Antonio Tabucchi - Letter from Casablanca

It was 1958 and we were in Rosario. Uncle Alfredo, after many years in Argentina, spoke a strange mixture of Italian and Spanish. His garage was called “The Motorized Italian,” and he repaired everything, but mainly tractors, old Ford carcasses. As an emblem, next to Shell’s shell, he had a leaning tower of neon which, however, was only half-lit because the gas in the tubes was used up, and nobody had ever had the patience to replace it. Uncle Alfredo was a corpulent man, full-blooded, patient, a gourmet, with a nose furrowed by many tiny blue veins, and a constitutional tendency to hypertension — everything exactly opposite of Papa. You would never have said that they were brothers.

Ah, but I was telling you about those evenings after supper at our house, when visitors came and Mama sat down at the piano. Signorina Palestro went into ecstasies over waltzes by Strauss, but I liked it much belter when Mama sang. It was so difficult to make her sing. She acted coy, she blushed. “I don’t have a voice anymore,” she said smiling, but then she gave in at the insistence of Signora Elvira. She, too, preferred ballads and songs more than waltzes. And finally Mama surrendered. Then there was a great silence. Mama began with some amusing little songs in order to enliven the atmosphere — something like Rosamunda or Eulalia Torricelli . Signora Elvira laughed delightedly, somewhat breathlessly, emitting the cluckings of a brooding hen and lifting her enormous chest, while she cooled herself with her fan. Then Mama executed an interlude at the piano without singing. Signorina Palestro requested something more challenging. Mama raised her eyes to the ceiling as if searching for inspiration or ransacking her memory. Her hands caressed the keyboard. It was a dead hour for trains, there would not be disturbing noises. From the window wide open to the marsh came the sound of crickets. A moth battered its wings against the net, trying in vain to enter. Mama sang Luna rossa, All’alba se ne parte il marinaro , or a ballad by Beniamino Gigli, Oh begli occhi di fata . How lovely it was to hear her sing! Signorina Palestro’s eyes were shining, Signora Elvira even stopped fanning herself, everyone was watching Mama. She wore a rather filmy blue dress. You were sleeping in your room, unaware. You haven’t had these moments to remember in your life. I was happy. Everyone applauded. Papa overflowed with pride. He circled around with the bottle of vermouth and refilled the guests’ glasses, saying, “Please, please, we’re not in a Turk’s house.”

Uncle Alfredo always used this curious expression, too. It was funny to hear him say it in the middle of his Spanish sentences. I remember we were at the table. He liked tripe alia parmigiana very much and thought that the Argentinians were stupid because they appreciated only the steaks from their cattle. Helping himself abundantly from the big steaming soup tureen, he told me, “Go and eat, niño , we’re not in a Turk’s house.” It was a phrase from their childhood, Uncle Alfredo’s and Papa’s. It went back to who knows what ancient time. I understood the concept: it meant that this was a house in which there was abundance, and in which the owner was generous. Who knows why the contrary was attributed to the Turks? Perhaps it was an expression that dated from the Saracen invasions. And Uncle Alfredo really was generous with me. He brought me up as if I were his son. Moreover, he had no children of his own. He was generous and patient, just like a father, and probably with me plenty of patience was necessary. I was an absent-minded, sad boy. I caused a lot of trouble as a result of my temperament. The only time I saw him lose his patience it was terrible, but it was not my fault. We were having dinner. I had precipitated a disaster with a tractor. I had had to execute a difficult maneuver to get it into the garage. Maybe I was inattentive. And then at that moment Modugno was singing Volare on the radio, and Uncle Alfredo had put it on at full volume because he loved it. I had scraped against the side of a Chrysler going in and had done a lot of damage.

Aunt Olga was not bad. She was a talkative, grumbling Venetian who had remained stubbornly attached to her dialect. When she spoke, you understood almost nothing. She mixed Venetian with Spanish — a disaster. She and my uncle had met in Argentina. When they decided to marry, they were already elderly. In fact, you couldn’t say they had married for love. Let’s say it had been convenient for both of them — for her, because she gave up working in the meat-canning plant, and for Uncle Alfredo, because he needed a woman to keep his house in order. However, they were fond of each other, or at least there was liking, and Aunt Olga respected him and spoiled him. Who knows why she came out with that sentence that day? Maybe she was tired or out of sorts. She lost her patience. I am sure it was not really the case. Uncle Alfredo had already reprimanded me earlier, and I was mortified enough. I kept my eyes on my plate. Aunt Olga, point-blank, but not in order to hurt my feelings, poor thing, almost as if she were confirming something, said, “He’s the son of a madman — only a madman could do that to his wife.” And then I saw Uncle Alfredo get up, calmly, his face grown white, and give her a terrible backhanded slap. The blow was so violent that Aunt Olga fell from her chair, and in her fall she grabbed the tablecloth, pulling it with all the dishes after her. Uncle Alfredo left slowly and went down to the garage to work. Aunt Olga got up as if nothing had happened, began to pick up the dishes, swept the floor, put on a new tablecloth because the other one was a mess, set the table, and appeared at the stairwell. “Alfredo,” she shouted, “dinner’s ready!”

When I left for Mar del Plata I was sixteen years old. Sewed inside my vest I wore a roll of pesos , and in my pocket a business card from the Pensione Albano—“hot and cold running water”—and a letter to the proprietor, an Italian friend of Uncle Alfredo’s, a friend of his youth. They had arrived in Argentina on the same ship and had always kept in touch. I was going to attend a boarding school run by Salesian Italians who had a conservatory, or something of the kind. My aunt and uncle had encouraged me. By this time I had finished the lower schools. I was not cut out to be a garage mechanic, this was immediately evident, and then Aunt Olga hoped that the city would change me. One evening I had heard her say, “Sometimes his eyes scare me, they’re so frightened. Who knows what he saw, poor boy? Who knows what he remembers?” I’m sure I was a little worrying in my way of doing things, I admit. I never talked, I blushed, I stammered, I often cried. Aunt Olga complained that the popular songs, with all those stupid words, ruined me. Uncle. Alfredo tried to arouse my interest by explaining camshafts and clutches to me, and in the evening he tried to persuade me to go with him to the Caffè Florida, where there were many Italians who played cards. But I preferred to stay next to the radio to listen to the music program. I adored the old tangos of Carlos Gardel, the melancholy sambas of Wilson Baptista, the popular songs of Doris Day, but I liked all music. And perhaps it was better for me to study music, if that was my inclination, but far away from the prairie, in a civilized place.

Mar del Plata was a bizarre and fascinating city, deserted in the cold season and crowded in the vacation months, with huge white hotels, twentieth-century style, that in the off season emitted sadness. In that period it was a city of exotic seamen and of old people who had chosen to spend their last years of life there and who tried to keep each other company by taking turns at making appointments for tea on the terraces of the hotels or at the coffee-concerts, where shabby little orchestras caterwauled popular songs and tangos.