Blindly (The Margellos World Republic of Letters) (3 page)

And even if I had read it before writing it, it wouldn’t change anything. It’s so difficult to determine what comes first and what comes later, Goli Otok, Dachau or Port Arthur; suffering is always in the present, here and now. He has—I’m said to have—the feeling that he’s not been told the truth about his origins. I’d like to see how you’d feel, Doctor, if they told you when and why you started being a traitor, if they claimed to tell you what you did and what you
planned to do, your past and future offences, like the UDBA agents claimed to explain to me—even you think you know who I am and who I’m not better than I do. Your, that is my, Nosological History, Doc. No. 485, is indeed a fine fiction ...

Not that I don’t have my problems. When in Newgate, amidst that thieving, murderous scum—though I made them respect me from the outset, I had after all witnessed and doled out death on the deck of the
Admiral Juhl
or the
Surprize
, under the Danish flag and the British flag—when I wrote about the truth of our religion revealed in the Scriptures and in nature, in that cell in Newgate where I had been unjustly thrown by the judges of His Majesty George IV, I realized that prophets hear the word of God, that it comes to them as tremendous, a thunderclap in their ears, and that to tell it to others they turn around, addressing those left at the foot of the mountain, looking down like Reverend Blunt from the pulpit when he preaches in the prison chapel, and they repeat it, but that word, spoken through their mouths, comes out muffled, distorted, it is no longer the word of God but of someone else.

That’s what happens to me when I encounter the words I use to try to recount my experiences; I don’t seem to recognize them anymore, neither the words nor the events. Who is it who’s throwing these globs of mud in my mouth, “bay”
“bojkot”
“revolution,” words, a pie in the face, what a funny taste they have, I can’t guess what it is, better to swallow them whole, get them down quickly ... Sir George, the enlightened governor of our Austral colony, once said, in a benevolent tone, that my adventures seemed incredible to him, and I too am beginning to have trouble believing them; when I think about them, they come back up as if regurgitated, who knows what a face I make when I feel them weighing on my stomach.

It’s been raining since yesterday, an incessant rain that hammers the eucalyptus leaves and the ferns, shiny and bright in the murky, humid air, an insurmountable wall of water, and everything is on the other side, the faces, the voices, the years ... Istria too, up there, is on the other side, in another world, it’s strange how from here I seem to see it so clearly, so near, like when you look at it from the coast of Barcola, but then it vanishes, dissolves ... There were scores of black swans, that day we sailed up the estuary of the Derwent River on the
Lady Nelson
, a century ago, maybe two, flocks of black swans in the sky, and occasionally I would shoot one down. The meat had a pungent, gamy taste, I threw a few scraps to the convicts in chains, whom we had come to drop off and who were chewing their hardtack. The banks of the Derwent River were covered with clumps of drenched, shiny grass, waterfalls and cataracts white as snow plunged into the river from great heights, their fine particles glinting in the sunlight, rotted logs got trapped in coves of brownish water formed by the meandering current, a kangaroo ran off into the bush. A forest brimming with confusion stood where Hobart Town now stands, the light filtered in and disappeared like birds in the tangle of branches, fungi and lichens clung to giant trees a thousand years old.

It was there in that bay, at Risdon Cove, that we landed, that we put ashore the convicts sentenced to forced labour; that’s how Hobart Town was born. I remember the day perfectly, September 9, 1803. I went to check my autobiography and I’m glad to see that this date is reported accurately, it shows the author’s diligence and meticulousness. Hobart Town, the first civilian, military and penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land. Above all penal. Every city is founded on blood; it’s not surprising that the Risdon Creek massacre occurred a short time later, perhaps the Aboriginal who
climbed naked on the
Lady Nelson
that first day to trade us his spear for a roasted swan may have been among those massacred.

I’m just saying that, since afterwards no one bothered to find out how things really went; even our Reverend Knopwood turned a blind eye. Everyone always turns a blind eye to these things, massacres I mean. Nelson did too, when he continued to bombard my Copenhagen for hours and hours after the Danish fleet, trapped in the strait, had been sunk; the city, battered and in flames, had raised the white flag and Admiral Parker himself, the British commander, had sent a ceasefire signal.

But Nelson brings the spyglass to his blindfolded eye, observes the carnage with the wrong eye, the blind one, and sees only the black patch, no white flag,
I’m damned if I see it
, the shells continue to fall on people who no longer defend themselves, then come the surrender ceremonies, admirals and dignitaries in full dress, swords handed over and magnanimously returned, a blindfold is convenient, it helps you close an eye to the slaughter.

Butchery down here and up there, the aurora borealis and the aurora australis herald the same bloody sun and everyone exalts the rising day, so much the worse for those for whom it no longer rises. The rising sun ... History, the Party taught us, or rather the bloody prehistoric times in which we live and will continue to live until the world is redeemed by the ultimate revolution, has a tragic need to combat barbarism with barbarous acts. And so it’s hard to tell anymore who is the barbarian, Tito or Stalin, us or them, Nelson or Bonaparte. That one ended up in St. Helena—I put ashore there more than once—and I, King of Iceland, wound up here, I’m not exactly sure where. “Don’t worry, as long as someone knows, it doesn’t matter who, someone who’s heard about the voyage and the disastrous return.”

Who would have thought at the time, when we transported the convicts here, that so many years later I too would come here in chains, like them—in chains, so to speak, they never put me in irons on the ship that carried all those wretches here from London, I was a prisoner on the
Woodman
but they made me act as surgeon and eat with the officers. But I would never have believed that one day I would return to Hobart Town that way, as a convict, back when I harpooned the first whale in the bay ever to be hunted and killed in those parts since the day of Creation. The bay was a favourite of the whales; they came to play and splash about, thinking it was still the dawn of time, that blissful era at the beginning when there was no harpoon to fear, and instead harpoons have been stabbing and slashing and causing blood to spout since time immemorial. The world is old, everything is old; even those increasingly fewer Aborigines are decrepit, a race that should have already disappeared at the time of the Flood. Nature was distracted, but we arrived on the scene to correct her inattention.

I continued harpooning whales on the
Alexander
as well, during its return to London from Hobart Town—it took us nearly twenty months, because we encountered a terrible wind at Cape Horn that blew us off course, forcing us to sail three thousand miles farther than expected, passing through Otaheiti, St. Helena and along the Brazilian coast, in an ocean that was never-ending. Now the rain conceals everything, streams of water dense as a palisade and long, pendulous eucalyptus leaves obscure the view toward the sea, but the sea is there behind it, boundless, an immense nightfall that descends over things—by contrast, as a boy in Copenhagen, when I went to see the ships at Nyhavn, the wind in the rigging making the flags flap, the smell of the sea and that luminous blue sky were like a fresh, breezy morning, calling you to run away from home.

I know, Doctor, I know what young Hooker said, pathetically trying to follow his illustrious father along the paths of science, botany in particular. That I talk nonsense and make up stories, too many kangaroos and too many whales, even Cape Horn rounded too many times, not to mention the plagiarism. And what am I supposed to have plagiarized, his father’s book on Iceland? Aside from the fact that, if anything, he’s the one who used my unpublished and conveniently missing diary; no one knows better than I, having had to endure it unjustly, how futile the accusation of plagiarism is. Can there possibly be anything that isn’t copied? However, when I decided to write my story that time it’s because it didn’t seem right to me, as I note at the outset, humbly relying on God’s mercy and the readers’ charitable hearts, that—wait, here it is—“that my sad but instructive vicissitudes might descend unwept into the darkness of a long, silent night ...”

SO THEN
, you want to know if my name is Tore. I see there are a lot of you asking me that. Do I know what online means?—Aye-aye, captain. English is still the language of the seas and even
Argo
, as you decided to call this contraption, just to be funny, is the name of a ship. Of
the
ship. Navigare necesse est, it was even written on the pamphlet giving us directions on how to become Cybernauts. Although I prefer the tape recorder, as you can see; yes, I like using my voice, especially when I want to tell someone to go screw himself. Like you now, all of you so quick to pressure a poor devil with indiscreet questions, spying on him, never letting him out of your sight. Right,
Argo
is also the name of that dragon with a hundred eyes ... Still, I’m not so sure that there are really so many of you, maybe you’re alone too, there on the other side, and don’t want anyone to know who you really are—“Hang on, in this game, seeking the truth is not allowed. However, you like to interrogate, but when it comes to responding ...”—Oh all right, my name is also Tore (Salvatore) Cippico-
ipiko (Cipico), and for that matter I had other names as well, it should be obvious, during those years of underground fighting. A far cry from chatroom screen names. Even Commander Carlos, Carlos Contreras, founder of the glorious
Fifth Regiment, nucleus of the Spanish Republican Army—
No pasarán
, we shouted, they shall not pass, then they broke through, but it cost them dearly, inch by inch,
Viva la muerte
, they shouted, and we doled it out to many of them, that death, and we weren’t afraid to take it—even Carlos, who had lived in the blissful shadow of the sword, accustomed to no longer being able to distinguish his own blood, spilled liberally and fearlessly, from that of others—even Commander Carlos had a great many names, when the Party sent him around the world in the name of the revolution, and in fact was supposed to send him down here as well, to organize the Australian Communist movement. When he tried in vain to organize a mutiny of the sailors in Spalato and Pola against Tito and we were in the Gulag of Goli Otok subjected to
kroz stroj
, by then instead he was called only by his humble real name, Vittorio Vidali.

So then, my name is Salvatore—like Jason, Comrade Blasich said mockingly, a healer, one who saves, a physician familiar with the drugs of life and death. History is an intensive care unit and it’s easy to get the dose wrong and send patients you hoped to save to the other world. Salvatore; Tore, in dialect, to my friends. Salvatore
ipiko, then Cippico, in the twenties, after we had returned to Europe, and Trieste, Fiume, Istria and the Quarnero islands had become Italian, the Vattovaz had become Vattovani and the Ivancic Di Giovanni or at least Ivancich, all Slavic names rinsed clean as they should be, the Isonzo and Jadransko More filtered and purified in the Arno.

I had other names as well, which was customary in underground combat.—“Yes, Nevèra, Strijèla and ...”—Enough. You all know everything about me, so many spies against one single man ... This PC controls the world even better than that other one, of course, the old PC has been seized up since who knows when. History presses a
key and the Party disappears; I disappeared with it but now I press a key and delete those curious strangers who want to know my names. Jorgen’s name was given to me not by a Party cell but by another one, still a cell, but a different kind—but all in due course. Port Arthur, a century and a half ago, Dachau and Goli Otok, yesterday, today. Be careful with those keys; otherwise you end up deleting some passage and then you’re lost, you don’t know who it is who’s speaking, whom that voice belongs to—when it changes on its own, and comes out differently, from your throat and from who knows where, even you don’t recognize it—