Letter from Casablanca

by Antonio Tabucchi

  The high point of the show was Carmen del Rio. Her voice was no longer what it had been, of course, yet she still constituted an attraction. With the passing of the years the hoarse timbre that gave charm to her more desperate tangos had weakened, had become more limpid, and she tried in vain to regain it by smoking two cigars before her performance. But what was spectacular about her and what she knew would send the public into a frenzy was not so much her voice as a combination of resources: her repertory, her movements, her make-up, her costumes. Behind the curtains of the platform she had a little room crammed with rubbish and a majestic wardrobe with all the clothes she had used in the Forties when she was the great Carmen del Rio. There were long chiffon dresses, marvelous white sandals with very high cork heels, feather boas, tango singers’ shawls, one blonde wig, one red one, and two raven black ones parted in the middle and with large chignons with white combs, as in Andalusia. The secret of Carmen del Rio was her make-up. She knew it. She spent hours making herself up. She did not neglect the smallest detail: the tinted base, the long false eyelashes, on her lips the glittering lipstick she had used in earlier days, the very long fatal fingernails painted vermillion.

  She often called me because I helped her. She said that I had a very light touch and exquisite taste, I was the only person in the night club whom she trusted. She opened her wardrobe and wanted me to advise her. I went over the repertory for the evening. For the tangos she knew what to wear, but the makeup for the sentimental songs I chose. Usually I went for the light, filmy, pastel dresses—I don’t know, apricot, for example, which was enchanting on her, or a pale indigo that seemed to me unbeatable for Ramona. And then I did her nails and eyelashes. She closed her eyes and stretched out in the easy-chair, surrendered her head to the head-rest, and whispered to me as if in a dream, “Once I had a sensitive lover like you. … He spoiled me like a baby. … His name was Daniel…. He was from Quebec…. Who knows what became of him….” Close up and without cosmetics Carmen looked her age, but under the spotlight and after my make-up she was still a queen. I overdid the base and the grease-paint, naturally, and for face powder I insisted on a very pink Guerlain, instead of the too-white Argentine brands which gave prominence to her wrinkles. And the result was sensational. She was most grateful to me. She said that I pushed back the clock. And for her perfume I converted her to violet—much, very much, violet—and on principle she had protested, because violet is a vulgar perfume for schoolgirls. And she didn’t know that on the other hand it was this contrast that fascinated the public: an old defeated beauty who sang the tango made up like a pink doll. It was this that created the pathos and brought tears to the eyes.

  Then I went to do my work at the rear of the room. I circulated among the tables with a light step. “More carabine-ros a la plancha, señor?” “Do you like the rose wine, señorita?” I knew that while she was singing, Carmen was searching for me with her eyes. When with the boss’s gold cigar lighter I lit the cigarette which some client had just finished inserting between his lips, I made the light shine a minute at heart level. It was an agreed-upon signal between Carmen and me. It meant that she was singing divinely, that she went right to the heart. And I observed that her voice vibrated even more and gained warmth. She needed to be encouraged, the splendid old Carmen. Without her, “O Bichinho” would have been nothing.

  The night Carmen stopped singing there was panic. She did not give up of her own accord, obviously. We were in her dressing room, I was doing her make-up, she was stretched out in the armchair in front of the mirror. She was smoking her cigar, keeping her eyes closed, and all of a sudden the powder began to get sticky on her forehead. I realized that she was sweating. I touched her: it was a cold sweat. “I feel bad,” she murmured, and said nothing else. I put my hand on her chest, took her pulse, and couldn’t feel it any longer. I went to call the manager. Carmen was trembling as if she had a fever, but she did not have a fever. She was icy. We called a taxi to take her to the hospital. I helped her to the back entrance so the public wouldn’t see her. “Ciao, Carmen,” I said to her. “It’s nothing. I’ll come to see you tomorrow,” and she attempted a smile.

  It was eleven o’clock. The clients were having supper. On the platform the spotlight made a circle of empty light. The pianist played softly in order to fill the void. Then from the room came a little impatient applause. They were demanding Carmen. Senhor Paiva, behind the curtain, was very nervous. He sucked his cigarette anxiously, called the manager and told him to serve some champagne gratis. Probably the idea was to keep the public in a good mood. But at that moment a little chorus chanted, “Car-men! Car-men!”

  And then I don’t know what came over me. It wasn’t something I thought about. I felt a force that drove me into the dressing room. I turned on the make-up lights around the mirror. I chose a very tight-fitting sequined dress with a slit up the side, of the deliberately showy sort, some white shoes with very high heels, black elbow-length evening gloves, a red wig with long curls. I made up my eyes heavily, with silver, but for my lips I chose a light lipstick, an opaque apricot. When I went out on the platform the spotlight struck me in full force. The public stopped eating. I saw many faces staring at me, many forks remaining suspended in the air. I knew that public, but I had never seen it from up front, arranged in a semi-circle like this. It was like a siege.

  I began with Caminito verde. The pianist was an intelligent type. He immediately understood the timbre of my voice, provided me with a very discreet accompaniment, all in low notes. And then I nodded to the electrician. He put on a blue disc. I grasped the microphone and began to whisper into it. I let the pianist do two intermezzzos to prolong the song because the public didn’t take its eyes off me. And while he played I moved slowly on the platform and the cone of blue light followed me. Now and then I moved my arms as if I were swimming in that light and stroked my shoulders, with my legs slowly spreading apart and my head swaying so that my curls caressed my shoulders, as I had seen Rita Hayworth do in Gilda. And then the public began to applaud excitedly. I understood that it had gone well and I took the counteroffensive. In order not to let the enthusiasm die down, I attacked another song before the applause ended. This time it was Lola Lolita la Piquetera, and then a Buenos Aires tango of the Thirties, Pregunto, that sent them into delirium. It was applause that Carmen had had only when she was at her best. And then an inspiration came to me, a whim. I went to the pianist and made him give me his jacket. I put it on over my dress and as a joke, but with much sadness, I began to sing the ballad of Beniamino Gigli, Oh begli occhi di fata, as if it were addressed to an imaginary woman for whom I was pining for love. And little by little, while I was singing, that woman whom I was evoking came to me, recalled by my song. At the same time I slowly took off the jacket. And while I was whispering into the microphone the last line, “della mia gioventú cogliete il fiore,” I was abandoned by my lover, but my lover was the public, who stared at me with rapture. And I was myself once more, and with my feet I pushed away the jacket that I had let fall to the platform. And then, before the enchantment ended, rubbing the microphone on my lips, I began to sing Acércate más. An indescribable thing happened. The men got up on their feet and applauded, an old man in a white jacket threw me a carnation, an English officer at a table in the first row came up on the platform and tried to kiss me. I escaped to the dressing room. I felt I was going crazy with excitement and joy. I fell a kind of shock all over my body. I shut myself inside, I panted, I looked at myself in the mirror. I was beautiful, I was young, I was happy. And then I was overtaken by a whim. I put on the blonde wig, I put around my neck the blue feather boa, letting it drag on the floor behind me, and I returned to the platform in little elflike skipping steps.

  First I did Que será será in the Doris Day manner, and then I attacked Volare with a chá-chá rhythm. Wiggling, I invited the public to accompany me by beating time to the rhythm with their hands. And when I sang “Vo-la-re!” a chorus answered me “Oh-oh,” and I “Can-t
a-re,” and they “Oh-oh-oh-oh.” It was like the end of the world. When I returned to the dressing room, I left behind me excitement and noise. I was there, in Carmen’s easy-chair, crying with happiness, and I heard the public chant, “Name! Name!” Senhor Paiva came in, speechless, beaming, his eyes shining. “You have to go out and tell them your name,” he said. “We can’t calm them down.” And I went out again. The electrician had put in a pink disc that flooded me with a warm light. I took the microphone. I had two songs that surged in my throat. I sang Luna rossa and All’alba se ne parte il marinaro. And when the long applause died away, I whispered into the microphone a name that came spontaneously to my lips. “Josephine,” I said. “Josephine.”

  Lena, many years have passed since that night, and I have lived my life as I felt I had to live it. During my travels around the world I have often thought of writing to you and never had the courage to do it. I don’t know if you have ever known what happened when we were children. Perhaps our aunt and uncle weren’t able to tell you anything. There are things that cannot be told. Anyway, if you already know or if you come to know, remember that Papa was not bad. Forgive him as I have forgiven him.

  From here, from this hospital in this far-away city, I ask you a favor. If what I am willingly about to face should turn out badly, I beg you to claim my body. I have left precise instructions with a notary and the Italian Embassy so that my body may be returned home. In such a case you’ll receive a sum of money sufficient to execute this and an extra sum as recompense, because in my life I’ve earned enough money. The world is stupid, Lena, nature is vile, and I don’t believe in the resurrection of the flesh. I believe in memories, however, and I ask you to let me satisfy them.

  About two kilometers from the signal house where we spent our childhood, between the farm where Signor Quintilio worked and the town, if you take a little road between the fields that once had a sign saying “Turbines” because it led to the suction pump for the reclaimed land, after the locks, a few hundred meters from a group of red houses, you come to a little cemetery. Mama rests there. I want to be buried next to her and to have on the tombstone an enlarged photograph of me when I was six years old. It’s a photograph that remained with aunt and uncle. You must have seen it who knows how many times. It’s of you and me. You are very small, a baby lying on a blanket, I am sitting beside you and holding your hand. They dressed me in a pinafore and I have curls tied with a bow. I don’t want any dates. Don’t have an inscription put on the stone, I beg you, only the name. But not Hector. Put the name with which I sign this letter, with the brotherly affection which binds me to you, your

  Josephine

  SATURDAY AFTERNOONS

  He was on a bicycle,” said Nena. “He wore a knotted handkerchief on his head. I saw him very well. He saw me, too. He wanted something here at home. I understood him. But he went by as if he couldn’t stop. It was exactly two o’clock.”

  Nena then wore a metal contraption on her upper teeth, which persisted in growing crooked. She had a reddish cat that she called “My Belafonte” and spent the day singing “Banana Boat” to herself—or preferably whistling it, because thanks to her teeth the whistle turned out very well, better than mine. Mama seemed very annoyed, but usually she didn’t yell at her. She limited herself to saying, “Leave the poor animal in peace.” Or, when you saw that she was very sad and was pretending to rest in the armchair, and Nena ran into the garden under the oleanders, where she had installed her own pied-à-terre, Mama would appear at the window pushing back a lock of hair that was stuck to her with perspiration, and wearily, not as if she were scolding but almost as if it were a private lament, a litany, she would say to her, “Stop whistling that nonsense. Does it seem right to you? You know that respectable little girls shouldn’t whistle.”

  Nena’s pied-à-terre consisted of the blue canvas deck chair which had been Papa’s favorite and which she had propped against two terra cotta pots of privet to make a wall. On the lawn, which served as the floor, she had arranged all her dolls (her “little friends”), the poor Belafonte tied on a leash, and a red tin telephone, a present which Aunt Yvonne had given me the previous year for my Saint’s Day, and which I had then passed on to Nena. I had never liked it very much anyway. It was a stupid toy and absolutely inadequate for a boy of my age. But you had to have patience and be polite, said Mama. Aunt Yvonne didn’t have any children—not because she hadn’t wanted them, poor thing—and she didn’t have the slightest notion of what toys were suited to a boy. To tell the truth, Aunt Yvonne didn’t have the slightest notion of anything, not even of what to say in certain circumstances. She was so careless that she was always late for appointments, and when she came to our house she always left something on the train. “But even so, there’s no harm done,” said Mama. “It’s a good thing you forgot something, otherwise what would become of us?” And Aunt Yvonne smiled like a guilty little girl, looking very embarrassed at all the luggage that she had deposited in the entry, while in the street the taxi tooted to remind her that she still had to pay.

  And so, characteristically, she had committed “an unpardonable gaffe,” as she had said, making the situation worse, while Mama sobbed on the divan. (But then Mama had forgiven her at once.) When she had arrived at our house immediately after the misfortune, she had announced herself by a telephone call which old Tommaso had answered, from which she had taken leave by saying, “Regards to the young gentleman officer.” And that stupid Tommaso had repeated it, crying like a calf. But what would you expect him to do? He was arteriosclerotic, and I had always heard it said that even as a young man he hadn’t been very smart. He had repeated it while Mama talked with the notary in the living room that infernal day in which she had had to think of everything, “of everything except what I really wanted to think of, alone with my pain.” But the fact was that Aunt Yvonne had repeated that leave-taking for years. It was a joke that went back to 1941, when Papa and Mama were engaged. He was an officer at La Spezia. So that she and Aunt Yvonne could have a vacation, he had rented a little villa in Rapallo, the proprietor of which was a very polite lady who did not miss an opportunity to emphasize her aristocratic origins, however questionable. She loved to make conversation while she watered the garden when Mama and Aunt Yvonne were outside on the terrace and, taking leave, she always said, “Regards to the young gentleman officer,” which made Aunt Yvonne break into giggles, promptly leave the terrace, and laugh herself silly.

  So Mama, those summer hours after dinner, while she lay in an armchair with her eyes covered with a handkerchief, heard Nena whistling “Banana Boat,” sighed, and let it alone. “What do you want her to do, poor treasure?” I had heard Aunt Yvonne say. “If she’s not happy at her age, when do you expect her to be? Let her alone.” And Mama, with her eyes glistening, had nodded, wringing her hands. It was the first of May and Aunt Yvonne had come to say good-bye. She was contrite in her careless way. She said, “My dear, you realize there’s nothing else we can do. What do you expect? Rodolfo can’t stay here any longer. You know they all pounce on him like jackals. A day doesn’t go by that it isn’t in the financial pages. No one can live like this, not even the president of the Bank of Italy. And then you know the job in Switzerland is a prestigious thing. We haven’t had any children, unfortunately. Up to now his only satisfaction has been his career. I certainly can’t interfere with the meaning of his life—it would be inhumane. But Lausanne really isn’t the end of the world, is it? We’ll see each other at least once a year. In fact, we’ll surely be here in September, and when you want to come our house is always open.” It was a Sunday morning. Mama had put on a little black veil because she was already ready for Mass. She stayed motionless on her chair and stared beyond Aunt Yvonne, who was sitting opposite her, beyond the buffet in the living room, which was behind Aunt Yvonne, and slowly nodded her head yes, calmly, with resignation, and with an air of understanding and tenderness.

  Sundays had become much sadder without Aunt Yvonne’s visits.
At least when she came there was a bit of movement, even confusion, because she descended upon us unexpectedly, and the telephone rang as long as she remained in our house and even afterwards. Furthermore, she wore a kitchen apron that turned out to be very funny over those classy outfits that she wore—long silk skirts, chiffon blouses, a super chic little hat with an organza camellia—and dolled up in that way she declared that she would prepare a French delicacy—Versailles mousse, for example—because the food in our house was “horrifyingly mundane.” Then it happened that at the last minute Mama had to resort to horrifyingly mundane veal scallops with lemon and buttered peas because between one telephone call and another Aunt Yvonne would have finished the mousse at four o’clock in the afternoon, and Nena and I, impatient, were going around the kitchen stealing breadsticks and cubes of cheese. But even so, all that turmoil brought about at least a little bit of happiness, even if later on it fell to Mama to wash six or seven pyrex bowls. But anyway, the mousse kept until the next day and it was truly delicious.

  For all of May and part of June the days passed quickly enough. Mama was extremely busy with her azaleas, which that spring were very slow. They seemed reluctant to show themselves, as if they, too, had suffered with all the family. “Flowers are so sensible,” said Mama, working the soil. “They are perfectly aware of what is happening. They’re sensitive.” And I was very much occupied with the third declension, kinds of parisyllabics, and the imparisyllabics. I never succeeded in remembering which took an um and which took an ium. The teacher had said, “This boy has done badly since the beginning of the year. He confuses all the declensions, and then what do you expect, dear lady? Latin is a precise language. It’s like mathematics. If one’s not cut out for it, one’s not cut out. He is much better in free composition. In any case, he can make up the work with study.” And so I had spent the whole month of May trying to make up, but evidently I had not made up enough.