A Different Sea

by Magris, Claudio

  Enrico continues to go out in his boat – often with Pepi, a local fisherman, a willing companion on days of dead-calm, sluggish seas. Enrico keeps among his papers a postcard Pepi sends him from Leipzig. In ’39 Paula pays a visit. On gazing into her dark eyes he can believe that the world is not just one awful mistake.

  War comes and, like an echo, passes by – or rather, hangs over them oppressively. Enrico keeps abreast of events only indirectly, by hearing of the departure, return, or failure to return of young men of the village whom he does not know. Lia sends him the odd parcel, the Busdachins work the land, and even he, Enrico, feels compelled to read the papers more frequently than before. Luckily the sea does not change, and he can still see from his boat shadows of fish in the depths. In the winter of ’41 the bora is particularly icy, and Enrico remembers Janes with gratitude, since it was he who had persuaded him to install that stove in the kitchen.

  The Germans arrest Carlo’s elder sister, Elda. Her mother, now alone, writes to Enrico of her loss of faith in everyone and everything. No one, neither relatives nor friends, shows her any pity; no one has the courage to pay an old Jewess a visit. “You are fortunate, dear Rico, to live far from this nasty, fickle little world.” The exterminators’ world is small only for an old woman worried about Enrico, fearful that he is too much on his own. “If I were less decrepit,” she wrote, “I should come to visit you.” And in the next line, she regrets that she lacks her brother’s lust for life – he’s eighty-six and has just had a nasty accident. Instead, what she is waiting for, she writes, is a peaceful return to that land from which we all have come. “And, dear Rico, talking of land, I imagine you are satisfied with yours and with the wheat that has done well this year.”

  At Salvore, too, thunderbolts fall in the shape of Germans on motorbikes barking harsh commands like whiplashes in one courtyard after another. Enrico hears tell of an incident at Grubia where a couple of girls were battered to death by the fascists for hiding some partisans, or was it merely some pamphlets? He has never been to Bassania, let alone Grubia. Young people and old abandon their homes, and most of the girls are on the move, gathering wood up-country and meeting together at night in some house or other. The Germans spread out, mowing them down as they go. Three youngsters, it is rumoured, were hanged at the roadside near Visignano (others say Pisino) and left there strung up by hooks through their throats. On capture, one of them couldn’t utter a word, but the other two yelled “Smrt Fašizmu” and “Živio Tito”, raising clenched fists; and one, who knew some German, said something as they hoisted him that made the officer flush with rage, and then tried to spit in his face. It reminds Enrico of the chilotes in Patagonia, with the difference that they knew only how to die, while these knew how to kill as well. They say that up on the Neretva river and the Kozara range, the Germans were astounded to find themselves in retreat before a bunch of vagabonds advancing on them out of the woods. Graffiti appear: “Trst je nǎs”; “It is not Tito who wants Istria, but Istria who wants Tito”; “Život damo Trst ne damo”. Some Italian partisans, the report goes, protest about this to the Slavs fighting with them against the Germans and the fascists. They argue that, in the spirit of brotherhood and liberation from tyranny, they shouldn’t in their turn become the oppressors and rob the Italians of their rights. But whoever takes this line disappears and ends up at the bottom of a ravine on the Carso, or is captured by the Germans – after being discovered, no one has the faintest idea how, in a secret hide-out.

  This too is dumb pain, a weight that falls and crushes, the delirium of believing that life is redeemable, the illusion of the “I” which finds liberation from the world’s madness by sinking to the level of brute existence. The tiger believes it is right to devour the antelope. Fortunately life is a short, painful negative adverb – – “non-being”, and not something everlasting. The eternal scorches that “non”, that tiny, ferocious sting. To keep to oneself and to turn to flame – that is true liberation from every single changeable thing. And nothing is more changeable than man.

  Graffiti are the lies of those who believe victory is within their grasp. Yet it is equally wrong to deny the Slavs any share in Istria’s red land. Contempt, like spit, ultimately falls back on the spitter. More news arrives: near Albona in the heart of the battle, the Titoists have been hurling Italians, guilty or innocent, their hands bound with wire, into the ravines or the sea. Another bubonic plague is breaking out in history. If only they could go back in time to their school desks, to discuss the suppressed tensions that are now exploding; if only Carlo had learned Slovenian; perhaps . . . who knows . . . But it’s no use putting back the clock: everything would turn out just the same – the same mistakes, the same atrocities.

  The Germans have deported Emma and Elda to Auschwitz, but Paula is in Switzerland. A spiritualist neighbour had told them not to worry, that she had contacted Carlo who had communicated by knocking on the table to say that they could safely stay where they were. Emma dies in ’43, soon after arrival at the concentration camp, and Elda dies a year later. Both Carlo and Gino his brother killed themselves in their prime, the ancient pain of their race engendering in them an incurable rupture. But it took Auschwitz and the whole mise-en-scène of the Third Reich to do away with an 89-year-old Jewess. It is precisely the Thousand-year Reich that proves rhetoric’s destructive power. Yes, Enrico repeats to himself and writes to Paula and some other friends, Carlo was supreme; his sun shines brighter and radiates further than even those of Parmenides and Plato. Merely the report of all this tragedy and atrocity serves to make Carlo’s name, albeit suppressed and twisted, re-echo in Enrico’s ears.

  Argia too, though not a Jew, dies in a concentration camp, for she refused to turn a blind eye and spoke out against the Nazi deportations. It was thought that she had been helping the partisans as well. Someone suggests to Enrico that it was her memory of Carlo that made Argia speak and act so fearlessly. Enrico says nothing. His face darkens and he gazes at the pines and Salvore’s deserted shore. With whom can he converse among these rocks? He thinks uneasily of Paula’s dark eyes. Perhaps it would be better never to see her again.

  Tito’s ninth armoured division reaches Trieste, entering the city on 1st May 1945, one week before the liberation of Zagreb. Communism’s red flag, and the national white, red and blue, cover the heavens like a scarlet cloud; and in the coppery light the reaper’s scythe swings indiscriminately. The Triestine Slays’ recovery after their long obscurity breeds its own dark and spreading violence: with the supporters of Tito in power at Gorizia, many, including Nino’s widow, Pina, are arrested and never return.

  Even Enrico and Captain Pelizzon are arrested and taken to Umago. Sharing the same crowded cell with so many others is intolerable enough. Sweat’s fetid stench pervades the airless room – not the sweat of a summer’s day or of honest work, but the acid sweat of fear. Not to fear death and not to fear its companion, the fear of death – but the life of persuasion is difficult in practice. It is not easy to tolerate the stench, the interrogations, the beatings; it is hard not to hope at every moment that they will cease, open the door, and let one leave. Here, inside, you would have to be a saint: only saints fear nothing. But Enrico never asked for sainthood or required it of anyone else – not even of Carlo. His only desire in that attic had been to enjoy himself in the company of friends.

  Enrico is afraid, but he has a stubborn streak. He is unable to concentrate on the example of Socrates, but he is also incapable of controlling his temper. He scornfully dismisses the soup, telling his gaolers to offer it to those swine of a secret police, even though it’s better than the muck they’re usually fed in their sties. And when they menace him with their stupid questions, he becomes angry and offensive, firing off insults in Italian and Slovenian, treating them like curs driven from their master’s table. They in turn lose their patience – with drastic effect.

  It’s a curious experience being beaten. But not just curious. There’s the pain too and, worse, the
sense of helplessness and loss beneath the blows. How insensitive he has been in his intolerance of children! They must often feel as he does now. He tries to think back to when he was a child, but to no avail. Recollection, while trying to shield head and belly, does not come easily.

  Enrico has never been in a fist-fight, let alone been beaten up. Such physical, violent closeness utterly bewilders him. A gun battle would be less frightening. Danger he has confronted before – in Patagonia or on the sea – but never anything like this. The world, vast, overwhelming, crushing, is falling in on him. He could never stand people touching him or even taking his arm in conversation. And now this. It hurts, hurts a lot; and it’s the indecent intimacy that hurts most. For he’s always been one to keep his distance, never wanting to sleep the night with anyone, always choosing separate beds. Even if there were only one, evenly-matched, aggressor out on the pampas, still he would have no notion of self-defence, but would curl up pitifully and cover his head, like a child hiding beneath the blankets.

  It doesn’t last long, for they realize their blunder soon enough. A couple of local farmers, who are Party members, explain to police headquarters that “the teacher” is a harmless eccentric, has never been a fascist or even a nationalist, and has never caused any trouble or made any demands. They add that he even knows Slovenian, though he would do better to learn Croat. So they let him go and even apologize. A captain from Zagreb, a fluent Italian-speaker, takes him home to Salvore by car and tells him that now the revolution has come, mistakes like this should never happen again. Enrico doesn’t say a word. This is not the moment to express his views on revolution and counter-revolution, or to say what he thinks of all those who are impatient to usher in the future.

  Pelizzon is freed too and obtains the right to emigrate. He leaves everything behind and goes to Trieste as an exile, where he gets a council job – the Captain’s moment to go ashore has finally arrived. Enrico too is free to leave. But to go where? A city? Trieste is full of cars and turmoil, Gorizia lies too far inland, where shoes are obligatory. Lini becomes rather abrupt and turns more heavily to drink while waiting silently for him to make up his mind.

  He stays – to general admiration. But it is fear not courage – fear of staying put, and an even greater fear of leaving. Enrico is no hero. Carlo could have been one, but a hero has to win, and victories are nothing more than tricks and tragedies designed to manipulate the emotions of an audience, an opponent, or a judge. So Carlo declined the part. Heroes and victories are only play-acting. How can you deny the palm of victory to someone who would otherwise make a scene? Indeed, Philoctetes loses. Without the opportunity to show off his strength and sensitivity, he has only his putrid wound for company.

  Enrico is afraid – not of people, but of papers, documents, statements, census forms, declarations that he must continually sign, and of taxes too. The agrarian reform confiscates half his land in favour of the tenants. The Busdachins are now landowners and neighbours. Not that he is angry with them personally – had it not been them, it would have been someone else. They are upright folk, after all, and there’s no denying they have worked hard all these years. What he detests is communism itself. Conditions are even tougher now, and it is hard to live off the little land he’s got left. A vague threat hangs in the air, and even his walks along the beach are clouded in uncertainty. “That teacher who’s stayed on at Punta Salvore with a noose around his neck,” as a Milanese friend of Bruno Battilana described him in a letter.

  Life on this side of the iron curtain is quite a burden. “Dear Biagio, if things persist as they are at present, I shan’t hold out much longer. The annulment of individuality is so complete that the slightest activity is frowned upon. Which explains why I can’t write in more detail.” No letters, no decisions, no hurry; to rest at peace, quiet, immobile – like an oak – looking out to sea. “Dear Paula, everyone is leaving. I haven’t made up my mind – there’s no rush yet. What concerns me most is never to torsake the sea.” Punt a Salvore too becomes part of a game whose players are not so much Italy and Yugoslavia, but the distant superpowers. Not having read Persuasion and Rhetoric, they believe they can dispute the mastery of the world. Frontiers are re-drawn, lengthened, shortened – on sheets of paper that diplomats exchange with each other before discarding them. Were it not for Lia and the Battilanas, who lend him money and help out when and as they can, it would be difficult for him and Lini to keep going. Even his boat, Maia, has been confiscated.

  One day Toio Zorzenon stops by with his wife and two small children. A labourer in the shipyards at Monfalcone, he was among the first organizers of the Communist Party’s secret cells at the factory. Imprisoned by the fascists and deported by the Germans, he met Busdachin when a partisan in Istria, after his escape from Germany. Despite being Italian, he wants Trieste and the Free Territory to become part of communist Yugoslavia. For in the proletarian revolution national differences count little compared with redemption of the world and its people. However, such ideas brought the nationalists at Monfalcone down on him as well.

  He wants to live in Yugoslavia, to help build socialism. A country ruined by war needs trained workers. Some two thousand men from Monfalcone share his views and cross over against the tide of another three hundred thousand Italians who, at different times, pour into Italy from Istria, Fiume, and Dalmatia. Both groups abandon their houses, their roots, everything. Zorzenon has stopped to see Busdachin on his way to work in the mines of the Arsa region. His wife looks lost and doesn’t say a word, their children sit on the one or two suitcases they have brought with them. Zorzenon speaks of socialism and the future. Enrico goes off for his walk, to listen to the sound of the sea, while Lini finds a bit of fruit for the children.

  “Dearest Biagio, for many years now I have been incapable of living life as I should . . .” However, when his nephew Gregorio and family come to visit him, he is as abrupt and as obstinate as ever. He is happy enough to see them, but he obliges them to park their car elsewhere, out of sight; and they have to remove their watches, at least when they’re with him. Then he starts criticizing Tito and his regime. He doesn’t care if those two from the Milicija next door hear him or not – he even raises his voice: the Slavs will have to wait a thousand years to take over from Venice. Perhaps by then they will have learned a thing or two. But as long as the communists are still around the Slavs will be cultural pygmies. Gregorio and his wife look around anxiously, but the two militiamen pretend not to hear – they know him only too well. Instead they laugh to each other like schoolboys, taking care the teacher doesn’t notice.

  In this period, especially in the evenings, Enrico often goes for a stroll along the beach with Battilana. Erect, lean, white hair ever longer and ruffled by the wind, eyes seemingly ever bluer and ever clearer – Enrico speaks of Carlo, and speaks at length, gesturing at the sea. Battilana listens in silence, one step behind. “Who better than Rico to introduce me, a meek and lowly man, to the miraculous force of his twenty-year-old friend? Flashes of love, thunder claps of indomitable will to become One, as God.”

  Yet Enrico often dries up in mid-sentence. Something chokes inside when Battilana looks at him as he used to look at Carlo. To gather oneself into a single point, to become flame, to be master of oneself with persuasion . . . If only they would leave him in peace to watch the boys and girls playing ball on the beach. One girl with an angry mouth and long legs kicks the ball into the water where it bobs up and down on the waves, ever in the same place.

  Enrico turns back. He speaks little to Lini and does not reply to Biagio’s letters and poems. Or if he does, he scribbles a couple of lines at most – to justify his silence. Even with Gaetano he writes only to make excuses. He doesn’t react to Lisetta’s letter describing her life at Danzig with her husband and her two little daughters when the Reich collapsed, how the Russians invaded, of her escape with the children in a torrent of refugees. He writes resentfully to Lia telling her to pay him for her side of the apartment which they o
wn jointly. True, her section is much bigger, and yes she has paid for it, but, as he points out, she inherited the money from her father – and therefore from his mother – her father was his mother’s darling, the only one she cared about – she had no time for that other son in Patagonia. And even if Lia has put some of her own money towards it, that’s no concern of his: she must do as he says. If everyone believes that they have a right to their own opinion, even ignoramuses who know no Greek, the world will be in real trouble.

  Lia not only lets him say his piece, she also posts him some parcels and money, in excess, even, of his share in the apartment. Enrico sends her a receipt and scrawls a bad-tempered letter of thanks. Women like Lia and the Busdachin woman, with their liberal open-handedness – which you can’t help noticing even in the way they serve you at table – make him feel distinctly shabby. But they are all just a gaggle of silly geese, they don’t realize that only megalomaniacs go in for grand gestures.

  Chiavacci is working on a new edition of Carlo’s collected works. “Dearest Gaetano, be happy in the knowledge that you are capable of the task . . . Your name and Arangio’s will be coupled with His; and in time posterity will realize that he is the greatest figure Europe has ever produced.” Enrico cares little that his own name is not linked with Carlo. On the contrary – it is better that it should be erased. He is fortunate not to have the ability of either Chiavacci or Arangio-Ruiz. Enrico writes to Gaetano about his own inability – with a certain false modesty – and then crosses out what he has said with a single thin line that leaves the words clearly visible. Carlo is the Buddha of the western world. That is enough. When the journal, La fiera letteraria, remembers him and asks for a contribution to an issue devoted to Michelstaedter, Enrico sends them a short paragraph, which is published along with the full and discursive essays written by many others, only to say that Carlo and Buddha are the two great awakened ones, of West and East respectively.