Antonio Tabucchi - Letter from Casablanca

And then I don’t know what came over me. It wasn’t something I thought about. I felt a force that drove me into the dressing room. I turned on the make-up lights around the mirror. I chose a very tight-fitting sequined dress with a slit up the side, of the deliberately showy sort, some white shoes with very high heels, black elbow-length evening gloves, a red wig with long curls. I made up my eyes heavily, with silver, but for my lips I chose a light lipstick, an opaque apricot. When I went out on the platform the spotlight struck me in full force. The public stopped eating. I saw many faces staring at me, many forks remaining suspended in the air. I knew that public, but I had never seen it from up front, arranged in a semi-circle like this. It was like a siege.

I began with Caminito verde . The pianist was an intelligent type. He immediately understood the timbre of my voice, provided me with a very discreet accompaniment, all in low notes. And then I nodded to the electrician. He put on a blue disc. I grasped the microphone and began to whisper into it. I let the pianist do two intermezzzos to prolong the song because the public didn’t take its eyes off me. And while he played I moved slowly on the platform and the cone of blue light followed me. Now and then I moved my arms as if I were swimming in that light and stroked my shoulders, with my legs slowly spreading apart and my head swaying so that my curls caressed my shoulders, as I had seen Rita Hayworth do in Gilda . And then the public began to applaud excitedly. I understood that it had gone well and I took the counteroffensive. In order not to let the enthusiasm die down, I attacked another song before the applause ended. This time it was Lola Lolita la Piquetera , and then a Buenos Aires tango of the Thirties, Pregunto , that sent them into delirium. It was applause that Carmen had had only when she was at her best. And then an inspiration came to me, a whim. I went to the pianist and made him give me his jacket. I put it on over my dress and as a joke, but with much sadness, I began to sing the ballad of Beniamino Gigli, Oh begli occhi di fata , as if it were addressed to an imaginary woman for whom I was pining for love. And little by little, while I was singing, that woman whom I was evoking came to me, recalled by my song. At the same time I slowly took off the jacket. And while I was whispering into the microphone the last line, “ della mia gioventú cogliete il fiore ,” I was abandoned by my lover, but my lover was the public, who stared at me with rapture. And I was myself once more, and with my feet I pushed away the jacket that I had let fall to the platform. And then, before the enchantment ended, rubbing the microphone on my lips, I began to sing Acércate más . An indescribable thing happened. The men got up on their feet and applauded, an old man in a white jacket threw me a carnation, an English officer at a table in the first row came up on the platform and tried to kiss me. I escaped to the dressing room. I felt I was going crazy with excitement and joy. I fell a kind of shock all over my body. I shut myself inside, I panted, I looked at myself in the mirror. I was beautiful, I was young, I was happy. And then I was overtaken by a whim. I put on the blonde wig, I put around my neck the blue feather boa, letting it drag on the floor behind me, and I returned to the platform in little elflike skipping steps.

First I did Que será será in the Doris Day manner, and then I attacked Volare with a chá-chá rhythm. Wiggling, I invited the public to accompany me by beating time to the rhythm with their hands. And when I sang “Vo-la-re!” a chorus answered me “Oh-oh,” and I “Can-ta-re,” and they “Oh-oh-oh-oh.” It was like the end of the world. When I returned to the dressing room, I left behind me excitement and noise. I was there, in Carmen’s easy-chair, crying with happiness, and I heard the public chant, “Name! Name!” Senhor Paiva came in, speechless, beaming, his eyes shining. “You have to go out and tell them your name,” he said. “We can’t calm them down.” And I went out again. The electrician had put in a pink disc that flooded me with a warm light. I took the microphone. I had two songs that surged in my throat. I sang Luna rossa and All’alba se ne parte il marinaro . And when the long applause died away, I whispered into the microphone a name that came spontaneously to my lips. “Josephine,” I said. “Josephine.”

Lena, many years have passed since that night, and I have lived my life as I felt I had to live it. During my travels around the world I have often thought of writing to you and never had the courage to do it. I don’t know if you have ever known what happened when we were children. Perhaps our aunt and uncle weren’t able to tell you anything. There are things that cannot be told. Anyway, if you already know or if you come to know, remember that Papa was not bad. Forgive him as I have forgiven him.

From here, from this hospital in this far-away city, I ask you a favor. If what I am willingly about to face should turn out badly, I beg you to claim my body. I have left precise instructions with a notary and the Italian Embassy so that my body may be returned home. In such a case you’ll receive a sum of money sufficient to execute this and an extra sum as recompense, because in my life I’ve earned enough money. The world is stupid, Lena, nature is vile, and I don’t believe in the resurrection of the flesh. I believe in memories, however, and I ask you to let me satisfy them.

About two kilometers from the signal house where we spent our childhood, between the farm where Signor Quintilio worked and the town, if you take a little road between the fields that once had a sign saying “Turbines” because it led to the suction pump for the reclaimed land, after the locks, a few hundred meters from a group of red houses, you come to a little cemetery. Mama rests there. I want to be buried next to her and to have on the tombstone an enlarged photograph of me when I was six years old. It’s a photograph that remained with aunt and uncle. You must have seen it who knows how many times. It’s of you and me. You are very small, a baby lying on a blanket, I am sitting beside you and holding your hand. They dressed me in a pinafore and I have curls tied with a bow. I don’t want any dates. Don’t have an inscription put on the stone, I beg you, only the name. But not Hector. Put the name with which I sign this letter, with the brotherly affection which binds me to you, your

Josephine

He was on a bicycle,” said Nena. “He wore a knotted handkerchief on his head. I saw him very well. He saw me, too. He wanted something here at home. I understood him. But he went by as if he couldn’t stop. It was exactly two o’clock.”

Nena then wore a metal contraption on her upper teeth, which persisted in growing crooked. She had a reddish cat that she called “My Belafonte” and spent the day singing “Banana Boat” to herself — or preferably whistling it, because thanks to her teeth the whistle turned out very well, better than mine. Mama seemed very annoyed, but usually she didn’t yell at her. She limited herself to saying, “Leave the poor animal in peace.” Or, when you saw that she was very sad and was pretending to rest in the armchair, and Nena ran into the garden under the oleanders, where she had installed her own pied-à-terre , Mama would appear at the window pushing back a lock of hair that was stuck to her with perspiration, and wearily, not as if she were scolding but almost as if it were a private lament, a litany, she would say to her, “Stop whistling that nonsense. Does it seem right to you? You know that respectable little girls shouldn’t whistle.”