History (96 page)

He didn't even know what had driven him, all of a sudden, to turn his chair towards the next table (still the only one occupied, at that moment, in the tavern ), putting into this simple and normal act an impetus so excessive it seemed an aggression. Perhaps, in any place and in any com pany (in a tribunal, or an old people's home, or even at the Court of England) his movement would have been the same. He had obeyed one of those incongruous impulses, the kind that drive a person, while he is walking through a square, suddenly to strip naked

No doubt it had seemed to him, in turning his chair this way, that he was arriving at some important resolve, even if unpredictable to himself, and very confused. And it was only at the moment when he opened his mouth that he realized his real desire, today, was to
speak.
He himself-so it seemed to him-was a terrible knot, and all the others were tangled and stumbling in the same way. Only a dialogue with the others could perhaps undo the knot. It was a battle, to be faced today, without hesitation; and then, after the victory, he would rest. If he had to make a speech, or rather a lecture, he didn't care about knowing it ahead of time. He was certain of only one thing : that these were
urgent communications!

The possible themes were too many, really : so many that they bewil dered him. And though completely conscious, he still recognized that his mind was glowing not with health, but with a kind of lucid fever which he wanted to make an effc. to restrain, even if, somehow, he meant to take advantage of it.
To speak,
yes; but beginning where? From when? He had started out with his words about the war, as if this were a Pole S tar, or a wandering comet, which would indicate his direction to him; but mean while (even after the invitation of the old man with the medal ) he only rambled on in his idle protests, with a pretense of toughness that already brought him some sneers from Black Hand.

"The war's over," the card-player who looked like a cattle-trader spoke up, glancing at him for an instant. "We have to think about peace now . . ." Then, immediately dropping the subject, he turned his eyes towards his partner, the dull-witted peddler of vari merchandise, and urged him :

"Come on! Follow suit!"

"Yes, the war's over!" Davide repeated, in a polemical tone, "it's peacetime, that's right . . ." And having said this, he laughed raucously.

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This laugh had a certain surprise eff on Bella, who pricked up both ears; but meanwhile Davide, giving way-despite himself-to an access of ill humor, writhed in his chair, with a grim look : "These peaces . . ." he inveighed towards the trader, who was really paying no further attention to him, "have been made a hundred thousand times! And there'll be another hundred thousand still, and the war is never over! To use the word PEACE for certain intrigues is . . . is pornography! It's spitting on the dead! But, of course, as far as the dead are concerned, you make an ap proximate count, and then they're fi away: dead fi On anniversaries, gentlemen in mourning clothes carry a wreath to the unknown soldier . . .
"
"Let the dead bury the dead," the little pensioner proverbialized, his bloodshot eyes winking in a way that was meant not to be ironic but to encourage Davide. "Cases fi and forgotten !" Davide insisted, writhing, in revolt. But here he was restrained by the thought that if he began like this, by growing angry, he would lose his way from the start. And with a great effort of will, he made a kind of mental leap, which brought him to a state of lucid split-personality. There was a Davide Superego who set the pace, and another Davide who obeyed, even if puzzled at times as to the means and the ends. This Davide Superego was then to reappear to him, as

his speech continued today, in varying guises : sometimes as a fl sword, sometimes as a parody . . . This time, in giving him the go-sign, he assumed the form of a Professor of History. And Davide forced himself, with brows knit, to collect in his mind his own basic information on the subject, from the primary notions already instilled in his schooldays : forc ing himself to be calm, clear, and especially orderly and methodical, if he wanted to deploy the fi in view of the imminent battle. He decided then to proceed through successive theses, establishing, in the fi place, some fundamental points of obvious certainty, indeed already given, as in theorems. And setting out on this assignment, with the same seriousness as when, a schoolboy, he was called to the board, he began, with a speech so diligent and orderly he seemed to be reading from a breviary :

1) The word
Fascism
is of recent coinage, but it corresponds to a social system of prehistoric decrepitude, absolutely rudimentary, and in deed less evolved than that used among an thropoids ( as anyone who knows something about zoology can confi ); 2) such a system is in fact based on the exploitation of the helpless ( peoples or classes or individuals) by those who have the means to use violence; 3) in reality, from its primitive origins, and all through the course of human History, there has existed no other system but this. Recently, the name of
Fascism
or
Nazism
has been given to certain extreme eruptions of ignominy, madness, and stupidity, characteristic of bourgeois degeneration; however, the system as

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such is still functioning everywhere (under different, even contradictory names and aspects . . . ) , always, everywhere, since the beginning of
1m
man History . .
.

In this preparatory phase of his problematical undertaking, Davide moved his head, alternately, this way and that, as if calling all those present in the place to witness his postulates. And though, in reality, from his speech (uttered, for that matter, in a very restrained voice) only some fragments emerged, immediately drowned again in the general confusion, still, with a kind of blind faith, he continued for a fairly long stretch, speaking according to the preestablished order: ". . . that, in other words, all History is a history of fascisms, more or less disguised . . . in the Greece of Pericles . . . and in the Rome of the Caesars and the Popes

. . . and in the steppes of the Huns . . . and in the Aztec Empire . . . and in the America of the pioneers . . . and in the Italy of the Risorgi- mento . . . and in the Russia of the Tsars and the Soviets . . . always and everywhere,
sempar e departUt,
free men and slaves . . . rich and poor . . . the buyers and the bought . . . superiors and inferiors . . . leaders and herds . . . 111e system never changes . . . it was called reli- gion, divine right, glory, honor, spirit, future . . . all pseudonyms . . . all masks . . . But with the industrial age, certain masks won't hold up . . . the system bares its teeth, and every cl on the fl of the masses it prints its real name and title . . . and it's no accident that, in its language, mankind is called MASSES, which means
inert matter
. . . And so, here we are . . . this poor matter, materi for work and labor, becomes fodder for extermination and destruction . .
.
Extermination camps
.
. . they've already found the earth's new name . . .
Extermination industry,
this is the sys�em's real name today! And it ought to be written on signs at factory gates . . . and over the doorways of schools, and churches, and ministries, and offi and in neon on skyscrapers . . . and on the mastheads of newspapers . . . and the title pages of books . . . even the SO-CALLED revolutionary texts . . .
Quieren carne de hombres!!"

He no longer knew where he had read this last sentence; but at the very moment when he was quoting it, he reproached himself for it, as a mistake, since surely nobody there knew Spanish! He could have spoken, really, in ancient Greek, or in Sanskrit, because his words were received, at most, as an acoustical phenomenon. At present, he was only partially aware of this circumstance; but already the calm his Superego desired had been lost; and he began to move his feet and hands impatiently, bursting into coarse laughter: "There are those who believed," he exclaimed, raising his voice aggressively, "this last war was a war . . . of world revolution!"

Th news broadcast was coming to an end; some of the listeners lingered to argue, while others were drifting off "Make the revolution

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yourself, if you're so smart!" said a shirtsleeved young man, who, at Davide's words, had come over to the table. Davide turned to him with a quarrelsome grimace: ''I'm not one of those who believed in it!" he ex plained with rancor. "I don't believe in those revolutions! . . . there's never been a true revolution! I've given up hope in the true revolu tion! . . ."

But the shirtsleeved young man, shrugging a shoulder, had already gone back towards the group of sports fans. "\Vhat might this good revolu tion be, then?" the proprietor asked from his counter, giving Davide a lazy glance. Without awaiting a reply, however, he resumed the argument al ready begun with the fans, exclaiming in their direction, somewhat heatedly :

"If you ask me, it was the referee who screwed things up."

The radio was now broadcasting light music, and the proprietor turn down the volume the better to follow the discussion of the games. From the various scores of the day, the talk had gone back to the All-Italy team's more recent victories over foreign teams. The young man in his shirtsleeves, shouting, sustained the supremacy of Mazzola. And at this point, unable to contain himself, the little man with the sick eyes rose from his chair to dispute him: "The win in Turin, to begin with," he shouted, proud of his expertise, "was all due to Gabetto! Mazzola had nothing to do with it! Gabetto made two goals! T\VO!" he insisted, trium phantly waving two fi benea th the young man's nose.

Since the radio was now playing a recent hit song (I don't remember which ), one of the young men, on his own initiative, turned up the vol ume again; and to the song's rhythm, he began making studied movements with his hips and feet. Another, boasting of being more up-to-date in the fi of dance, intervened to teach him the proper steps; and this new subject distracted a part of the surrounding group from sports. An ani mated, youthful shuffl was thus added to the music and the various voices. But, as usual, the general confusion did not touch Davide, or at least it grazed him only superfi The center of his powers was held fast, aimed at the presumed mission that toda�·, suddenly, with tragic urgency, he had imposed on himself: and that indefi goad shattered, dispersed, everything else around him. Convinced that the proprietor's question demanded a suitable answer, \\·ith frowning patience he went back to his previous, schema tic lesson. And concentrating again on the point where he had interrupted it, returning to his earlier tone of goodwill, almost catechistic, he made a total eff to declare : that the famous established eternal universal system of exploitation, etc., by defi is always attached to propert�·, whether private or governmental . . . And by defi it's racist . . . And by defi it has to produce itself and

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consume itself and reproduce itself through oppression and aggression and invasions and various wars . . . it can't escape from this circle . . . And its vaunted "revolutions" can be understood only in the astronomical meaning of the word, which means : motion of bodies around a center of gravity. Which center of gravity, always the same, is : Power. Always one: POWER . . .

But at this point the speaker must have realized his fi words were not being received by anyone, unless by mistake; they were like scraps of wastepaper whirled by the wind . . . And in fact, he fell silent for a moment, with the upset and puzzled face of a child in the midst of a noisy dream . . . But he promptly frowned, clenching his jaws; and suddenly rising to his feet, he shouted in a defi tone:

"I'm a Jewl"

Dazed by his outburst, the customers at the tables around looked up for a moment from their cards, while Clemente glanced at him, his lips curling. "What's wrong with being a Jew?" asked the little man with bloodshot eyes, who meantime had sat down again in his place. "The Jews," the man in the messenger's uniform stated with almost offi gravity, "are Christians the same as anybody else. The Jews are Italian citizens the same as anybody else."

"That isn't what I meant," Davide protested, blushing. He really felt guilty, as if accused of having introduced some personal questions; at heart, however, he was pleased simply that someone at least had answered him. "Who did you take me for?!" he protested still with some embarrassment, hunting for the thread that had escaped him, "races, classes, citizenships, are all balls, tricks performed by Power. It's Power that needs the gallows : 'That man's a Jew, he's a Negro, he's a worker, he's a slave . . . he's diff . . . that man's the Enemy!' all tricks, to conceal the real enemy, himself, Power! He's the one, he's the pestilence that overwhelms the world with his raving . . . A man's born a Jew by chance, and black, and white, by chance . . ." (here he thought he had found the thread again )
"but you're not born a human being by chance!"
he announced, with an inspired little smile, as if of gratitude.

This last sentence, in fact, was the opening of a poem, written by him several years earlier under the title "Total Consciousness," which now serv him in good stead. But as his Superego advised him against setting out to declaim those verses here, he thought it better, for the occasion, to turn that poem into prose; but all the same he produced a chanting voice, rhetorical and shy at once, just like a poet reciting his works :

"From the alga to the amoeba, through all the successive forms of life, along the incalculable epochs, the multiple and continuous movement of nature has tended towards this manifestation of single, universal will : the

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