B007P4V3G4 EBOK (7 page)

And Mr Koopman on his branch in the chestnut tree? Often you
can't really tell with the elderly. Frequently they're just like
chickens clucking because they've laid an egg. Only their emotional life is so much richer. They go through more. Disappointments
impress their effects more deeply. Mr Koopman sighs. He sighs in
a way that has some human quality about it once more. He sits
there so sorrily. It's raining so wet. And he's so alone. And it's just
as if his brown pyjamas are no longer hairy. They're turning blue
again and they no longer give any warmth. And it's only wise for
him to come out of the tree at last. He doesn't seem so agile any
more either. He only just manages to come down via the trunk.
Now he's standing on the patch of grass. An elderly gent in blue
pyjamas, in the pouring rain. Walking with difficulty and with his
head bowed like a wrongdoer, he enters the sunlounge. The good
old orderly sees him alright, but she's busy with one of the other
gentlemen. She really hasn't the time right now.

The breakfast looks very withered by now. The slice of ham,
already gone off as it was, has now got a very nasty colour
indeed. The slices of cheese have dried out and there are unappetising beads of perspiration on them. The bread, too, is in no state to
stir the appetite. And there are two of those suspect little curly
hairs on the butter.

But Mr Koopman is once again the same greedy gourmand as
ever. He doesn't even sit down. He grabs what's there as it comes.
Stuffs bread, cheese and spice cake inside, just like that. Licks the
jam pot clean. Cleans out the butter pot with his finger. Only the
egg. He doesn't eat the egg. He picks it up like a thief does a
stolen half-crown. His frozen fingers close around it. He walks over
to his bed. Slowly. With a bit of a shuffling gait. And that's how
he crawls under the blankets in his soaked through pyjamas. But
lying under the blankets, head and all, he presses that egg against
his belly. He will hatch it into a new conception. The truth for a
new life, the lies of which he has learned to get the measure of in
his old one.

Maarten Asscher

There are islands which, in the course of their history, are continually being disputed over by neighbouring states. First they belong
to one country and have its language and governance imposed
upon them, and later, after a battle won or the decline of a
dynasty, they end up under the hegemony of the other state. Thus
they are shoved back and forth like the small change of history. In
time, after so many twists of fortune, such an island begins to
develop its own, hybrid culture, a bastard tongue sprouted from
the languages of its conquerors, an impure style of architecture
combining the influence of both. One might think of Greek-Turkish
Samos or of Pantelleria with its Moorish as well as Sicilian characteristics.

Italian-French Argentera is such an island, tossed to and fro for
centuries between two Mediterranean cultures. Situated in the
westernmost part of the Gulf of Genoa, it lies almost exactly on
the French-Italian border were one to continue this as an imaginary
line from the land out to sea. There is, however, one particular
difference between Argentera and other islands that have fallen to
rival states by turns. For centuries, Argentera was held to be an
island of doom, and neither France nor Italy wished to number it
among its territories. France, even now, considers it to be foreign
soil and since 1919 refers to it consistently by its Italian name.
Italy, in its turn, maintains never to have signed the relevant treaty
so that this little speck is invariably indicated as Argentere on
Italian maps.

Thus has been the fate of this rocky little island, from the late
Middle Ages onwards: an abandoned child between haughty
powers. There was a short period of prosperity in the sixteenth
century, when Argentere was colonised by the Genoese in the
expectation of there being silver to be mined on the island. On the
basis of obscure maps and speculative indications, much money
was invested at the time in the sinking of mineshafts but a
powerful earth-tremor put an end to these attempts - and to more than a hundred and fifty human lives. Argentera is still worth a
footnote in Napoleonic literature, for at first there was a plan to
banish Bonaparte there. But, as is well known, having learned from
the escape from Elba, the choice fell on Saint Helena.

All of this was as yet unknown to me when I first caught sight of
the island of Argentera. I was aboard the ship from Marseille to
Livorno and sharing an inside cabin, a piece of French bread and a
bag of tomatoes with a not very talkative fellow traveller. Neither
in the booking office in the French port nor on the ticket had I
seen any mention of a port-of-call, so I got up, hesitant and
curious, when the ship suddenly could be heard and felt to be
about to berth though we couldn't possibly be at our destination
yet. Upon my question as to the reason for our delay, my
travelling companion growled something unintelligible and so I
decided to investigate. Having arrived on the upper deck, I saw
that loading and unloading was already in full swing: crates of
vegetables, wooden chests, small livestock and even a patient on a
stretcher. In the midst of all the activity and the frantic shouting
from the ship's railing to the edge of the dock and back, someone
managed to tell me that this was the weekly call at Argentera. All
other days, the scheduled service between Marseille and Livorno
sails past, non-stop, but once a week, in both directions, the ferry
calls at the island.

What with all the running about on board I was barely given
the opportunity, during our already short stop, to take in the
island properly. Thinking back to that first impression, what I
particularly see again are those steep, narrow little streets, the
yellow-brown houses, the pebbly beach at the beginning of
the concrete berthing pier, all of this in the waning light of the
Mediterranean evening sun. Perhaps fifty or a hundred houses
could be seen; beyond that, Argentera seemed on first acquaintance
to be a forgotten, parochial island with more rocks and trees than
houses and people. I would therefore never have called this flash
visit to mind with special attention or have got to know anything
at all about the island, let alone that I would ever have set foot
there, had not an unfortunate incident taken place during the hasty
loading of goods that had to join us for the trip from Argentera to
Livorno.

Our crew were being rushed to such a pitch by the captain, who
sought to shorten the delay as much as possible, that on taking in a sack with items of mail, part of the contents fluttered down like
white birds on to the water. The command to take in the two
gangways had already sounded through the megaphone and the
ship's engines were already making the extra revolutions necessary
for departure, so there could be no question of suffering further
delay for a few letters. The unfortunate mail was taken up mercilessly in the maelstrom of our propeller, while the ship loosed itself
from the little port. Among the people getting smaller on the pier
there was an older man in a sand-coloured suit who was beside
himself with excitement about the slight mishap with the consignment of mail. He had to be calmed down by three others and, by
the look of it, they were barely able to prevent him from jumping
into the water, fully dressed, in order to rescue the papers, indeed,
to prevent the ship from leaving, or so his wild gestures seemed to
suggest.

The ship's turning obscured this tableau from my view and I
returned to my cabin to continue my evening meal there. Passing
the mezzanine deck I stepped aside a moment as a member of the
crew wished hurriedly to pass, and the moment I walked on, I saw
a letter jammed in the metal mount of a life buoy. The chic white
envelope was addressed to the Libreria Maccari in Livorno. During
the slipping open of the mailbag this letter must have got stuck
halfway through its fall. Doubtless, I would have quite properly
handed it in to the crew, or posted it in Livorno myself, were it
not that I was intrigued by its sender's name. Pre-printed in
splendid, dark-blue little letters, bottom-left, on the cream-white
cover, it read: Bibliotheca Sarrazina, Dr R. Sarrazin. What, for
heaven's sake, did such an island as this want with a scholarly
library? This was a question I dearly wished to investigate myself,
instead of immediately handing over the possible answer to others.

Alas, the lights were out already in my cabin and, presumably,
the food was finished. From the upper bunk, satisfied snoring rang
out, in any case. Feeling my way, I rolled on to the bottom berth
and, before falling asleep, I felt a moment for the letter in my inner
pocket.

As soon as we had gone ashore in the port of Livorno, in the early
light, walking along the quayside, I tore open the envelope. At
first sight, the contents disappointed me a little and I felt regret
that I had been unable to restrain my curiosity. In refined, oldfashioned handwriting endorsed by a flamboyant signature, Dr Raoul Sarrazin was ordering a dozen geological studies and reference books from Maccari and Company. Except for author's names
and the titles of the desired works, the letter contained nothing
other than polite phrases, references to terms upon which previous
orders had been fulfilled and, finally, a word of thanks in advance
for rapid despatch. The remarkable thing, however, was that there
were three books among them written by Dr R. Sarrazin himself,
and on re-reading the titles I did rediscover my curiosity of the
previous day: Recherches mineralogiques dans la region nord-ouest de la
Mediterranee, L'isola di Argentere e in sua importanza nella letteratura
Napoleonica and - especially - Description de la vie quotidienne en
Argentera. Tome XXXVI. I had never heard of the remaining
authors, nor of their just as picturesquely entitled works.

Sitting on a bench in the light of the sun that was getting
warmer, I wondered what kind of backwater that minute island
would have to be, what with that academic Bibliotheca Sarrazina.
Was there a librarian sitting there, day in, day out, working on
historical studies of his island in the Napoleonic era? And, in the
meantime, did he take down the daily events in the village as well?
And how, from this badly accessible clump of rock, could he
undertake mineralogical research in what he called la region nordouest de la Mediterranee? In short: I really had become curious now,
and counted myself lucky that I had opened the letter and,
moreover, that I had the opportunity to sort out this affair right to
the bottom.

Before commencing my immodest sleuthing, I first went and
had breakfast and subsequently, in the mounting heat of morning, I
looked for a cheap little hotel. I found the Albergo al Porto not far
from the docks, a small, tall building that had not been painted for
a hundred years but which, from my rickety balcony, did indeed
give, only just, - almost miraculously bit of a view on the
harbour and the Mediterranean that stretched out beyond it.

A problem occurred when, that afternoon, I asked the proprietress of my Albergo the way to the Calle delle XV Settembre where,
according to the address on the envelope, the Libreria Maccari had
to be situated. Everybody was dragged into it - brothers-in-law,
neighbours, sisters - but no one appeared to know precisely this
street or that bookshop, though some had lived for fifty
of fifty years, Sir - in this town. All the names of all the
bookshops were read out aloud from the telephone directory but
there was none called Maccari. Only the old father-in-law, wakened from his afternoon nap by the clamour, was able to solve my
simply-meant question. Despite the clear manner in which the
letter had been addressed, Maccari turned out not to be a bookshop
at all, and the Calle delle XV Settembre was not such a long walk
away: the old gentleman would show me the way, no trouble at
all.

At the time of writing this continuation to my tale, I'm on
Argentera, in the garden room of the Bibliotheca Sarrazina where I
enjoy the greatest hospitality possible. Before, however, passing
on to a description of life here and of this extraordinary institute, I
must first explain what has happened in the intervening weeks and in
what manner I have, you might say, made Dr Sarrazin's existence my
own, or rather Raoul's, as he has permitted me to call him.

Once arrived in the unprepossessing Calle delle XV Settembre,
having thanked my elderly guide and rung the bell at Maccari &
Co., the door was presently opened by the proprietor himself. He
was visibly delighted by a possible new customer presenting
himself and invited me in with many words and gestures. In my
best Italian, I lied that I was a close acquaintance of Dr Sarrazin's
and that he had asked me a friend's favour to take back a fresh
order for twelve books for his library to Argentere in a fortnight's
time. Standing among high piles of magazine-copies and series of,
on the face of it, scientific and technical bulletins, Mr Maccari
frowned. He said, in all innocence, that he believed that the orders
were always delivered freight to Dr Sarrazin, weren't they, and
that no other persons were required for this. Dr Sarrazin did pay
extra for postage as well as for discretion, after all.