Antonio Tabucchi - Tristano Dies - A Life

You like it? I thought about it all night, rewrote it in my head, word for word, but I’m sure you’ll improve it once you write it down; make it poignant, if you can … I’m not much good at heartbreak, but that’s exactly what this calls for, because this is a letter that truly came out of nowhere … Who wrote that letter to Tristano, and from what depths did it emerge, like a relentless sea-bass pushing up in time from the bottom of the ocean until one day it breaks the surface of the water? Was she still living, that woman searching for his grave? — and why — to dig her own beside it? Daphne was no longer there, but her voice remained, so her search for him remained as well. Can we survive ourselves? Who can say … Eyes wide-open in the dog days of August, with words from a letter but no letter in his hand, the air thick with viscous remorse, like ammoniac gas leaking from a punctured pipe, Tristano stood there, frozen in the blinding midday sun, naked as the day he was born, as he’d fled from the house, fled from voices invoking spirits that were invoking him … his hanging, flaccid member, a useless compass needle, indicating a non-cardinal point that he knew to be the ground, and more than the ground, the bottom, and more than the bottom, the pit, and eternity … and the slight kiss of light on his body turned to shadow, blinding shadow that swallowed all … He raised his arms, groping, and he felt he inhabited nothing, was made of nothing, too. Was he already dead? Who could say, who could say … No one can say, writer, I’m the only one who knows, and maybe I don’t know, either, because you don’t just die on the outside, you die on the inside even more.

I’ll be honest, before you came I thought I’d tell you everything about Mavri Elià, no one’s ever mentioned her, and luckily, you ignored her in your book as well … I told myself that I’d make things right again. How foolish, as if things could be made right in this life … but I don’t feel like it anymore, Mavri Elià is Tristano’s and his alone, why should I give her to you, you don’t deserve her … at most, I’ll give you a few of the essential details, limit myself to the so-called facts. But what do facts mean?… the facts … let’s say this … the facts … when she disappeared, for instance … when she passed away, like someone might say who uses expressions like, it is my obligation to, and, my condolences. So stupid, people don’t die, it is my obligation to be precise, they’re only under a spell … a writer you must be familiar with said we’re under the spell of those who love us — I mean those who really really love us — and we wind up floating off the ground, like balloons, though no one sees, the only ones who see are those who love us, those who really really love us, and they rise up on tiptoe, give a little hop, just a bounce, and grab hold of our legs, which at this point have turned to air, and they pull us down, keep hold of us, otherwise we’d start flying again, rising again, but they link their arm in ours, holding us down, down with them, as if nothing had occurred, as we do with certain pretenses in our life, a matter of social convention, so we won’t look bad in front of the shopkeeper or the tobacco-store owner who’s known you forever and might say, but look at that strange guy arm-in-arm with his wife who’s floating right off the ground … and that’s what happened to him, to Tristano, it was Sunday, and even if it wasn’t, make it Sunday, because I’ve decided that everything important to Tristano happened on a Sunday, and if you write it this way in your book, what you write will become true, because when things are written down they become true … and it was August, because I’ve decided all the important things in Tristano’s life happened on a Sunday in August, and if you write it this way, then it will become true as well, you’ll see … he wandered around empty Plaka and thought about how sad she looked at times, and about some sad evenings at Malafrasca, Daphne, pensive, staring out the open windows toward the plains, the gas lamps, and her saying in her Crete accent, Tristano, if there’s one thing I want, it’s not to be buried out there when I die, in that cemetery covered by fog, take me home and have me cremated, and scatter my ashes in my sea, around my Aegean islands, but nothing dramatic, please, something simple, just wander here and there, go from one island to the next, borrow a little fishing boat, take it a little ways out from shore, not too far, at Sifnos, Naxos, Paros, and throw a pinch here, a pinch there, and also, please lie naked in the bottom of the boat, like when we made those trips because you got it into your head to fish for gambusinen, but you never did fish for them, and we’d wind up making love, the boat rocking crazily and you shouting, shipwrecked once more!.. Tristano stopped at the men’s shop in Plaka, she was lying in the Byzantine chapel nearby, it was so hot … and he thought the shopkeeper might find a way to get her back because he’d known her since she was a girl, but the shopkeeper didn’t remember her, then Tristano went to the snack kiosk and asked the little man if he remembered a woman who bought candies there as a girl, her name’s Daphne, Phine, her friends always called her Phine, she’s lying in a coffin in the chapel close by, on the square, if you remember her, could you give her back to me? I’ve heard about these magic spells, and I’m trying … But the little man at the kiosk didn’t remember Daphne, sorry, he said, but Greece is filled with Daphnes … and then Tristano turned to the legless woman selling violets, and the legless woman selling violets remembered her at once, of course, of course, she said, that girl with eyes like two black olives, it was a long time ago, but I remember her very well, look, she hasn’t just vanished into thin air, she’s right there beside you, up by that orange tree, just grab her legs and pull her down … Spells are strange, writer, because just like that, Tristano swung round and there was Mavri Elià floating by an orange tree, and he told her, how silly, I’m old and must be going blind, you were right there behind me and I didn’t even notice, thank god for the lady selling violets who made me see you were only under a spell … Thank you, ma’am, he said to the legless woman selling violets, and he pulled Daphne down from the tree and they started strolling around Plaka, but it wasn’t as he thought, it was a winter day, and Daphne was saying, come inside the door, they’re shooting — it’s dangerous — and you’ve killed a German officer.

Ferruccio said that lesser organisms have greater vitality than those that are more evolved. That’s the theory of someone who died young, people who think like that have to die young, just to be consistent … I’d tell you a story, a nice little tidbit, something no one really suspects, but I’m tired now, it must be getting late, I need to sleep … I’ll say it briefly, and you’ll have to do some embellishing, because it’s not all that exciting … but right now I really need to sleep, I can’t hold out any longer. Tomorrow, please come early, at dawn even, I’ll be awake then, there’s not much time left, I want to die before the end of August, and September’s knocking at the door, I can hear it.

I realize we’re at the end now, I’m telling you this because tonight I was thinking of entering my circle … I mean, I’ve already been trotting around in here a little while … funny verb, to trot, for someone with a leg in this condition, can’t you just see it?… I can — try to picture it — some scrawny old guy, completely naked, just a sheet around him, dragging his chewed-up leg, hopping around in an empty space, making a circle … thinking about it, you want to cheer him on … get in there, go on, decide already, you can do it!.. There’s something I was thinking I wouldn’t tell you, I’ve resisted up to now, I was thinking to myself that all in all, it didn’t really add anything, anyway, and then I told myself that it’s not like it does much for Tristano’s character … just the opposite … and it feels like I’ve already ruined your character a bit … but ruined isn’t the right word … troubles … you know, a writer invents a character and purifies him somehow … I’m not being very clear here, it’s not that the writer purifies his character, it’s that whatever this character is, even if the author gives his character a human life — and people’s lives are filled with troubles, man’s a cruel animal — it’s still a life on paper, and on paper, troubles don’t stink … but if someone tells you certain things that he’s actually lived, and more than that, if he tells you these things in the flesh, right next to you, and he’s breathing and maybe his flesh isn’t in the best of shape, either, then those troubles he’s telling you are less aseptic, am I making myself clear?… But, when someone’s reaching the end … in short, I thought that thanks to you, these troubles will turn to paper, and so you’ll render them more abstract. But troubles aren’t … who knows … at times it’s so hard to tell the difference between cruelty and justice … killing … or murdering … Tristano was a pacifist, you know this from that interview a long time ago, before he made himself disappear, and he was especially opposed to the death penalty, that obtuse, bureaucratic, state-provided death on officially stamped paper … sure, but this is a matter of principle and would be worth something in a perfect world, and if you follow this principle to the extreme, then you need to go embrace that Chilean general who murdered thousands in the stadiums, go on, give him a hug and tell him about loving his fellow man, maybe you’ll wind up friends … Unfortunately, the world’s not like Tolstoy imagined, where you can convince a murderer through love and forgiveness … it would be beautiful, this utopia. Hitler promised that Nazism would reign a thousand years in Europe, you think we should allow it in the name of brotherly love?… Our principles rule out homicide, but killing a tyrant — the Beast — who’d devour our principles, this doesn’t contradict our principles … Anyway, I’ll leave that dilemma to you, it doesn’t concern me anymore … I’ll be brief, I don’t feel like going into too much detail, and really, it’s not necessary for the story, all you need to know is that Tristano wasn’t alone and that Taddeo was driving. A detail: Tristano wasn’t young anymore, no, he was old and needed some company … and Taddeo was also rather old, but he was the company Tristano wanted … No, listen, I’ve changed my mind, I’m only going to give you the details of the story, that’s what I want, I’m leaving out the essential part, you’ll figure that out on your own … meaning, where Tristano learned to unravel the knot, how he found the exact right spot, and who helped him in his search … that doesn’t matter. Taddeo was driving the car and Tristano was humming a little nursery rhyme, ahi luna luna luna el niño la mira mira el niño la está mirando … There’s a gypsy legend that the full moon steals children, the child she stole from him was no longer a child but was still a child to him … Proserpina covers the dead with white sheets, luna luna luna lead the way … the road was dusty white with low shrubs on either side, and it was whiter still in the headlights … Tristano had already written a postcard to Rosamunda but hadn’t mailed it yet, it was still in the glove compartment … everyone had left that small town, it had become a tourist village, said the carabinero who gave him directions, but a specific kind of tourist village, d’élite , since those living there already were cultural tourists, that’s what he’d called them, a thoughtful community, everyone quiet, reflective, not like those young people going to discos or throwing parties with loud music and everybody getting drunk, and we’ll have to break them up … And the house was truly elegant as seen from the outside, an old country house remodeled by an intelligent architect, the kind that restores and doesn’t ruin the landscape … And its tenant, too, was an elegant gentleman, friendly, and he welcomed them in a friendly manner; for that matter, they came as friends, but I’m not saying how that happened, how they managed to get themselves welcomed as friends, because that’s not a detail … and how things unfolded exactly isn’t a detail at all, after they took a seat on those beautiful sofas draped with traditional Castilian shawls, and that pleasant gentleman offered them a first-rate brandy, aged Carlos Primero, this detail’s worth emphasizing, because brandy aids in digestion, another important detail, because they’d had an extravagant dinner, he and Taddeo, an important detail, not just for the gazpacho and the roasted angulas , which Taddeo had never tried before, but because if it was after dinner, it was night and rather late … A brandy Taddeo liked so well that he accepted a second, and then a third, and while he was drinking his third glass he said — another detail — that he really needed it that evening, something to put some fire in his veins … And now we’ve arrived at the essential part, what I’ll spare you, like I promised … I’d just like to add one more detail, that before this essential part, Tristano set a photo on the table of a boy in a wicker chair under a pergola, a jug of water in front of him and he was holding a book, you could tell it was summer, and the boy had straight, dark hair, and looked happy, his smile spoke of going out to meet the world … And he showed that photo and said … he said … I don’t remember, writer, I swear, I couldn’t tell you the exact words, but since it’s not a detail, I’ll just give you the basic gist, you can assume he said he was showing the gentleman that photo because he wanted to emphasize that this boy was his son and that he loved him very much … And at this point, that pleasant gentleman understood everything and became far from pleasant, as you might imagine, and Tristano didn’t just stop there, now he wanted to know where this man, this pleasant gentleman, had gotten his orders … which organizations, and whose, meaning, were they overseas or homegrown? And if it was something national, were these men who’d strayed from the right path, or those who’d found the right way? But these are details I’ll let you decide on, writer, as to the rest, if you have the patience for it, there’s a dossier, thousands of pages’ worth, sitting in the archives of our republic’s parliament … they’re the records of a committee with an unusual name, no other country in Europe has such a committee, we alone can brag of reaching such heights, of our parliamentary committee for mass murder, with its records available to all citizens, if you ever find the time, go take a look, I’m happy to leave all that to you, just like I’m happy to leave you this century … And when the snakes on Medusa’s head finally went limp, the two men stepped out into the night, Taddeo got back behind the wheel, there was a beautiful full moon, luna luna luna el niño la mira mira el niño la está mirando , and as they drove past a church on a small square, Tristano noticed a mailbox attached to the side of the bell tower, and it seemed like the most fitting mailbox for the postcard he’d written to Rosamunda, Miss Marilyn-Rosamunda , celestial Pancuervo, Cosmos. That was the address … an address no postman in this world could trace, but Tristano preferred it that way, he felt as though a weight had been lifted … In dreams begins responsibility , I did what you asked me to in a dream. Farewell, Tristano.