Indeed, the Italians grew so confident in their unchallenged hold over the quarta sponda – or ‘fourth shore,’ squaring the Italian boot’s three other shores – over these years, that they officially annexed the province to Italy in 1939, by which time Italian settlers made up over a third of Libya’s urban population and owned extensive land holdings in the interior of the country. Those familiar with narratives of the British presence during the Raj will recognise the intimately theatrical scenes Spina sets for his readers as he chronicles an episode in Italian history that has been nearly obliterated from the country’s collective memory. Time stands perfectly still in Spina’s Benghazi while the ladies chatter and their husbands talk of war. The city’s wide avenues are dotted with cafés where people gossip and orchestras play, yet Spina’s narrators often take the reader on a tour of the surrounding area’s Greek ruins – the remnants of the once-powerful city-states of the Libyan Pentapolis. Spina’s tableau is vast: his stories feature haughty grande dames, industrialists, aristocrats, politicians, revolutionaries, servants, functionaries, prostitutes, dressmakers, policemen, school teachers, poets, musicians and knaves – whether in uniform or not. Nevertheless, this section of Spina’s epic rightfully retains a militaristic feel: after all, the military was in charge in Italian Libya, and as such, many of the stories are set in the Officers’ Club, where the soldiers sleep with one another’s wives, scheme against one another, stage one-man shows, eat, drink, philosophise and discuss Italy’s chances in the coming war, blissfully unaware that their artificial presence in that conquered land is soon to vanish entirely. As I mentioned in my introduction to Volume One of The Confines of the Shadow, Spina’s officers perfectly typify his concept of the ‘shadow’: their minds are haunted by the maddening darkness – or hollowness – of the colonial enterprise, and yet they are simultaneously unable to extricate themselves from it, bound to serve their masters – in this case the Fascist bureaucracy and its Supreme Leader, Benito Mussolini – until the bitter end. And bitter it was.
Author’s Note
This sequence of novels and short stories takes as its subject the Italian experience in Cyrenaica. The Young Maronite (1971) discusses the 1911 war prompted by Giolitti, The Marriage of Omar (1973) narrates the ensuing truce and the attempt by the two peoples to strike a compromise before the rise of Fascism. The Nocturnal Visitor (1979) chronicles the end of the twenty-year Libyan resistance; Officers’ Tales (1967) focuses on the triumph of colonialism – albeit this having been achieved when the end of Italian hegemony already loomed in sight and the Second World War appeared inevitable – and The Psychological Comedy (1992), which ends with Italy’s retreat from Libya and the fleeing of settlers. Entry into Babylon (1976) concentrates on Libyan independence in 1951, Cairo Nights (1986) illustrates the early years of the Sanussi Monarchy and the looming spectre of Pan-Arab nationalism, while The Shore of the Lesser Life (1997) examines the profound social and political changes that occurred when large oil and gas deposits were discovered in the mid-1960s. Each text can be read independently or as part of the sequence. Either mode of reading will produce different – but equally legitimate – impressions.i
i The dates indicate the original publication dates of each of the novels in the original Italian.
Officers’ Tales
THE COUNT OF LUNA
‘You must learn how to behave in respectable circles,’ Mrs Macchi said. ‘The whole town frequents Mrs Boratti’s house. You’re eleven years old, and five or six years from now, you’ll be a lady. If you keep getting invited to that house, it’ll certainly come in handy…’
…when you want to get married, Emma finished her thought.
Mrs Boratti had studied vocal pedagogy and could sing a fairly decent soprano, which she kept fine-tuned by practicing while Emma’s father accompanied her on the piano. ‘Mrs Boratti is so very kind; needless to say, we’re not up to her usual standards. But you see, she behaves as though we weren’t so different at all.’ On more than one occasion, Emma had tried to explain that she didn’t want to go to Mrs Boratti’s house any more, that those little pastries always made her feel nauseous – but her mother didn’t want to hear any of it, and she insisted on dragging her daughter along with her anyway.
‘Mrs Boratti always humiliates us!’
‘It’s not true: she’s a very kind lady, and she’s always so sweet with you. Besides,’ she peevishly added, ‘if what you say is true and she does humiliate us, then it’s best you get used to it.’
Emma had even tried to repay Mrs Boratti’s kindness by being unkind, but the latter pretended not to notice. Instead, as soon as they’d returned home, Emma’s mother would smack her daughter and say: ‘You better not do that again for your own sake, and remember that Mrs Boratti is paying for those hours we spend with her.’ Emma eventually resigned herself to the situation. She would turn the pages of the music scores, drink tea and eat pastries. She simply couldn’t understand why there had to be so much drama in order to secure that cheque at the end of every month.
‘Look!’ her mother exclaimed in cheerful satisfaction. ‘There are a lot of people today. Emma, make sure you help the lady when the tea is brought out.’
Standing in the vestibule, Mrs Macchi tried to see who was in the main hall. ‘Important people, very important people. Make sure you curtsy.’
Resigning herself, Emma curtsied before all the l
adies. ‘Such a pretty girl, such a pretty girl…’ Captain Mosca’s wife said. Mrs Macchi was introduced to people she didn’t know: they were so courteous, almost thoughtfully so. Mrs Macchi’s cheerful self-contentedness grew apace: the ritual of introductions felt like an initiation rite, and had the rhythm and meaningfulness of a sacred dance. ‘You see?’ Mrs Macchi whispered into Emma’s ear, as though she’d just stepped backstage for a brief moment, ‘even the Prefect is here.’ Emma even curtsied before a gentleman who’d been awkwardly standing next to the window. Captain Mosca’s wife laughed, but given that Mrs Macchi was absorbed by all the introductions, she didn’t notice anything at all. The gentleman looked as though he were saturated with water and was as flaccid as an octopus. Emma confusedly realised that she had humiliated him. Yet remedying the situation was out of the question: the gentleman was already standing in front of Mrs Russo. She curtsied, leaving the greenish gentleman to stew in the bitterness of that humiliation.
Standing next to the piano, an officer leafed through the music scores. The complicated ritual of bows and introductions didn’t interest him in the slightest. Emma noticed him as soon as she’d sat down. He stood apart from everyone else, but his presence featured heavily in people’s conversations. The ladies talked, laughed, sipped their tea and munched pastries: and yet they observed the officer’s silence as though it were part of the evening’s entertainment.
Once the merry-go-round of tea had come to an end, Mrs Boratti stood up, and although it wasn’t exactly clear whom she was addressing, she asked: ‘May we begin?’ Having been instructed, Emma’s mother also jumped to her feet, while the paunchy guest courageously struggled to stand. Emma devotedly followed her mother, and went to sit next to her beside the Bechstein baby grand piano, which was black and shiny. Mrs Boratti and the paunchy man, a bank employee, lingered close to one another in the cove created by the piano, while the officer, who had just paced in a circle around the instrument, came to a stop right behind Emma and leaned his hands against her chair. Emma felt his presence as though he were a cloud hovering above her head. Yet what really frightened her were his hands, whose strength seemed to have turned her chair into stone. The ladies followed the five characters’ movements with cheerful amazement as their comments interwove into a dense, delicate tapestry.
As soon as Mrs Macchi began to play – just a few introductory notes – the ladies fell silent. The Prefect put down her cup, left the remains of a little pastry next to it on the saucer, and gracefully thrust her chest forward in an effort to better hear the performance. Her behaviour, which seemed unduly dramatic, if not alarmed, conferred her with an aura of extraordinary importance. She was sat on the right side of the sofa. Yet her presence and attitude transformed that sofa into a royal dais. Mrs Boratti smiled at her, as though she were an interpreter asking her regal guest for permission before going ahead. The Prefect gave her consent with a gracious smile.
In a small voice, Mrs Macchi read out the few lines assigned to the character of Ines. She stood apart from all the others, almost exaggeratedly so. Mrs Boratti could claim for herself almost all of the stage, which had been carved out of the living room starting from the piano’s side. The paunchy man looked very ill at ease. He trembled, incapable of standing up on his own two feet: he’d lost his center of gravity. He had gone to stand next to Mrs Boratti, who having hurried through Ines’s lines, proceeded to launch into the beautiful aria: Tacea la notte placida (Silent was the night)… The aria was long, and the tenor’s awkwardness grew apace in a crescendo: it was as though his body, a bladder full of water, might explode at any moment, leaving no trace of that bulky man except a tiny puddle on the floor. Yet he completely lacked the courage to move. The bank employee exuded a confused sense of modesty, as though he’d been forced to bare his naked frame to the ladies’ prying eyes.
During the final and most difficult part of the aria, Mrs Boratti regained her confidence and she hit every single note with a ballerina’s agility: ‘Per esso io morirò/per esso io morirò!/Ah, si, per esso io morirò/per esso io morirò, morirò’ (I will die for him/I will die for him!/Oh, yes, I will die for him/die for him!)…
Thus, when the Prefect raised her hands (which were as light as powder puffs) as soon as her friend the soprano concluded the final notes, and clapped them twice, one against the other – the applause seemed well deserved to everyone assembled, and the ladies nodded their heads. Relaxed, Mrs Boratti smiled, and this smile remained stretched out for the rest of the night, laying like a red carpet at the Prefect’s feet.
The officer hadn’t removed his hands from the back of Emma’s chair for a single instant. He occasionally leaned over to better hear the notes being played, but his hands remained where they were. Emma had often stood up to turn the pages of the score, but the chair, which the officer’s hands had turned to stone, didn’t reflect any of her movements. Those hands were as strong as a chain. Mrs Boratti’s aria, to which Emma had paid scant attention, and which had risen out of the depths of the monster-prince’s prison stood out like a patch of blue sky, and felt as fresh as a slice of the sea. Emma was well aware of the fact that those sounds and images – now that she found great delight in the intricate rituals of the Prefect’s court, the conversations revolving around the rim of the tea cups, the secrets concealed in a smile, even in the slightest curl of the lips, as intricate a process as bowing and curtsying – were dictated by her status. Like all forms of slavery, even the one experienced by the monster-prince had made all things appear inordinately more valuable. Emma named those things with the anxiety of one who would be forced to leave them behind: as though she’d finally seen things in all their splendour just before they vanished forever.
If the officer had lifted his hands, Emma would have been freed on the spot, but the world would have lost all shape and solidity. The monster-prince’s chains were life itself. Emma was very distressed: for the first time in her life she had a secret, and this relationship – a mixture of attraction and fear – produced in her the strongest sentiments she’d ever felt. It was simply incredible how the officer could make his presence known through the sheer force of his immovable hands.
For the first time in Emma’s life, she had met a character with all the hallmarks of a fairy tale hero. She felt as though their entire relationship hinged on that secretiveness. Had she spoken, had she revealed her secret, the monster-prince’s kingdom would have fallen apart and all her new feelings would have vanished with it. Emma felt that keeping that secret would be an incredibly difficult task, if not an outright ordeal. If she managed to overcome that challenge, she would win the keys to the prince’s kingdom. But if she failed, she would be doomed to dwell in the Prefect’s greyish, silent realm, its stagnant pond.
Having learned to abide by the court’s expectations, which were regulated by murky, yet binding laws – a reality which, having spurned adventure, refined itself through the art of repetition – Emma had detected a mysterious presence in the officer: the strength of his hands, and before that his deep-seated silence, had left no doubt as to that.
When the officer finally mouthed his first words – tragic, gloomy notes: like a horse’s hooves tearing the night’s silence asunder – the living room’s precious harmony was irrevocably shattered, and everything was turned on its head. Emma held her breath. The strength of those hands had been transmuted into sound. The Prefect’s world seemed to shrink until it was small enough to fit inside a pencil case.
Fear messed up the order of those notes: Emma had trouble following the song on her score. She moved only hesitantly and was late in turning a page. Yet the officer’s hand preceded hers, and having swelled disproportionately to its actual size, it took the entirety of Emma’s field of vision. The monster displayed an agility that was simultaneously graceful and persecutory. With his trembling voice, the paunchy man intoned Manrico’s fiery chant: ‘Deserto sulla terra…’ (Earth is a desert…). That song was so undignified that the ladies, stuffed inside tha
t pencil case, couldn’t help but burst out in amused laughter. The poor man strained his voice, which nevertheless had much trouble leaving his mouth: a vague, lukewarm trickle of sound issued from his lips, just a few slimy, greenish notes. The Count of Luna’s brief interjections exploded like thunder and lightning: the fearful, trembling living room stood before him like a landscape. And in a tiny corner of that landscape, the unhappy bank employee played out his solitary agony.
Emma’s head sank into her shoulders. Keeping his hands firmly fixed, the officer bent over and straightened himself back up, like a bear’s ferocious, tender dance. Yet his voice gave them no respite. Emma felt as though she was being chased by a hound. The Prefect had picked up her cup of tea again and was sipping from it as though she were praying. One of the Count’s more brutal ‘No!’s left Emma on the edge of her seat. Everyone was screaming and her mother’s fingers ran along the keyboard as though possessed. The Count’s lines were full of difficult, stressed syllables: ‘Di geloso amor sprezzato’… (My spurned and jealous love). Emma couldn’t even understand what that meant. That voice made her feel like her head was being repeatedly hit by a sledgehammer: ‘Ei più vivere non può/no, ei più vivere non può, no, no, no, no/ei più vivere non può, ei più vivere non può…’ (He can live no longer/no, he can live no longer, no, no, no, no/he can live no longer, he can live no longer).
The Prefect and the social order she represented, like multiple rows on a dais, reemerged from the shadows at the end of the first act. The pencil case once again resumed the living room’s former dimensions.
Mrs Boratti smiled, instructed the servant to serve everyone a second cup of tea, and both graciously accepted and gave thanks. Even Mrs Macchi stood up. Running her fingers up and down the keyboard trying to keep up with that delirious trio had completely worn her out. She dried her hands with her handkerchief. The paunchy gentleman headed back towards his seat, and despite his heaviness, he sank into it. Emma didn’t budge. She contented herself with leaning back against her chair, now that the officer had finally moved his hands.
The Fourth Shore Page 1
