A Different Sea

by Magris, Claudio

  The Busdachin woman’s gaze exudes goodness, a goodness at once mocking and maternal. Law and order are necessary evils, however. This is no longer Nino’s attic – the world outside is harsh. But for these hateful laws there would be all sorts of trouble. Enrico despises them but observes them to the letter. Who knows how things might end up otherwise – if, for example, one were to abandon oneself to the smiling eyes of the woman with the child in her arms?

  But she too must learn, she and that stupid child of hers – and the other one that screams even louder. Let them all learn to their cost, as he has, that there is no such thing as living, that no one lives. Let them realize that there is never anything to lose, not even those extra hens he has forced them to get rid of according to the rules. Only when one has understood that, is one free. Only slaves talk idly of rights; the free man has duties.

  The stipulations must be rigorously observed, with all their implications of renunciation. Enrico fears neither man nor puma, nor the darkening bora that can crash down on a boat at sea. Yet the clauses and sub-clauses of a contract scare him witless. The law states that the tenant is to work the land he leases and share the produce equally with the owner. He is the owner and it is his duty to ensure the law’s fulfilment. It is not right, for example, for the children to pluck and eat the occasional piece of fruit from the tree, for that apple or that bunch of grapes does not feature in the final accounts.

  He makes sure that the two children keep their hands to themselves. They are mad on figs, but the figs are his. He did not create the world. Indeed, he is of one mind with Buddha, with no wish for life and no yearning. Nevertheless, in the meantime, no one is going to eye his figs let alone touch them. Sometimes Enrico even rifles through the rubbish: a core or piece of peel means an illegal appropriation of his property. It will be the worse for them, and it is no good the Busdachin woman looking at him that way as he searches through the filth. On sheets of paper taken from his notepad he lists all incomings, outgoings, and provisions : to Tita (a cousin of Anna who works at the Pensione) 500; tenant’s expenses for grain 66; plough 70; kitchen expenses 50.

  Anita soon leaves him for Dr Janes, who, despite the Galapagos project, has running water and electricity in his house. “Now what?” Enrico asks the Busdachin woman. Yet he is neither upset nor surprised. We are all strangers: no passing can cause pain, not even the final one – and least of all that of a woman who walks out of your life. He sharpens a stick, without caring whether the knife-blade loses its edge.

  It had been over between him and Anita for some time. She was always complaining about their austere lifestyle and was full of fancy ideas. She thought only of luxuries, obsessed with desire for a radio and heating. Any pretext was good enough for a trip to town – Trieste – without bothering to let him know when she would be back. And that evening she had started yawning repeatedly on purpose and asking him when the steamer left for Trieste in the morning. Although knowing perfectly well how he detested timetables and clocks, she asked him two, even three, times – “right at the very moment of climax during the love-making that she herself had started” – as Enrico wrote in his diary.

  That questioning had a paralysing effect on him, as, perhaps, Anita had intended. The night noises came in at the window, and suddenly he was drained of desire. Something beneath his skin and behind his eyes simply dried out; his body lay inert and shrivelled, a stranger to the whole affair. This was not death but non-being. Desire’s ultimate deception is to make one believe in it, to expect it, to want it. That night deception ceased. Truth halts things. Consciousness extinguishes desire, and death extinguishes consciousness. He re-reads the Philoctetes, as he had in Patagonia. He is the only true hero, whose sore prevents him from being like the others.

  But he has no hard feelings, even if Anita did it on purpose. To hate her he needed a greater unthinking faith in himself and his own paltry deeds and triumphs. If he is angry with anyone, it’s Janes. But even that’s rather half-hearted – anger just for form’s sake. In such circumstances there is no need to kill oneself like the gangsters of Buenos Aires. But equally one cannot pretend that nothing has happened, and a friend who acts like Janes is as good as dead. A pity though, for he is a good doctor. And Enrico, who is frightened of illness even though he wanders around in mid-winter in shirt-sleeves and bare feet, would like to be able to call him when necessary.

  But now what? In Patagonia solitude is all right, but not here. Here it’s too eccentric. To disappear from view one has to be like everyone else – and live with a woman. A man on his own sticks out like a sore thumb. So he goes to Gorizia, to fetch Lini. Or rather, he makes her think that she has succeeded in trapping him. For he allows her to beg him to let her stay at Salvore, and when she comes he mistreats her and locks her out all night – it isn’t that cold – while he sleeps peacefully within.

  Lini sells her flat in Gorizia and moves in to the house at Salvore with its unplastered walls and exposed beams. Her only two possessions are a clock and a small battery-operated radio that she listens to locked away upstairs out of Enrico’s hearing.

  From March to November they eat outside, resting their plates and the coffee pot on an upturned fruit crate. Enrico sits on a box, Lini on a proper chair, chain-smoking. His old jackets from Gorizia are of good material. Only their colour fades here and there between patches, like the sky growing softer and clearer as time passes. Lini prepares the food, and gives him a call when it’s ready. Or, if he is out at sea, she lights a fire of damp wood and sends smoke signals.

  Occasionally Lini goes sailing with him but, more often, she stays at home. The days are long, and she has developed a liking for pelinkovec – by eleven she has usually downed several glasses. Some days, glancing at the clock that Enrico pretends not to see, she realizes all of a sudden that it’s already gone three. So she puts the hands back to twelve, makes the lunch and calls Enrico. He comes ashore, ties up and flings his entire catch on to the beach for the children to take – all except for a couple of fish that he grills for himself and Lini over pine cones and charcoal.

  Enrico grows ever more wiry, his face withers and wrinkles, his hair as always is too long. Lini’s arms too are scrawny. He often asks her to read to him as he listens with half-closed eyes, leaning against a tree. She selects from the last days of Buddha, skipping the sections spoken by Ananda, the favourite disciple, because disciples irritate Enrico, or from Carlo’s works – some pages from Persuasion and Rhetoric, some poetry – “What do you want from the perfidious sea?”, but never from the Dialogue on Health. She also reads a story by Björnson, in German, of silent waters and fair-haired women.

  Although Lini has no love of books, she treats them with cautious respect. Even in those moments when she’s doing her hair, she is aware that the life that matters, the life that endures, Enrico’s life, is to be found there, in those books. But there is one book she can’t stand, Die Kameradschaftsehe, by Lindsay and Evans. Presumably the authors are man and wife, or at any rate a man and a woman, but they show precious little understanding of certain things. Although, Lord knows, their idea of “marriage as friendship” doesn’t seem that bad and maybe even has its good points – when Enrico loses his temper and shoves her out of bed because she contradicts him, or when he catches her staring at an aeroplane and throws down a bucket of water to stop her gawping at such deafening contraptions.

  On some afternoons when her tongue’s clogged with pelinkovec, Lini doesn’t feel like reading. Instead she complains to Enrico about the Busdachin children’s screaming that gave her a headache while he was out at sea. Later on Enrico shouts at the tenant, he in turn takes it out on his wife who, not being able to slap the mistress – that dried-up old bag who goes round acting the lady – belts her two children instead. Then she picks up the stuff that Lini always leaves lying around – it’s all in a day’s work.

  On some Sundays, Tita and Lidia Predonzani come over, with Captain Pelizzon and Captain Cipolla. If they are the
only visitors, Enrico does not slip away but stays for a game of cards – briscola or cotecio – and to listen to them setting the world to rights. Someone says that Il Duce is off his rocker. Enrico listens, cheerfully, his head cocked to one side. He lifts a finger, clicks his tongue, and gravely interjects: “Quite so, right, well done.” The Slavs are no longer enough for the fascists, they have started their dirty tricks on the Jews as well. Enrico thinks of the dark, eastern eyes of Carlo and Paula. Once Paula comes to visit him – with her son, whose name, of course, is Carlo. And when she leaves, Enrico stays for a long time looking out to sea, his back turned on the others, including Lini, who is busily putting away the plates and glasses.

  Even at Salvore, perhaps without realizing it, they cannot escape the Empire proclaimed by Il Duce. Quia non sumus esse volumus et quia esse volumus non sumus. Not that Enrico has any liking for communists. Communism is a load of nonsense: all it does is give the Slavs big ideas and make them forget hundreds of years of history. Yet it’s the communists that keep the fascists on their toes – one has to grant them that. And they don’t fear death or even the fear of death, nor do they ask any favours of life, bankrupt as it is. Nevertheless, it will go to the dogs, communism, even in Russia. It must be a nightmare there, all those groups and collectives – a consortium of evil – a sleep from which they will have to awake. Every belief is no more than a dream, and soon turns into a nightmare. One of Cipolla’s friends with republican sympathies has gone to fight in Spain. Around the table, or rather the fruit crate, the others speak of him admiringly. Enrico says nothing and gets to his feet for a walk by the sea.

  Times are difficult. Although they have very few needs, prices keep rising. Enrico gives an acquaintance in Gorizia power of attorney to sell his flat at Monfalcone, and he keeps a detailed record of all expenses. He enjoys visits from Lia, his brother’s daughter: she likes the bare house and the wind gusting in the pines and whipping up the waves. They walk along the beach and among the rocks and caves. He points out the fleshy red sea anemones that open like flower buds when covered at high tide, and together they collect worms for bait.

  They also go out in his boat. She is handy with the sheets and bursts into peals of laughter when the Maia seems on the point of striking the rocks but suddenly goes about and heads away from the shore. Her laughter is clear, immediate. There’s no pain in watching it, as there used to be when he had Fulviargiaula on board.

  Lia resembles her father. Looking at her, Enrico sometimes regrets that he and his brother had so little to say to each other. If only they had played more as children, they might have had some good times. On the way back, Lia dives overboard and swims to the shore, then runs off still dripping wet to light the barbecue to grill the fish. Rejecting the broken pine cones, she orders Enrico to go to find some others – whole, big ones – and he enjoys obeying her wishes.

  Occasionally, too, they go swimming together, and he lets her grab him by the shoulders and push him under. Perhaps after all Carlo and Paula – discounting the masses that are to be avoided like flies – are not the only people in the world. Enrico even bothers to learn Lia’s tastes and is careful to take the fish from the flame before it browns all over – for she likes it a little underdone and garnished with a sprig of rosemary. Lia devours the fish with relish, tossing her hair and throwing her head back. True – this is no illumination of Buddha beneath the tree, but Enrico is happy all the same. As far as he’s concerned, she can stay on: it’s proving a good season, and he’ll ensure that she has plenty of fish grilled to taste.

  But the summer is sultry, and the blue sky soon hazes over. When Lia’s mother comes to collect her, Enrico tells her bluntly that his brother was irresponsible in producing children who are nobodies and who will never have a penny to their name now he’s dead. He goes on to pick a quarrel with her over a medal he wants back, a medal with the bust of Franz Josef – a worthless bauble; it was his father’s, he shouts, and so belongs to him not his brother, and he’s not about to let himself be cheated by some prattling female who’s no longer part of the family.

  Carla’s daughter, Lisetta, comes to see him once – a loving, adventurous girl just like her mother. Like her mother, too, she loves horses. Enrico talks to her of red Indians and ponies, and they act out some of Karl May’s stories, with him as old Shatterhand and her as Chief Winnetou. Thankfully she is not his daughter – not only does that make things so much simpler, it also means that he can more easily bear to see her leave – for Germany, never to return.

  He often gets letters from Signora Emma, who is now eighty; “the senseless eighties”, as she puts it. In one letter she describes her eightieth birthday party at Gorizia, how she sat at home all day long, from nine in the morning to eleven at night, receiving a never-ending stream of letters, telegrams and flowers – “all worthy of a better cause – why is it that the days fly so swiftly by?” She prefers Lini to Anita but wants to look Enrico in the eye to know whether he is really all right. Probably not. To avoid upset, to get ahead, one has to be like everyone else. That, anyway, is her policy; and when the racial laws are introduced in ’38, she sends him recipes for asparagus and matalviz, and enquires whether he still has one trouser-leg longer than the other, like the last time they met. Enrico’s reply is evasive. That expression “to get ahead” annoys him.

  Emma writes most often about her grandson Carlo, Paula’s boy. He and his mother are now living in the Dolomites near the Marmolada glacier. Paula’s marriage is not going too well, but the Marmolada gleams majestically white, and Carlo is having fun throwing snowballs. From the photo he seems a good-looking lad – full of smiles. It’s wrong, she knows, to be seduced by good looks – there’s great injustice in charm and good health – but the old woman can’t help looking at that photograph. Were she younger, she would make the trip out to Salvore. But seeing each other again is not all that important. “Our bonds, Rico, are the sort that cannot be broken.” Enrico knows that she would welcome longer replies from him, but letter-writing is a form of literature, and so he scorns it – preferring by far to make notes on specific uses of quominus.

  Biagio Marin visits him now and then, and tries to convince him to plant one rose bush at least in front of the house to keep Lini happy. Even if he has never forgotten that morning at school when Carlo took off his round Spanish hat, placed his face and mouth under the fountain, and drank, Biagio can never understand Carlo. For Biagio loves falling water, descending weight, flowing life – loves a life full of both greed and hunger, a life that changes and dissolves continually. As a poet he is capable of seeing God only in the sensual and the finite – things that always become something else: pitchers for drinking, mouths for kissing, greedy idols chanting the eternal psalm of their own intoxicating disappearance.

  Enrico thinks of the light Carlo saw where others see only darkness; of seas without shores and furrowed by no keel; of a sun which, on such a sea, never alters and never sets; of a heaven inhabited not by Homer’s gods but by Plato’s ideal forms. But sometimes that blazing, blinding heaven goes black; he shuts his eyes and plunges into the darkness behind his eyelids. The blazing light scorches and withers. Why choose him of all people? There is need of a stronger tree, one richer in sap and resin, one that can receive the light of the lamp without being burned. He envies Marin, for he has not been struck down by the light and, instead, encounters the eternal in fugitive divinities wherever he looks. Marin nevertheless bears within him the inextinguishable memory of that morning beside the fountain. “We can neither ignore nor forget each other,” Enrico writes to him, even though – in a later letter to Paula – he disparages Biagio’s limited understanding. For Biagio loves the world, while “Carlo is a saint, detached from this world, in search of another undisturbed by madness and pain”.

  On some afternoons they visit the Battilanas, whose house, like the couple themselves, is bright and welcoming. They play the piano – Schubert and Beethoven – as did Argia, by that same sea. In a ligh
ter mood, Lidia sings La Paloma and Lini plays the zither, its straying tones suiting her austere expression. Enrico smiles and she smiles back, forgetting how he shoved her out of bed and hurt her, remembering instead some of his letters that ended with a kiss. For a moment, sadness vanishes from her eyes, like a light that is extinguished. But the zither has its limits, its sound trails off mutely as huge clouds pass across the heavens, the earth revolves, and coffee and sugar become ever more scarce. Lini’s mouth sets bitter again, though pelinkovec and grappa, fortunately, remain in plentiful supply.

  Enrico develops an abscess on his neck. At first he pays it no attention but, as it grows larger, he makes up his mind to act and summons Janes; for he is afraid of illness but even more so of doctors. I didn’t think you’d come, he says, as Janes bends over him. I’m here in my professional capacity, comes the reply, although, as he prepares to make the small incision, Janes does not meet Enrico’s eye. Janes returns to Valdoltra, where he is compelled by the difficult times to sell part of his house. Skin cancer breaks out on his face, devouring it just as flames shrivel and strip away the covers of old books thrown on the fire. Enrico is sure that he will commit suicide. Instead he dies little by little, like a mushroom attacked by a slow-spreading but relentless mould. Towards the end, thankfully, the process speeds up, and Anita, beautiful but shattered by fatigue, moves to Trieste.