Antonio Tabucchi - Tristano Dies - A Life

… and then it goes … I saw other riddles like bloomed flowers in an empty place, empty gowns laying claim to bodies turned to air, and I saw a girl’s heart forgotten in a cage, lion feces, the circus gone away, and time a fortress built of stone and stupor, and on the fortress walls a blind dove perched, but how do you decipher what heroes won’t tell, how do you defeat the sea if you’re free to sail but not to build a boat?… That long, annoying poem of Frau’s came back to me, but you don’t give a damn. I do, though: I’d like March sprinkles, but it’s August instead, she says, and there’s nothing you can do. And she’s right …

… I’m tired but I haven’t finished, let me rest a bit, but don’t go — stay — keep your ears open, it’s important, because there’s another future beyond the one I’ve told you, and Tristano had to choose. And in this other future there was, simply, freedom. Which is no small thing. Here’s what it looked like, up in the mountains, okay?… there were woods and a forked path and Tristano was standing in the middle of those woods, gun pointed, but he had only one gun sight, his gun fired in only one direction, it obeyed the laws of ballistics, and there’s no guesswork to ballistics, because it depends on geometry, and there’s not much you can do about geometry, my dear writer: if an angle’s acute it’s acute and if it’s obtuse it’s obtuse, and you don’t want to fuss with angle apertures, it was truly a fork in the path, Tristano was at a crossroads, and this divided problem really came down to his rifle sight: point and pull the trigger one way, you stay in a classless society that suffocates you as a person, point and pull the trigger the other way, and the world keeps turning like always, with those who thrive and those who don’t, but hey, you’re on the side of freedom … it’s a matter of killing one or the other, and Tristano has to choose. And you know what he chose, because you know what freedom is, you’re a liberal intellectual, and you hold to your ideals, and this is why you were inspired by that interview a sneaky journalist got from Tristano, a few words, and they inspired your little book — sorry, that just slipped out — not little — short — of course it’s stupid measuring novels in meters, as if quantity counts for something, truth is, your eighty pages are worth more than bricks sold by the kilogram, it’s almost like you were right there at Tristano’s side, up in the mountains, right there that day — even better — you’re pointing the gun, you choose the direction, aim, fire. Bang. You picked democracy. Bravo. You made the same choice as Tristano, that’s why you’ve managed to get inside his head so well — such mimetic powers — you really seem to be Tristano, in my opinion you are Tristano, I don’t know why I’m telling you about him, you are Tristano, in your story, you wrote exactly what he did, you’re the one who suffered what he was going through, suffered through it in first person, because you’re a gifted writer, that’s why I called you, in those few pages you were Tristano, a perfect Tristano, an exemplary Tristano, an indisputable Tristano that he never managed to be his entire life … How funny, in so few pages, you managed to be what a real person never was in his entire life, that’s also why your novel won a prize — it should — the truth should be prized, because the truth is concrete, like that wire-haired poet said, and the truth’s even more concrete when it’s black on white, that, yes, that’s true, you write the truth and sign it, and like Tristano, you understood the freedom you went looking for and finally found, because freedom’s something to hold dear, that’s for sure, and you wrote it down in black and white, and those are your words, the word is sacred, and so it must be free, but you know, my friend, there’s one detail you didn’t think of, and you’ll need to write this detail down, because I called you to my bedside just for that, and you came to my bedside just for that, because you’re curious and wanted to write Tristano’s real life, and I’d like to tell you this detail … Now then, someday, if one of those creatures you sit and watch on TV in your living room, one of those creatures that’s all skin and bones with a belly like a drum and eyes full of flies, if this creature steps right out of the television, materializes right in front of you, you know what you should tell him to really earn that prize you won? You don’t know, do you? I’ll tell you what you need to say. You need to say, speak, friend, speak — you’re a free man, your word is sacred — no one can destroy your word — and this is true freedom, this is why we’ve always fought, all of us who love freedom, so you can speak, so you can express your free opinion — speak — my civilization will allow it, you’re here to speak, you have to speak, open your mouth, brush away the flies and speak, don’t give me that stupid look, do me a favor, forget that you’re malnourished for the moment, forget your dumb diseases, please — speak — forget you only have one kidney for a second, it’s common knowledge, organ trafficking … plus, what’s one kidney compared to freedom of speech, don’t waste this opportunity … your country’s hit rock-bottom, it’s an inferno, but a fiscal paradise for us … it’s a problem, I know … you’re being pillaged by our industries, your raw materials carried away … another problem the free world has to deal with … the free world backs a dictator who’s slaughtered thousands of citizens — better — it’s the free world who put that dictator in power, in place of the democratically elected president … a few of us, myself included, don’t entirely agree on this point, and that’s why I invite you to speak, speak, that’s why you came into this world, to speak, the word is sacred, you’re free to speak, you can trust us, I’m not just anybody: I’m a writer, and writers are very much aware of the meaning of free speech, you’re free to speak with me, this person talking to you has chosen freedom, has defended freedom, stop being catatonic — speak — it’s the opportunity of a lifetime, take advantage now — you might not get another chance — don’t think that they’re going to invite you to the broadcast transmission where the true meaning of freedom will be announced, you won’t get an invitation, but here we are, face to face, in my living room, I’ll consider reporting what you said, at least one word, and if you don’t know how to say this word in your own language, because maybe this word doesn’t exist in your own language, then say it in English so the whole world will understand; in English, the word is freedom , say it with me — free-dom — got it?… Tell him this, writer. Now do me a favor, go to bed, I want to sleep now, too, I’m tired, I’m glad Frau gave you a room with a view, those towers are beautiful, framed by the window, they’re ancient, did you see how they float in the morning heat, they’re almost trying to pull away from the ground, to touch the sky, they’re ambitious towers, they were built in the Middle Ages, think of that — the Middle Ages — the Middle Ages means being in the middle of something, and what do you think they were in the middle of, what came before or what we are now, is there something in the middle between one thing and another? It’s night out, I can tell, because I can sense the light and then the stages of the light … stages of the dark, I mean … that’s what I know … Do you know the stages of the dark?

Today I’ve found another topic, tied to the transmission of the flesh. I’m having a philosophical moment, writer, I feel really good as a philosopher. The transmission of the flesh. You ever transmitted any? I’m sure you have, maybe into more than one uterus, that’s what you modern writers do, take a wife, get her pregnant, dedicate a book to her, because a wife is a wife a wife … and then you might take another … another child, another dedication, various pollinations.… and meanwhile the printers are hard at work … the registry offices … because the human race can’t be wiped out … Cain’s line deserves to be transmitted … and so do the books the human race has come up with, otherwise, what’s the point of this spinning globe we wander?… The transmission of the flesh provides some kind of sense to this asteroid spinning on its axis where we reside, but don’t kid yourself — the world’s not turning — it’s just something thought up by some atheist scientist who believes in optical illusions: everything is fixed, was fixed from the start, in the sense that everything’s just the same, Ptolemy was a genius, everything is fixed, how it was created or blew apart on its own, everything was born and then stayed fixed in place, we’re the ones walking by, and we believe everything follows us while we walk, but everything’s been fixed in place from the very start, frozen like this noonday’s frozen and was frozen from the very start; do you hear the cicadas, feel the heat through the shutters, and that light inviting us to close our eyes, to abandon ourselves to the frozen ocean that pretends to move? And yet it does move … Illusions. Nothing moves, this noonday is fixed, had been, was, and will be. How many days have gone by since you came to write this voice of mine, how many days this August? No, don’t bother, he won’t last more than a month, the doctor said, whispered, really, to Frau in the hallway; I heard, the dying’s hearing is acute, he won’t last more than a month … That was early August, a Sunday, I remember it clearly because they started giving me morphine, morphine is Ptolemaic, it tends to stop everything, it crystallizes, turns time to candied fruit … Now to the point: Tristano didn’t follow the obligatory path of the transmission of the flesh, he didn’t want to continue in another, he spread his seed on Rosamunda’s belly, and his one true love, with whom he’d wanted to share his seed, his Mavri, he abandoned on one of the Aegean islands, I’m speaking metaphorically of course, he abandoned her like Theseus abandoned Ariadne, not really knowing why, maybe because, like Theseus, he was a moron, I’m still speaking metaphorically, the myth doesn’t say this — I do — Theseus was a moron. And sometimes someone does something all the same and he doesn’t know why, he just does it, that’s all, and then he spends the rest of his life with it gnawing away at his conscience, while he beats his head against the wall, or against a vineyard stake, the way Tristano did …