Yet the latter paid him no heed and kept talking and talking: it was as though he was trying to hypnotise the woman beside him, a silly ugly woman. The functionary wondered whether the man hadn’t repressed his instinct to mock the woman by instead pretending to turn to that lady as a figure of authority. Instead of anger, however, he experienced an unexpected feeling: he too wanted to be like that rich, confident man and worry only about keeping an eye on himself rather than on other people. There we have it: this is the diarist’s gold mine: the profligacy of carrying on a conversation with oneself. Yet instead of waning, his mood soured further: envy had forced its way into the mix. That man wasn’t jeopardizing the security of the State, he was ignoring it altogether. As for himself, outside of his wretched job, which left behind the disagreeable stench of all the people he controlled – all of whom had broken the law in some form, for one reason or another – what was left for him outside of the State?
To be sure, nobody had forbidden him to keep a diary. And he knew so much more about that city, thanks to his ancient profession, than that industrialist and all his specious self-regard.
‘A diary exists in a constant state of metamorphosis: I transcribe, make additions…’ the industrialist told the roly-poly woman, who had tiny feet, just like in caricatures, which feed off visual contradictions.
If everything constantly changes, how does one choose the right moment to intervene? the functionary dutifully asked himself. Perhaps the fatal page hadn’t been written yet, or maybe it had been torn out. The policeman’s job was difficult, the relationship with the criminal they’re after can often be as complex as their relationship with their lovers. The slightest inaccuracy can lead to fatal consequences, and the cards on the table change entirely.
Now he felt as though he was a hunter in his hiding spot waiting to surprise his prey at the right moment. The image was gratifying and he retained it. He was slightly excited, as though he had reached the end of a long private drama, and wasn’t just merely carrying out his duties. He looked at the Corso, which was busy at that hour. It looked like a forest where there were people instead of plants, and that they were moving around of their own volition. Before going out on their evening stroll, people had straightened out their appearance, which endowed the portrait with an unusual elegance.
‘Diaries,’ the man explained, brandishing his beer mug with an airy gesture (there was always something parodic to his gestures and conversation, which his unusual height accentuated), ‘are made up of… personal accounts of one’s readings, confessions, echoes of emotional events, amusing anecdotes, scrupulous accounts of various states of mind, hopes and disappointments, reflections and conjectures: diaries must always follow the same rules, just like how rivers flow downwards and incise their beds. The day we’ll see a river climb a mountain without keeping to a distinct path will be the day we see a diary that resembles no other.
‘Almost the entirety of our lives goes by atrociously slowly. A novel is the work of the devil because it condenses the complex adventures of the Karamazov brothers in merely eight hundred pages. And memories – and this is the point I wanted to make, my dear friend – are the stuff of novels: the devil erased hundreds of the diary’s pages in which, Ivan’s days – all of which were identical – had been narrated with the slowness of destiny. The fluvial Dostoyevsky was in fact rather brusque in the end: these are the tricks of the trade (or, to those who prefer it, the deal one strikes with the devil, where one offers a sacrifice to a mendacious god). Why did I rip up the diary? All of life’s exasperating slowness lay within it, not the deceitful pace one finds in novels, which memoirs instead manage to recover.’
To recap, the functionary said, slamming his blue pack of cigarettes down on the coffee table. This man would have me believe that the diary has been destroyed, as if he’d neatly predicted that I’d want to advise my superiors to order an investigation into the matter: why give me such news if not to deflect suspicion away from yourself? Nevertheless, you’ve also confessed to writing your own memoirs. And what if reading them turned out to be a labyrinthine enterprise, and what if, having reached the end of that labyrinth, I had learned nothing more about the fat woman hanging on your every word right now, what then? That man who was keeping a diary, as though he’d wanted to metaphorically confess of having a doppelgänger. That the only liveable reality lay in the imagination, because only in memoirs – and not in diaries, which capture the slowness of life – can one find the same captivating pace of novels, where the immense mess of the Karamazov brothers fit, barely, into eight hundred pages. He knew all there was to know about the Karamazov brothers, he had seen a film adaptation just a month earlier where the vast cast had played their roles well…
Because only in the imagination does the poison of life disappear, which is its slowness, its repetitiveness, its near-absence, really…
Maybe by exposing himself to scrutiny, perhaps even to criminal charges, he had wanted to reveal his need for such an imagination, he practiced the art of escapism in order to give his life some respite.
But what did he reveal in the end?
The secret functionary seemed as cocky as a musketeer.
To be a spy, which is a task I’ve bitterly come to terms with, is the concrete figuration of his dream: I too live in the imagination. Although it is equally true that it is someone else’s imagination…
At this point the roly-poly woman rushed to his aid: ‘Why are you telling me all this?’ she asked. She was wearing a low-necked dress, exposing what was still fresh in her: her ample, candid bosoms.
The functionary pricked up his ears, as though he was at a concert.
‘Am I not the protagonist, after all?’ she picked up again, not impolitely, as if wanting to hint at something: desire for attention, or perhaps desire itself. ‘You look so melancholy…’ she added, expertly changing the tone of her voice accordingly.
‘Distant,’ the man suddenly said, as though he’d just fired a gun.
‘Oh,’ the lady said, saddened, ‘you’re a real master at the art of paying someone compliments!’
At that moment, the roly-poly woman’s husband appeared, Colonel Nucci.
The diarist jumped to his feet.
‘Where have you been?’ the lady impatiently asked, even though, the steadfastly diligent functionary thought to himself – she was probably only upset by the fact he’d returned.
‘I went for a walk.’
‘To mull over what?’ she asked him, distractedly.
‘The past.’
‘That means you must have just stepped out of his diary,’ and he pointed the man out.
Who bowed.
The functionary was thinking that he would have liked to live in that diary: maybe his life there would be less wretched and dreary than the one reality had dealt him.
He picked up his cigarettes and walked off in a hurry.
21
THE PALACE OF DEATH
Major Laurenzi had run aground in the dusty road on the highlands – as he later humorously told the story sometime after the incident – and his jeep had refused to move in any direction. It was the most fertile sector in the province, lushly verdant and pleasantly wavy; Barca, the historic county seat, was already far behind him, and the valley appeared uninhabited, in fact it looked as if it was unknown to anyone, as if it had been added to the landscape just a moment earlier.
‘Do you know why the jeep refused to budge?’ he asked, cockily jumping out of the car. ‘It caught a sight of the palace of death and it refused to go any further.’
‘And where would this palace be?’ Lieutenant Nerino asked in an alarmed tone, trying to give his question a twist of irony.
They were alone in that place, and the jeep’s wheels were as firmly stuck as a dog’s legs when it has picked up the scent of danger. Sunset was drawing near: this meant that night was on its way. How could they possibly keep calm when this palace was their journey’s destination? ‘Wouldn’t it be better fo
r us to retrace our steps on foot and go back?’ he asked, frightened.
There was no hope that anyone would show up on that rugged road. ‘That said,’ Major Laurenzi humorously said, ‘it’s quite common in this uninhabited land to wander around like Adam, thinking you’re all alone in the world, until you suddenly find yourself face to face with – well, not so much Eve, alas, but a nomad, say, maybe even a very old one, who looks like God the Father Himself, who nevertheless fails to tell why he’s showed up and what he wants from you; in fact,’ he added, ‘you don’t even know if he wants you to see him or if he wants to pass by incognito, having perhaps grown weary of man’s stupidity.’
Lieutenant Nerino couldn’t decide whether he wanted such a nomad to appear to free him from the Major, or whether it would be better to keep close to the Major, out of fear for the eccentric wanderer who felt annoyed by the very human race which he had created. He was angry with himself for having naïvely volunteered to accompany his superior officer. The latter had hesitated at the time, which in retrospect now seemed perfectly clear: Major Laurenzi already knew that the palace which had terrorised their jeep lay at the bottom of that road. In a sudden burst of good cheer, which proved brief and of little comfort, Lieutenant Nerino asked himself if he too, like the jeep, would fix his legs firmly and refuse to budge further, having picked up the scent of death not far from there.
‘We could certainly,’ the Major said, ‘go back to Barca on foot, despite the fact we can’t see anything out here, but we’re not so far after all, and there’s a colonist’s house about halfway back to the town, we’ll borrow a bicycle so we can flee from Vesuvius as it erupts. But this is also exactly why we have all the time we need to reach that palace, take a look at it, and contemplate le magnifique témoignage de notre néant,lxxxiv as the preachers of old used to say. It would really be unforgivable for us to have come all this way and not to take the last thousand steps to the temple – which reminds us of our former greatness, the monument is over two thousand years old, and it also reminds us how insignificant we are, because it’s a tomb. War is brewing now and there’ll be untold bloodshed: and alas, none of us will be given a glorious burial. Despite the heroism we might collectively display, we may well even lose this boundless land where we wound up some thirty-odd years ago. I don’t think we’ll find shelter or burial even in the works of poets, like unlucky Hector did, that’s how Montilxxxv called him, or Tasso’slxxxvi heroes, on both sides of the Crusades, who found so much gloomy sweetness in their eloquence: in the future, poets will mock militarism, they’ll sing loudly of pacifism and a universal harmony where the hero has been marginalised. If the Creator has grown weary of humankind, the Muses are equally tired of the cults espoused by today’s scribblers: they too emigrated, but not to Africa, (an exterminated space), like we did, but to crammed, dusty libraries.’
Lieutenant Nerino was anxious: he wanted to run away to Barca, abandoning the Major who insisted on proceeding on foot and the jeep which had been immobilised by terror – in order to find some proper shelter before darkness extended itself over the plateau. Major Laurenzi had dragged him along as though he’d hypnotised him with his chatter. That’s what authority was: the power to make others walk along dangerous roads! It was merely the reality which the knightly epics had once described, even though he only nursed a vague recollection of them, he hadn’t opened a book since he’d left school behind, and he had never imagined that he would himself be a teacher – or an enchanter, or the devil himself – in the garb of a superior officer in the silent lands of Africa where there wasn’t a trace of paper in sight. Just like in those long epics, his will lay bound on chains, and nobody would come to free it. Nothing was headed his way except for the night, which was limitless in Africa, where not only the sky turns pitch black, but also the pain, the vast expanse where terrifying knights might make an incursion.
‘Can’t we postpone the visit to another day?’ Lieutenant Nerino jokingly asked, his military dignity preventing him from showing any fear: least of all to a superior officer! The jeep belonged to a mechanical world, which, like the animal one, could plunge into the depth of cowardice (and leave them stranded in that deserted land!); but a man, a soldier, had his duties: he had to be heroic, defying both death and its palace – otherwise, what was the point of wearing a uniform like his?
‘Look!’ Major Laurenzi exclaimed, and in an instinctively defensive gesture he barred the young man’s path with his arm.
Lieutenant Nerino raised his eyes and for an instant, perhaps having succumbed to cowardice, he saw nothing at all, there was only a brownish mound. However, mirabile dictum,lxxxvii right at the foot of the mound, almost carved into the rock, one could see the palace, which was a tomb on two levels ‘from the Hellenic era,’ the Major explained, ‘or at least,’ he added, as if wanting to throw a veil of reassuring uncertainty over his words, ‘that’s what Professor Berioli told me. Come on, let’s go up.’
Although no longer in his prime, that man quickly clambered up the mound and stood facing the tomb. As the light began to fade, he appeared to grow more impatient, or at least that was Lieutenant Nerino’s impression, who had in the meanwhile regressed to a state of infancy.
He once again experienced the temptation to flee, but he couldn’t budge: he too had run aground.
‘What are you waiting for?’ the Major asked.
Frightened, Lieutenant Nerino clambered up the mount after the Major, as if he was the latter’s ghostly child, and poking his head through the aperture between the two Doric columns, he stepped inside the atrium, where there were three stone triclinia lying next to the walls; through a door at the far end one could enter the sepulchral section of the monument, where the sarcophagus containing the body was located, inside a niche. Major Laurenzi – with his creased field uniform, his bristly beard, and his marked features which were suddenly muted – seemed to have stepped out of that tomb at that moment in order to greet a visitor. Caught between his split personalities as a boy and a young officer, Lieutenant Nerino was as frightened as if he’d been called up for an initiation rite to mark his passage from adolescence to adulthood and virility, so he tried to strengthen his resolve and kept quiet (or rather he tried to make some ironic remarks), but it was useless. The Major was altogether elsewhere by then; the present was still, but the past had begun to move, and the past is a night without end, as inscrutable as the dark sky.
It was up to Lieutenant Nerino now to prompt the Major to speak, the silence felt like the other side of the night. The Lieutenant remembered that divinities are always authoritarian and mute, as though they are forbidden to speak.
But these were nothing but idle fantasies. Finally, the Major said:
‘Let’s go upstairs.’
They found themselves on the loggia, between the three Ionic pillars, side by side once again, as night proceeded to fall, having turned silent and gloomy now too, struggling to spread itself fully over that vast, deserted continent.
The loggia was empty.
‘Lean against the Doric columns on the first floor,’ the Major explained, looking as though he’d just returned from a trip and was once again cheerfully chatty, ‘they’re quite stocky,’ he added, as though exhibiting the structure to a group of assembled scholars.
Lieutenant Nerino couldn’t free himself from the Major’s mental grip – which meant lingering in a deserted loggia on the upper floor of a palace carved into the rock, ‘towards the end of the sixth century,’ as the Major had declared, all the way out there in a place where they hadn’t seen a single house, aside from the sepulchral abode they had holed up in. He felt as though he were standing in a field facing an enemy who had challenged him to a duel – and his enemy wore the Major’s face, which was nevertheless a mask.
Is this what the colony is really like? he asked himself, frightened.
A couple of hours later, they reached a white farmstead, where farmers from the Veneto, who had emigrated to Africa the previous yea
r (having taken advantage of the government’s grandiose scheme for reclaiming and then freeing up the land which they’d purchased at such a dear cost), welcomed them with warm obsequiousness and surprise: wanderers never came around their parts, especially at that late hour of the night. ‘Africa is empty,’ they said. ‘A Major! A Lieutenant!’ They wanted to run off and help them un-beach their jeep, but the Major, assuming a fatherly tone and demeanor, cheerfully calmed them down: ‘You can’t very well carry the jeep on your shoulders, and anyway, by the time you brought it back here, we would have easily reached…’ and he made a gesture, shaking his hand in vague manner to indicate wherever Barca was, ‘and so we should be off.’
Nevertheless, the old man of the house declared that he wouldn’t allow them to leave, under any circumstances. He said that he would send his son on his bicycle to Headquarters to let them know that they were ‘safe’.
And he showed them the modest, but clean and tidy bedroom where they could sleep.
The Major accepted without any hesitation, which took Lieutenant Nerino aback. It was as though he was in no hurry to get back to the present, to his ordinary life. Having left his heroic, knightly poems behind, he now appeared to find mental shelter in the realm of pastoral fables. He would have wanted to tell him so, but he was scared of his superior officer’s skill with irony.
He struck up a conversation with one of the farmer’s boys, who was his age, and it felt reassuring to hear the Venetian dialect, which made Africa’s boundless spaces feel far more tame and gentle.
Over dinner, out in the courtyard, the Major remained in high spirits, and didn’t appear to be ill at ease among those simple folk.
The Fourth Shore Page 34
