Antonio Tabucchi - Letter from Casablanca

I asked Madame what she thought of Bal à Antibes (it was the reproduction for June) with those splashes of blue and white for the sailors in the foreground in the midst of the turmoil of colors. And the light blue enchantment of La mer (July) with those sails (I really said this) like little bursts of laughter. And the harmony of the pastels in Plage de Sainte-Adresse , the 1921 one, I thought, (August) didn’t it make her think of a little symphony? Madame agreed. However, I said preemptorily, I thought Jardins publiques à Hyères (September) was unsurpassable. I found it “ definitive .” For me, after that picture, Dufy did not exist any longer. (And this was the absolute truth.)

The calendar had a certain effect, on Madame, who was not sparing of her compliments to me. And then — oh, well — I said with all the ease that the act seemed to merit that in order to study the fauves I had gone “on purpose” to Paris. Naturally, I refrained from saying that I knew Paris well, because all my knowledge resulted from a school field trip with the nuns when Papa was working in the mine at Charleroi. It had been a four-day bus trip, with brief stops for bread and bathroom, then on board again and another round of En passant par la Lorraine under the inflexible joy of Sister Marianne who, fearing long conversations and long silences, both messengers of mischief, resolved the dilemma with the jollity of a healthy song. Of Paris I retained the dreadful memory of the Musée de I’Histoire de France, of the Pantheon, of my feet swollen like hot water bottles, and of my first menstrual period, which had started after a memorable walk the second night of our stay. The last day Sister Marianne had piloted us to the Louvre for a fifteen-minute visit, just long enough to put our noses in front of Corot and Millet, and at the booth at the exit each one of us had had to chip in to buy a reproduction of The Angelus , which during the trip home Sister Marianne had then stuck up on the rear window of the bus. I was thirteen years old, I felt ugly, unhappy, and misunderstood, and for the entire trip I dreamed of a cruel vendetta: One day I would become a great painter with a grand studio in the Latin Quarter. Sister Marianne would come to beg me on bended knee to go and fresco the refectory of the school in Charleroi where the great artist had done her first work. But I would answer haughtily that it was just, not possible, I had to prepare for my triumphal exhibition at the Grand Palais, Paris rendered me homage, the whole world claimed my paintings, and even the President of the Republic would be present.

— And Ikebana? — said Madame. — Do you like Ikebana? — I answered that “ decidedly ” I did not know him. (I felt stuck, and chose to be dry and definitive.)

— A pity, — said Madame, — but it’s not important. I’m sure you will learn to love it. Please put the bottle of gin nearer to me and call to Constance to bring me another tonic water.—

While she waited for the tonic water, Madame asked me absent-mindedly about my hobbies, if by chance I had a passion for oenology. Ah, yes? Splendid. She did not, she preferred cocktails. But the engineer, yes, her husband, had a passion for wines as a good Italian — an adoptive Italian, but Italian nevertheless — oh, for rare wines, of course. She would have liked to learn something more about them, too, but she certainly couldn’t insist that the engineer give her lessons, he was always traveling, always so consumed by his business, poor dear. But, by the way, my French was excellent.

I answered that yes, it was indeed true, my poor papa had taken my education very much to heart, in spite of not ever having a free minute in his life — he was in mining. The governess had required French, obviously, old, dear, austere Francine (I was slightly moved by her memory) who had been practically a mother to me. She was a Walloon. This unequivocal Belgian acccent that once I detested and that today I found delightful I owed to her. Oh, no, no, my mother didn’t leave me an orphan. It was only that Mama was so fragile, so delicate, and then her piano gave her no rest.

Madame pushed the cart with the aperitifs toward my armchair and invited me to help myself.

— And so school does not interest you? It is not your vocation?—

I said that as far as a vocation was concerned, I might even have followed it, but I had been graduated for two years already, and it still fell to me to do substitute teaching. And, dear God, I was almost twenty years old. I explained the concept of substituting, which Madame appeared to totally ignore, and to be concise said that the following week, when the teacher I was substituting for had finished her maternity leave, the principal would tell me that the school was very grateful for my most valuable assistance, good day and goodbye. And while at one time the pregnant ladies to be substituted for had sprouted like mushrooms, nowadays people think twice before having children, what with the cost of living, just imagine. I don’t know if she kept abreast of the statistics relative to births in Italy.

Dusk was falling over the lake, and from our position it really was a painting, anything but Dufy. The terrace overlooked the garden, full of lemon trees and cypresses, furrowed by the geometry of the boxwood hedges which outlined the pebbled avenues. The town, on the spur that jutted into the lake, was already in shadow, and on its roofs lingered vague streaks of pale blue light. The last light of day was for the landing stage opposite the gale and for the towers of the villa, which were warm yellow, toasted by time. The swallows made a marvelous uproar, going crazy low in the sky. Madaine was explaining to me that she was very much afraid of being bored during the winter, used as she was to Paris. She couldn’t say she exactly needed a secretary, let’s say rather a companion. Yes, some letters now and then to certain Swiss galleries from which she bought, and things of that kind. But fundamentally she was looking for a person of good taste with whom to exchange impressions, with whom to talk about intelligent matters. “ Naturally ,” she did not insist that I decide on the spot, I could give my answer tomorrow. But “ naturally ,” food and lodging. Would I like to have a look at my eventual bedroom? She called Constance.

For all the rest of October Madame was very busy in planning a non-realistic Ikebana, an extremely delicate balance of autumn shades. The base was an antique gold-colored Belle Epoque vase, a 1906 glass, with a long, slender neck.

Madame left the responsibility of naming the composition up to me. All the fanciful compositions were titled, because one of the purposes of Ikebana was just to solicit names, to make concrete in words the sensation that the composition had excited in our souls. What struck me the most in that composition was “its heart of light,” I said, and Madame affirmed that she couldn’t have found a better name herself. To tell the truth, I began to possess a certain competence in this area. I had literally devoured Ikebana: I’art des fleurs, Les fleurs et Vantique tradition japonaise, Ikebana et Hai-Kai , and finally La peinture japonaise , a magnificent volume on glossy paper, all reproductions. At night, on the advice of Madame, I read Kawabata, who was “so Zen from the first to the last page.” It bored me to death, with all those idiotic women gazing sadly at winter landscapes, but I refrained from saying so in order not to appear materialistic. Madame detested materialism, and Kawabata was “ un petit souffle who caressed the plains of the soul.”

With my October salary, which Madame insisted on paying in full even though I had not begun work at the beginning of the month, I bought myself a jacket of dark green buckskin, which I felt much in need of, and accessories in very red tortoise: powder box, comb, and cigar lighter combined. With advanced money I purchased a most elegant writing case, which seemed to me to be indispensable for a secretary of a certain level, and which contained a tiny silver papercutter, a lacquered fountain pen, a bottle of very blue ink, and a little packet of writing paper in splendid light yellow-colored rice paper with matching envelopes. I found that my room acquired a more intellectual aspect. I made some small changes in the arrangement of the objects. I moved the lamp made from the jade vase from the chest of drawers to the table near the window, I arranged next to it the objects I had bought, and I got a real desk. To finish it off, I arranged in broad view the Poésie complète by Vittoria Aganoor Pompilj and La vie des abeilles by Maeterlinck, which I had bought at a stall.