by Primo Levi
It had not in fact escaped. He found the remains of it stuck to the piece of wood: twenty little fragments, each no bigger than a postage stamp, for a total area no more than a fifth of the original sheet of paper. The rest of “Annunciation” had departed, in the form of scraps, tiny crumpled, frayed shreds, which were scattered in all the corners of the house: he found only three or four, and though he smoothed them out carefully, they were illegible.
Pasquale spent the following Sunday in less and less reliable efforts to reconstruct the poem. From that time on, there were neither whistles nor shivers; he tried many times, during the rest of his life, to call to memory the lost text; in fact, at increasingly rare intervals, he wrote other versions of it, but they were increasingly thin, bloodless, and weak.
One Night
It was very cold and still. The sun had set a few minutes earlier, sinking obliquely behind a horizon that, owing to the clarity of the air, appeared close, and leaving a luminous yellow-green trail that extended almost to the zenith. Meanwhile in the east the sky was opaque, purplish, obscured by large gray cumuli that seemed to weigh on the frozen land like deflated balloons. The air was dry and smelled like ice.
There was no human trace on the whole plateau except for the train tracks that stretched straight as far as the eye could see and appeared to converge at the point where the sun had just vanished; in the opposite direction they disappeared in the farthest edge of the woods. The land was slightly rolling and covered with small oaks and beeches that the prevailing wind had tilted to the south, bending some of the treetops all the way to the ground. But that day was completely calm. Calcareous rocks whittled by rain and encrusted with fossilized shells appeared on the surface of the ground: rough and white, they looked like the bones of buried animals. From the cracks protruded sticks carbonized by a recent fire. There was no grass, just yellow and red stains of lichen stuck to the rock.
The roar could be heard before the train was visible: in the silence of the plateau, the sound was transmitted through the rock and the ice like underground thunder. The train was fast, and soon one could discern that it was made up of only three boxcars in addition to the engine. When it got closer, the high-pitched drone of the racing diesels could be heard, along with the whistle of air lacerated by its forward motion. The train overtook the observation point in a flash, and both drone and whistle decreased by a tone; it hurtled on between birch trees and the occasional beech on the edge of the woods. Here the tracks were covered by a thick layer of dry, fragile brown leaves. The wave of rushing air collided with the leaves before the train even touched them, lifting them in a scattered cloud—higher than the highest trees, stirred by the gusts of wind like a swarm of bees—that accompanied the train on its course and made it visible from afar. The leaves were light but their mass was large: in spite of its momentum, the train was obliged to slow down.
A shapeless pile of leaves formed in front of the locomotive, which it split in two like a prow: some of the leaves ended up crushed between the tracks and the wheels, increasing the work of the engine and forcing it to slow down even more. At the same time, the friction between the train and the leaves—both the leaves in the piles and the ones that circled about—electrified the air, the train, and the leaves themselves. Large purple sparks streaked from the train to the ground, creating a tangle of luminous fragments against the dark backdrop of the woods. The air was heavy with ozone and the acrid odor of burned paper.
The mass of leaves in front of the locomotive grew thicker and the wheels’ grip on the tracks grew weaker until the train stopped, though the engines continued to churn at their maximum strength. The locomotive’s wheels, spinning in vain, grew red hot, and even the section of track beneath each wheel became almost incandescent; waves of fire, originating from these incandescent points, rippled over the leaves on the ground, but were spent after a few meters. There was a click, the engines were turned off, and everything was silent again. The face of the engineer appeared at the window of the locomotive, wide and pale: he stared into space, motionless. All the leaves had fallen to the ground. Nothing happened for a long time, but the light crackling of the leaves in front of the locomotive could be heard as they settled back into their position of repose: the pile slowly increased in volume, like rising dough.
Fascinated by the train, some crows had come to rest, and they pecked spitefully at the rocks and the leaves, croaking softly. Just before nightfall they became silent, then all together they took flight; something must have scared them. In fact, from among the trees came a rhythmic rustling, subdued but widespread: from the woods emerged a group of cautious little people. They were men and women of short stature, slim, in dark clothes; on their feet they wore coarse felt boots. They approached the train hesitantly, consulting each other in whispers. They didn’t seem to have a leader: nevertheless, determination prevailed over doubt. They gathered around the cars, and soon the creaking of their weight was followed by a metallic rustling like that of an anthill that has been disturbed. The little men and women busied themselves around the train; they must have had various implements hidden under their padded jackets, because the indistinct murmur was punctuated by dry crashes and the screech of saws.
Toward sunrise, the steel plates and wood that the cars were made of had been removed piece by piece and stacked up beside the tracks, but some of the people, not contented, attacked the stacks furiously in small groups, with hacksaws, shears, and hammers: they tore apart, broke up, and destroyed, as if all order and all structure conflicted with some ideal they shared. A pile of bits of wood had been set ablaze and the demolishers took turns standing near it to warm their hands. Meanwhile, others were occupied with the beams and girders of the framework; a single individual would not have seen the end of it in a year, but they were many and they were resolute, and their numbers grew by the hour. Intent and silent they labored, and the work progressed rapidly: when someone proved unable to destroy a piece, another, more capable or stronger, would push him aside and take his place. Often two would quarrel over a piece, tugging on it from opposite ends. The frames demolished, they busied themselves with the trucks, the shafts, and the wheel disks; it was astonishing how, with such primitive instruments, they managed to get on with their work: they would not abandon a part until it was bent, split, sawed into two unequal parts, splintered, or otherwise rendered unusable.
Demolishing the engine appeared to be more difficult. They worked on it for several hours, taking turns in no apparent order. Many, perhaps to rest, had crammed into the engineer’s cab, where a little of the heat from the engines still lingered, but others pulled them out to continue with the work. Soon they formed a chain, starting inside the cab and beside the piles of already removed fragments, and ending in the woods. The unrecognizable segments of the body, of the framework, of the engines, of the electrical system were passed from hand to hand in the uncertain light of dawn; thus, too, the inert body of the engineer. Once the engine, with all its delicate mechanisms, had been dismantled and destroyed, the little people attacked the rails and demolished about a hundred meters in each direction, while others, with great effort, extracted the ties from the frozen ground and split them with axes.
When the sun rose, nothing remained of the train, but the crowd did not disperse; the most vigorous, with those same axes, attacked the bases of the nearest birch trees, felled them, and stripped them of their branches; others, in pairs or in groups, flung themselves against one another with deliberate blows. Some were seen blindly striking themselves.
Fra Diavolo on the Po
Before the current confusion of reforms, obtaining a high-school diploma was an undertaking that made one tremble—it was a decathlon. The candidate was required to complete four written exams and an oral exam in every subject covered in three years of high school: in practice, a summary of everything that is known to mankind. Thus, by the day of the first exam, one would be completely exhausted, in a state both frantic and fatalistic, since it was
clear to everyone that luck played a major role in the final results.
In July of 1936, precisely two days before my first exam, the written exam in Italian, I received a menacing red postcard from the Ministry of War: the following day I was to report to the seaplane station (the one on the Po River, from which the seaplane leaves for Venice: how many Turinese remember it?) for an urgent message. I went there full of foreboding and found myself in the company of another teen-ager, who (I never discovered why) was also called Levi, before a giant in a Fascist uniform who assailed us with an avalanche of insults, accusations, and threats.
He was red in the face, in a fit of rage; he accused us of nothing less than attempted desertion. We were both cowards: according to him, we hadn’t responded to a previous call, clearly intending to avoid military service in the Royal Navy. Yes, because our two names, of all names, had been drawn in the Turin lottery for the Navy draft. No one could save us from twenty-four months of service.
I didn’t even know how to swim at the time, and though I had read Stevenson and Defoe, the prospect of becoming a sailor struck me as absurd and frightening. I went home terrified; the next day, I turned in an Italian exam that was insubstantial and incoherent, so much so that, in all fairness, I got a D, was not allowed to take the oral exam, and was told to return in October. It was the first bad grade in my impeccable academic career, and it felt pretty much like a death sentence. I passed the other exams thanks only to an exhausting effort.
WE HELD a family council; my father, poor man, already gravely ill, set about making the rounds of the relevant authorities, from the military recruiting office to the podestà,* from the Superintendent of Education to the Fascist Federation. What came of it was a paradoxical solution, a preemptive strike: I would avoid the Navy draft by enlisting as soon as possible in the pre-military course at the Milizia Volontaria per la Sicurezza Nazionale,* in other words the Fascist MVSN.
Thus, the following fall, once I had passed my Italian exam, I enrolled in the university and found myself in the position of university soldier. At the time I was neither Fascist nor anti-Fascist. Wearing a uniform gave me no sense of pride; rather, I found it somehow annoying (especially the boots). But I have to admit that I didn’t dislike marching in step, in close order, especially to band music. It was a dance, and it gave me the sensation of belonging to a human alliance, of merging with a unified group. I later learned that Einstein declared he could not understand the type of man who took pleasure in marching in step. Well, at the time I was that type, even if seven years later some other marching in step made me change my mind radically.
So there I was, a soldier, all decked out in Alpine hat, eagle, fasces, gray-green jacket and pants, and black shirt. The routine of pre-military education should have enabled me to predict much of what was to come after Italy entered the war, in 1940: suffice it to say that throughout the entire course I neither fired a single shot nor saw even from a distance what the cartridge clips of the extremely heavy Model 91 rifle looked like.
The muster was on Saturday afternoons in the courtyard of the university on Via Po, where, in one of the corridors, the armory of the University Militia was situated. We had to show up in uniform, and each of us was given a rifle; the bayonet—with its two lateral grooves “so that the blood can drain away”—was fixed to the muzzle, and the loop of the bayonet sheath was threaded through the belt, along with cartridge pouches meant to hold ammunition but naturally empty. Once our belts were on we would fill the cartridge pouches with bread and salami for snack time; the smokers used them for cigarettes. Pre-military training consisted solely of the tedious close-order drills and long walks in the hills that would have been pleasant if it hadn’t been for the loathsome boots that chafed our ankles and feet raw.
If I am not mistaken, I was the only true university student in my squad. The others were studying geometry or accounting, and had all enrolled in the University Militia for the various worldly advantages that could be gained from it—not one had joined out of Fascist beliefs. Because they were the same height as me, four shrewd, friendly boys—all a little frisky—were always near me in the squad, and with the aid of their rifles they kept themselves entertained by playing the part of Fra Diavolo.* They called each other Canù Vacché (wizened cowboy), Cravé (Cravero) Bastard,* Comi Schifús, and Simoncelli Struns:† as in Homeric texts, these were fixed attributes and were an integral part of their names—like honorary titles.
COMI SCHIFÚS in fact was an old acquaintance. He had been a classmate of mine in elementary school, and already then was trying his very best to be gross: he was the only one in our entire class who could lick the soles of his shoes—without taking them off, of course. It pleases me to mention the names of these faraway comrades in arms, in the event that any of them should recognize himself here. One had composed amiably obscene verses in which the surreal names of the parts of the above-mentioned rifle recurred: “dog collar sling,” “butt plate,” “nose cap,” and others I can’t recall because, as a matter of fact, we had never taken a rifle apart. The rifle was intended less as a weapon than as a dead weight, useful only for hampering movements.
As a result of the racial laws, my military career didn’t last long: in September 1938, I was asked to turn in my uniform, and I did so without regrets. But when, in 1945, I returned from captivity in Germany, I discovered that the specter of military service in the Navy had not vanished: I appeared to still be registered for the naval draft. I was called to the recruiting office to re-state my position, stripped naked, and subjected to the statutory medical exam with the recruits of ’27. I was in pretty bad shape, but the doctor wanted to declare me fit for service. A negotiation ensued: strange as it may seem, I did not possess any documents to attest to my year in Auschwitz, except for the number tattooed on my arm. After long explanations and pleading, the doctor agreed first to classify me as temporarily unfit for service, and then to let me out definitively. Thus ended my brief military career.
The Sorcerers
Wilkins and Goldbaum had been away from their base camp for two days: they had been trying, in vain, to record the dialect of the Siriono* of the east village, on the other side of the river, ten kilometers from the camp and from West Siriono. They saw the smoke and immediately started back: it was a dense black smoke, and it rose slowly into the evening sky, in the very direction where, with the help of the natives, they had built their wood-and-straw huts. They reached the riverbank in less than an hour, forded the muddy stream, and saw the disaster. The camp was no longer there: only smoking embers and scraps of metal, ashes and unidentifiable charred remains.
The village of West Siriono, five hundred meters away, was on a bend in the river; the Siriono were waiting for them, in great excitement: they had tried to put out the fire, drawing water from the river using their crude pots and some buckets, a gift of the two Englishmen, but hadn’t managed to salvage anything. Sabotage was unlikely: their relations with the Siriono were good, and, besides, the Siriono weren’t that familiar with fire. Probably the generator had backfired—they had left it on during their absence to keep the refrigerator going—or perhaps had had a short circuit. Anyway, the situation was serious: the radio no longer functioned, and the nearest town was a twenty-day walk through the forest.
Up to that point the two ethnographers’ contacts with the Siriono had been limited. Only through hard work, and by corrupting him with two cans of corned beef, had they managed to overcome the distrust of Achtiti, who was the most intelligent and curious man in the village; he had consented to answer their questions, speaking into the microphone of the tape recorder. But it had been, rather than a necessity or a job, an academic game: Achtiti, too, had taken it that way, and had obviously found it entertaining to teach the two the names of the colors, of the trees that surrounded the camp, of his friends, and of his women. Achtiti had learned a few words of English, and they a hundred-odd words with a harsh, indistinct sound, and when they tried to reproduce them, Ac
htiti beat his stomach with both hands in delight.
It was no longer a game. They did not feel capable of following a Siriono guide on a twenty-day march through a forest saturated with putrid water. They would have to explain to Achtiti that he must send a messenger to Candelaria with a letter from them, in which they asked for a motorboat to come up the river to get them, and bring the messenger back to the tribe. It would not be easy to explain to Achtiti even what a letter was. In the meantime, there was nothing to do but ask the Siriono for their hospitality for three or four weeks.
As for hospitality, there were no problems: Achtiti immediately understood the situation, and offered the men a straw pallet, and two of the peculiar Siriono blankets, painstakingly woven from palm fibers and magpie feathers. They put off the explanations till the next day and slept deeply.
The following day, Wilkins prepared the letter for Suarez in Candelaria. He had the idea of drafting it in two versions, one written in Spanish for Suarez and one ideographic, so that both Achtiti and the messenger could get an idea of the purpose of the mission and put aside their evident suspicion. The second version showed the messenger himself walking southwest, along the river; twenty suns were intended to represent the length of the journey. Then came the city: tall huts, and among them many men and women in trousers and skirts and with hats on their heads. Finally, there was a bigger man, pushing the motorboat into the river, with three men on board and sacks of provisions, and the boat going back up the river; in this last image, the messenger was on board, stretched out and eating from a bowl.
Uiuna, the messenger chosen by Achtiti, examined the drawings carefully, asking for explanations with gestures. Was it in the direction that he was pointing to on the horizon? And the distance? Finally he loaded a knapsack of dried meat on his back, took his bow and arrows, and set off barefoot, rapid and silent, with the undulating gait of the Siriono. Achtiti made solemn gestures with his head, as if to say that they could have confidence in Uiuna: Goldbaum and Wilkins looked at one another in bewilderment. It was the first time that a Siriono had traveled so far from the village and gone to a city, in so far as Candelaria, with its five thousand inhabitants, could be considered a city.
