Antonio Tabucchi - Tristano Dies - A Life

… What day is it? No, I’m not dead yet, my eyes were closed but I’m not dead yet, you’ll have to be patient … Today I’m feeling clear-headed, my fever must be down, no more nightmares. Have I told you some of my nightmares? If I have, don’t throw anything away, everything remains in a life, especially a hero’s life, even nightmares … I’m wheezing a little, you hear it? when I breathe, there’s a whistling in my throat, but don’t worry, today’s not the day, this thing’s going to take a while, you’ll just have to be patient, like me. What day is it? Let me know when it’s August tenth, don’t forget, but maybe the tenth’s already past. I’ve slept so much, I must have slept so much. But maybe not … sometimes years can go by in a single minute of sleep … Frau’s being stingy with the morphine, the bitch … or maybe she thinks the injections hurt, poor thing … At times, memories seem like gelatin, everything seems melded together, boneless, melting, you see a face … stop, you say, got you, you silly girl, don’t you know me? — it’s me — can’t you tell? — it’s me, wait a second … she’s smiling at you … Ah, now you know me, you say, but she’s sneering at you, nah nah, cutie pie, and she winks … her eyelashes, so long, and that malicious smile of hers is just the same, but the mouth’s different, how strange, and her face, too, like warm wax molding itself over, into a different face now. And this one, what does he want? Ah, it’s Sirio, you recognize him, it’s Sirio, who died of ass cancer … but Sirio’s only there a second, now it’s Cary, that American commander who was with you in the mountains, you can see him so clearly, Tristano, too, you can see him like he’s someone else, when he was Commander Clark, deep down they were the same person, united by skin, twin brothers, they called him that because he looked like a movie star from back then, with that stray wisp of hair, shiny with brilliantine, on his forehead, the only thing missing was the pencil mustache. And on that day, that pale morning, at dawn, he’s waiting, hiding behind the boulder, he has his submachine gun aimed and ready, but he’s smiling like he’s got a joke for you … and you smile back; it’s strange ending up like this, after all this time, and he’s still there, in that same place, on that pale dawn. Maybe he never moved at all? Maybe. Men don’t move, they stay put, entranced in fixed moments, only they don’t realize this; we think that there’s a steady, evaporating flow, but no: somewhere out there is a fixed moment, a frozen gesture, as if everything’s under a spell, a photograph without a plate, without a negative. You have to know it to see it, but I’m telling you, it’s there.

… So anyway, here’s how it went: he saw her from a distance in the meadow, she was outside the farmhouse, turned away from him, and he set down the telescope he was carrying — he hadn’t brought a weapon into the mountains. It was a miracle. She was wearing boots, a pair of knee-length leather shorts, and had a submachine gun over her shoulder, the gun barrel poking into her loose dark hair. He started trembling. From surprise, emotion, something I can’t describe, a flame bursting in his chest, temples pounding. Daphne! he called. She didn’t turn around. She was talking with someone, looked like a soldier in a Savoy uniform. Daphne! he called again and started running. She heard, turned around, gripping her gun. She stared at him, surprised, intense blue eyes slightly scornful, maybe because she was a little nearsighted. My name is Marilyn, she said. What do you want? She couldn’t have been more than twenty, but she spoke like someone accustomed to being in charge. I’m new, he stammered, I was in Greece. I work with the allies’ contacts, she said. I’m American. You can call me Captain — Captain Mary. Rosamunda suits you better, he said. Cut it out, she said. Who’s Rosamunda? A piece by Schubert, he said.

Frau wanted to put the pendulum clock on the nightstand for me — at least then you’ll know the time, she says, just turn your head, and you’ll be less confused during the day — you’re always asking the time. I told her the tick tock was annoying, but she just won’t quit. No one can hear it when it’s under that glass bell, she says, not even someone with tuberculosis. Someone with tuberculosis, no, but me, yes, I hear everything … I can hear a worm gnawing inside the wardrobe, it’s unbearable, like a voice in a cave … the wardrobe’s chestnut, worms like chestnut wood, and the more seasoned, the better, I know all about these worms … that’s exactly what I told her, I know all about these worms, Renate, go on, take a look at my leg … and I know all about these sounds, too, I’ve got a direct line to down below, I’m hooked in, I can hear the ants crawling on little hair feet. You’re getting too much morphine, she snaps — ants, nothing — this is your third injection today, but if the clock on the nightstand’s annoying, then you’ll just have to be patient: now that you have someone here listening to you all day long, you can ask him what time it is — I’m too busy. Too busy … what she’s so busy with is a mystery, Agostino’s wife does the housework, we get our supplies delivered … what she’s so busy with is giving orders to anyone in reach. Does she order you around, too? Anyway, if I’m disoriented during the day, it’s better at night, there’s a plane — I don’t know if you’ve heard it yet — maybe not — you must be asleep at midnight, and it’s pretty high up, it sounds so far away, it’s the midnight plane, that’s what I call it … it’s punctual, maybe just slightly late at times, not much, it strikes midnight better than that stupid clock that doesn’t chime anymore, that just goes tick tock … you can see it from your bedroom window, but you have to wait for it: if you hear it, it’s already passed over, you’ll see it, two small blue parallel lights … that plane’s been passing over for at least ten years now, I first noticed it the same evening we came back to this house, we were exhausted when we got here, you know, we’d set out that August afternoon from a small square in Plaka where Daphne as a joke had started floating overhead by an orange tree, while I begged her not to make me go alone, and so we set off on our journey … that night I couldn’t sleep, which happens when you’re too tired, I was at the window, you know how it is, a cigarette … That plane comes from the South and heads west, and when it’s overhead, just over the house, it turns for the coast … and then he’s over the sea … I can see him, he’s over Sardinia, a traveler who probably sees the lights below from his small window and asks himself who’s living in those lights, who’s down there, in that house, that village … it’s impossible to know, just like I don’t know who this traveler is who’s asking himself this, and yet we’re both imagining this, he and I, and not knowing who we are, we’ve thought the same thing … and there he is, over Spain … maybe he’ll even pass over Pancuervo, and in Pancuervo there’ll be someone awake at midnight, staring up at that plane … and finally, over Portugal … and then it’s the ocean, oh, it’s true, there’s nothing else for it, dear boy, you have to cross the Atlantic … and all at once you’re in America, because you can reach America quickly by plane. America … My father always dreamed of going to America, my grandfather would tell me this, that my father thought he could continue his research there, in America, he could become a world-famous biologist … America … The America my father dreamed of must have been so beautiful! He knew everything about the plains, about the Seminole Indians, Benjamin Franklin, Charlie Chaplin, Walt Whitman, the Empire State Building, the music … my grandfather told me about this, too, how no one here appreciated that music, they thought it was awful, this negro music … idiots … but my father had a phonograph, and he had records shipped directly from America … it was my grandfather who taught me to love that music, after my father died, by that time, I’d lost interest in my grandfather’s Garibaldi sword, and so he had to invent a new Sunday-morning game: you’d tiptoe into my father’s study, as if he were in there, eye glued to his microscope and couldn’t be disturbed, and then my grandfather would put on a record of someone playing the trumpet, and he’d grow very animated, twirl his white mustache to the beat, listen to him, he’d say, listen to him blow that horn, how alive it is, breath is life, kid, in the beginning was the word, and the priests, I don’t know who they think they are, but the word is breath, kid, it’s only breathing … life, you’ve got to love life and always enjoy it — remember that — the fascists are the ones who enjoy death … Writer, if you check in the library, next to the table under the window, you’ll find my grandfather’s telescope and my father’s microscope … How strange, think about it, my father studied lives up close with a microscope, my grandfather searched for other distant lives with his telescope, and both of them used lenses. But you discover life with the naked eye, not from a distance, not too close, just at eye level … My father loved New York so much, and he died before he got there … I wanted to see New York, too, but I never did, it never worked out. Have you been there, to New York? — what am I saying — in your world, who hasn’t been to New York … You know, I’d really love to take that plane I was telling you about, one of these nights, maybe so, maybe so … Sorry, what was I saying? — I’m all over the place — maybe I was sleeping, you start talking nonsense when you’re nodding off, maybe we’ll pick this up later, it seems late now … You think I could have a smoke, just two puffs, and maybe Frau wouldn’t notice? At least open the shutters — it’s so damned hot.