The Unseen

by Nanni Balestrini

  one of these non-residents was Nocciola who by now was coming to our school every day Nocciola got by with a bit of shoplifting in the supermarkets and the shops he thieved all kinds of things even stuff he didn’t need because then he’d resell it the school had kind of become his market in fact there were people who’d order things from him in advance moccassin shoes or a record player and then us too because we didn’t have any money and now we were fed up with asking for it at home luckily Nocciola was there teaching us a thousand and one ways to get by with not much money and how to find it we did a bit of mass shoplifting in the bookshops and then we sold the books to stall-holders we forged canteen vouchers Nocciola knew how to get telephone coin boxes open and he always went round with tons of tokens in his pockets he paid for everything with telephone tokens he went to the cinema and paid with telephone tokens

  bit by bit we started selling off the school we started taking it apart really taking it apart and selling the stuff piece by piece light-fittings typewriters chairs stools encyclopaedias from the library materials from the chemistry and physics laboratory the glass cases and the cupboards there was nothing left in the school then they bought everything brand new again but we sold it all all over again and so they gave up the teachers didn’t even leave their cars in the car park otherwise the tyres would disappear on them the school had now become an empty space quite void of interest too nothing to do with us at all at a certain point we realized we had to leave and go and clean somewhere else out and so we didn’t go there any more and we started living at the centre

  when we took over the centre what happened was that we’d gone to the centre of a Marxist-Leninist group to ask if there was any chance of using it for our meetings it was a very big centre five or six rooms it was on the ground floor of an old building in the centre of town it was very well kept the parquet floor was polished everything was very neat and tidy with red curtains but at the same time it was very gloomy those big empty rooms and the smell of a locked-up church there were huge Chinese posters framed under glass posters with Chinese workers and peasants very muscular and always smiling with fists raised and great big banners hanging the whole length of the walls long live the heroic victory of the Cambodian people there was one room turned into a cultural centre the Antonio Gramsci Cultural Centre it said on a polished plate on the door

  when we rang the bell there was only one comrade there arranging the library books nearly all Chinese editions of the works of Mao and Stalin and other things like that and he announced us to the comrade secretary who was in his office behind a polished desk with a telephone on it the secretary was a diminutive individual with a big belly very earnest all the time with a big grey overcoat that was never taken off we told him what we wanted but he started talking about political lines giving us a long tirade about the political line of his party he was looking for a bit of political confrontation but we couldn’t have cared less about political confrontation at that time there were loads of struggles going on and it was the first we’d ever seen of this lot and now here he was asking us to take up a position on the political line of their party

  we couldn’t have cared less but we had to listen to the whole of his triumphalist tirade about his party we kept looking at the telephone hoping it would ring and interrupt him it never rang though but then he tells us that in that particular conjuncture however the party presence in town had been weakened by the expulsion of some militants for right-wing or left-wing deviationism though they did have three workers functioning as a party cell inside two factories and one student but lately this student had been going around with a bad crowd people who hung about at the station and they even suspected him of being on drugs and in the end the comrade secretary let himself go and said that they didn’t have any more money to pay the rent and even the telephone had been cut off and the three workers had it up to here with taking a cut out of their wages every month to pay for the centre so we reached an agreement that they would transfer all the rooms but one to us and that was that

  three or four of them put up a partition to separate their room from the others and they made a separate entrance but after all this work we never saw or heard from them again until we realized that they’d stopped coming and then we pulled down the partition and we used their room too immediately within just a few days there was a great convergence of people all the dispersed people of the movement began to pour in all kinds turned up workers students unemployed people women drop-outs old people comrades from the extra-parliamentary groups anarchists it was a different place from the usual sort of centre the groups had it was a movement centre and since it was big there was plenty of room there for all these differences

  we’d inherited all the MLs’ furnishings their chairs their bookshelves their cupboards though the comrade secretary had taken away the telephone we’d inherited the big framed Chinese posters with Mao strolling around the middle of the countryside smiling followed by squads of peasants holding sickles or pitchforks or rifles and we left them as they were the centre was always open we made a show of closing it in the evening shutting the door but the fact was that there were no keys there were people coming and going all the time there were meetings of workers of students of casual workers of hospital workers of women but also groups that turned up there with guitars flutes and so on to play to smoke joints to fix up dates for the evening it had become everybody’s regular drop-in place

  of course the comrades also used the centre as a place for working out the various systems for not paying electricity bills gas bills telephone bills systems for not paying for transport for sabotaging the ticket machines on the buses for forging train tickets for sabotaging the electricity meters and so on they were things that started spontaneously with individuals or small groups and that by word of mouth would then lead to the organization of real mass struggles around these things for instance we’d started going to the cinema on Sundays for free fifty or sixty of us would push our way in or at a pinch if it was clear that they’d call the police we’d throw down a derisory sum that was no more than token

  the same thing went for the fancy shops in the centre of town for thirty or forty of us to go into a really smart shop was in itself already pretty intimidating and even without having to hurry much it was really easy to make off with a stereo deck a leather jacket a camera and so on the same thing went for the transport struggles we’d travel in large groups and we’d say we weren’t paying then we’d give out leaflets to the rest of the passengers to encourage them to do the same thing until it became routine and the conductor didn’t even ask the comrades for tickets not even when they were on their own in the early days the bus company had the idea of putting guards on the buses but then it had to give this up because along with this it had to budget for the cost of wrecked bus stations and even a pair of buses that went up in smoke one night our centre was right in the middle of town and the whole surrounding area was in fact occupied by us movement people came and went groups of comrades would hang out all day sitting outside on benches in the small park about two hundred yards away there was a big department store that was visited daily by groups of comrades at one point the management of the department store decided to tackle these brazen daily raids and they installed a large number of security guards one day they started chasing some comrades who’d stolen some food they ran after them even once they were outside the store and then the comrades started running in the direction of our centre and they started shouting and in no time there was a general alert everyone outside with the banners which were just pickaxe handles with a strip of red cloth attached

  the security guards weren’t expecting this they stopped short a few yards away from the first banners about-turn and away they went but they knew one of our comrades by name and they reported her to the police and for fear of some retaliation by us they asked for two cars full of cops to be stationed in front of the entrance then the women comrades came up with a nice m
ove and twenty or thirty of them went into the department store and once inside they started making the rounds of the fashion department with razor blades and that was that jackets sweaters skirts trousers raincoats dresses overcoats a real disaster damage to the tune of millions of lire and then they just left calm as you please nobody noticed a thing the police cars stayed on guard for another two weeks and meanwhile people went and did their thieving in another supermarket then they went back there and started all over again

  in the early days the centre was used by the movement as a whole mainly for activities like these some even used the centre as a temporary lodging those who’d maybe left home the day before it became their berth for the night they’d pull their sleeping bags out of the cupboard then in the morning they’d roll them up again and store them back in the cupboard there were washing facilities and there was heating and in one room we’d even come up with a bar the gathering point for everybody was the general meeting that was held in the biggest room roughly once a week all packed together in there we’d discuss all the things that the different collectives planned to do or had done during the week and we’d tackle the problem of how to use the strength that we’d built so as to generalize the offensive to the factories to the schools to the hospitals to the local districts to the squares and we’d get leaflets ready

  to generalize the offensive means to radicalize disaffection with whichever hierarchy you choose to exercise our destructive creativity against the society of the spectacle to sabotage the machines and goods that sabotage our lives to promote indefinite wildcat general strikes always to have mass meetings in all the separate factories to elect delegates who can be recalled by the base to keep continuous links between all the places of struggle to overlook no useful technical means of free communication to give a direct use value to everything that has an exchange value to occupy permanently the factories and the public buildings to organize self-defence of the conquered territories and on with the music

  27

  The isolation cell was six feet by nine an iron bedstead fixed to the floor a foam rubber mattress a foam rubber pillow two sheets a pillow-slip a brown blanket a dirty white ceramic washbasin and that was all and on the far wall across from the door there was a barred window some wire netting behind the window which looks on to a passageway that’s hardly wide enough for one person to go through it but judging by the accumulation of dust dirt and cobwebs it must have been a long time since anyone had gone through it the cell is lit by a very bright light that comes from a bulb that’s out of sight but which must be in the corridor above the door and the light filters in through an iron grating about a foot square

  the floor is poured concrete furrowed with cracks of assorted sizes the cracks are full of dust dirty cigarette ends bits of plaster the walls that once must have been white are a dirty yellow colour and here and there all over the place bits of plaster are coming away after having first formed bubbles on account of the damp the bubbles swell up then they break then the bits of plaster start to come away and fall on the floor they are also coming off the low uneven ceiling and falling in the middle of the cell on the walls all kinds of writing dug into the plaster with fingernails or burned in with cigarettes the writing is prolific intricate with some things written over others half crossed out so that it’s all muddled up

  low down on the left at floor level a small iron door about a foot high not quite closed I open it there’s a small opening and inside there’s a metal bucket covered in rust which gives off a nauseating stink inside it there are still traces of shit and piss cockroaches foul insects I close the door with a kick I’ll never have a shit in there no way right now I don’t need to shit but I need to piss I go and piss in the washbasin even that’s pretty foul all scummy and full of cracks it’s ready to split right open I run the water for a long time there’s a stink coming from the little door that almost makes me vomit but maybe the stink was there before and I didn’t notice it it’s the stink of that subterranean place

  a nauseating stink of piss of shit of vomit of enclosure I try to hold my breath for a few seconds but it’s just the same it changes nothing in fact when I breathe out again it’s worse I look around but there’s nothing to look at I sit down on the bed and I listen I can hear only the slow dragging tread of a guard up and down the corridor unlike the cell at police headquarters there’s silence here but maybe the silence is worse I look at my hands black with ink I try to wash them with water from the washbasin but there isn’t even a scrap of soap and the water runs off the impermeable ink then I think of scraping it off with one of the bits of plaster that’s coming off the walls but it’s futile I give up and I sit down again on the bed what do I do now I wonder and now what do I do

  what do you do in here to pass the time and then it occurs to me that I don’t even know how much time I’ll have to spend here I don’t even know what to wait for no that’s it the lawyer I have to wait for the lawyer I’ll leave the cell to see the lawyer but then I’ll have to come back again and I’m gripped by an oppressive sensation as if something was squeezing my lungs my heart my stomach everything inside everything closed compressed a painful lump I look at my black hands I have to be careful where I put them so that I don’t leave marks all over the place my clothes the sheets but I’ve nothing to keep my hands occupied they’ve left me nothing only half a pack of cigarettes but no lighter what good are cigarettes to me if I’ve nothing to light them with

  I hear the sound of the key in the door two turns of the lock the door opens the sergeant of the guard appears with two guards beside him and he tells me that I have to go and see the doctor I go out without asking why because I guess that it’s routine we go down to the end of the corridor and we reach the last cell that’s been converted into an infirmary if you can call it that containing a small bed covered with a transparent plastic sheet a desk and a plastic cabinet with a few medicines in it the doctor is young an unpleasant peevish expression on his face he hardly glances at me then he writes my details on a card and starts to ask me about childhood and adolescent illnesses

  measles mumps chicken pox all that sort of thing he reads them off a list rattling away like an express train he doesn’t even wait for me to answer he ticks off each line on the list and only looks up with a question about whether I’ve got any infectious illnesses I answer no and then he’s finished he scribbles something at the bottom of the card and signals to the guards to say that we can leave the whole thing has lasted a minute I’m back in my cell again the gate and the metal door slam behind me I stand there for a bit then I decide to make the bed I do it all very slowly I take twice or three times as long as I’d usually take so as to fill up the longest possible time

  when I get to the blanket I realize it can’t have been washed for months if I move it at all it sends up clouds of dust it’s so full of dust it weighs double it’s more or less covered in patches of dried stuff it’s really disgusting but it’s cold and I can’t do without the blanket and I spread it out evenly over the sheets I stretch out on the bed and I start reading the things written on the walls trying to concentrate on one bit of writing after the other trying to read that whole muddle of stains and dirt it seems as if the stench is stronger when I’m lying down I get up I lie down again three or four times until I’m sure it’s just the same or that at least there isn’t much difference

  I go back to looking at the writing there are dates and signatures dates going back two even three years before signatures with greetings insults to guards insults to other names and the word bastard recurs often bastard this bastard that bastard prison then women’s names with hearts words of love poems drawings of pricks and cunts the odd hammer and sickle the odd fasces political slogans of left and right a few five-pointed stars signed BR* drawings and writings altered distorted and then everywhere dirty stains splatters stripes and marks in a brownish colour it occurs to me I could write something too the ones who made those marks d
id it because like me they had nothing to do to pass the time but I can think of nothing I’d like to write on those walls

  time passes I’m not aware of the speed of time passing I can’t keep an eye on it because they’ve taken away my watch and you can’t see daylight at one point the spy-hole is opened a new face appears he nods for me to go over and he hands me a plastic plate and a plastic glass he asks me if I want soup I try to look out through the spy-hole to see what soup he means outside there’s an iron trolley with a huge pan on it a huge ladle sitting in a thin reddish broth I say I don’t want any and then he hands me a plastic bag containing a scrap of dry cheese two shrivelled green apples and a piece of bread that at least is fresh

  the spy-hole is closed again I hear the sound of the trolley going further away I put my lunch on my jacket because the blanket disgusts me I wash the apples under the tap but I’m not hungry despite not having eaten since yesterday morning however I eat just the same I eat slowly chewing the food over and over I think that even with eating it’s better to make things last as long as possible but I also think that it can’t be any later than noon since they’ve brought me food that only a few hours have gone by I’m cold the dampness is getting into my bones I can feel shivers down my back I put my jacket on again its lining all torn from the searches I move about a bit to warm up I try to measure the number of steps I can take in the cell four steps the length of it four and a half steps the width of it and about turn too few for passing the time and so I lie down again

  28

  The demonstration sets off with our group at the head of it along with Talpa the trade unionist from the occupied factory there are drums and cow bells that make an infernal din first we go through the village everybody’s outside watching in the roadway on the pavement at the windows there has never been a demonstration before in this village we start chanting a few fairly tough slogans and all the workers men and women take them up right away and they have a good time shouting out production methods like you’ve never seen when you stick the boss in the pressing machine prices get higher every day we’ll help ourselves but we won’t pay we go through the whole village a mini-bus full of carabinieri follows at a distance once we’ve left the centre of the village we head towards the small factories some are shut having heard about the demonstration and the plans to stir things up that were going round the bars the night before and a lot of workers didn’t turn up for work