Antonio Tabucchi - Letter from Casablanca

For my friend M.I., who once entrusted me with a secret

The first telephone call had been from a girl who called for the third time in three days and repeated ad infinitum that she just couldn’t cope anymore. You have to be careful in many cases because there’s the risk of psychodependence. It’s necessary to be affectionate with circumspection. Whoever calls must hear a friend on the other end of the line, not a deus ex machina on whom his life depends. Moreover, the main rule is that the caller shouldn’t get attached to one voice in particular, otherwise it creates difficult situations. This happens extremely easily with the depressed. They need a personalized confidant, they are not satisfied with an anonymous voice, they want it to be that voice, and they attach themselves to it desperately. But with the depressed of a certain type, those who have a fixed idea and with it build a wall around themselves, the situation is further complicated. They make telephone calls that freeze you, and you rarely establish contact. This time, however, it went well because I had the luck to discover something that interested her. Another rule that is usually valid for a good number of cases is to lead the conversation to a subject that interests the caller, because everyone, even the most desperate, has one thing which, deep down, interests him, even those who are most cut off from reality. Often it’s a question of our good will. You even need to resort to little tricks, devices. At times I’ve succeeded in clearing up some seemingly impossible situations with a trick with a glass, and managed to stabilize some communication. Let’s suppose that the telephone rings, you pick up the receiver, you say the usual formula or something similar, and then on the other end nothing, the most absolute silence, not even a sigh. Then you insist, you try to be tactful, you say that you know he’s there listening, to please say something, whatever he wants, whatever springs to mind — an absurdity, a curse, a cry, a syllable. Nothing. Total silence. And yet if he’s called, there’s a reason. But you can’t know it, you don’t know anything. He can be foreign, he can be mute, he can be everything. And then I take a glass and a pencil and say, Listen to me. There are millions and millions of us on this earth, and yet the two of us have met — only on the telephone, of course, without knowing each other and without seeing each other. However, we have met. Let’s not throw away this meeting. It must have some meaning. Listen to me. Let’s play a game. I have a glass here in front of me. I make it ring with a pencil— ping —do you hear me? If you hear me, do the same thing — two taps. Or if you don’t have anything in front of you, you can lap the receiver with your fingernail like this— tap, tap —do you hear me? If you hear me, answer, I beg you. Listen. Now I’ll try to name some things, things that cross my mind, and you tell me if you like them. For example, do you like the sea? To say yes, tap two times. Only one tap means no.

But there’s just no understanding what it is that interests a girl who dials the number, is silent for almost two minutes, and then begins to repeat, I can’t cope anymore. I can’t cope anymore. I can’t cope anymore. I can’t cope anymore. Like this, ad infinitum . It was pure chance, because earlier I had put on a record since, I thought, on the fifteenth of August holiday of the Assumption of the Virgin it won’t be very busy, with so many people going away. And, in fact, I’d come on duty more than two hours before, and no one had called. It was terribly hot. The little fan that I’d brought with me gave no relief. The city seemed dead, everyone away on vacation. I sat down in the armchair and began to read, but the book fell on my chest. I don’t like to fall asleep when I’m on duty. I have slow reflexes, and if someone calls I remain surprised the first few seconds, and at times it’s really those first seconds which count, because he might even hang up, and then who knows if he’ll have the courage to dial the number again? So I put on The Turkish March by Mozart, softly. It’s happy, it’s stimulating, it keeps up the morale. She telephoned while the record was playing. She was silent a long time and then began to repeat that she couldn’t cope anymore. I let her say it, because in these cases it’s a good thing to let the caller get it off his chest. He must say everything he wants and as many times as he wants. When I heard only her troubled breathing over the receiver, I said, Wait a moment, would you mind? I took off the record, and she answered, Please leave it on. Of course, I told her, I’ll be glad to leave it. Do you like Brahms? I don’t know how I’d sensed that the music could furnish the possibility of communication. The trick had come to me spontaneously. Sometimes a little falsehood is providential. As for Brahms, probably the suggestion of the title by Sagan had played in my subconscious, a title that you always carry dormant in your memory. This isn’t Brahms, she said, it’s Mozart. Mozart? I put it on. Of course Mozart, she said vivaciously. It’s The Turkish March by Mozart. And thanks to this she began to talk about the conservatory where she had studied before something happened to her, and everything went very well.

The time, then, passed slowly. I heard the bell of St. Dominic’s Church strike seven. I went to the window. There was a light haze of heat over the city. Few automobiles passed through the street. I made up my eyelashes again. Sometimes I feel pretty. Then I lay down on the couch next to the phonograph and I thought about things, about people, about life. At seven thirty the telephone rang again. I recited the usual formula, perhaps with a certain weariness. On the other end of the line there was a brief hesitation. Then the voice said, My name is Manning, but I’m not a gerund. It’s always advisable to appreciate the jokes of those who call — they reveal the desire to establish contact — and I laughed. I answered that I had a grandfather who was named Dunne, but he wasn’t a past participle, he was only Irish. And he, too, laughed a little. And then he said that he had something in common with verbs, however, that he had one of their qualities, that he was intransitive. All verbs serve in the construction of the sentence, I said. It seemed to me that the conversation permitted an allusive tone, and then you always have to encourage the attitude chosen by the caller. But I’m deponent, he said. Deponent in what sense, I asked. In the sense that I lay down, he said. I lay down my arms. Perhaps the mistake was in thinking that arms shouldn’t be laid down, didn’t he think? Perhaps they had taught us bad grammar. It was better to let arms be used by belligerent people. There were many unarmed people, he could be certain to have a lot of company. He said, He will. And I said that our conversation seemed like a table of verb conjugations. And this time it was his turn to laugh, a brief, rough laugh. And then he asked me if I knew the sound of time. No, I said, I don’t know it. Well, he said, you only have to sit down on the bed during the night when you can’t sleep and keep your eyes open in the dark, and after a little while you hear. It’s like a roar in the distance, like the breath of an animal that devours people. Why didn’t he tell me more about those nights? I had all the time in the world, and I had nothing else to do except listen to him. But in the meantime he was already somewhere else. He had skipped a connection indispensable for me to follow the thread of the story. He didn’t need that passage, or perhaps he preferred to avoid it. But I let him talk — you should never interrupt for any reason — and then I didn’t like his voice, which was slightly shrill and sometimes a whisper.