Antonio Tabucchi - Little misunderstandings of no importance - stories

“Many wonders there be, but naught more wondrous than man, Over the surging sea, with a whitening south wind wan, Through the foam of the firth man makes his perilous way.”

God knows how they came to mind so exactly, and whether she remembered them, whether she was in a condition to understand, but she squeezed my hand before they wheeled her away. I went down to the hospital coffee-shop, where the only alcohol was Ramazzotti Bitters and it took a dozen glasses to get me drunk. When I began to feel a bit queasy I went and sat on a bench in front of the hospital, telling myself that it would be quite mad to seek out the surgeon, a madness born of drink. Because I wanted to find the surgeon and ask him not to throw those breasts into the incinerator but to give them to me. I wanted to keep them, and even if they were rotten inside I didn’t care; there’s something rotten in all of us and I cared for those breasts — how could I put it? — they had a special meaning for me; I hoped he understood. But a flicker of reason stopped me; I managed to get a taxi and go home, where I slept through the afternoon. It was dark when the telephone woke me — I didn’t notice the time. Federico was on the line saying: “Tonino, it’s me. Can you hear, Tonino? It’s me.” “Where are you?” I asked in gummy voice. “I’m down south, in Catanzaro.” “Catanzaro? What are you doing there?” “I’m trying for the post of prosecutor. I’ve heard that Maddalena’s ill, in the hospital.” “Exactly. Do you remember those breasts of hers? Well, snip, snip, they’re gone.” “What are you saying, Tonino. Are you drunk?” “Of course I’m drunk, drunk as a drunk, and life makes me sick, and you make me sick, too, taking an exam there in Catanzaro. Why didn’t you marry her, tell me that? She was in love with you, not with Leo, and you knew it; you didn’t marry her because you were afraid. And why the devil did you marry that know-it-all wife of yours, tell me that! You’re a bastard, Federico!” There was a click as he hung up. I muttered a few more expletives into the telephone, then went back to bed and dreamed of a field of poppies.

And so the years continued to f Iutter back and forth, as they passed, while Leo and Federico continued to dance with Mad-dalena in the Empire-style drawing room. In the space of a second, just as in an old film, while they sat in the courtroom, the one wearing his judge’s robe, the other in the prisoner’s cage, the merry-go-round turned, leaves flew off the calendar and stuck to one another, and they danced with Maddalena, gazing into her eyes, while I changed the records. Up came a summer we all spent together in the mountain camp of the National Olympics Committee, the walks in the woods and the contagious passion for tennis. The only serious player was Leo, with his unbeatable backhand, his good looks, close-fitting T-shirt, glossy hair, and the towel wound casually around his neck when the game was over. In the evening we stretched out on the grass and talked of one thing and another, wondering on whose chest Maddalena would lay her head. And then a winter that took us all by surprise. First of all on account of Leo. Who could have imagined him, so well turned out and so ostentatiously futile, with an arm around the statue in the hallway leading to the university president’s office, haranguing the students. He wore a very becoming olive-green parka, military style. I’d bought a blue one, which I thought went better with my eyes, but Maddalena didn’t notice, or at least didn’t say so. She was intent on Federico’s parka, which was too big, with dangling sleeves and was bunched up round his ramrod body in a ridiculous fashion which, for some reason, was appealing to women.

Now Leo started to talk in his low-pitched, monotonous voice, as if he were telling a story, in the ironical manner that I knew so well. In the courtroom you could have heard a pin drop; the newspaper reporters hunched over their notes as if he were telling the Great Secret, and Federico, too, followed him intently. Good God, I thought, why must you pretend to follow so closely? What he’s saying isn’t so strange; that winter you were in on it, too. I almost imagined Federico standing up and saying: “Gentlemen of the jury, with your permission, I’d like to tell this part myself, because I knew it at first hand. The bookshop was called Nuovo Mondo; it was on the Piazza Dante where now, if I’m not mistaken, there’s a smart shop which sells perfumes and Gucci bags. It had a large room, with a closet, a smaller room and a toilet on the right side. We never kept explosives in the small room, only the strawberries Memmo brought up from Apulia after he had been there on vacation. Every evening, in season, we got together to eat strawberries and olives. The chief topic of conversation was the Cuban Revolution — there was a poster of Che Guevara over the cash register — but we talked about revolutions of the past as well. As a matter of fact, I was the one to talk about them. My friends had no historical or philosophical background, whereas I was studying for an exam on political ideas (which I passed with top marks). And so I gave them lessons — seminars, we called them — on Babeuf, Ba-kunin, and Carlo Cattaneo. Actually revolutions didn’t really interest me. I did it because I was in love with a red-haired girl called Maddalena. I was sure she was in love with Leo, or, rather, I knew she was in love with me but I was afraid she was in love with Leo. In short, it was a little misunderstanding of no importance, a phrase popular with us at the time. And Leo was always making fun of me; he had a gift for that. He was witty and ironical and plied me with tricky catch questions which conveyed the idea that I was a liberal but he was a true radical, a revolutionary. He wasn’t all that radical, really; he put it on in order to impress Maddalena, but whether it was by chance or from conviction, he took on a prominent role and became the most important member of our group. Yet, for him, too, this was a little misunderstanding which he considered of no importance. And then you know how it is: the roles that we assume become real. In life things easily get locked in, and an attitude freezes into a choice.

But Federico said none of these things. He was listening attentively to the prosecutor’s questions and Leo’s answers. It’s not possible, I thought to myself; it’s all a play. But it wasn’t a play; it was real. Leo was on trial; the things he had done were Teal and he was admitting to them, impassively, while Federico impassively listened. He couldn’t do otherwise, I realized, because that was his role in the comedy that they were playing. At this point I was moved by an impulse to rebel, to interfere, to erase the prepared script and rewrite it. What could I do? I wondered, and the only recourse, it occurred to me, was Memmo; yes, that was the only thing to do. I went out of the courtroom, showing my press card to the carabinieri. In the hallway, while I was dialling the number, I racked my brain for what I was going to say. They’re going to sentence Leo, Td tell him; come quickly, because you’ve got to do something. He’s digging his own grave; it’s totally absurd. Yes, he’s guilty, I know, but not to that extent; he’s just a cog in a machine that’s crushed him. He’s pretending he was at the controls, but that’s just in order to live up to his reputation. He’s never manipulated any machine and perhaps there’s no proof of what he’s saying. He’s just Leo, the Leo that used to play tennis, with a towel wound around his neck. Only he’s bright, I mean bright in a stupid way, and the whole thing’s absurd.

The telephone rang and rang until a cold, refined woman’s voice, with a marked Roman accent, answered. “No, His Honour isn’t home, he’s at Strasbourg. What do you want?” “I’m a friend,” I said, “an old friend. Can you tell me how to reach him? It’s something very important.” “I’m sorry,” said the cold, refined voice, “His Honour’s at a meeting. If you like you can leave a message and I’ll get it to him as soon as possible.” I hung up and went back to the courtroom, but not to the place where I’d been sitting. I stayed at the upper edge of the semi-circular room, behind the carabinieri. At this particular moment there was widespread murmuring. Leo must have come out with one of his usual witticisms. His face wore the malicious expression of someone who has pulled a fast one. At the same time I detected a sad look. Federico, too, as he shuffled the papers in front of him, seemed oppressed by sadness, like a weight on his shoulders. I had an urge to cross the courtroom, to stand in front of the judge’s bench, amid camera flashes, to say something to the two of them and grasp their hands or something of the sort. But what could I say? That it was a little misunderstanding that couldn’t be corrected? Because just as I thought of this I realized that it was, indeed, an enormous little misunderstanding that couldn’t be corrected, that the roles had been allotted and it was impossible not to play them. I had come with my notebook and pen, hadn’t I? Just looking at them play their parts I was playing one of my own. I was to blame for falling in with the game, because there’s no escape and everyone of us is to blame in his own way. All of a sudden I was overcome by weariness and shame and, at the same time, I was struck by an idea I couldn’t decipher, a desire for Simplification. In a split second, in pursuit of a dizzily unwinding skein, I realized that we were there because of something called Complication, which for hundreds and thousands and millions of years has piled up, layer upon layer, increasingly complex circuits and systems, forming us as we are and all that we live through. I longed for Simplification, as if the millions of years which had produced Federico, Leo, Maddalena, “Little Pol” and myself had magically faded out into a split second of vacant time and I could imagine us, all of us, sitting on a leaf. Well, not exactly sitting, because we had become microscopic in size, and mononuclear, without sex, or history or reason, but with a flicker of awareness which allowed us to recognize one another, to know that we, we five, were there on a leaf, sucking up dewtirops as if we were sipping drinks at a table of the Caffe Goliardico, having no other function than to sit there while another kind of record player played another kind of Dusty Road, in a different form but with the same substance.