The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories

by Jhumpa Lahiri

  Venizelos Airport looked brand new, surely they’d built it for the Olympic Games. He was happy with himself for being able to reach the boarding gate for Crete without reading the signs in English, the Greek he’d learned at school was still useful, curiously. When he landed at the Hania airport at first he didn’t realize he’d reached his destination: during the brief flight from Athens to Crete, a little less than an hour, he’d fallen fast asleep, forgetting everything, it seemed, even himself. To such a degree that when he came down the airplane’s staircase into that African light, he asked himself where he was, and why he was there and even who he was, and in that amazement at nothing he even felt happy. His suitcase wasn’t long in arriving on the conveyor belt, just beyond the boarding gates were the car-rental offices, he couldn’t remember the instructions, Hertz or Avis? It was one or the other, fortunately he guessed right, along with the car keys, they gave him a road map of Crete, a copy of the programme of the convention, his hotel reservation and the route to the tourist village where the convention-goers were lodged. Which by now he knew by heart, because he’d studied and restudied it in his guide, nicely furnished with road maps: from the airport you went straight down to the coast, you had to go that way unless you wanted to reach the Marathi beaches, then you turned left, otherwise you wound up west and he was going east, towards Iraklion, you passed in front of the Hotel Doma, went along Venizelos, and followed the green signs that meant highway, though it was actually a coastal freeway, you exited shortly after Georgopolis, a tourist spot to avoid, and followed the directions for the hotel, Beach Resort, it was easy.

  The car, a black Volkswagen parked in the sun, was boiling, but he let it cool down a little by leaving the doors open, entered it as though he were late for an appointment, but he wasn’t late and he didn’t have any appointments, it was four o’clock in the afternoon, he’d get to the hotel in a little more than an hour, the convention wouldn’t start till the evening of the following day, with an official banquet, he had more than twenty-four hours of freedom, what was the hurry? No hurry. After a few kilometres a tourist sign indicated the grave of Venizelos, a few hundred metres from the main road. He decided to take a short break to freshen up before the drive. Next to the entrance to the monument was an ice-cream shop with a large open terrace overlooking the little town. He settled himself at a table, ordered a Turkish coffee and a lemon sorbet. The town he saw had been Venetian and then Turkish, it was nice, and of an almost blinding white. Now he was feeling really good, with an unusual energy, the disquiet he’d felt on the plane had completely vanished. He checked the road map: to get to the freeway to Iraklion he could pass through the town or go around the gulf of Souda, a few kilometres more. He chose the second route, the gulf from up above was beautiful and the sea intensely azure. The descent from the hill to Souda was pleasant, beyond the low vegetation and the rooftops of some houses he could see little coves of white sand, a strong urge to swim came over him, he turned off the air-conditioning and lowered the window to feel the warm air smelling of the sea on his face. He passed the little industrial port and the residential zone and arrived at the intersection where, turning to the left, the road merged with the coastal highway to Iraklion. He put on his left blinker and stopped. A car behind him beeped for him to go: there was no oncoming traffic. He didn’t move, just let the car pass him, then signalled right and went in the opposite direction, where a sign said Mourniès.

  And now we’re following him, the unknown character who arrived in Crete to reach a pleasant seaside locale and who at a certain moment, abruptly, for a reason also unknown, took a road towards the mountains. The man proceeded till Mourniès, drove through the village without knowing where he was going, though as if he did. Actually he wasn’t thinking, just driving, he knew he was headed south: the sun, still high, was already behind him. Since he’d changed direction, that sensation of lightness had returned, which he’d briefly felt at the table in the ice-cream shop, looking down on the broad horizon: an unusual lightness, and with it an energy he no longer recalled, as though he were young again, a sort of light euphoria, almost a happiness. He arrived at a village called Fournès, drove through the town confidently as though he already knew the way, stopped at a crossroads, the main road went to the right, he took the secondary road with a sign that said: Lefka Ori, the white mountains. He drove on calmly, the sensation of wellbeing was turning into a sort of cheerfulness, a Mozart aria came to mind and he felt he could reproduce its notes, he began whistling them with amazing ease, but then went hopelessly out of tune in a couple of passages, which made him laugh. The road slipped into the rugged canyons of a mountain. They were beautiful and wild places, the car went along a narrow asphalt road bordering the bed of a dry creek, at a certain point the creek bed disappeared among the rocks and the asphalt ended in a dirt road, in a barren plain among inhospitable mountains, meanwhile the light was fading, but he kept going as though he already knew the way, like someone obeying an old memory or an order received in a dream, and at a certain point he saw a crooked tin sign riddled with holes as if from gunshots or from time, and the sign said: Monastiri.

  He followed it as though he’d been expecting it all along, until he came to a tiny monastery, its roof in ruins. He realized he’d arrived. Went down. The dilapidated door of those ruins sagged inward. He figured no one was there any longer; a beehive under the little portico seemed the only housekeeper. He went down and waited as if he had an appointment. It was almost dark. Then at the door a monk appeared, he was very old and moved with difficulty, he had the look of an anchorite, with his hair down to his shoulders and yellowish beard, what do you want? he asked in Greek. Do you know Italian? answered the traveller. The old man nodded. A little, he murmured. I’ve come to change places with you, said the man.

  So it’d been like this, and no other conclusion was possible, because that story didn’t call for any other possible conclusions, but the person who knew this story was aware that he couldn’t let it conclude in this way, and at this point he made a leap in time. And thanks to one of those leaps in time that are possible only in the imagination, things landed in the future with regard to that month of April of 2008. How many years ahead no one knows, and the person who knew the story remained vague, twenty years, for instance, which in the lifetime of a man is a lot, because if in 2008 a man of sixty still has all his energy, in 2028 he’ll be an old man, his body worn out by time.

  And so the person who knew this story imagined it continued like this, and so let’s accept that we’re in 2028, as the person who knew the story had wanted and had imagined it would continue.

  And at this point, the person who imagined how the story would continue saw two young people, a guy and a girl wearing leather shorts and trekking boots, who were hiking in the mountains of Crete. The girl said to her companion: I think that old guide you found in your father’s library doesn’t make any sense, by now the monastery will be a pile of stones full of lizards, why don’t we head towards the sea? And the guy responded: I think you’re right. But just as he said this she replied: no, let’s keep on for a bit, you never know. And in fact it was enough to walk around the rugged red-stone hill that cut through the countryside and there it was, the monastery, or rather ruins of the monastery, and the two of them approached, a wind blew in from the canyons raising the dust, the monastery’s door had collapsed, wasps’ nests defended that empty cave, the two of them had already turned their backs on that gloom when they heard a voice. In the empty space of the door stood a man. He was very old, looked dreadful, with a long white beard to his chest and hair down to his shoulders. Oooh, called the voice. Nothing else. The couple stood still. The man asked: do you understand Italian? They didn’t respond. What happened in 2008? asked the old man. The two young people looked at each other, they didn’t have the courage to exchange a word. Do you have photographs? asked the old man, what happened in 2008? Then he gestured for them to go away, though perhaps he was brushing away the wasps that whir
led under the portico, and he returned to the dark of his cave.

  The man who knew this story was aware that it couldn’t finish in any other way. Before writing his stories, he loved telling them to himself. And he’d tell them to himself so perfectly, in such detail, word by word, that one might say they were written in his memory. He’d tell them to himself, preferably, late in the evening, in the solitude of that big empty house, or on those nights when he couldn’t sleep, those nights in which insomnia yielded nothing but imagination, not much, yet imagination gave him a reality so alive that it seemed more real than the reality he was living. But the most difficult thing wasn’t telling to himself his stories, that was the easy part, it was as though he’d see the words of the stories he told himself written on the dark screen of his room, when fantasy would keep his eyes wide open. And that one story, which he’d told himself in this way so many times, seemed to him an already printed book, one that was very easy to express mentally but very difficult to write with the letters of the alphabet necessary for thought to be made concrete and visible. It was as if he were lacking the principle of reality to write his story, and in order to live the effective reality of what was real within him, yet unable to become truly real, he’d chosen this place.

  The trip was planned in fine detail. He landed at the Hania airport, got his luggage, went into the Hertz office, picked up the car keys. Three days? the clerk asked, astonished. What’s so strange about it? he said. No one comes to Crete on vacation for three days, the clerk replied, smiling. I have a long weekend, he responded, it’s enough for what I have to do.

  The light in Crete was beautiful. It wasn’t Mediterranean but African; he’d reach the Beach Resort in an hour and a half, at most two, even going slowly, he’d arrive there around six, a shower and he’d start writing immediately, the hotel restaurant was open till eleven, it was Thursday evening, he counted: all of Friday, Saturday and Sunday, three full days. They’d be enough: in his head everything was all already written.

  Why he turned left at that light, he couldn’t say. The pylons of the freeway were clearly visible, another four or five hundred metres and he’d be at the coastal freeway to Iraklion. But instead he turned left, where a little blue sign indicated an unknown place. He thought he’d already been there, for in a moment he saw everything: a tree-lined street with a few houses, a plain square with an ugly monument, a ledge of rocks, a mountain. It was a flash of lighting. That strange thing which medical science can’t explain, he told himself, they call it déjà vu, already-seen, it’d never happened to him before. But the explanation he gave himself didn’t reassure him, because the already-seen endured, it was stronger than what he was seeing, like a membrane enveloping the surrounding reality, the trees, the mountains, the evening shadows, even the air he was breathing. He felt overcome by vertigo and was afraid of being sucked into it, but only for a moment, because as it expanded that sensation went through a strange metamorphosis, like a glove turning inside out and bringing forth the hand it covered. Everything changed perspective, in a flash he felt the euphoria of discovery, a subtle nausea, a mortal melancholy. But also a sense of infinite liberation, as when we finally understand something we’d known all along and didn’t want to know: it wasn’t the already-seen that was swallowing him in a never-lived past, he instead was capturing it in a future yet to be lived. As he drove among the olive trees on that little road taking him towards the mountains, he knew that at a certain point he’d find an old rusty sign full of holes on which was written: Monastiri. And that he’d follow it. Now everything was clear.

  ‘Controtempo’

  Published as part of the collection Il tempo invecchia in fretta (Einaudi, 2009).

  Italo Svevo

  1861–1928

  Trieste, in Italy’s extreme north-east, belonged to the Hapsburg Empire until 1918, when it was incorporated into the kingdom of Italy. Svevo, a profound hybrid with deeply doubled roots, was born there with the name Aron Ettore Schmitz. Today he is hailed as one of the first great Italian Modernists, but Svevo is in fact a literary Janus figure, his artistic orientation as Italian as it is central European (the pseudonym represents, quite literally, the cultural and geographical amalgam that constituted his essence; ‘Italo’ represents Italy, and ‘Svevo’ describes a person from Swabia – ‘Svevia’ in Italian – which is in south-western Germany). The son of an Austrian Jewish father and an Italian Jewish mother, he was educated in German, spoke dialect at home and was an Austrian citizen. He converted from Judaism to Catholicism in order to marry, but had a Jewish funeral. He worked in a bank and, after marriage, for his father-in-law’s company, which produced underwater paints. But his passion, since adolescence, was literature; he nurtured himself on the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and the psychoanalytic works of Sigmund Freud, and he mixed the Triestine dialect and German to create his signature, unconventional Italian. His English teacher in Trieste was James Joyce, whom he befriended. Perpetually conflicted between his artistic calling and familial responsibilities, Svevo’s most important novel, La coscienza di Zeno (translated into English not as The Conscience of Zeno, but as The Confessions of Zeno), was published in 1923. Until then his work went largely unnoticed; the silence that followed Senilità (Senility, given the English title As a Man Grows Older), a novel published over two decades before, almost caused him to stop writing. But Joyce adored Senilità, to the point of committing pages of it to memory and providing its English title. Physical decline, ineptitude and idleness were ongoing themes, and almost all of Svevo’s stories, published towards the end of his career, describe the battlefield of old age. The protagonist of this selection is typical of Svevo’s warrior-heroes, in part both neurotic and noble, infantile and enlightened.

  Generous Wine

  Translated by John Penuel

  A niece of my wife’s was getting married at that age at which girls stop being girls and start becoming old maids. Until shortly before, the poor thing had rejected life, but pressures from the entire family had then persuaded her to return to it and, renouncing her desire for purity and religion, she had agreed to speak to a young man the family considered a good match. Immediately thereafter, it was Goodbye, religion, Goodbye, dreams of virtuous solitude, and the date of the wedding was set for sooner even than the families would have preferred. And now we were sitting down to dinner on the eve of the wedding.

  As an old satyr, I had to laugh. What had the young fellow done to get her to change her mind so quickly? He had probably taken her in his arms to make her feel the joy of living and seduced her rather than convinced her. So they really had to be wished all the best. All people, when they marry, need good wishes, but that girl needed them more than anybody. What a disaster if one day she were to regret having let herself be led back into a life that, by instinct, she had abhorred. And I, too, accompanied a drink or two of mine with good wishes, which I managed even to tailor to that particular case: ‘May you be happy for a year or two, since it will be easier then for you to put up with the other long years, out of gratitude for having enjoyed yourselves. Joy gives way to longing, and it, too, is a sorrow, but a sorrow that masks the fundamental one, the sorrow of life.’

  It seemed that the bride didn’t feel the need for a lot of good wishes. In fact, it seemed to me that her face was practically fossilized into an expression of trusting abandon. But it was the same expression she had worn when she was announcing her intention to withdraw into a cloister. This time, too, she was making a vow, a vow to be happy her entire life. Some people in this world are always making vows. Would she fulfil this vow any better than she had the earlier one?

  Everyone else at that table was cheerful, with great naturalness, as spectators always are. I was missing naturalness altogether. It was a momentous evening for me, too. My wife had gotten permission from Dr Paoli for me to eat and drink like everybody else. The freedom was made more precious by the warning that it would be taken from me immediately afterward. And I acted exactly the way
those young fellows who are given the keys to the house for the first time act. I ate and drank, not out of hunger or thirst but out of eagerness for freedom. Each bite, each sip, had to be a declaration of independence. I opened my mouth more than what was necessary for me to put the individual bites in it, and the wine went from the bottle to overflowing in my glass, and I left it there for but an instant. I felt an urge to move, and, riveted to that chair there, I somehow had the feeling I was running and jumping like a dog freed of its chain.

  My wife made my state worse by telling a woman next to her about the diet I was usually on, while my daughter Emma, fifteen years old, was listening to her and giving herself airs by adding to her mother’s remarks. So they wanted to remind me of the chain even at that moment at which it had been lifted from me? And the entirety of my torture was described: how they weighed the little bit of meat I was allowed at midday, depriving it of all taste, and how there was nothing to weigh in the evening because dinner was a roll with a sliver of ham and a glass of warm milk without sugar, which nauseated me. And as they spoke, I offered up a critique of the doctor’s knowledge and their affection. If my body were really in such bad shape, after all, how was it possible that that evening – seeing as we had managed to get someone who wouldn’t have married had she been left to her own devices to get married – it could suddenly take so much indigestible and harmful food? And as I drank I readied myself for the rebellion of the next day. They were going to be in for a tough one.

  The others were on the champagne, but after having had a glass or two of it in response to the several toasts, I’d gone back to the ordinary dinner wine, a dry and sincere Istrian wine a friend had sent for the occasion. I loved that wine the way one loves memories and wasn’t wary of it; nor was I surprised that, instead of procuring me joy and heedlessness, it was making me angrier.