Antonio Tabucchi - Requiem - A Hallucination

How many letters are there in the Latin alphabet? asked my father’s voice. I looked carefully and there in the half-light was my father. He was standing at the far end of the room, leaning on the dresser, watching me mischievously. He was in his sailor’s uniform, he looked about twenty-something, but he was definitely my father, there was no mistake about that. Dad, I said, what are you doing here in the Pensão Isadora, dressed as a sailor? What are you doing here? he responded, it’s 1932, I’m doing my military service and my ship got into Lisbon today, it’s called the Filiberto , it’s a frigate. But why are you talking to me in Portuguese, Dad? I said, and why when you appear to me do you always ask me absurd questions? it’s as though you were putting me through an exam, last month you turned up to ask me when my mother was born, I can never remember dates, I get confused, I’m useless with numbers, Dad, but you’re always tormenting me with these questions. He said, I just want to see if you’re a good son, that’s all, that’s why I keep asking you questions, to see if you’re a good son. My Father as a Young Man took off his sailor’s hat and smoothed back his hair. He was good-looking, my Father as a Young Man, he had an honest face and lovely blonde hair. Look Dad, I said, to tell the truth, I don’t like these questions, these exams, you’ve got to stop appearing to me like this, whenever you fancy it, you’ve got to stop bothering me. Hang on a minute, he said, I’m here because I want to know something, I want to know how my life will end and you’re the only one who can know that, you’re living in the present, I want to know everything today, Sunday, 30th July 1932. What good will it do you to know? I said, it won’t do you any good at all, life is whatever it’s going to be, there’s nothing you can do about it, let it be, Dad. No, no, said my Father as a Young Man, I’ll forget it the moment I leave the Pensão Isadora, there’s a girl waiting for me in Rua da Moeda, as soon as I leave here, I’ll forget everything, but I need to know now, that’s why I keep bothering you. All right, Dad, if that’s what you want, I said, your life ends badly, with cancer of the larynx, which is odd because you never smoked, but anyway, that’s how it is, you’re going to get cancer, and the surgeon who operates on you is the director of the clinic, a famous otolaryngologist, now there’s a word! but in my opinion, the only thing the guy knows about is tonsils, I don’t think he understands a thing about cancer. And then? asked my Father as a Young Man. And then you stay in the hospital for a month, I spend the nights with you because the nurses in the famous professor’s clinic have other things to do, if you ring the bell no one comes and they leave you there choking like a dog, so I have to be there at your bedside and work the disgusting machine that extracts the blood from your throat, and a month later, the day before you’re due to leave hospital, the doctors introduce a small tube through your nose down into your stomach so that they can feed you and they say: Everything’s fine now, the patient can go home, but everything isn’t fine, I go out for a coffee and when I come back to your room I find you dying, your face is all swollen and purple, you can’t breathe, you’ve got palpitations. What’s wrong with my father? I ask the doctor on duty, a crafty so-and-so. Your father’s having a heart attack, he says. Then I want a cardiologist, I say, because I don’t believe you. The cardiologist arrives, gives you an electrocardiogram and says: The patient has nothing wrong with his heart but there is something wrong with his lungs, he needs an X-ray. And then I pick you up from the bed in my arms, because the nurses at the famous professor’s clinic have other things to do, and I call an ambulance and we go in the ambulance to the X-ray clinic, on my responsibility, because the sly doctor on duty says that you can only leave if I take full responsibility, so I do and the radiologist, after the X-ray, says: A tube has perforated your father’s oesophagus, pierced the mediastinum and entered the lung, now you need a specialist in pulmonary diseases with a scalpel, if not, your father will die. You see, Dad, when those eminent doctors introduced the tube into your stomach, they perforated first your oesophagus and then your lung, I took you away because I had no faith in them or in their competence; the specialist, whom I called at once, made an incision in your back with a scalpel, the air was expelled and the lung deflated, they put you in intensive care, that place where all the patients lie there naked connected up by tubes on all sides, and after two weeks you recovered, I should say that during all the time you were there, the famous doctor who had first operated on you never once came to see you, the bastard. And then? asked my Father as a Young Man, what happened to me then? Well, Dad, I said, then I found a really good surgeon, a friend of mine who works in a big hospital, he performed the anastomosis on you, I mean the reconstruction of your perforated oesophagus, and after that you lived for another three years, three nice, peaceful years, eating normally, but then your illness reappeared, this time the disease had spread, and you died. How? asked my Father as a Young Man, I want to know how, if it was a painful death or if it was peaceful, how was it? I want to know. You just burned out like a candle, Dad, I said, one day you lay down and you said: I’m tired and I’m not hungry, and you never got up or ate anything again, apart from the soup that Mum used to make for you, I’d come and visit you every day, and you went on like that for a month, you were little more than a skeleton by then but you weren’t in any pain, and when you died, you waved to me before going into the dark.

My Father as a Young Man smiled and smoothed back his hair. But there’s another story you should tell me, he said, you haven’t finished yet. There’s nothing else, I said. Don’t be obtuse, he said, I want to know if you were a good son, how you behaved towards the doctor who operated on me. Look, Dad, I said, I don’t know if I did the right thing, maybe I should have done things differently, I should have just punched the guy, that would have been a braver solution, but I didn’t, that’s why I’m left with this feeling of guilt, instead of smashing his face in, I wrote a story about the conversation I’d had with him and he brought a case against me, alleging it was false, I couldn’t prove to the judge that what I’d said was true and I lost the case. Were you found guilty? my Father as a Young Man asked. It’s not final yet, I said, I appealed and the trial is still going on, but I wish I’d done it differently, I wish I’d punched him, that would have been honourable, radical, in the old tradition. Don’t be hard on yourself, son, said my Father as a Young Man, you did the best thing, it’s better to use the pen than brute force, it’s a more elegant way of delivering a punch. It’s nice of you to comfort me, Dad, I said, because I don’t feel satisfied with myself. That’s why I’m here in this room, said my Father as a Young Man, because I wanted to reassure you, to reassure us both, now that you’ve told me everything, I feel more at peace. I hope so, Dad, I hope you don’t come back again the way you have done recently, it’s frightening, it was becoming unbearable. There’s one thing you should know, said my Father as a Young Man, I didn’t choose to appear in this room, it was your will that called me here, because it was you who wanted me in your dream, and now I only have time to say goodbye, goodbye my son, the maid is just about to knock on the door, I have to leave.

I heard the knocking on the door and opened my eyes, Viriata came in and said: Good afternoon, you’ve slept for exactly an hour and a half, I’m very punctual as you see, I hope you’ve had a good rest. She placed my trousers and my shirt on the edge of the bed and asked: Are you staying here tonight? No, Viriata, I said, I have to leave, I want to go for a walk. In this heat? asked Viriata, alarmed. It’s not a long walk, I said, and I might take the tram, I’ve got the whole afternoon ahead of me and I want to visit a painting. Visit a painting? said Viriata, what a weird idea. I never really understood what the painting meant, you see, perhaps today I’ll understand it better, who knows, today’s a very special day. If you don’t mind, then, I’ll come with you to the tram stop, said Viriata, I’d like to go for a walk too. With the greatest of pleasure, Viriata, I said, but first hand me the wallet that’s in my trouser pocket. Viriata understood at once, raised her hands and exclaimed: Certainly not, I don’t want a tip, you’ve been very kind to me and kindness is the best gift you can give to someone you don’t know.