The Periodic Table

by Primo Levi

  The story of what had happened began to take shape. For some reason, some analyst had been betrayed by a defective method, or an impure reagent, or an incorrect habit; he had diligently totted up those so obviously suspicious but formally blameless results; he had punctiliously signed each analysis, and his signature, swelling like an avalanche, had been consolidated by the signatures of the lab chief, the technical director, and the general director. I could see him, the poor wretch, against the background of those difficult years: no longer young, since all the young men were in the military services; perhaps chivied by the Fascists, perhaps himself a Fascist being looked for by the partisans; certainly frustrated, because being an analyst is a young man’s job; on guard in his lab within the fortress of his minuscule specialty, since the analyst is by definition infallible; and derided and regarded with a hostile eye outside the lab just because of his virtues as an incorruptible guardian, a severe, pedantic, unimaginative little judge, a stick poked in the wheels of production. To judge from the anonymous, neat handwriting, his trade must have exhausted him and at the same time brought him to a crude perfection, like a pebble in a mountain stream that has been twirled over and over all the way to the stream’s mouth. It was not surprising that, with time, he had developed a certain insensitivity to the real significance of the operations he was performing and the notes he was writing. I planned to look into his particular case but nobody knew anything more about him; my questions were met with discourteous or absentminded replies. Moreover, I was beginning to feel around me and my work a mocking and malevolent curiosity: who was this Johnny-come-lately, this pipsqueak earning 7,000 lire a month, this maniac scribbler who was disturbing the nights of the guest quarters typing away at God knows what, and sticking his nose into past mistakes and washing a generation’s dirty linen? I even had the suspicion that the job that had been assigned me had the secret purpose of getting me to bump into something or somebody; but by now this matter of the livering absorbed me body and soul, tripes et boyaux—in short, I was enamored of it almost as of that aforementioned girl, who in fact was a little jealous of it.

  It was not hard for me to procure, besides the Purchase Specification (the PS), also the equally inviolable CS, the Checking Specifications: in a drawer in the lab there was a packet of greasy file cards, typewritten and corrected several times by hand, each of which contained the way to carry out a check of a specific raw material. The file card on prussian blue was stained with blue, the file card on glycerine was sticky, and the file card on fish oil smelled like sardines. I took out the file card on chromate, which due to long use had become sunrise, and read it carefully. It was all rather sensible and in keeping with my not-so-far-off scholastic notions; only one point seemed strange to me. Having achieved the disintegration of the pigment, it prescribed adding twenty-three drops of a certain reagent. Now, a drop is not so definite a unit as to entail so definite a numerical coefficient; and besides, when all is said and done, the prescribed dose was absurdly high: it would have flooded the analysis, leading in any case to a result in keeping with the specification. I looked at the back of the file card; it bore the date of the last review, January 4, 1944; the birth certificate of the first livered batch was on the succeeding February 22.

  At this point I began to see the light. In a dusty archive I found the CS collection no longer in use, and there, lo and behold, the preceding edition of the chromate file card bore the direction to add “2 or 3” drops, and not “23”: the fundamental “or” was half erased and in the next transcription had gotten lost. The events meshed perfectly: the revision of the file card had caused a mistake in transcription, and the mistake had falsified all succeeding analyses, concealing the results on the basis of a fictitious value due to the reagent’s enormous excess and thus bringing about the acceptance of shipments of pigment which should have been discarded; these, being too basic, had brought about the livering.

  But there is trouble in store for anyone who surrenders to the temptation of mistaking an elegant hypothesis for a certainty: the readers of detective stories know this quite well. I got hold of the sleepy man in charge of the storeroom, requested from him all the samples of all the shipments of chromate from January 1944 on, and barricaded myself behind a workbench for three days in order to analyze them according to the incorrect and correct methods. Gradually, as the results lined up in a column on the register, the boredom of repetitious work was being transformed into nervous gaiety, as when as children you play hide and seek and discover your opponent clumsily squatting behind a hedge. With the mistaken method you constantly found the fateful 29.5 percent; with the correct method, the results were widely dispersed, and a good quarter, being inferior to the prescribed minimum, corresponded to the shipments which should have been rejected. The diagnosis was confirmed, the pathogenesis discovered: it was now a matter of defining the therapy.

  This was found pretty soon, drawing on good inorganic chemistry, that distant Cartesian island, a lost paradise, for us organic chemists, bunglers, “students of gunks”: it was necessary to neutralize in some way, within the sick body of that varnish, the excess of basicity due to free lead oxide. The acids were shown to be noxious from other aspects: I thought of ammonium chloride, capable of combining stably with lead oxide, producing an insoluble and inert chloride and freeing the ammonia. Tests on a small scale gave promising results: now quick, find the chloride, come to an agreement with the head of the Milling Department, slip into a small ball mill two of the livers disgusting to see and touch, add a weighed quantity of the presumed medicine, start the mill under the skeptical eyes of the onlookers. The mill, usually so noisy, started almost grudgingly, in a silence of bad omen, impeded by the gelatinous mass which stuck to the balls. All that was left was to go back to Turin to wait for Monday, telling the patient girl in whirlwind style the hypotheses arrived at, the things understood at the lakeshore, the spasmodic waiting for the sentence that the facts would pronounce.

  The following Monday the mill had regained its voice: it was in fact crunching away gaily with a full, continuous tone, without that rhythmic roaring that in a ball mill indicates bad maintenance or bad health. I stopped it and cautiously loosened the bolts on the manhole; there spurted out with a hiss an ammoniacal puff, as it should. Then I took off the cover. Angels and ministers of grace!—the paint was fluid and smooth, completely normal, born again from its ashes like the Phoenix. I wrote out a report in good company jargon and the management increased my salary. Besides, as a form of recognition, I received the assignment of two tires for my bike.

  Since the storeroom contained several shipments of perilously basic chromate, which must also be utilized because they had been accepted by the inspection and could not be returned to the supplier, the chloride was officially introduced as an anti-livering preventive in the formula of that varnish. Then I quit my job: ten years went by, the postwar years were over, the deleterious, too basic chromates disappeared from the market, and my report went the way of all flesh: but formulas are as holy as prayers, decree-laws, and dead languages, and not an iota in them can be changed. And so my ammonium chloride, the twin of a happy love and a liberating book, by now completely useless and probably a bit harmful, is religiously ground into the chromate anti-rust paint on the shore of that lake, and nobody knows why anymore.

  SULFUR

  Lanza hooked the bike to the rack, punched the time card, went to the boiler, put the mixer in gear, and started the motor. The jet of pulverized naphtha ignited with a violent thud, and a perfidious backfire shot out (but Lanza, knowing that furnace, had gotten out of the way in time): then it continued to burn with a good, taut, full roar, like continuous thunder, which covered the low hum of the motors and transmissions. Lanza was still heavy with the sleep and cold of a sudden awakening, he remained squatting in front of the furnace, whose red blaze, in a succession of rapid gleams, made his enormous, crazed shadow dance on the back wall, as in some primitive movie house.

  After ha
lf an hour the thermometer began to move, as it should: the hand of burnished steel, slithering like a snail over the dark yellow face, came to a stop at 95 degrees. This too was right, because the thermometer was off by five degrees; Lanza was satisfied and obscurely at peace with the boiler, the thermometer, and, in short, the world and himself because all the things which should happen were happening, and because in the factory he alone knew that the thermometer was off: perhaps another man would have given a boost to the fire, or would have started to figure out who knows what to make it rise to 100 degrees, as it was written on the worksheet.

  So the thermometer halted for a long time at 95 degrees and then began to climb again. Lanza remained close to the fire, and since, with the warmth, sleep began pressing in on him again, he permitted it softly to invade some of the rooms of his consciousness. But not that which stood behind his eyes and watched the thermometer: that must remain wide awake.

  With a sulfodiene one never knows, but for the moment everything was going properly. Lanza enjoyed the quiet rest, going along with the dance of thoughts and images that is the prelude to sleep, yet avoiding being overcome by it. It was hot, and Lanza saw his hometown—his wife, his son, his field, the tavern. The warm breath of the tavern, the heavy breath of the stable. Water trickled into the stable with every rainstorm, water that came from above, from the hayloft—perhaps from a crack in the wall, because all the roof tiles (he had checked them himself at Easter) were in perfect condition. There is room for another cow, but (here everything became fogged over by a mist of sketchy and unfinished calculations). Every minute of work put ten lire into his pocket: now he felt as if the fire was roaring for him, that the mixer was turning for him, like a machine to make money.

  On your feet, Lanza, we have arrived at 180 degrees, we’ve got to unbolt the kettle hatch and throw in the B 41: but to go on calling it B 41 is really a big joke when the whole factory knows that it is sulfur, and in time of war, when everything was lacking, many took it home and sold it on the black market to the peasants who dust the vines with it. But if that’s how the boss wants it, that’s what he gets.

  He switched off the fire, slowed up the mixer, unbolted the hatch, and put on the protective mask, which made him feel like half a mole and half a wild boar. The B 41 was already weighed out, in three cardboard boxes: he put it in cautiously and, despite the mask, which may have leaked a bit, immediately smelled the dirty, sad smell that emanated from the mixture, and thought that maybe the priest was right too, when he said that in Hell there is a smell of sulfur: after all, even the dogs don’t like it, everyone knows that. When he was finished, he shut the door and started everything up again.

  At three in the morning the thermometer stood at 200 degrees: it was time for the vacuum. He lifted the black lever and the high, sharp racket of the centrifugal pump was superimposed on the deep thunder of the burner. The needle of the vacuum gauge, which stood vertical at zero, began to fall, sliding to the left. Twenty degrees, forty degrees: good. At this point you can light a cigarette and take it easy for more than an hour.

  Some are fated to become millionaires, and some are fated to drop dead. He, Lanza, was fated (and he yawned noisily to keep himself company) to make night into day. As if they too had guessed it, during the war they had immediately shoved him into the great job of staying up nights on the rooftops to shoot planes out of the sky.

  With a jump he was on his feet, his ears listening tensely and all his nerves in alarm. The clatter of the pump had suddenly become slower and more clogged, as though constrained: and in fact, the needle of the vacuum gauge, like a threatening finger, rose up to zero, and, look! degree by degree, it began to slide to the right. That was it, the kettle was building up pressure.

  “Turn it off and run.” “Turn everything off and run.” But he did not run: he grabbed a wrench and banged the vacuum pipe along its entire length: it had to be obstructed, there could be no other reason. Bang again and bang again: nothing, the pump continued to grind away, and the needle bounced around at about a third of an atmosphere.

  Lanza felt all his hairs standing on end, like the tail of an enraged cat: and he was enraged, in a murderous, wild rage against the kettle, against that ugly, reluctant beast crouched on the fire, which lowed like a bull: red hot, like an enormous hedgehog with its quills standing straight up, so that you do not know where to touch and seize it and you feel like jumping on it and kicking it to pieces. His fists clenched and his head bursting, Lanza was in a frenzy to open the hatch and let the pressure escape; he began to loosen the bolts, and, look! a yellowish slime squirted hissing from the crack together with puffs of foul smoke: the kettle must be full of foam. Lanza slammed it shut, filled with an overwhelming desire to get on the phone and call the boss, call the fireman, call the Holy Ghost to come out of the night and give him a hand or at least advice.

  The kettle was not built for pressure and could explode from one moment to the next; or at least that’s what Lanza thought, and perhaps, if it had been during the day or he hadn’t been alone, he would not have thought that. But his fear had turned into anger, and when his anger had simmered down it left his head cold and uncluttered. And then he thought of the most obvious thing: he opened the valve of the suction fan, started it going, closed the vacuum breaker, and stopped the pump. With relief and pride because he had correctly figured it out, he saw the needle rise up all the way to zero, like a stray sheep that returns to the fold, and then slide gently down on the vacuum side.

  He looked around, with a great need to laugh and tell it to somebody and with a feeling of lightness in all his limbs. He saw on the floor his cigarette reduced to a long thin cylinder of ash: it had smoked itself. It was five twenty, dawn was breaking behind the shed of empty barrels, the thermometer pointed to 210 degrees. He took a sample from the boiler, let it cool, and tested it with the reagent: the test tube remained clear for a few seconds and then became white as milk. Lanza turned off the fire, stopped the mixer and the fan, and opened the vacuum breaker: he heard a long, angry hiss, which gradually calmed down into a rustle, a murmur, and then fell silent. He screwed in the siphon pipe, started the compressor, and, gloriously, surrounded by white puffs of smoke and the customary sharp smell, the dense jet of resin came to rest in the collection basin, forming a black shiny mirror.

  Lanza went to the main gate and met Carmine, who was coming in. He told him that everything was going well, left him the work orders, and began pumping up his bike’s tires.

  TITANIUM

  To Felice Fantino

  In the kitchen there was a very tall man dressed in a way Maria had never seen before. On his head he wore a boat made out of a newspaper, he smoked a pipe, and he was painting the closet white.

  It was incomprehensible how all that white could be contained in so small a can, and Maria had a great desire to go over and look inside it. Every so often the man rested his pipe on the closet and whistled; then he stopped whistling and began to sing; every so often he took two steps back and closed one eye, and also at times he would go and spit in the garbage can, then he rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand. In short he did so many strange and new things that it was very interesting to stay there and watch him: and when the closet was white, he picked up the pot and many newspapers that were on the floor and carried everything next to the cupboard and began to paint that too.

  The closet was so shiny, clean, and white that it was almost indispensable to touch it. Maria went up to the closet, but the man noticed and said, “Don’t touch. You mustn’t touch.”

  Maria stopped in amazement and asked, “Why?” to which the man replied, “Because you shouldn’t.” Maria thought about that, and then asked again, “Why is it so white?” The man also thought for a while, as if the question seemed difficult to him, and then said in a deep voice, “Because it is titanium.“{9}

  Maria felt a delicious shiver of fear run through her, as when in the fairy tale you get to the ogre; so she looked carefully and saw that
the man did not have knives either in his hand or near him: but he could have one hidden. Then she asked, “Cut what on me?”—and at this point he should have replied, “Cut your tongue.” Instead, he only said, “I’m not cutting anything: this is titanium.”

  In conclusion, he must be a very powerful man: but he did not seem to be angry, but rather good-natured and friendly. Maria asked him, “Mister, what’s your name?” He replied, “Felice.” He had not taken his pipe out of his mouth, and when he spoke his pipe danced up and down but did not fall. Maria stood there for a while in silence, looking alternately at the man and the closet. She was not at all satisfied by that answer and would have liked to ask him why he was named Felice, but then she did not dare, because she remembered that children must never ask why. Her friend Alice was called Alice and was a child, and it was really strange that a big man like that should be called Felice. But little by little, however, it began to seem natural to her that the man should be called Felice, and in fact she thought he could not have been called anything else.