Message from the Shadows

by Antonio Tabucchi

  – Watch carefully, said the man, and consider it, in nefelomanzia you need quick intuition but consideration is indispensable, don’t lose sight of it.

  Isabella shaded her eyes with her hand. The man lit a cigarette.

  – Smoking isn’t good for your health, said Isabella.

  – Don’t worry about what I’m doing, think about the cloud, in this world there are lots of things that aren’t good for your health.

  – It’s opened at the sides, exclaimed Isabella, as if it’s taken on wings.

  – Butterfly, said the man confidently, and the butterfly has only one meaning, there’s no doubt.

  – Which is? asked Isabella.

  – People with existential disagreements stop having them, people separated will be reunited and their life will be gracious like the flight of a butterfly, Strabo, page twenty-six of the main book.

  – What book is that? asked Isabella.

  – The main book of Strabo, said the man, that’s the title, unfortunately it was never translated into modern languages, it’s only studied in the last semester of college because you can only read it in ancient Greek.

  – Why was it never translated?

  – Because modern languages are too hurried, said the man, in the haste to communicate they become synthetic and grow less precise, for instance ancient Greek uses the dual in conjugating verbs, we only have the plural, and when we say we, in this case you and I, we can also mean many people, but for the ancient Greeks, who were quite exact, if only you and I are doing or saying that thing, only a pair of us, the dual was used. For instance, the nefelomanzia of that cloud is being done only by the two of us, only we know about it, and for this they had the dual.

  – Really awesome, said Isabella, and let out a little shriek, putting a hand over her mouth, look at the other side, at the other side!

  – It’s a cirrus, the man said, a beautiful baby cirrus that in a moment will be swallowed by the sky, ordinary people would mistake it for a nimbus, though a cirrus is a cirrus, too bad for them, and the form of a cirrus can’t have any other meaning but its own, which other clouds don’t have.

  – Which is? asked Isabella.

  – Depends on the shape, said the man, you have to interpret it, and here’s where I need you, otherwise what kind of nefelomanti are we?

  – It seems to be splitting in two, said Isabella, look, it really is split in two, they seem like two little sheep trotting side by side.

  – Two cirrinus lambs, without a doubt.

  – I just don’t get it.

  – It’s easy, said the man, the meek lamb by itself represents the evolutions of humankind, Strabo, page thirty-one of the main book, watch carefully, but when it splits, it becomes two parallel wars, one is just and the other unjust, they’re impossible to distinguish, which ultimately isn’t all that important to us, what matters is to understand how they’ll both end up, what their future holds.

  Isabella glanced at him like someone awaiting an urgent response.

  – A miserable end, I can assure you, dear Isabèl.

  – Are you really sure? she asked in an anxious voice.

  – You tell me, whispered the man, I’m closing my eyes now, you have to interpret them, watch them, be patient, but try to catch just the right moment, because after that you’ll be too late. The man closed his eyes, extended his legs, lowered a cap over his face, and remained still, as though falling asleep. Perhaps a minute passed, even more. Over the beach was a great silence, the bathers had gone to the restaurant.

  – They’re flaking in a kind of stracciatella soup, said Isabella in a low voice, like when the trail of a jet breaks up, now you can hardly see them, how weird, I can hardly see them, you look too.

  The man didn’t move.

  – It’s not necessary, he said, Strabo, page twenty-four of the main book, he wasn’t ever wrong, two thousand years ago he prophesied the end of all war, but nobody up to now has fully grasped it, and today we’ve finally deciphered it on this beach, the two of us.

  – You know you’re an awesome man? said Isabella.

  – I’m perfectly aware of that, answered the man.

  – I think it’s time to go to the restaurant, she went on, maybe my mom is already waiting at our table and she gets angry, can we keep talking this afternoon?

  – I don’t know, nefelomanzia is a very tiring art, maybe this afternoon I’ll have to sleep, otherwise this evening I won’t even make it to dinner.

  – Is this why you take so many pills? asked Isabella, because of the nefelomanzia?

  The man raised the cap from his face and looked at her.

  – And what do you think? he asked.

  Isabella had gotten up, she stepped out of the circle of shade, her body shone in the sunlight.

  – I’ll tell you tomorrow, she replied.

  Translated by Martha Cooley and Antonio Romani

  Letter From Casablanca

  Lina,

  I don’t know why I’m starting this letter off by discussing a palm tree when you haven’t heard anything from me for eighteen years. Maybe because of all the palm trees here, I can see them from the hospital window, their long fronds waving in the scorching wind along blazing boulevards vanishing into white. Our house, when we were children, had a palm tree out front. Maybe you don’t remember, because it was chopped down, if memory serves, the year it happened – so it had to be ’53, that summer, I think – I was ten years old. We had a happy childhood, Lina, you can’t remember, and no one could tell you about it, our aunt who raised you wouldn’t know, oh, sure, she can tell you something about Papa and Mama, but not about your childhood that she couldn’t have known and you don’t remember. She lived too far away, up north, her husband worked at a bank, and they considered themselves superior to the family of a signalman, so they never came to our house. The palm tree was taken down by order of the Ministry of Transport claiming that it impeded the view of the trains and could cause an accident. God knows what sort of accident that palm tree could have caused, it was so tall, with a tuft of fronds brushing our second-floor window. The only thing that might have been slightly annoying: from the house, you saw the trunk, a trunk thinner than a light pole, that certainly didn’t impede the view of the trains. Anyway, we had to take it down, there was nothing else to do, it’s not like the land was ours. One night at dinner Mama, who from time to time had great ideas, proposed writing a letter directly to the Minister of Transport that the whole family would sign, a sort of petition. It went like this: “Dear Mr. Minister: In relation to the circular number such-and-such, protocol such-and-such, regarding the palm tree situated on the small piece of land in front of signal house number such-and-such for the Rome–Turin line, the signalman’s family informs your Excellency that the abovementioned palm tree does not constitute any obstacle to the view of the passing trains. So we beg you to leave standing the abovementioned palm tree, being the only tree on the land (apart from a sparse vine on a pergola by the door) and being greatly loved by the signalman’s children, and in particular keeping our little boy company, who’s delicate by nature and often forced to stay in bed and can at least see a palm tree out the window and not just empty space, which would make him sad, and to testify to the love the signalman’s children have for the abovementioned palm tree, suffice it to say that they have baptized it and do not call it palm tree but Josephine, this name owing to our once taking them to the city to see the movie Quarantasette morto che parla with Totò, and in the newsreel, they saw the famous French Negro singer with the abovementioned name who danced with a gorgeous headdress made out of palm leaves, and ever since, when the wind blows and the palm tree seems to dance our children call the tree their Josephine.”

  This letter’s one of the few things I have left of Mama, a draft of the petition we sent, that Mama wrote out by hand in my composition notebook, and so, when I was s
ent to Argentina, I just happened to bring it along, never realizing, never imagining how precious that page would become for me. Something else I have left of Mama, a picture, but you can barely see her, a photo Mr. Quintilio took of us under our pergola, at the stone table, it must be summer, there’s Papa, and Mr. Quintilio’s daughter, a thin girl with long braids and a flowered dress, I’m playing with a wood rife, pretending to shoot into the camera lens, there are glasses on the table and a bottle of wine, Mama’s just leaving the house with a soup tureen, she’s just entered the photo that Mr. Quintilio’s already snapped, she’s entered by accident, in motion, and this is why she’s a bit out of focus and in profile – she’s hard to recognize – so much so, I prefer to think of her as I remember her. Because I remember her well, that year, the year we took down the palm tree, I was ten, it was definitely summer, and the event happened in October, a person remembers perfectly well at age ten, and I’ll never forget what happened that October. But Mr. Quintilio, do you remember him? He was the overseer on the farm about two kilometers from the signal house, where we used to pick cherries in May, a small, nervous man who was always cracking jokes, Papa would tease him because under fascism he’d been deputy provincial party secretary, or something or other, and he was ashamed about it, would shake his head, say that was all water under the bridge, and Papa would laugh and slap him on the back. And his wife, do you remember her, that sad, heavy woman? She suffered terribly in the heat, and when they came for lunch, she brought a fan, and she’d sweat and pant, then go sit outside under the pergola and fall asleep on the stone bench, her head against the wall, not even waking to the passing freight trains. It was splendid when they came after dinner, and sometimes there was also Miss Palestro, an elderly spinster who lived alone in a large house affiliated with the farm, surrounded by a battalion of cats, and she was obsessed with teaching me French, because when she was young she’d been governess to the children of a count, she was always saying, “pardon,” “c’est dommage,” and then her favorite, for all occasions, to emphasize something important or simply if she dropped her glasses: “oh-là-là!” Those evenings, Mama would sit down at the small piano – how she carried herself at that piano, it testified to her upbringing, to her comfortable childhood, her chancellor father, their vacations in the Tuscan Apennines – the stories she told of those vacations. And then she graduated in home economics.

  If you only knew, my first years in Argentina, how I longed to have experienced those vacations! I longed for them so much, had imagined them so vividly, that sometimes I felt as though under a strange spell, and I’d recall vacations in Gavinana and San Marcello, the two of us there, Lina, when we were little, only you weren’t you but Mama as a little girl and I was your brother who loved you very much, and I remembered when we went to a stream down from Gavinana to catch tadpoles, and you, meaning Mama, had a net and a huge goofy hat with flaps, like the wimple of the Vincenzine nuns, you were always running ahead, chattering, “We have to run, we have to run – the tadpoles are waiting!” and this sounded so funny to me, and I’d laugh like crazy, I couldn’t keep up I was laughing so hard, and you disappeared into the chestnut trees by the stream and shouted, “Catch me, catch me!” and I did my best to catch up and took you by the shoulders, you cried out, and down we went, down the slope, rolling, and I hugged you and whispered, “Mama, Mama, hold me tight, Mama,” and you held me tight, and as we rolled, you became the Mama I knew, I smelled your perfume, kissed your hair, everything merged, grass, hair, sky, and in that ecstatic moment came Uncle Alfredo’s baritone voice: “entonces niño, ¿los platinados están prontos?” No, they weren’t ready. And I found myself in the yawning maw of an old Mercedes, a box of spark-plug points in one hand and a screwdriver in the other, the ground dotted with watery blue oil, “now, what’s this kid dreaming about,” he said, giving me an affectionate slap. We were in Rosario, in 1958, and Uncle Alfredo, after all those years in Argentina, spoke a strange mix of Italian and Spanish. His garage was called The Motorized Italian, and he repaired everything, but mainly tractors, old Ford wrecks, as an emblem, next to Shell’s shell, he had a leaning tower of neon, though only half-lit, as the gas in the tubes was used up and no one ever bothered to replace them. Uncle Alfredo was a corpulent man, ruddy, patient, a food connoisseur, and his nose was covered in blue spider veins and he was prone to hypertension – the exact opposite of Papa – you’d never have said that they were brothers.

  Ah, but I was telling you about those evenings after dinner at our house, when we had visitors and Mama would sit down at the piano. Miss Palestro went into raptures over Strauss waltzes, I really preferred when Mama sang, it was so difficult to get her to sing, she was shy and would blush, “I don’t have a voice anymore,” she’d say, smiling, but then she’d give in at the insistence of Mrs. Elvira, who also preferred ballads and songs to waltzes, and finally Mama would give in, then there was a long silence. Mama would start with some amusing little ditties, to liven things up, “Rosamunda,” say, or “Eulalia Torricelli,” Mrs. Elvira would laugh with delight, breathlessly, clucking like a brood hen and puffing out her enormous chest as she fanned herself. Then Mama would play an interlude, not singing, Miss Palestro would ask for something more challenging, Mama would look up at the ceiling, as if for inspiration or trying to remember, her hands caressed the keys, there were no trains at that time, no disturbing sounds, the window thrown open to the marshland, the call of crickets, moths beating the screen with their wings, desperate to get in, Mama would sing “Luna Rossa,” “All’alba se ne parte il marinaro,” or a Beniamino Gigli ballad, “Occhi di Fata.” How lovely it was to hear her sing! Miss Palestro’s eyes would shine, Mrs. Elvira would even stop fanning herself, everyone was watching Mama in her filmy blue dress, you’d be asleep in your room, unaware, you didn’t have these moments to remember. I was happy. Everyone applauded. Papa, brimming with pride, would go around with the bottle of vermouth and fill the guests’ small glasses, saying, “please, please, this is no house of a Turk.” Uncle Alfredo always used this strange expression, too, it was funny hearing him say this mixed in with Spanish, I remember we’d be at the table, he loved tripe alla parmigiana and thought Argentines were foolish for only liking cuts of steak from cattle, and he’d take a generous helping from the enormous steaming tureen, saying, “Anda a comer, niño, this is no house of a Turk.” It was a phrase from their childhood, Uncle Alfredo and Papa’s, who knows what it dated back to, I understood the concept, that this was a house of abundance, with a generous host, and who knows why the opposite was attributed to the Turks, maybe it dated back to the Saracen invasions. And Uncle Alfredo really was generous with me, he raised me like I was his own son, and actually, he had no children of his own: generous and patient, just like a real father, and probably with me plenty of patience was necessary. I was a sad, absentminded little boy, I got into a lot of trouble as a result, the only time I saw him lose his patience was awful, but it wasn’t my fault, we were having our lunch, I’d crashed a tractor, I was doing a difficult maneuver, trying to get it into the shop, maybe I was distracted, and right then Modugno started singing “Volare” on the radio and Uncle Alfredo turned up the volume because he was crazy about that song, and I scraped the side of a Chrysler, doing quite a bit of damage. Aunt Olga wasn’t mean, she was talker, a grumbling Venetian who clung to her dialect, you could barely understand her when she spoke, Venetian mixed with Spanish, a disaster. She and my uncle met in Argentina, and when they decided to marry, they were already getting on in years, so you couldn’t really say it was a love match, let’s just say it was convenient for them both, because she got to give up working in a meat-canning factory and Uncle Alfredo got a woman to keep his house tidy. But they did care for each other, or at least there was fondness, and Aunt Olga respected him, spoiled him. Who can say why she blurted that out that day, maybe she was tired, annoyed, had grown impatient, what I do know is she shouldn’t have, Uncle Alfredo had reprimanded me earlier, and I was al
ready mortified, just staring down at my plate, and Aunt Olga, out of the blue, but not meaning to hurt my feelings, poor thing, almost like she was just making an observation, said, “he’s the son of a madman – only a madman could do that to his wife.” And then I watched as Uncle Alfredo stood up, calm, white in the face, and gave her a terrifying back-handed slap. The blow was so violent it knocked Aunt Olga off her chair, and falling, she grabbed onto the tablecloth, dragged down all the dishes behind her. Uncle Alfredo slowly walked out, returning to the garage. Aunt Olga got to her feet like nothing had happened, she gathered up the broken dishes, swept the floor, laid out a new tablecloth because the other was a mess, set the table, and went out to the stairwell. “Alfredo,” she shouted, “lunch is on the table!”

  When I left for Mar del Plata I was sixteen years old. Sewn into my undershirt I had a roll of pesos, and in my pocket, a business card from the Pensione Albano, “agua corriente fria caliente,” and a letter for the owner, an Italian friend of Uncle Alfredo’s, a friend from his youth, they’d come to Argentina on the same ship and always kept in touch. I was going to attend an Italian Salesian boarding school that had a conservatory of some sort. My aunt and uncle had pushed me to go, I’d finished my early schooling, I wasn’t cut out to be a mechanic, that was clear, and Aunt Olga hoped the city would change me, I overheard her one night saying, “his eyes scare me sometimes, they’re so frightened, who knows what the poor boy saw, who knows what he remembers.” The way I behaved must have been somewhat troubling, I can see that. I never spoke, I’d turn red, grow flustered, cry a lot. Aunt Olga complained that popular songs and their foolish lyrics were ruining me, Uncle Alfredo tried to rouse me by explaining camshafts and clutches and at night, he’d try to get me to join him at the Florida café where a lot of Italians played scopone, but I preferred hanging out listening to music on the radio, I adored old Carlos Gardel tangos, Wilson Baptista’s melancholy sambas, Doris Day songs, but, really, I loved all music. Maybe it was better for me to go study music, if that was my path: but far from the plains, somewhere civilized.