History (97 page)

human being! Human being means : consciousness. 1l1is is Genesis. Con sciousness is the miracle of God. It is God! That day God says : B
e
hold
man!
And then he says :
I am the son of man!
And so he fi rests, and takes a holiday . . .

"But consciousness, in its own holiday, is one, total : separate indi viduals don't exist, in consciousness. And no diff exist, in reality, between one human being and another. White black red or yellow, females or males, being born human means having grown to the highest degree of terrestrial evolution! And this is the sign of God, man's only real coat-of-arms : all other coats-of-arms, honors, and epaulettes are nasty jokes, a delirium, pestilence : talk and tin . . ."

"But what God do you believe in?" Clemente interrupted him, his mouth half-twisted, his question already denoting a derogatory opinion of the man questioned. "Eh, believers are lucky!" the man with the bloodshot eyes sighed, on this score . . . "\Vhat kind of question is that? I thought I had made myself clear," Davide grumbled, ". . . do I BELIEVE IN GOD? . . . The question's wrong from the start, one of the usual tricks with words. A trick, like so many others."

"Ah. A trick."

"A trick, a trick. Priests' talk, and Fascists'. They talk about belief in God, in the Fatherland, in freedom, in the people, in the revolution; and all these beliefs are just frauds, tricks for their convenience, like medals and money. Anyway, I'm an ATHEIST, if that's what you wanted to know."

"Then what are you talking about God for? If you don't even believe in him !" the cattle-trader spoke up, on his own, swelling his cheeks slightly with an annoyed air. Meanwhile, since his partner in the game, the ped dler, scratching one ear in accord with their signals, was consulting him across the table about his next move, he authorized him with the words : "Play!" and the peddler promptly fl his card on the table.

"Believing in God . . . What kind of God would a God be, if you can believe or not believe in him?! Me, too, when I was a kid, I understood it in that sense, more or less . . . But this isn't God! . . . Wait! I re member once, not long ago, a friend of mine asked me: 'Do you believe God exists?' I thought it over and I answered : 'I believe only God exists.' But without thinking, he said : 'On the con trary, I believe all things exist except God!!' 'In that ca we concluded, 'we're obviously not in agree ment . . .' But afterwards I discovered he and I were saying the same thing . . .
"

Such an explanation must have sounded to the listeners (if anyone had really been listening ) like an insoluble puzzle. Perhaps they assumed it was some Hebrew theology . . . In any event, the only comment that followed was some coughing from Black Hand, tantamount to notes of

4 8 3

sarcasm uttered for him by his ruined lungs; as well as a "Hey, Davide!" discreet, but fairly daring, from Useppe. It was already the third or fourth time in the course of the meeting that Useppe had made his presence known with that appeal to his friend : but it was only to boast, "We're here, too!" with no expectation of a reply. And in fact, Davide, this time as before, gave no sign he had even heard.

He had sunk down in his seat again, almost without realizing it, and he was stubbornly pursuing the course of his own argumentation with the expression of one who, awake, is trying to reconstruct a dream's adventure: "In fact, they say
God is immortal,
precisely because existence is one, the same, in all living things. And the day that consciousness knows this, what is then left to death? In the all-one, death is nothing. Does the light suff

if you or I close our eyelids?! Unity of consciousness : this is the victory of the revolution over death, the end of History, and the birth of God! That God created man is another of the many fairy tales; on the contrary, it's from man that God must be born. And we're still waiting for his birth; but maybe God will never be born. There's no more hope in the true revolu tion . . ."

"You think you're a revolutionary?" Clemente spoke up again, always with that sly and reluctant manner of nis, scorning the other's reply even before he had heard it. "This," Davide said, with a little bitter laugh, "is another trick question. People like Bonaparte, or Hitler, or Stalin, would answer
yes
. . . In any case, I'm an ANARCHIST, if that's what you want to know!"

Now he was speaking in a combative tone, but not against Black Hand : rather, against some invisible interlocutor. At ti he would con fuse the hoarse, rasping voice of Black Hand with that of his own Super ego!

"And the only genuine revolution is ANARCHY! AN-ARCHY, which means : NO power, of NO sort, for NO one, over NO one! Anybody who talks about revolution and, at the same time, about Power, is a liar! He's a cheat! And anyone who wants Power, for himself or for anybody else, is a reactionary; and even if he was born a proletarian, he's a bour geois! That's right, a bourgeois, because by now
Power
and
Bourgeoisie
are inseparable! The symbiosis is established! \Vherever you fi Powers, that's where the bourgeoisie fl like parasites in sewers . . ."

"Ah, they're the ones with the money," the proprietor said, in a yawn, rubbing his right thumb against his forefi "With money," came a carefree voice from the direction of the radio-listeners, "you can buy even the Madonna . . ." ". . . and God Almighty," a second voice, more sar castic, insisted from the same group.

"Money . . ." Davide laughed. And with a confused notion of creat-

484 H I S T O R Y
. . . . . .
1 9 47

ing a spectacle, like a terrorist hurling a bomb, he took from his pocket the two little banknotes he had, fl them away with contempt. But de spite his impetuosity, those weightless little pieces of paper fell only a pace from him, just behind Bella's tail; and Useppe duly bent and picked them up, considerately returning them to his friend, not without exploiting the opportunity to say : "Hey, Davide!" Then he went back, properly, to his still-warm chair, received by Bella with a dramatic jolt of welcome, as if he were coming home from a great expedition.

Davide had meekly allowed his possessions to be returned to him, shoving them back into his pocket, paying no attention : perhaps having already forgotten his impulsive act, with which, nevertheless, he had not released all his aggressiveness : "!V he cried, "was History's fi screwing!" But meanwhile, the young man with the carefree voice was no longer listening to him. He was a lively boy with gleaming teeth, who, putting one ear to the radio, had covered the other with his palm, to hear the new songs on the musical program without too much interference.

"It was one of
their
fi tricks!" Davide went on, all the same, "and
they,
with this trick of money, have bought our whole life! All money is fake! Can money be eaten !? They sell their garbageman's frauds at a high pri Selling it by weight, a million is worth less than a pound of shit . . .
"
"All the same, a little million would come in handy for me." At this point the unexpected voice of the peddler was heard, with a sigh. And in his eyes, worn and small as two pennies, there was the expanse of a legen dary vision : perhaps a stupendous supermarket of his own property, brim ming with tons of fritters and peanuts . . . His vision made him forget for a moment the game in progress; and he was soon reproached by his part

ner, who shouted at him : "Wake up !", giving Davide a cross look.

At the peddler's interjection, Davide's mood changed; and he smiled a pacifi boyish smile. Then, with this new face, brightened and promising (as if a fabulous herald had, all of a sudden, touched his brow) he announced :

"In the Anarchist Community, money doesn't exist."

And here, without further ado, he embarked on a description of the Anarchist Community: where the land belongs to all, and all work it together, dividing its produce equally according to the law of nature. In fact, profi property, hierarchies, are all depraved and against nature, where they are excluded. And labor is a celebration of friendship, like repose. And love is a guiltless giving of the self, wi hout any possessive egoism. Children-all born from love-are, there, the children of all. No families exist, since they are really the fi knot in the deceit, that is, in established society, which is always a conspiracy . . . There, the use of surnames is unknown, everybody's called by his fi name; and as for ranks

4 8 5

and titles, there they would seem as ridiculous as a fake nose or a paper tail. There, feelings are spontaneous, because the natural, reciprocal emo tion is understanding. And the senses, healed from the pestilential raving of Power, return to communion with nature, in an intoxicating health! There taste, sight, hearing, intellect, are all stages towards the true unifi happiness . . .

From the way he spoke, content and convinced, with a limpid smile in his Bedouin's eyes, it seemed that the Anarchist Community was really a station to be found on maps (such and such a latitude, such and such a longitude) and you had only to take the train and go there. This illusory hypothesis aroused only a few little laughs (more of futility than of skepti cism ) in the group of idle old men, sitting and looking on; while, beyond the table, the radio was broadcasting, at the end of a little dance-band piece, a recorded din of applause that, to Davide, seemed mocking. But the worst mockery came to him, actually, from within himself, from the usual Superego : "Here it seems to me we're marching in the wrong direction," the latter insinuated, giving him a pinch in the stomach. "You're launch ing yourself as a prophet of the Future, and meanwhile you're exalting the remote past: namely the garden of Eden, from which we emigrated, don't you remember? to
be fruitful and multiply,
towards the City of Conscious ness!" "TI1at's right," Davide spoke again, gulping and laughin�, uneasily, "they tell us that man, at the beginning, rejected the innocence of Eden in favor of knowledge, of consciousness. And this choice required the test of History, that is the confl between the Revolution and the puppet of Power . . . until, fi the puppet won! thrusting man down lower than the lower animals!! And this, now, is what we're witnessing! In fact, all the other living species, at least, haven't regressed : they've remained where they were the fi day : in Eden, in the state of nature! while mankind alone has regressed! And has declined not only from his historical degree of consciousness, but also from the degree of his animal nature. You only have to summarize biology, and History . . . Never, before, had any living species produced a monster below nature like that spawned by human society in our modern age . . ."

". . . what's that?" the man with the bloodshot eyes inquired, in spontaneous curiosity.

Davide had to force his lips and jaws, in order to give the answer, since it seemed so obvious : "It's the bourgeoisie!" he declared, with the reluctance of someone chewing a tasteless morsel. And the little man drew back from any sort of argument, with a meek and bewildered smile, tinged with a certain disappoin tmen t: surely he was expecting a more sensational reply.

Davide, meanwhile, in his compulsive loquacity, felt as if he were

486 H I S T O R Y . . . . . . 1 9 47

running a gratuitous race, toilsome and ineluctable, through prearr obstacles. His quarrel with the class enemy, in fact, had grown up with him since puberty ( "like the fl of manhood and reason" he had once written in a poem ), and now he felt an uneasiness at having to face again that trite, squalid enemy! But yet, at the mere mention, a ferm of rebellion rose inside him; and the Superego ordered him not to retreat!

"At least the pre-bourgeois Powers!" he began, rushing headlong, with a grimace, "in their togas and wigs, on their thrones and altars and horses, though pestilential, perhaps retained still a residue of nostalgia, let's say, for
total consciousness.
And to compensate (at least partially) for their shame, they left some vital, useful work as a repayment or a hope of salvation . . . In other words, some luminous trace, before putrefying, they did leave . . . But the bourgeois Power, in its passage, leaves only a slimy, repulsive streak, an infected pus. \Vherever it puts down roots, it reduces all living substance-indeed, all inanimate substance-to corrup tion and rot, like leprosy . . . and it feels no shame! In fact, shame is a sign of consciousness-and the bourgeois have amputated consciousness, which is man's honor. They think they are whole beings, whereas they're maimed. And their greatest misfortune is this stubborn, impenetrable igno rance . . .
"

He had risen to a tone of wrathful exhibition, like a District Attorn Nor was this certainly the fi time he played the role of prosecutor in such a trial; indeed, his propositions today were all echoes and refrains of a hymn he had sung over and over again, God knows how many times, either by himself, or with his companions in the struggle, when, on occasion, he had felt keyed up . . . Only his well-known class-protest was redoubled today by a visceral, disorderly passion that threatened to engulf him; and when he tried to release its excess with one of his usual wild laughs, this same laughter seemed to strike him like a volley of blows, hardening his muscles for his vengeance.

The: terms of the prosecution's summing-up which he was uttering seemed to him insuffi to nail down the defendant defi ively; they sounded abused, overworked . . . And he was searching his invention to find new, resolutive ones for this extreme clash, when the strange aggres sion of his passion overwhelmed him; and fi nothing better, his tongue was unleashed in a series of atrocious obscenities ( those usually known as
barracks language ),
rather unusual in his speech. He himself, in utteri them, felt amazement, and also the devouring pleasure of self rape. And he had the bizarre sensation of celebrating a kind of black mass.

"All right, all right, we get it!" the usual carefree voice arrived from the radio-listeners, "the bourgeois give you a pain in the ass." And Davide,