The Communist

by Guido Morselli

  “The most famous picture gallery in the universe! It’s no more than half a kilometer from our hotel.”

  “I’m not here on a pleasure trip myself,” said Ferranini. “I’m here to learn. You go.”

  This was Leningrad, which had witnessed the great Revolution, it seemed to Ferranini he could do nothing worthier than study and learn. The question that plagued him resurfaced—labor today, labor eternal, as he would have put it—a question that coincided with life itself. And chance led to some interesting encounters.

  Chance—and the fact that after more than six months inside an artificial (hence abstract) environment, he had stepped out of it, an environment where everyone acted in the name of the workers while none of them were workers. That this was Leningrad made these encounters stand out all the more, strengthening a belief that was already quite strong in him. Borders did not exist as far as labor in its hard fatality was concerned. Not even borders between systems.

  In the Hotel Evropeiskaya’s crowded lobby the Intourist guides were a fixture, there to escort foreign visitors. But with their PCI passes, Amoruso and Ferranini could circulate without guides. They were their own masters. They had spotted an inexpensive restaurant on Jouskovo and Ferranini decided to go in. The menu offered some Italian dishes, and later they found out that the head cook was an Italian from Foggia, who had been in Russia since ’42 when he arrived with the infamous ARMIR, the Italian army sent to the eastern front.

  Not only a restaurant; the place, all three stories of it, was also a workers’ canteen, or rather there were two canteens: one for technicians, functionaries, and clerical staff on the second floor, and a more modest one for workers on the ground floor. They decided to eat at this second one and had no problems finding a place at a long table where eight or nine young men, a group of workmates, were already seated. As soon as it became clear that the two new arrivals were foreigners, they got up one by one to introduce themselves: surname, name, and patronymic, as well as job title.

  Ferranini was struck by this last detail, because in Reggio he used to tell his friends, “Don’t say, ‘I’m so-and-so the lathe man, or the millwright,’ we mustn’t honor specialization! Say, ‘I’m a worker’ and leave it at that.” Otherwise the Russians were quite polite, almost formal, with a hint of deference that in no way diminished their dignity as builders of socialism.

  The conversation quickly departed from the commonplace, the generic. They were construction workers at a nearby building site (the Italians had seen it while coming in) where they operated steam shovels, bulldozers, and jackhammers. They were laying the foundations of a building that would house a branch of the government department store GUM. Workers who had just come from the job, fully aware of its importance and blessed with a high level of general education. Their persons, their overalls, had none of that humble, resigned untidiness that immediately marked workers in a capitalist country such as Italy.

  One of the younger ones, the dark, curly-haired Andrey Carlovich, had a volume of Chebutykin’s History of Scientific Thought tucked under his arm while he ate.

  “We have seventeen hundred libraries in Leningrad,” said Andrey Carlovich. “Is it true that in Europe workers are not admitted to libraries?”

  “It certainly is true in Italy. The hours are such that workers can never use them.”

  “And so only the rich frequent them?”

  “The rich are far too uncultivated to want to educate themselves in a library.”

  “Well then, who uses them?”

  “Professors, the educated, those who write articles and books.”

  “But if the workers aren’t able to read books, what use are writers?”

  Amoruso turned toward Ferranini, looking chastened, and somewhat amused. “Right. What good are Italian writers?”

  Andrey Sergheyevich was strong, blond, with pale blue, watery eyes. He might have been German, but he had the Slav’s intense, slightly ecstatic expression. He said, “I read in the newspaper that Italians detest nature.”

  Andrey Sergheyevich, too, was right.

  “Your government does not plant any trees, and so Italy is a country without trees.”

  “The city of Leningrad probably plants more trees than our government does in the whole of Italy,” Amoruso admitted.

  “But the people, how do they enjoy themselves when they are not working, if they do not love nature?”

  “Italians,” said Amoruso, “have three ways of enjoying themselves. They sit in bars and taverns, they go to football matches, or they race up and down the roads on motorbikes and in cars, making a tremendous racket.”

  “And have they no other desires?” said Andrey Carlovich, somewhat dismayed.

  “No other desires nor any more noble needs.”

  They were curious about Amoruso’s literary Russian, and they didn’t always understand him. Ferranini, for his part, asked about how their labor was compensated: wages and social insurance. Wages turned out to be good, something he already knew. Andrey Sergheyevich, twenty-six years old, a steam-shovel operator, earned a net wage equivalent to 130,000 Italian lire. But his real wage was higher, considering what prices were in Leningrad. The cost of housing was impressively modest. With a wife and two children, Andrey Sergheyevich paid the equivalent of just 10,000 lire a month for lodgings that included two bedrooms and a toilet, and he lived less than five kilometers from the Nevsky Prospekt.

  “You live well, therefore you are pleased to be in this world,” Amoruso concluded.

  “Life is a house; we merely furnish it.” Andrey Sergheyevich fell back on the wisdom of an old Russian proverb.

  “The government of the Soviet Union,” said Ferranini, “promises that by 1975 all housing will be free. Are you satisfied with that?”

  Andrey Sergheyevich nodded, looking serious.

  Ferranini ate with appetite, making up for the three days in which he’d scarcely taken any food. The others ate much less, and Amoruso noticed that of their eight young fellow diners, three were on a special diet. Boiled fish, boiled vegetables, and a few slices of toasted bread. They sent their meal down with milk.

  “It looks to me as if there are tastier choices for dinner,” he said, “so why is this, young fellows?”

  Andrey Sergheyevich reddened and began to laugh. “I’ve got nervous gastritis,” he said, “and so do my comrades. It’s the machines. It’s the vibration of the machines, the noise they make.”

  11

  “WHAT A coincidence,” said Amoruso in Italian, turning to Ferranini. “A few days before I left Italy four or five young working men came to the hospital, employees of a company that is leveling the ground for a new plant at Trivio di Formia. They complained of stomach problems. Since when had they had the problem? ‘We were hired this summer and put to work operating backhoes—and we haven’t been well since.’ What do you eat, what do you drink? Do you smoke? ‘No changes in any of that.’ Simple indigestion was my diagnosis, and we prescribed the usual Pepto-Bismol, the usual sedatives. But now I’ve changed my mind. We’re looking at a specific etiology. A collective one.”

  “And you can speak about it just like that, so cheerfully?” said Ferranini, pushing away his plate.

  “But it’s nothing alarming! It’s an illness that can be treated.”

  “It’s not the illness. It’s the fact that we find it in Leningrad, in the Soviet Union.”

  “And why are you so surprised?” Amoruso snapped back, this time losing his patience. “Good Lord, people have stomachs in Leningrad just as they do in Formia. If anything, I’m sorry I didn’t take the machinery into account when I saw those men in the hospital in Formia—”

  “And that’s it, eh?” Ferranini cut him short.

  After many hours at the Academy of Sciences they returned to the restaurant that evening, but they didn’t find their worker friends. The canteen on the ground floor was closed. They had their supper on the upper floor with a very different group of diners sitting at smaller tabl
es. They recognized the French delegation and also the Yugoslavs, who had come out of the meeting hall at the State University on the Neva embankment along with them, but Ferranini chose not to sit near them. If he had to talk while he ate, he’d rather do it with the Russians.

  It was a white-collar population—administrators, office workers, teachers—most of them regular clients who knew the waiters and didn’t have to consult the menu. Each of them, even those who then went on to chat with their tablemates, unfolded the newspaper resting by the water carafe and put it on the table in front of him. These were bureaucrats, Ferranini guessed; a broad ethnic variety to judge by their different features and body types. A good many of the Soviet republics seemed to be represented, but they all spoke the same Russian, thick with administrative and technical jargon.

  “Look at those terrible old things,” said Amoruso, pointing to the fans suspended from the ceiling, spinning over their heads. “They look like the ones in the movies thirty years ago. But, what the devil, aren’t we in January?”

  Such were the things Amoruso thought about.

  As they were finishing their meal a well-dressed man in his fifties sat down at their table and apologized for his companion, a huge dog with a slate-colored pelt, as gentle as could be. The beast curled up on Amoruso’s feet under the table and didn’t move a muscle.

  The elderly man with the dog was an engineer, Leonid Victorovic Schmidt, professor of metallurgical chemistry, doing research at the Kirov plants. A bachelor, he told them right off. With a decent literary culture, among other things. He didn’t speak Italian but immediately understood they were Italians, and quoted (without mangling them) some of Ungaretti’s verses. Appiè dei passi della sera / Va un’acqua chiara / Colore dell’uliva. . . .

  Schmidt put them through a clipped and courteous series of questions. At a certain point he said, very solemnly, “Comrades. You belong to the PCI. Why has the party not yet taken power? The Italians are tired of waiting.”

  “Inevitable question,” said Amoruso with a wink at Ferranini.

  “Russia is an immense octopus in its geographical dimension,” added Leonid Victorovic. “It’s difficult to know where to grab it. Italy is a charming young lady with a tiny waist. The PCI has the girl by the waist, controls Tuscany and Emilia, the roads and the railways. Grab her. She’s yours.”

  “It’s a pointless observation,” replied Ferranini, bitterly if less imaginatively.

  “Why?” Leonid Victorovic shot back. “Don’t you have plans? Do you lack the will?”

  “You must understand that not only is it not discussed; it is forbidden to discuss it. The PCI doesn’t speak of it. The left doesn’t speak of it, inside or outside the party.”

  “There is a left outside the party?”

  “There are several,” Ferranini replied. “Anarchist and Trotskyist groups, and one called the Communist Internationalist Party.”

  He thought of Mazzola and was about to say: And now there’s even a group of loyal Stalinists.

  Amoruso spoke up. “My friend Leonid Victorovic, my friend Ferranini, let’s not accuse anyone of fence-sitting. The PCI policy is based on sound logic, it seems to me. I’m optimistic. In Italy we hold general elections about every two and a half years. At each election, our party gets five percent more votes. And so within fifteen years we’ll be in power (we’ll win the girl) with the greatest of ease. By means of formal democracy, thus providing an example to the other countries in the Western Bloc and creating precedent. I’m fifty-five years old. There’s still time for me to be elected the commissar for health and hygiene in Italy. I’m a doctor and I’m counting on it.”

  “PazhAlusta, ya ni panimAju,” Leonid Victorovic replied. I don’t understand. Perhaps thinking he hadn’t heard correctly.

  “I was saying I expect to end up as the health minister in the Italian Communist government. I’m a doctor.”

  “The doctor,” said Leonid Victorovic, “likes to joke.”

  Maybe, but Ferranini thought Amoruso might be serious.

  Comrade Schmidt then spoke of himself. A member of the party (none of the young men they’d met at lunch were), Leonid Victorovic had an important position in the management of the Kirov industries, was able to study as much as he liked, and had an excellent salary. One of his younger brothers was a worker in Arkhangelsk.

  “Matvej’s not as fortunate as I am. He works as a varnisher in a factory making electric engines. One of the lighter jobs, apparently. This summer I went to see him. One of his arms, his right arm, is swollen. It worries me.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Amoruso. “It’s probably arthritis. Send him to Crimea.”

  “No, it’s not; I was told hypertrophy of the limb. He spends ten hours a day in front of a conveyor belt, every day repeating the same movement thousands of times. When he gets off in the evening he’s groggy, and doesn’t want to read, listen to music, or even talk to a friend. He’s not as fortunate as I am. Maybe not even as fortunate as Ghipki, my wolfhound.”

  “Typical laborer,” said Ferranini.

  He was thinking of the mute fatigue of the Ukrainian farmers he’d met in August ’54. Unable to respond to the questions the interpreter asked. Like the farmers and field hands of Emilia.

  There were still the Andrey Carlovics and the Andrey Sergheyevichs, however. Those who had the time and desire to read, those at least. Right, and their reward was a job that gave them nervous gastritis.

  “In the end, though,” Leonid Victorovic went on, “what are we talking about? I belong to another world, that of the clean hands. Every intellectual ought to be made to work with his hands half a day out of every two. That’s not unimaginable.”

  Those obsolete class distinctions return to reproduce themselves within labor, Ferranini thought to himself. Still, it wasn’t so strange. Labor gave birth to hierarchy, above all. You couldn’t do without hierarchy. Even without an army, a clergy, or whatever other stratifying order, men would have been stratified by labor. Organized labor was divided labor.

  Leonid Victorovic must have sensed the Italian’s doubts, and he confirmed them.

  “There are social groups here too; the bourgeois might even speak of ‘classes.’ In any case we have them and they are not challenged.”

  “And will they be?” asked Ferranini.

  “You may know,” Leonid Victorovic replied, “that from the Seventeenth Congress it’s been officially established that demanding equal treatment for individuals is petit bourgeois nonsense, it’s not socialism. Also, Marxism is opposed to egalitarianism. Further, if labor is fatiguing, it is also true that we managers are overburdened. We intellectuals. For example, if I want to follow the technical literature, domestic and foreign, I must lock myself in the library every weekend, and even then I can’t keep up with all the publications.”

  “I know what you mean,” boasted Amoruso. “The same happens to me.”

  “It all derives from progress,” said Leonid Victorovic. “Today specialist knowledge proliferates like the cells of a tumor. You find the same phenomenon in America.”

  •

  Amoruso didn’t appear to be taking Schmidt’s confidences too seriously, just as that morning he hadn’t asked many questions of the workers they had met. But Ferranini’s head was pounding. Was it just an obsession of his (therefore wrong) or was this really the reality?

  The next day, the day before they were due to depart, presented another important encounter, a new aspect of the problem.

  The celebratory session of the Academy of Sciences was finished. Amoruso had gone off to explore the great labyrinth of the Hermitage. Ferranini went on his own to see the cruiser Aurora, the Industrial Cooperative’s Cultural Center, and the Kirov plant that had taken the place of the old (renowned, glorious) Putilov works. He didn’t look up Comrade Schmidt, who had invited them to visit him at work. Exhausted, he sat in one of the recreational clubs inside the plant, and while drinking a coffee jotted down notes for an article about Leningrad
that he intended to publish in the Reggio Federation newsletter. He took the subway back to the hotel because the boulevards and immense squares made him feel slightly gloomy. They reminded him of Turin.

  Earlier, leaving the hotel that morning, they had asked to be taken to the Warsaw station. They wanted to reserve sleepers for the night, so that they could depart in the evening. Amoruso was keen to make the trip by train.

  So familiar with the din and the chaos of the Reggio Emilia station, Ferranini had been astonished by the silence (and cleanliness) of the old station, one of many in the city, at 9:00 a.m.

  “It’s like being in a church,” Amoruso had said, raising his eyes to the glass of the arcade over the rails. “It makes me think of Anna Karenina, ready to throw herself under the wheels, poor thing.”

  An elderly attendant with a white apron over her dark uniform stood near them on the wooden platform, a great brass samovar before her emitting a wisp of steam. There was a passenger car at the head of the train, and on the stairs sat a bearded fellow with a grave expression, polishing the door handles.

  A moment later, the express train from Poland burst in and cut through the silence, bearing sleeper cars from Vienna, Berlin, and Paris. The locomotive (and the detail didn’t escape Ferranini) was a very modern electro-diesel model as tall and long as a house. It made an interesting contrast with the environment, including the people, of the station. While they were admiring this machine, one of the engine drivers got down.

  They were in the station buffet, warming up with a drop of slivovitz. As they were getting ready to leave, the driver came in.

  “I’d like to talk to you for a moment,” said Amoruso.

  And so, while the man was drinking a steaming glass of green tea, he joined him. The driver was handsome, in his thirties, short, stocky, his gaze slightly inert in a rather expressive face. His brow, under blond hair, was what you’d call pensive. To Amoruso he looked more like a violinist than an engine driver.

  “I’m a comrade from Italy,” Amoruso said to him. “Can we exchange a few words? First off, I admire your locomotive. It’s powerful! How fast does it go?”