Antonio Tabucchi - Tristano Dies - A Life

Do you know what a headache means? I’m not talking about a migraine, or a slight headache, this is something else again, it’s a bunch of different things at once, and it’s not easy explaining something that’s a bunch of different things at once … first off it’s a small noise, that’s how it starts, a strange bell, more like a whistle or a squeal, a sonar that arrives from far away, from deep, deep down, and you can feel it, and all of a sudden you see the fierce outlines of things, as if that whistle’s there in sight, intensifying, distorting, and you feel as if a prism has replaced your eyes, because contours, edges, objects have increased and filled up space, expanded, changed shape, and through this change, they no longer mean what they used to mean, the wardrobe, for instance, is now a cube, a cube and nothing more, it no longer has the sense of a wardrobe, and now everything is rippling, space is swelling like the tide, and here comes the ache of the headache sea, like a blowing bellows that you’re sitting on, swaying, you have to sit, and the floor turns fluid, and around you is a breathing lung that seems to be the entire universe, no, it’s inside you, and you’re on top and inside at the same time; you’re a dust mote floating in the alveoli of a monstrous lung that’s breathing in and out and you press on your temples, trying to hold back the waves bursting in your head like a tempest where you drown … this, this is a headache … Tristano had his first headache one August tenth, many things have happened to him, to Tristano, in August, his life is marked by August, there are men like that, it’s Uranus, Saturn, so many things, I’ve forgotten many of them, but not this, that would be impossible, August tenth is San Lorenzo Day, the day of shooting stars, and maybe one dropped right on his head, a meteorite, but it wasn’t at night, it was noon, and he was right here in this house where he’d come back to do nothing, sitting under the pergola, and he was staring at a bunch of unripe grapes, counting them off like the years of his life, one grape one grape one grape for you, he whispered, a silly little ditty, and there were already so many grapes, and right then he grew aware of a strange whistle he’d never heard before, the bunch of grapes stopped being a bunch of grapes, the air cracked into fissures, nausea rose in his throat, and he staggered across the veranda as though he were on the quarterdeck of a ship tossing in the waves, and he reached his room, closed the shutters, threw himself onto the bed and clutched his pillow, and he was off on the first of those wretched journeys that would accompany him a long while, through miasmas, locust-filled clouds, a glaring expanse of nothing in all directions … He died the day before, you know, he blew up, with his instruments of death — his boy — that he loved more than a son … goddamn him …

… Some nights, sometimes, he’d stare at the lights on the plains and think of the past, of those days when people were playing with the future of his country, up in the mountains … everyone against the Nazi-Fascists, that was clear, but the future was something else again. By now, I’m very much aware that as far as the future’s concerned, there are many, could be many, like the color spectrum, slight gradations of color, almost nothing, a shade of blue will bring you to indigo, then violet, but blue’s one thing and violet another, almost nothing, but try living in one shade, you’ll see how intense it can be … During that time, though, he saw the world as binary; you know, we tend to be binary by nature, and we let ourselves be convinced, we’re such idiots: black and white, hot and cold, male and female. In short: this or that. But why do we always have to think of life as this or that, did you ever ask yourself why, writer? I think you have, and that might be why I called you here. But back then, he saw the future as divided in two, because he thought history was divided in two — the idiot — he didn’t understand that we make history, that we build it with our own two hands, it’s our own invention, and we could build another, if we just wanted to, if we just convinced ourselves that history, her story, is this or that, if we only had the strength to tell her, you’re nothing, madam history, don’t be so arrogant, you’re just my hypothesis, and if you don’t mind, madam, I’m going to invent you now as I see fit. But to say this, you have to be old and useless, practically a corpse like me, before you understand that she was an illusion, a ghost, and you can’t make her anymore, she’s already been made. History’s like love, a kind of music, and you’re the musician, and while you play her, you’re extremely capable, an interpreter who blows full blast on his toy trumpet or scrapes his bow ecstatically across the strings … magnificent, a perfect execution, applause. But you don’t know the score. And you only understand this later, much later, after the music’s already disappeared … So for him, there were only two possible futures. The first he knew all too well because he knew the country that had invented it, though you couldn’t say this in Italy, a future composed of ashen days, steered by a political system that considered people not as individuals but as cogs in a superior machine, small teeth in small, insignificant wheels grinding for the great wheel, for a classless society where we’d all be equal, with equal thoughts, equal efforts, equal joys, equal destinies. You want a little happiness, what you’ve got coming to you, comrade? — do you have a party membership card? — a ration card for collective happiness? — very good, how many in your family? — four, let’s see now … let’s see now … four, you, your female comrade and two children, good, good, comrade, good, good — and your wife’s card? — good, good — and your children’s? — good, good — everything seems in order, comrade, you have the right to four shares of happiness: sign here and I’ll stamp your paper, you’re a good comrade, and the great comrade who accompanies us all in the pursuit of happiness loves good comrades like you and wants you to have the necessary amount of happiness, just the right amount of happiness for the just world we’re building, a just world for a just society built by just comrades just like you, dear comrade, that’s what the great comrade said in his last speech, you must have heard it, a speech directed at good comrades like you working for a just society who deserve their just share of happiness, so what more do you want, comrade? — you’ve already been stamped by the political system, everything’s in order, regulated, go back to your laborious home, tell your domestic comrades that the great comrade sends his fraternal salute, now, how ’bout you stop breaking my balls? — ah, yes, you fought in the mountains, you killed a squad of fascists all by yourself — you’re a real hero, comrade — but if I’m not mistaken, you already got your medal for that — and you also lost two fingers — they got jammed in the submachine gun — no, don’t bother showing me your hand — it’s right here on this piece of paper — this piece of paper, comrade, is more important than your hand — well, you didn’t lose your balls, dear comrade — sorry to be so familiar, but we’re both comrades here, brave comrades like you don’t lose their balls, I know, I know, there were two gladiators in the arena, one was strong, mighty, ferocious, but the other was fearless, and he had this tiny, wicked smile that made him look like an American actor, some gladiators are strong but stupid, comrade — they puff out their chest, strut around, and wind up losing their balls, because they’re stupid, but you, comrade, you’re brave and you’re sharp — you’re especially sharp — but don’t try and be too sharp now, comrade, because we know everything about you — we know you went to live in a picture-postcard city — isn’t that a bit aesthete? — we know you have a good wife, but that she’s not enough for you; comrade, you say you love freedom and justice, but isn’t that a touch middle-class? — sorry to be blunt — but you seem a bit bourgeois; you know, libertarian ideology was revolutionary at first, but if you practice it in secret, that’s just bourgeois, and above all, we believe in the family — the family is the revolutionary center of the revolutionary society — comrade, I don’t want you to disturb the great comrade, because he’s watching over us, he only sleeps two hours a night, because he has to take care of us all; in his feverish, sleepless nights, from his window overlooking the vast piazza where he assembled the military review dedicated to veterans like you who saved the country, well, comrade, he’s watching you from that window, and he knows what you did on the dawn of that day that was crucial for our country, that you took out an entire enemy squad, he knows it better than you do, comrade, but excuse me, comrade, how many hours of sleep do you get a night? — seven hours? — seven hours is a lot, comrade, a whole night’s sleep — he sleeps one, two hours at the most — you don’t want to disturb the great comrade — comrade, seven hours of sleep is a good amount — we found out you write poetry, and this makes us happy, but watch the intimism, we know about the intimist poets, they create the past — watch out — you don’t want to drink too much past, comrade, it might go to your head, and now, back to your busy little home where your lady comrade’s waiting for you, go in peace, comrade, and don’t pester us again …