Antonio Tabucchi - Tristano Dies - A Life

Ferruccio said the person who writes in order to comment on life always thinks the fact that he’s commenting is more important than the comment itself, though he might not realize this. And what about you? — you write about life — so what do you think?…

… sorry for yesterday, if it was yesterday. Was it yesterday or this morning? I think it was yesterday, but I can’t be sure anymore … sorry … it’s true … I wasn’t particularly soft on you, but you probably don’t expect someone in my condition to be very nice … I know when certain things are raised … I mean, that novel’s so important to you, you wrote it, even won a prize … Frau tells me you weren’t feeling too well today … a headache, she says … she’s taken a shine to you … you’re torturing him, young sir, she tells me, hours and hours of listening to you in this hot, airless room that stinks of disinfectant … But you don’t have a headache, I’m the one with the headache, you were just smarting from … I needled you about your comment on life … patience, now … anyway, sorry, I thought of a detail: when Tristano’s waiting for the Germans to leave the farmhouse, you describe his face as resembling an American actor’s from back then, and I’ve always asked myself how you came up with this, how you could have known … it’s impossible, that was just a little game he had with Marilyn, no one else knew, Marilyn’s the only one who called him Clark — a coincidence? — it must be — you’re too young, and everyone who knew him in the mountains is dead by now … I don’t like that passage in your novel … Clark waited, absolutely still, crouched for hours behind that rock; he’d often been the prey before, but other times, like now, he’d also played the role of the hunter … It doesn’t even feel like your writing, it’s like you copied someone else, your own writing’s far more capable, it explores nuances, chiaroscuro, you’re a different sort of hunter, an ambiguity detective, you’re always wary, even of yourself, you are, and here you drop me into some kind of neorealism, as if reality’s what a person sees, do you really think life can be sealed into biography? This idea doesn’t suit you, the notion of the official record … you don’t believe in biography, especially the kind that interprets and concludes, you know these biographies are only skin-deep, you prefer lifting the flap of skin and seeing underneath, the tissues are what interest you, I’ve been mulling this over the past two days … before you go, meaning, before I go, if you want to tell me the truth, I’d like that … The morphine I just took hasn’t done a thing for the pain, no effect whatsoever, when you leave, tell Frau she’s giving me distilled water … inject him with distilled water, you’ll see: it will act like a placebo … I can just hear that kid doctor who’s treating my death according to local healthcare regulations … do me a favor, tell her to give me some real morphine, to put some morphine in this water clock of mine … a water clock of morphine … you like that idea? I believe in chemistry, so do you … listen to me, no, listen to someone who wrote before you, who wrote better than you, that writer who understood that even feelings are combinations of chemicals, he called them elective affinities, equilibriums predisposed by nature, understand? it’s a question of atoms, an atom of this drawn to an atom of that, valences, they combine and you either love or loathe someone, depending on … sorry, I’m losing the thread … I was saying … was it something about religion? I think I was telling you something before about religion, but maybe not, anyway, I was getting to Tristano’s not believing in faith, if I can put it like that, well, he just didn’t have the gift, like those with faith might say, and Tristano just didn’t have it, and so he was at risk and wound up the way people like him wind up, those people who don’t have anything nonexistent to believe in, and so they wind up believing in people because people exist, which is the worst thing ever, but there’s also a worst of the worst of the worst, because Tristano believed in believing in people, but in my opinion, deep down, he didn’t believe in them, and this is the worst of the worst of the worst — am I making any sense? And this is why at his lowest moments, he clung oh so quietly to a faith in those religions that priests have who try to find a little happiness by relying on something like the morphine Frau’s so stingy with, this thing that lasts as long as it lasts, and as long as it lasts it’s okay, but it’s not paradise, because paradise should be eternal, and Tristano was only staying in a hotel by the hour, with just a chance for a few good dreams. And this is why there came a time, like I was saying before, that he decided the solution might be to make a pilgrimage to a shrine no longer in use, a ruin that was now a tourists-in-shorts destination, and he was thinking that in this place the spirit of some defunct priestess might be able to explain the past and the present and the fleeing hours, what they might mean … life, in other words, that life you’re turning into biography, if a bit piecemeal … but I’ll tell you about this trip later, I’ll remember it better tomorrow … and I’ll make it to tomorrow, don’t worry, and even to the day after that, I’ll let you know when the movie’s over, I’ll know better than you, and in the meantime, you stick to writing Tristano’s biography, what you can write, what’s possible to write … Life … a novel read one time only, long ago … a philosopher said that, I can’t remember who, must be German, only a German could say something so grim and so true … speaking of lives and novels, I think I may have left out a third type of biography, the kind that’s fictionalized, sorry to keep on about this, but the book you wrote with your character inspired by Tristano — when someone writes in first person and is writing someone else’s life as if it’s his own — deep down, this becomes something of that third type. Why did you write me in first person? That might seem normal to you, but, listen, it really isn’t. Why did you become Tristano? Why did you put yourself in his place? — and thirty years after it all happened, when Tristano wasn’t Tristano anymore, when there was no longer a reason for it, except your personal reasons, if we can speak of these … I don’t think there’s a writer out there who can say why he writes — and what does your life have to do with Tristano’s, anyway — why did you identify with him exactly?… Why do you write, writer? Are you afraid of dying? Do you want to be someone else? Is it a longing for the womb? Do you need a father — like you’re still a child? Life’s not enough for you? And where did you get the idea to write about Tristano — up in the mountains? But you were never in those mountains, not with a submachine gun in your hands, anyway, maybe you were up there on vacation, in some nice hotel with old-world, Central European charm, because the Cecco Beppe — the Franz Joseph — railway used to lead up there, I know about hotels like that and the people who go there, entrepreneurs, politicians, the rich and powerful … maybe you were surrounded by that sort and got the idea to write about Tristano — was it because you saw the Alan Ladd film Shane ? Was this why, during that time of war, you had your Tristano obsessing over the Soviet tribunals and the Moscow Trials, why you had him act as supreme judge, in the name of a sacrosanct principle, as a condemnation of any attempt to stifle individual consciousness, a sacred principle that anyone wanting to create a free society had to recognize? But how could you simplify Tristano that way? Who are you, writer, to possess the pangs of conscience of someone you’ve never met? Tristano seems like one of Charlemagne’s paladins, Charlemagne, the great avenger of betrayal, relentless toward traitors. But what do you know about real betrayal?… I think you just know the edges of it, the piddling stuff, nothing, what you solve with a pardon me, a bedtime confession, a transgression. You can’t possibly know the very heart of betrayal … Call for Frau, call her in here, tell her that even she’s betraying me, betraying me for my own good or what she thinks is my own good, such a stupid betrayal … instead of morphine she’s pumping me full of distilled water, now’s the time for another injection, I can tell by the light that it must be five in the evening, six at the latest, just listen to the cicadas, this is when they sing like crazy, a las cinco de la tarde , they’re afraid the male won’t come back again, they’ve been calling him all day … he’s coming, he’s coming … the male cicada always comes back, even if it’s at the last moment, males keep others waiting, they’re cruel, but then he returns and he finally impregnates the female, and then for her it’s all over, she’s served her purpose, what she sang for, the fool, he’s filled her belly, she lays her eggs and croaks so another cicada will be born that will spend another summer singing, calling for the male to impregnate her … Call for Frau, let’s continue this later, the pain’s getting worse, and it’s making me crabby … can’t you see I’m in a bad mood?… and you, too, go lie down, rest at noon, pale and thoughtful, you deserve a little nap, writer, or go out to the vineyard for a breath of fresh air, since Frau says I’m keeping you prisoner in this dark room that stinks of disinfectant.