Tristano Dies (6 page)

… You have no idea how quickly an August can end, hurling itself against early September, like a car ramming a tree, crumpling, deflated like an accordion out of breath. Such arrogance, those days of summer, during the Feast of the Assumption
or when the sky’s lit up with fireworks on the night of San Lorenzo and the senses seem so full and life, a cavern from the vaults of heaven, but then four rain drops, the coriander’s gone to seed, and in a single day that bloated, bombastic month is swallowed up … Life’s that way, too, like August, you start to realize there’s a lapse between what’s said and done, when you really weren’t expecting this, the elastic’s worn out, can’t be stretched, and the raven shows up in the corner to croak its
nevermore …
The house, empty as a dried gourd, and he emptier still, and the dead seasons, and the current day dead as a doornail, everything was conspiring for a completely ataraxic state, the stillness of the horizon, only a few lisped words, directed at nothing, unheard. And that thick fog … How do you feel? Doctor Ziegler asked him. Shooshoo, Tristano answered, I feel shooshoo, as to the rest, I’d be fine if I weren’t feeling so shooshoo. Doctor Ziegler didn’t understand; he asked Tristano to please explain,
bitte, Herr Tristano, bitte
. Shooshoo’s like rain-soaked cabbage, Doctor, have you ever seen cabbage with its limp outer leaves in the mud? They’re shooshoo … And then he added, it’s like I’ve seen a tranglumanglo, you understand? Doctor Ziegler began to suspect this was some sort of language of the unconscious, but reluctantly, as he wasn’t of that school … but what on earth did these words mean? Tristano hesitated, secretive. Well, they come to me at night – no – they think of me – really – I’m thought up, they’re the ones that think of me, they nip at me – no – it’s more like they sting me, tiny slivers of something, tiny letters, exploding into a thousand pieces, and they arrive like
they’re washing in on the evening tide … Doctor Ziegler had his hands behind his back, his chin on his chest. So, they’re dreams? he asked. No answer. Half-dreams, then? Yes, that’s it, Doctor, almost – no, not really – more like memories, floating in their own sea foam, I’m on the edge of sleep, a few reach me, sting me, others, all I have to do is dangle my arm alongside the bed to fish some up. Doctor Ziegler kept pacing back and forth as though he wanted to dig a rut in the floor, he didn’t care that Tristano was slouched in his chair on the porch, it was as if he’d found him in his sleepless bed. Try fishing one up now, he said, just let yourself go, let your arm hang over the edge, close your eyes, pretend I’m not here … Silence. Doctor Ziegler froze, held his breath. All you could hear was the countryside’s breathing, the ground, the smell of stubble in the valley, the buzzing blue flies, a bee, a barking dog, but far far away, another world. I caught a can of gambusinen, but it’s open, the key’s turning up the rusty lid, Tristano mumbled as if in a trance,
nichts, absolut nichts, gambusinen kaputt
. Doctor Ziegler was worrying his hands behind his back. Gambusinen? –
was bedeutet gambusinen
, go on, Herr Tristano, concentrate. Oh … oh … oh … Tristano was searching for something, or perhaps those concentric rings of sound rising in his throat meant he was already lost to a world of dreams? Ziegler waited patiently, silently. I should talk about old schnabelewopskian customs, Tristano mumbled, ancient anthropology, Doctor, practically geology, and he was in full flight now over a truly incomprehensible land not to be found on any maps, probably tied to the archipelago of his imagination, and over there
was Utopia Island. Schnabelewops was a principality, a swatch of land high in the mountains, with a view of the sea, and that sea was the Greek sea, where Venus was virgin-born, it was understood, a country of impervious peaks but also soft slopes and meadows and olive and chestnut trees and crisscrossed by countless streams, their water as clean, as crystal-clear as the water where Orlando christened his sword Durlindana or Dionigi di Gaula bathed his feet after his long, long march, as the mad hidalgo tells it. And during the local wheat festivals or on the many scorching-hot days, the people would joyfully splash about in these streams, to the shrieks of young ladies. And there were so many streams, the Schnabelewopskians hadn’t even tried counting them for their maps. What was the point? Each village had a stream running beside it or even dividing it in two, so that there were great cultural divides going back a thousand years between those villagers on the right bank or the left, and a Nordic folklorist, who’d wandered everywhere collecting ancient songs, had recorded some ancient treasures where the maid who’d left to marry sang with longing for the land of her fathers that she’d abandoned when she wed and crossed over the stream to live in the house facing her own that was in a whole other country; and wading in, she soaked her stockings … With this last effort, Tristano grew quiet, eyes closed, his hand gone fishing, dangling off the lounge chair. Not asleep though … Doctor Ziegler was afraid to interrupt his oneiric space, which was sacred to every patient and crucial to every therapist. The countryside was slowly breathing in and out. It was midday.
Doctor Ziegler should have been in his office in town, but of course he’d cancelled all his appointments: this patient was too interesting. Tristano started to speak again, but perhaps he was truly sailing in his oneiric space now, talking about gambusinen, aquatic creatures presumably from his childhood, no doubt part of a fantastic zoology known only to the disturbed or to poets who’d never written any poetry, creatures which, if you listened to his semi-garbled words, seemed to fall somewhere between crustaceans and proper fish, meaning, with gills and fins. Antidiluvian creatures, Doctor Ziegler thought, from the earliest of times, when everything was just coming into being, when taxonomy wasn’t yet possible, and you couldn’t distinguish flower from fruit, fish from fowl, insect from mammal … You see, Doctor, sir, I’m not sure I can explain: a tiny creature like a freshwater crawfish, pink-colored, but with no keratin shell, so, soft like a dormouse, with a tiny round head that’s sprouting four miniature tentacles, maybe a centimeter and a half, two centimeters long, nothing more, and extremely tender, it feeds off something like the moss that grows in the cleanest streams in the principality, the gambusinen gorge on it, an exquisite green, like nothing else, and it lingers in their meat, like a truffle cutting the slight bitterness of porcini mushrooms … Doctor Ziegler listened and was silent. The cicadas were raging, and heat settled over the pergola. It was August … It was an August like this one, writer, and Tristano didn’t need any morphine to step outside himself, he was out of his mind all on his own. I wanted to tell you about this later, but it’s come to me now and so I told you
now, be patient, I’m sure it won’t make sense in your book, let it go … Listen, it must be nearly evening and Frau’s coming to give me my morphine, but I don’t want it tonight. I’m hungry, tell her I’m hungry, that I want a cup of broth, a cup of chicken broth, there was a time I’d ask for gambusinen, but now they’re extinct, all that’s left of them are empty tins with the key turning up the rusty lid … Tell Frau that since there aren’t any gambusinen, I’ll make do with a cup of chicken broth – you’ll see – she’ll know.

Ferruccio said you writers always see yourselves in light of the future, as posthumous, and I thought about what you set in motion by telling my story in the first person, as if you were Tristano … you’d already consigned me to the future, like a tombstone, and you saw your own reflection there, because that tombstone reflected your own image back to you, like you thought you’d be for posterity … But I’m changing that image right under your nose, no, it’s more topsy-turvy, face down feet up, like a carnival mirror … I feel sorry for you, but I’m not sure what you were expecting when you came here to see me, I’m not here to confirm anything, just the opposite … never trust mirrors, right then and there they seem to show your image, but they really distort it, or even worse, they absorb your image, drink up everything, suck you in as well … Mirrors are porous, writer, and you didn’t even know.

He didn’t answer, Marios, staring off at nothing, his finger stirring the coffee grinds at the bottom of his glass, he looked like a failed fortuneteller searching for an answer that couldn’t be found, and he just kept quiet … The same small Plaka square, one cold sunny day, the impassive Acropolis above … Marios, it’s me, I’m back, please, look at me. And then Marios spoke, his voice neutral, like a doctor handing out a diagnosis or a judge a sentence … the mountains are the same, and the stones, and the trees, but everything’s finished, there’s no one left, they’re all dead, I’m dead, too; Field Marshal Papagos, that black-hearted leader, gave Greece a new Duce and a new king, identical to the ones that came before, the British lent a hand, the Americans, too, General Skolby, the great strategist, expert at mass shootings … the British and their younger cousins have two democracies, the good kind, for internal use, and then the damaged kind, left to molder in the storehouses of time, the export kind, suitable for poor people, so poor they’ll swallow anything … and now you’re back, Tristano, I see that you’re back, and you’re asking about your comrades, about Daphne … your comrades are dead, Daphne’s far away, I don’t know where, giving her concerts, it’s not as though Greece needs her music, the marshals want patriotic music for the people in their new Greece … I see that you’re back, you’re back like you promised, but maybe you didn’t notice ten years have gone by, you left in forty-three – when the beast in my country is dead I’ll be back, you said – I think the beast has been dead in your country for quite some time, but here he’s alive and well, like I told you, if you’re feeling nostalgic
for the Peloponnese Mountains, go up there for a stroll, go and clear your lungs … Tristano, go back where you came from, to your own country, if you came for us, you’re awfully late, if it was for Daphne, come back next year, or maybe in a couple of years … Writer, if you’d known about this, you’d have told the story like you know how: the hero who arranges a time to return and then shows up ten years too late warrants a few pages, a parody of Ulysses, a joke of a Ulysses who got on the wrong tram, the one for Pancuervo instead of Ithaca … I don’t know how your protagonist would have answered Marios if you’d written what I told you, what excuse would your Tristano have come up with? Sorry if I’m jumping to conclusions here, I’m only guessing … I can see a solemn Tristano, with wounded pride … I received the War Cross, he says in a grave voice, I’m a hero, Marios, you have to understand how many obligations fill a hero’s days, the staged appearances, diplomatic missions, ambassadorships for peace and brotherhood, ceremonies, conferences … and a man like Marios, who’d fought for freedom, even though it turned out badly, would understand and embrace him. But Tristano gave another excuse entirely … I didn’t come before because of one small detail, he said with conviction, one damned detail. Just like that, a ridiculous excuse, it smacks of comedy, someone getting on the wrong tram … and if you write Tristano’s life, this is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me … But listen, writer, if you want to write this according to your own ideas, how you might have if you’d known about this earlier, then feel free. Your choice – and who’d object?

God is in the details, a Jewish scholar said, a philologist, I think. But so’s the Devil. It was a summer day, blue, Tristano remembers, even the city he remembers as blue, though it was actually a rose-colored city, with pink and yellow buildings all along the moats and ancient walls by the sea. The buildings crowded along the bulwarks had sheets hanging out the windows to dry, like white flags, and they were snapping that day in the northwest wind. And Tristano, when he’d go see Taddeo, rode his red motorcycle, because he liked riding his motorcycle along the coast, the road just outside the city sloped down, winding sharply around rocky cliffs where tamarisk and prickly pear grew, and from there you could enjoy the vast panorama, the sky-blue sea, with sailboats on the horizon, and after a few curves, Taddeo’s pensione came into view. Not a real pensione, though; it was called Taddeo Zimmer, a low structure that Taddeo had put up with his own two hands, right below the cliffs, by a short, pebble beach. Eight small rooms with a kitchenette and bath, each with its own terrace divided from the others by privet shrubs in terracotta pots, to give the Germans – the Krauts, Taddeo called them – a sense of being in the Mediterranean, as he liked to say. He’d become a great friend of the krauts, and they were devoted clients, because Taddeo’s pensione was modest and his customers were mainly workers from the Ruhr Valley, and at night they’d sit with Taddeo and play cards. Taddeo had killed many Germans. He counted his kills in a filthy notebook,
in German, jotting down the hour and place,
ein, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben
, and next to those he’d killed with the highest military rank, he put three small stars like in the Michelin Guide. Taddeo and Tristano first met a few years before in those mountains behind them. Taddeo was a small wild boy who lived in the woods with his family of foresters, exterminated by the SS that the Republicans had guided into the woods. Hidden in the oak trees in front of their house, he’d witnessed their murder from a distance, through tortured, wild eyes, while he stood among the branches. But during the retreat, one of the Nazis left his squad to find a fresh egg in the chicken coop; Taddeo waited behind a holm-oak, and when the soldier went by, smashed his face in with a knotty branch. Then he took the soldier’s
Maschinenpistole
and climbed the slopes to join the partisans. By now, they didn’t have much to say to each other, he and Taddeo. The reality was he went to Taddeo’s because he enjoyed riding his motorcycle along that steep road to the sea, a road filled with wind and different scents … And now we’ve come to the detail. Instead of going by motorcycle that day, Tristano went by bus. Why? I couldn’t say. In the piazza that stretched out behind the moats, between the Mussolini-era post office and the first piers of the port, there was a small market of fresh-caught fish. Tristano was wandering by the fish still flopping in crates when he suddenly felt the urge to see Taddeo, the bus stop was nearby – it was just like that. He bought the proper fish for Taddeo to make his spicy
cacciucco
stew, he crossed the road, it was almost noon, only ten minutes to wait. Tristano remembers two precise
sounds, as if he were hearing them now, the noon bells ringing and the bus honking its horn, announcing its arrival, right on schedule. And then a voice murmured in his ear: Glenn Miller’s more cheerful than Schubert. Tristano swung round, and all he could manage to say was, what are you doing here, where’d you come from, why aren’t you back in America? I’ve been waiting for you, Rosamunda answered … I’m not making this up, writer, that’s exactly what she said, I’ve been waiting for you, which is a crazy answer, because none of this made any sense, and then she added, I’m coming with you – we have to talk. But then during the trip they didn’t exchange a word, they got off at the second stop, took the road to the small town by the shore, and reached Taddeo’s pensione. Tristano handed the fish over to the girl who did all the general maid work, because Taddeo wasn’t back yet. Marilyn asked Tristano if they could get a room. The
Zimmer
, like all the other
Zimmer
, was a room with plaster walls that were whitewashed and textured for a Mediterranean effect, and prints of old photographs were hanging, fishermen in rolled-up trousers who sat mending fish pots. A small door led to the bathroom, a closet-sized room with a toilet, sink, and showerhead fixed to the wall with a plastic curtain to pull around it. The sliding glass door led onto the terrace sheltered by privet shrubs, Tristano stepped out and lit a cigarette. They hadn’t spoken a word yet. Marilyn tiptoed over to him and draped her arms around his shoulders. What do you want? he asked. You, she said. Tristano turned and grabbed her wrists. Rosamunda, he said, this is ridiculous, you can’t pretend
nothing happened, things ended badly between us, let’s not make it any worse. There was a green park bench against the low terrace wall. Marilyn sat down and crossed her legs. None of that matters anymore, Clark, she said, I swear, none of that matters. But I don’t love you anymore – and don’t call me Clark – actually, Tristano said, I never loved you. Me neither, Marilyn said, but what the body wants is something else, and it’s the same for you, I know it is, I know because I remember. Forget it, Tristano said, try a little harder, you’re good at forgetting. They had their dinner on the covered veranda that Taddeo used as a restaurant. Hardly anyone was out there, it wasn’t high season yet. Taddeo served them in silence, as if they were any two customers. They didn’t talk, either, they were listening to the waves lapping against the pebbles on the shore. It was nearly dawn before he broke the silence. I have to go to Greece, he said, there’s a woman waiting for me, I’m in love with her. Marilyn stroked his chest and whispered, if she’s waited this long, she can wait a little longer, and she hugged him tightly, first, come with me, I have to go to Spain, come with me, I was lying before: I’m in love with you. In the frame of the window, a light went by in the distance, probably a fishing boat. Maybe I am, too, Tristano said, my body is, anyway, but for now, let me sleep, I’m tired.