58
AT FIRST I REFUSE to ask for pardon. But this was earlier—Yes, after the trial and Judge Newman, but a century before that meeting in Trieste, on Via Madonnina, when I had just returned from Goli Otok and the comrades ordered me to keep my mouth shut about it, not to say a word, because although the Party acknowledged that the resolution of the Cominform, brutally imposed by Stalin, was wrong, the time was not yet right to say so, and while Tito had indeed committed sins, even grave ones, it was necessary to mend the workers’ unity and so mum’s the word! about anything that could help the imperialists defame and weaken that unity.
I see Carlos’s hooded gaze again, the look of a tiger holding its prey, its claws still retracted, and Bernetich’s severe, officious look: none of this story will ever be known. Comrade Vidali’s large mutilated hand—Commander Carlos had left his thumb in Spain, along with a large grenade fragment—crumples up the sheets of paper and throws them into the wastebasket. “A fine article, Comrade Cippico, what you’ve written, with all these stories about Goli Otok, but suitable for Difesa Adriatica or some other Fascist rag—or even Trotskyist, as far as I’m concerned. In Il Lavoratore however it would really be sabotaging, if I may say so”—his gaze somewhat languid, concealed by a somnolent yet watchful guard, a jaguar calculating the leap, for a moment he was lost in melancholy. I knew how much it cost him to say those things, he who out of loyalty to that resolution of the Cominform, it was rumoured, had even attempted an officers’ revolt on the part of the Yugoslavian Navy, in Pola and Spalato. None of this will ever be known—Even that sombre melancholy quickly disappeared from the broad mastifflike face.
I gave in, I withdrew the article, I asked for pardon. I admitted to having been wrong. About everything. Therefore even to having held out in Goli Otok, on behalf of the Party ...
In Goli Otok no, I didn’t seek pardon. Not even in bojkot did I give in; I didn’t shout that Tito was right and the Party wrong. But it was easier, because at that time I was in the Party, or so I thought; I was therefore at home, a tree with roots that help it sustain the wind’s fury, a red flag that doesn’t fear that wind. But when the Party silenced me, then yes my head started spinning, like when they stuck it in the shithole in Goli Otok.
The wind that assailed me was not the bora but a poisonous gas from a faulty valve, it goes to your brain, and so I said yes, I withdraw it, I retract, I’ll keep quiet, nothing happened, I ask for pardon, I’ll sign anything you want, like in here, I’ve signed a lot of papers since I’ve been here. They were all satisfied and once again cordial and decent to me. Even in Bow Street, when I submitted my application for pardon, they praised me “for having thereby demonstrated respect for authority.” So then, sentence commuted to forced labour for life at Port Arthur. Departure on the first ship scheduled for my group. Meanwhile it’s back to Newgate, who knows for how long. There are many deportees awaiting departure. The refugees in Trieste on the waiting list for Australia—in 1949, 1950, 1951—were also numerous. Now I really should say farewell, but I don’t know who ...
59
“WHAT IS A PIECE OF WOOD? Nothing, a branch that snaps, a sodden log that is perhaps no longer useful, not even for burning and providing a little warmth, because it only gives off smoke that defiles the air—like your breath and the stink of your sweat, my brothers, whom God’s wrath has sent to rot among these walls and who will soon crumble, even if the bells of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre do not announce that for you the hour of earthly justice has come, the time to swing from the gallows to amuse those other sinners who are more sinful than you, who go to the square to enjoy the deaths of others, like pagans, so as not to think about their own eternal death! No, my brothers, none of us is worth more than a piece of wood corroded by water, and I too, whom God’s goodness has called to announce His word despite my sins, am nothing more than wood, good only for burning! It’s no use looking at me wide-eyed or with that sad air you’re under the illusion will arouse pity, you should have thought of it sooner, scoundrels, thieves, adulterers, fornicators, murderers, you should have had pity on the widow you robbed or the children you orphaned—At baptism you were given a garment white as snow and if it’s now as soiled as the rag that cleans the latrine, it’s not the fault of either the king or the Lord whom you curse, but only of your own filthy behaviour.
“You are a piece of wood. But wretched wood contains within it the mystery of the cross. The world is an immense sea, but the wood of a ship, if that wood is blessed, crosses that sea and returns home.
“Only four inches of wood, at most seven, as the ancient poet says—since immeasurable divine wisdom has sometimes granted that even pagans may foresee the truth—only a few inches of wood under your feet will separate you from the bleak abyss of the bitter, merciless sea, from the deep dark vortexes where the Leviathan lurks along with fish as cruel and obtuse as hatred, and all it takes is one sin to puncture the bottom of the ship and make us all perish in the perfidious waves, but if we are firm in our faith and strong in acknowledging our frailty and insignificance, the ship will safely make it through the storm and arrive in port. Don’t be afraid of the bitter sea, locus of all misfortune, for it is the bitterness in your heart that holds out death’s poison, it is your corrupt heart that is the locus of your ruin, the sea that can cause you to sink! My brothers ...”
Reverend Blunt’s voice was a gurgling cackle, although it wouldn’t do to tell him that, since he might refuse to give me the agreed-upon shilling for each sermon I wrote. In any case, the Reverend won back one out of every two shillings playing cards with me and drank it up in beer, offering several good swigs to me as well—I must say—when the guard brought it to him at the end of the game. It didn’t bother me, especially since, when he delivered the sermons written by me, Reverend Blunt added something of his own—not for the better, of course, overdoing the repetitions, letting a few vulgarities slip out and mixing up the images and quotations from the Bible.
However, thanks to those sermons I had been given a cell of my own, a supply of paper and candles, and, most recently, even a clerk to procure the books I needed and sometimes write while I dictated—“Not to be lazy, but to see if the text is suitable for being read aloud,” I explained to the Reverend so he would support my request.
A far cry from Goli Otok. There I didn’t listen to the world and its noise, but sought relief from it. Maybe because I was deaf, thanks in part to those jailers who had broken my eardrum. At Newgate, on the other hand, I did. When the outer door of the prison opened, perhaps to send one of us to hang at Tyburn, I tried to hear the street noises, the cries of the hawkers and drunks, the indistinct clamour of life. And in the cell, at night, I wrote in part to overcome the silence. I write to please each man’s tastes, I exalt both freedom of the seas and rigid protectionism. Do I contradict myself? At sea there’s room for everyone and everything, life and death, freedom and rules. Besides, for each book, it’s also good to write its refutation and publish only those refutations, making biased critics fall into the trap: they strike down your self-parody and then you pull out the real book and they can no longer attack it. I did this even with my books about the state of Christianity on the island of Otaheiti and about Christianity as a natural religion ...
60
THE LATTER I wrote in prison. It does you good, in jail, to write about God. A great, empty word, which fills the space with familiar noises. Why didn’t it occur to me in the Lager? Without God we are lost children—a good start. Where did it end up, that volume? A work about religion, more precisely The Religion of Christ Is the Religion of Nature. A challenge to atheists, to those who don’t believe. You must believe, to be a comrade. The world cannot be self-sufficient, eternal matter, one generation after another falls into the grave like droplets into a sea that remains unchanged, ships sink and crews disappear but nothing changes ...
But those others, deists, theists, nurses, foremen, ward chiefs, are also all of a kind, because it’s not enough
that God created the world, as they may perhaps admit, but they insist that afterwards He left it on its own, with no further intervention. The world is vast and beautiful, coral islands and flowers in the wind, but there is also fear, and the wail that leaps to your throat when you feel alone, and that hatred and that resentment that lurk within and stifle the soul ... My God, it’s not enough for Him to stay up there, as if He didn’t exist—let Him respond to the cry, separate the Red Sea, still the tempest and guide ships to port, let Him also punish, if He wants, send the Flood, but let Him make Himself felt ...
By God does He send them, those floods. Refute the proud theists point by point, the free thinkers who raise man on a clay pedestal and consign him to his misery. Every empire is futile greatness, Atlantis swallowed by the sea. I have books brought to me by the Quakers who visit the prisoners and linger at length with me, especially Mrs. Elizabeth Fry with her pious ladies, who are also responsible for recruiting women to send to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, as brides for the men down there.
Mrs. Fry gives me a Bible. The Bible is true science and every stone confirms this. The earth shows traces of the Flood, with seashells and fossil fish found in the mountains, skeletons of unknown animals and bones of enormous hyenas. Even in Dachau many traces of the apocalypse could be found, human skeletons, graffiti, bloody prints, but no one has a desire to go digging, they all act as if nothing happened. Still, it’s also nice to think about the Flood, heavy rains falling incessantly on stormy seas and island ferns, waters from heaven that pour down on the earth almost as if to reunite with those of the sea, like in the beginning ...
A destructive flood is also good. The water engulfs, purifies. In the Southern Hemisphere the waters never completely withdrew, they still cover a large part of the globe and even the southern continent may perhaps be water, frozen water. According to Sir Richard Phillips, the eminent geologist, the place where I find myself—yes, that piece of England where they built Newgate prison—was covered three times by the ocean, in times immemorial, and three times it re-emerged. Maybe it would be good to stay down there, on the bottom, under the great vault of waters higher than that of the sky, there where the sea serpent slithers—the primeval serpent who fled down there because he is no longer needed, men created in the image and likeness of God are already corrupt and inclined toward evil. The waters are black; so is the cell when you blow out the candle, it’s black, a dark, rising water.
When I manage to print a notice announcing the publication of the book, asking the ladies, lords and gentlemen to underwrite its purchase for not more than half a guinea, the grousing, which is already spreading through the prison because of the special dishes they give me in the mess hall, explodes and Carlile’s crew, a group of hacks convicted for publishing blasphemous, irreverent rubbish, raises its voice, accusing me of hiding behind a pious disguise to write a work filled with subtle poisons against religion. This mania of taking offence at books, putting them on the Index, burning them. Of reading everything, books, even letters, as infamous coded messages to be used by enemies of the people. Writers and readers of the world, unite. You are, we are the real proletarians, the banished, our every word is a crime. We must learn to keep silent. Yes, it’s true, it was I who wrote them, those pages in Newgate that one of them, one of the group, stole from me and showed to the chaplain. But it was one of those texts of mine written purposely to be refuted, intended to make the veracity of faith stand out by contrast in the book I would have written immediately afterwards, had they given me time.
61
“BUT THE MOON, my brethren,” Blunt cackled, “which sinks plunging into the darkness of the night, is a symbol of man, who does not shine with his own light, since by himself he would be swallowed up by shadow, but receives his light from God, as the moon does from the sun. Man must die, like the moon that wanes, to be reborn in the eternal dawn of God’s sun. Jericho was destroyed by seven trumpet blasts; we too, when God tells us that the time has come in a voice more clarion than seven trumpets, will be destroyed like Jericho. Foolish as the moon, wise as the moon, those for whom the bell is about to toll! because the Lord has made wisdom foolish and foolishness wise! Some of you will soon be in the house of the Father—it’s no use grumbling back there, you scoundrels, you’d do better to remember that not even the gallows spares you a few lashes on the back until a few hours beforehand—some of you, as I was saying, will soon be home, may God assist you in your final hours. Others will have to journey for a long time yet, before reaching port. The world is a bitter sea, which tosses the small ship about, and wherever one’s gaze turns on the black surface of the waves, only images of death can be seen.
“Woe to the man who relies on his own strength and ability as a helmsman, though he has sailed through reefs and storms, though he has rounded Cape Horn amid the fury of the winds. With the eastern wind, O Lord, you shatter the ships of Tarsus. Terrible is the storm of the world’s sea, worse than any hurricane on the oceans, but if the mast of the ship is the wood of the cross and you embrace it fervently, no infernal wind that rises from the dark waters can pull you into the abyss. Do not fear, hold tight to that mast, and the ship will make it through the fury of the high waters as did Noah’s Ark.
“Yes, you will, we will founder, my brethren. Christian truth is not that sweet honey with which the pagan sirens daze the seafarer causing him to perish in the deep vortexes. Christian truth is a medicine that heals, but it is bitter like death, like the sea: it makes you spit up your black soul to the last dregs of bile, like the huge rollers make you vomit over the rails, but only if you have emptied the hold of your heart of all depravity and poison will you reach port. Yes, you will founder! The port is death—if you do not founder in faith, as the Apostle says, you will not find salvation and will suffer a far more terrible shipwreck, in the waters of eternal darkness!
“The old Adam must die so that the new man can be born, the sailor must fall into the sea to reach the blissful shore. Do not lament because only the Lord can rebuke the waves; rejoice, the whistling of the wind among the sails is the announcement of the final battle and the approaching port. And though the world does not remember you, since ships leave no trace behind on the sea, the Saviour, the helmsman who guides you to port, will not forget you ...”
I too declaimed out loud, when I dictated those sermons that I would hear the following day in church. Sometimes Blunt arrived too early and sat down, waiting for me to finish composing the sermon he needed. He was a small man who breathed heavily above a protruding belly, his mouth thin in his fat, sweaty face, tufts of hair sticking out of his ears. He looked blankly out the window, running his tongue over his lips; occasionally he winked, it wasn’t clear if this was due to a tic or because he was engaged in some crafty discourse, speaking softly to himself. Once, entering the kitchen, I saw him from behind, in his black topcoat, with a hand under the skirt of a scullery maid. Neither of the two said anything—they stood there, in the eternity of that moment, a surge of blood bringing a flush to the pastor’s cheeks. The Reverend did not move. I took some bread and left without saying a word, silent like the other two. Half an hour later, when he picked up the manuscript, the Reverend did not seem embarrassed. De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine, out of the Depths I call to you, O Lord. The body sweats, putrefies; the flesh we carry rots like that badly preserved meat in the prison larder. A hand under Marie’s skirt? It’s all so disgusting and so innocent.
The sermons end up creating an uproar—in part because Pastor Blunt goes on and on, and maybe gets the pages mixed up—with some convicts snickering, others, more moved, punching them to make them keep quiet, and still others intoning the chantey of the lovely Mary and her Tom whose cock only rises firm and straight as it should when they put the noose around his neck.
The bell of the Holy Sepulchre peals often; the list with the names of the condemned is generally posted on Wednesday, and after a while you get used to reading it like the numbers for the races or
the lottery. Almost everyone climbs up on the wagon using their own legs; a few have to be pushed forcefully and actually propped up, then they’re gone, just time for a prayer and it’s quickly done. Even Reverend Blunt protested, saying that there were too many at one time and that they didn’t give him enough time to recite the prayer with the solemnity that is called for. How many people, throughout the world, die every minute?
At one time black waves covered the world, everything was just an immense dark sea in the night. The land was an island and might be submerged at any moment. The magnificent vast austral ocean; so much sea and so little land, like in the beginning, islands that sprang up like corals and can easily disappear again, heavy rains that veil it all. The Last Judgment will take place under water. Man is the bait with which the Lord will catch the dragon, the original Leviathan, just as seamen catch fish, shoving pieces of flesh in their mouth with a hook that sticks in their throat.
62
MEANWHILE, however, with those accusations of Cominformism, I mean atheism, I’m in trouble. The most defamatory denunciation, that of not believing. You have to believe. In God, in the Party, in the Flag. There’s no place for anyone who doesn’t believe and you may as well get rid of him. How can I explain the truth, make them understand that I’m a believer, someone who has always believed everything? I know it’s difficult; it’s rare to see witnesses for the defence in People’s Court, they would end up at the wall even before the defendant.
Who can help me? Perhaps Lord Castlereagh recalls my qualities and can get me out; it would be his duty to, in part to clear his conscience, since it was he who had my Copenhagen bombarded; it would be a kind of reparation. But darkness is descending on Lord Castlereagh; he sees hatred and conspiracy everywhere around him, he spends hours in his rooms ranting about plots and schemes. His wiliness, by which he held ministers and the crowned heads of half of Europe at bay, in the end serves him only to deceive his physician and find the razor that he had hidden from him. Then he rings the bell—his last imperious act, almost as if wanting to command even after death—and when Dr. Bankhead comes running, finding a head almost severed by a slash to the throat, he is unable to understand the final blood-strangled words.
Blindly (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) Page 20
