Letter from Casablanca

by Antonio Tabucchi

  VOICES

  For my friend M.I., who once entrusted me with a secret

  The first telephone call had been from a girl who called for the third time in three days and repeated ad infinitum that she just couldn’t cope anymore. You have to be careful in many cases because there’s the risk of psychodependence. It’s necessary to be affectionate with circumspection. Whoever calls must hear a friend on the other end of the line, not a deus ex machina on whom his life depends. Moreover, the main rule is that the caller shouldn’t get attached to one voice in particular, otherwise it creates difficult situations. This happens extremely easily with the depressed. They need a personalized confidant, they are not satisfied with an anonymous voice, they want it to be that voice, and they attach themselves to it desperately. But with the depressed of a certain type, those who have a fixed idea and with it build a wall around themselves, the situation is further complicated. They make telephone calls that freeze you, and you rarely establish contact. This time, however, it went well because I had the luck to discover something that interested her. Another rule that is usually valid for a good number of cases is to lead the conversation to a subject that interests the caller, because everyone, even the most desperate, has one thing which, deep down, interests him, even those who are most cut off from reality. Often it’s a question of our good will. You even need to resort to little tricks, devices. At times I’ve succeeded in clearing up some seemingly impossible situations with a trick with a glass, and managed to stabilize some communication. Let’s suppose that the telephone rings, you pick up the receiver, you say the usual formula or something similar, and then on the other end nothing, the most absolute silence, not even a sigh. Then you insist, you try to be tactful, you say that you know he’s there listening, to please say something, whatever he wants, whatever springs to mind—an absurdity, a curse, a cry, a syllable. Nothing. Total silence. And yet if he’s called, there’s a reason. But you can’t know it, you don’t know anything. He can be foreign, he can be mute, he can be everything. And then I take a glass and a pencil and say, Listen to me. There are millions and millions of us on this earth, and yet the two of us have met—only on the telephone, of course, without knowing each other and without seeing each other. However, we have met. Let’s not throw away this meeting. It must have some meaning. Listen to me. Let’s play a game. I have a glass here in front of me. I make it ring with a pencil—ping—do you hear me? If you hear me, do the same thing—two taps. Or if you don’t have anything in front of you, you can lap the receiver with your fingernail like this—tap, tap—do you hear me? If you hear me, answer, I beg you. Listen. Now I’ll try to name some things, things that cross my mind, and you tell me if you like them. For example, do you like the sea? To say yes, tap two times. Only one tap means no.

  But there’s just no understanding what it is that interests a girl who dials the number, is silent for almost two minutes, and then begins to repeat, I can’t cope anymore. I can’t cope anymore. I can’t cope anymore. I can’t cope anymore. Like this, ad infinitum. It was pure chance, because earlier I had put on a record since, I thought, on the fifteenth of August holiday of the Assumption of the Virgin it won’t be very busy, with so many people going away. And, in fact, I’d come on duty more than two hours before, and no one had called. It was terribly hot. The little fan that I’d brought with me gave no relief. The city seemed dead, everyone away on vacation. I sat down in the armchair and began to read, but the book fell on my chest. I don’t like to fall asleep when I’m on duty. I have slow reflexes, and if someone calls I remain surprised the first few seconds, and at times it’s really those first seconds which count, because he might even hang up, and then who knows if he’ll have the courage to dial the number again? So I put on The Turkish March by Mozart, softly. It’s happy, it’s stimulating, it keeps up the morale. She telephoned while the record was playing. She was silent a long time and then began to repeat that she couldn’t cope anymore. I let her say it, because in these cases it’s a good thing to let the caller get it off his chest. He must say everything he wants and as many times as he wants. When I heard only her troubled breathing over the receiver, I said, Wait a moment, would you mind? I took off the record, and she answered, Please leave it on. Of course, I told her, I’ll be glad to leave it. Do you like Brahms? I don’t know how I’d sensed that the music could furnish the possibility of communication. The trick had come to me spontaneously. Sometimes a little falsehood is providential. As for Brahms, probably the suggestion of the title by Sagan had played in my subconscious, a title that you always carry dormant in your memory. This isn’t Brahms, she said, it’s Mozart. Mozart? I put it on. Of course Mozart, she said vivaciously. It’s The Turkish March by Mozart. And thanks to this she began to talk about the conservatory where she had studied before something happened to her, and everything went very well.

  The time, then, passed slowly. I heard the bell of St. Dominic’s Church strike seven. I went to the window. There was a light haze of heat over the city. Few automobiles passed through the street. I made up my eyelashes again. Sometimes I feel pretty. Then I lay down on the couch next to the phonograph and I thought about things, about people, about life. At seven thirty the telephone rang again. I recited the usual formula, perhaps with a certain weariness. On the other end of the line there was a brief hesitation. Then the voice said, My name is Manning, but I’m not a gerund. It’s always advisable to appreciate the jokes of those who call—they reveal the desire to establish contact—and I laughed. I answered that I had a grandfather who was named Dunne, but he wasn’t a past participle, he was only Irish. And he, too, laughed a little. And then he said that he had something in common with verbs, however, that he had one of their qualities, that he was intransitive. All verbs serve in the construction of the sentence, I said. It seemed to me that the conversation permitted an allusive tone, and then you always have to encourage the attitude chosen by the caller. But I’m deponent, he said. Deponent in what sense, I asked. In the sense that I lay down, he said. I lay down my arms. Perhaps the mistake was in thinking that arms shouldn’t be laid down, didn’t he think? Perhaps they had taught us bad grammar. It was better to let arms be used by belligerent people. There were many unarmed people, he could be certain to have a lot of company. He said, He will. And I said that our conversation seemed like a table of verb conjugations. And this time it was his turn to laugh, a brief, rough laugh. And then he asked me if I knew the sound of time. No, I said, I don’t know it. Well, he said, you only have to sit down on the bed during the night when you can’t sleep and keep your eyes open in the dark, and after a little while you hear. It’s like a roar in the distance, like the breath of an animal that devours people. Why didn’t he tell me more about those nights? I had all the time in the world, and I had nothing else to do except listen to him. But in the meantime he was already somewhere else. He had skipped a connection indispensable for me to follow the thread of the story. He didn’t need that passage, or perhaps he preferred to avoid it. But I let him talk—you should never interrupt for any reason—and then I didn’t like his voice, which was slightly shrill and sometimes a whisper.

  The house is very large, he said. It’s an old house. There’s furniture that belonged to my ancestors, awful furniture in the Empire style, with feet. And worn-out carpets, and pictures of surly men and proud, unhappy ladies with their lower lips imperceptibly drooping. Do you know why their mouths have that curious shape? Because the bitterness of all their lives outlines their lower lips and makes them droop. Those women have spent sleepless nights next to stupid husbands incapable of tenderness. And they too, those women, remain in the dark with their eyes open, cultivating resentment. In the dressing room next to my bedroom there are still some of her things, those that she left. A few underclothes atrophied on a footstool, a little gold chain she used to wear on her wrist, a tortoise-shell hairpin. The letter is on the chest of drawers under the glass bell that once guarded a gigantic alarm clock from Basel. I broke
that alarm clock when I was a child. One day when I was sick, no one came up to see me. I remember it as if it were yesterday. I got up and liberated the alarm clock from its safe-keeping. It had a frightening tick-tock. I removed the bottom cover and methodically took it apart until the sheet was strewn with all its tiny gears. If you want, I can read it to you—the letter, I mean. In fact, I repeat it to you from memory—I read it every night: Manning, if only you knew how I have hated you all these years. … It begins like this. The rest you can deduce for yourself. The glass bell guards a massive, repressed hatred.

  And then he again skipped a passage, but this time I thought I understood the connection. He said, And now how will Jimmy be? Who will he have become? He’s a man, somewhere in the world. And then I asked him if that letter was dated August fifteenth, because I had known by intuition, and he said yes, it was the very anniversary and he would celebrate it appropriately. He already had the instrument ready for the celebration—it was there on the table next to the telephone.

  He was silent. I had expected he would talk some more, but he said nothing else. Then I said, Wait for another anniversary, Manning. Try to wait one more year. I was immediately aware of how ridiculous that sentence was, but at the moment I had nothing else in mind, I talked for the sake of talking, and in the end all that counted was the concept. I’ve listened to a lot of telephone callers of all kinds with the most absurd situations, and yet maybe that was the moment in which my habitual bravura vacillated, and I even felt lost myself as if I needed another person who would stay to listen to me and tell me something appropriate to say. It lasted a moment, he didn’t reply, I recovered promptly. Now I knew what I could say. I could talk about microperspectives, and I talked about microperspectives. Because in life there are all kinds of perspectives, the so-called great perspectives which everyone considers fundamental, and those that I call microperspectives which are insignificant, I admit. But if everything is relative, if nature permits eagles and ants to exist, why can’t we live like the ants, I asked, by microperspectives? Yes, microperspectives, I insisted, and he found my definition amusing. But in what would these microperspectives consist, he asked, and I set out to explain punctiliously. Microperspectives is a modus vivendi, all right? Let’s say so, anyhow. It’s a way of concentrating the attention, all the attention, on a little detail of life, of daily routine, as if that detail were the most important thing in the world. But ironically, knowing that it isn’t the most important thing in the world at all, and that everything is relative. One help is to make lists, mark down appointments, give yourself strict schedules, and don’t compromise. Microperspectives is a concrete way of attacking concrete things.

  He didn’t seem very convinced, but my objective wasn’t to try to convince him. I was perfectly aware that I wasn’t revealing the secret of the philosopher’s stone. And yet just the fact that he felt that someone could be interested in his problems must serve for something. It was as much as I could do. He asked me if he could telephone me at home. Sorry, I didn’t have a telephone. And here? Certainly, here whenever he wanted. Not tomorrow, no, unfortunately. But of course he could leave me a message, in fact he had to. There was another friend in my place who’d then pass it on to me. I’d be happy if he told me what had been the microperspectives of his day.

  He said good-bye to me politely in a tone of voice that seemed to say he was sorry. The evening was hot and I hadn’t noticed. At times certain conversations require frightening concentration. From the window I saw Gulliver crossing the street, coming to relieve me. Gulliver could be seen from the top of a skyscraper—it was not for nothing that we called him Gulliver. I collected my things and prepared to leave. Only then did I verify that it was ten minutes to nine. Damn! I had promised Paco that I’d be home at nine sharp, and even if I hurried I couldn’t make it until half past nine. In addition, you can imagine public transportation, which was a disaster even on normal days, on the fifteenth of August. Maybe it was better to go on foot. I went by Gulliver like an arrow, without even giving him time to say hello. He shouted something jokingly after me. I answered on the stairs that I had an appointment, and the next time come on time, please. I was leaving him the fan even though he didn’t deserve it. However, as soon as I went out the front door I saw the number 32 rounding the corner. Even if it didn’t take me as far as my house it saved me a good stretch of road, so I flung myself up. It was completely empty. The 32 empty that way makes an impression, if you think how it usually is. The driver went so slowly that the desire to say something to him came to me, but I let it go—he had such a resigned air, eyes dull. Well, I thought, if Paco is irritated, too bad for him. I certainly can’t fly. I got off at the stop in front of the big stores. I started to walk fast, but it was already nine twenty-five. It was useless to set out to run in order to arrive late anyway, all sweaty and panting like a madwoman.

  I slipped in the key, trying to be quiet. The house was dark and silent, and it made an impression on me. Who knows why I thought of something unpleasant? And I let myself be conquered by anxiety. I said, Paco, Paco, it’s me, I’m back. For a moment I felt overcome by depression. I put my books and purse on the stool by the front door and went as far as the door to the living room. I still felt like saying Paco, Paco. Silence at times is a dreadful thing. I know what I would have wanted to tell him if he had been there. Please, Paco, I would have said, it wasn’t my fault. I got an extremely long telephone call, and transportation is on half-schedule today—it’s August fifteenth. I went to close the door to the small terrace in back, because there are mosquitoes in the garden and as soon as they see the light they come in in swarms. It crossed my mind that a tin of caviar and one of paté remained in the refrigerator. It seemed to me like the time to open them, and also to uncork a bottle of Moselle wine. I set out yellow linen placemats and put a red candle on the table. My kitchen has light wooden furniture and with candlelight acquires a comforting atmosphere. While I made preparations I weakly called again, Paco. With a spoon I tapped lightly on a glass—ping. Then I tapped harder—PING. The sound lingered all through the house. Then suddenly an inspiration came to me. Opposite my plate I put another placemat, a plate, silverware, and a glass. I filled both glasses and went into the bathroom to make myself tidy. And if, later, he had really returned? Sometimes reality surpasses the imagination. He would have rung with two brief repealed rings, as he always did, and I would have opened the door with an air of complicity. I set the table for two, I would have told him. I was expecting you, I don’t know why, but I was expecting you. Who knows what kind of face he would have made?

  THEATRE

  To Don Caetano de Lancastre, who told me a story like this

  The garden of the small barracks was lost in the dark mass of the forest that besieged the clearing. It was a colonial building, with a faded pink facade and yellow shutters, which must have gone back to 1885, to the time of the skirmishes with Cecil Rhodes, when it must have constituted a decorous general quarters for the commander who controlled the western border near the Zambezi. Since 1890, when our troops had withdrawn from the Niassaland region, the barracks had no longer been a garrison. It was occupied by a reserve captain who remained there the whole period of his military service and by two Negro soldiers, two “sepoys,” elderly and silent, with their wives, whose only duty, apparently, was to act as orthopedists for the occupants of the nearby village who worked for the lumber company. The day of my arrival there had been a frenetic coming and going of limping people, although the captain had reassured me that something unusual had occurred: a pile had collapsed on the piers of the Zambezi. Usually the Negroes preferred to cure themselves on their own with their tribal methods. The Sengas were a very special type—I certainly knew this better than he—and then the medical equipment of the barracks left much to be desired: it was useless to delude ourselves.

  The captain was a kind, loquacious, rather clumsy man. He called me “Excellency” and must have been my age or a little older. His ac
cent and behavior, provincial and archaic, revealed him to be a northerner, from Oporto, perhaps, or from Amarente. His thick jaw, his bluish beard, his humble, patient eyes told of generations of peasants or mountaineers, which his short duration in the army had not succeeded in erasing. He was studying law and was enrolled in the University of Coimbra. When his African term of service was over, he would enter the magistrature. He had eight examinations to go, and in that place he had ample time to study.

  He had me served a cool tamarind on the little veranda invaded by climbing vines, and began a polite, very tactful conversation from which transpired his desire for a confidential, unconstrained demeanor which, however, he was unable to assume. He inquired with compunction about my trip. It had gone very well, thank you, in so far as three hundred kilometers in a truck can go very well on such a road. Joaquim was an excellent chauffeur. I had come by train as far as Tete, evidently. No, the climate of Tete was not really one of the best. From Europe I had six-day-old news, nothing particularly interesting, it seemed to me. Theoretically I would stay twelve months, if many asked for a survey with a copy of the census for the district of Kaniemba. But perhaps ten would be enough. Thanks for the generous offer of help—probably I would need it. He would be very happy to put at my disposition the “sepoy” who knew how to write. By the way, did the barracks have an archive? Very well, we would begin from there. He had a certain experience with archives? Excellent, I would never have expected such luck. Actually my surveys would be rather rough, let’s say merely oriented toward a future census the government intended to make in the Kaniemba zone.

  The tamarind was followed by a very strong brandy which the “sepoys” distilled at the barracks, and we changed the subject to talk of friendlier, less relevant things. The evening that was falling was full of disquieting sounds from the forest. The mosquitoes became terrible. A very light breeze bore the acrid odor of the undergrowth. The captain had the window netting lowered, lit the oil lamp, and asked my permission to withdraw in order to give directions for supper. Would I excuse him for leaving me alone? We would continue the conversation at the table. I excused him willingly. It did not displease me to remain in silence in the moonlight, to gaze at the night. It had seemed superfluous to tell him, but that day I had completed four years in Africa. I wanted to think about them.