Blindly (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (27 page)

Maybe the release from Newgate should also be celebrated on the wagon, I thought while writing this monograph about Madagascar in that cell, since the gallows is also a way to become an ancestor. I didn’t receive even one shilling for that book, only the usual accusation of falsehood. But it’s not true, what they accused me of, that I learned all those things about Madagascar, including the story about King Radam, son of Andrianampoinimerinandriantsimitovianimandriamoanjioka, from Jacques Roulin, that French slave dealer who was in the cell
with me. I was there, on that large island, when I travelled on the
Lady Nelson
, driven by storms to deviate widely from her route. It’s not my fault if that landing wasn’t recorded in the Admiralty’s registers. If I’ve confused the names of some of the bays, it’s only because, after so much time and so many misfortunes, memory occasionally cracks, like the ground during an earthquake, and lets things slip out through its chasms. But I witnessed those things—the ceremony of the exhumation of the corpse, for example, people greeting it and talking to it as if it were alive and the bones being carried around the village, in triumph. It’s nice, this celebration of the dead, of the flesh that decays underground and then returns, as if anticipating resurrection—those dry, dusty bones, as admired as the cheeks of a young girl ... It’s so hard to carry them around all your life, those bones, on land and at sea. And those feasts, those dances ... Scripture says that humbled bones shall exult ...

I go out only in the evening, from that room on Warren Street. I wander around London in the rain for hours and hours. A mouse slinks into a sewer. Who knows how hard it’s raining at the mouth of the Derwent, on that sea-river. The moon is gaunt, yellowish. How long, Lord? The last thing to go is a pocket watch from my father, along with the mattress, sheets and other pieces of Sarah Stourbridge’s furniture. It’s a relief when, on May 15, the woman, along with police officer Henry Crocker, brings me before magistrate R. Birmie of Bow Street, on charges of theft of a bed, 40 shillings, a cushion, 5 shillings, two blankets, 4 shillings, and a duvet, 2 shillings.

At the trial, on December 4, Judge Newman and the twelve jurors find themselves facing a man who declares himself guilty—and how could it possibly be otherwise, if someone is wrong, it must be me, like so many comrades, not the Party. Guilty, yet also innocent—but
this doesn’t interest their Lordships and rightly so. The judge’s words, “to be hanged by the neck until you be dead, and may the Lord have mercy on your soul,” reach me from afar, they concern someone else.

AT FIRST I REFUSE
to ask for pardon. But this was earlier—Yes, after the trial and Judge Newman, but a century before that meeting in Trieste, on Via Madonnina, when I had just returned from Goli Otok and the comrades ordered me to keep my mouth shut about it, not to say a word, because although the Party acknowledged that the resolution of the Cominform, brutally imposed by Stalin, was wrong, the time was not yet right to say so, and while Tito had indeed committed sins, even grave ones, it was necessary to mend the workers’ unity and so mum’s the word! about anything that could help the imperialists defame and weaken that unity.

I see Carlos’s hooded gaze again, the look of a tiger holding its prey, its claws still retracted, and Bernetich’s severe, officious look: none of this story will ever be known. Comrade Vidali’s large mutilated hand—Commander Carlos had left his thumb in Spain, along with a large grenade fragment—crumples up the sheets of paper and throws them into the wastebasket. “A fine article, Comrade Cippico, what you’ve written, with all these stories about Goli Otok, but suitable for
Difesa Adriatica
or some other Fascist rag—or even Trotskyist, as far as I’m concerned. In
Il Lavoratore
however it would really be sabotaging, if I may say so”—his gaze somewhat languid, concealed by a somnolent yet watchful guard, a jaguar calculating the leap, for a moment he was lost in melancholy. I knew how much it cost him to say those things, he who out of loyalty to that resolution of the Cominform, it was rumoured, had even attempted an officers’ revolt on the part of the Yugoslavian Navy, in Pola and Spalato. None of this will ever be known—Even that sombre melancholy quickly disappeared from the broad mastifflike face.

I gave in, I withdrew the article, I asked for pardon. I admitted to having been wrong. About everything. Therefore even to having held out in Goli Otok, on behalf of the Party ...

In Goli Otok no, I didn’t seek pardon. Not even in
bojkot
did I give in; I didn’t shout that Tito was right and the Party wrong. But it was easier, because at that time I was in the Party, or so I thought; I was therefore at home, a tree with roots that help it sustain the wind’s fury, a red flag that doesn’t fear that wind. But when the Party silenced me, then yes my head started spinning, like when they stuck it in the shithole in Goli Otok.

The wind that assailed me was not the bora but a poisonous gas from a faulty valve, it goes to your brain, and so I said yes, I withdraw it, I retract, I’ll keep quiet, nothing happened, I ask for pardon, I’ll sign anything you want, like in here, I’ve signed a lot of papers since I’ve been here. They were all satisfied and once again cordial and decent to me. Even in Bow Street, when I submitted my application for pardon, they praised me “for having thereby demonstrated respect for authority.” So then, sentence commuted to forced labour for life at Port Arthur. Departure on the first ship scheduled for my group. Meanwhile it’s back to Newgate, who knows for how long. There are many deportees
awaiting departure. The refugees in Trieste on the waiting list for Australia—in 1949, 1950, 1951—were also numerous. Now I really should say farewell, but I don’t know who ...

“
WHAT IS A PIECE OF WOOD
? Nothing, a branch that snaps, a sodden log that is perhaps no longer useful, not even for burning and providing a little warmth, because it only gives off smoke that defiles the air—like your breath and the stink of your sweat, my brothers, whom God’s wrath has sent to rot among these walls and who will soon crumble, even if the bells of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre do not announce that for you the hour of earthly justice has come, the time to swing from the gallows to amuse those other sinners who are more sinful than you, who go to the square to enjoy the deaths of others, like pagans, so as not to think about their own eternal death! No, my brothers, none of us is worth more than a piece of wood corroded by water, and I too, whom God’s goodness has called to announce His word despite my sins, am nothing more than wood, good only for burning! It’s no use looking at me wide-eyed or with that sad air you’re under the illusion will arouse pity, you should have thought of it sooner, scoundrels, thieves, adulterers, fornicators, murderers, you should have had pity on the widow you robbed or the children you orphaned—At baptism you were given a garment white as snow and if it’s now as soiled as the rag that cleans the latrine, it’s not
the fault of either the king or the Lord whom you curse, but only of your own filthy behaviour.

“You are a piece of wood. But wretched wood contains within it the mystery of the cross. The world is an immense sea, but the wood of a ship, if that wood is blessed, crosses that sea and returns home.

“Only four inches of wood, at most seven, as the ancient poet says—since immeasurable divine wisdom has sometimes granted that even pagans may foresee the truth—only a few inches of wood under your feet will separate you from the bleak abyss of the bitter, merciless sea, from the deep dark vortexes where the Leviathan lurks along with fish as cruel and obtuse as hatred, and all it takes is one sin to puncture the bottom of the ship and make us all perish in the perfidious waves, but if we are firm in our faith and strong in acknowledging our frailty and insignificance, the ship will safely make it through the storm and arrive in port. Don’t be afraid of the bitter sea, locus of all misfortune, for it is the bitterness in your heart that holds out death’s poison, it is your corrupt heart that is the locus of your ruin, the sea that can cause you to sink! My brothers ...”

Reverend Blunt’s voice was a gurgling cackle, although it wouldn’t do to tell him that, since he might refuse to give me the agreed-upon shilling for each sermon I wrote. In any case, the Reverend won back one out of every two shillings playing cards with me and drank it up in beer, offering several good swigs to me as well—I must say—when the guard brought it to him at the end of the game. It didn’t bother me, especially since, when he delivered the sermons written by me, Reverend Blunt added something of his own—not for the better, of course, overdoing the repetitions, letting a few vulgarities slip out and mixing up the images and quotations from the Bible.

However, thanks to those sermons I had been given a cell of
my own, a supply of paper and candles, and, most recently, even a clerk to procure the books I needed and sometimes write while I dictated—“Not to be lazy, but to see if the text is suitable for being read aloud,” I explained to the Reverend so he would support my request.

A far cry from Goli Otok. There I didn’t listen to the world and its noise, but sought relief from it. Maybe because I was deaf, thanks in part to those jailers who had broken my eardrum. At Newgate, on the other hand, I did. When the outer door of the prison opened, perhaps to send one of us to hang at Tyburn, I tried to hear the street noises, the cries of the hawkers and drunks, the indistinct clamour of life. And in the cell, at night, I wrote in part to overcome the silence. I write to please each man’s tastes, I exalt both freedom of the seas and rigid protectionism. Do I contradict myself? At sea there’s room for everyone and everything, life and death, freedom and rules. Besides, for each book, it’s also good to write its refutation and publish only those refutations, making biased critics fall into the trap: they strike down your self-parody and then you pull out the real book and they can no longer attack it. I did this even with my books about the state of Christianity on the island of Otaheiti and about Christianity as a natural religion ...

THE LATTER I
wrote in prison. It does you good, in jail, to write about God. A great, empty word, which fills the space with familiar noises. Why didn’t it occur to me in the Lager? Without God we are lost children—a good start. Where did it end up, that volume? A work about religion, more precisely
The Religion of Christ Is the Religion of Nature.
A challenge to atheists, to those who don’t believe. You must believe, to be a comrade. The world cannot be self-sufficient, eternal matter, one generation after another falls into the grave like droplets into a sea that remains unchanged, ships sink and crews disappear but nothing changes ...

But those others, deists, theists, nurses, foremen, ward chiefs, are also all of a kind, because it’s not enough that God created the world, as they may perhaps admit, but they insist that afterwards He left it on its own, with no further intervention. The world is vast and beautiful, coral islands and flowers in the wind, but there is also fear, and the wail that leaps to your throat when you feel alone, and that hatred and that resentment that lurk within and stifle the soul ... My God, it’s not enough for Him to stay up there, as if He didn’t exist—let Him respond to the cry, separate the Red Sea, still the tempest and guide ships to port, let Him also
punish, if He wants, send the Flood, but let Him make Himself felt ...

By God does He send them, those floods. Refute the proud theists point by point, the free thinkers who raise man on a clay pedestal and consign him to his misery. Every empire is futile greatness, Atlantis swallowed by the sea. I have books brought to me by the Quakers who visit the prisoners and linger at length with me, especially Mrs. Elizabeth Fry with her pious ladies, who are also responsible for recruiting women to send to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, as brides for the men down there.

Mrs. Fry gives me a Bible. The Bible is true science and every stone confirms this. The earth shows traces of the Flood, with seashells and fossil fish found in the mountains, skeletons of unknown animals and bones of enormous hyenas. Even in Dachau many traces of the apocalypse could be found, human skeletons, graffiti, bloody prints, but no one has a desire to go digging, they all act as if nothing happened. Still, it’s also nice to think about the Flood, heavy rains falling incessantly on stormy seas and island ferns, waters from heaven that pour down on the earth almost as if to reunite with those of the sea, like in the beginning ...

A destructive flood is also good. The water engulfs, purifies. In the Southern Hemisphere the waters never completely withdrew, they still cover a large part of the globe and even the southern continent may perhaps be water, frozen water. According to Sir Richard Phillips, the eminent geologist, the place where I find myself—yes, that piece of England where they built Newgate prison—was covered three times by the ocean, in times immemorial, and three times it re-emerged. Maybe it would be good to stay down there, on the bottom, under the great vault of waters higher than that of the sky, there where the sea serpent slithers—the primeval serpent
who fled down there because he is no longer needed, men created in the image and likeness of God are already corrupt and inclined toward evil. The waters are black; so is the cell when you blow out the candle, it’s black, a dark, rising water.

When I manage to print a notice announcing the publication of the book, asking the ladies, lords and gentlemen to underwrite its purchase for not more than half a guinea, the grousing, which is already spreading through the prison because of the special dishes they give me in the mess hall, explodes and Carlile’s crew, a group of hacks convicted for publishing blasphemous, irreverent rubbish, raises its voice, accusing me of hiding behind a pious disguise to write a work filled with subtle poisons against religion. This mania of taking offence at books, putting them on the Index, burning them. Of reading everything, books, even letters, as infamous coded messages to be used by enemies of the people. Writers and readers of the world, unite. You are, we are the real proletarians, the banished, our every word is a crime. We must learn to keep silent. Yes, it’s true, it was I who wrote them, those pages in Newgate that one of them, one of the group, stole from me and showed to the chaplain. But it was one of those texts of mine written purposely to be refuted, intended to make the veracity of faith stand out by contrast in the book I would have written immediately afterwards, had they given me time.