Blindly (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

by Magris, Claudio

  The Leviathan holds creation in its teeth like a piece of meat and if we all become lambs we’ll be devoured by wolves. Nevertheless, when there was no need and no one keeping an eye on me, I cast the harpoon so that it would end up in the sea and let a few whales get away; I liked seeing the huge creatures disappear in the distance, imagining them free and joyful in oceans unploughed by ships. Most of all, I liked letting the seals get away, when I could—we would pass colonies of them basking and rolling around on the beaches, a giant wave rising and falling and merging with the roller that breaks and recedes.

  Some seals look melancholic; everyone knows the tale of the sailor who surprises a seal the night their pelts are removed, a beautiful naked sea nymph whom he brings home and marries in church, as she, instead of looking at the priest and the cross, turns continually toward the roaring sea. That too is a tale told in every port; in Dalmatia as well, between Isola Lunga and the Incoronate, where we sometimes went with my father’s boat from Lussino and San Pietro in Nembi. A sad story, with its nostalgic ending; the woman years later finds her old skin again, puts it on and vanishes in the sea. Her two children are left alone, but when they go and play on the beach a seal brings them beautiful seashells.

  A fine melancholic story, but the truth is that men indulge in bestial acts, with seals, and then rage against the pups using the fur as a pretext, but the real reason is lust, flesh and blood often go together. In Port King we gave a couple of shirts to those blacks who emerged from the bush, and the sailors took two women and went on and on, but the blacks stood there watching as if they didn’t care a whit. Then, I don’t know how it happened, someone threw a spear someone fired, for no reason, as always, but it can’t be helped, we went off in the boat and the blacks retreated into the bush. A bloodied white shirt remained on the shore, evidence of our passage and of our exploratory voyage, which confirmed Dr. Bass’s discovery and provided much data for identifying and mapping the strait that bears his name.

  When we entered Sydney on the Harbinger, the mutineers hanging from the yardarm of the Anne, which was rocking on the waves, greeted us like flags on a large dressed masthead hoisted in our honour. There are many things in Sydney, salt pork, rum and lots of news. A year earlier, the British fleet, commanded by Admiral Parker and by Nelson, as vice-admiral, shelled Copenhagen to force Denmark to withdraw from the league of neutral countries, controlled by Napoleon. Twelve hundred British guns against six hundred and twenty Danes. Beaten, the Danes try to surrender, but Nelson brings the spyglass to his blindfolded eye, I’m damned if I see it, he doesn’t see any white flag. The carnage continues until two and then peace is solemnly and cheerfully made. England and Denmark are sisters; it’s no wonder that I, Jorgen Jorgensen, raised in the Royal Palace in Copenhagen, am a seaman, after disembarking in Sydney on the Harbinger, as John Johnson, no, Jan Jansen, on a ship of His Britannic Majesty called the Lady Nelson, which transports grain up the Hawkesbay River among rocks, eucalyptus and mangroves, for the prosperity of New South Wales and for the expansion of British power to the most remote corners of the earth.

  History is a spyglass held up to a blindfolded eye. Every so often, like after the fighting on the Preneuse, I look into the barrel of a pistol. Maybe there’s something down there, the strip that in Oriule, in front of San Pietro in Nembi, divides the green sea from the blue one, the thin threshold of true life, but I’m damned if I see it, there’s nothing in that blackness either on one side or the other, I could even pull the trigger, blindly, there’s no one there.

  News comes that a peace treaty has been signed in Amiens, but down here we continue to die. Forty-seven convicts die of fever on the Royal Admiral, fourteen are hanged on the Hercules, but there are always more arriving, Charon brings morsels of meat to Cerberus. Water washes away names, like that of the shipwrecked vessel we found on King Island; the rocks had bashed in its side, right at the spot where its name was written, and the fragments of wood with the letters had long since been shattered by the waves. The ship is almost broken in two, leaning on its side; the water flows in and out of the hatch depending on the tide; an axe rolls up and down, knocking against an overturned table.

  On board there is only a cat; maybe it feeds on birds and their eggs and at night comes back to sleep on the ship. When we approached, it disappeared into the darkness of the hold, for a while we saw its eyes, two flames in the shadows, then the coals died away. I look into the night as into the enormous barrel of a pistol. Dark as those x-rays on your table, Doctor, under which you wrote my wrong name, but it doesn’t matter, that black void is me, a dark blank sky—In the eyes of that cat, however ...—When we left and the tide started flowing into the hatch, we saw it leap out, clamber crookedly up a mast and perch on top.

  Before coming to Hobart Town, we went here and there on the Lady Nelson, returning each time to Sydney. When we dropped anchor at the mouth of the Fitzroy River, at the southern edge of the Great Barrier Reef along the Tropic of Capricorn, Westall, the painter, painted the corals. The corals there are black, in incredibly blue waters. I swam underwater, among those stony flowers of shadow that bloom when life is spent. Coral is a skeleton. I swam among those stratified spirals, convolutions of a gigantic brain of another species.

  My suggestion to Governor King, to forestall the intentions of the French who are laying claim to the Derwent estuary in Van Diemen’s Land on the grounds that it was discovered by d’Entrecasteaux in 1792, is not insignificant. The Géographe and the Naturaliste, under the command of Commodore Baudin, roam these seas under the pretext of scientific exploration, but in reality to set up a military installation. I suggested to the governor that he write to Lord Hobart, yes, Secretary of State for the Colonies, but not wait months for his reply; rather he should officially announce that the plan for a colony at the mouth of the Derwent—albeit a penal colony—had already been approved and that soldiers and convicts should be sent. And so we set out—I set out, I went to found the city of my ruin, just as later I constructed a world that collapsed on top of me. The Pacific Ocean or the Adriatic, but always at sea, that great shroud that I pulled over my head.

  The first time violent storms force the Lady Nelson to turn back, but the second time I tell the captain what he must do to overcome the squalls—I was an expert sailor, I say so without false modesty, and I often managed to prevail over the sea’s fury. Thus I subdued those waves and those merciful winds that wanted to drive me back and reached the place where I should never have come. On September 6, 1803, I read in my notes, corroborated by the Admiralty’s documents recorded in my biographies, the Lady Nelson, with its cargo of convicts, drops anchor in Ralph’s Bay and on the ninth, finally, in Risdon Cove, the future Hobart Town.

  11

  THE MESSAGE BOUNCED BACK, though I don’t recall having sent it and I don’t know if I’m asking or replying. What did the figurehead whisper to Jason, when he stood at the prow? He dared not ask, his face still and sorrowful, he did not want to know what she saw with her astonished, dilated gaze. It’s in order to keep watch that the figurehead is placed at the prow, to search for what is forbidden to the sailors, something that would be fatal for them to know.

  As his shipmates bent over their oars, Jason, uncertain as always, studied the figurehead, straining to hear the rustling of her oaken fronds that vanished in the roar of the sea. In the still, dazzling midday, the distant voice told him to let go, to wrap the fleece around him like a blanket and go to sleep. Help me sleep, Doctor; sleep is a heroic venture, a victory over anxieties and nagging thoughts, over the plans and anguish about tomorrow that gnaw at the heart. Don’t stand there mute and unmoving like that wooden face, I know that oracles can’t speak, not then and not now; those who know are silent, you disciples of Aesculapius are experts at wisdom and silence, you could at least give me one of those gold coins that dissolve in the mouth.

  I spent many sleepless nights in Goli Otok. At the prow of the Argo, on the other hand, it was so easy to fall asleep,
to block out everything. Even the moon was an intrusion and it was with relief that I saw it sink and slip below like a fish. When we put ashore, at Corinth, I will beach the ship, lie down in its shadow and sleep beneath the shelter of the prow and the figurehead, whose expression changes there above me, a brazen, venerating look, large mysterious eyes and the sulky mouth of a woman smiling with insolent pleasure, inviting you to sleep at her feet. I ...

  12

  IN 1928, after coming back down here, we went to Hobart Town for a couple of months before settling in Sydney, since my father would have preferred locating there again. That way, Tore, he told me, you’ll see the beach where you went in the sea for the first time, in your mother’s arms. The estuary is immense, a river that is a sea even before it flows out and vanishes into the ocean, the edge of emptiness. Even Flinders and Bass say so, in the descriptions of their voyage.

  I, on the shores of that emptiness, build a world. For three weeks the convicts, whom we brought to this terra incognita, fell trees, construct huts. The trees are gigantic, a tangle of branches that barely allow light to filter in, enormous leaves dripping moisture; the rain doesn’t fall from the sky but is the sky itself, gloomy, infinite. The Huon pines are millennia old; under the pandanuses, among the rotted, fallen trunks, grows a jungle of moulds, fungi and lichens. Brooks flow unsullied into the sea-river, clear streams sparkling with little waterfalls form small lakes; at times they overrun and flood the paths the convicts are digging in the ground, the streets of the City, where Clark, a free farmer, builds the first stone building. On Hunter Island there are already two government storehouses. In the bay, hundreds of black swans; when a flock floats past a shed that I am building for the future exchequer, I decide that there are twelve of them, twelve augural birds for the City that I’m creating, a bulwark of order and civilization at the edge of Emptiness. The estuary, in the evening, is a vermilion spume; the sun sinks into the bloody waters like a harpooned whale.

  The convicts fell tree trunks, square off stones and build small dams and bridges on the streams that muddy the paths. Yes, I know, years later I too became one of them, but—In the evening we eat fish, and kangaroo and wallaby meat, gamy and sweetish. A few Aborigines emerge like shadows, their skin smeared with animal fat and ochre, their faces painted with charcoal and spittle. They give us a parrot, accept a gaily coloured handkerchief and disappear into the undersea darkness of the forest. When the parrot pecks Barrett, a convict, he hurls it against a tree and slugs the native, who raises his hand to his nose, observes the blood on his black fingers with astonishment and steps back, retreating into the jungle.

  Reverend Knopwood designs a crest with a kangaroo, an emu, a shield, a sailing ship, a starfish and the motto Sic fortis Hobartia crevit. Arbeit macht frei, Socially useful work, Abandon all hope, ye who enter here; all Infernos have a sign on their gates. The City is order, stronger than nature’s disorder. Man, it is written, will dominate the earth; he seems weak, but his hands can uproot enormous trees, divert rivers, reclaim land from the sea.

  A sea more a sea than the others, because it has no memory. The others preserve traces of man’s paltriness and greatness, the glory of sovereigns the daring of traders the affliction of shipwrecked survivors, names of admirals and adventurers written on the abrasive mirror of the water. Here, by contrast, there is nothing, no event, no name; for centuries the indigenous peoples from the bush hardly ever came to the shore, recoiling at the sight of their black faces quivering in the waves. They never went to sea, for them Bass’s strait is the end of the world. Those places are still almost all nameless, History is a stone that drops into the water and disappears without a trace, a spear whistling in the forest. A seagull plummets like an arrow, snatches a fish and rises again in flight, the sea quickly smoothes the small ripple.

  The axe chops down eucalyptus and pandanuses, for the first time it’s not a lightning strike that cleaves the gnarly wood but an iron blade. The shattered branches fall among the ferns and lichens, soon rot into mould, disintegrate in the pluvial undergrowth, the margay’s paw leaves a print that moisture carves out and then blurs. Rows of huts appear, logs become squared, regular planks; clearings appear in the woods, the tangle quickly closes them up again, but the axe opens other gaps, other breaks. The masterly pattern of branches trunks and leaves, the orderliness that goes from the bark to the venation of the leaf, are obscured in a chaos of brushwood and litter.

  Where does order lie, I wondered as I commanded the logging operations necessary to obtain materials for the huts, where does disorder lie? Do those rows of huts, those muddy lanes, drained and widened, which gradually become streets, lead to order or chaos? Even the barracks in Dachau were nicely aligned, each with its own number. Even the death registry is always in order. A masked owl swoops down on a bandicoot, the thud of an axe felling a trunk makes them fall silent and vanish quickly into the forest. The stars rise and set in the distances, the earth revolves around the sun, His Majesty’s ships plough the seas, the axes rise and fall on decrepit trunks. The hands of the clocks in my father and brother’s workshop circle around. Days nights years come and go like the mechanical figures that come out and go round and round on town hall clock towers; like the prisoners who get out of bed, line up, split stones, line up again and go back to their cells, when they don’t wind up hanging from the gallows, like in Sydney, Parramatta, Castle Hill, wherever. The world is a forest of hanged men.

  Men, seals, whales, kangaroos, Aborigines, next! Sometimes, in those tangled forests, it’s difficult to distinguish the last two, their darkish colour is similar and both leap nimbly and quick as lightning through the undergrowth. Those fifty blacks killed not far from Hobart Town showed up with loud cries, driving a big herd of kangaroos ahead of them. Some soldiers thought they were war cries and feared an attack, others heard the harsh grunts of the animals, got scared and fired into the crowd of men and beasts; the surviving natives went on goading the beasts for a while, automatically, in the heat of the hunt, without immediately understanding why so many of them were falling to the ground, then they turned their backs and fled, terrified. The kangaroos, finding themselves suddenly facing the soldiers, scattered; some did an about-face and fled in the direction from which they had come, following and sometimes running over the natives, others swooped down upon the soldiers, who continued shooting wildly, at blacks and kangaroos.

  Fifty blacks and scores of kangaroos left lying on the ground; no one is to blame—Reverend Knopwood says—these things unfortunately happen when we don’t know each other well and don’t yet understand one another, in truth anyone would have been frightened hearing those black, naked, greased men shouting like lunatics; it’s human to think the worst and think about defending oneself.

  Even the Reverend shoots. At the black swans, because he is avid for their meat and gorges himself on it as much as he can, even though he complains that they have a fishy taste and has asked Dr. Brown if, as a man of science, he can come up with a way to remedy this drawback. The swans, shot in the water, list like a vessel assailed by a cannon, slowly they keel over, flap their wings, then roll over on their side. The long neck uncoils like a snake, the vitreous eye is frozen forever in an inane, terrified malevolence; if one of them is snatched and pulled under by a fish that is quicker than the boat, Reverend Knopwood, red and ravenous, becomes furious.

  Black swans, kangaroos of the world, unite! The Anti-Fascist League, which Frank Carmagnola founded in Sydney in 1926, numbered about three hundred members in the city; two years later, just back from Italy, I too worked hard turning out Il Risveglio in the Communist Party’s printing office. The Party sent me here and there throughout half of Australia. Even to Melbourne, to help establish the Matteotti Club, which brought all the anti-Fascists together. We gave Battistessa and the other Fascist squad members who came to wreck it a good trouncing too. And on Russell Street, at Temperance Hall, two years later, we soundly thrashed all those ruffian Blackshirts who were celebrating th
e anniversary of the march on Rome. It was one of the few times, otherwise I was almost always on the receiving end.

  Thank you, Doctor, a little water is just what I needed. You’re thirsty too, I see. In any case, as long as it’s those others who give it to you, the foes and scoundrels, if you have guts you can take it. The worst is when it’s your own who toss you into the snakepit, and after a while you no longer know if they’re your own or if they’re the bastards whom you and your side have always tried to wipe out. And after a while longer, you don’t even know if you too are one of your own or if you’ve become one of them. That’s why after Goli Otok it’s no longer clear which ones are our own ... And me? Am I the one who brought the convicts in chains ashore in Hobart Town, on the Lady Nelson, or the one who came to the same port on the Woodman with his own feet shackled?—Okay, it’s true, I found a ruse to get them off, I already told you. In any event, though my ankles were less livid, I was still a man with a noose around his neck; often I didn’t remember having it and it almost seemed like a foulard, but if they suddenly got it into their heads, they could give it a tug at any time and put an end to it, I was still a man sentenced to death leniently granted forced labour for life, or rather a dead man forced to remain on shore, rejected by Charon’s boat. And to think that, many years earlier when I left Hobart Town for London on the Alexander, I wondered if I would ever see it again ...