He had run out of plates. He emerged from the cloth. He was pleased. Bice was before him, naked, as if waiting.
“Now you can dress,” he said, euphoric, but already in a hurry. “Let’s go out.”
She looked at him, bewildered.
“I’ve got you now,” he said.
Bice burst into tears.
Antonino realized that he had fallen in love with her that same day. They started living together, and he bought the most modern cameras, telescopic lens, the most advanced equipment; he installed a dark-room. He even had a set-up for photographing her at night when she was asleep. Bice would wake at the flash, annoyed; Antonino went on taking snapshots of her as she disentangled herself from sleep, of her becoming furious with him, of her trying in vain to find sleep again plunging her face into the pillow, of her making up with him, of her recognizing as acts of love these photographic rapes.
In Antonino’s dark-room, strung with films and proofs, Bice peered from every frame, as thousands of bees peer out of the honeycomb of a hive, always the same bee: Bice in every attitude, at every angle, in every guise; Bice posed or caught unawares, an identity fragmented into a powder of images.
“But what’s this obsession with Bice? Can’t you photograph anything else?” was the question he heard constantly from his friends, and also from her.
“It isn’t just a matter of Bice,” he answered. “It’s a question of method. Whatever person you decide to photograph, or whatever thing, you must go on photographing it always, exclusively, at every hour of the day and night. Photography has a meaning only if it exhausts all possible images.”
But he didn’t say what meant most to him: to catch Bice in the street when she didn’t know he was watching her, to keep her within the range of hidden lenses, to photograph her not only without letting himself be seen but without seeing her, to surprise her as she was in the absence of his gaze, of any gaze. Not that he wanted to discover any particular thing; he wasn’t a jealous man in the usual sense of the word. It was an invisible Bice that he wanted to possess, a Bice absolutely alone, a Bice whose presence presupposed the absence of him and everyone else.
Whether or not it could be defined as jealousy, it was, in any case, a passion difficult to put up with. And soon Bice left him.
Antonino sank into deep depression. He began to keep a diary: a photographic diary, of course. With the camera slung around his neck, shut up in the house, slumped in an armchair, he compulsively snapped pictures as he stared into the void. He was photographing the absence of Bice.
He collected the photographs in an album: you could see ashtrays brimming with cigarette butts, an unmade bed, a damp stain on the wall. He got the idea of composing a catalogue of everything in the world that resists photography, what is systematically omitted from the visual field not only by cameras but also by human beings. On every subject he spent days, using up whole rolls, at intervals of hours, so as to follow the changes of lights and shadows. One day he became obsessed with a completely empty corner of the room, containing a radiator pipe and nothing else: he was tempted to go on photographing that spot and only that till the end of his days.
The apartment was completely neglected, old newspapers, letters, lay crumpled on the floor, and he photographed them. The photographs in the papers were photographed as well, and an indirect bond was established between his lens and that of distant news-photographers. To produce those black spots the lenses of other cameras had been aimed on police assaults, charred automobiles, running athletes, ministers, defendants.
Antonino now felt a special pleasure in portraying domestic objects framed by a mosaic of telephotos, violent patches of ink on white sheets. From his immobility he was surprised to find he envied the life of the news-photographer, who moves following the movements of crowds, bloodshed, tears, feasts, crime, the conventions of fashion, the falsity of official ceremonies; the news-photographer, who documents the extremes of society, the most rich and the most poor, the exceptional moments that are yet produced at every moment and in every place.
Does this mean that only the exceptional condition has a meaning? Antonino asked himself. Is the news-photographer the true antagonist of the Sunday photographer? Are their worlds mutually exclusive? Or does one give a meaning to the other?
And reflecting like this, he began to tear up the photographs with Bice or without Bice that had accumulated during the months of his passion, ripping to pieces the strips of proofs hung on the walls, snipping up the celluloid of the negatives, jabbing the slides, and piling the remains of this methodical destruction on newspapers spread out on the floor.
Perhaps true, total photography, he thought, is a pile of fragments of private images, against the creased background of massacres and coronations.
He folded the corners of the newspapers into a huge bundle to be thrown into the trash, but first he wanted to photograph it. He arranged the edges so that you could clearly see two halves of photographs of different newspapers that in the bundle happened, by chance, to fit together. In fact he reopened the package a little so that a bit of shiny pasteboard would stick out, the fragment of a torn enlargement. He turned on a spotlight; he wanted it to be possible to recognize in his photograph the half-crumpled and torn images and at the same time to feel their unreality as casual inky shadows, and also at the same time their concreteness as objects charged with meaning, the strength with which they clung to the attention that tried to drive them away.
To get all this into one photograph he had to acquire an extraordinary technical skill, but only then would Antonino quit taking pictures. Having exhausted every possibility, at the moment when he was coming full circle, Antonino realized that photographing photographs was the only course that he had left, or rather, the true course he had obscurely sought all this time.
(1955)
The adventure of a traveler
FEDERICO V., who lived in a Northern Italian city, was in love with Cinzia U., a resident of Rome. Whenever his work permitted, he would take the train to the capital. Accustomed to budgeting his time strictly, at work and in his pleasures, he always traveled at night: there was one train, the last, which was not crowded – except in the holiday season – and Federico could stretch out and sleep.
Federico’s days in his own city went by nervously, like the hours of someone between trains who, as he goes about his business, cannot stop thinking of the schedule. But when the evening of his departure finally came and his tasks were done and he was walking with his suitcase towards the station, then, even in his haste to avoid missing his train, he began to feel a sense of inner calm pervade him. It was as if all the bustle around the station – now at its last gasp, given the late hour – were part of a natural movement, and he also belonged to it. Everything seemed to be there to encourage him, to give a spring to his steps like the rubberized pavement of the station, and even the obstacles, the wait, his minutes numbered, at the last ticket-window still open, the difficulty of breaking a large bill, the lack of small change at the newsstand, seemed to exist for his pleasure in confronting and overcoming them.
Not that he betrayed any sign of this mood: a staid man, he liked being indistinguishable from the many travelers arriving and leaving, all in overcoats like him, case in hand; and yet he felt as if he were borne on the crest of a wave, because he was rushing towards Cinzia.
The hand in his overcoat pocket toyed with a telephone token. Tomorrow morning, as soon as he landed at the Rome Termini Station, he would run, token in hand, to the nearest public telephone, dial the number, and say: “Hello, darling, I’m here . . .” And he clutched the token as if it were a most precious object, the only one in the world, the sole tangible proof of what awaited him on his arrival.
The trip was expensive and Federico wasn’t rich. If he saw a second-class coach with padded seats and empty compartments, Federico would buy a second-class ticket. Or rather, he always bought a second-class ticket, with the idea that, if he found too many people there,
he would move into first, paying the difference to the conductor. In this operation, he enjoyed the pleasure of economy (also the cost of first class, being paid in two instalments, and through necessity, upset him less), the satisfaction of profiting by his own experience, and a sense of freedom and expansiveness in his actions and in his thoughts.
As sometimes happens with men whose life is most conditioned by others, extrovert, Federico tended constantly to defend his own condition of inner concentration, and actually it took very little, a hotel room, a train compartment all to himself, and he could adjust the world in harmony with his life, the world seemed created specially for him, as if the railroads that swathed the peninsula had been built deliberately to bear him triumphantly towards Cinzia. That evening, again, second-class was almost empty. Every sign was favorable.
Federico V. chose an empty compartment, not over the wheels, but not too far into the coach either, because he knew that as a rule people who board a train in haste tend to reject the first few compartments. The defense of the necessary space to stretch out and travel lying down is made up of tiny psychological devices; Federico knew them and employed them all.
For example, he drew the curtains over the door, an act which, performed at this point, might even seem excessive; but it aimed, in fact, at a psychological effect. Seeing those drawn curtains, the traveler who arrives later is almost always overcome by an instinctive scruple, and prefers, if he can find it, a compartment, perhaps with two or three people already in it, but with the curtains open. Federico strewed his bag, overcoat, newspapers on the seats opposite and beside him. Another elementary move, abused and apparently futile but actually of use. Not that he wanted to make people believe those places were occupied: such a subterfuge would have been contrary to his civic conscience and to his sincere nature. He wanted only to create a rapid impression of a cluttered, not very inviting compartment, a simple, rapid impression.
He sat down and heaved a sigh of relief. He had learned that being in a setting where everything can only be in its place, the same as always, anonymous, without possible surprises, filled him with calm, with self-awareness, freedom of thought. His whole life rushed along in disorder, but now he found the perfect balance between interior stimulus and the impassive neutrality of material things.
It lasted an instant (if he was in second; a minute, if he was in first) then he was immediately seized by a pang: the squalor of the compartment, the plush threadbare in places, the suspicion of dust all about, the faded texture of the curtains in the old-style coaches, gave him a sensation of sadness, the uneasy thought of sleeping in his clothes, on a bunk not his, with no possible intimacy between him and what he touched. But he immediately recalled the reason why he was traveling, and he felt caught up again in that natural rhythm, as of the sea or the wind, that festive, light impulse; he had only to seek it within himself, closing his eyes, or clasping the telephone token in his hand, and that sense of squalor was defeated, only he existed, alone, facing the adventure of his journey.
But something was still missing: what? Ah: he heard the bass voice approaching under the canopy: “Pillows!” He had already stood up, was lowering the window, extending his hand with the two 100-lire pieces, shouting: “I’ll have one!” It was the pillow-man who, every time, gave the journey its starting signal. He passed by the window a minute before departure, pushing in front of him the wheeled rack with pillows hanging from it. He was a tall old man, thin, with a white moustache and large hands, long, thick fingers: hands that inspire trust. He was dressed all in black: military cap, uniform, overcoat, a scarf wound tight around his neck. A character from the times of King Umberto I; something like an old colonel, or only a faithful quartermaster sergeant. Or a postman, an old rural messenger: with those big hands, when he extended the thin pillow to Federico, holding it with his fingertips, he seemed to be delivering a letter, or perhaps to be posting it through the window. The pillow now was in Federico’s arms, square, flat, just like an envelope, and, what’s more, covered with postmarks: it was the daily letter to Cinzia, also departing this evening, and instead of the page of eager scrawl there was Federico in person to take the invisible path of the night post, through the hand of the old winter messenger, the last incarnation of the rational, disciplined North before the incursion among the unruly passions of the Center-South.
But still, and above all, it was a pillow; namely, a soft object (though pressed and compact) and white (though covered with rubber-stamp marks) from the steam laundry. It contained in itself, as a concept is enclosed within an ideographic sign, the idea of bed, the twisting and turning, the privacy; and Federico was already anticipating with pleasure the island of freshness it would be for him, that night, amid that rough and treacherous plush. And further: that slender rectangle of comfort prefigured later comforts, later intimacy, later sweetness, whose enjoyment was the reason he was setting out on this journey; indeed, the fact itself of departing, the hiring of the cushion was a form of enjoying them, a way of entering the dimension where Cinzia reigned, the circle enclosed by her soft arms.
And it was with an amorous, caressing motion that the train began to glide among the columns of the canopies, snaking through the iron-clad fields of the points, hurling itself into the darkness, and becoming one with the impulse that till then Federico had felt within himself. And, as if the release of his tension in the speeding of the train had made him lighter, he began to accompany its race, humming the tune of a song that this same speed brought to his mind: “J’ai deux amours . . . Mon pays ét Paris . . . Paris toujours . . .”
A man entered; Federico fell silent. “Is this place free?” He sat down. Federico had already made a quick, mental calculation: strictly speaking, if you want to make your journey lying down, it’s best to have someone else in the compartment, one person stretched out on one side, and the other opposite, and then nobody dares disturb you; but if on the other hand, half the compartment remains free, when you least expect it a family of six boards the train, complete with children, all bound for Siracusa, and you’re forced to sit up. Federico was quite aware then that the wisest thing to do, on entering an uncrowded train, was to take a seat not in an empty compartment but in a compartment where there was already one traveler. But he never did this: he preferred to aim at total solitude, and when, through no choice of his, he acquired a traveling companion, he could always console himself with the advantages of the new situation.
And so he did now. “Are you going to Rome?” he asked the newcomer, so that he could then add: Fine, let’s draw the curtains, turn off the light, and nobody else will come in. But instead the man answered: “No. Genoa.” It would be fine for him to get off at Genoa and leave Federico alone again, but, for a few hours’ journey, he wouldn’t want to stretch out, probably would remain awake, wouldn’t allow the light to be turned off, and other people could come in at the stations along the way. Thus Federico had the disadvantages of travelling in company with none of the corresponding advantages.
But he didn’t dwell on this. His forte had always been an ability to dismiss from the area of his thoughts any aspect of reality that upset him or was of no use to him. He erased the man seated in the corner opposite his, reduced him to a shadow, a gray patch. The newspapers that both held open before their faces assisted the reciprocal impermeability. Federico could go on feeling himself soar in his amorous flight. “Paris toujours . . .” No one could imagine that in that sordid setting of people coming and going, driven by need and by patience, he was flying to the arms of a woman the like of Cinzia U. And to feed this sense of pride, Federico felt impelled to consider his traveling companion (at whom he had not even glanced so far) to compare – with the cruelty of the nouveau riche – his own fortunate state with the grayness of other existences.
The stranger, however, didn’t look the least downcast. He was a still-young man, sturdy, hefty; his manner was satisfied, active; he was reading a sports magazine, and had a large suitcase at his side. He looked
, in other words, like the agent for some firm, a commercial traveler. For a moment, Federico V. was gripped by the feeling of envy always inspired in him by people who seemed more practical and vital than he; but it was the impression of a moment, which he immediately dismissed, thinking: He’s a man who travels in corrugated iron, or paints, whereas I . . . And he was seized again by that desire to sing, in a release of euphoria, clearing his mind. “Je voyage en amour!” he warbled in his mind, to the earlier rhythm that he felt harmonized with the race of the train, adapting words specially invented to enrage the salesman, if he could have heard them. “Je voyage en volupté!” underlining as far as he could the lilt and the languor of the tune, “Je voyage toujours . . . l’hiver et l’été. . . .” He was thus becoming more and more worked up, “l’hiver et . . .l’été!”, to such a degree that a smile of complete mental beatitude must have appeared on his lips. At that moment he realized the salesman was staring at him.
He promptly resumed his staid mien, concentrated on the reading of his paper, denying even to himself that he had been caught a moment before in such a childish mood. Childish? Why? Nothing childish about it: his journey put him in a propitious condition of spirit, a condition characteristic, in fact, of the man who knows the good and the evil of life, and now is preparing himself to enjoy, deservedly, the good. Serene, his conscience perfectly at peace, he leafed through the illustrated weeklies, shattered images of a fast, frantic life, in which he sought something of what also moved him. Soon he discovered that the magazines didn’t interest him in the least, mere scribbles of immediacy, of the life that flows on the surface. His impatience was voyaging through loftier heavens. “L’hiver et . . . l’été!” Now it was time to settle down to sleep.
Difficult Loves Page 6
