Tristano Dies (12 page)

Frau read me her Sunday poem, an ancient Persian poet, she says. In my opinion it isn’t Sunday, this August has too many Sundays, Frau’s tacking on some more Sundays, maybe that’s her way of prolonging my life, adding on Sundays … Young sir, she says, the poem starts like this: Don’t think about the rotation of the Earth, Saki, first think about my head … Saki’s the manservant of the old Persian poet who brings him cups of wine, part servant, part philosopher, just like Frau … Oh Saki, where did the old days go?… Tristano would have his own way of continuing the poem, something like … I’m stretched out on my deathbed, Saki, they’ve stuck a catheter in me that I pull out just to be spiteful, as for me, besides my voice, there’s nothing left, or almost nothing left, a profile on the pillow, sharp as a razor, and some breathing that at times turns to a rattle, your master’s lying out there, dear Saki, outside the window it seems like an August so still, broken only by the frenzied cicadas, how long until tomorrow, Saki, is it still a long way off?… why is it always today?… an entire month of today, make tomorrow come and carry me away, there’s a big fly that keeps hitting the mirror, trying to get out, stupid fly, it can’t find the way out, like me, it needs morphine, like me, I lie here and talk and talk, but why insist on digging up old days, Saki … please, don’t let that young
nurse in, the one Frau hired, she’s here with my urinal so I won’t piss the sheets, I can’t bear how she slips it so delicately into that glass container, like a dying flower … Saki, it was a beautiful May day, the zephyr had returned, and Tristano was sitting on his motorcycle near a newsstand, and it felt like Italy was cured, and the whole world alongside Italy, and he was humming our fatherland is the world over, our law is freedom, and even for him, life was returning … the sap was rising, after all that wartime adrenaline, all the carnage and blood, and now, sitting on his motorcycle, he was saying, how beautiful. It was May of forty-five, I remember it like it was happening this very moment.

You know when everything really became clear to him? When everything seemed already clear and already over, on the sixth of August of forty-five. At a quarter past eight that morning, if you want to know the time as well. That day Tristano understood that after the monster was conquered came the monstrosity of the conquerors … it was the second crime against humanity in this happy century now coming to a close … that morning, the first atomic bomb used as a weapon of mass destruction was dropped on one of our cities, and that city was annihilated, two hundred thousand people incinerated. I say two hundred thousand, but that leaves out the thousands who died later, and all the stillbirths, all the cancer … and they weren’t soldiers, they were defenseless citizens whose one offense was being blameless … There’s a place, in Hiroshima, called Genbaku
Dome, it’s a pavilion, meaning it’s an atomic dome, and this was the epicenter of the explosion, and here the soil temperature reached the temperature of the surface of the sun; near the monument with its peace torch is a stone slab, a doorstep, an ordinary doorstep like you’d find in front of any of our houses, where we lay the doormat to wipe our feet. Inside that stone, that piece of marble, I imagine it’s like paper absorbing ink, and there’s the imprint of a body, the arms outspread. This is all that remains of the body of the man who melted on his doorstep at a quarter past eight on that sixth of August of forty-five … If you can, take a trip there, it’s informative … it’s been said that those victims were pointless, the monster’s head had already been crushed at Dresden and Berlin, and to break Japan all the Americans needed were conventional weapons. That’s a mistake, that the victims were pointless – for the conquerors, they were extremely useful – in this manner, the world would come to know its new masters … History is an icy creature, she doesn’t have the slightest pity for anything or anyone; that German philosopher who committed suicide in a small hotel on the border, so escaping Franco and Hitler and everyone – maybe even escaping himself – he’d reflected too much on this ruthless lady that men court in vain, and it didn’t seem to do him much good … in his reflections he wrote that when faced with an enemy, if that enemy wins, even the dead aren’t safe … and I’d add that this includes all enemies, even someone who’s the enemy of evil men, because being the enemy of evil men can’t make someone do good – and what do you think
of that?… I understand your objections, I’ve been too succinct, of course if evil won there’d be no way out … but speaking of good, I wanted to say … well … good, okay, good conquered evil, only there’s a little too much evil in this good and a little too much imperfection in this truth … The truth’s imperfect … That journalist who snuck an interview with me years ago – by pretending we were just talking over a drink – he wrote this concerning the subject: that Tristano admitted to the existence of God, but it was a short-lived existence. Too bad you didn’t explore this more in your novel, it’s a topic that warranted some reflection; you know, this understanding of Tristano was a bit too simple, as if what he meant was that even gods die, but we all know that: take Jupiter, for instance, who lasted a good long while before being replaced, but that’s not what Tristano meant. Sure, of course, everything grows old, probably God, too, what we believe in, but God won’t die a natural death, then be replaced by something else. I’m afraid he’s got a more painful end coming to him, if things keep going the way they are, think about it … one day … imagine a heat like the surface of the sun, but not in just one spot, over the entire planet, thousands of Hiroshimas, a whole slew of Hiroshimas, Hiroshimas all over … an immense roar, and then an immense silence, a big bang in reverse, not a living soul left, not even a cat, everyone kaput … Sure, he’ll still exist, but who cares, if no one’s around anymore to believe that he exists … an unemployed God … we’ll make him useless, pointless, because what’s the point of having God if no one’s around to believe in him?… I’ve gotten off track again,
as usual, today I meant to tell you about our Hypnos Pages, I think without our ever saying it, we started doing this in answer to that philosopher who questioned the possibility of writing poetry after the unspeakable had occurred. Not only was it possible, it was probably the only thing we could do that made any sense, because when the monster’s been conquered and you don’t believe in the monster’s conquerors anymore, all you’re left with is believing in your own dreams … in dreams begins responsibility, like I told you, is the line we used as an epigraph in our little books, because the arm reaches only as far as the hand, but a dream can go on and on … a prosthesis slipping past the prison of existence. Seems to me we started in fifty-two, we did a book a year, so we made thirty-six, they stopped eleven years back, when the others died … Any poets that weren’t Greek we all translated, Daphne and I, and her friends, Ioanna and Antheos, who signed his name as Marios because that’s what I called him. Handmade, you know, with a hand press from an old print shop, a contraption once used for printing leaflets against the Ottoman Empire, that’s what the man from Cyprus said who sold it to us, and it’s certainly possible, the thing was gigantic, weighed a ton … Why Crete and not here at home? Your question makes sense, with a nation like ours that’s full of saints, sailors, and poets … not that Crete was Paris, but people from Crete had character, you know what they did when the Germans invaded? – they wiped out an entire Nazi battalion that was armed like the Nazis always were, and you know how they did it? With their billhooks for harvesting olives – they even
strangled Nazis with their bare hands … And Italy back then … you’re too young, you were just a boy … Pella, Tambroni, these names won’t mean much, if anything, to you, Don Gnocchi’s crippled children, the Polesine flood, the processions of the penitents, the weeping madonnas … Do they still weep? Around here madonnas’ tears come easy, and saints and sailors seem to be on the rise. Luckily, we’ve still got poets, too, but they must feel a bit uncomfortable in this company … You’re a good writer, too bad you write prose … sorry, I’m not being fair, as far as I’m concerned I should be grateful you write prose, if you’d been a poet, you wouldn’t be here patiently gathering all these bits and pieces I’m telling you, maybe you’d have disposed of me with an elegant elegy or a poison epigram, the kind they kill you with even after you’re gone … or some little nonsense rhyme, a limerick, maybe, like the British are so good at, let’s see … let me think … There was an old hero they say, Who tucked all of his dreams away, But they started to rot with the gangrene he got, So it’s dreamless and legless he’ll stay.

What’s the time, one already, like you Northerners say? I told you to come at thirteen hundred hours but not to wake me, I was having such a good sleep and then you woke me, you’re nice, but you follow orders to the letter, if you see I’m sleeping, please don’t wake me, I slept two hours, one hundred and twenty minutes, I could have slept two hundred minutes, think about it, two hundred minutes less …

It was August, like I told you, a lot of things in Tristano’s life happened in August, a hazy, sultry day, haze over the hills and haze on the mountain and haze over the plains, too; and even inside them, a great haze like cotton that blankets everything, is deadening. Tristano waits for her to speak, if she’s come all the way here, she wants something, he stares at this woman he loved so passionately, her eyes sunken now in their sockets, darkly ringed, almost purple, like a mask, her headscarf doesn’t completely hide the hair growing back at her temples, she’s ten years younger than he is but looks twenty years older; still, he thinks, it feels like just yesterday that they were up in the mountains, and he showed her the yellow dog buried in sand just yesterday, and their trip to Spain, and he asks himself again, why, why Spain? Because of my work in Spain, she’d say, my friends in Spain … There’s a darkness in her eyes, like fear, Tristano understands this, he knows them well, those eyes; in spite of everything, she’s assumed a relaxed position on the couch, legs crossed. They’re both quiet. A boy’s voice is coming from the back of the house, he’s speaking to Frau, who knows if Frau wanted a child. All you did was spill your sperm on my belly, I wanted your child, but you spilled your sperm on my belly, you always did that … Marilyn talks this way, they’re her expressions, she’s always talked like this, Tristano recalls, she didn’t value the weight of her words in Italian, sometimes she talked like a sailor, other times, like a Protestant pastor. He’s almost twelve, Marilyn
is saying, he looks like you, did you see how much he looks like you? Not really, Tristano says, but if you say so … I picked him because he looked like you, Marilyn breathes, you’re like two drops of water you’re so alike, there were a lot of children, but I saw him right away … A long silence now, hard to break. Marilyn lights a cigarillo, coughs, sorry if I start to cry, she says. But she’s not about to cry, maybe she’s only thinking aloud. From down the hall comes a tune in German. Frau rarely sings, only on special occasions. Rosamunda, Tristano says, please try to be clear, what are you trying to say?… you picked him, there were a lot of children … Marilyn fidgets with the cigarillo between her lips, then she puts it out in her tea cup. Well, she says, there were so many wretches in wretched Spain, the orphanages were full … some still are … I adopted him, I felt so bad for him … it’s true, he doesn’t look like you at all, but that’s not important, it’s like he was your son, I always thought of him as the son you refused to give me, and now I’m entrusting him to you, please take him, I can’t raise him. Maybe she’s waiting for Tristano to ask her why, but he stays quiet. Then she says, I don’t have much more time. She shifts her headscarf slightly for him to see. I tried what I could, she says, but the results were negative, the doctor was clear, there’s nothing left to try. She’s clawing her own palm but doesn’t realize. On his birth certificate he’s Ignacio, she adds, but I call him Clark, he’s always been Clark to me. She pulls an elegant suede wallet from her purse. Here are his documents, she says and sets them on the table. Marilyn, Tristano says, I only come back periodically, I think
you know that, normally just in the summer, just to keep up the vineyard and olive trees a little, Agostino can’t do it all on his own, and then there’s Frau, this is her house, too, by now, she’s got nowhere else to go; the rest of the year, I live in Kritsa. Is that near Athens? Marilyn asks. It’s a village on Crete, Tristano says. Did you see how he hugged you, she says, he loves you, I’ve always talked about you, he knows all about us, I told him you were his real father. You’re crazy, Tristano says. You’re crazy, Rosamunda, there’s something wrong with you – always has been. He’s speaking softly, almost to himself. Marilyn doesn’t answer, she’s rummaging in her purse, keeps looking, then empties it onto the couch, and finally retrieves an old square photo not much larger than a postage stamp, a young man with a wisp of hair on his forehead, wearing a military jacket, a submachine gun over his shoulder, there’s a mountain farmhouse in the background, a dark patch of woods. She holds it out to Tristano. He was conceived the day I took this picture of you, she murmurs. That photo’s almost twenty years old, he says, you’re not well, Rosamunda, please, stop talking, you don’t need to say anything more. Where I come from, Marilyn says, ignoring him, there’s an old Navajo belief that when you keep thinking about a man, sooner or later, his spirit will give you a child. Frau is at the door: Ignacio wants to see the bay horse, we’re going to the stable, we’ll be back shortly, if the signora would like more tea I’ll bring in the kettle. Marilyn’s putting her things back in her purse. You could be with him in the summer, she says quickly, three months a year isn’t so little, you’d be a good father to him, and
you don’t have children, maybe you’re sterile, I’m giving you the chance to have a son who’s almost yours, is practically yours – no,
is
yours – please, Tristano, raise him, I have no one left in America, my family’s all dead. And what about the rest of the year? Tristano says, excuse me, Rosamunda, but who’s going to look after him here in this house? She gets to her feet, staggers, knocks against the end table, tea splashes from her still-full cup. This Frau, she says … Agostino … I don’t know them, but they must be good people, and during the winter he’ll have school – you could find a good boarding school. Where are you going? Tristano asks. Back to Spain, she says, but the best train for Irun leaves tomorrow morning – the station’s far, and I don’t want to drive at night – I’ll find some little hotel on the coast. She tightens her scarf under her chin, hesitates, then puts her finger to her lips, sending a kiss or telling him to be quiet, he can’t be sure. Is your uncle waiting for you? he asks. We’re thick as thieves now, she says, sometimes life’s like that, even if you don’t want it to be, I never understood why you called him my uncle – he’s your age. Because he’s the American uncle, Tristano answers – the classic Uncle Sam, with stars and stripes on his top hat and his pointing finger, commanding
I want you
– has he got something to do with Ignacio? I’m Ignacio’s mother, Marilyn says, he wasn’t involved in the adoption, but Ignacio loves him and really considers him his uncle … If Ignacio wants to visit him, you shouldn’t stop him, but keep an eye on him: his uncle’s in a dangerous business – so was I. She heads for the door, and Tristano follows. I’ll go with you, Rosamunda, it’s a long way, and
I don’t want you driving through all those hills by yourself … and so it goes … Tristano didn’t know that on this day, on this short trip with Marilyn, they’d find a dying dog that they’d name Vanda like the yellow dog they saw years before in a museum. But this you already know, writer, because I told you the day it popped into my head, I can’t remember when that was … How strange, you’re ahead of Tristano’s life, let’s stop here now, for today.