Wu Ming - 54

Cary relaxes. Cary goes to sleep.

Cary hardly remembers anything. He wakes up. He feels good. Colours are vivid. His movements are fluid, his bones light.

‘Very, veeeerrrry interesting, Monsieur Grant, but any anamnesis would be over-hasty. I shall administer LSD to you again. Are you available next Tuesday, at the same time?’

‘LSD? Those drops were LSD? Why have you given me a hallucinogenic drug?’

‘In a sense to return you to your childhood, Monsieur Grant, without the inhibitions of adulthood, beyond the reality principle.’

‘I must have been coming out with some foolish things. ’

‘On the contrary, Monsieur Grant. Your visions have been highly instructive. I have a few questions to ask you, but let’s not think about those now. We’ll meet again on Tuesday.’

‘I think the effect is persistent, it’s as though everything were. underlined. As though every object were winking at me and saying, “I’m here, and I couldn’t be anywhere else for any reason in the world”. ’

‘I shall make a record of your description of lysergic perception, monsieur . Is it pleasurable?’ ‘I would really say so, yes. It’s as though everything has a complete shape, but not a fixed one.’ ‘It will last a few hours. In the meantime, try to see and hear as you have never seen or heard before.’ When he is on his own, Clapas writes:

First notes for anamnesis.

The subject has created an alter ego for himself, with a revealing name, the non-existent James Bond. ‘Bond’, a link, a connection. ‘James Bond’ is the super-ego, he is Hollywood, and by extension the American society in which the subject feels ill at ease. In fact, he defends himself a number of times against the accusation of being ‘James Bond’, that is, of having links with this society.

The reference to the alleged korephilic perversions and National Socialist sympathies of the actor Errol Flynn, who later couples with the subject’s mother and a less famous actress, one Frances Farmer, is indicative of the same conflictual relationship.

The Quebecois double in the cupboard, surprised talking to the Yugoslav dictator Tito, represents precisely the fear of failure to conform (Quebec represents cultural anomaly, the stranger in the house), the fear of being accused of anti-Americanism and communist sympathies. The Quebecois double is naked, and hence in a state of innocence close to the truth, but at the same time he is wearing a tie, a sign of indecision between nature and civilisation. That might mean that the subject is effectively a crypto-communist, but that this causes him a sense of qualms and guilt. With regard to this, the parallel between Stalin, Robespierre and McCarthy, which is turned on its head by the execution of McCarthy by Robespierre , indicates an insoluble contradiction: the subject is well aware that democracy will prevail over totalitarianism, so he feels remorse for his communist sympathies, but also suspects that democracy, if it is to win, will have to sink to the level of the enemy, resorting to Terror. McCarthy has shown that this can happen. Given this confused, if not undifferentiated reality, the subject feels partially justified for his choice of communist. All the more so in that there is no parental authority to reproach him or explain to him that not everything is play and fiction, not everything is a stage (see the reference to Clifford Odets) or a film set (see the reference to Alfred Hitchcock). The constant tone is one of rancour at a father who has not only killed the mother, the object of the subject’s Oedipal desire, but who has abandoned his own role as a guide, leaving the subject in an eternal limbo between childhood and adolescence. The situation is aggravated by the schizoid doubling, even tripling of the subject’s personality, divided between the child Archie Leach (who has emerged as a result of locally induced regression, see the markedly English manner of speech), the character Cary Grant and the mysterious ‘James Bond’.

The tripled subject is constantly in search of three fathers (perhaps the trio of Stalin — Robespierre — McCarthy?) and three mothers. Could that be why he has had three wives? Or are they Elsie, Frances Farmer and the unknown ‘Frances Stevens’? The last two swim beside him, a clear reference to the amniotic fluid of the maternal womb.

Clapas hadn’t understood a thing. However, Cary had discovered how to keep depression at bay. See and listen. A few drops and every thread in the fabric of the world appears before you. The winter of his discontent made glorious summer by that lysergic sun.

V London, 20 September

Dear Professor Fanti,

I am not good at writing like you, I have never written enough in my life and above all I started too late. But I will try.

I would like to tell you that I can’t thank you enough for all the trouble you have taken. You write that you did it out of your friendship for Pierre, and I believe you, but that alone cannot justify everything. You are a good person, one of those you seldom meet in life.

The lodging that you have found me in the home of the family of your poor wife is very fine. I have a great deal of difficulty with the language, but have already managed to buy the book of translations you recommended, and am applying myself to it day and night. For the moment I only tend to the house, but Mrs Jean has said she wants to find me a job (or at least that is what I think she said). The money you sent me from Pierre, minus my first expenses, I have put in the bank until I decide what to do with it.

It seems incredible that my pain is fading. Perhaps I have merely managed to contain it, to lock it up at the bottom of my heart, where I can keep it along with my memories of Ferruccio. But perhaps this is only natural. Life goes on, and the things you have written to me about the loss of our dear ones are said by someone who has been through the same ordeal as myself. Thank you for that as well. They were beautiful words.

You tell me that you have received a letter from Pierre, from Mexico, and that he is well. I am happy. For now, please tell him my news yourself, tell him that I want for nothing and that I am well too. That I have kept his address and when I feel capable of doing so, I will write to him straight away. Mexico. How far away is Mexico? On the other side of the ocean.

You know, it’s strange, but I don’t miss Italy at all, the bad memories are still too recent. Apart from displacement, I am happy to be here, where I know no one and everything has to be started over again. I am the kind of person who is able to adapt. Just imagine, I have even started eating bacon and eggs for breakfast!

I don’t know if this was the right decision. To tell you the truth I don’t know anything at all. Perhaps I was only acting out of instinct, driven by the pain and the sense of betrayal. But it doesn’t matter any more. I’m here, and I have to think about this new life.

I still can’t find the words to thank you for everything, professore .

Write to me again and give me some news.

Affectionately,

Angela

VI Bologna, 2 October

Renato Fanti stared at the card for a long time. A pre-Columbian pyramid standing out against a grassy plain.

On the back, a familiar handwriting.

Mexico City, 4 September 1954

Dear Professor,

There are teachings that we carry within ourselves, even on the other side of the world.

There are people you can’t forget.

I think that the only way a pupil has to pay his debts is to confront life, bringing to fruition what he has learned.

I hope that I will succeed in demonstrating this. I hope that one day we will meet again, although I am not sure we will.