Antonio Tabucchi - Little misunderstandings of no importance - stories

Baroque writers loved ambiguity. Calderon, and others with him, made ambiguity into a metaphor for the world. I suppose that they were moved by faith that, on the day when we awaken from the dream of living, our earthly ambiguity will finally be explained.

I, too, speak of ambiguities, but it’s not so much that I like them; I am driven, rather, to seek them out. Misunderstandings, uncertainties, belated understandings, useless remorse, treacherous memories, stupid and irredeemable mistakes, all these irresistibly fascinate me, as if they constituted a vocation, a sort of lowly stigmata. The fact that the attraction is mutual is not exactly a consolation. I might be consoled by the conviction that life is by nature ambiguous and distributes ambiguities among all of us. But this would be, perhaps, a presumptuous axiom, not unlike the baroque metaphor.

Concerning the stories collected here, I should like to supply only a few notes on their beginnings. I stole A Riddle in Paris one evening in 1975, and it stayed within me long enough to come out in a version that unfortunately betrays the original. I shouldn’t mind if Spells and Any Where in the World were considered, in the broadest sense of the term, ghost stories, which doesn’t mean that they can’t have another interpretation. The first owes something to a theory of the French child psychologist Dr. Franchise Dolto, while, in the case of the second, it may be superfluous to specify that it was inspired by Baudelaire’s Le spleen de Paris, particularly the prose poem from which I took the title. Bitterness and Clouds is a realistic story. Cinema owes much to a rainy evening, a small railway station on the Riviera, and to the face of an actress now dead.

About the rest of the stories I have little to add. I can only say that I wish Waiting for Winter had been written by Henry James and The Trains that Go to Madras by Rudyard Kipling. They would doubtless have come off better that way. Rather than regret for what I have written, I feel regret for what I shall never be able to read.

The clerk called the court to order and there was a brief silence as the nearly white-haired Federico, in his, judge’s robe, led the little procession through the side door into the courtroom. At that very moment the tune of Dusty Road surged up in my mind. I watched them take their seats as if I were witnessing a ritual, remote and incomprehensible, but projected into the future. The image of those solemn men, sitting on a bench with a crucifix hanging over it, faded into the image of a past which, like an old film, was my present. Almost mechanically my hand scribbled Dusty Road, while my thoughts travelled backwards. Leo, confined like a dangerous animal in the prisoner’s cage, lost his sickly, unhappy look. I saw him leaning on his grandmother’s Empire-style console with that old bored and knowing expression which made for his very special charm. “To-nino,” he was saying, “put Dusty Road on again, will you?” And I put the record back on. Yes, Leo deserved to dance with Maddalena, known as the Tragic Muse because as Antigone in the school play she had broken into uncontrollable sobs. This was the appropriate record, yes it was, for dancing so passionately in the drawing room of Leo’s grandmother. Here were the antecedents of the trial, that evening when Leo and Federico had taken turns dancing with the auburn-haired Tragic Muse, gazing into her eyes and swearing that they weren’t rivals, that they didn’t give a damn for her. They were dancing for the sake of dancing, that was all. But they were mad about her, of course, and so was I as I changed the records, looking as if I didn’t care.

From one dance to another a year went by, a year marked by a certain phrase, one that we ran into the ground because it fitted any and every occasion. Missing an appointment, spending money you didn’t have in the bank, forgetting a solemn promise, finding a highly recommended book a total bore, all these mistakes and ambiguities were described as ‘little misunderstandings of no importance’”. The original example was something that happened to Federico and roused us to memorable gales of laughter. Federico, like the rest of us, had planned his future and signed up for Classics; he was already a whiz at Greek and had played the part of Creon in Antigone. We, instead, had opted for Modern Literature. “It’s closer to us,” said Leo, “and you can’t compare James Joyce with those boring ancients, can you?” We were at the Caffe Goliardico, the students’ meeting place, each of us with his registration book, looking over the schedule of courses, stretched out on the billiard table. Memmo had joined us; he was a fellow from Lecce with political commitments and anxious that politics be handled “the way it should be”, so we called him “Little Pol” and the nickname stuck throughout the year. At a certain point Federico appeared on the scene, looking very upset and waving his registration book in the air. He was so breathless and beside himself that he was barely able to explain. They had signed him up, by mistake, for Law and he simply couldn’t get over it. To give him moral support we went with him to the administrative office, where we tangled with an amiable but indifferent old codger who had dealt with thousands of students over the years. He looked carefully at Federico’s book and then at his worried face. “Just a little misunderstanding that can’t be corrected,” he said. “No use worrying about it.” Federico stared at him in dismay, his cheeks reddening. “A little misunderstanding that can’t be corrected?” he stammered. The old man did not lose his composure. “Sorry,” he said, “that’s not what I meant. I meant a little misunderstanding of no importance. I’ll get it fixed for you before Christmas. Meanwhile, if you like, you can take the Law courses. That way you won’t be wasting your time.” We went away choking with laughter: a little misunderstanding of no importance! And Federico’s angry look made us laugh all the more.

Strange, the way things happen. One morning a few weeks later, Federico turned up at the cafe looking quite pleased with himself. He had just come out of a class on the philosophy of law, where he had gone merely to pass the time, and well, boys, believe it or not, he’d grasped certain problems he’d never grasped before. The Greek tragedians, by comparison, had nothing to say. He already knew the classics, anyhow, so he’d decided to stay with Law.

Federico the judge said something in a questioning tone; his voice sounded faraway and metallic as if it were coming through a telephone. Time staggered and took a vertical fall, and the face of Maddalena, ringed by tiny bubbles, floated in a puddle of years. Perhaps it’s not such a good idea to go and see a girl you’ve been in love with on the day they’re amputating her breasts. If only in self-defence. But I had no wish to defend myself; I’d long since surrendered. And so I hung about in the hall outside the operating room, where patients are made to wait for their turn. She was wheeled in, wearing on her face the innocently happy look of pre-anesthesia, which I’ve heard stirs up a sort of unconscious excitement. There was an element of fear, I could see, but dulled by drugs. Should I say something? What I wanted to say was: “Maddalena, I was always in love with you; I don’t know why I’ve never managed to tell you before.” But you can’t say such a thing to a girl entering the operating room for an operation like that. Instead I broke out at full speed with some lines from Antigone, which I’d spoken in the performance years before: