The Great Weaver From Kashmir (26 page)

The house stood open and two bulky women worked in the kitchen; one was the housewife. She came to the door and stood there opposite the traveler, clad in black, tall and shriveled, like the women who are paid to weep at the cheapest funerals. Steinn lifted his hat and asked about a foreign woman who had been buried here.

The housewife answered that her husband had gone to take a midday nap; otherwise he knew everything about those who had found their rest here in the graveyard.

“But maybe I could help in some way,” she said, and added: “I wonder if this foreign woman was one of the faithful or if she was a heretic?”

“She was certainly one of the faithful,” said Steinn, in the hope of avoiding any fuss.

“Catholic?” reiterated the woman.

“No, she wasn't strictly Catholic, but all the same very faithful,” answered Steinn, and he laughed in his heart, since this was the first time in his life that he had given credit to his mother for anything.

“Then other rules apply here,” said the woman. “Since she is not Catholic, then she is lying in the other graveyard.”

“What other graveyard?”

“Yes – there is actually another tiny yard a short distance from here, for Turks, Jews, and heretics. They don't receive any church service, you know, but instead are buried like dogs.”

“Yes, very pitiful,” said Steinn Elliði.

“But all the same I think that the good God who rules the universe has mercy on them,” said the woman. “By the way, I can hear by your accent that you're from northern Italy, sir,” she added.

“Yes, I'm from northern Italy.”

“Well that's good luck,” said the woman. “Because my husband actually comes from northern Italian stock. If you give him a few soldi
⁷¹
for tobacco, I almost think he'd be willing to get himself up and dressed and take you over to the heretics' yard. Wait just a moment, sir; after five or ten minutes my husband will be ready.”

When the woman had gone back into the house Steinn clenched his face with both hands. In front of the doghouse lay a donkey-load of firewood. For a moment he felt as if he would lose his balance and faint. He let himself sink down onto one of the bundles of firewood, supported himself with his elbow on his knee, and covered his face with the hollows of his hands, sat in that way motionless for a while. But his body was suddenly seized with uncontrollable shaking. It was as if his chest were going to burst, and the sobs were forced like unstoppable laughter up out of his throat, sore and dry. The guard dog looked at Steinn Elliði like a wise man, but Steinn Elliði howled like a guard dog.

He himself didn't know whether he was laughing or crying. But he certainly laughed and cried all at once. His heart was ungovernable. Neither Heaven with all of its might nor Earth with all of its wisdom could break the back of this power. The tears burst forth like water that suddenly sprays from cliffs; they fell down below his hands and were lost in the white dust on his feet, the dust that thirsts ceaselessly for human tears, the dust that swallows all human tears. And the worm writhes back and forth in the dust.

On the steps on the Via dei Vespri, the steep street leading up to Villa Valverde, where Steinn had rented a room, sits a one-legged beggar playing a flute. Every time that Steinn walks along the Via dei Vespri the beggar grabs his flute and blows one measure in a show of respect. And on the days when Steinn sits out on his balcony and watches the smoke from his cigarette creep out and in among the fronds of the palm trees in the calm, he hears the whistling from down on the Via dei Vespri, and the cicadas in the crowns of the trees provide accompaniment. The beggar knows three short melodies and mixes them all together into one, and usually ends up playing off-key like a young cock that hasn't yet gotten the hang of crowing. But the flute always resounds with redemptive jubilation and heavenly delirium. The spirit is greatly uplifted in listening to such music.

This virtuoso is named Leonardo Peppino, in Icelandic, Ljónharður Pípín. He has a yellow dog, emaciated and abject, tied with a rope to his remaining leg. But Ljónharður Pípín is not merely a virtuoso; he is also an instrument maker. Wind instruments are his specialty. And more than an instrument maker, he is an instrument decorator: he decorates wind instruments. He makes them from hollow stumps of wood, and decorates them with carvings. His etchings are matchless; his grasp of style unfailing. He whittles all sorts of supernatural species of cabbage, and peering out from between the
cabbages are faces like smirking corpses or half-awakened ghosts; an icy and fatal dead man's bliss shines from their eyes. Twice a day a dark-eyed and filthy little girl comes from a nearby house, gives him a loaf of bread, an onion, and water in a clay jug with two handles. She says nothing and leaves.

Pípín is a small man, shabby and grizzled, with gray strands of beard here and there upon his wrinkled face. He has cinnabar eyelids, and is usually dirty about the mouth because he kisses the ground whenever an American passes by on the street. But he is a happy man and smiles the whole day, celebrates the glory on the visage of things from morning till night. He smiles at the countenances of the apparitions that are revealed beneath the point of his knife, smiles at his dog as he checks it for lice, smiles at the Americans who buy his flutes,
ricordo di Taormina,
⁷³
smiles at the bald-headed gentlemen and gracious ladies who hand him two soldi as they pass by, just because such a man should exist, and when night falls he lies down and smiles at good God in Heaven before he goes to sleep. And he sleeps in the Via dei Vespri, on the open street in the five-finger-thick dust, and sleeps deeply and sweetly. Fortune lives in Taormina in Sicily, and Taormina is called the pearl of Europe. Fortune sleeps in the open on the Via dei Vespri.

Steinn had difficulty withstanding Ljónharður Pípín's charm. He often stopped on the stairs where the beggar sat, and listened to his Sicilian when he talked about his flutes and praised the magnanimity of the Americans, those God-fearing people whom God sends to care for the poor. Otherwise Steinn did not have the bad habit of giving alms, for such a thing offends God, who has given into people's hands an entire planet, full of bounty. Pípín's blissfulness and his
arts were, on the other hand, of such quality that twenty soldi was not too much to pay for the pleasure of his company. It was not in Steinn's power to grant this foundling any fortune other than admiration. And he laughed in his heart to be considered
gran' signore
⁷⁴
in the Via dei Vespri, because he felt himself unworthy to untie the shoelaces of a man who has conquered himself so thoroughly as to be able to kiss the dust before every American.

And one day when Steinn sat at his meal in the Villa Valverde, and the flute-song was borne in through the open window, the waiter said:

“Signore must excuse this everlasting noise from that beggar's shrieking tool. But he once received permission from the police to sit here on the street, and although we've complained about him many times to the authorities we still haven't succeeded in driving him away.”

“Do you think that you can play the flute better than Leonardo Peppino?” answered Steinn.

But since the waiter had to admit that that was not the case, it consoled him to mention the fact that this wretched ragamuffin had spent fourteen years in a workhouse.

“Workhouse?” asked Steinn Elliði.

“Yes, he was sentenced to prison, signore!” said the man.

“For what?”

“A fatto malo a una piccola ragazza,”
⁷⁵
answered the waiter, without going into any more detail. And so the day passed by. In the evening a brass band played at the Piazza Sant Agostino, and a pink moon burned in the green haze over the horizon of the Mediterranean Sea, and with this magical world as a background stood the cinnabar red
balustrades at the edges of the square, octagonal pillars at every twentieth baluster and a flowerpot on the top of every pillar, with acacias in the pots. And in the crowd of people meandering back and forth over the square stood Steinn Elliði, leaning back against a tree trunk, smoking a cigarette and looking out at the sea. The brass band played a whole act from
The Barber of Seville,
⁷⁶
and Steinn knew each and every note by heart and felt the breath of mastery in every wave, but
“durch alle Töne tönte ein zarter Liebeston,”
⁷⁷
and it was the flute of the beggar, singing of slavery and prison, quivering with joy and thankfulness, like birdsong in the spring.

“Saluti, saluti, Eccellenza!”
⁷⁸
exclaimed the beggar, as Steinn walked by in the evening. He rose from the dust to wipe his flute and play to Steinn Elliði's glory. Steinn stopped, leaned up against the wall opposite the virtuoso, watched him and waited for his meandering rigmarole to wind down. Then he asked:

“Is it true, Leonardo Peppino, that you committed a crime against a little girl?”

The beggar bent his head from side to side several times and gave a sidelong glance, then played a long, wailing note on his flute and answered:

“Dear sir, I am a horribly wicked man. Why am I such a bad man while other men are so good? The notary's daughter was twelve years old, sir, and was standing in the doorway. And in the evenings when I came home from work she was standing in the doorway. She had two pigeons. And in the evenings when I came home from work I saw how she stood on the threshold, leaned up against the door-frame and held her pigeons by their legs and kissed them on the breast. She was careful not to look at me as I walked by. But when
I'd passed by she would follow me with her eyes. But God and men have justly punished me. I feel as if I always understand better and better how God and men are just. Fourteen years in the workhouse, sir, fourteen years in prison with consumption in my leg, fourteen years. But what's that? I am just as happy having those behind me as I would have been having reigned as a king for fourteen years, because who counts the hours once they've passed? It is said that God hears the tears of the wretched fall, and if God hears my tears fall, would I really be better off as a king living in a palace in Rome? And since God and men are good, do I deserve anything else but to be a dead wretch before God and men? Don't I have reason to thank God and our Lady for being allowed to sit here and play my flutes for the blessed Americans who are so good? When I came from prison worse than dead, with a crutch under each arm and only one leg, then there was no one to help me, absolutely no one, sir, except for good God who rules the entire world. And then I thought to myself: But oh how sweet it is to be allowed to draw breath under your sky, my Lord, free and wide. And you let yourself be crucified under your sky, my Lord, for love of me. But a murderer from Calabria,
⁷⁹
who was a tremendous musical genius and had been a coal burner up in the mountains all his life – he taught me to play the flute in prison while I lay sick with consumption. And the day before I was set free we were allowed to say good-bye out in the prison yard and he gave me his flute as a parting gift, the only flute that he owned. And ever since then he's been fluteless.”

It was Steinn's resolute intention to put an end to all vanity, to everything that tied his being to the laws of existence, and he had, not without lustful feelings, tried to envision how he could bring about his death in the most ridiculous manner possible. He longed to die with storylike disgrace, and asked himself again and again: “What would amuse Bambara Salvatore best?”

He was born in Kashmir, the valley of roses, with a harp in his hand like the gods. One day he awoke from his harp playing and saw himself: the roses had paled and died beneath the soles of his feet. But human society can only do two things for all of its sages: turn them into either criminals or suicides. Before the door of the sexton he had sobbed away his last human feelings. And this entire ridiculous tragedy had its roots in an event no greater than this: his mother had forgotten to use contraceptive precautions. But now he was reborn. His suicide did not signify his fear of becoming a criminal, as did Dr. Otto Weininger's suicide, but rather his escape from a dungeon.

He was truly reborn. His feelings were far from dancing a deranged dance in his breast as before, when he had been a normal person. Tonight he did not despair. He muttered to himself almost involuntarily this foolish aphorism of Maupassant, the conclusion of
Une vie: “La vie, ça n'est jamais si bon ni si mauvais qu'on croit.”
⁸⁰
Suicide was actually not a more horrid act than, say, eating a slice of bread with sausages. There is, generally speaking, not a more trivial or insignificant act. But from a dead man the power of destiny is
wiped away; a dead man has cut himself free from the yoke of his existence. A dead man is freer than God. What prompted Steinn was the desire to defeat this God of the deeps and dawnlight, who can never be eluded, to defeat this power which itself was forced to live and let live. How indigent and worthless is all the glory of existence compared to the strange, victorious smile on the face of a dead man! Even the poems of the divine Omar Khayyám pale before it! He sits in the armchair on the balcony, malevolent like a troll in a grave mound, his mind ice-cold. Down on the Via dei Vespri a lantern shines, and the electricity and the moon join hands in illuminating the garden beyond, while bats,
bêtes à bon dieu,
⁸¹
and locusts play in the crowns of the palms and poisonous mosquitoes hum like fiddles. He lit a new cigarette, tore a page from his pocketbook, and wrote:

“Til det dansk-islandke konsulat, Palermo. Sicilien.
⁸²