The Fourth Shore

by Alessandro Spina

  ‘I bore witness to the agony of her death throes, in that colonial hospital,’ the physician said, ‘she’d shown up all of a sudden and there weren’t any of her relatives there: having been called from the motherland, they hadn’t had time to get there yet, the mail boat operated according to fixed schedules that were indifferent to all the (occasionally hurried) tragedies of human affairs. The old woman was nearly immobilised, but I had the distinct impression that using her hand or her eye – don’t ask me how, when reality has reached a turning point one can’t take note of everything – she would start to fiddle around with her diary: I should have hidden it.

  ‘Maybe I made the entire thing up: but one page I read, almost without realizing it, and maybe some phrase that was specifically directed at me, which foreshadowed the rest of the text, convinced me that she hadn’t written her diary for her husband or her sons, and that they couldn’t be allowed to get their hands on it. It might be true that it hadn’t been written for me either, but a stranger is in a privileged situation whenever one looks for a confidant, and can provide a confidential service: I took the diary without bothering to conceal my actions and stuck it inside my bag. From that moment on, the unhappy woman never looked at me again. Four days later, her family arrived, the father and his three sons, but by then she had slipped out of consciousness.

  ‘So what should I do now? Should I return the manuscript to them?

  ‘Having placed it in your hands, I feel relieved of any sins of indiscretion, it’s as if you were the one responsible for the theft now. At least… what I mean… that my good cheer comes from the fact that I fulfilled the mission, however casually, by placing the diary in the hands of the person it was destined for. Keep it, burn it – or hand it over to your German mentor over there.’

  The geologist nodded with his head, possibly because the physician was looking at him.

  Only then, having regained his calm, did he ask what had happened – and he pointed his finger at the manuscript, having understood that the real story lay in there, and not in the conversation between the two friends.

  Carlino tried to sum up the entire affair, but whether he was distracted by other thoughts, since it was difficult to tread slowly when the past transforms itself and returns with all the violence of the wind, or perhaps the geologist had remembered an unresolved detail from the trip, the German had therefore mistaken one thing for another: an old woman had died, and this lady – which the manuscript mentioned, where maybe a last will and testament had been concealed, not once concerned with worldly goods, but with the interpretation of old, painful memories – had actually been the doctor’s own mother. He immediately stood up and offered the newcomer his condolences – who in his turn stood up, smiling and failing to understand why that distinguished gentleman, who wore a beard like his, was congratulating him.

  Carlino didn’t translate a single word, and that was fine. After all, when the past returns, it enchants us and steals us away. Inside that manuscript was his own story, lost in the wake of others’ stories.

  Now all that is left is to explain how so many different events can be interconnected.

  Carlino’s mother and the manuscript’s author (as was to be expected, this was a story of disillusions, not that it had anything to do with love or money: that woman had unlimited ambitions for the destiny of others and none of the men in her life stuck their necks out or took risks; but she was wrong, there was something captivating about Antonio, or at least this was the opinion of the woman who had loved him for a while) were therefore not the same person: they were childhood friends. Just like how Carlino and one of the woman’s three sons, Antonio, had spent parts of their youth together.

  This wasn’t what had misled Carlino, it had been a sentence which had slipped through the author’s fingers. Perhaps her illness had reduced her faculties. She had therefore revealed that Carlino wasn’t the son of that industrious businessman who’d carried on a long-term relationship that everyone knew about, a man he hated – Carlino had in fact, her friends had confided in her, been fathered by an army officer with whom she’d had a brief fling, a man of whom she’d then never heard from again, there was little more to his memory than his uniform. It seemed like the same old story that rose out of a conquered town, when soldiers ran loose through the streets, having been given a free hand. An officer had come into her home, he had forced himself violently on her and then had vanished. In actual fact, the event had taken place in a hotel where the mother had been staying.

  What truly embarrassed Carlino was the hate he’d nursed for that devastating father of his, with his beastly narcissism, who believed himself master of the entire universe, having confused the former for his factory: he had blamed an innocent man. Thus, he too had been betrayed in his turn: his real father was a uniform. His childhood drama was either absent or was headed for other destinations.

  He could run over to his mother, erasing the thousand miles of distance that separated them, and ask to know more. But hadn’t she confessed to her friend, who didn’t seem to know much about it anyway?

  What about him, the little professor, wasn’t he a grown up man after all?

  What did it matter to men who their fathers were? Fathers are figures who belong to the world of infancy, of adolescence.

  The geologist was observing his guest and nodding affirmatively with his head.

  The physician looked at both of them and didn’t understand what had happened. It seemed as though the manuscript belonged to the two of them, and that he was being kept in the dark, the situation had been turned on its head.

  ‘Today,’ Carlino mockingly announced, ‘the little professor has died: the manuscript was my initiation rite, marking my passage from youth to adulthood: I will now begin my second life.’

  The geologist didn’t understand what the guest had said about him, he had merely grasped the word professor, which was used in both languages.

  xxxiv Pentapolis: informal league of five cities in the western part of Cyrenaica, named after Cyrene, the leading city of the Pentapolis.

  xxxv Giuseppe Volpi, Count of Misurata [now Misrata] (1877–1947): Businessman who governed the colony of Tripolitania in the mid-1920s. He was also the founder of the Venice Film Festival.

  xxxvi German: ‘sing-song,’ a kind of opera.

  xxxvii West–östlicher Divan: (West–Eastern Diwan) a collection of poems by Goethe inspired by the Persian poet Hafez.

  5

  WHAT ARE YOU GOING

  TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?

  It was the oldest game in the world. Every boy has been asked the same question: a playful and troubled echo, every boy has therefore asked himself that very question.

  ‘Things were easier during the times of the barbarian hordes,’ Colonel Varzi said in a good-natured manner, ‘one knew that one was fated to follow in one’s father’s footsteps, whether he was a hero or a thief.’

  Sat on the tiny jetty on the beach, the three officers were listening to the groups of boys busy playing the future game on the sandy shore. Their answers to that question didn’t vary from the usual: one wanted to be a pilot, another a sailor, a third an inventor, while the fourth wanted to be a racing car driver. ‘Funny,’ the Colonel commented, seemingly the most alert among them, ‘none of them seem to be interested in any kind of productive enterprise.’

  ‘Nor moneymaking!’ the General added, without bothering to explain if he considered this a sign of maturity or ignorance. They were in their bathing costumes, their uniforms had been hung up in the bathers’ chalets as though it was a storeroom for theatrical costumes. The men were all of average height, with rather slender physiques and tanned skin.

  In that group was a blonde boy who said he wanted to be a poet. Turning to the Colonel, the General asked him: ‘Should he be counted among those who chose a productive enterprise?’

  Perhaps because the people around them were in their bathing costumes (save for a few who were in their pajamas or their bathro
bes, as though they were priests of some kind), and thus, surrounded by a reconquered primitivity – they looked like a barbarian horde that had chosen to strike camp. The three men on the jetty began to talk about the scattered fragments of history relating to the Vandal invasion: had it reached all the way to Cyrenaica, or had it stopped short at the perilous gulf of Sirte?

  ‘Carducci’s history teacher said that, having come down through Spain, the Vandals stormed Tripoli, where they subsequently lost their way, and inexplicably dispersed, like a stream of water. Besides, nobody ever said they’d reached the Nile.’

  ‘Why don’t you ask Garibaldi about that?’ the General, who hailed from Pinerolo, in the Piedmont, haughtily said.

  The conversation languished. The three historians seemed more interested in the redheaded lady who, having stood up, was taking tentative steps along the shore. They looked like hunters, ready to pounce on their prey.

  This too was one of the oldest games in the world.

  ‘Let’s play the game in reverse: what sort of past would we have liked to have?’ the Colonel asked. ‘Or better yet, what would we have wanted to be as children?’

  ‘Where would we have liked to live as children, you mean?’ the General corrected him, a little dryly. But no answer was forthcoming. Everyone seemed wrapped in his own thoughts, memories, longings, delusions and lassitude.

  Nevertheless, there was that blonde boy, slender as an eel, the one who wanted to write daring verses as an adult, perhaps to bring the unspeakable to life, and who was now, having distanced himself from the others, stood up to his ankles in water and staring straight at the blinding sun: the legs hanging off the jetty, the three officers looking like bored schoolboys, who instead of sitting in class and listening to their teacher, preferred to dream of games, lying on the beach, fishing and sleep – which only generates even more dreams.

  6

  FROM THE STATIONER’S

  Christmas, nor any other holiday was being observed that day, and yet the excitement and the aura of sacredness which reigned over the family environment was similar to it: on that afternoon, Mrs Ruffatto had gone out with her four sons to pay the Pavone stationary shop a visit.

  It was difficult to understand why the boys experienced the inextricable tension – made of lights and shadows – that comes with embarking on a journey only while at that stationer’s. That first day of school at first appeared barely distinguishable from the rest: their imaginations weren’t being fueled by the prospect of meeting new classmates, teachers, the new classrooms or subjects they would be studying – it was being moved by coloured pencils, compasses, rulers, copybooks, erasers, pencil sharpeners, and ‘all the other accoutrements of the hand,’ as Mrs Ruffatto, who knew how to crown the most everyday occasions with a halo of unreality. She certainly ensured her boys were up with their studies, but she nevertheless didn’t let those studies take up the entire day; instead of forcing them to observe reality. She kept a door to a lighter world open, which was real and invisible in its own way, thus allowing external elements to mix with others, thus helping to avoid the pernicious tendency to oversimplify reality.

  Owing to his profession, Doctor Ruffatto had gone inside all the houses in the city and had been able to see those families in the midst of their daily routine: there were messy houses and very strict houses, as well as those that were ruinously nervous or completely devoid of any intimacy. None of them felt like his own, which was pleasant and serene. Fairy tales, in that house (which had its fair share of problems like all the others: the children’s health, school, daily errands, cooking and cleaning rituals, washing, hanging the laundry out to dry, making the beds, keeping all the drawers tidy…), once the boys had outgrown their childish naivety (all except the youngest, who was almost four years old), had returned in the form of theatre.

  Even at the theatre we can see what everyday life looks like, but events are naturally accentuated and the rhythm of those sequences of events are accelerated, transfiguring them. Instead of demeaning reality in order to prepare the boys to look after themselves in the social jungle, the boys’ mother instead sought to poke fun at it, or to exalt it by derailing it off its boring, grey tracks. As if she wanted to educate them in the art of dreams, to keep that dream alive in their everyday lives – to feel at ease in those dreams, without being stifled by them. ‘I always come to your house at different times, Doctor, and without any advance warning: I’ve never seen your wife annoyed with the children, or tense, or quiet; there’s something… colourful about your house, as if there was always enough light, as though nothing or nobody ever tripped up,’ a friend of his – who was also a patient who suffered from asthma – once told him. Everyday actions can claim a number of meanings, in the same way that fairy tales have blurry confines, because they are simply able to do so.

  Thus they had visited the Pavone stationary shop on the lively and narrow Via Torino. They weren’t merely buying the usual instruments of their apprenticeships, it seemed as though the boys had forgotten that in the space of a few days all of them would be finding themselves in a new classroom, where they would be expected to cram some knowledge – which was old, obvious, worn out and for the time being entirely useless – into their heads while sat alongside thirty-odd classmates. Instead, it seemed as if all those instruments – the golden compass, the shiny ruler made of fake ivory, the copybook with the aggressively coloured cover, the pencil sharpener that was shaped like a sea shell, the exotic-looking eraser, the ink which looked like it was a liquid metaphor of the night, the pencils that yearned to flush out the unspeakable through words, drawings or numbers – had been designed to allow alchemists, astrologers and other secret conjurers to make mysterious and decisive discoveries.

  The youngest boy, Stefano, appeared torn between the excitement of being in his brothers’ company, who were busy preparing for a long journey, and the suspicion that he would be left behind on dry land. He was a delicate child, in some ways his father’s favourite, probably because he shared his fatal uncertainties. He wore spectacles, which made his face look somewhat fake. Doctor Ruffatto often left him to orbit around his mother, who was more suited to ensuring his happiness: the boy always seemed to get excitable whenever he entered the room, as though his clout was inauspicious.

  Perhaps the boy was aware that his mother was certain that he would soon become similar to his brothers, Doctor Ruffatto thought, and that he would share their inventive, serene outlooks on life; while he himself feared that everything would soon become complicated and his own uncertainties would accentuate the boy’s own. Stefano had often alternated between mimicking his father and his mother – which had led to the previously mentioned arrangement.

  Doctor Ruffatto watched his wife and sons while unseen behind one of the windows of the twin buildings at the top of Via Regina Elena, as they made their way to Via Torino, which began a little further on. The boys were talking tirelessly: even Stefano, who probably didn’t have anything to say, but who didn’t want to be left out.

  His mother held him by the hand.

  This was the portrait of his settled life. He had raised a family, he was a cherished husband and father, and even more ambitious people than him seemed to envy him his simple, happy house, and the harmonious, exciting flow to the passing of time within its walls. The ceremony of taking the boys to the Pavone stationary shop had traditionally been reserved for his wife, both of them having tacitly agreed to the arrangement. This allowed them to walk home together in the evening, when all the boys would want to show him everything right away, all at the same time. This too provided proof of his wife’s gracefulness in bringing a spark to everyday life and giving it a different light. He who doesn’t know what to do with pennies will end up wasting millions, the Doctor thought melancholically.

  He had been standing by the window for the past half hour. He wasn’t waiting for his wife and children to pass by, even though he knew at exactly what time the procession would appear.

&nbs
p; He had taken a day off from the hospital, since he had to clean up, or rather pack up, the apartment his brother – who had died two months earlier – had lived in.

  He had repeatedly postponed the chore, as if fleeing from the responsibility of writing the final act of that life.

  His brother had been separated from his wife, who had long since returned to the motherland.

  Owing to some childish impulse, he had always kept a trunk full of family papers – mementoes of his youth and some old letters – at his brother’s house instead of his own. Not that he would have expected his wife to stick her nose into that sort of business, in fact she even knew about the trunk in his brother’s house. It was as if the Doctor wanted to protect his house from the (possibly malicious) influence those papers might exert on it. He had buried another version of himself in that trunk. Why he didn’t just burn it all, nobody knew. His brother had been a discreet man and he had never asked him any questions. Besides, the apartment was very large, it took up an entire floor, and thus the trunk had never been in the way.

  A smooth plank had been placed on top of the trunk and this had then been covered by a piece of red velvet with golden rickracks which hung all the way down to the floor.

  It looked like an altar.

  Or a sarcophagus.

  He never opened the trunk, and having finally decided to dedicate that entire day to packing everything in that apartment up, or rather, to working out how he would pack it up, given that the owner was already demanding it be turned over, on his way to the apartment he had wondered whether the trunk wasn’t already empty, maybe he had thrown everything away one day and simply forgotten, or perhaps his brother had thrown it away, it had been years since they had given any thought to that legacy (of his former self).

  Apprehensions or vain hopes: they were all present, just as he had left them. It was thus up to him to free himself from those shadows – it was out of the question to bring that trunk home and foolishly entrust it to someone else yet again. Besides, who would he be able to entrust it to?