Antonio Tabucchi - Tristano Dies - A Life

I knew it was her, even when she was just a figure on the horizon, a bug, because I could make out those familiar, ample hips like an amphora vase where I’d laid my hands and my body; to the left, on the hill, were two Ionic columns, of course I knew they were really the towers from my window, but the painter who’d created this scene, who paints dreams, had transformed these towers into two Ionic columns, and little by little, getting closer, her legs also seemed like two columns, and a delicate vine climbed up to cover her pubis, and he wondered if she hadn’t become a tree, though the tree was moving, he was in his shroud, in the middle of this room that was flung wide open to the countryside, it was an idea of a room and inside this idea of a room was an olive grove that could only be the grove of Delphi, because the trunks were so gnarled and ancient, they could only be those of Delphi, the places they’d passed through in their life dancing dances with immemorial movements though not a trace remains, to the sound of a reed flute that we never hear, that guides our dancing, he hummed “Tha Xanarthis,” and she peeked out from behind an olive tree and said, of course I’m back, I had to come back, my darling Tristano, I thought you were dead, I looked all over the islands for you, I wrote you a letter, then let the wind take it, then a firefly wandering in a field of reaped wheat told me you were here, Tristano, and so I came. It’s true, he said, Mavri, my love, the wheat’s been threshed and the sheaves are yellowing in the fields, but it’s never too late to revive the stalks. Saying this, he lifted his shroud, she was very close now and with his head bowed, he whispered, do you see? — my leg’s being devoured by gangrene, the flesh is rotten and the worm is in the fruit; it’s so bad, the worm is in the fruit. He was naked, with just a kerchief around his neck like the reapers wear in the field. Tristano, she said, I can still see your cock, so you’re not completely rotten yet, maybe there’s still a little time. Daphne, he said, how notarial our life is, I’m here in articulo mortis . Well, I like you all the same, she said, even if your legs are full of maggots: your trunk is healthy, and that is where your heart is beating. Then they lay down, and the countryside around them turned into a hot, wide-open plain; over the hills the orange light of the setting sun sent the shadow of the Ionic temple all the way down to Daphne’s belly. You know, Daphne, he said, I forgot about backlighting, about the candle I always kept lit in a house on the shore, and one night you walked by in the frame of the window as though you were walking on air, that’s the most important memory of my whole life, and I was about to forget it, do you remember that house we once lived in, the empty rooms, the piano on the ground floor, the sound of the surf, the smell of algae that I called the smell of aldae because the woman who came to clean for us was named Alda? She didn’t answer, her breath came rushing in his ear, like panting, here I am, she breathed like she did at certain moments, here I am, Tristano, hold me tight, and just then the beacon light came on from down the coast, the plain was dark by then, but luckily the beacon light was on, and there was nothing to be afraid of.

… Do you know that poem where a mother dressed in black is crying over the body of her son killed in the square? Or did I already ask you? Frau read it to me the other day … you left one morning in May, it goes, and now the fountain is dry, I wish you water forever … and then it goes on to say that she unties her white hair and covers that withered flower of a face … half past midnight, the hours go by quickly, even if it isn’t half past midnight, that’s what I’m guessing, Frau turned on the lamp at nine, I’ve been here, not moving, not talking, and who would I talk to? — I’m alone in this house now … did you notice how nicely that poem works for me?… seems like it was written just for me, like the writer knew … but it’s not true that I don’t have anyone now, I can talk to you, even if all you do is listen, that’s something, that’s plenty … Thank you.

Writer, you see how I go back and forth in time, I wander, can’t tell now from then, can’t separate the two, which brings Papee to mind — but who was Papee? — did I ever meet him? Maybe he was a character in some novel I read once, a nice boy who fought for his country’s freedom, Burundi, or somewhere like that, and the memory sweeps everything along with it, into the same water, but you have an advantage: I’m teaching you that a clock’s time doesn’t run at the same pace as a lifetime, and any time you’ll have to discuss this, you can say you learned it from an old man about to croak who went back and forth in time as he pleased, and there will be those who think this is a trick of some kind, because they don’t care if they understand, they’ll think it’s all a trick, and that memory … There are so few memories remaining to us, writer: Caesar’s commentaries, Augustine’s confessions, certain de profundis , like Molly’s, a de profundis of the womb, though a man wrote it, and mine too is a de profundis … you know, writer, I’d really like to have a womb, to be a woman now, a beautiful, ripe young woman, the sap circulating in my body, how beautiful … lifted by the moon like the tides, a woman who was the origin of the world, and here I am instead, my two dried-up balls being devoured by gangrene, while I lie here blowing a bunch of hot air.

… Rosamunda, Rosamunda, on such a lovely evening, I truly am believing it’s fairy dust I’m breathing, a thousand voices, thousand choices, thousand hearts are all rejoicing, such happiness is ours, such joy beneath the stars … Oh, wri-ter, all of my love is for you, oh, wri-ter, I’m thinking only of you … You know, it’s really strange: I called you and I was only thinking about myself, I really wasn’t thinking about you, and since you’ve been here, even though you haven’t said a word, I’ve started thinking about you. For one reason: you’re writing me. And at times, you seem to be me a little, and so I ask myself if what I’m telling you is mine because I’m telling it, or is it yours because you’re writing it … Do things belong to those who say them or to those who write them? What do you think? Think it over — what’s it matter to me — why should I give a damn at this point?

You and I need to make a pact. I thought about it all night … what I mean is, I have something to ask you, too, so thinking about it some more, I want to do a little bartering. But first let’s be clear on something, because I don’t want you to convince yourself that I was the one who asked you to come … it was you, you know that better than me, I whistled and you came running, because that’s all you were waiting for … it was just too tempting … Sorry I’m only telling you this now, agreements should be worked out early on, like gentlemen do, sealing the deal with a handshake, but I was saying, and then I got a bit lost, even if I wanted to tell you first thing, believe me … okay, here it is … what I propose is that you say something in return … I want us to make a pact here, because I know you writers, at just the right moment, you’ll see something, maybe it stands out, you think something like this has nothing to do with the rest of the story, it interrupts the flow, and so long, into the garbage it goes … I’m telling this story but you’re the one writing it down, and who’s to guarantee you’ll include something if you think it’s insignificant and doesn’t matter?… But it does matter, it matters a great deal, and that’s why we need to make a pact: I tell you what I promised to tell you, but you write this detail down, because they say when something’s written down, it holds a different value … and be sure they know that it’s not just anybody asking for this; it’s a national hero, someone with a war cross on his chest, and who knows, maybe that’ll impress the British, the British value heroism, they’ve practiced it quite lavishly, and if they hadn’t been up there when Tristano was in the mountains … you can write this down: that Tristano truly admired them at that time … less at other times … because of what they did in other places, and you don’t have to go very far, just think of Daphne’s country, where they propped up that big fascist Field Marshall Papagos, so the Greeks got themselves a new Duce and a new king, after Metaxas, it’s the British concept of democracy in other people’s houses … But now let’s get down to it … personally, I don’t know the exact words to use — that’s your job — it’ll take tact and diplomacy, otherwise what kind of writer would you be … It’s about the Parthenon marbles … that’s what Tristano wants you to ask for, the marble friezes taken by a British lord who was ambassador to Turkey when the Ottomans controlled Greece, and who had the Parthenon flayed and the marbles transported to Great Britain, like a man who finds a lady lying unconscious on a deserted street and tears off her necklace for his wife … it was that exactly … flayed, that’s the word, writer, that thief had his workers use pick axes and sledgehammers … years ago I read an account of someone who witnessed that rape, but I’ll spare you the details … You know, they didn’t just take a painting, what you’d stick on a wall, they stole a whole landscape … supporters of this theft have their various views … I know: the friezes at the British Museum are gorgeously lit … as if fluorescent lights in England were somehow brighter than the sun in Greece … or that when the lord took them they weren’t friezes on the original temple anymore, because the Ottomans had turned it into a mosque … nice reasoning, but the Ottomans only changed the contents, a small thing — what’s it take to substitute one god for another? — they didn’t change the container in the least … such sweethearts, I’d really like to see how they’d react, these fine thinkers, if the spires of their Westminster Abbey wound up in the Athens Museum … The lord in question was Elgin, Lord Elgin , write it down, so the British won’t get him confused with some other lord, with all those lords they have in England … In short, write down that Tristano wants them to give those marbles back to their rightful owner, that it’s a sublime temple, and if Athena hadn’t built it, they wouldn’t have their House of Lords, they’d still be just a bunch of sheep herders … and maybe remind them of Byron, who died for these things, who knows, maybe that’ll have an impact … And if you want, add that along with the reasonable demands of normal diplomacy, these friezes were already requested by a great poet, though no one knew him because he lived like a nobody in rented rooms, Mr. Cavafy, and that Tristano wishes to repeat this poet’s polite request, which he made a century ago, so by now, it must have reached British ears … All right, here’s my proposal: I tell you what you want to know, and you write down Tristano’s wish, I think you’re the one who’s getting the better end of things … Is it a deal? If it’s a deal, I trust you, it’s an old-fashioned pact, between gentlemen … a verbal pact … but for us everything is verbal, everything’s composed of words, right? A gentlemen’s agreement , as the British say … If it’s a deal, take my hand, I still know how to shake someone’s hand, and this will be the first time you ever touched me.