Tristano Dies: A Life

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… I was saying … before I interrupted myself … now I’m better … I was telling you something but now I can’t remember, did you write it down or did you lose the thread like me? — don’t lose the thread — writers mustn’t lose the thread, otherwise they get off too easy, a jump in the story, an empty place … it’s a mystery, people will say, the mystery of things … or there’s no real conclusion, because you can’t unravel the knot, and then … open-ended, and problem solved. Bravo. Get me a little water, sorry to turn you into a nurse, get the glass with the straw, otherwise I’ll spill all over myself, don’t call Frau, she’ll interrupt us, and she’ll want me to sleep, when she gives me an injection, she says I have to sleep … the fool … there’ll be time enough to sleep; besides, injections have the opposite effect by now, they wake me up and I feel good, really good, I’m telling you, never better, light as a feather, no, I really am a feather … goodbye pain, goodbye guilty conscience, and who gives a shit if Tristano’s so tormented by his problem, stupid Tristano, so fixated, like a fetish, but you wouldn’t understand, you writers solve a problem with a snap of your fingers, a novel, a short story — olé! — like your book, how Tristano solves it in a snap, that thing over there … freedom … piece of cake, you know what he knew of freedom, you make him shift his gun sight just a few millimeters — and poof — he’s found freedom … but I’m afraid the problem’s not in the sight; you know, abstract is one thing, concrete’s another: this thing, this freedom, is something that needs to be applied, but how? — how does someone like you — a writer — apply it? I’ll tell you how … like casting out nines, or like that elementary-school rule, changing the order of the factors doesn’t change the product, that’s how someone like you thinks, if something’s valid in one situation, it’s valid for them all, because mathematics is mathematics, I read your novel about Tristano closely, I liked it, the way you apply that little rule is brilliant, you verify the rule with two different characters, the man and the woman up in the mountains, they betray each other and then are more united than ever, they had to settle in, like casting out nines, so to speak: they changed the order of the factors and the product didn’t change. Ah, love, love … but no, my dear friend, there’s something you never considered … changing the order of the factors does change the product. It changes day for night. Because betrayal is transitive. That’s the truth. And being transitive touches others, it contaminates, circulates, expands with no logical form, no plan, no pattern … yes, there was a pattern early on, but at some point the original pattern dissolves, disintegrates, you can’t consult it anymore, it was clear once, discernible, visible like everything that’s visible, and then at some point it turns invisible, a shadow without limits, shapeless, like a cloud moving across the sun, forming a pool of shadow over the landscape, I’m not sure I’m explaining myself very well … Can you measure the perimeter of that shadow? You try, maybe you really labor over it, make these complicated calculations, you try to guess, and meanwhile the cloud’s slipping by, so strange how the shadow has shifted a little, is now over the meadow that was filled with sunshine just a minute before, but no, it’s no longer over the meadow, it’s over the hillsides, go on, chase it, catch it, catch a tiger by the tail, the shadow of that cloud … That’s what Tristano would think when he started thinking about that shadow, but by the time he started thinking about it, it was too late, because the shadow would already be wandering around, minding its own business, in transit, going where it wanted. And where did this shadow come from? How did it start? How was it even possible? The sun was so bright, absolutely brilliant, bringing every edge into sharp relief, no chance for error, and suddenly here’s this shadow … and not only that, the weather forecast predicted continuing good weather, and Tristano himself had contributed to that report …

It’s been pouring down rain … No, I’m not referring to the weather — it’s scorching-hot out, just like yesterday — it’s one of Frau’s things, the things she reads, that says there’s been driving rain all day, while this morning everything was so blue, and then it goes on, I know perfectly well how elegant a gray rain can be, and how oppressive the sun is, how vulgar, and I also know it’s out of style now to be affected by changes in the light, but who said I want to be in style? These days, everyone’s so sharp, don’t you agree, writer?… no one’s affected by changes in the light … that’s just old-fashioned …

… But the topic was clouds … I was saying, how could there suddenly be a cloud going by, where did it come from, and how dare it, anyway? Someone like you wouldn’t know, a writer who reads the weather by casting out nines, even if he’s also produced a little humidity himself, if only through breathing, at times all you need is one little breath, the atmosphere’s so sensitive, one puff and you’ve made your extremely modest contribution to forming a cloud, which then supplies the shadow, and suddenly the whole countryside goes dark, this morning was so radiant, really promising, but the weather’s turned, who could have predicted, not a writer like you, I know your story … metaphors … your two main characters betray each other, but then they finally see the error of their ways and their betrayal cements their love even more, the music grows louder, they kiss each other passionately, the sun setting in the background, the lights go up, the end appears on the screen, the audience is moved, someone’s crying, and now it’s dinnertime, Sunday’s over, everybody home. Your Tristano deserves that sort of movie, uplifting … Too bad it’s not that way. Do you know what the true nature of betrayal is? — to betray, and so it also betrays the betrayer, it has no limits, like the shadow over the countryside, you begin by betraying a love, or a small love, I mean some little nothing, a cat, say, and then you wind up arriving at yourself, but you didn’t know you’d get there, otherwise you wouldn’t have made that first move, and it turns out it was exactly this move, this little bit of nonsense that seemed so unimportant, that’s become a catastrophe, an absolute torrent, a flood that carries you off, you’re struggling, struggling, can’t keep afloat … Understand? Sure you do, you were in this country during those times, just like Tristano, and you’re not one of those people who acted as if nothing had happened, one of those who, if he wasn’t sleeping or looking at the highest peaks of art, then laurels, laurels, lift up your hearts … You understood as much as I did, I mean, that someone broke his agreements, right? — and breaking your agreement means betrayal. That’s what Tristano thought, but you didn’t have him think this way in your novel, you’re too kind, and I know that’s why you came running to my bedside as soon as I called, my dear writer, because you wanted to find out what you’d missed … you Peeping Tom … sorry to call you that since what you really do is use your ears — be patient with me — after all, it is pretty much the same thing; do you want to know how Tristano started to think this way, and especially, how he came to question why, something you didn’t do, and why on earth would you, if the principle, the ideal, was sound? So if the principle, the ideal, was sound, that meant people had to be killed for it? Blown sky-high? Blown to bits? Is freedom so precious, then, to be worth this price?… Nous n’osons plus chanter les roses, they wrote. Do you still dare to sing them? Can you understand how someone like Tristano thought about going to Delphi, a ridiculous solution if there ever was one, a non-solution solution … but what’s there left to do when everything is ashes? With no lord god of his own, he wound up putting his trust in a senseless pilgrimage back to the origins … but the origins of what? you might ask. I couldn’t say … of his civilization that he picked up a rifle for, or what he thought was his civilization — poareto di un zuanìn — that’s what we called him in dialect — the poor little guy — the once valiant Anselmo who went off to war with his helmet on, that helmet of freedom on his head so he wouldn’t be too badly hurt, western civilization, writer … so let’s see what you can do with this one, will it be at all like that shadow over the countryside?… on the other side of the ocean, another West, a torch in one hand, an atomic bomb in the other, and insisting she’s the real West — so now what? — where’s the sun going to set? All right, all right … Well … I’m tired … I’m so tired all of a sudden, I was feeling so peppy … it must be all this business about freedom and equality … citizen writer, I think I heard it on our free morning broadcast, the daily reports are in on the state of equality based on data from the national institute for measuring freedom: the freedom stock index is down significantly, owing to a country a little to our south that’s chock-full of poor, awful people who need a lesson on freedom, and so the entire market has shifted south … dear listeners, we’re pleased to inform you that a branch of our stock exchange has opened in a soccer stadium in this country’s capital, with a high interest rate; this is something our new economists developed, which makes use of the old system, what’s known as direct from the manufacturer to the consumer: each stock index is attached to the testicle of one of those awful customers, and every time there’s any effort to raise the local stock market, the consumer in this country gets a nice jolt of electricity that he most unequivocally feels … it’s a personalized system … for those esteemed customers of the female persuasion, the market index acts upon the ovaries, or on the fetus, in case of pregnancy … Writer, the freedom index is widespread, reaches customers the world over, our fatherland is the world over, our law is freedom, and a solemn thought is in our hearts … Go get some rest, I’ve kept you late. Or maybe it’s not late for you, but I’m tired, anyway. Hand me the urinal first, though, set it on the nightstand where I can reach it. But don’t worry, I can stick it in there on my own, I didn’t call you here to humiliate you.

Ferruccio said the person who writes in order to comment on life always thinks the fact that he’s commenting is more important than the comment itself, though he might not realize this. And what about you? — you write about life — so what do you think?…

… sorry for yesterday, if it was yesterday. Was it yesterday or this morning? I think it was yesterday, but I can’t be sure anymore … sorry … it’s true … I wasn’t particularly soft on you, but you probably don’t expect someone in my condition to be very nice … I know when certain things are raised … I mean, that novel’s so important to you, you wrote it, even won a prize … Frau tells me you weren’t feeling too well today … a headache, she says … she’s taken a shine to you … you’re torturing him, young sir, she tells me, hours and hours of listening to you in this hot, airless room that stinks of disinfectant … But you don’t have a headache, I’m the one with the headache, you were just smarting from … I needled you about your comment on life … patience, now … anyway, sorry, I thought of a detail: when Tristano’s waiting for the Germans to leave the farmhouse, you describe his face as resembling an American actor’s from back then, and I’ve always asked myself how you came up with this, how you could have known … it’s impossible, that was just a little game he had with Marilyn, no one else knew, Marilyn’s the only one who called him Clark — a coincidence? — it must be — you’re too young, and everyone who knew him in the mountains is dead by now … I don’t like that passage in your novel … Clark waited, absolutely still, crouched for hours behind that rock; he’d often been the prey before, but other times, like now, he’d also played the role of the hunter … It doesn’t even feel like your writing, it’s like you copied someone else, your own writing’s far more capable, it explores nuances, chiaroscuro, you’re a different sort of hunter, an ambiguity detective, you’re always wary, even of yourself, you are, and here you drop me into some kind of neorealism, as if reality’s what a person sees, do you really think life can be sealed into biography? This idea doesn’t suit you, the notion of the official record … you don’t believe in biography, especially the kind that interprets and concludes, you know these biographies are only skin-deep, you prefer lifting the flap of skin and seeing underneath, the tissues are what interest you, I’ve been mulling this over the past two days … before you go, meaning, before I go, if you want to tell me the truth, I’d like that … The morphine I just took hasn’t done a thing for the pain, no effect whatsoever, when you leave, tell Frau she’s giving me distilled water … inject him with distilled water, you’ll see: it will act like a placebo … I can just hear that kid doctor who’s treating my death according to local healthcare regulations … do me a favor, tell her to give me some real morphine, to put some morphine in this water clock of mine … a water clock of morphine … you like that idea? I believe in chemistry, so do you … listen to me, no, listen to someone who wrote before you, who wrote better than you, that writer who understood that even feelings are combinations of chemicals, he called them elective affinities, equilibriums predisposed by nature, understand? it’s a question of atoms, an atom of this drawn to an atom of that, valences, they combine and you either love or loathe someone, depending on … sorry, I’m losing the thread … I was saying … was it something about religion? I think I was telling you something before about religion, but maybe not, anyway, I was getting to Tristano’s not believing in faith, if I can put it like that, well, he just didn’t have the gift, like those with faith might say, and Tristano just didn’t have it, and so he was at risk and wound up the way people like him wind up, those people who don’t have anything nonexistent to believe in, and so they wind up believing in people because people exist, which is the worst thing ever, but there’s also a worst of the worst of the worst, because Tristano believed in believing in people, but in my opinion, deep down, he didn’t believe in them, and this is the worst of the worst of the worst — am I making any sense? And this is why at his lowest moments, he clung oh so quietly to a faith in those religions that priests have who try to find a little happiness by relying on something like the morphine Frau’s so stingy with, this thing that lasts as long as it lasts, and as long as it lasts it’s okay, but it’s not paradise, because paradise should be eternal, and Tristano was only staying in a hotel by the hour, with just a chance for a few good dreams. And this is why there came a time, like I was saying before, that he decided the solution might be to make a pilgrimage to a shrine no longer in use, a ruin that was now a tourists-in-shorts destination, and he was thinking that in this place the spirit of some defunct priestess might be able to explain the past and the present and the fleeing hours, what they might mean … life, in other words, that life you’re turning into biography, if a bit piecemeal … but I’ll tell you about this trip later, I’ll remember it better tomorrow … and I’ll make it to tomorrow, don’t worry, and even to the day after that, I’ll let you know when the movie’s over, I’ll know better than you, and in the meantime, you stick to writing Tristano’s biography, what you can write, what’s possible to write … Life … a novel read one time only, long ago … a philosopher said that, I can’t remember who, must be German, only a German could say something so grim and so true … speaking of lives and novels, I think I may have left out a third type of biography, the kind that’s fictionalized, sorry to keep on about this, but the book you wrote with your character inspired by Tristano — when someone writes in first person and is writing someone else’s life as if it’s his own — deep down, this becomes something of that third type. Why did you write me in first person? That might seem normal to you, but, listen, it really isn’t. Why did you become Tristano? Why did you put yourself in his place? — and thirty years after it all happened, when Tristano wasn’t Tristano anymore, when there was no longer a reason for it, except your personal reasons, if we can speak of these … I don’t think there’s a writer out there who can say why he writes — and what does your life have to do with Tristano’s, anyway — why did you identify with him exactly?… Why do you write, writer? Are you afraid of dying? Do you want to be someone else? Is it a longing for the womb? Do you need a father — like you’re still a child? Life’s not enough for you? And where did you get the idea to write about Tristano — up in the mountains? But you were never in those mountains, not with a submachine gun in your hands, anyway, maybe you were up there on vacation, in some nice hotel with old-world, Central European charm, because the Cecco Beppe — the Franz Joseph — railway used to lead up there, I know about hotels like that and the people who go there, entrepreneurs, politicians, the rich and powerful … maybe you were surrounded by that sort and got the idea to write about Tristano — was it because you saw the Alan Ladd film Shane? Was this why, during that time of war, you had your Tristano obsessing over the Soviet tribunals and the Moscow Trials, why you had him act as supreme judge, in the name of a sacrosanct principle, as a condemnation of any attempt to stifle individual consciousness, a sacred principle that anyone wanting to create a free society had to recognize? But how could you simplify Tristano that way? Who are you, writer, to possess the pangs of conscience of someone you’ve never met? Tristano seems like one of Charlemagne’s paladins, Charlemagne, the great avenger of betrayal, relentless toward traitors. But what do you know about real betrayal?… I think you just know the edges of it, the piddling stuff, nothing, what you solve with a pardon me, a bedtime confession, a transgression. You can’t possibly know the very heart of betrayal … Call for Frau, call her in here, tell her that even she’s betraying me, betraying me for my own good or what she thinks is my own good, such a stupid betrayal … instead of morphine she’s pumping me full of distilled water, now’s the time for another injection, I can tell by the light that it must be five in the evening, six at the latest, just listen to the cicadas, this is when they sing like crazy, a las cinco de la tarde, they’re afraid the male won’t come back again, they’ve been calling him all day … he’s coming, he’s coming … the male cicada always comes back, even if it’s at the last moment, males keep others waiting, they’re cruel, but then he returns and he finally impregnates the female, and then for her it’s all over, she’s served her purpose, what she sang for, the fool, he’s filled her belly, she lays her eggs and croaks so another cicada will be born that will spend another summer singing, calling for the male to impregnate her … Call for Frau, let’s continue this later, the pain’s getting worse, and it’s making me crabby … can’t you see I’m in a bad mood?… and you, too, go lie down, rest at noon, pale and thoughtful, you deserve a little nap, writer, or go out to the vineyard for a breath of fresh air, since Frau says I’m keeping you prisoner in this dark room that stinks of disinfectant.

Frau read me her Sunday poem, an ancient Persian poet, she says. In my opinion it isn’t Sunday, this August has too many Sundays, Frau’s tacking on some more Sundays, maybe that’s her way of prolonging my life, adding on Sundays … Young sir, she says, the poem starts like this: Don’t think about the rotation of the Earth, Saki, first think about my head … Saki’s the manservant of the old Persian poet who brings him cups of wine, part servant, part philosopher, just like Frau … Oh Saki, where did the old days go?… Tristano would have his own way of continuing the poem, something like … I’m stretched out on my deathbed, Saki, they’ve stuck a catheter in me that I pull out just to be spiteful, as for me, besides my voice, there’s nothing left, or almost nothing left, a profile on the pillow, sharp as a razor, and some breathing that at times turns to a rattle, your master’s lying out there, dear Saki, outside the window it seems like an August so still, broken only by the frenzied cicadas, how long until tomorrow, Saki, is it still a long way off?… why is it always today?… an entire month of today, make tomorrow come and carry me away, there’s a big fly that keeps hitting the mirror, trying to get out, stupid fly, it can’t find the way out, like me, it needs morphine, like me, I lie here and talk and talk, but why insist on digging up old days, Saki … please, don’t let that young nurse in, the one Frau hired, she’s here with my urinal so I won’t piss the sheets, I can’t bear how she slips it so delicately into that glass container, like a dying flower … Saki, it was a beautiful May day, the zephyr had returned, and Tristano was sitting on his motorcycle near a newsstand, and it felt like Italy was cured, and the whole world alongside Italy, and he was humming our fatherland is the world over, our law is freedom, and even for him, life was returning … the sap was rising, after all that wartime adrenaline, all the carnage and blood, and now, sitting on his motorcycle, he was saying, how beautiful. It was May of forty-five, I remember it like it was happening this very moment.

You know when everything really became clear to him? When everything seemed already clear and already over, on the sixth of August of forty-five. At a quarter past eight that morning, if you want to know the time as well. That day Tristano understood that after the monster was conquered came the monstrosity of the conquerors … it was the second crime against humanity in this happy century now coming to a close … that morning, the first atomic bomb used as a weapon of mass destruction was dropped on one of our cities, and that city was annihilated, two hundred thousand people incinerated. I say two hundred thousand, but that leaves out the thousands who died later, and all the stillbirths, all the cancer … and they weren’t soldiers, they were defenseless citizens whose one offense was being blameless … There’s a place, in Hiroshima, called Genbaku Dome, it’s a pavilion, meaning it’s an atomic dome, and this was the epicenter of the explosion, and here the soil temperature reached the temperature of the surface of the sun; near the monument with its peace torch is a stone slab, a doorstep, an ordinary doorstep like you’d find in front of any of our houses, where we lay the doormat to wipe our feet. Inside that stone, that piece of marble, I imagine it’s like paper absorbing ink, and there’s the imprint of a body, the arms outspread. This is all that remains of the body of the man who melted on his doorstep at a quarter past eight on that sixth of August of forty-five … If you can, take a trip there, it’s informative … it’s been said that those victims were pointless, the monster’s head had already been crushed at Dresden and Berlin, and to break Japan all the Americans needed were conventional weapons. That’s a mistake, that the victims were pointless — for the conquerors, they were extremely useful — in this manner, the world would come to know its new masters … History is an icy creature, she doesn’t have the slightest pity for anything or anyone; that German philosopher who committed suicide in a small hotel on the border, so escaping Franco and Hitler and everyone — maybe even escaping himself — he’d reflected too much on this ruthless lady that men court in vain, and it didn’t seem to do him much good … in his reflections he wrote that when faced with an enemy, if that enemy wins, even the dead aren’t safe … and I’d add that this includes all enemies, even someone who’s the enemy of evil men, because being the enemy of evil men can’t make someone do good — and what do you think of that?… I understand your objections, I’ve been too succinct, of course if evil won there’d be no way out … but speaking of good, I wanted to say … well … good, okay, good conquered evil, only there’s a little too much evil in this good and a little too much imperfection in this truth … The truth’s imperfect … That journalist who snuck an interview with me years ago — by pretending we were just talking over a drink — he wrote this concerning the subject: that Tristano admitted to the existence of God, but it was a short-lived existence. Too bad you didn’t explore this more in your novel, it’s a topic that warranted some reflection; you know, this understanding of Tristano was a bit too simple, as if what he meant was that even gods die, but we all know that: take Jupiter, for instance, who lasted a good long while before being replaced, but that’s not what Tristano meant. Sure, of course, everything grows old, probably God, too, what we believe in, but God won’t die a natural death, then be replaced by something else. I’m afraid he’s got a more painful end coming to him, if things keep going the way they are, think about it … one day … imagine a heat like the surface of the sun, but not in just one spot, over the entire planet, thousands of Hiroshimas, a whole slew of Hiroshimas, Hiroshimas all over … an immense roar, and then an immense silence, a big bang in reverse, not a living soul left, not even a cat, everyone kaput … Sure, he’ll still exist, but who cares, if no one’s around anymore to believe that he exists … an unemployed God … we’ll make him useless, pointless, because what’s the point of having God if no one’s around to believe in him?… I’ve gotten off track again, as usual, today I meant to tell you about our Hypnos Pages, I think without our ever saying it, we started doing this in answer to that philosopher who questioned the possibility of writing poetry after the unspeakable had occurred. Not only was it possible, it was probably the only thing we could do that made any sense, because when the monster’s been conquered and you don’t believe in the monster’s conquerors anymore, all you’re left with is believing in your own dreams … in dreams begins responsibility, like I told you, is the line we used as an epigraph in our little books, because the arm reaches only as far as the hand, but a dream can go on and on … a prosthesis slipping past the prison of existence. Seems to me we started in fifty-two, we did a book a year, so we made thirty-six, they stopped eleven years back, when the others died … Any poets that weren’t Greek we all translated, Daphne and I, and her friends, Ioanna and Antheos, who signed his name as Marios because that’s what I called him. Handmade, you know, with a hand press from an old print shop, a contraption once used for printing leaflets against the Ottoman Empire, that’s what the man from Cyprus said who sold it to us, and it’s certainly possible, the thing was gigantic, weighed a ton … Why Crete and not here at home? Your question makes sense, with a nation like ours that’s full of saints, sailors, and poets … not that Crete was Paris, but people from Crete had character, you know what they did when the Germans invaded? — they wiped out an entire Nazi battalion that was armed like the Nazis always were, and you know how they did it? With their billhooks for harvesting olives — they even strangled Nazis with their bare hands … And Italy back then … you’re too young, you were just a boy … Pella, Tambroni, these names won’t mean much, if anything, to you, Don Gnocchi’s crippled children, the Polesine flood, the processions of the penitents, the weeping madonnas … Do they still weep? Around here madonnas’ tears come easy, and saints and sailors seem to be on the rise. Luckily, we’ve still got poets, too, but they must feel a bit uncomfortable in this company … You’re a good writer, too bad you write prose … sorry, I’m not being fair, as far as I’m concerned I should be grateful you write prose, if you’d been a poet, you wouldn’t be here patiently gathering all these bits and pieces I’m telling you, maybe you’d have disposed of me with an elegant elegy or a poison epigram, the kind they kill you with even after you’re gone … or some little nonsense rhyme, a limerick, maybe, like the British are so good at, let’s see … let me think … There was an old hero they say, Who tucked all of his dreams away, But they started to rot with the gangrene he got, So it’s dreamless and legless he’ll stay.

What’s the time, one already, like you Northerners say? I told you to come at thirteen hundred hours but not to wake me, I was having such a good sleep and then you woke me, you’re nice, but you follow orders to the letter, if you see I’m sleeping, please don’t wake me, I slept two hours, one hundred and twenty minutes, I could have slept two hundred minutes, think about it, two hundred minutes less …

It was August, like I told you, a lot of things in Tristano’s life happened in August, a hazy, sultry day, haze over the hills and haze on the mountain and haze over the plains, too; and even inside them, a great haze like cotton that blankets everything, is deadening. Tristano waits for her to speak, if she’s come all the way here, she wants something, he stares at this woman he loved so passionately, her eyes sunken now in their sockets, darkly ringed, almost purple, like a mask, her headscarf doesn’t completely hide the hair growing back at her temples, she’s ten years younger than he is but looks twenty years older; still, he thinks, it feels like just yesterday that they were up in the mountains, and he showed her the yellow dog buried in sand just yesterday, and their trip to Spain, and he asks himself again, why, why Spain? Because of my work in Spain, she’d say, my friends in Spain … There’s a darkness in her eyes, like fear, Tristano understands this, he knows them well, those eyes; in spite of everything, she’s assumed a relaxed position on the couch, legs crossed. They’re both quiet. A boy’s voice is coming from the back of the house, he’s speaking to Frau, who knows if Frau wanted a child. All you did was spill your sperm on my belly, I wanted your child, but you spilled your sperm on my belly, you always did that … Marilyn talks this way, they’re her expressions, she’s always talked like this, Tristano recalls, she didn’t value the weight of her words in Italian, sometimes she talked like a sailor, other times, like a Protestant pastor. He’s almost twelve, Marilyn is saying, he looks like you, did you see how much he looks like you? Not really, Tristano says, but if you say so … I picked him because he looked like you, Marilyn breathes, you’re like two drops of water you’re so alike, there were a lot of children, but I saw him right away … A long silence now, hard to break. Marilyn lights a cigarillo, coughs, sorry if I start to cry, she says. But she’s not about to cry, maybe she’s only thinking aloud. From down the hall comes a tune in German. Frau rarely sings, only on special occasions. Rosamunda, Tristano says, please try to be clear, what are you trying to say?… you picked him, there were a lot of children … Marilyn fidgets with the cigarillo between her lips, then she puts it out in her tea cup. Well, she says, there were so many wretches in wretched Spain, the orphanages were full … some still are … I adopted him, I felt so bad for him … it’s true, he doesn’t look like you at all, but that’s not important, it’s like he was your son, I always thought of him as the son you refused to give me, and now I’m entrusting him to you, please take him, I can’t raise him. Maybe she’s waiting for Tristano to ask her why, but he stays quiet. Then she says, I don’t have much more time. She shifts her headscarf slightly for him to see. I tried what I could, she says, but the results were negative, the doctor was clear, there’s nothing left to try. She’s clawing her own palm but doesn’t realize. On his birth certificate he’s Ignacio, she adds, but I call him Clark, he’s always been Clark to me. She pulls an elegant suede wallet from her purse. Here are his documents, she says and sets them on the table. Marilyn, Tristano says, I only come back periodically, I think you know that, normally just in the summer, just to keep up the vineyard and olive trees a little, Agostino can’t do it all on his own, and then there’s Frau, this is her house, too, by now, she’s got nowhere else to go; the rest of the year, I live in Kritsa. Is that near Athens? Marilyn asks. It’s a village on Crete, Tristano says. Did you see how he hugged you, she says, he loves you, I’ve always talked about you, he knows all about us, I told him you were his real father. You’re crazy, Tristano says. You’re crazy, Rosamunda, there’s something wrong with you — always has been. He’s speaking softly, almost to himself. Marilyn doesn’t answer, she’s rummaging in her purse, keeps looking, then empties it onto the couch, and finally retrieves an old square photo not much larger than a postage stamp, a young man with a wisp of hair on his forehead, wearing a military jacket, a submachine gun over his shoulder, there’s a mountain farmhouse in the background, a dark patch of woods. She holds it out to Tristano. He was conceived the day I took this picture of you, she murmurs. That photo’s almost twenty years old, he says, you’re not well, Rosamunda, please, stop talking, you don’t need to say anything more. Where I come from, Marilyn says, ignoring him, there’s an old Navajo belief that when you keep thinking about a man, sooner or later, his spirit will give you a child. Frau is at the door: Ignacio wants to see the bay horse, we’re going to the stable, we’ll be back shortly, if the signora would like more tea I’ll bring in the kettle. Marilyn’s putting her things back in her purse. You could be with him in the summer, she says quickly, three months a year isn’t so little, you’d be a good father to him, and you don’t have children, maybe you’re sterile, I’m giving you the chance to have a son who’s almost yours, is practically yours — no, is yours — please, Tristano, raise him, I have no one left in America, my family’s all dead. And what about the rest of the year? Tristano says, excuse me, Rosamunda, but who’s going to look after him here in this house? She gets to her feet, staggers, knocks against the end table, tea splashes from her still-full cup. This Frau, she says … Agostino … I don’t know them, but they must be good people, and during the winter he’ll have school — you could find a good boarding school. Where are you going? Tristano asks. Back to Spain, she says, but the best train for Irun leaves tomorrow morning — the station’s far, and I don’t want to drive at night — I’ll find some little hotel on the coast. She tightens her scarf under her chin, hesitates, then puts her finger to her lips, sending a kiss or telling him to be quiet, he can’t be sure. Is your uncle waiting for you? he asks. We’re thick as thieves now, she says, sometimes life’s like that, even if you don’t want it to be, I never understood why you called him my uncle — he’s your age. Because he’s the American uncle, Tristano answers — the classic Uncle Sam, with stars and stripes on his top hat and his pointing finger, commanding I want you — has he got something to do with Ignacio? I’m Ignacio’s mother, Marilyn says, he wasn’t involved in the adoption, but Ignacio loves him and really considers him his uncle … If Ignacio wants to visit him, you shouldn’t stop him, but keep an eye on him: his uncle’s in a dangerous business — so was I. She heads for the door, and Tristano follows. I’ll go with you, Rosamunda, it’s a long way, and I don’t want you driving through all those hills by yourself … and so it goes … Tristano didn’t know that on this day, on this short trip with Marilyn, they’d find a dying dog that they’d name Vanda like the yellow dog they saw years before in a museum. But this you already know, writer, because I told you the day it popped into my head, I can’t remember when that was … How strange, you’re ahead of Tristano’s life, let’s stop here now, for today.

… Hello? Who is this?… He blew up … What are you saying?… I’m saying your boy blew up, don’t you understand Italian … Who are you?… Never mind, I’m someone who knew him better than you did, but enough with the questions, listen and be quiet, listen now, he had the thing in his bag, and it blew up between his legs, the idiot, not too sharp your boy, he was all talk, plenty of philosophizing, the sun setting on the West, the decline of our civilization, but with some small jobs you need a brain, you need real smarts, one time maybe he did it all right, but that was just a matter of leaving it and getting the hell out of there, not handling anything, and that spot was easy, you just dropped the bag and left … listen, you bastard, you shot at us years ago, but we forgive you, we like you all the same, respect you, in our way, at least you didn’t go on some transcendent quest to India … you listening?… you’re tough, we know that, and you loved your boy, we loved him, too, we assigned him the role of Saint George slaying the dragon, the idiot democrat with communist leanings … listen, do something for me, he must have left a bunch of evidence lying around, a tad disorganized, your boy, all talk, and we put too much trust in him … you listening?… listen up, do me a favor, go to his room and have a good look around, there must be datebooks, notepads, take it all and burn it, and especially if you find anything referring to this bad ass we all called omaccio, with the initials om, o as in Otranto and m as in Milan — got it? — take it all and burn it — you don’t want your good little boy to be exposed, right? — not with that bag that blew him up, balls first … listen now, do what I tell you … click … Youuu youuu youuu … end of call, got it, writer? End of call, for Tristano … Keep that lamp lit on the dresser, the one with the shade with the glass droplets, and lay a handkerchief over the top, I don’t want to be here in the dark tonight, yes, I’ll say it’s night, though it might be morning, but that’s your problem, for me it’s night. Good night.

… and I saw my entire life reduced to that insect, a minuscule, complicated instrument for flight and hibernation, the buzzing rage and fragile beating of wing casings and filthy feet, I tossed it all into the gutter, bits of rubber, smell of burning cork, that’s all that ties me to this world … You know what I’m referring to, it’s that piece Frau tortured me with, it didn’t just come to me, it’s because Tristano started getting letters, one after another, a steady stream. But I don’t feel like talking about that now, I don’t feel like saying anything — but stay here anyway — please — stay here anyway and I’ll have other things to tell you … you have to be patient. Be patient.

… Could you explain a bit more, said Doctor Ziegler, about what you mean when you say you feel as if everything has stopped? Tristano was sprawled in the wicker chair, one arm dangling, the other covering his eyes from the noonday sun: it’s like this afternoon, he said, everything has stopped, don’t you feel it?… a stillness has settled over everything, wiped out space and time, like with some medieval paintings when you see a saint in rapture, under his own mystical spell, an eternal moment … any sound at all now and the glass bell covering the countryside will crack; a rooster might crow, a dog might bark, and the spell will be broken … okay, what I mean is I have these moments when I feel like it feels this afternoon … everything has stopped … and I feel like I’m stopped in the middle of time that’s stopped, as if I’ve been momentarily transported to another world. Even Doctor Ziegler had stopped pacing back and forth on the porch, he’d stopped beside Tristano, hands behind his back, deep in thought. Go on, Herr Tristano, go on … Or maybe I’m feeling other things, Tristano continued, like I’m dreaming though I’m awake, and forgotten memories from long ago start coming back … memories I didn’t even know about … they well up so fast and flash before me like a movie projected on a wall, and it’s my eyes doing the projecting. And what do you feel? Doctor Ziegler whispered, can you tell me? Tristano was quiet. Ziegler waited patiently. If you feel like sighing, the doctor whispered, then sigh … don’t breathe in, sigh, sighing is what our bodies invented for expelling that diffuse, insidious anxiety from the pneuma that the British call spleen … yawning serves the same function, though less extreme, for common boredom, but yours is a different kind of boredom … it’s a weariness of being … so sigh, Herr Tristano. Tristano breathed deeply, and he let out a long, weak sigh, as though releasing evil humors composed of air. Go on, Doctor Ziegler said. What I was referring to, Tristano said, was a very intense sense of nostalgia … too intense … devastating … but it’s not nostalgia exactly, more of a yearning, something frightening, more abstract, because nostalgia implies the object you have nostalgia for, and the truth is I don’t feel nostalgia for the images flashing before my eyes like a film; often, they’re memories that don’t matter, banalities buried in my memory because they’re banal, and so they carry no nostalgia … no, the nostalgia I’m feeling is outside, unrelated to those images, I’m not sure I can explain: it feels like they’re not the cause of this nostalgia but that this nostalgia is a condition, and without it I couldn’t see them … so this isn’t really nostalgia, it’s a vague restlessness that’s also become a fear of sorts, but mixed with the absurd, and inside this sense of the absurd there’s a terror that’s destroying me, as though my body’s convulsing and about to blow apart, you must have seen in the movies how they’ll bring down old city-buildings so another can go up, they collapse in on themselves, crumple, implode … that’s how I feel … my body’s imploding, and I feel terribly cold, my hands and feet are freezing and that’s when I get a splitting migraine: ferocious, unbearable. Doctor Ziegler was sitting on the low wall by the pots of lavender, he’d plucked a flowering sprig and was brushing it over his face, breathing in the smell now and then. Angor mortis, the doctor murmured, that’s what they called it in the ancient world … you’ve described the most complicated symptoms of the migraine aura, Herr Tristano, cluster headaches, probably, and they never just come on their own, when these empresses come calling, they’re preceded by an ambassadorship of the most distinctive creatures, a madhouse of heralds, trumpeters, courtiers, female dancers, shouting street vendors, fire eaters, tightrope walkers … if I were to take a census of all the different kinds of auras preceding headaches, I’d be here until evening, and I’d have to insist, Herr Tristano, that you invite me to stay for dinner … I think tonight we’re having rabbit with rosemary, Tristano answered, it’s a dish that Agostino’s wife prepares that’s just sublime, and maybe Frau will make a chocolate cake. Doctor Ziegler removed the white coat he always wore, even when he saw his patient at home, and he hung it on a hook on the pergola. Chocolate’s not recommended for headaches, he said, but I love it and you can avoid it, rabbit on the other hand will be fine for us both, since it’s white meat.

You came here to gather up a life. But you know what you’re gathering? Words. No — more like air, my friend — words are sounds composed of air. Air. You’re gathering air.

The rabbit with rosemary was really quite good, Doctor Ziegler said, but this chocolate cake … we have cakes like this where I come from, but this one is something else again, maybe it’s the ground almonds … you can certainly have a little, Herr Tristano, nothing’s going to happen if you do. Tristano could tell what Doctor Ziegler really wanted to ask, and so he brought it up, to avoid any awkwardness: I did invite Frau to eat with us, he said, but she refused, said she was tired … the truth is, she isn’t tired, but I don’t want you to think she’s avoiding you, either, Doctor — quite the contrary — she respects you a great deal: the truth is, I’ve put myself in your hands because she advised it, I mean it … the real reason is she’s afraid we’ll start speaking in German, which would only be natural, it’s your language after all, and I don’t mind speaking it, either … you see, Doctor, Frau … I understand her, she came here when she was just a little girl, and it’s not that she’s lost her German, but she’s had to use Italian her whole life … I don’t know what it is that keeps her from speaking German with a German, it’s as if she has to get over some kind of hurdle, as if she’s ashamed … she only speaks German with me, but imagine this, if someone annoying drops by, someone unexpected, then Frau will speak to him in German, and you should hear how good her German is then, and she’ll pretend she doesn’t know any Italian. Herr Tristano, Doctor Ziegler said, I’ll allow one more bite of cake, I’m sure you’ll sleep better tonight, you’ll have no unwelcome visitors … but I promised you a list of the symptoms leading up to the arrival of the empress, as I call her, it’s an endless list, so I’ll try to be succinct … but first, this strange term, aura … it comes from an ancient physician, Pelope, who was Galen’s teacher … he was the first to note the physical phenomenon generally signaling the onset of the seizure, a sensation that starts in the hand or foot and seems to rise toward the head. One of his patients described it as feeling like cold vapor, and since the general belief during that period was that blood vessels contained air, he thought the problem had to be vapor in the limbs that was then carried back in the veins and he called it pneumatickè aura, an immaterial vapor … Herr Tristano, when you say a star fell on your head one August night, you were really telling me the truth with that metaphor of yours … that star didn’t just fall on your head, it entered inside your head, I’m sure of it … you started seeing brilliant intermittent lights with your eyes closed, zigzagging electricity, flashing lights that no doubt looked like continuously transforming mosaics, like a kaleidoscope, am I right? Tristano, silent, gave an imperceptible nod. It’s the most common aura, Ziegler continued, light effects like fireworks going off inside your eyes, and even things, objects, seem to have glowing outlines, or they’re bright, anyway, am I right? as though they’re encircled by an electric wire and you can see the electricity running through them … but the aura symptoms, before the empress arrives and while she’s visiting, are endless … sensory hallucinations of various kinds, emotional disturbance with extreme yet indefinable emotions, impossible to describe, to communicate to others … something like ecstasy, that some even find pleasurable … who knows, perhaps many mystics suffer from terrible headaches … plus visual disorders, perceiving objects and figures as distorted, or the magnifying of an image, from what I can tell … the person in front of you looks like he’s shrinking, or growing, growing all of a sudden, in front of you, like you see in certain documentaries on plant growth, you must have seen them, a camera lens is trained on a flower bud for a week, and you watch the flower blooming in a few seconds because the image has been sped up … Lewis Carroll suffered from terrible migraines and described these optical distortions extremely well with his Alice … for that matter, he was also a mathematician, and he understood logic, he knew how to talk about his symptoms logically, even if we find his logic fantastic … and then there are hallucinations of sound … noises, hissing, buzzing, muttering that can be dim or crystal-clear, it all depends, it might be the rumbling of thunder or the roar of a fountain … but it might also be voices, many voices … the most common case histories include familiar voices, those voices that are or were a part of our life, or that we’ve listened to so much they’re stored up in our warehouse of memories … but they can also be completely unknown voices, artificial voices that our brain invents, generates. Doctor Ziegler paused. These cases are rare, complicated, Herr Tristano, I don’t want you to worry, usually they occur in migraines associated with epilepsy, but they can also occur in non-epileptic subjects, very acute forms that cause convulsive seizures … however, there is some scientific debate on the matter, and in fact, some maintain that it’s not convulsions that bring on the headache but the other way around … by now, Tristano was on his third piece of cake. I don’t think chocolate has much to do with it, either, he said … but the symptoms I described this afternoon, memories that just come rushing out of nowhere, experiences that rush by like a movie, what can you tell me about these, Doctor Ziegler? They might belong to the category of déjà vu, the doctor answered, I’m inclined to think they belong to the category of déjà vu, in a more complex clinical context, of course, but I’d say they belong to that family of temporal confusion … there have been theories advanced concerning both the physiological and the psychological bases of this phenomenon that we’ve all experienced, if only momentarily, the feeling that we’re reliving something for the second time … there seems to be a delay between our perception of something and the transmission of that perception to the brain — it’s a millionth of a second delay, of course — but our brain thinks that years have passed, the brain’s already lived through this thing — am I making myself clear? But why this should occur is still a mystery … An important physiologist defined déjà vu as a distortion of the cataloguing of time in the nervous system … such a beautiful definition. Freud, on the other hand, explored déjà vu in his studies of Unheimlich, what’s referred to as the uncanny, because the experience of the uncanny does indeed often accompany déjà vu, though it’s hard to say if it follows or precedes the incident … to Freud, déjà vu is the return of the repressed experience, which feels unwarranted, like a betrayal, and so provokes this sensation … And what theory do you support? Tristano asked. Doctor Ziegler helped himself to more cake, but to be polite, left the last bite for Tristano. Cool country air spilled in through the wide-open windows. Doctor Ziegler was preparing to leave. Since I first met you, he said, and you started this type of hybrid analysis with me, I’ve grown ever more convinced that the two theories aren’t mutually exclusive — actually in patients like you they can be the perfect marriage … good night, Herr Tristano, try to get some rest.

I must have had a dream, I dreamt about Tristano … or maybe it was the memory of a dream … or maybe the dream of a memory … or maybe both … Ah, writer, such a rebus … Do you ever keep a recording device with you? Sorry to bring this up, but I’ve begun to suspect you might have a little recorder in your pocket. But did I already ask you that? Maybe I already asked you that. Well, if you have one, turn it off, I don’t want my voice to linger; besides, you shouldn’t record a dream, you have to listen and then rewrite it, just listen, listen close and then rewrite it, that’s the start of literature, telling someone else’s dream, I’m sure it’ll come to you, you’ll work it out in your imagination, and I’m also leaving you the point of view … we’ll do it this way, the point of view is mine — well, Tristano’s — because he’s the one who lived it, but I dreamt it from my point of view and now I’m telling you, and then you’ll tell it, and so … you, I’m sure, know these tricks better than me, but I once read a book on the topic, a manual, I’ve always liked manuals; you’d be surprised: for someone you consider a man of action, I’ve read an awful lot of manuals in my life … how to perfect your dance technique, how to learn the art of chess, how to paint with watercolors, how to use the stars to guide you, how to scale the Alps … how to screw up your entire life and not even know it … If you really think about it, the point of view belongs to the dream, in the sense that it’s the dream’s point of view, not mine, not Tristano’s, because you can’t control dreams, just like you can’t control the heart, you have to live dreams the way they want to be lived, and this dream wanted me to dream Tristano, like so: Tristano was flattened out in the shrubs, I don’t like that word, flattened, but if I’m not mistaken that’s what you use in your novel, and Tristano is surrounded by thick brush that stretches all the way to the woods and the mountainside. And his finger’s quivering on the trigger of the submachine gun, and through the sight, he fixes his right eye on the farmhouse door, because he knows the Germans will have to leave by that door, as will the traitor who brought them there. Boom, boom, boom goes Tristano’s heart, and this pounding seems to carry all the way to the versants of the valley … sorry for that word, versants, it’s an Alpine word, ugly, don’t you think? I hope you’ve never used that word … and it feels like the beating of his heart echoes off these versants, magnified, boom, boom, boom … and in the strange logic of dreams, though it’s so real, Tristano sees the traitor his bullet’s waiting for, the traitor is at the door, smiling and nodding for him to come inside. And Tristano obeys the relentless logic of dreams, gets to his feet and approaches … and only as he’s crossing the clearing does he realize that this traitor isn’t the school janitor, this traitor has the face of a woman, and he knows this woman, even if she is wearing a German uniform and has a wisp of hair on her forehead, imitating some cocky-looking guy … It’s Marilyn, it’s Marilyn … Tristano wants to scream, he pulls out his knife, holds it up, waves it as though to stab that cross-dressing traitor, then he slows down, like slow-motion in a movie, because in that moment the film of Tristano’s dream is slipping into slow-motion, and his hand moves slowly, ever so slowly, one centimeter at a time, gently, a graceful arc, almost tender, almost a graceful dance, the blade in that hand that will tear into the traitor’s lungs and bring on the death the traitor deserves, but with the logic of dreams, Tristano’s hand falls to the traitor’s shoulders, about to stab, and then the hand drops the knife and is resting on Rosamunda’s bare shoulders, drawing her into an embrace, because that’s how dreams go, writer, they take you where they please, and now he’s dancing with her, that rugged mountain clearing has become a drawing room flooded with music, an Italian garden viewed from the windows, he’s dancing, holding Rosamunda who’s dressed like a German soldier, her breasts pressed to his chest, her nipples like stone … her arms are draped about his neck, and she’s caressing him, Clark, she whispers, her tongue flits into his ear, Clark, my darling, you’re the only one I ever loved, the others were just my being wicked, just my need for some male company, some reassurance when you were on your missions, down in the valley … Tristano has his arms around her waist, and he’s stroking her, and then she takes his hand, guides it toward her stomach, lower, to her groin, and now Tristano feels something hard beneath those soldier’s trousers, a male organ, an erect male organ, and she wants him to stroke it, she’s whispering in his ear, her voice hot, sensual, Tristano, the commander’s sent me, he’s not dead at all, that was all a joke, come play with us, darling, he can’t do it anymore, but he still loves me, and for him to do it he needs to watch someone strong like you, please, love me, and the poor commander will also play his part, I left him in the farmhouse on the mountain, he looked dead, but he wasn’t, he’s been there, growing old, he’s waiting for us, come join us, we’ll make a nice threesome, I promise. Twilight’s fallen, how strange, it was dawn in the mountain valley, and suddenly it’s twilight, but Tristano smiles at the woman who’s stepped outside the farmhouse, the knife he was holding has turned to a wildflower, she waves for him to come inside, come on, come on, Tristano … Tristano steps through the doorway and reenters the dream he was dreaming the moment before, behind that door he doesn’t find the rooms of a rustic farmhouse, there are people dancing in a drawing room, and beyond that room is an elegant garden that seems like the garden of a Tuscan villa, with cypress trees and boxwood hedges, and people holding glasses, and waiters in white jackets, Tristano is back at a garden party with the German officer who’s now his valet, no longer Marilyn, an older gentleman, face withered, skin peppered with age spots, who whispers a German name that Tristano doesn’t recall, the man has a monocle over his right eye and a stiff leg, maybe a false leg, who knows. In his dream, Tristano thinks that many German aristocrats lost a leg in the first world war, and then he thinks that this German might start dancing on the table, but that’s from reading books and watching movies, and dreams aren’t innocent … instead, with the unsurprised surprise of dreams, the German baron with the monocle starts speaking in English, says I’m American, and then he whispers other things lost in the murmuring of the guests, freedom … freedom … please, let me introduce you to the other guests, and his voice is icy, metallic, creaking like his false leg … What a nightmare … but it’s not a real nightmare, because I’m awake now, so I’m not telling you my dream, I’m telling you something I see, now and then this something will let go of me, like now, I’ve escaped, but then it sucks me back in as if I’m really living it, look, I’m not telling you my nightmare, it’s something real, I’m in the midst of it, must be all those drugs together, and then my head’s exploding, just exploding … Tristano, honey … He turned around: Marilyn was at the back of the garden, and she was dressed like a little girl, with bows in her pigtails, she was lying in the grass, her skirts pulled up to her belly, legs spread, behind her was a seaport with the words freedom harbor written out, and beside her was some stranger, balding, squat, round-faced, smiling, join us, this pipsqueak muttered, this is the revolution, but Tristano didn’t understand … what’s that? This chubby pipsqueak asked if he knew how to shoot a gun, we need sharp guys like you, don’t bother with those idiots and their parties, we’re using them, they’re useful, and the worse they are the better, explain it to your boy, Rosamunda, what kind of a partisan is he, anyway? — join us, Tristano, it’s time to kill — haven’t you figured that out yet? — explain it to him, Marilyn, tell him it’s time to kill … his voice lingering like an echo, kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiillll. Someone tapped his shoulder, a tall man, ugly, with a huge nose and a crooked smile, let me introduce you to the head of state of the sunken republic, Big Nose whispered in Tristano’s ear, he has very close contacts who can provide all kinds of services, treat him with the proper respect, he’s got more dead enemies on his conscience than there are grapes in a vineyard. Then Big Nose and the decorated military man took him by the elbows and steered him toward the huge barbecue pit blazing on the far side of the garden, gathered around this pit was a group of maybe ten little old men with white eyebrows carrying plates and nibbling on sausages, the air smelled entirely different in this part of the garden, more of a country fair, a sausage festival, with a tune playing that seemed familiar to Tristano but that he couldn’t place, coming from an old gramophone by the braziers. Cloned Mr. Presidents of the future republic, shouted Big Nose, it is my distinct privilege to present to you a great national hero, a man who drove out the invader — celebrate him now, before he kicks you in the ass! The ten little old men started joyfully skipping about, tossing their sausages in the air, singing the anthem along with the gramophone, si è cinto la testa, si è cinto la testa! But at that moment, out from the bush popped a squat bulldog of a fellow in a double-breasted jacket, who stomped arrogantly over to Tristano and said, friend, don’t listen to the proletarian revolutionaries, don’t listen to these old farts from the retirement home, listen to me, I’m the one who’s going to be in charge, the founder of the Pippopippi Republic, you want to be appointed manager of a top-notch program? The squat fellow licked his lips and out shot a chameleon-like tongue that washed his entire face clean. I’m your future, my dear partisan, he said, his tone of voice brooked no reply, I’m the reason you fought in the mountains, if you didn’t know it, so listen up, I’m going to tell you one thing and one thing only because I have a bass dinner waiting for me that my cook prepared, so here it is: Christ brought too many people from the East to our door, he was a Bedouin, he rode along on a donkey just to annoy to us — we’re a car-based civilization …

Ferruccio said if you start looking in the most hidden crevices of society, anywhere you look, you’ll find madness. But all those brave enough to look were mad themselves … Sorry to cut off Tristano’s dream … I didn’t get to finish it myself, there came a point when the dream was interrupted by some guy riding along on a donkey, I think, and then I was really asleep, the drugs must have worn off, and so did the hallucination, Frau told me there hadn’t been a storm, she’s always one for giving out bad news, she’s spent her life giving out bad news, she comes in and says, young sir, the evening storm they predicted last night didn’t come, so it’s hotter than it was before, but your room’s cooler than anywhere else in the house, so you should be content, the nurse is taking two days off, her son has the chickenpox, I was the one who stayed with you last night, and you slept like an angel, not one peep out of you, it’s time for your morphine, but I’m not going to give it to you, it’s poisoning you, I’m not saying you’re not hurting, but your life’s been better than mine, and I never complain, you ever hear me complain? Do you?

Writer, you know who Tristano was fighting for? Go on … of course you do, you’re just not thinking … one day Tristano realized, just like that, a flash of insight, one of those things … what’s that called in literature?… you know, when reality’s fixed like concrete, and then, as if by an act of god, there’s suddenly a crack, and you can peer into that crack, and you understand … it’s like a tiny miracle, am I making myself clear? Well … never mind … Tristano understood who it was he’d struggled for — who it was he’d fought and killed and risked being killed for … and what all the pain and suffering and ideals were for. It was for pippopippi. That’s what I call it because that’s what Tristano called that thing over there, pippopippi, and it’s not just the gadget, I mean the box, the physical object, the empirical evidence, the visible thing. The pippopippi that Tristano understood was some sort of god, some entirely new, unknown god, whose religion was an absence of religion and so devoid of any substance … and this very lack of substance was the source of its extraordinary power, superior to any ity or ism, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islamism, Shintoism, Taoism, it could participate in all of these and be no one, revealing, then, a nature that was both protein and absolute, not pure spirit, visible and illusory at once, the projection of itself and all things, dreams and desires, everything and nothing, composed of electrons, of energy, but not of molecules … Curiously, Tristano understood this without watching pippopippi, because when you watch it, it isn’t it; it’s only its hypostasis … Tristano understood the essence of pippopippi one summer night, while standing on the terrace off this room, it was an extremely clear night and he was staring up at the starry sky and thinking about Doctor Ziegler’s theories, and while he was looking for the Big Dipper or Orion, he caught sight of a star that was moving, that wasn’t a star, because it was moving and too sparkly, so it had to be artificial, and he thought he caught the beep beep of this new star out in sidereal space and it seemed to him that he was catching something in code, and he was hearing … don’t think, people, don’t think, remember not to think, thinking’s hard, it’s useless, you started thinking to make a tool from flint and then came the earthenware pot and the shovel and the chamber pot and Zyklon B and the atomic bomb, yep, good job thinking, you must be tired of thinking, just think of me and I’ll think of you, so you’ll have done your thinking, I’m pippopippi and I’ll protect you from thought itself … Tristano looked down over the plain dotted with lights from the houses, then farther, to the light from the city, the smear of yellow reflected in the night sky, and the voice of that artificial star seemed to draw all those lights together, and all those lights together let out a distant roar, like the ground churning from an earthquake, a rumbling, a grumbling all together, a Biblical sound, like something from the Book of Revelations, and this is what they rumbled: pippopippi, we’re thinking your thoughts, thank you, pippopippi … Ah, it was a bad dream, and he started having nightmares, now pippopippi’s voice began to visit him even during REM, what Doctor Ziegler called deep sleep, and its voice was flute-like or falsetto, a confessor’s whisper through the confessional grate: don’t think, remember not to think, let me think for you, Tristano, you fought for freedom and freedom’s come: it’s being liberated from thinking, no longer thinking … real freedom’s when you’re thought.

Do you know the poem that goes, long shadows over the sea, your smile, my love, and your caresses soon grow resigned, like shadows at night … and then it continues with the horizon, the waves, and all the other clichés? You know that one? Don’t tell me you know it … it doesn’t exist, no one ever wrote it, and it sounds so ordinary, let’s just put it to rest.

… but he wouldn’t cry, he mustn’t cry, he didn’t like crying. And laughing? It’s nothing to laugh at, the ridens philosopher said, laughing while he spoke … That unfree man was breathless pain that brought on choking rage, and what else could he do but scream madly into the void, cry and cluck in the vineyard, when the midday is silent heat, grinding teeth, and wails of grief, killing even the shrilling of the cicada?… Listen, listen, how did the Abderites diagnose him … you never heard of them? That’s what he called them, those doctors putting on their highfalutin doctor airs … a diagnosis with the stamp of the local health department, complete with case history and description, listen now, this was their diagnosis … man gaunt in appearance, long beard, eyes at times cloudy as though affected by choleric humors that render the cornea yellow, swearing under breath not infrequent, normally won’t respond to even the most basic questions, as though he is elsewhere, so remains silent during medical session, and still quiet, gets up to leave without turning around, and if he does turn around, makes a bizarre gesture more mocking than any form of salutation, refuses medication that has restored the smile to millions and that the state would supply free of charge, even if he is well-to-do, in the first attempt at psychological examination, patient stated they might as well, quote, stop breaking his balls about his childhood because it was happy, you’d never find one happier, he remembers an anticlerical grandfather who was passionate about astronomy, he remembers his initiation at age fifteen with an unidentified female, one of their farmworkers, a grown woman, and it was marvelous, he says the problem’s not up in the mountains but down by the sea, he’s insisted on a prescription for laudanum, that we of course didn’t prescribe, and he responded to our justified medical refusal with guffaws … This, the diagnosis of the Abderites, rendered scientific, my dear Damagetus, with a certifying stamp … today I think you’re my Damagetus, that’s what I’ll call you today, and you must have read the pages concerning this madness, because that’s where Tristano found himself, just like Damagetus writes, he was stuck between laughter and fury, the two extremes that life has to offer us at times, stuck, you might say, between a rock and a hard place, and no fissure between these two extremes, which is where virtus would lie, but Tristano had no virtus, couldn’t find any. He considered the treatment for imbalanced humors in the ancient world, tears or laughter, but neither would do, because his pain was mute, continuous, inarticulate, gnawing at his chest, searching for a voice, for words, like a creature howling deep inside a tunnel … He wasn’t inside a tunnel, the tunnel was him, he’d become a tunnel … And one day in the vineyard he saw a toad … and that toad became a dog … or did I mention this already?… patience, now, you can always rewrite it … a yellow toad that became a yellow dog with its head poking up from the ground where it had been buried, its mouth wide open … you could see down its throat, it was suffocating, the toad went glog glog, and then its voice turned into a dog’s voice, and now it showed its broken, decaying teeth, boo boo boo, it said, I’m you and you’re me, am I making myself clear?… This creature, it was being extremely clear, and Tristano suddenly understood that this was his brother … no … his mirror. And the world began to spin. He was pissing, facing the vineyard, pissing on his shoes, feeling drunk, the way you do when you suddenly understand something and start feeling dizzy, sand on sand, what he’d believed, what he’d given for freedom, a freedom buried up to the neck in sand, thank you, Tristano, you’ve really been a good little watch dog, now bark if you can, and if you can’t, then nip at the wind … Tristano looked that toad in the eye and everything was written there, and he understood now, but it was too late, the bombs had gone off, the dead were dead, the murderers were on holiday and the republican brass band was playing in the piazzas, because it was June second, and the sacred flag was snapping in the wind, and officials stood at attention by the flag, like Tristano stood at attention by the vineyard while pissing on his shoes … He saluted the toad, at your command, Signor Toad, and the toad half-dog half-toad let out a sharp cry like sirens probably cry, on that first sultry day on the plains, a voice from the mountains, a cool voice blowing down from snowy peaks, a faint song, spilling over layers of time, but sharp still, a voice calling, the olive falls, no leaves fall, your beauty won’t ever, you’re like the sea of waves, go beddy-bye, go beddy-bye, you traitor. Tristano wheeled around, staggering, sought out the shadow of his room, threw himself onto the bed, covered his ears, and tried to sleep. Which as you can imagine, writer, wasn’t possible.

Pancuervo! Pancuervo! he started screaming one day. Frau rushed to his study: he seemed to be dozing in his chair, a branch from the cherry tree was coming through the open window beside him. It was the end of May, the cherries were bright red, he leaped to his feet and screamed out the window, at the fields, Pancuervo! Frau stood very still, petrified, he stepped onto the sunny terrace, raced down the stone steps, and started dancing round the cherry tree, grasping the trunk now and then, tugging, as if he wanted to pull the tree up by the roots, kicking his legs high like a wild man of the forest, screaming, cherry pink and apple blossom white!.. Frau had followed behind him and stood there, terrified, while he danced crazily and sang these strange words, and she thought he was having some kind of fit, poor Frau, she was petrified, stood absolutely still, even when he raced off to the fields, still screaming, Pancuervooo! Pancuervooo!.. It wasn’t some kind of fit, it was that he understood, he suddenly understood, a flash of lightning come too late, that it all began in Pancuervo many years before, that there, at the end of the line from his boy exploding, sat Pancuervo, that’s where he had to look, Pancuervo … But did Pancuervo really exist?… The train pulled in, then pulled away, but he hadn’t climbed on board, he’d stayed put in a remote little station in Castile, staring off at the rolling hills, barren and strange, hills like white elephants.

… I was just drowsing a little and something popped into my head … why are you doing all this? I mean, you put up with my rotten moods, and everything else … in my opinion you’re a tricky devil, no offense, and maybe you don’t even realize it … well … you’re awfully patient … so that phrase popped into my head, tricky devil … don’t be offended, I’m a jerk, no, I’m a jailed jerk, blame it on this gangrene that’s eating me alive, I think it’s got my balls by now, do me a favor, get me that menthol talcum powder on the dresser … sorry to be so intimate, but I’ve been telling you such private things, we’re pretty close at this point … I notice you come rushing in at the ring-a-ling of my bell, no matter what time it is, even if it’s just to hear me say something mean to you, like right now … So, I guess Tristano’s life really must matter to you, huh?

The Abderites insisted that Tristano was raving mad, and I told you he was crazy, too, but the truth is, he just arrived too early … early arrivals always seem crazy, they’re fated to be Cassandras, they might just be little nothing Cassandras, but nothing Creons are still scared of them, that’s why they invented asylums, places to stuff those harmless Cassandras, while the dangerous people are on the outside, and they’re the ones in charge … You know what’s going to happen, writer?… I’ll tell you what Tristano thought after he figured out pippopippi’s true nature, because now it’s all coming to pass … pippopippi, with the solemn goal of obliterating from the mind any thought that might be harmful to him, to pippopippi, will slowly expunge all images carrying even the slightest trace of thought from all his glass boxes, until you’re all completely weaned, and anything with any sign of meaning will have completely disappeared, because the image itself, even the most paltry, wretched, repulsive image — like the ones they dish up to you every night — can lead to a thought, and thoughts are dangerous … and so you all will simply stare at the light, at the trembling electric lines, the crackling dots of light, where you’ll lose your thoughts, and the shipwreck will be sweet for you in that shimmering … a modern nirvana? maybe the fateful mu, finally attained, that Buddhism speaks of. That’s what awaits you tomorrow, writer, because after all, as Scarlett said, tomorrow is another day, I can see you all there, at night, gathered in your carpeted caves, fixated on your electric fire, all of you together murmuring muuuu … and on the hearth I lay my war cross, that piece of junk, because he shall be the lord your god, and you shall have no other gods before him … not that the electric fires in other countries will be so different from yours, to each according to his due … I say your country because mine’s almost gone … I’m already more there than here, my feet practically swinging in the air, I’m stateless, I don’t belong to anyone, my passport’s useless for the customs I have to get through, and there’s no one who can grab hold of my feet and pull me down from the orange tree, like Tristano did for his Daphne, that I can assure you.

… as I was saying, letters started arriving. No — voices — they arrived in the form of voices, even if he saw them as written, he could read each and every one of them written in the air, all with different handwriting, because each voice had its own handwriting, the timbre of the writing, each had its own tone, its own inflection, the color of the voice sending the letter. Doctor Ziegler had told him this sort of thing sometimes happened … sounds turned to colors, a type of aura … even the ink varied in color, with all shades of the color spectrum, mostly black, but also white on black sometimes, and yellows, and oranges like a summer sunset … reds … a few blues … a great many greens, all kinds of green, bottle-green, flag-green, Verona-green, and especially blister-green verging on brownish yellow. That green entered his auricle like a hiss, a green carried by the sound of sssssssssss … hissing, snaking letters, the green whistling in his ears turning magically bitter on his tongue, like chewing on a thistle. He called that green bitter-green. And he received numerous letters every day, ten, twenty, more, even at night, he’d finally fall asleep, after a great deal of effort, he might not even dream, he’d turn off like a radio turned off, no reception … actually he fooled himself into thinking he’d shut off all contact, over and out, but no, he might be over but he wasn’t out … the thing would start with a sizzle, I’m not sure how to describe it, like when you twist the radio dial and there’s a crackling, and he’d wake up, hoist his head off the pillows, frozen in the dark room, a letter was arriving, that strange mailman was ringing, the doorbell insisting, sizzling in the dark, as though they’d laid his ear on a red-hot grill, shssss shssss shssss, and they weren’t all written in black or bitter-green ink, maybe some were in blue, even a sky blue, a blur of childhood and lost memories … Dear Ninototo, you scratched Ninototo Ninototo all over the walls of the stable with a piece of coal, and I found that amusing, because no one taught you how to write, so you learned it on your own, but this morning, I found this same writing on the wall to the farm, and along with it, words I never heard you say, and I had to call Amilcare, and it took two buckets of lime to cover all that writing, all those words, my dear boy, you mustn’t write these things, because they shock peasants like Amilcare, on Sundays they go to mass, and the priest will scold them if they say these words, and finding them written here has an impact, these peasants are respectful, they believe in god, and we must let them believe in god, so you may only say these words to Nonno when we’re together, otherwise Nonno won’t take you to the town fair again for the San Giovanni Festival, like we did last year, is that clear, Ninototo?… His grandfather’s voice was written in blue. His grandfather kept a red shirt hanging in his wardrobe because he’d been in Garibaldi’s army, and there was a saber leaning against the red shirt that Ninototo saw on Saturday afternoons when he was allowed in his grandfather’s room. But even with that red shirt, his grandfather’s voice was sky-blue and Tristano, head hoisted off the pillows, completely awake at this point, frightened, would clearly see that blue voice in the dark. Nonno, he’d say into the darkness, why’d you wake me? — I was just falling asleep, I can barely sleep these days, listen, Nonno, that was so long ago, I don’t remember anymore, so much time has passed, Nonno, I’m as old as you — no, older — please, Nonno, rest in peace and let me rest, too, but what’s gotten into you, sending me a letter just now, I worked so hard to fall asleep, you know, I’m all alone now, I don’t have anyone anymore, that boy I loved like a son brought death with him … so gentle, so quiet, how’s that even possible?… Nonno, what I did back then was wrong, I know why you’re scolding me, but are you trying to tell me what I did as a grownup was wrong, too, is that why you’re writing me, Nonno?

… Another letter, hard to define the color, maybe colorless. My darling Clark, that’s what I’ll call you from now on, since no one knows your name here, you’ve given out two or three, but only the commander knows your real name, I’m going to call you Clark because with that wisp of hair on your forehead and that little ironic smile, you resemble an actor from my country that I really like, but I like you even more, and I like it when you wrap your strong arms around me at night, but tonight we can’t, my darling Clark, I know you’re going down to the valley with the squad they’ve given you, I’m going down with the Gesso squad, you’re headed to the eastern versant, I’m headed to the western versant, the commander finally ordered me into action, and this is why they had me parachute into these mountains, he’ll stay here by himself, but he’s got nothing to worry about, the Savoy soldiers make good guards, and tomorrow night I’ll be back with you in your shelter, I promise, I think after this military action you’ll have to obey me and stop calling me Rosamunda, I don’t like it when you call me that, my name’s Marilyn, and you, Clark, what’s your name, won’t you tell me?… Another: bitter-green. Tristano, you’re awful, what you’re suggesting’s obscene, it was a paradoxical affair, not tied to my real life, my heart was always so full of this frustrated love for you, there was very little room for a man in my life, and that paradoxical situation was, paradoxically, the only one that worked for me … I wasn’t the one who betrayed you in the mountains, you wanted to believe that — and you know why, too — you know you needed to think that someone else was doing the betraying … Another: a rich color. Dear comrade, I’m not writing to you as commander, I’m writing to you as a comrade, if it’s all right to call you that even if you might not entirely sympathize with the deeper meaning of the word. I really appreciate your position and how honest you’ve been with me about your political views, I don’t want you to think that I consider you a bourgeois intellectual as you’ve accused me, and I also don’t want you to think of me as a diehard proletarian-lover, which is how you put it, and which didn’t offend me in the least, you should know this, because I value your ideas just as I hope you value mine, you’re brave and I respect you as a man and as a combatant, when all this is over, we’ll sit down and calmly discuss our ideas; for now, let’s just stick to firing at the enemy, and not at each other … Another: yellow. Tristano, I’m beginning to understand that no one wants to take responsibility for anything in your country, as if everything that happened, what we came to rid you of, was no one’s fault, and this allowed some to flirt with communist countries, as if any kind of totalitarianism was good, no matter what, me, I’m staying in Spain for now, I don’t have the heart to go back to Cincinnati, Spain’s different, really, and the ghost of old Ernest surrounds me here, is my amulet … but why did you decide to stay behind at that small train depot in the middle of nowhere, why didn’t you come with me, was it because you were afraid to understand? Another: black, in black vestments. Tristano, I entrusted him to you, and you didn’t know how to protect him, and you’re not capable of cutting off her head, the head of Medusa who hypnotized him, you’re the same coward you were back then.

… Because he had a mirror, Perseus managed to cut off the head of Medusa, who turned people to stone with her stare, and when he held up his trophy by the snake hair, he was able to free Andromeda from the sea monster, and then he married her … The principal star in the Perseus constellation is Algenib, or Mirfak … Arabic names … the Arabs were such great navigators, always sailing the seas and studying the stars … In Arabic, Algenib means keep to the right, and this is the brightest star, easily seen with the naked eye … thousands of times brighter than the sun, but the most well-known star is Algol, which means the demon’s head, apparently sailors found this star the most useful, who knows why … the Perseids are shooting stars that originate in the Perseus constellation, astronomers say they’re the remains of lasting comets, comets that have lasted god knows how long, you can see them around the tenth of August, maybe if you take a peek out the window, you’ll get to see them, I always did, it was like an appointment, every August tenth, but it must be long past August tenth by now, lying here, I’ve lost track.

I landed on this island late in the day. From the ferry, I watched the harbor approaching, and the small white town perched around the Venetian-style castle, and I thought, maybe he’s here. And I wandered narrow lanes that led to the tower, carrying my suitcase that every day grew lighter, and up every step I’d repeat to myself, maybe he’s here. In the small square below the castle, a terrace overlooking the harbor, there’s a cheap restaurant with old iron tables along a low wall, two flower beds with two olive trees, and bright red geraniums in rectangular pots. Old men sit on the wall and talk quietly, children run around a marble bust of a mustached captain, a hero in the Balkan Wars of the twenties. I sat down at a small table, set my suitcase on the ground, smoothed my skirt, and ordered a typical island dish, rabbit and onions, that smelled of cinnamon. The first tourists show up in early June. Night was falling, a clear night, the cobalt sky going bright purple, then darker, to indigo. Out on the water, the lights glimmered from the villages of Paros, which seemed only a few short steps away. Yesterday I met a doctor on Paros. He’s from the South, I believe from our Crete, though I didn’t ask. He’s short and stocky, with a veined nose. I was watching the horizon and he asked if I was watching the horizon. I’m watching the horizon, I answered. The only line that breaks the horizon, he said, is a rainbow. An optical trick, pure illusion. And we talked about illusions, and though I didn’t want to, I spoke of you, I brought up your name without even trying, and he told me he met you once because he’d sutured your veins after you slit your wrists. I didn’t know, and I was moved, and I thought I’d find a bit of you in him, because he’d known your blood. So I went back with him to his hotel, the Thalassa, on the boardwalk, it was dingy, full of the sort of middle-class foreigners who spend their vacations in Greece and detest the Greeks. But he wasn’t like them, he was kind, shy when he undressed, and his member was small, slightly twisted, like those terracotta satyr statues in the Athens museum. And it wasn’t so much that he wanted a woman as a few comforting words, because he was unhappy, and I pretended to comfort him, for pity’s sake. I looked for you, my love, for every speck of you dispersed in the universe. I gathered what I could, from the ground, the air, the sea, the glances and gestures of others. I even looked for you in the kouroi on a far-off mountain of one of these islands, because you told me once that you sat on a kouros’s lap. It wasn’t easy getting up there. The bus left me in Sypouros, if that’s what this unknown village is even called, since it’s not on any map, and then I had to do the last three kilometers on foot, I trudged up the winding dirt road, which further on, led to a valley of cypresses and olive trees. There was an old shepherd by the road, and I said the only word to him that mattered: kouros. And his eyes shone with a light of complicity as though he understood, as though he knew who I was and who I was looking for, that I was looking for you, and without a word, he pointed to a path, and I gathered up his guiding gesture and that brief light shining in his eyes, and I put them in my pocket, look, they’re right here, I could lay them out on this little patio table where I’m dining, they’re two more chips of the crumbled fresco I’m desperately gathering, trying to put you back together, along with the smell of that man I spent the night with and the rainbow on the horizon and this pale blue sea that makes me feel so anxious. And above them all is the barred window I discovered on Santorini, the one with a grapevine climbing the bars, which looks out over the vast sea and a small public square. The sea was endless kilometers, and the small square a few meters across, and I recalled some poems about the sea and about squares, a sea of shimmering tiles that I saw from a cemetery with you, and a small square and the people living there who’d seen your face, and I looked for you in the shimmering of that sea because you’d seen it, and in the eyes of the shopkeeper, the pharmacist, the little old man who sold iced coffee in that small square, because they’d seen you. And I put these things in my pocket, too, in this pocket that’s myself and my eyes. A priest stepped onto the church square. He was sweating in his black robes and reciting a Byzantine liturgy and the kyrie was colored by you. On the horizon, a boat leaves a trail of white foam over the blue. Is that you as well? Perhaps. I might put it in my pocket. But in the meantime a foreigner, an early tourist — early for the season, but practically old herself — is on a payphone by the sea that’s open to the wind and anyone passing by, and she’s saying, Here the weather is wonderful. I will remain very well. And these are your words, I recognize them even in another language, though of course we know this is just a tourist’s attempt at translating something you’ve already said into English. Spring has passed for us, my dearest friend, my dearest love. And autumn’s come, with its yellowing leaves. No — it’s the dead of winter in this untimely summer cooled by a breeze on this terrace overlooking Naxos Port. Windows, that’s what we need, a wise old man in a distant country once told me, the vastness of reality is incomprehensible, and to understand it, we must lock a rectangle around it, geometry is opposed to chaos, that’s why men invented windows that are geometrical, and every structure assumes right angles. And is our life subject to right angles as well? You know, those difficult routes, composed of segments that we all must get through just to reach our death. Perhaps, but if a woman like me sits thinking on an open terrace by the Aegean Sea on a night like this, she understands that everything we think and live and have lived and imagine and long for, that all of this can’t be governed by geometry. And that windows are only a timid geometric form for men afraid of the circular gaze, where everything beyond the window frame might enter, senseless and irreparable, like Thales gazing at the stars. Everything I collected of you, crumbs, dust, fragments, traces, guesses, intonations left behind in others’ voices, grains of sand, a conch, your past that I imagined, our supposed future, what I wanted from you, what you promised me, my childhood dreams, the love I felt for my father as a child, some silly poems from my youth, a poppy along a dusty road — that went into my pocket, too, you understand? The corolla of a poppy, like the poppies I’d collect in May, when I drove up into the hills in my Volkswagen, while you stayed home, consumed with your projects, the complicated recipes your mother left you, scribbled in French in a little black book, and I’d gather poppies for you, and you didn’t understand. I don’t know if you planted your seed in me, or if it was the other way around. Each of us is alone, with no transmission of future flesh, and most of all I have no one to gather up my anguish. All of them, I’ve wandered all these islands, all of them, searching for you. And this is the last, just as I’m the last. After me, no more. And who besides me would look for you? I won’t betray you, cut the thread. Not even knowing where your body lies. You surrendered to your Minos, whom you thought you’d tricked, but who swallowed you instead. And so I read epigraphs in every cemetery I can find, searching for your beloved name, where I might cry for you at least. Two times you betrayed me, the second, when you hid your body. And now here I sit at this table on a terrace, staring out to sea, eating rabbit seasoned with cinnamon. A lazy old Greek is singing an ancient song for coins. There are cats, children, two British tourists my age talking about Virginia Woolf, and a lighthouse in the distance that they don’t even see. I made you leave the labyrinth that you forced me into, but for me there’s no exit, not even one that’s final. Because my life is over, and everything is slipping past, with no chance for a connection that will lead me back to myself or to the cosmos. I’m here, the breeze caresses my hair, and I’m groping in the dark, because I’ve lost my thread, Theseus, the one I gave you …

You like it? I thought about it all night, rewrote it in my head, word for word, but I’m sure you’ll improve it once you write it down; make it poignant, if you can … I’m not much good at heartbreak, but that’s exactly what this calls for, because this is a letter that truly came out of nowhere … Who wrote that letter to Tristano, and from what depths did it emerge, like a relentless sea-bass pushing up in time from the bottom of the ocean until one day it breaks the surface of the water? Was she still living, that woman searching for his grave? — and why — to dig her own beside it? Daphne was no longer there, but her voice remained, so her search for him remained as well. Can we survive ourselves? Who can say … Eyes wide-open in the dog days of August, with words from a letter but no letter in his hand, the air thick with viscous remorse, like ammoniac gas leaking from a punctured pipe, Tristano stood there, frozen in the blinding midday sun, naked as the day he was born, as he’d fled from the house, fled from voices invoking spirits that were invoking him … his hanging, flaccid member, a useless compass needle, indicating a non-cardinal point that he knew to be the ground, and more than the ground, the bottom, and more than the bottom, the pit, and eternity … and the slight kiss of light on his body turned to shadow, blinding shadow that swallowed all … He raised his arms, groping, and he felt he inhabited nothing, was made of nothing, too. Was he already dead? Who could say, who could say … No one can say, writer, I’m the only one who knows, and maybe I don’t know, either, because you don’t just die on the outside, you die on the inside even more.

I’ll be honest, before you came I thought I’d tell you everything about Mavri Elià, no one’s ever mentioned her, and luckily, you ignored her in your book as well … I told myself that I’d make things right again. How foolish, as if things could be made right in this life … but I don’t feel like it anymore, Mavri Elià is Tristano’s and his alone, why should I give her to you, you don’t deserve her … at most, I’ll give you a few of the essential details, limit myself to the so-called facts. But what do facts mean?… the facts … let’s say this … the facts … when she disappeared, for instance … when she passed away, like someone might say who uses expressions like, it is my obligation to, and, my condolences. So stupid, people don’t die, it is my obligation to be precise, they’re only under a spell … a writer you must be familiar with said we’re under the spell of those who love us — I mean those who really really love us — and we wind up floating off the ground, like balloons, though no one sees, the only ones who see are those who love us, those who really really love us, and they rise up on tiptoe, give a little hop, just a bounce, and grab hold of our legs, which at this point have turned to air, and they pull us down, keep hold of us, otherwise we’d start flying again, rising again, but they link their arm in ours, holding us down, down with them, as if nothing had occurred, as we do with certain pretenses in our life, a matter of social convention, so we won’t look bad in front of the shopkeeper or the tobacco-store owner who’s known you forever and might say, but look at that strange guy arm-in-arm with his wife who’s floating right off the ground … and that’s what happened to him, to Tristano, it was Sunday, and even if it wasn’t, make it Sunday, because I’ve decided that everything important to Tristano happened on a Sunday, and if you write it this way in your book, what you write will become true, because when things are written down they become true … and it was August, because I’ve decided all the important things in Tristano’s life happened on a Sunday in August, and if you write it this way, then it will become true as well, you’ll see … he wandered around empty Plaka and thought about how sad she looked at times, and about some sad evenings at Malafrasca, Daphne, pensive, staring out the open windows toward the plains, the gas lamps, and her saying in her Crete accent, Tristano, if there’s one thing I want, it’s not to be buried out there when I die, in that cemetery covered by fog, take me home and have me cremated, and scatter my ashes in my sea, around my Aegean islands, but nothing dramatic, please, something simple, just wander here and there, go from one island to the next, borrow a little fishing boat, take it a little ways out from shore, not too far, at Sifnos, Naxos, Paros, and throw a pinch here, a pinch there, and also, please lie naked in the bottom of the boat, like when we made those trips because you got it into your head to fish for gambusinen, but you never did fish for them, and we’d wind up making love, the boat rocking crazily and you shouting, shipwrecked once more!.. Tristano stopped at the men’s shop in Plaka, she was lying in the Byzantine chapel nearby, it was so hot … and he thought the shopkeeper might find a way to get her back because he’d known her since she was a girl, but the shopkeeper didn’t remember her, then Tristano went to the snack kiosk and asked the little man if he remembered a woman who bought candies there as a girl, her name’s Daphne, Phine, her friends always called her Phine, she’s lying in a coffin in the chapel close by, on the square, if you remember her, could you give her back to me? I’ve heard about these magic spells, and I’m trying … But the little man at the kiosk didn’t remember Daphne, sorry, he said, but Greece is filled with Daphnes … and then Tristano turned to the legless woman selling violets, and the legless woman selling violets remembered her at once, of course, of course, she said, that girl with eyes like two black olives, it was a long time ago, but I remember her very well, look, she hasn’t just vanished into thin air, she’s right there beside you, up by that orange tree, just grab her legs and pull her down … Spells are strange, writer, because just like that, Tristano swung round and there was Mavri Elià floating by an orange tree, and he told her, how silly, I’m old and must be going blind, you were right there behind me and I didn’t even notice, thank god for the lady selling violets who made me see you were only under a spell … Thank you, ma’am, he said to the legless woman selling violets, and he pulled Daphne down from the tree and they started strolling around Plaka, but it wasn’t as he thought, it was a winter day, and Daphne was saying, come inside the door, they’re shooting — it’s dangerous — and you’ve killed a German officer.

Ferruccio said that lesser organisms have greater vitality than those that are more evolved. That’s the theory of someone who died young, people who think like that have to die young, just to be consistent … I’d tell you a story, a nice little tidbit, something no one really suspects, but I’m tired now, it must be getting late, I need to sleep … I’ll say it briefly, and you’ll have to do some embellishing, because it’s not all that exciting … but right now I really need to sleep, I can’t hold out any longer. Tomorrow, please come early, at dawn even, I’ll be awake then, there’s not much time left, I want to die before the end of August, and September’s knocking at the door, I can hear it.

I realize we’re at the end now, I’m telling you this because tonight I was thinking of entering my circle … I mean, I’ve already been trotting around in here a little while … funny verb, to trot, for someone with a leg in this condition, can’t you just see it?… I can — try to picture it — some scrawny old guy, completely naked, just a sheet around him, dragging his chewed-up leg, hopping around in an empty space, making a circle … thinking about it, you want to cheer him on … get in there, go on, decide already, you can do it!.. There’s something I was thinking I wouldn’t tell you, I’ve resisted up to now, I was thinking to myself that all in all, it didn’t really add anything, anyway, and then I told myself that it’s not like it does much for Tristano’s character … just the opposite … and it feels like I’ve already ruined your character a bit … but ruined isn’t the right word … troubles … you know, a writer invents a character and purifies him somehow … I’m not being very clear here, it’s not that the writer purifies his character, it’s that whatever this character is, even if the author gives his character a human life — and people’s lives are filled with troubles, man’s a cruel animal — it’s still a life on paper, and on paper, troubles don’t stink … but if someone tells you certain things that he’s actually lived, and more than that, if he tells you these things in the flesh, right next to you, and he’s breathing and maybe his flesh isn’t in the best of shape, either, then those troubles he’s telling you are less aseptic, am I making myself clear?… But, when someone’s reaching the end … in short, I thought that thanks to you, these troubles will turn to paper, and so you’ll render them more abstract. But troubles aren’t … who knows … at times it’s so hard to tell the difference between cruelty and justice … killing … or murdering … Tristano was a pacifist, you know this from that interview a long time ago, before he made himself disappear, and he was especially opposed to the death penalty, that obtuse, bureaucratic, state-provided death on officially stamped paper … sure, but this is a matter of principle and would be worth something in a perfect world, and if you follow this principle to the extreme, then you need to go embrace that Chilean general who murdered thousands in the stadiums, go on, give him a hug and tell him about loving his fellow man, maybe you’ll wind up friends … Unfortunately, the world’s not like Tolstoy imagined, where you can convince a murderer through love and forgiveness … it would be beautiful, this utopia. Hitler promised that Nazism would reign a thousand years in Europe, you think we should allow it in the name of brotherly love?… Our principles rule out homicide, but killing a tyrant — the Beast — who’d devour our principles, this doesn’t contradict our principles … Anyway, I’ll leave that dilemma to you, it doesn’t concern me anymore … I’ll be brief, I don’t feel like going into too much detail, and really, it’s not necessary for the story, all you need to know is that Tristano wasn’t alone and that Taddeo was driving. A detail: Tristano wasn’t young anymore, no, he was old and needed some company … and Taddeo was also rather old, but he was the company Tristano wanted … No, listen, I’ve changed my mind, I’m only going to give you the details of the story, that’s what I want, I’m leaving out the essential part, you’ll figure that out on your own … meaning, where Tristano learned to unravel the knot, how he found the exact right spot, and who helped him in his search … that doesn’t matter. Taddeo was driving the car and Tristano was humming a little nursery rhyme, ahi luna luna luna el niño la mira mira el niño la está mirando … There’s a gypsy legend that the full moon steals children, the child she stole from him was no longer a child but was still a child to him … Proserpina covers the dead with white sheets, luna luna luna lead the way … the road was dusty white with low shrubs on either side, and it was whiter still in the headlights … Tristano had already written a postcard to Rosamunda but hadn’t mailed it yet, it was still in the glove compartment … everyone had left that small town, it had become a tourist village, said the carabinero who gave him directions, but a specific kind of tourist village, d’élite, since those living there already were cultural tourists, that’s what he’d called them, a thoughtful community, everyone quiet, reflective, not like those young people going to discos or throwing parties with loud music and everybody getting drunk, and we’ll have to break them up … And the house was truly elegant as seen from the outside, an old country house remodeled by an intelligent architect, the kind that restores and doesn’t ruin the landscape … And its tenant, too, was an elegant gentleman, friendly, and he welcomed them in a friendly manner; for that matter, they came as friends, but I’m not saying how that happened, how they managed to get themselves welcomed as friends, because that’s not a detail … and how things unfolded exactly isn’t a detail at all, after they took a seat on those beautiful sofas draped with traditional Castilian shawls, and that pleasant gentleman offered them a first-rate brandy, aged Carlos Primero, this detail’s worth emphasizing, because brandy aids in digestion, another important detail, because they’d had an extravagant dinner, he and Taddeo, an important detail, not just for the gazpacho and the roasted angulas, which Taddeo had never tried before, but because if it was after dinner, it was night and rather late … A brandy Taddeo liked so well that he accepted a second, and then a third, and while he was drinking his third glass he said — another detail — that he really needed it that evening, something to put some fire in his veins … And now we’ve arrived at the essential part, what I’ll spare you, like I promised … I’d just like to add one more detail, that before this essential part, Tristano set a photo on the table of a boy in a wicker chair under a pergola, a jug of water in front of him and he was holding a book, you could tell it was summer, and the boy had straight, dark hair, and looked happy, his smile spoke of going out to meet the world … And he showed that photo and said … he said … I don’t remember, writer, I swear, I couldn’t tell you the exact words, but since it’s not a detail, I’ll just give you the basic gist, you can assume he said he was showing the gentleman that photo because he wanted to emphasize that this boy was his son and that he loved him very much … And at this point, that pleasant gentleman understood everything and became far from pleasant, as you might imagine, and Tristano didn’t just stop there, now he wanted to know where this man, this pleasant gentleman, had gotten his orders … which organizations, and whose, meaning, were they overseas or homegrown? And if it was something national, were these men who’d strayed from the right path, or those who’d found the right way? But these are details I’ll let you decide on, writer, as to the rest, if you have the patience for it, there’s a dossier, thousands of pages’ worth, sitting in the archives of our republic’s parliament … they’re the records of a committee with an unusual name, no other country in Europe has such a committee, we alone can brag of reaching such heights, of our parliamentary committee for mass murder, with its records available to all citizens, if you ever find the time, go take a look, I’m happy to leave all that to you, just like I’m happy to leave you this century … And when the snakes on Medusa’s head finally went limp, the two men stepped out into the night, Taddeo got back behind the wheel, there was a beautiful full moon, luna luna luna el niño la mira mira el niño la está mirando, and as they drove past a church on a small square, Tristano noticed a mailbox attached to the side of the bell tower, and it seemed like the most fitting mailbox for the postcard he’d written to Rosamunda, Miss Marilyn-Rosamunda, celestial Pancuervo, Cosmos. That was the address … an address no postman in this world could trace, but Tristano preferred it that way, he felt as though a weight had been lifted … In dreams begins responsibility, I did what you asked me to in a dream. Farewell, Tristano.

In the distance, you could make out fires on the mountains, maybe shepherds. Night was falling, a feeble purple tingeing the strip of land blue, and a word came to him that he hadn’t thought of in years, bluing, that blue liquid housekeepers added to the wash … and now the road ran straight toward the mountain, a cluster of lights on the slope, a village, perhaps, no, not Thebes, Ghiannis said, though Thebes is just a village now, but we’ve already passed it and you didn’t notice, it’s just some little town, but now we’ll be rounding a lot of curves, we’re climbing toward Parnassus, which is only a hill in literature but is really a massive mountain, maybe we’ll stop and eat in Arachova … And then Ghiannis started talking about the Crimean War, who knows why, and Tristano recalled his elementary-school teacher who’d loved him, and his schoolbook primer, and on that Parnassus of defunct muses, faceless faces appeared in the night, General La Marmora and his bersaglieri, and most of all, a voice singing, I had a pony all dappled gray … But the moon was an icy disc, the road empty; a stray dog by the side of the road seemed to be waiting for someone, straining its neck, head tilted upward, perhaps the creature was howling … And with that image there came another voice, one of those voices that had settled inside him, or maybe it was always the same voice, just different tones, and it was singing a dirge like a lullaby … Antheos, he said, if you know that poem “Voices,” then recite it for me in the Greek, would you? My name’s not Antheos, Ghiannis said, it’s Ghiannis. Do it anyway, Tristano said, you sound just like a friend I had in Plaka many years ago, but I called him Marios, at times we hear them talking in our dreams, at times in thought they echo through the brain … They started up the mountain, the olive grove of Delphi stretched out below, they stopped beside the omphalòs … he looked up. The sky hung low, a blanket of dripping fog, Tristano stroked the curving surface of the stone and then started up toward the temple of Apollo. A little man in raggedy clothes was sitting under the columns of Athena’s Sanctuary, trying to keep out of the rain, he had a buzuki on his lap and when he saw Tristano, he started plucking the strings. Tristano gave him a coin and the man began to sing softly, something old, maybe, but he barely even knew the chorus, tram to teleutaio, then a dedah dedah … a sad folk song … He asked the man to sing it more clearly, but he didn’t understand … Essùrossa ki arghìsame, ma osso ke na fteo, perpàta na prolàvume, to tram to teleutaio … I got drunk, we were late, a mistake, but let’s grab the last tram, dedah dedah, ring the bell tonight, dedah dedah … it’s the last tram … He asked Ghiannis to wait for him, and he started up toward the temple of Apollo, careful to keep his footing on the wet paving stones. He laid his hand on a lopped-off column and made a sign, he’d read somewhere that this was how you called the oracle. He squatted in the rain and lit a cigarette … Not even the shadow of a Pythia — of course not — they hadn’t existed for centuries. You idiot, he told himself, you came all this way, you just needed to really concentrate, a nice cozy headache and the Pythia would have come calling … The rain was falling harder, he got to his feet and made his way down slowly in the dark. Far off, on the horizon, he could see the lights on the coast, Galaxidi … a line of trembling lights, yellow, only one was white, strange, that one white light in a line of yellow, Tristano concentrated on that light and it started coming closer, rushing toward him, plowing into him like a meteor, and then he was in a cold, deserted square, a Nazi officer lying at his feet, he stood there, staring in amazement at his rifle, and a girl was pushing open a large front door, gesturing for him to come inside … But is this the riddle I came to solve, he murmured, this past is already clear to me … I know, the cypress answered, this isn’t the past you came for … you came to hear your real past told in my voice, because you don’t have the courage for it yourself, so you’re leaving it to me, predictor of the future, to predict what’s already been and won’t ever change … so listen … one day, many years ago, you’ll find yourself in the woods, in the mountains, on a pale, cold dawn, and you’ll be hiding behind a rock and clutching a submachine gun, waiting for your enemies to leave a ruined farmhouse … you’ll be impatient, trembling because you’re cold and frightened, because what you need to do is critical, the fate of all your comrades, of the ideals you’re fighting for, they’re in your hands … and finally those enemies will leave the farmhouse, and you’ll fire your precise blasts, and kill them all … now that mountain clearing is dead silent, and you get to your feet, triumphant, you’re the new squad commander, a hero, you’ve killed them all and even avenged the old commander’s slaughter … but then, something unexpected — your temples are pounding, you’re freezing cold — a woman has stepped outside the farmhouse, her hair tousled as though she’s been asleep, her eyes wide, astonished, terrified … she sees you, she’s standing in the clearing, surrounded by dead soldiers, she looks like a statue, and she’s screaming at you, traitor! — spy — traitor!.. You’d like to go meet her, tell her he was only an old commander and that it was for one person and one person only that you killed them all … but you don’t say a word, as if your thoughts freeze in the air and can’t find a voice … how’s it possible?… she was supposed to be on a mission tonight in the valley, but … she was here … now you point your gun at her, she’s in your sights, one round and you’ll be vindicated and the one witness to what really happened will disappear, and you will be a perfect hero … But you won’t fire, the Pythia knows this, and so do you … Pilgrim, did you know she spent her nights at that farmhouse? Is that why you became a spy? Or was it because you really wanted to slaughter a German platoon? Or was it because that commander fighting a common enemy believed in a different future than you, and so that made him your enemy as well?… Your life holds three possibilities, pilgrim, but the Pythia can’t know what they are: she can predict what’s going to happen, but not the will behind it, because Oracles might know what happens outside a man, but they can’t read his thoughts.

… But instead, the world’s composed of acts, actions … concrete things that then are gone, because, writer, an action takes place, it occurs … and occurs only in that one precise moment, then disappears, is no longer there; it was. For an action to remain, it needs words, which continue to make it be, they bear witness. Verba volant isn’t true. Verba manent. All that remains of what we are and what we were are the words we’ve said, the words you’re writing down now, writer, and not what I did in that given place and that given time. Words remain … my words … and above all, yours … words that bear witness. The word is not at the beginning, writer; it’s at the end. But who bears witness for the witness? Here’s the point: no one bears witness for the witness … Happy, unhappy, that’s not the problem, you know, what I’m consoled by, writer, is that in the great summation of things, in your odious summation filled with figures, I don’t figure in, I’m not a single unit among the others, I haven’t been counted into the total, okay, you wanted me to be even and I was odd, I screwed up your calculations … That’s my poem for Monday, or Tuesday … I’ve forgotten Sunday’s — I didn’t like it — so take this as my gift to you instead.

… But in spite of what I was saying earlier, I have an advantage over you, my friend: I am voice; yours is only writing, mine is voice … writing’s deaf … these sounds you’re hearing in the air will die on the page, writing fixes them, kills them, like a fossil crystallized in quartz … writing is a fossilized voice, no longer living, its spirit, once waves vibrating in space, has disappeared … in a little while my voice will be gone, and your writing will remain … sure, you can record my voice, but it will be dead, it will always be the same words, unchanging, with no volition, into infinity, not a voice, a facsimile of a voice … while what I’m saying to you, even if I have to force myself with my cracked vocal cords that croak and wheeze, the words I say are alive, because they’re my breath, until … a voice is breath, writer, listen now, do you hear it, how the cicada’s cry shatters the oppressive silence? And the suffocating breathing of the August countryside … do you hear it?… the countryside is breathing like you and me, like everything around us breathes, this globe turning in space, we as we turn on it, and the space we turn in, and the universe that space turns in, and the universes the universe turns in … but stop thinking about the rotation of the earth, think about my head, I’ve got a splitting headache, right now, as I reach the end, headaches are diehard, harder than we are, see if you can find me something on the dresser, any kind of pill … and god, too, if there is one, god breathes … imagine the lungs he must have … cosmic, I’d say, with monstrous alveoli opening and closing like jaws, measureless breath, but he is breathing … today is the last day for me, or the second to last, I can’t be any more precise, but trust me when I say my breathing’s at an end, I can hear it, and so’s my voice, this voice that’s told you a life as best it could, sorry, I’d like to have done a better job, but you probably understand … you don’t tell a life, like I already said, you live a life, and while you’re living it, it’s already lost, has slipped away … so what you’ve heard is a resurrected time, but it’s not the time of that living breath, that breath can’t be repeated, all you can do is tell it, like a gramophone … Besides, look, I haven’t told you anything new, I’ve told you an ancient story, History’s told this story a thousand times over, poor thing, just like us, we men, History doesn’t have many choices, someone had to say it … so someone, always meaning well, has to sacrifice himself … our story started with Judas, and look at our contempt for him, we should reflect more on the sacrifice he made, it’s not that easy making a choice, even if you mean well, it was the ultimate choice, the choice of choices, he deserves some rehabilitation, since I’m asking you to rehabilitate a few folks today … there’s a colleague of yours from Argentina who’s confronted this riddle like few others, I’ve read him over and over … just incredible … but he makes a theorem of it, maybe he knew little about life and more about its apparatus, what we call paradigms … But when you dig under paradigms you often find shit, and that’s hard to solve, there’s no solution to shit … You talk about a hero and maybe you find shit … so what do you do — build a statue? Why not? — printed words have the same function, in the end, they’re a future memory, like a statue, memory and oblivion at the same time, because someday the first will be swallowed by the second … but if it were only oblivion it would already be quite a lot, because before that there’d be memory, which they say refers to reality, but I’m afraid that words are only under the delusion of grabbing hold of reality … in my view they only describe the apparatus of reality, so we’re back to the paradigm … but underneath, is life … teeming life, like when you lift a stone and find an ant nest, ants fleeing in every direction … we call this an ant nest, and everyone understands what we mean by this, but an ant nest is composed of ants, and all the ants have fled. So what do you have left? A hole. Dig, though, go ahead and dig.

Who knows how much they’ll wind up hating you for telling my story … especially in this country where you happen to live … and in this century you’re moving into. You know, if there’s someone everyday judases — who betray just to betray — absolutely hate, it’s the real Judas, who betrayed out of loyalty … but don’t you pay any attention, you’ve had the privilege of hearing Tristano’s voice, his living voice, as they say, and no one’s going to hear it anymore, because it’ll be dead. And now, Tristano’s truly tired, he’s out of breath, listen, he must want to sleep, but not just a quick nap from an injection, a long sleep, the kind of sleep that compensates for all the effort of living … It’s time now for his eyelids to lower, for a darkness to spread inside that’s darker than the darkness of drawn shutters … You never tell me what day it is, or maybe I just keep forgetting, but it’s still August, the dog days are coming to a close, I’m sensing something in the air of September, I don’t know what, something of September, but I got there first, I screwed him over … You know what Tristano’s seeing behind his eyelids? An August night from years ago, so many years ago, he’s a boy sitting on his grandfather’s knee, and they’re out in the barnyard, and his grandfather knows so much about the sky and has promised to explain the sky to him that evening, his grandfather’s a gruff man, he went all the way down to Sicily to shoot at the Bourbons and now he has a red shirt tucked away in a bureau smelling of camphor, everyone’s very formal with him, except the boy, and his grandfather laughs with him a good deal, now he’s taken hold of the boy’s hand and is pointing it toward the starry sky, and he tells him to close one eye like he’s aiming a musket, a bit more on high, he says, a bit more to sea — can you find it? — that’s Orion, the north’s behind us, what your nonno calls on high, understand, Ninototo? Behind Tristano’s eyelids, the grandfather has an odd voice, he and the boy he’s speaking to are one and the same person — so strange. But is it any stranger than the sky, with all those stars up there forever?… The things of this world are so old that by being old they’re rejuvenated, as if they were tired of being old. We’ll start in the west, his grandfather says — no — we’ll start in the south, what your nonno calls to sea when he’s talking to the cowherds. We’ll start in the south because that’s where you find Equuleus, the Little Horse, here, let me show you, follow my finger, at night I heard nonna sing you the lullaby of the dappled pony to make you fall asleep, I had a pony all dappled gray that counted clip-clops to the moon … there they are, those stars up there, they’re called that for the story: the pony Mercury gave his friend as a gift, but the Greeks called him Hermes not Mercury, the Greeks discovered the stars first, because they came first, but the stars were there before anyone, now that direction, that’s East, everything started there, in the East, everything comes from there, from that magnificent, ancient East where men understood things in the abstract, it’s all been downhill from there, Ninototo, we haven’t discovered a thing though we think we’re so clever, but I’m getting off-track, let’s get back to it, steady now, there, by the Little Horse, that’s the Swan and that’s the Swan’s brightest star, Albireo, you can see what color it is through my telescope, it’s orange, and nearby is Deneb, that’s what the Arabs called it, which means tail … no, no — I’m wrong — Deneb’s the brightest, it has a companion, a strange companion you can only see once every five years, a boy named Phaethon was transformed into that constellation, he was like Amilcare driving his ox cart, only Phaethon drove a sun cart, but he wasn’t paying attention and he wound up in a ditch and the gods turned his cart into those stars you see. Now we’ll shift some and you follow my finger, there’s Capricorn, and Aquarius, they’re faint stars, like graveyard candles, I can’t see them, not without my telescope, but your eyes are good … how do I know these things by heart? Well, it’s the same sky every summer, Ninototo, always the same sky, and I’ve studied it every summer of my life …

These days everyone’s so informal, you must have noticed, I find it brusque, overly familiar. I don’t like it — it shows disrespect … I think when two people hold each other in high regard they should be more formal, it’s more civilized, more respectful. And it creates the proper distance to make the other person understand that even if we know each other well, know each other intimately — our respective secrets — that we pretend we don’t, that we don’t know certain things, and we do this to make the other feel more comfortable, like when someone’s confessed something important to you that he wouldn’t tell anyone else and so you act a bit distracted, oh, not really, of course, you actually listened very carefully, but … well, it’s like you already stopped thinking about it, you locked it away inside a secret compartment in your heart … Now that the time has come for us to say goodbye, now that it’s time for me to take my leave, I want to be more formal with you. I’m sure you understand, it’s not an insignificant detail … also because of what you’ll write about me. Sound okay?

I think there’s still a big fly in here, please, get it out, sir, I don’t want that fly landing on my mouth after I’ve closed it. When you write this story, sir, when you turn it into a book, put your name on the cover, I don’t want my own there, I don’t want to be the one doing the telling, I want to be told … You wrote once that Tristano knew about fear, and I agreed. But real fear is something else again, that was a trifling kind of fear, a privileged, random fear, it could go badly, but it was also something you could get out from under … Real fear is when the hour’s fixed and you know it’s inevitable … that’s a strange fear, unusual, something you experience once in a lifetime, never more, it’s like vertigo, like throwing a window open onto nothing, and it’s there that thought truly drowns, is obliterated. This, this is real fear … In a little while, when you no longer hear me breathing, throw the window wide, let in the light, the sounds of the living world. They belong to you, sir; silence belongs to me. And then leave right after, close the door and leave the corpse behind, it won’t be me, I’ve already given Frau directions for disposing of it quickly … There’s a religious love of death that’s close to necrophilia, practically loving the corpse more than the living … A beautiful death … what nonsense, death’s never beautiful, death is filthy — always, filthy — the denial of life … They say death’s a mystery, but having existed at all is the greater mystery, this might seem banal, but it’s really so mysterious … Take you and me, for instance, you know, finding ourselves here, in the same room, at this precise moment, it’s very mysterious, or at least it’s rather odd, wouldn’t you say?… I thank you, sir … I’d like to give you another gift, you see that photograph on the dresser? no, not the one on the other dresser, the dresser with the mirror, next to the glass bell, where the pendulum keeps moving the hands, because the hands keep going even after we stop, we may be the ones who invented clocks, but they obey a different master … I mean the one in the ebony frame, the one of the man from behind, walking down the shore … see those houses in the distance?… that’s the town where my mother lived, my father’s heading off to marry her, that’s why he’s dressed so elegantly though he’s walking along the beach, after the ceremony he’ll bring my mother here, to this house where I was born and that will soon be sold, after Frau dies … It’s a beautiful photo, take it as a gift, use it in your book, it isn’t Tristano, but it is a little, since it’s his father … He has his back to us, as if he’s saying goodbye, what I’ve been doing all these days with you, sir, and what I’m doing now for the last time … Check the clock, what time is it? That might sound foolish, but I want to know, it’s the last thing I want to know … After all, like they say, tomorrow is another day.