They think everyone else is that way and it’s reasonable that they would want to keep people with such a face out of their houses, in the wind and cold, or inside, but in jail, in the Lager. The Bonegilla camp, in 1952, was a true Lager—Italian workers deceived, abandoned, enslaved, our Risveglio wrote; Communist agitators, Australian police and diplomats thundered, Stalin’s fifth columnists, and our governors and ambassadors and consuls saying that yes, that maybe, that no, that our emigrants were not Communists and the Italian government would be the first that would never, that maybe one or two, but generally speaking no, good people, and yet they understood that the Australian government, but these understandable difficulties would be overcome and Italy was confident that in the near future and that meantime.
There were thousands of us; convicts, emigrants, displaced persons. Of course I was there too, even if the name is different—and there’s no need to explain why. Troops intervened, four tanks even entered the camp at Bonegilla; it’s true, unlike the peaceful protest of two weeks earlier, at the beginning of July, that time a few huts and the church were set on fire. The Communist agitators at Il Risveglio—to be truthful those from La Fiamma as well, ultra-Fascists but still emigrants, scum of the earth—wrote all sorts of things about that repression and about the governments that closed an eye to it, like Reverend Knopwood did with those Aborigines who were killed off. Then things calmed down and later I found a job at the Tasmanian Hydro Electric Commission. It was there, at Hobart Town, that I encountered Maria.—No, she’d remained up there, behind that revolving glass door at the Café Lloyd.
83
OH ALL RIGHT, I also wrote out the envelopes for the Colonist, only the envelopes, down here everyone manages as best he can. Fortunately Dr. Ross noticed me and asked me to write my autobiography for the Hobart Town Almanack, so as to correct that apocryphal biography of mine—published in the fraudulent edition of the Religion of Christ, which caused me so many problems and provoked accusations of impiety—and thereby re-establish the truth. I immediately got to work. It’s so nice to have a pen in your hand, even when you’re not writing. The Waterloo Inn is poorly lit, just enough light to see the paper and read the words. All around you the world blurs, Norah drinks and blurts out something bawdy, she comes in and out of the tavern, a coarse word drifts from the other tables and is lost in the stagnant staleness, I too drink, I drink and write, I’m no longer sure who’s drunk and who’s not, whether Norah is returning from yet another lockup or on her way to one; on one occasion she stays away for a couple of months, it seems, it’s pleasant to ignore things, let them slide off like drops of rain on a jacket. And all thanks to a pen and some paper on which to restructure your life. I’m grateful to you for giving me a pen and paper here inside as well. That screen isn’t enough for me. I learned to use it a little, since you insisted, but—I like the recorder better, it works on its own, I don’t even notice whether it’s there or not. But paper is better than anything.
So many things to say, so many to leave out, partly because the number of pages I have is limited. I list numerous mistakes—like my gambling vice—since the purpose is to expose the great errors of my life so that a moral lesson can be drawn from them. In order for this lesson to be clear, a little order must be brought to the tangle of events … So I shift and change the facts and dates of some events, to make them appear more consistent; I also state that I left Iceland of my own free will and that I was among those who crossed Bass Strait for the first time, on the Lady Nelson. I forgive all those who denigrated, betrayed, denounced me. I forgive the Party, namely myself, and repeat a phrase I heard somewhere—this man’s life would make a perfect novel, if it were written with the utmost fidelity to the truth. I’ve been described as a gambler, a thief, a spy, a wretch, a jailbird and worse, even a pirate. Nothing serious.
With a pen in hand, I am History, the Party; I can’t complain about my misfortunes and play the victim, but must faithfully side with reality, which, without pen and paper, I can’t manage to see. It seems fitting to me, indeed requisite, to celebrate the merits of Sir George Arthur, who leaves the colony at the end of his mandate, and to defend the penal institution that bears his name against the slurs written in England and against the biased, ill-informed books of the do-gooders. The cells, the dozens of lashes with the cat-o’-nine-tails, the electroshock—None of this entire story, Comrade, will ever be known. Norah comes in drunk, she makes fun of me, calling me Your Majesty amid the laughter of the other drunks, I stand up, she grabs the sheets of paper from me, I snatch them back and dash out, she chases after me brandishing a piece of wood. The autobiography is published in 1838, but several pages got lost along the street, who knows where they ended up, as she ran after me, furious …
84
THIS IS GALATEA. She was found on an African beach following a shipwreck, and was worshipped like a goddess by the aborigines; other figures ended up adorning inns and taverns, so that the sailors might feel a little more at home even when they were on land.
You see, figureheads were evicted from the sea and so they manage as best they can, I’ve discovered more than one of them displaying a coiffure in a beauty salon window or modelling a dress in an apparel store—well disguised of course, a proper mannequin, but she didn’t escape my attention. Still, I pretended not to notice anything, everyone gets by as best they can. We buried one of them—read what it says here—the one from the Rebecca, a whaling ship from New Bedford, among the rocks by the sea. Under the bones of the waves, as they say in Iceland, we drank beer in her honour, her funeral beer; women should have one too, it’s only fair, we got drunk and sang the Office for the Dead on her grave of sand and stones. Lewdness too, as is fitting; death is lewd and sorrow is lewd. I’d like to piss on my grave, the flowers on a grave have to be watered, don’t they? I even do it, when nobody can see me, there in St. David’s Park.
On the figurehead from the Rebecca all we did was pour some beer, but we didn’t do it on purpose, it’s just that we were a little drunk; besides, the waves quickly washed it away, that rank odour vanished in the salt sea air and now there’s not a trace, not even the grave, the tide scraped and sucked it away, maybe now she rises and falls on the open sea, corroded by the water, wood that is no longer distinguishable from any other remains of a shipwreck. Even a face composed of flesh soon deteriorates, the fish devour it and it quickly becomes unrecognizable, an unrecognizable piece of flotsam from the sea. It was I who pushed Maria, on the open sea and under the sea; I threw her to the sharks as food and so I was spared by them. Savage teeth tore her from my arms—no, it was I who let her go, who shoved her into those jaws, all the more voracious because her heart was bleeding and the brutes get even more excited at the taste of blood, the slave drivers lash out more enthusiastically when they see red trickling down their captives’ backs.
And so she disappeared in that shadowy sea, in that darkness. But I read that sometimes shipwrecked figureheads return. Maria disappeared on the open sea, the ship vanished over the horizon, and when I heard that it was returning to port I also heard that it was returning without her—she was no longer there, they must have treacherously thrown her overboard, of course, how could I think that one small push … I read, in the catalogue, about a sculptor who chose his beautiful girlfriend to be the model for the figurehead of a ship on which she was about to leave on a long voyage—for her, soon afterwards, the longest voyage of all: she died. Every day he watched the sea disconsolately, he couldn’t believe she was dead and when the ship re-entered the port and he saw the figurehead, standing upright on the prow, identical to her—he leapt into the water to go to her, longing to embrace her, but he went under. Waterlogged and dazed, water in his nose in his mouth in his ears, it was impossible to see the ship as it passed by, to see whether she was there or not. She wasn’t there, Eurydice vanishes; look how beautiful she is, this Eurydice wiping her tears with the edge of the mantle that envelops her. She too is in La Spezia, the caption says; we�
��ll see if I’m able to successfully recreate her, that mantle is the dark water, the night, the bottom of the sea, I’ll pull it over my head and we’ll stay under there, close together, clinging to one another …
85
DO I LIKE taking walks around this island? Of course, in fact I’m grateful for this freedom I enjoy. Not everyone here has that privilege. In that room, for example, at the end of the corridor, in that other section, I once opened the door and looked in, then someone immediately rushed over—those beds with the straps, I understand, those are people who aren’t well, it’s right not to let them go strolling around the island, there are bushes, rocks, they could fall and hurt themselves. Of course I realized that we’re on an island. Don’t worry, I won’t tell the others and get them worked up, I understand that it’s kept hidden from them so as not to upset them—it’s always disquieting, being on an island, you feel cut off from the world, even if the arm of the sea is so narrow. I, on the other hand, like being over here, across the sea, it’s like in school when they took us to summer camp. Here at least I can play my old cards my own way, as if they hadn’t run out; the old film studio hasn’t yet been dismantled and at least nobody pities me for being an old nostalgic, they take me seriously. On the other side, however, out there, by now nobody gives a damn …
I recognized it immediately, my Isle of the Dead, even though so much time has passed. You’ve changed the inside of the barracks and even the church a little, and you’ve chiselled off the gravestone epitaphs so as not to make your guests melancholy; I recognize those stones, you pulled them out of the ground and piled them up there in back, but I remember when they stood modest but austere over the graves. I myself had many of them placed; I also dictated the inscriptions and epitaphs for those comrades in adversity more unfortunate than I, lying there underground while I strolled above them, though reflecting on their destiny and the words with which to briefly and decorously remember them. I even got two shillings for every gravestone, and an increasing number of convicts died, in Port Arthur, given that more and more of them arrived.
When I first came to this Isle of the Dead there were already graves but not yet gravestones for the convicts. The Reverend John Allen Manton had buried the first prisoner, John Hanck, and those who followed him, under a simple mound of earth.
It’s all well and good that time and harsh weather erase men’s traces, but a little decorum is only proper. Even a convict is entitled to a gravestone—true, that too won’t last long, but good manners should be preserved, even with the dead. Even in here, Doctor, good manners are preserved, I have to admit it. You have the delicacy never to tell the truth directly to all of these inmates of ours, to us in short, namely that we’re dead; indeed, you operate in such a way that no one even notices that he’s already in the cemetery, that he’s walking—when given permission to walk—on his own grave. Just like when I left that antiquarian bookstore, where I bought my autobiography and a couple of my biographies, and went to take a little walk on my grave in St. David’s Park, a short distance away from the sea-river. Yes, it’s somewhere down there, where the city’s old cemetery once stood. At least I think so … what happened later, where they found me, what they did with that diploid, with that nucleus, with all those chromosomes, forty-five, I think, no, forty-six, I don’t know, but—A fine grave, a public park. Children playing, old men on a bench. The earth, an immense cemetery. They should leave us in peace, a little respect for the dead, and instead …
I sit on a bench, looking out at the sea-river; perhaps I’m down here, or a little farther on, it doesn’t matter, I start reading my autobiography. I wrote an epitaph for myself as well—a little longer but it’s quite understandable, a little self-esteem is inevitable. I had even prescribed—as agreed with Reverend Manton and with the stonecutters cooperative I had set up, all semi-free convicts like me—that the graves and gravestones not be arranged in rows, but rather scattered randomly, in clumps, like in a copse. Those down below there had already marched in rows too often in their lives. Jack Mulligan, the glory of heaven awaits those who have known darkness on earth. Timothy Bones, I have sinned more than His Majesty’s judge who sent me down here knows, but another judge sees that my life was not just base actions. † June 18, 1838. Sarah Eliza Smith, dead at age four, this lovely bud in Paradise will bloom.
On the back of the gravestone you could write the deceased’s history, concisely yet providing all the essentials. Gravestones are condensed novels. Or rather, novels are expanded gravestones; a verb—he sailed—which becomes a highly detailed chronicle of storms, doldrums, piracies, mutinies. My autobiography is one of these expanded headstones. For this reason it should be forgiven if it contains some indulgent exaggeration of my adventures and fails to mention any foibles. De mortuis nihil nisi bene. No one should speak ill of the dead, or even of those sentenced to life.
Or for life? But this sentence was promulgated very early on and it’s useless to contest His Majesty’s courts, as the do-gooders do, because their jurisdiction ends there. They could, in theory, cease issuing death sentences—I’m not sure it would be a good thing, with so any scoundrels around—but they can’t suspend life sentences. Me, for example, who is it that pulled me out from under there, who stole that nucleus, who sent me back to this unknown Austral island which is the world, to this Lager?
For a while I didn’t think about it anymore, I forgot about it. I worked quietly at my little job at the Tasmanian Hydro Electric Commission, sometimes I thought I felt Maria’s eyes on me, like the witch eyeing Hansel and Gretel while fattening them up for her gruesome meal, and then, with a pang, for a moment I recalled Fiume, when Maria was in fact Gretel, who gave me her hand, and holding that hand I was no longer afraid of any witch, but it was just for a moment, then it went away. And I resigned myself, I went on working, I drank a little more than I should, I waited for it to be time to go to sleep. You would never have gotten your hands on me and brought me in here were it not for that time when Luttmann came …
86
HE HAD COME to visit the emigrants on behalf of the Party, Luttmann had, and I don’t know what got into me to get so hopping mad that way, just because of those words of his at Battery Point. What are a few words, after all, true or false, soon lost in the millions of words that come out of people’s mouths and evaporate like bubbles? Why get so worked up, then? Wait a minute, I’m the one asking you, Doctor, given that you know everything about me, that you read, or maybe even wrote, my nosological history, my novel …
No, I don’t remember anything important happening in Barcelona—Comrade Luttmann, the Commander Falcon of Jarama, was looking out at the sea, not at the girl who had asked him that question, a girl from Gradisca, who had come down here almost as a child, with her mother and two brothers, her father had been killed in the final days of the war in Spain. No, Luttmann did not meet her eyes; he gazed out at the sea without seeing it, he too looked where there was nothing to be seen. He didn’t meet my eyes either, when I started shouting soon afterwards—he didn’t see a thing, only the black sea, and when you don’t see anything you can also start shooting, for no reason, just for the fun of it, like throwing stones into a dark chasm, if there’s no one there no one gets hurt, and even if there is someone down there but you don’t see him it’s as if no one were there, the stone cracks a head but the chasm is too deep to hear a cry. Nelson didn’t see anyone die looking through the spyglass with his blindfolded eye, he didn’t hear the cries of those who fell under his cannons either. In Goli Otok the cries of those in kroz stroj were lost at sea, the comrades fall but the Party doesn’t know anything about it.
The old cannon at Battery Point hasn’t fired for centuries—Luttmann wasn’t firing at anyone either, the Party hasn’t had any cannons for a long time, in fact it was struck in the face by their recoil and was left dumbfounded. But he too had fired, in Barcelona, now he no longer knew at whom—nothing important, that gunfire those nights, those comrades fallen on the barrica
des themselves forming a barricade, No pasarán, instead they passed through, they all pass, the cannon exploded and tore through the wall, an enormous rupture. That breach is me, my body, my heart in pieces—nothing important?
I had gone there to listen to him, with the others; I don’t remember how, but I started shouting, he averted his eyes, I even jumped him, almost, they stopped me first, all I could see were arms legs and some contorted faces, mouths screaming, I struck out wherever I could. That was when we met, Doctor, they dragged me here, to you—or to someone like you, I don’t remember, in any case someone with a long white coat, like yours. True, all the guards here are white, they’re the ones who won—you or someone else, I don’t know, he was kind however, but by then I was calm and collected, more than anything I was worn out.
87
HOW COULD I possibly be anything but worn out? Not because of Luttmann’s words, which for that matter only you know, Doctor, it’s you who reported them to me, don’t tell me you invented them, just like that, to provoke me?
How could one possibly not lose one’s head passing below Puer Point with the boat, beyond Opossum Bay? The scored reddish rocks rise tall over an agitated sea; they seem brittle, almost a hope that evil and its bastions might crumble at any moment. No, they won’t give way, red with blood congealed for all eternity. The children and adolescent prisoners are up there; amid lashings and unspeakable abuses they learn to work the land, to make bread and repeat a few verses of the Bible by heart, but most of all to be tortured and to torture—History is the rape of childhood.
Blindly (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) Page 27
