Antonio Tabucchi - Letter from Casablanca

Everybody wanted St. Raphaël, and instead the evening then dragged on at the Hôtel du Cap. Maybe the Negronis were a little strong. And then there was a quantity of Gershwin for Mr. Deluxe. And then there were the Arrigos installed on the terrace. Who could resist those two? They were two perfect McKiscos, bitter and quarrelsome, too cocasse . At ten o’clock at night they were at each other’s throats. They seemed to have just emerged from Tender Is the Night . It was impossible to shake them off to go to St. Raphaël. They’ve never known they’re the McKiscos, poor things, probably they didn’t even know who Fitzgerald was. “And your novel, Perri, at what point is your novel?” Mrs. McKisco always repeated the same question. She was polite, over-solicitous. She wore very elegant scarves and a pearl shamrock on the collar of her white jacket. Mrs. McKisco was never seen without her white jacket. I said that it wasn’t going badly, yes, it truly wasn’t going badly, I was at a good point, look, the story already had everything, dramatics, I mean, but with a bit of frivolity, frivolity’s good for drama, two destinies which don’t meet, a wronged life, two wronged lives…. Despair? Of course, but in moderation. Maybe a death. Of him or of her, I didn’t know yet, or else, what can I say, a great betrayal. But principally inadequacy in life, as if nothing is enough, and a sense of waste, and with it something like non-reason, and then a perverse selfishness. Mrs. McKisco sighed with understanding, as if saying, “But to whom can life ever be enough?” She lifted her voluminous breast, the pearl shamrock sparkled. Mr. McKisco watched her grimly as if he were about to bite her. She was melancholy, incongruous, her unhappiness was of a touching simplicity. Away with you, Mrs. McKisco, I would have liked to comfort you. Rest your generous breast on my shoulder and unburden yourself, cry. It’s true, your life is wasted, your husband is an orangutan full of Pernod, you have too much money and now you ask yourself what good is money, what do you do with your paper mills. But it all goes for nothing, right, Mrs. McKisco? There were some children you would have wanted, and instead you find yourself here stemming old age and solitude. You’d like to convince yourself that children aren’t everything. You look at the lights of Cannes and want very much to cry. Come with me to the railing, let’s look at the sea. I tell you about a frivolously despairing novel and we laugh about it like crazy, all very Fitzgeraldish. He’s a writer of a single book, has had a decayed childhood which every now and then aches with acute sharp pains. In his lifetime he got away with methods that were not exactly clean. Let’s say that he’s rather a crook, but deep-down he’s good. Would you like to hear the beginning? He’d begin this way, for example: In 1959, when the protagonist of this story was thirty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual “There!”—yet at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the conscious stage …. To tell the truth, the beginning isn’t mine, dear Mrs. McKisco. Only the dates are mine, but it’s almost the same.

Toward midnight Mr. McKisco collapsed on the table. He needed to be lifted up bodily. Even Bishop was rather drunk. She gave one giggle after another, she was a happy drunk. Now she felt right in shape for a little visit to St. Raphael. Away we go, a fast run to eat a couple of shrimp. At that point I got away. I preferred to wait for you at home. In any case, within an hour you’d have returned. Would you like to know why that night of August 12 I didn’t come back? I’ve never wondered why you didn’t come back. I don’t want to know, I don’t care. But I want to tell you why I didn’t come back. It’s very funny. Because it was St. Macarius’ Day. My father’s name was Macarius. I wanted to remember him by myself, far away from your house, without interference. And then I had the photograph of Scottie in my pocket. I have it here in front of me now, too. It was taken when she was four years old. Scottie has a flowered dress, white socks, and pigtails burned by the sun. She carries a puppet in her hand, a kind of sad-eyed basset-hound. She holds it dangling by one ear. His name was Socrates, do you remember Socrates? I bought him. There’s a hole in the photograph: that’s you. And there’s the villa in the background, taken from the west side, the stairs covered with an American vine that led to Scottie’s rooms, the white door with the little pieces of engraved glass, very English. So I had the photograph of Scottie in my pocket and I sat down at a cafe. I felt really well. My plan was perfect, and then some place toward Mentone you could see fireworks. It must have been the festival of a patron saint. It seemed to me to be a good omen. For a month and a half, every Saturday evening, I crossed the border in my car. There was a customs agent, a boy from Benevento, who came on duty at exactly ten o’clock for the night shift. By this time he was used to seeing me. I went to get a cup of coffee in Italy. At half past ten I crossed the border again. “Homesick for Italian coffee, sir?’’ He greeted me with his hand to his visor. I responded to the salute. Sometimes I stopped for a brief chat. For him I was a rich man with a mania for Italian coffee. He’d never have dreamed of looking in the car. Asleep under a car robe, Scottie would have passed perfectly.

I loitered for a little while along the sea-front, watching the fireworks toward Mentone. It would have been for tomorrow evening. It was St. Macarius’ Day. The night was beautiful. I thought about my father dead in a fetid hotel in Baltimore. I stopped at the “Racé” to pick up some money. I had contacts there, but this was the last time. I needed that money to set up an honest business in Italy. Not that I lacked money, but the more I had the better: the first days wouldn’t have been easy. At the “Racé” there was a jam session with an incredible type who imitated to perfection Rex Stewart, a cornet player with Ellington in the Thirties. He was happy. He played “Trumpet in Space” and “Kissing My Baby Good-night,” imagine that. I was happy, too. I stayed a little while and then left and took a long walk because I had a desire to breathe fresh air. There. A whole life can change over a trifle. Or stay the same.

Time is perfidious. It makes us believe it never passes, and if we look behind, it’s passed too hurriedly. You’d like a sentence like this for my story, right, Marline? I give in. Time is perfidious. I look behind, it passed too hurriedly, and how slow it was to pass! Almost twenty years have gone by, and for us Scottie is still four years old. But after all, I, too, am the same age as then for you. Because I’m unattainable. In a certain sense I’m eternal, here, where I find myself. I’m beyond the curve in the road, do you understand that concept? Twenty years should have been enough to understand a concept like this. You, on the other hand, no. You’ve remained on the straight and narrow, exposed. You’ve grown old, Martine, it’s normal. At last you won’t fear the arrival of old age any longer: it’s here now. There haven’t been any signs of Bishop. She disappeared in England. But I know what happened to her: she became a half-nun, she never married, she lives in a convent in Sussex, she teaches American culture to young girls from good families. Even Deluxe has grown old, by God. He lost all his aviator’s looks. He came to see you sometimes, but it’s impossible to take up the game again, it allows him nothing more. He’s a corpulent gentleman with a blue Citroën who does business in the suburbs: farewell, Tom Barban. And even the villa, how it’s aged. I passed by it recently and imagined going in. On the boundary wall, next to the gate, there’s a little panel of blue tiles with a brigantine with blowing sails. We bought it at Ēze Village, do you remember? On the wrought-iron gate the white varnish has peeled off. Where the color has come off, because of the sun and the saltiness, in large galls that crack under the fingers, a fine, very yellow rust has formed. It must be necessary to push the double doors very hard, otherwise they won’t open because the hinges are stiff. When you finally succeed in opening the gate, after having shaken it rather impatiently, it emits a soft, prolonged squeak, like a far-away moan, in front of us. Once I happened to raise my eyes mechanically in the search for the emitter of that lament, and then I saw the sky blue of the sea. To the right of the gate, after the entrance, under a palm tree, there’s a porter’s lodge painted yellow, a little room that looks like a miniature house. Once the night watchman’s tools were kept there. Now I imagine what’s there: a baby carriage with a folding lop, as you see in photographs of the Thirties, a child’s cordless xylophone, some old records full of scratches. They’re unbearable things. It’s impossible to look at them, but it’s also impossible to get rid of them: you need to find a little room. But why do I describe to you things that you know better than I? To create a note of wastefulness in my story, a sense of dissipation? You always preferred desperate, futile lives. Francis and Zelda, Bessie Smith, Isadora. … I do what I can: it’s as much as we have at our disposal. Ah, yes, the villa has really lost its tone, it would need a good maquillage : facade, windows, garden, gratings…. But money is scarce, they lack Ferri’s discreet little business affairs, so dubious but so remunerative. You don’t eat tradition for dinner. If only you could begin to think how to utilize everything. The location is of a rate elegance, the rooms are magnificent, so deliciously art-nouveau. You could retire to the rooms that used to be Scottie’s, so you’d be even nearer to her memory — and then two rooms are enough for you by this time — and turn the rest into a hotel. A small hotel, but very elite: ten bedrooms, dining room on the ground floor with green lampshades on the tables, pianist on the terrace after supper, a lot of Gershwin, moonlight and Bacardi. The rich, middle-aged Swiss adore this kind of place. You ought to find an appropriate name, refined but witty. For instance, “ Au p’tit Gatsby .” And thus you could face a tranquil old age, spending your afternoons in peace and quiet looking at the coast and thinking of the future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out. our arms farther … And one fine morning … It’s a Fitzgerald finale, of course.