The Colonial Conquest: The Confines of the Shadow Volume I

by Alessandro Spina

  Oblivious to this challenge to his authority, the Count was hurrying through the day’s paperwork. He was at his most serene when it came to public functions, negotiating the problems posed by Italy’s labyrinthine bureaucracy, making his decisions without undue delays.

  He finished early and went out onto the balcony.

  The sky was a perfect blue. A fishing boat was anchored in the port, where the dockers were idling peacefully. A group of porters waited outside the customs office for their names to be called. The balcony was empty, the streets deserted, and the city silent. Leaving Italy was my destiny: but what did that even mean? I’ve been haunted by it ever since Bergonzi paid us a visit that evening.

  The sea breeze blew softly. Along the horizon, one could see the smoke plumes of the mail ship pull further away into the distance. Unlike the sluggish colonists and their mental lethargy, my arrival on this desolate coast was the experience that shaped everything I think and feel, even my memory, the repository of all that I’ve been taught, a demon that guides our every step, which can either enlighten or blind us. Whether in Rome or Benghazi, the Count was a link in the chain that connected ordinary citizens, or subjects, to the authorities. Perhaps he enjoyed a greater freedom of movement in Benghazi, since the distance from the motherland meant the central authorities had to allow him to make decisions they might have otherwise made for themselves. And if I were to be recalled to Rome tomorrow, would I go back to being the bureaucrat I used to be, in perfect harmony with the nation’s collective conscience, just like a drop of water is lost in an ocean? The Basic Charter is an attempt to crown our presence here by blessing it with popular consensus, which is why I made such a flag-waving cause out of it – in fact, it’s more like a door through which our consciences will be able to flee: otherwise, we’ll remain prisoners of our actions, regardless of whatever affirms our stubborn arrogance.

  While in Rome, I was convinced that the existing social order, which is safeguarded by power, was a contract all citizens had freely subscribed to. However, here in Benghazi I feel that authority and order are profanations and injustices: the contract is the attempt to crown the Italian presence with the blessing of legitimacy. Does everyone in Rome really acknowledge the legitimacy of authority and the validity of the social order as defended by the bureaucracy to which I belong? I could easily reply that the security of life in Rome, which I now long for, was a sign of blindness: one need only leave the upper-class milieu, which creates the order I know and which watches over it, to see that public acceptance of it is merely an illusion, while the law is nothing but a mask and an instrument of oppression. What else can explain the disorder on the streets of Italy other than that a section of the people does not recognise the legitimacy of the authorities and rejects the order that keeps it confined?

  The previous day, the Count had had a heated argument with Rosina, who’d refused to accompany him to a public function after she’d already got ready to leave, like an actress who refuses to speak her lines after the curtain’s gone up and her entrance on stage is imminent.

  Like a pendulum, his mind oscillated between the private and the public, which at times looked like one and the same. Instead, he spoke to himself as though he were talking to a stranger, so as to identify with his past. Is Rosina right to accuse me of oppressing these people, despite the appearance of generosity and justice, because I am forcing the reality I was entrusted with to flow in a riverbed that is fundamentally alien to it? How can I possibly expect to persuade these people to sign up to the Basic Charter if we are the only ones who had any hand in writing it, meaning it only addresses issues that concern us – or mirrors our preoccupations and interests, to which the other party are indifferent? Generosity cannot overcome our fundamental problem: is our presence here legitimate? What right do we have to interfere in their destinies? Did anyone ask us to bring order to their world? Landing on this African beach wasn’t just about going from point A to point B, it was only a steppingstone on the journey of knowledge: the immensity of the world contradicts and derides our vision of it – and transforms it.

  Occasionally, the Count felt that time stood still in Africa, where the hours went by slowly; but it wasn’t a bad feeling, or a prelude to boredom. It seemed to him as though he were rediscovering the leisurely way of life shepherds used to lead, who roved in those lands from one place to the next, their souls as unblemished as the sky.

  Every man receives an education, and although he may resist it a little or make some minor changes to it, he ultimately considers his education an infallible book, and writes his life in its pages. Well then, there comes a point when one’s education cracks, and the order it expresses is revealed as false. This is the fatal hour of alienation: as though a ship drifted off on an adventurous journey in the nocturnal silence, floating down a river unknown to everyone except the ship itself. Instead of obeying orders and going through repetitive motions, man instead asks questions. The bureaucrat is conscious of the divinity he is duty-bound to serve, and wants to extend its empire to the furthest edges of the world; but he is also tormented by the doubt that this divinity is the devil itself. A rhythm with three tempos – sacrifice, escape and violence – multiplies and confuses its steps.

  An acacia tree, its shiny green leaves like a saw’s jagged teeth, appeared to contradict the aridity of the soil, while the silent breeze made the branches sway, as though they were floating on water. At the top of the tree, the orange blossoms looked like a flock of fleshless birds, as though made of straw.

  Rosina was secretly waiting for her nephew, in her big silent house.

  The Count was jealous of Antonino, of the ease with which his nephew had been welcomed by the indigenous society he was trying to command. He couldn’t tolerate the boy being able to go back and forth effortlessly across the same river the Count had tried to build a bridge of paper over: he doesn’t understand that the bridge is only as long as everyone thinks it is, and that armies and bureaucratic machines cannot cross a paper bridge.

  The Viceroy of Libya couldn’t tolerate that his wife preferred to dance on a platform as big as a giant chequerboard with her favourite nephew instead of staying by his side. Her absence disappointed his vision of reality – and upset the scales. Unbeknownst to him, Alonzo’s rival will remain hidden under his roof. I entrust myself to the exacting and useless rules of the game, which are completely opposed to goodwill, duty, responsibility, and self-awareness. Like music, games are a microcosm, pure escapism. The invisible and the artificial vie with one another to confine Alonzo’s reality, whose limits constantly expand or contract in keeping with our psychological situation.

  ‘My dear Count,’ Doctor Amilcare concluded, while the pair walked side by side in the dusty street, ‘the alienation created by our education, meaning the detachment from one’s fellow citizens that being in this alien society has caused, is diabolical: those who seek to divorce you from your past don’t want to integrate you into their system. This is an enigma fit for a condemned enemy, and not something for a novice. These people are trying to confuse your beliefs – your loyalty to the King, and our people’s charitable mission here – in order to take advantage of your sensibility; but they’ll keep their door closed to you just like they do to us, they’ll seek to profit from your restlessness in order to throw us all out of the country as soon as they can, slamming their door in all our faces.

  If their presence shatters your acceptance of the education you received, that’s not to say our presence here compromises their traditions: on the contrary, perhaps it even reinforces them. Your generous efforts to at least partly understand and accept their civilisation doesn’t interest them at all; in fact, they consider it a sign of weakness, or an anthropological exercise of the sort promoted by the government – a new instrument of oppression, in other words. An open dialogue with these people is possible only on one condition: as we are the stronger party, they should model themselves on us, meaning they should accept our teachings, and
surrender their spiritual journey to whoever exercises temporal power over them. But in doing so, we don’t honour the other culture at all, which is saddening: we’ll simply end up wiping it out.’

  Having reached his front door, Doctor Amilcare removed his hat and bowed ceremoniously, taking his leave.

  The Count found the door to the first floor hall shut. Surprised, he knocked on it sharply. Rosina made her voice heard, and after a moment she opened the door.

  ‘Why did you lock yourself in? You scared me.’

  ‘So you were finally concerned about your wife, if only for a moment.’

  ‘Yes, I was. But let’s not exaggerate.’

  Returning to his domestic milieu meant leaving certain rules behind and being subjected to different ones. Having cut his links with the outside world, he had suppressed his inner conflict so as to make room, in the sheltered drawing room, for frivolous and irresolvable contradictions.

  A chair crashed to the floor in the adjacent room.

  ‘What is that noise? Something fell down in the cupboard.’

  ‘I didn’t hear anything.’

  ‘It’s clear you must have many things on your mind.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Somebody’s in there.’

  ‘Who do you think it is?’4

  ‘Oh, come now, enough of these riddles.’

  The Count tried to open the door.

  ‘Should I steady myself for a jealous outburst?’ Rosina asked.

  ‘Give me the key to this door.’

  ‘I don’t have it. But I want to know, is this an outburst of jealousy?’

  ‘I want to break this door down, just for the sake of a little peace of mind – it’s got nothing to do with jealousy.’

  There was a crowbar in the basement, and they went to fetch it. He offered his wife his arm.

  Rosina crossed the hall very slowly; every step she took was like a point scored.

  The game, infinitesimally trivial, was an alternative to music. Vanity and the invisible were exhausting reality.

  The paths the couple were walking didn’t intersect. Each considered the other a traitor, or a prisoner, and made their individual mistakes seem like an exercise in freedom.

  On leaving, Rosina took care to give the door behind her a little knock. In the way one does when a signal has been agreed on, the door opened and Antonino appeared on the scene, trembling all over. He ran to the windowsill, and jumped out.

  He fell on the lawn, making a muffled thud, and ran towards the coachman’s room at the far end of the courtyard.

  ‘Omar!’ he exclaimed, bursting into the room.

  When the Count had knocked on the door, Antonino had sought refuge in the adjacent box room, but the fallen chair had reawakened the Count’s suspicions. ‘Go out onto the balcony and use the drainpipe to lower yourself onto the terrace, bolt yourself inside the box room before your uncle comes back – take my place, Omar!’ Antonino exclaimed, and embraced him. Everything happened so quickly that Omar sped off to his post as though the game might end in unforeseen, risky ways, as if someone’s destiny depended on it, as though being in that box room meant he was saving someone’s life, and not keeping someone’s secret.

  ‘What a shameful scene!’ the Countess exclaimed in an excessive outburst of wrath. The Count was holding a hammer in one hand and a crowbar in the other.

  But as soon as he drew close to the box room door it was suddenly thrown open, as if by magic.

  ‘Omar!’ the Count yelled, stunned. A crevice had opened, letting reality drip down on the comedy’s homogeneous fabric, altering it. The Count had opened his eyes during a scene he didn’t like in the slightest, a scene that had gone wrong. His face was marked by astonishment, wrath, and bitter anxiety.

  ‘Omar!’ Rosina exclaimed, suddenly happy, if a little perplexed.

  ‘What is it?’ Omar asked, playing his role very poorly. In fact, it was his inability to give a convincing performance that fuelled the entire scene.

  The Count and Countess felt the landscape of their security shrinking around them. Estrangement was tempting, and was in itself a form of seduction.

  As Omar had taken Antonino’s place, Rosina’s heart – which was torn in two –could no longer understand the rivalry between the Count and the man locked in the box room. The two knights were no longer fighting over her, but for mastery of the world, which they interpreted in vastly different ways. The young god, who was only a boy, had vanished, and been replaced by a monster. In reality, Omar and Antonino nursed versions of the other within themselves, and could summon them at will. Pandora’s box had been tampered with, and its mechanism became destiny.

  ‘Je le tuerai! Je le tuerai.’ ‘Tuez-le donc, ce méchant page!’5

  The Countess was pointing at Omar.

  Omar felt ashamed, since whoever gambles is inevitably outsmarted. What overwhelming confusion he’d felt when Antonino had embraced him and ordered him to occupy his place, so that he could be caught in flagrante delicto coming out of the box room in the presence of the deputy governor and the Countess. The seemingly unbridgeable distance between Omar and Countess Rosina appeared to have shortened at the moment when Omar’s identity and that of Rosina’s beloved nephew became one and the same; as for the deputy governor – that big, omnipotent fool – he’d edged close to the real secret, and had become as intolerable as a rival.

  ‘I can’t understand what made you pull a practical joke like that today,’ the Count said, as soon as the servant was dismissed. ‘What will Omar think of seeing us play such silly games?’

  ‘I can’t besmirch your honour,’ Rosina bitterly replied, ‘but I want to at least besmirch your dignity. The practical joke made complete fools of us.’

  Rightly or wrongly, being excluded from the Count’s life was pushing Rosina to add and subtract with eyes wide shut; a mechanism like the spring in a wooden chest would have worked magically.

  The door opened noisily and Khadija appeared.

  ‘Who jumped out of the window and into the garden?’

  Khadija’s sombre features contrasted against Omar’s introverted, limpid face.

  ‘I heard a thud and a shadow flew past the wall. But when I reached the window, there was nobody on the lawn. Who trampled those flowers?’

  ‘I did,’ Omar replied, his chin buried in his chest.

  Every time it was Omar’s turn to play this game, he would contradict himself and bend out of shape, fading away. The tension between his masters was dying down and a thread – thin but strong – bound them together at an invisible point. The game had stopped being a perfectly illuminated goldfish bowl in which all possibilities could be seen: it had become a journey, like music.

  Destroying the conventions and habits of the world leads to a breakdown … the Count ruminated. Knowledge brings a stranger closer and pushes the ordinary away, making it once more incomprehensible, and the absence of meaning degenerates into oblivion, an oblivion from which an altered sense of the ordinary may one day be recovered, if it can be recovered at all. Knowledge and madness, knowledge and destruction: a catastrophe is nothing if not intolerable knowledge.

  Khadija glared at Omar.

  ‘And what is this?’ she asked, opening an identity card she’d found in the flowerbed. Antonino’s tender features smiled at the three characters in the little photograph.

  Khadija mumbled something and then, clasping the portrait of her favourite master to her bosom, she left.

  That night the Countess appeared in the courtyard. She wanted to speak to Antonino. She crossed the yard and approached the door of the room where Omar was sleeping. Antonino was hiding inside. She gently opened the door.

  The room was lit by the moon. Omar was stretched out on a rudimentary wooden bed. He was alone and fast asleep.

  The previous scene was being played out again, except inversely. Once again, Antonino’s presence in a small room had been replaced by Omar’s, but this time, Omar was the one who was confused,
while last time, it had been Count Alonzo.

  Omar’s hands were resting on his chest; his legs were together, while his feet opened up into a fan, like pastoral pipes. This was how Byzantine painters depicted their subjects: in rigid symmetry, exactly in the way late Gothic sculptors modelled their saints. Just like those warriors gripping their swords tightly in their hands while lying in their funereal mausoleums.

  The Count instead slept in a rather disorderly way. A river divided the two images: one belonged to a world where order still reigned, the other to a world that was falling apart. For the first time, Rosina understood the fascination Alonzo felt for that archaic society, with its fixed rules. Alonzo almost never features in the fable … he’s always on the sidelines. But it’s precisely his inability to be like the others that makes him who he is in the first place! He considers the reality of the others as nostalgia, a voyage – however impossible it is – back to the past.

  She’d often watched the Count while he slept, as though trying to speak to him in a nocturnal scene. But how different Omar was! How noble that servant’s features were! The secret of that image was the order that framed it.

  The Basic Charter: now, she too would create a Basic Charter of her own, so as to overcome the distance that separated her from that man.

  Rosina’s fear that the Count would notice her absence pulled her out of her reverie. She carefully closed the door and crossed the courtyard. She saw her shadow, projected by the light of the moon, stir on the ground. She quickened her pace and went back inside the house.

  4 Lines from The Marriage of Figaro, Act II; translation by André Naffis-Sahely.

  5 Lines from Beaumarchais’ Le mariage de Figaro, Act II, Scene XVII.