History (105 page)

At their unreal clatter he wakes ( the light of day is already appearing) and masturbates repeatedly, till blood comes. He hopes this at least will help him sleep; but instead, though totally exhausted, he remains still half awake, in a state of stupor and searing guilt. In his brain, God knows why, the isolated word ORDEAL starts ticking again like a clock. He makes an

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eff to recall its meaning : and it seems to him that it is a kind of divine judgment, revealed through a test. At this point he thinks he understands that his
ordeal
would be to give up drugs of every kind, including alcohol, accepting the terrible privilege of rationality. To ply any trade : worker, farm rer, writer, explorer . . . gaining in his own fl the experience that matter and intellect are a single thing, which is God . . . Then he sees himself walking on the earth again : no longer with Comrade Ninnuzzu, or G., or relatives, or friends. And all the earth, from the Caribbean to Siberi to India, to America, appears to him like the landscape of his fi dream tonight: bloodied chains, and himself inquiring about the revolu tion, and people laughing in his face ("Here there is no longer any act, among all you could perform, that must not repel your conscience" ). He decides, in any event, that his defi ORDEAL begins today
( Never put off till tomorrow!),
but all the same he stands up, staggering and goes to the little suitcase where he keeps a certain supply of drugs. There are the capsules of red and black sleeping pills which have been betraying him for some time (giving him at most a sudden, abnormal sleep like a delirium and leaving a nasty, indecent taste in his mouth ). There are powders, or stimulant tablets to inject in the vein after having pounded them to dust ( this is presumably the operation performed in the tavern latrine which gave him new drive). There is some kif left, bought from a Moroccan, who also supplied him with a special little pipe. There is, from the same source, a sample of crude opium, of a dark amber color, the size of a walnut, etc., etc. In these last times, truly, he had capriciously transformed himself into a kind of human guinea pig; and now he laughs, bending over the case, thinking that, to justify himself somehow, he had perhaps presumed these experiments, in his
vile body,
were his ORDEAL.

In the case there is also a little copybook with some fairly recent poems of his, discovered in his house in Mantua. He tries to reread them, but the letters dance before his eyes, the sentences twist, stretch, contract, fragmenting in his brain, meaningless. "There," he says to himself,
"the degradation of the intellect.
Maybe I'm already crazy, I reduce myself, on my own, to the condition of insanity . . . TO UNDERSTAND, on the contrary! I t's necessary TO UNDERSTAND! The vital end of man is : to understand. The straight way of the revolution is : to understand." Davide girds himself for a supreme act of bravado. He will make ready on the usual chair beside the bed all the familiar array of his favorite
medicine
(his true friend, the one of his Naples initiation : peace, the fantastic night), and he will begin an endurance contest: it is there, waiting, and he will not touch it. Only seeing it, actually, he feels an impatient hunger for it, like a puppy at the bitch's teat. But this, precisely, is the ORDEAL.

On the chair, with trembling hands, he has arranged everything:

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medicine, cotton, matches, syringe, strap for his arm. And he will not touch them. The contest has begun. "We will write poems, we will write more poems, we will print, we will publish. Now there is freedom of the press (even if bourgeois 'freedom' perhaps . . . ) and even the Jews are
citizens equal to the others"
. . . Suddenly he has decided that, later, he will go out and eat; but at the mere thought, he feels at once a nausea, which rises from his stomach to his throat. He has stretched out again, and the mattress seems to be crawling with insects. In reality, there are no insects in the room, despite the disorder and the fi : he defends himself against them, in fact, with a daily, downright savage profusion of DDT, the powerful insecticide brought by the Allied troops with the end of the war . . . But you would say that his senses and his brain are inventing every kind of joke to prevent his repose. The sun is already high, the day is very hot, and he is all covered with sweat, but the sweat freezes on his skin, making him shudder and, at the imaginary teeming of insects, he is fi with revulsion. His brain's working has slowed down, but at the fi glimpse of the open threshold of awareness, he draws back, full of suspi cion and anguish and he does nothing but roll and toss and yawn, in alarm at the new day invading the world. In his little room, the electric bulb remains burning; nor is there, truly, much daylight penetrating the dirty panes of the window, covered by the curtain. But even that scant light from outside, the signal of full day, is too much for him and exasperates him. Now he regrets the night, which, at least, suspends all traffi and empties the streets : any night. And the familiar sounds of every morning, from outdoors, hammer at his temples like an anonymous threat:
"Mama mia, mama mia
. . ." he begins to say: but even those two pri

syllables
ma-ma
have been ruined for him by destiny, in such an aberrant wrench that no oracle, ever, could have foreseen the like, at any man's birth. Suddenly raging, delirious news runs through the room, as if by now all the world's childhood had been devastated for etern y, and all infants raped in their nests, because of what was done to Davide's mother. He, orphaned, would like at least a ghost to rock him, to make him sleep, while his raving, childishly, has become fi on a precise memory of more than a decade ago.

At thirteen, Davide was already tall, taller than other boys his age, so he had earned the ri in advance, to dress
like a man.
And on this occasion, his mother proudly came back from shopping, bringing him as a present a special purchase : a necktie! She had chosen it herself in the most elegant shop in Mantua, where the young men of the highest society bought their clothes . . . And for his part, Davide at that time had not yet repudiated the bourgeois use of the necktie (later, indeed, he had a number of them, bought on his own, which we wore as a bold

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symbol . . . ) But this particular one didn't suit his taste at all; so he gave it a cross look, and despising it, said brusquely to his mother: "Give it to somebody else! Anybody you like!" Her eyelashes trembled, she forced a smile, and took it back.

That was all! But today, from some unknown crevice of his memory, that tasteless tie is resuscitated before him. l-Ie recognizes it : a pale blue ground, with some whimsical paisley pattern . . . And he sees it unfurled over the whole globe, among Fasces and S\\·astikas! From every part of the earth, sharp lines converge towards one point: the murder of his mother. And one of those coun tless lines comes from the ill-fated necktie. \V knows what happened to it? And how to rub it out of space and time? If he could sleep, have a long real sleep of at least ten hours, it seems to him this perv little banner would also be erased, with the other nightmares, and he would feel able to face a new day.

But sleep no longer comes to him now, in any form. He blames the daylight and the others' voices, and he relieves himself in curses and banal ities that fall unheard in the room, and he beats the side of the bed with weakened fi All the world's population is fascist, all have murdered his mother, and he is one of them. Finally, in himself Davide hates all, and this is a new sickness he has never felt before. 1-I deepest feeling towards others has always been compassion (it was this, really, that made him so sulky, in his shame), but today, suddenly a vindictive aversion towards everyone grows in him. The voices outside belong to fascists and enemies, and they have shut him up in a bunker: any moment they may kick the door open and burst into his lair, to load him onto their trucks. He knows very well this is a delirium, that the voices and racket outside are only the usual kids with their football games, the dragging steps of the landlady, the slam of blinds and of garbage cans . . . But it's as if he didn't know; he would like no window or door, he would like to break off all communica tion . . . There might still be a possible means, there, ready, on the seat of the chair : just this once, at least . . . Davide casts a glance in that direction and turns away at once, refusing the cowardly surrender. But obviously, the ORDEAL the boy had insisted on imposing upon himself was too diffi

So, after the outburst of the new solar day, another quarter of the terrestrial rotation passed. It was two o'clock on Monday afternoon, and Davide's condition was growing worse. As for the appointment with Useppe, he retained no trace of it in his memory, if ever he had known anything of it (he was, in fact, already as if absent in the moment when he said : yes, tomorrow). It may also be that in the course of the night two little blue eyes had someti fl here or there in his room; but they were too small to count for anything.

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That Monday, from early in the morning, was very busy for Useppe and Bella. According to the plan established the previous day, they got up before the usual hour, and had promptly undertaken their familiar walk towards the ri in their eagerness to meet Scim6. Among other things, Useppe wanted to propose the idea of inviting a friend of his (Davide) to the little beach, making him an exclusive participant in their common secret: with the guarantee that Davide, surely, would not betray them!

On entering the hut, they found it in exactly the same state as yester· day. The alarm was still stopped, at two. And the briefs were still fl on the same place on the mattress, suggesting that Scim6 was not at present there in the neighborhood having a swim (for example). Indeed, it was fairly obvious, now, that he hadn't come to sleep in the hut last night or the night before. But Useppe, in a defensive refl denied even the suspi cion of his possible capture; and he preferred to believe the fugitive had lingered in the evening in some wondrous movie house or phantasmagori cal pizzeria, taking refuge for the night in other hidden quarters . . . and that, without fail, this very day, or tomorrow, he would return to the hut.

Bella declared herself of the same opinion. After having sniff about the area a bit, she sat on the ground, wi a grave and resigned look, which clearly said : "No use searching. He's not in these parts." Today, again, she gave up her swim, rather than leave Useppe alone. The day was sultry and the fi were already beginning to turn yellow; but beneath the tree tent the grass remained still fresh, as in spring. Many little birds went by, but Bella, made sleepy by the heat, paid no attenti to them. Late in the morning, up in the trees, a chirping began : yesterday's fi cicada was already accompanied by others, new ones, making up a little consort. The imminent arrival of a great orchestra could be foreseen.

After waiting almost two hours, they gave up any thought of seeing Scim6 today, deciding to come back tomorrow and look for him. And at the noon bells, they started back towards home. Along the calm expanse of the river banks, windless, a few scattered voices could be heard : on Mon day ( and with the schools not yet closed ) the river-boys were few, and almost all little kids.

At two in the aftern when Ida was lying down on the bed to rest as usual, Useppe set off again with Bella for the
appointment
with Davide. He had taken with him the famous fl of wine ( which, every now and then, along the way, he set on the ground a moment, to rest from his burden ). And in addition, with the usual change that Ida gave him daily, he thought to buy his fri something to eat, along with the wine. So he

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purchased some thick, dark cakes, which arc still sold today, if I'm not mistaken, with the name of
ugly-but-good.
Unfortunately, those cakes, of an economical variety, and carelessly wrapped by the shopkeeper, were dropped halfway to Davide's and scattered over the ground, so they were not only
ugly
but also broken : "still
good,
however," Bella promptly barked, to console Useppe, who was collecting them, with some anxiety.

It was almost the solstice; but the summer, fairly mild till yesterday, seemed to have exploded suddenly in its full ripeness, and this was the most torrid hour of the day. The siesta's lethargic vapors had drained the streets, all the windows showed closed shutters and lowered blinds, even the radios were silent. And the narrow cluster of huts, near Davide's house, looked like a deserted African village. The scant grass that sprouted there in spring, among the rocks and the rubbish, was now burned and con sumed by the dust; and from the garbage rose the sweetish odor of decom position. The only voice to be heard, already from a certain distance, was the ferine, solitary barking of the famous Wolf, who, today, perhaps in his owner's absence, was tied to the fence of his hut, with no comfort save the slender shadow of the pales.