Letter from Casablanca (9 page)

Your mother, yes, she understood death. I understood at once when I met her that she was a woman who understood death. And she also understood the same thing about me. She understood that there was a little of this in my stupid novel, and that’s why she did everything to make it become a book. She prevented me from arriving in Mentone. She freed me from the condition of “poor young aspiring writer, son of immigrants, returning to his native land with a manuscript in his pocket.” Did you think that my love for Fitzgerald was so vast as to have driven me on a pilgrimage through his itinerary? That my descriptions of his hotel in Baltimore were the result of a maniacal passion? It really isn’t so. Let’s say that I’m a reporter. I spent my early childhood in that hotel. I prefer to pass over the particulars. My father was a waiter there for twenty-nine years. He had known Fitzgerald, he had some books with his dedication, he often talked to me about
him, and also about Zelda, who had liked him very much. She was fond of him because my father prepared very comprehensive drinks for her. She even put him in
Save Me the Waltz
under another name. Then the hotel in the course of the years had fallen into decadence, the clientele had deteriorated. They had given my father and me a room in the rear wing. After Mama’s death he wouldn’t have known to whom to entrust me. At least I was safe there, or at least so he presumed. He spent his last years serving supper to old fur-wrapped whores, to distinguished morphine addicts, to argumentative pederasts… . Here he is, my Fitzgerald. Your mother understood many things about me. And so did I about her. Would you like to know exactly what our relationship was? It’s not something you can say in a few lines. I loved her very much, I think that’s enough.

Everybody wanted St. Raphaël, and instead the evening then dragged on at the Hôtel du Cap. Maybe the Negronis were a little strong. And then there was a quantity of Gershwin for Mr. Deluxe. And then there were the Arrigos installed on the terrace. Who could resist those two? They were two perfect McKiscos, bitter and quarrelsome, too
cocasse
. At ten o’clock at night they were at each other’s throats. They seemed to have just emerged from
Tender Is the Night
. It was impossible to shake them off to go to St. Raphaël. They’ve never known they’re the McKiscos, poor things, probably they didn’t even know who Fitzgerald was. “And your novel, Perri, at what point is your novel?” Mrs. McKisco always repeated the same question. She was polite, over-solicitous. She wore very elegant scarves and a pearl shamrock on the collar of her white jacket. Mrs. McKisco was never seen without her white jacket. I said that it wasn’t going badly, yes, it truly wasn’t going badly, I was at a good point, look, the story already had everything, dramatics, I mean, but with a bit of frivolity, frivolity’s good for drama, two destinies which don’t meet, a wronged life, two wronged lives… . Despair? Of course, but
in moderation. Maybe a death. Of him or of her, I didn’t know yet, or else, what can I say, a great betrayal. But principally inadequacy in life, as if nothing is enough, and a sense of waste, and with it something like non-reason, and then a perverse selfishness. Mrs. McKisco sighed with understanding, as if saying, “But to whom can life ever be enough?” She lifted her voluminous breast, the pearl shamrock sparkled. Mr. McKisco watched her grimly as if he were about to bite her. She was melancholy, incongruous, her unhappiness was of a touching simplicity. Away with you, Mrs. McKisco, I would have liked to comfort you. Rest your generous breast on my shoulder and unburden yourself, cry. It’s true, your life is wasted, your husband is an orangutan full of Pernod, you have too much money and now you ask yourself what good is money, what do you do with your paper mills. But it all goes for nothing, right, Mrs. McKisco? There were some children you would have wanted, and instead you find yourself here stemming old age and solitude. You’d like to convince yourself that children aren’t everything. You look at the lights of Cannes and want very much to cry. Come with me to the railing, let’s look at the sea. I tell you about a frivolously despairing novel and we laugh about it like crazy, all very Fitzgeraldish. He’s a writer of a single book, has had a decayed childhood which every now and then aches with acute sharp pains. In his lifetime he got away with methods that were not exactly clean. Let’s say that he’s rather a crook, but deep-down he’s good. Would you like to hear the beginning? He’d begin this way, for example:
In 1959, when the protagonist of this story was thirty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual “There!”—yet at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the conscious stage
… . To tell the truth, the
beginning isn’t mine, dear Mrs. McKisco. Only the dates are mine, but it’s almost the same.

Toward midnight Mr. McKisco collapsed on the table. He needed to be lifted up bodily. Even Bishop was rather drunk. She gave one giggle after another, she was a happy drunk. Now she felt right in shape for a little visit to St. Raphael. Away we go, a fast run to eat a couple of shrimp. At that point I got away. I preferred to wait for you at home. In any case, within an hour you’d have returned. Would you like to know why that night of August 12 I didn’t come back? I’ve never wondered why you didn’t come back. I don’t want to know, I don’t care. But I want to tell you why I didn’t come back. It’s very funny. Because it was St. Macarius’ Day. My father’s name was Macarius. I wanted to remember him by myself, far away from your house, without interference. And then I had the photograph of Scottie in my pocket. I have it here in front of me now, too. It was taken when she was four years old. Scottie has a flowered dress, white socks, and pigtails burned by the sun. She carries a puppet in her hand, a kind of sad-eyed basset-hound. She holds it dangling by one ear. His name was Socrates, do you remember Socrates? I bought him. There’s a hole in the photograph: that’s you. And there’s the villa in the background, taken from the west side, the stairs covered with an American vine that led to Scottie’s rooms, the white door with the little pieces of engraved glass, very English. So I had the photograph of Scottie in my pocket and I sat down at a cafe. I felt really well. My plan was perfect, and then some place toward Mentone you could see fireworks. It must have been the festival of a patron saint. It seemed to me to be a good omen. For a month and a half, every Saturday evening, I crossed the border in my car. There was a customs agent, a boy from Benevento, who came on duty at exactly ten o’clock for the night shift. By this time he was used to seeing me. I went to get a cup of coffee in Italy. At half past ten I
crossed the border again. “Homesick for Italian coffee, sir?’’ He greeted me with his hand to his visor. I responded to the salute. Sometimes I stopped for a brief chat. For him I was a rich man with a mania for Italian coffee. He’d never have dreamed of looking in the car. Asleep under a car robe, Scottie would have passed perfectly.

I loitered for a little while along the sea-front, watching the fireworks toward Mentone. It would have been for tomorrow evening. It was St. Macarius’ Day. The night was beautiful. I thought about my father dead in a fetid hotel in Baltimore. I stopped at the “Racé” to pick up some money. I had contacts there, but this was the last time. I needed that money to set up an honest business in Italy. Not that I lacked money, but the more I had the better: the first days wouldn’t have been easy. At the “Racé” there was a jam session with an incredible type who imitated to perfection Rex Stewart, a cornet player with Ellington in the Thirties. He was happy. He played “Trumpet in Space” and “Kissing My Baby Good-night,” imagine that. I was happy, too. I stayed a little while and then left and took a long walk because I had a desire to breathe fresh air. There. A whole life can change over a trifle. Or stay the same.

Time is perfidious. It makes us believe it never passes, and if we look behind, it’s passed too hurriedly. You’d like a sentence like this for my story, right, Marline? I give in. Time is perfidious. I look behind, it passed too hurriedly, and how slow it was to pass! Almost twenty years have gone by, and for us Scottie is still four years old. But after all, I, too, am the same age as then for you. Because I’m unattainable. In a certain sense I’m eternal, here, where I find myself. I’m beyond the curve in the road, do you understand that concept? Twenty years should have been enough to understand a concept like this. You, on the other hand, no. You’ve remained on the straight and narrow, exposed. You’ve grown old, Martine, it’s normal. At last you won’t fear the arrival of old age any longer: it’s here now. There haven’t been any
signs of Bishop. She disappeared in England. But I know what happened to her: she became a half-nun, she never married, she lives in a convent in Sussex, she teaches American culture to young girls from good families. Even Deluxe has grown old, by God. He lost all his aviator’s looks. He came to see you sometimes, but it’s impossible to take up the game again, it allows him nothing more. He’s a corpulent gentleman with a blue Citroën who does business in the suburbs: farewell, Tom Barban. And even the villa, how it’s aged. I passed by it recently and imagined going in. On the boundary wall, next to the gate, there’s a little panel of blue tiles with a brigantine with blowing sails. We bought it at Ēze Village, do you remember? On the wrought-iron gate the white varnish has peeled off. Where the color has come off, because of the sun and the saltiness, in large galls that crack under the fingers, a fine, very yellow rust has formed. It must be necessary to push the double doors very hard, otherwise they won’t open because the hinges are stiff. When you finally succeed in opening the gate, after having shaken it rather impatiently, it emits a soft, prolonged squeak, like a far-away moan, in front of us. Once I happened to raise my eyes mechanically in the search for the emitter of that lament, and then I saw the sky blue of the sea. To the right of the gate, after the entrance, under a palm tree, there’s a porter’s lodge painted yellow, a little room that looks like a miniature house. Once the night watchman’s tools were kept there. Now I imagine what’s there: a baby carriage with a folding lop, as you see in photographs of the Thirties, a child’s cordless xylophone, some old records full of scratches. They’re unbearable things. It’s impossible to look at them, but it’s also impossible to get rid of them: you need to find a little room. But why do I describe to you things that you know better than I? To create a note of wastefulness in my story, a sense of dissipation? You always preferred desperate, futile lives. Francis and Zelda, Bessie Smith, Isadora. … I do what I can: it’s as much as we have at
our disposal. Ah, yes, the villa has really lost its tone, it would need a good
maquillage
: facade, windows, garden, gratings… . But money is scarce, they lack Ferri’s discreet little business affairs, so dubious but so remunerative. You don’t eat tradition for dinner. If only you could begin to think how to utilize everything. The location is of a rate elegance, the rooms are magnificent, so deliciously art-nouveau. You could retire to the rooms that used to be Scottie’s, so you’d be even nearer to her memory—and then two rooms are enough for you by this time—and turn the rest into a hotel. A small hotel, but very elite: ten bedrooms, dining room on the ground floor with green lampshades on the tables, pianist on the terrace after supper, a lot of Gershwin, moonlight and Bacardi. The rich, middle-aged Swiss adore this kind of place. You ought to find an appropriate name, refined but witty. For instance, “
Au p’tit Gatsby
.” And thus you could face a tranquil old age, spending your afternoons in peace and quiet looking at the coast and thinking of the future
that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster
,
stretch out. our arms farther … And one fine morning
… It’s a Fitzgerald finale, of course.

T
he first telephone call had been from a girl who called for the third time in three days and repeated
ad infinitum
that she just couldn’t cope anymore. You have to be careful in many cases because there’s the risk of psychodependence. It’s necessary to be affectionate with circumspection. Whoever calls must hear a friend on the other end of the line, not a
deus ex machina
on whom his life depends. Moreover, the main rule is that the caller shouldn’t get attached to one voice in particular, otherwise it creates difficult situations. This happens extremely easily with the depressed. They need a personalized confidant, they are not satisfied with an anonymous voice, they want it to be
that
voice, and they attach themselves to it desperately. But with the depressed of a certain type, those who have a fixed idea and with it build a wall around themselves, the situation is further complicated. They make telephone calls that freeze you, and you rarely establish contact. This time, however, it went well because I had the luck to discover something that interested her. Another rule that is usually valid for a good number of cases is to lead the conversation to a subject that interests the caller, because everyone, even the most desperate, has one thing which, deep down, interests him, even those
who are most cut off from reality. Often it’s a question of our good will. You even need to resort to little tricks, devices. At times I’ve succeeded in clearing up some seemingly impossible situations with a trick with a glass, and managed to stabilize some communication. Let’s suppose that the telephone rings, you pick up the receiver, you say the usual formula or something similar, and then on the other end nothing, the most absolute silence, not even a sigh. Then you insist, you try to be tactful, you say that you know he’s there listening, to please say something, whatever he wants, whatever springs to mind—an absurdity, a curse, a cry, a syllable. Nothing. Total silence. And yet if he’s called, there’s a reason. But you can’t know it, you don’t know anything. He can be foreign, he can be mute, he can be everything. And then I take a glass and a pencil and say, Listen to me. There are millions and millions of us on this earth, and yet the two of us have met—only on the telephone, of course, without knowing each other and without seeing each other. However, we have met. Let’s not throw away this meeting. It must have some meaning. Listen to me. Let’s play a game. I have a glass here in front of me. I make it ring with a pencil—
ping
—do you hear me? If you hear me, do the same thing—two taps. Or if you don’t have anything in front of you, you can lap the receiver with your fingernail like this—
tap, tap
—do you hear me? If you hear me, answer, I beg you. Listen. Now I’ll try to name some things, things that cross my mind, and you tell me if you like them. For example, do you like the sea? To say yes, tap two times. Only one tap means no.

But there’s just no understanding what it is that interests a girl who dials the number, is silent for almost two minutes, and then begins to repeat, I can’t cope anymore. I can’t cope anymore. I can’t cope anymore. I can’t cope anymore. Like this,
ad infinitum
. It was pure chance, because earlier I had put on a record since, I thought, on the fifteenth of August holiday of the Assumption of the Virgin it won’t be very busy,
with so many people going away. And, in fact, I’d come on duty more than two hours before, and no one had called. It was terribly hot. The little fan that I’d brought with me gave no relief. The city seemed dead, everyone away on vacation. I sat down in the armchair and began to read, but the book fell on my chest. I don’t like to fall asleep when I’m on duty. I have slow reflexes, and if someone calls I remain surprised the first few seconds, and at times it’s really those first seconds which count, because he might even hang up, and then who knows if he’ll have the courage to dial the number again? So I put on
The Turkish March
by Mozart, softly. It’s happy, it’s stimulating, it keeps up the morale. She telephoned while the record was playing. She was silent a long time and then began to repeat that she couldn’t cope anymore. I let her say it, because in these cases it’s a good thing to let the caller get it off his chest. He must say everything he wants and as many times as he wants. When I heard only her troubled breathing over the receiver, I said, Wait a moment, would you mind? I took off the record, and she answered, Please leave it on. Of course, I told her, I’ll be glad to leave it. Do you like Brahms? I don’t know how I’d sensed that the music could furnish the possibility of communication. The trick had come to me spontaneously. Sometimes a little falsehood is providential. As for Brahms, probably the suggestion of the title by Sagan had played in my subconscious, a title that you always carry dormant in your memory. This isn’t Brahms, she said, it’s Mozart. Mozart? I put it on. Of course Mozart, she said vivaciously. It’s
The Turkish March
by Mozart. And thanks to this she began to talk about the conservatory where she had studied before something happened to her, and everything went very well.

The time, then, passed slowly. I heard the bell of St. Dominic’s Church strike seven. I went to the window. There was a light haze of heat over the city. Few automobiles passed through the street. I made up my eyelashes again. Sometimes I
feel pretty. Then I lay down on the couch next to the phonograph and I thought about things, about people, about life. At seven thirty the telephone rang again. I recited the usual formula, perhaps with a certain weariness. On the other end of the line there was a brief hesitation. Then the voice said, My name is Manning, but I’m not a gerund. It’s always advisable to appreciate the jokes of those who call—they reveal the desire to establish contact—and I laughed. I answered that I had a grandfather who was named Dunne, but he wasn’t a past participle, he was only Irish. And he, too, laughed a little. And then he said that he had something in common with verbs, however, that he had one of their qualities, that he was intransitive. All verbs serve in the construction of the sentence, I said. It seemed to me that the conversation permitted an allusive tone, and then you always have to encourage the attitude chosen by the caller. But I’m deponent, he said. Deponent in what sense, I asked. In the sense that I lay down, he said. I lay down my arms. Perhaps the mistake was in thinking that arms shouldn’t be laid down, didn’t he think? Perhaps they had taught us bad grammar. It was better to let arms be used by belligerent people. There were many unarmed people, he could be certain to have a lot of company. He said, He will. And I said that our conversation seemed like a table of verb conjugations. And this time it was his turn to laugh, a brief, rough laugh. And then he asked me if I knew the sound of time. No, I said, I don’t know it. Well, he said, you only have to sit down on the bed during the night when you can’t sleep and keep your eyes open in the dark, and after a little while you hear. It’s like a roar in the distance, like the breath of an animal that devours people. Why didn’t he tell me more about those nights? I had all the time in the world, and I had nothing else to do except listen to him. But in the meantime he was already somewhere else. He had skipped a connection indispensable for me to follow the thread of the story. He didn’t need that passage, or perhaps he
preferred to avoid it. But I let him talk—you should never interrupt for any reason—and then I didn’t like his voice, which was slightly shrill and sometimes a whisper.

The house is very large, he said. It’s an old house. There’s furniture that belonged to my ancestors, awful furniture in the Empire style, with feet. And worn-out carpets, and pictures of surly men and proud, unhappy ladies with their lower lips imperceptibly drooping. Do you know why their mouths have that curious shape? Because the bitterness of all their lives outlines their lower lips and makes them droop. Those women have spent sleepless nights next to stupid husbands incapable of tenderness. And they too, those women, remain in the dark with their eyes open, cultivating resentment. In the dressing room next to my bedroom there are still some of her things, those that she left. A few underclothes atrophied on a footstool, a little gold chain she used to wear on her wrist, a tortoise-shell hairpin. The letter is on the chest of drawers under the glass bell that once guarded a gigantic alarm clock from Basel. I broke that alarm clock when I was a child. One day when I was sick, no one came up to see me. I remember it as if it were yesterday. I got up and liberated the alarm clock from its safe-keeping. It had a frightening tick-tock. I removed the bottom cover and methodically took it apart until the sheet was strewn with all its tiny gears. If you want, I can read it to you—the letter, I mean. In fact, I repeat it to you from memory—I read it every night: Manning, if only you knew how I have hated you all these years. … It begins like this. The rest you can deduce for yourself. The glass bell guards a massive, repressed hatred.

And then he again skipped a passage, but this time I thought I understood the connection. He said, And now how will Jimmy be? Who will he have become? He’s a man, somewhere in the world. And then I asked him if that letter was dated August fifteenth, because I had known by intuition, and he said yes, it was the very anniversary and he would celebrate
it appropriately. He already had the instrument ready for the celebration—it was there on the table next to the telephone.

He was silent. I had expected he would talk some more, but he said nothing else. Then I said, Wait for another anniversary, Manning. Try to wait one more year. I was immediately aware of how ridiculous that sentence was, but at the moment I had nothing else in mind, I talked for the sake of talking, and in the end all that counted was the concept. I’ve listened to a lot of telephone callers of all kinds with the most absurd situations, and yet maybe that was the moment in which my habitual bravura vacillated, and I even felt lost myself as if I needed another person who would stay to listen to me and tell me something appropriate to say. It lasted a moment, he didn’t reply, I recovered promptly. Now I knew what I could say. I could talk about microperspectives, and I talked about microperspectives. Because in life there are all kinds of perspectives, the so-called great perspectives which everyone considers fundamental, and those that I call microperspectives which are insignificant, I admit. But if everything is relative, if nature permits eagles and ants to exist, why can’t we live like the ants, I asked, by microperspectives? Yes, microperspectives, I insisted, and he found my definition amusing. But in what would these microperspectives consist, he asked, and I set out to explain punctiliously. Microperspectives is a
modus vivendi
, all right? Let’s say so, anyhow. It’s a way of concentrating the attention,
all
the attention, on a little detail of life, of daily routine, as if that detail were the most important thing in the world. But ironically, knowing that it isn’t the most important thing in the world at all, and that everything is relative. One help is to make lists, mark down appointments, give yourself strict schedules, and don’t compromise. Microperspectives is a concrete way of attacking concrete things.

He didn’t seem very convinced, but my objective wasn’t to try to convince him. I was perfectly aware that I wasn’t revealing
the secret of the philosopher’s stone. And yet just the fact that he felt that someone could be interested in his problems must serve for something. It was as much as I could do. He asked me if he could telephone me at home. Sorry, I didn’t have a telephone. And here? Certainly, here whenever he wanted. Not tomorrow, no, unfortunately. But of course he could leave me a message, in fact he had to. There was another friend in my place who’d then pass it on to me. I’d be happy if he told me what had been the microperspectives of his day.

He said good-bye to me politely in a tone of voice that seemed to say he was sorry. The evening was hot and I hadn’t noticed. At times certain conversations require frightening concentration. From the window I saw Gulliver crossing the street, coming to relieve me. Gulliver could be seen from the top of a skyscraper—it was not for nothing that we called him Gulliver. I collected my things and prepared to leave. Only then did I verify that it was ten minutes to nine. Damn! I had promised Paco that I’d be home at nine sharp, and even if I hurried I couldn’t make it until half past nine. In addition, you can imagine public transportation, which was a disaster even on normal days, on the fifteenth of August. Maybe it was better to go on foot. I went by Gulliver like an arrow, without even giving him time to say hello. He shouted something jokingly after me. I answered on the stairs that I had an appointment, and the next time come on time, please. I was leaving him the fan even though he didn’t deserve it. However, as soon as I went out the front door I saw the number 32 rounding the corner. Even if it didn’t take me as far as my house it saved me a good stretch of road, so I flung myself up. It was completely empty. The 32 empty that way makes an impression, if you think how it usually is. The driver went so slowly that the desire to say something to him came to me, but I let it go—he had such a resigned air, eyes dull. Well, I thought, if Paco is irritated, too bad for him. I certainly can’t fly. I got off at the stop in front of the big stores. I started to
walk fast, but it was already nine twenty-five. It was useless to set out to run in order to arrive late anyway, all sweaty and panting like a madwoman.

I slipped in the key, trying to be quiet. The house was dark and silent, and it made an impression on me. Who knows why I thought of something unpleasant? And I let myself be conquered by anxiety. I said, Paco, Paco, it’s me, I’m back. For a moment I felt overcome by depression. I put my books and purse on the stool by the front door and went as far as the door to the living room. I still felt like saying Paco, Paco. Silence at times is a dreadful thing. I know what I would have wanted to tell him if he had been there. Please, Paco, I would have said, it wasn’t my fault. I got an extremely long telephone call, and transportation is on half-schedule today—it’s August fifteenth. I went to close the door to the small terrace in back, because there are mosquitoes in the garden and as soon as they see the light they come in in swarms. It crossed my mind that a tin of caviar and one of paté remained in the refrigerator. It seemed to me like the time to open them, and also to uncork a bottle of Moselle wine. I set out yellow linen placemats and put a red candle on the table. My kitchen has light wooden furniture and with candlelight acquires a comforting atmosphere. While I made preparations I weakly called again, Paco. With a spoon I tapped lightly on a glass—
ping
. Then I tapped harder—
PING
. The sound lingered all through the house. Then suddenly an inspiration came to me. Opposite my plate I put another placemat, a plate, silverware, and a glass. I filled both glasses and went into the bathroom to make myself tidy. And if, later, he had really returned? Sometimes reality surpasses the imagination. He would have rung with two brief repealed rings, as he always did, and I would have opened the door with an air of complicity. I set the table for two, I would have told him. I was expecting you, I don’t know why, but I was expecting you. Who knows what kind of face he would have made?