Blindly (The Margellos World Republic of Letters)

by Magris, Claudio

  Ah yes, taverns, as I was saying. The Lamb, Jolly Sailor, The Seven Stars, Help’me thro the world and, since I hooked up with Norah, the Waterloo Inn; there was no other place she liked as much when it came to drinking herself under the table. Seamen love port calls, going ashore and heading for a tavern. It gets to be a habit, to the point that when the sea of life becomes stormy, you go ashore, or rather to the tavern, even though you’re no longer on the ship. I like drinking—even though here you only let me have those syrups and teas—sitting there drinking, I especially like listening to the voices; the buzz that occasionally rises a notch and sometimes culminates in a shout, like the surf rising into the roar of a bigger wave that crashes against a rock. I like watching the faces, the gestures. The world is varied, it keeps you company. You don’t need to have friends; just a crowd, people, a word or two at the bar, a flushed face that says something then vanishes forever in the grey multitude, it doesn’t matter, another one quickly appears and calls for a beer.

  Reverend Knopwood, whom I see rosy and well fed again after so many years, also likes beer; he quaffs it down urging others not to do as he does. At the Jolly Sailor one evening there’s a woman for sale for five pounds. Buxom and worn, like the large rose on her breast; a schoolteacher takes her home with him—usually you pay fifty sheep or twelve bottles of rum for a woman. This too is a sign of the city’s prosperity; people are getting rich from pork, timber, whale oil, kangaroo fur and seal pelts, so it makes sense that customs would relax a little. The governor of a few years ago, they say, celebrated the king’s birthday by getting drunk and distributing grog in the street, leaving the convicts to take control and gang up with the blacks in plundering and looting, later going on the rampage against those same blacks and their women.

  Now, however, ever since Colonel William Sorell created the hell of Macquarie Harbour, a proper penitentiary, for the most intractable prisoners, and since Sir George Arthur, the current lieutenant-governor, established the Executive Council, the Legislative Council and a court with full and autonomous jurisdiction over all crimes committed in Van Diemen’s Land, there’s greater discipline. Indeed five days after my arrival, I—like everyone else, it’s Sir George’s order—am obliged to attend the hanging of Matthew Bready and four other desperados, who became bushrangers and turned Hobart Town into a shambles with their looting.

  A hanging is always a spectacle. Here in the Antipodes, in the colonies, it’s an entirely different thing than at Tyburn; it doesn’t have those high spirits you find in taverns and at cockfights, with shouting, boozing, hands on women’s breasts, street vendors trumpeting cakes and rum. Here it’s solemn, civilization’s rite of initiation in the Terra Incognita, Nature’s blood becoming part of History. The Catholic Church, the Church of England and the Wesleyan rite perform solemn blessings, the Reverend intones the hymn, The hour of my departure comes, I hear the voice that calls me home; even the row of convicts and the throng of townspeople, crowded together by the invitation and order of Sir George, join in the chorus, In the midst of life we are in death. The bodies jerk in space and become rigid; death is a blast of wind that fills the sails and shrouds. Even the pecker stands up erect and useless, the ship slips into eternity straight as a flag; beyond that crossing the wind abates, a rag hangs limp between the legs. To tell the truth I spat on the ground seeing those poor wretches dangling in the wind; a huge glob, which almost ended up on the governor’s shoes, and it’s the only time I got a taste of the cat-o’-nine-tails. That should teach me to be more careful.

  I witnessed a number of hangings in Hobart Town: one hundred and five. Sir George Arthur views those public executions as akin to washing down muddy streets, a measure of the community’s progress. I take advantage of those hours to collect, as I saw them do in London, the final words of those sentenced to death and publish them, touching them up a little, of course. Partly because in Hobart Town the market is meagre, so it’s a good idea to satisfy the governor’s wishes; he wants those delinquents, whose acts terrorized the settlers, to appear repentant and frightened by death on the scaffold, so that people will see that even those devils are actually cowards and will no longer be afraid of them.

  So I leave out Matthew Bready’s courage as he climbs onto the gallows acclaimed by the crowd that sees him as a vigilante, the bawdy song strangled in Bryant’s throat by the rope as he sings “Oh! if I had her, Eh then if I had her, Oh! I would love her Black although she be!” and Jeffries’ obscenities regarding His Majesty; I also say nothing about William Tafferton, who the day before the execution tried to sell a leg and a heart, separately, to two surgeons, issuing them—so that others would not get their hands on the parts—regular receipts for the money, quickly spent on rum to celebrate his stage exit, on the eve of his marriage to the beautiful bride. Instead I record Perry’s pallor as he prays and begins vomiting and shitting his pants at the sight of the hangman, so that the executioner, revolted, slaps him in the face and he tries to sink down on his knees, in danger of strangling himself a moment too soon.

  When the Coriolis forces suck you down here and make you whirl around the cesspit of the world, you have to get by somehow. I get busy with my old acquaintances, Reverend Knopwood or Adolarius Humphrey, the eminent geologist. After all we arrived down here together on the first ship; in any case we created this world together—and seeing me among the convicts should arouse their sympathy a little bit. In fact they acquit themselves well and write to His Excellency the Governor, asking that I be pardoned.

  Humphrey is now a high-level police magistrate and doesn’t take much interest in rocks and the earth’s age anymore—what’s a few thousand years or centuries more or less, look at me, I don’t really know if I’m two hundred and seventeen, eighty-seven or ... not even you know, you photograph my mushy brain with those cameras of yours, but the life, the history, the face of a man are something else, old age and youth are reflected on the face like the sun’s light reflects on the earth, setting and rising again. Humphrey also lets the governor know how valuable some of my information is—gathered by worming out a secret here and there—concerning the forged Treasury bills meant to sow panic and upset the colony’s credit system. Sir George shilly-shallies, from London they informed him that I am a dangerous person—very true, but only to myself.

  The company is thinking of acquiring and developing some of the island’s northwestern territories, some of whose bays and estuaries are known, but whose interior is unexplored. Three thousand six hundred square miles of land, bounded on the north by a hundred miles of coast along Bass Strait between Port Sorell and Cape Grim, and on the west by eighty miles of ocean coastline, from Cape Grim to the mouth of the Pieman River.

  It’s natural that I should be the one to organize the expedition—as a convict I cost little, sixpence per day plus meals, and if an accident were to happen to me it wouldn’t be a problem for anyone, it never has been. Fifty miles a week, under the rains, sinking into the ground, on mountains soaked with muddy slush, a seventy-pound load apiece, me carrying a sword as well, eight pounds. My two companions—Mark Logan, another convict, and Black Andy, a black man—don’t understand why I lug it with me, but I like putting my hand on the hilt occasionally, as we walk through the forest. The last outposts of whites, the Brighton Inn and Captain Wood’s sheep pens, the territory where bankrupt daredevil Kemp built an empire, the realm of Dunn, the bushranger who terrorizes the few settlers in the bush; torrential rains for days and days, after a while you’re not even aware of being sodden, a seal underwater doesn’t feel wet either.

  Maps drawn in the rain that erases them; the rivers are overflowing though on those wet maps they snake along, neat and tidy, they submerge us in water over our belts, preventing us from crossing, but on the map they are already the orderly routes of tomorrow—the Ouse and the Shannon flow into the Derwent, the Tamar goes up as far as Launceston. Making History—and even a revolution—primarily means to bring order to the jungle, to map out paths and roa
ds through the indistinct marsh.

  I get the idea for a geography book, the first one about Van Diemen’s Land; it might even make a lot of money and this mountain in front of us, through which for days we’ve been looking unsuccessfully for a pass, could be called Mount Jorgensen, but meanwhile the swollen river rises, I fall into the water, the sword and the load on my back drag me down; I go under, the water flows in and out of my mouth, I am the river that roars and spitting inundates everything, the mouth of a shark, the darkness of the abyss in my head, a black burst torn by an unbearable flash. It’s almost all over, but an arm grabs me and pulls me up and onto the shore—Black Andy, naked, his black hand in my mouth and in my throat, the water gushes out of me like a spring, my head is still echoing, a cavern churning with waves, Andy parts my lips, blows and breathes into my mouth; after a while the waters in my head calm down, flow lightly, gently, a breeze sighs over them, I open my eyes, the world recomposes itself, the pieces fit back together, the trees the flooded banks the hut Andy’s black face his teeth.

  That mountain continues to stubbornly block our way, until a fleeing kangaroo reveals a pass. We go after it, the dogs catch up to it and kill it—advancing is like killing, I think as I eat the meat roasted over a fire laboriously started with dripping ferns, sabres and axes fell trees and shrubs to clear the way. In a small valley, remains gnawed some time ago still give off a scent that makes the dogs snarl. The fangs and beaks of wild creatures stripped the flesh off those bones—yes, someone recalls, they must belong to Dickson, Rever and Stean, three escaped prisoners who came here and stayed forever, a meal for the animals. Maybe not just for the animals; that cutting of the bones was done with knives, the three must have torn each other apart, eaten one another in turn, first two against one, then one against the other—a man, no matter how emaciated he’s become, is a good-sized portion—until the wild dogs, vultures and ants did the rest.

  At Sandy Cape we encounter some natives, led by a woman, arriving in catamarans that glide lightly over the waves. The women are naked, the warriors lay down their spears as a sign of peace.

  At Ross’s farm, instead, the blacks rebelled after being robbed and killed a man, a Scotsman, but then the whites, assisted by Dunn as well, though he usually loots them, finished off some of them, I don’t know how many. Living, killing. Why did Andy pull me out of the river? I look into his eyes for a long time. I think he understands his mistake, the debt he owes me. When the time comes I’ll remember it, I’ll remind him of it.

  75

  “HE WHO REBELS IS LOST.”—You’re telling me, you and your ridiculous pseudonyms, like this RedStar? Of course, lost. And yet ... On the Hellenic Prince, where I had been transferred from the Nelly, we were packed in like animals, nine hundred and fifty-four emigrants from all over Europe in a ship made to hold half that number; men and women separated, like at the Pedocin, so a man couldn’t even exchange a word with his wife for the entire trip, the slop they fed us disgusting, we couldn’t get off at the ports and bought things by lowering the money down on ropes and pulling up rubbish. Refugees, displaced persons whom the Second World War had flung here and there, robbing them of everything, and who were now on the move again, another flight, a different sea, another exile. On board you could do some work, that way the sailors and petty officers got a rest, and they paid us in lapsed Croatian kuna, which only circulated among us emigrants; they also forced us to exchange our money for these kuna, which they had suitcases full of.

  If someone on the Hellenic Prince fell ill, including a child, the ship’s doctor was nowhere to be seen; we even printed a newspaper, the Kanguro, to denounce these abuses and the IRO, which capitalized and cashed in on the mouldy food and children’s stomach aches and fevers. It’s all here, documented in this comprehensive historical study. No, my name isn’t there, I myself would have asked that it not be included, but that fine scholar realized on his own that, given everything I had already gone through, naming me would get me in trouble. And so he replaced my name with that of ... it’s not important. However, it’s easy to guess, among those five. Yes, because in Perth, once we arrived in port, we lost our patience; we protested, you bet! complete with a delegation and committee; there were five of us delegates, in short a real mutiny more or less, actually almost nil. The officer, icy and courteous, who made us go back down quietly with reassuring words, after we had gone up on deck, described our protest to the port authorities, once he went ashore, as “Mutiny.” To mutiny, at sea, seems as inevitable as sailing.

  A mini-revolt, they even sprayed us with water hoses; certainly in Dachau they didn’t use fire hoses. When we got to Bonegilla, the situation in the refugee camp was worse than on the Hellenic Prince, seven thousand seven hundred people in barracks, one thousand six hundred in tents, twelve children dead as a result of the sanitary and hygienic conditions—How can you expect us not to have revolted, not to have protested, it didn’t do much good but it did some good. Sometimes you have to stand up and say no, even if ...

  76

  AH, HERE WE ARE, the session resumes—maybe not therapeutic, but in any case seated on these benches, conversing quietly ... I like it, this custom of telling one another all about ourselves, what we did and the whys and wherefores ... group therapy, a gang at a tavern, everything remains the same as before, of course, still—When I returned to Hobart Town, coming down the Tamar, they granted me a ticket of leave, which also allows you to look for a job, with a licence revocable by the governor at any time. In fact I did hold some jobs; almost all of them, except forced labour. I had not been able to publish the novels written in England, due to the malevolence of the literary clique, but the reputation of my pen had come to be known down here as well, and so I engage in ink wars between the various newspapers of the colony, I write a history of the origins and expansion of the company—without a signature, just to be prudent—and some biographies and autobiographies of convicts—like that of John Savery, very similar to mine, for that matter, perhaps copied from mine, who knows, or of bushrangers like Howe, lord of the forest and the terror of the region along the Derwent, who escaped the soldiers and bounty hunters numerous times and finally fell near the Shannon. His chopped-off head ended up on the square in Hobart Town. By the way, gentlemen, if by any chance mine might interest you, go ahead, I hereby authorize you. Always better than the skulls of those blacks, I don’t know whom they might interest, apart from maniacs disguised as scientists ...

  We are founding a country—those huge rocks that the convicts pull out of the sea are its foundations—and therefore, obviously, creating its literature as well. I publish the letters, proclamations and those strange obsessions of Howe—no, I did not alter them, just a few revisions, it’s inevitable—that he wrote in blood in a notebook bound in kangaroo skin. At its origins, literature is still drenched in earth and blood; it still has that odour on it, the account of Romulus describing the killing of Remus. Then the paper passes from hand to hand, like money, and by dint of being handled loses its odour, becomes filthy but morally presentable. Bandits quickly become legend, the legend quickly turns into a lucrative business, which yields a tidy sum, sooner or later plundered by other bandits or maybe the same ones.

  But only a policeman really understands bandits, just as the whalers who harpoon them really know whales. And so, on May 21, 1828, it’s noted here, I become police constable in Oatlands, an area particularly overrun by bandits. When I personally arrest Sheldon, in Richmond, whom no one dares to touch, he is so surprised that someone has the courage to lay a hand on him that he puts up almost no resistance. I hunt down those bandits one by one, in those forests and among those mountains, tall greyish walls, ferns scoring the dark sky. I know how to hunt, because I have always been hunted: I know where the desperate instinct to escape leads to, where the hounded animal holes up, and I get there first, I’m there waiting for him in front of the hole where he’s about to hide. Me, a jailer at Dachau, a guard at Goli Otok?

  I bring in
sixty fugitives, to Hobart Town, a dog on a chain standing guard over chained wolves. Our steps and our knives force their way into the forest; dark sections of woods, streams, grassy clearings emerge from immemorial darkness, acquire a name. We try to tame the unknown with names of salvation, to baptize the fierce primordial gloom: Jericho, River Jordan, Lake Tiberias. But the new small bloody history that begins is also a baptismal font, which christens a world that has emerged from shadow to enter a different darkness: Murderer’s Plain, Killman’s Point, Foursquare Gallows. It is during that hunt, in Campbell Town, on the Elizabeth River, one of the most menacing places in the territory, that I meet ... no, not Maria, Norah. I don’t know if you realize ...

  77

  THAT EXPLAINS the Argonautics, later I understood. His dissertation at the Normal School of Pisa, honours and the esteem of publication for the not yet (or perhaps already?) and now no longer Comrade Blasich. But he also wrote a short paper about a later, minor mythographer, a paper as perverse as that later scholar’s version, which he liked a great deal in fact. Medea, he told me with a wink, after having killed her children, sees Jason again, old and frail, she forgives him, rejuvenates him with her magic skills and takes him back, once again attractive and untrustworthy. You see? That’s how things go. The betrayal, the escape, the killing of her brother, the humiliation in Corinth, a foreigner, vilified by everyone, most of all by her husband Jason, for whom she has sacrificed everything—the homicidal and suicidal agony of the children, the mother’s extreme negation of herself, all forgotten, no, all transformed into a memory like the others, and everything begins all over again. Even in bed—no longer like at first, the years go by for everyone, but with a few more or less magical skills you can remedy a sagging face, a flabby or withered breast, a pecker that no longer feels any great urge but, if need be, does its duty and pleases both of you. Inside there again, every so often, in that dark, damp cave, a little hoary and shrivelled but still moist; there inside, where the evil started, the delirium, the deceit, the descent into Avernus, and now as if nothing had happened, da capo ... Maria re-emerged from the Stygian swamp, where I sank her. Three years in Titoist prisons, then the Silos in Trieste, along with the last refugees remaining in the camp, just before they closed it. And finally, for her too, a displaced person, Terra Australis Incognita, emigration down here.