Vagrants, guilty and homeless like convicts. Black waters of the night. For a moment the porthole illuminates clumps of trees, shafts of light, fluorescent underwater shrubs, lifeless houses, sunken carcasses; an enormous moonfish vanishes in a spume denser than the black sky.
It wrings your heart, when they carry you off, far away, then later you begin to talk, to tell stories. A handful of broken tales, a fistful of sand scattered into the sea. When you’re up to your neck in deep waters it does you good to talk, even if little of that gurgling can be understood and the words are sobs, air bubbles floating out of the mouth of someone who has been pushed under, they rise to the surface and burst—at the seaside you were expected to score with the chicks, dunking their heads underwater. The only place you couldn’t do it was at the Pedocin, with its separation of men and women.
Words in the darkness, small fish that slip out of the net and are sucked back into the eddies—you can confess anything, squeezed in that compartment, dead tired and unable to sleep, real infamies and invented ones. In that darkness, it’s strangely pleasurable to feel that you’re worthless, garbage dumped from the ship. Throwing trash out the windows, throwing yourself into the darkness, is prohibited. Crossing the boundaries of Hell is prohibited, profaning the divine Samothrace, the tremendous mysteries of the gods unutterable to us mortals.
“Those mysteries, which it is not lawful for me to sing.” But in the dark, on the journey that takes us who knows where, it’s a spiteful relief to profane those unutterable mysteries—you can’t see each other’s faces, sacrilege has no face, and so you recount everything you’ve seen and wouldn’t have had to see if the enlightened gods of Olympus were ruling the world and not the ancient divinities of the Night and Erebus. Erebus and Terror, the last two ships I saw leave Hobart Town for the Antarctic night with Commodore Ross. Each one talks about how he became a man, the horrible initiations of violence, of infamy and of death—The Argonauts in Samothrace hear the scream of the Great Mother when the serpent rapes and impregnates her, the groan of the newborn god hacked to pieces, the rumble of the waters that roar into that dark tunnel and wash away the blood.
A foul, insignificant mystery that cannot be uttered—the sacred initiation that makes you a man when you can see with your own eyes the lurid darkness that surrounds you, mephitic exhalation of the Stygian bogs, when you realize there is infamy and immediately commit it, when the mud you used as a child to make castles on the beach hardens and becomes your arid, inert heart. During the celebration of the ineffable mysteries of Samothrace, they say, Zagreus, the newborn sacred bull-calf—perhaps it was a lamb—is torn to pieces by the Dactyls, small reckless demons devoted to the Great Mother, the Triple Goddess. “One seized his head and each of the others seized a leg, and while the music raged around them they tore the infant god in pieces, and sprinkled his blood on the Argonauts, to madden them.” So they say. And in the throes of ecstasy, they ripped the mangled carcass into shreds, eating the flesh greedily ...
66
“STOP! Have the baskets come?”—There was little meat in those baskets that they brought us at lunchtime during the filming on the steps of the Coliseum, where some of us, in the days between the arrival by train from Trieste and the departure from Rome to Bremerhaven, earned a few liras playing extras in a mediocre historical film featuring Nero, Christians and gladiators, and wild circus animals. It was about time that guy up there, with the megaphone, gave the signal to stop shooting. We were famished and those meagre sandwiches, though the production company even skimped on the cheese rinds, were better than nothing—when you act as steaks for the lions, in the amphitheatre, you feel even more of an urge to eat a thick juicy steak yourself. Maybe every other day, during that week of filming, by saving up those few liras, you could even afford to have that steak in the evening, before returning from the Coliseum to the refugee camp, where we were temporarily put up, script in hand to practise—oh here it is, how did you manage to find it?—well, practise, I didn’t have a single word to say, in short, to run through the scene for the following day. “Tiers of the Coliseum—Exterior—Daytime. Goaded by the amused, sneering guards, the Christians, chosen from among the youngest and most handsome ...,” young, no, but obviously handsome, that I was, if not I would already have kicked the bucket who knows how long ago, given what I went through, “... but in bad shape, due to their sufferings in miserable conditions,” precisely, I can well believe it, “are dressed as gladiators.”
A role made especially for me, as if I were one of those great actors for whom films are written. The others, in that train compartment racing through the dark, knew nothing about it, they arrived at that camp near Rome a few weeks later, afterwards we all left there to travel to Bremerhaven together, on that train that carried us through the night; they arrived when the filming was over. They were shooting a film about Christians and gladiators and catacombs, at Cinecittà, and they had hired us, some of us, to be extras. Christians fed to the lions, a perfect role.
The howl of the crowd—even those shouting way up at the top get paid a couple of liras and a basket, how much did the guards at Dachau get, for every howl?—“Keep the gladiators on standby!”—“The amphitheatre is already thronged with shouting public. Nero, surrounded by vestals and courtiers, takes his place. He gives the impression of being bored, yet seems excited and thirsting for thrills.” A friend of mine from Pola, who had the good luck to edge his way into Cinecittà, wrote I don’t know how many scripts like this, then someone else signed them, a somewhat bigger fish or one not quite as small, but meanwhile he made a living.
“Voices from the crowd. They say they’ll make the Christians fight among themselves. Today we’ll have some laughs.”—“Camera ready!”—“Close-ups of the Christians with their meek, suffering faces; wearing the flashing armour of gladiators forced to wield daggers and cudgels. Many pray softly. Murmuring of prayers.”—“Action!” A shout from the megaphone.—“Zoom in on the slits in the helmets through which the Christians’ eyes appear.” My eyes. The world through a slit. An arena. A dagger that glints, a cuirass that refracts the light, a blinding blade that strikes the eyes. The slit is narrow, only a thin slice of the world can be seen, the edge of that dagger, not the person who is gripping it, whether friend or foe. So then, who’s next? before it’s too late and that dagger, brandished by an unknown fraternal hand, pierces your belly “Spotlight on the arena.” In that dazzling light you can’t see a thing, like at night. “The public, now silent, waits for the battle to begin.”
All eyes are turned toward the arena. Yes, everyone enjoys seeing others tear each other limb from limb. This film goes on forever, it’s my role. I would even have changed it, but nobody wanted me in other roles, and so, for a couple of liras ... Friend or foe, the hand that draws the dagger, to protect your flank or spill your blood? I don’t know, Comrades, I don’t know. So then, obey. “Action!” the voice resounds from the megaphone. You’re next! ...
“Nor did anyone note with care that it was the same island; nor in the night did the Doliones clearly perceive that the heroes were returning; but they deemed that Pelasgian war-men of the Macrians had landed. Therefore they donned their armour and raised their hands against them. And with clashing of ashen spears and shields they fell on each other, like the swift rush of fire ... and the din of battle, terrible and furious, fell upon the people of the Doliones.” I didn’t see who was beating me, down in the hold of the Punat where we had been flung through the hatchway, my eyes were still dazzled by the lights. The searchlights they pointed at our faces, off the truck, into the ship, on the set—maybe elsewhere, I don’t know ... always blinding and dazzling in any case; without distinguishing a comrade from the enemy. And I, even there on the set, while the others stood still awaiting the expected signal, I began dealing out blows with my cardboard dagger, a giant windmill, who’s next—“Stop! What’s going on? What’s that asshole doing?” the megaphone shouted—I saw the surprised faces, they didn�
��t even bother to dodge those cardboard blows—“Out!”—“But at dawn both sides perceived the fatal and cureless error ...”—too late, that red dawn is a sunset, blood, the fallen flag.
“What’s gotten into you?” the director’s assistant stormed as he threw me out of the arena and even took away my shield and armour, “didn’t we rehearse the part over and over again, can’t you people act like Christians, or at least pretend to, for five minutes? It’s clear you didn’t read the script, three lines, no more, it’s not like we had you play Ursus or Nero—and to go and ruin a scene, don’t you know that a fuck-up like that costs money?” Meanwhile behind me, in the arena, “Action!” the megaphone shouted again, and then—like it says in the script, it’s true, that lout who’s dragging me away is right—“An unforeseen event: the Christians, first one, then a second, then all of them, throw down their weapons and shields and embrace, they make the sign of the cross,” just like in the script. Let me go back too, if only I had known, I too want to embrace you, Comrades, I made a mistake, it was a misunderstanding, so many misunderstandings, when we tore each other to pieces ... “The public, enraged, rises up in protest.” “Cowards, it’s a disgrace, it’s an insult to the emperor, feed them to the lions!” I know, I’m familiar with the role they always want us to play, sword against sword and shield against shield, and the more we kill each other the more they applaud, the more they increase our stipend every now and then if we do well and bash each other’s heads in.
One more shove and I’m out of the Coliseum; looking back, I can still see the Christians on their knees in the centre of the arena. At this point—naturally I read the script, I know it by heart, I’ve been playing the same part all my life, earlier I was just confused for a moment—at this point the lions arrive, like the script says, storming into the arena—the scene will be filmed at Circus Zavatta, then in the cutting room it will be inserted at the right spot, of course, putting the wild beasts and their prey together, but only on the screen, while I, while we, with those beasts in the Lager, less mangy than the poor circus lions ...—I’m sorry I wasn’t able to see it later, that mishmash—“The lions rush into the arena, leaping on the Christians lying on the ground,” briefly rolling around in their paws a bundle of rags or one of the dummies, liberally strewn among the sand and sawdust. What’s left of us is a mutilated carcass. As I was saying, torn to shreds. And if it’s fake, like in that cheap melodrama, it’s even worse, we don’t even have flesh anymore, not even that to be torn to shreds, like the calf—or lamb, ram, what do I know—which was hacked to pieces there in Samothrace, according to the script of the sacred unutterable mysteries, another bad film.
67
“THUS BY EATING of the god they became as gods.” This is the secret: banal, overwrought twaddle. Yes, we tore the god apart, killed the child god who lived in our hearts—and that even younger god, whose heart beat under that of Maria, it’s I who pulled him by the hand, led him to the priests who didn’t even have a knife for the sacrifice, only boots to kick his mother in the belly. Each of us, during the night of that long journey toward an even deeper night, lulled by the rolling motion, tells the stranger next to him about the darkness that has entered his heart. Torn, poorly digested pieces of meat rise up in his mouth; the foul-smelling taste mixes with his breath and his words, a fetid incense sprinkled in celebration of those unutterable mysteries of our shame, of evil committed and endured. And each man talks about that evil, exposes it, discloses how and when he became victim and executioner and accomplice, the altar boy who waves the thurible and taints the air while the high priests say that we must remain silent about all this infamy, it’s an unutterable divine mystery. And instead there we are pouring it out, blabbing it, whispering our obscene acts in the dark; after all no one can see our faces as we speak.
If a flash of lightning or a signal lamp cuts through the darkness for a moment, what you glimpse, in that moment, is the reflection of your own face in the window glass and so they talk, we talk; convicts and refugees are loquacious, they have a lot to tell. The fleece is the hide of that gentle calf torn to pieces by the bestial gods, by us. What’s left in my hands is a rag, good for wiping my shoes. They say, however, that once, some brave soldiers, not wanting to hand the flag over to the enemy, cut it into little pieces, each one taking a piece with the idea that they would meet up again and sew it back together. We too, each with a scrap of the red flag—except that when we were supposed to meet up, to put it back together again and raise it on the flagstaff, there was no one there. And so I was left holding this rag.
I even spoke about Maria, that night, I don’t know to whom.—“It seemed as though a resplendent star had plummeted into the maiden’s fair breast.”—Ah, it’s you again, here to make light about great ancient tragic loves ... indeed, love crushes you if it pounces on you, that’s why Jason rids himself of it, leaving her to carry it on her own and sink under its weight.
It was I who sent her to the bottom. Maria, reappearing in the darkness, thrust back by me in that darkness in which I talk aimlessly to unknown comrades and a voice is a cigarette butt in the dark. In the hold of the Punat, that morning when the UDBA agents hurled me down there, she couldn’t come with me. They threw her off harshly; I’ll get you out, she shouted to me, as the Punat moved away from shore. I heard her voice, clear limpid and strong, above the churning of the engines and the waters, and at that moment, there below, I’m safe, I thought, if Maria is there nothing can happen to me.
We’d met again during those months in Fiume; I in the shipyards, she at La Voce del Popolo, wearing ourselves out working for the Internationale’s future humanity, but forgetting all about work and the future when we went to make love at our Miholašica and then dove into the sea, the bay and the surf were her sustenance and breath—during those days, those months, I was immortal. My comrades too were gods, ready to create a world, sacrificing their lives to build a different world, free wild bulls who had willingly yoked themselves to the plough to clear the land and make it worthy of man. How could I have spied on them, sent secret reports about them, about what they thought and how they saw things, to Comrade Blasich, who had sent me there for that purpose? They made me pay for this too, when I returned. I paid, but never enough for what I did to Maria—it’s easier to talk about these things in the dark, without seeing your face, like now, without you being able to see mine.
68
“THEY, THE INDEFATIGABLE PRINCES, were putting heart and muscle to the oars; the immense sea under the keel parted on both sides welling up with foam.” Them, not me. I dodged the bullet and moved up to the deck, to distribute calomel and take advantage of the storeroom. One hundred and fifty Argonauts returning home, the ancient Moira curves them over the oar, straying through the sea.
All in the jaws of Argus who guards the fleece, like Jason before Medea pulls him out; in the belly of the sea serpent that crosses oceans and reappears at the end of the journey. The train reaches the station dark with smoke and soot, the ship drops anchor in the murky bay, in the recesses of the Inhospitable Sea, dark waters of the outermost cavern that swallows up sailors. As a boy I dove in the Plava Grota beneath Lubenice and re-emerged in the shining sea, but from these austral waters there is no return.
No, I did not return, I’m buried down here, and not under that avalanche of tomes that is supposed to have fallen on me like that liar William Buelow Gould claimed—it’s not surprising, a prisoner, a fine talent but a jailbird like me, you certainly can’t believe what he says. I was buried like everyone else. The grave on the shore sank, the land blocked the sea and now the Hobart Town park is my burial place. I stayed there. It’s no use trying to fool me, Doctor, I can plainly see that Miramare Castle and the Cathedral of Pirano, on the other side, and Punta Salvore, jutting out into the ocean, are a trick, a cardboard diorama or a screen on which that crony of yours projects luminous images.
No one returns. In the first officer’s cabin I leaf through the records, I cross out
the names of those whom cerebrospinal fever, once past the Tropic of Cancer, dispatches to the deep abyss, fortunately there are just a few, a few shillings less upon arrival. I keep files on everyone, the living and the dead. You never know, maybe for the valley of Josaphat.
69
EVERYONE SUCKED down the drain. The porthole is getting lighter, my friends, strange to see our faces appear; the shipwrecked survivors pull their heads out of the water, look around in the deserted expanse, the train moves off, we’re alone on the plain, a uniform, flat sea. The Nelly will soon depart from Bremerhaven. Now is no longer the time to talk; we are silent, strangers to one another, with our bundles and our suitcases. The words of nights in the train have vanished, moisture that evaporates in the morning.
I’m not ashamed of what I said, of what I heard. No one can read in our faces the stories we told each other, Hades is a black gurgling pit of words that remain down there; it’s as though you never said them and never heard them. The journey in the dark is merely uncomfortable, hours and hours crammed into the train compartment with the other refugees and their makeshift baggage, each with his exaggerated tale. Each with his guilt, that too exaggerated—it’s good to feel guilty, believe me, it confers a destiny, it explains and justifies the setbacks and adversities. The guilt complex is a great invention, it helps you live, to bend your head, which, in any case, they will bend for you.
None of these comrades who, like me, will board the ship to go down there, displaced persons, people without a name—during the voyage the IRO, the International Refugee Organization, will even sequester our ID card—none of them will remember this story about Maria, just as I no longer remember theirs. When we happened to run into one another, years later, in Perth in Hobart Town or wherever, we never talked about that black pit that had landed us down here. How are things, we would ask each other, pay, work, for some the wife and children, the social clubs for refugees in Perth and Melbourne.
Blindly (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) Page 22
