Tristano Dies

  Ferruccio said if you start looking in the most hidden crevices of society, anywhere you look, you’ll find madness. But all those brave enough to look were mad themselves … Sorry to cut off Tristano’s dream … I didn’t get to finish it myself, there came a point when the dream was interrupted by some guy riding along on a donkey, I think, and then I was really asleep, the drugs must have worn off, and so did the hallucination, Frau told me there hadn’t been a storm, she’s always one for giving out bad news, she’s spent her life giving out bad news, she comes in and says, young sir, the evening storm they predicted last night didn’t come, so it’s hotter than it was before, but your room’s cooler than anywhere else in the house, so you should be content, the nurse is taking two days off, her son has the chickenpox, I was the one who stayed with you last night, and you slept like an angel, not one peep out of you, it’s time for your morphine, but I’m not going to give it to you, it’s poisoning you, I’m not saying you’re not hurting, but your life’s been better than mine, and I never complain, you ever hear me complain? Do you?

  Writer, you know who Tristano was fighting for? Go on … of course you do, you’re just not thinking … one day Tristano realized, just like that, a flash of insight, one of those things … what’s that called in literature?… you know, when reality’s fixed like concrete, and then, as if by an act of god, there’s suddenly a crack, and you can peer into that crack, and you understand … it’s like a tiny miracle, am I making myself clear? Well … never mind … Tristano understood who it was he’d struggled for – who it was he’d fought and killed and risked being killed for … and what all the pain and suffering and ideals were for. It was for pippopippi. That’s what I call it because that’s what Tristano called that thing over there, pippopippi, and it’s not just the gadget, I mean the box, the physical object, the empirical evidence, the visible thing. The pippopippi that Tristano understood was some sort of god, some entirely new, unknown god, whose religion was an absence of religion and so devoid of any substance … and this very lack of substance was the source of its extraordinary power, superior to any ity or ism, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Islamism, Shintoism, Taoism, it could participate in all of these and be no one, revealing, then, a nature that was both protein and absolute, not pure spirit, visible and illusory at once, the projection of itself and all things, dreams and desires, everything and nothing, composed of electrons, of energy, but not of molecules … Curiously, Tristano understood this without watching pippopippi, because when you watch it, it isn’t it; it’s only its hypostasis … Tristano understood the essence of pippopippi one summer night, while standing on the terrace off this room, it was an extremely clear night and he was staring up at the starry sky and thinking about Doctor Ziegler’s theories, and while he was looking for the Big Dipper or Orion, he caught sight of a star that was moving, that wasn’t a star, because it was moving and too sparkly, so it had to be artificial, and he thought he caught the beep beep of this new star out in sidereal space and it seemed to him that he was catching something in code, and he was hearing … don’t think, people, don’t think, remember not to think, thinking’s hard, it’s useless, you started thinking to make a tool from flint and then came the earthenware pot and the shovel and the chamber pot and Zyklon B and the atomic bomb, yep, good job thinking, you must be tired of thinking, just think of me and I’ll think of you, so you’ll have done your thinking, I’m pippopippi and I’ll protect you from thought itself … Tristano looked down over the plain dotted with lights from the houses, then farther, to the light from the city, the smear of yellow reflected in the night sky, and the voice of that artificial star seemed to draw all those lights together, and all those lights together let out a distant roar, like the ground churning from an earthquake, a rumbling, a grumbling all together, a Biblical sound, like something from the Book of Revelations, and this is what they rumbled: pippopippi, we’re thinking your thoughts, thank you, pippopippi … Ah, it was a bad dream, and he started having nightmares, now pippopippi’s voice began to visit him even during REM, what Doctor Ziegler called deep sleep, and its voice was flute-like or falsetto, a confessor’s whisper through the confessional grate: don’t think, remember not to think, let me think for you, Tristano, you fought for freedom and freedom’s come: it’s being liberated from thinking, no longer thinking … real freedom’s when you’re thought.

  Do you know the poem that goes, long shadows over the sea, your smile, my love, and your caresses soon grow resigned, like shadows at night … and then it continues with the horizon, the waves, and all the other clichés? You know that one? Don’t tell me you know it … it doesn’t exist, no one ever wrote it, and it sounds so ordinary, let’s just put it to rest.

  … but he wouldn’t cry, he mustn’t cry, he didn’t like crying. And laughing? It’s nothing to laugh at, the ridens philosopher said, laughing while he spoke … That unfree man was breathless pain that brought on choking rage, and what else could he do but scream madly into the void, cry and cluck in the vineyard, when the midday is silent heat, grinding teeth, and wails of grief, killing even the shrilling of the cicada?… Listen, listen, how did the Abderites diagnose him … you never heard of them? That’s what he called them, those doctors putting on their highfalutin doctor airs … a diagnosis with the stamp of the local health department, complete with case history and description, listen now, this was their diagnosis … man gaunt in appearance, long beard, eyes at times cloudy as though affected by choleric humors that render the cornea yellow, swearing under breath not infrequent, normally won’t respond to even the most basic questions, as though he is elsewhere, so remains silent during medical session, and still quiet, gets up to leave without turning around, and if he does turn around, makes a bizarre gesture more mocking than any form of salutation, refuses medication that has restored the smile to millions and that the state would supply free of charge, even if he is well-to-do, in the first attempt at psychological examination, patient stated they might as well, quote, stop breaking his balls about his childhood because it was happy, you’d never find one happier, he remembers an anticlerical grandfather who was passionate about astronomy, he remembers his initiation at age fifteen with an unidentified female, one of their farmworkers, a grown woman, and it was marvelous, he says the problem’s not up in the mountains but down by the sea, he’s insisted on a prescription for laudanum, that we of course didn’t prescribe, and he responded to our justified medical refusal with guffaws … This, the diagnosis of the Abderites, rendered scientific, my dear Damagetus, with a certifying stamp … today I think you’re my Damagetus, that’s what I’ll call you today, and you must have read the pages concerning this madness, because that’s where Tristano found himself, just like Damagetus writes, he was stuck between laughter and fury, the two extremes that life has to offer us at times, stuck, you might say, between a rock and a hard place, and no fissure between these two extremes, which is where virtus would lie, but Tristano had no virtus, couldn’t find any. He considered the treatment for imbalanced humors in the ancient world, tears or laughter, but neither would do, because his pain was mute, continuous, inarticulate, gnawing at his chest, searching for a voice, for words, like a creature howling deep inside a tunnel … He wasn’t inside a tunnel, the tunnel was him, he’d become a tunnel … And one day in the vineyard he saw a toad … and that toad became a dog … or did I mention this already?… patience, now, you can always rewrite it … a yellow toad that became a yellow dog with its head poking up from the ground where it had been buried, its mouth wide open … you could see down its throat, it was suffocating, the toad went glog glog, and then its voice turned into a dog’s voice, and now it showed its broken, decaying teeth, boo boo boo, it said, I’m you and you’re me, am I making myself clear?… This creature, it was being extremely clear, and Tristano suddenly understood that this was his brother … no … his mirror. And the world began to spin. He was pissing, facing the vineyard, pissing on his shoes, feeling drunk, the way you do when y
ou suddenly understand something and start feeling dizzy, sand on sand, what he’d believed, what he’d given for freedom, a freedom buried up to the neck in sand, thank you, Tristano, you’ve really been a good little watch dog, now bark if you can, and if you can’t, then nip at the wind … Tristano looked that toad in the eye and everything was written there, and he understood now, but it was too late, the bombs had gone off, the dead were dead, the murderers were on holiday and the republican brass band was playing in the piazzas, because it was June second, and the sacred flag was snapping in the wind, and officials stood at attention by the flag, like Tristano stood at attention by the vineyard while pissing on his shoes … He saluted the toad, at your command, Signor Toad, and the toad half-dog half-toad let out a sharp cry like sirens probably cry, on that first sultry day on the plains, a voice from the mountains, a cool voice blowing down from snowy peaks, a faint song, spilling over layers of time, but sharp still, a voice calling, the olive falls, no leaves fall, your beauty won’t ever, you’re like the sea of waves, go beddy-bye, go beddy-bye, you traitor. Tristano wheeled around, staggering, sought out the shadow of his room, threw himself onto the bed, covered his ears, and tried to sleep. Which as you can imagine, writer, wasn’t possible.

  Pancuervo! Pancuervo! he started screaming one day. Frau rushed to his study: he seemed to be dozing in his chair, a branch from the cherry tree was coming through the open window beside him. It was the end of May, the cherries were bright red, he leaped to his feet and screamed out the window, at the fields, Pancuervo! Frau stood very still, petrified, he stepped onto the sunny terrace, raced down the stone steps, and started dancing round the cherry tree, grasping the trunk now and then, tugging, as if he wanted to pull the tree up by the roots, kicking his legs high like a wild man of the forest, screaming, cherry pink and apple blossom white!… Frau had followed behind him and stood there, terrified, while he danced crazily and sang these strange words, and she thought he was having some kind of fit, poor Frau, she was petrified, stood absolutely still, even when he raced off to the fields, still screaming, Pancuervooo! Pancuervooo!… It wasn’t some kind of fit, it was that he understood, he suddenly understood, a flash of lightning come too late, that it all began in Pancuervo many years before, that there, at the end of the line from his boy exploding, sat Pancuervo, that’s where he had to look, Pancuervo … But did Pancuervo really exist?… The train pulled in, then pulled away, but he hadn’t climbed on board, he’d stayed put in a remote little station in Castile, staring off at the rolling hills, barren and strange, hills like white elephants.

  … I was just drowsing a little and something popped into my head … why are you doing all this? I mean, you put up with my rotten moods, and everything else … in my opinion you’re a tricky devil, no offense, and maybe you don’t even realize it … well … you’re awfully patient … so that phrase popped into my head, tricky devil … don’t be offended, I’m a jerk, no, I’m a jailed jerk, blame it on this gangrene that’s eating me alive, I think it’s got my balls by now, do me a favor, get me that menthol talcum powder on the dresser … sorry to be so intimate, but I’ve been telling you such private things, we’re pretty close at this point … I notice you come rushing in at the ring-a-ling of my bell, no matter what time it is, even if it’s just to hear me say something mean to you, like right now … So, I guess Tristano’s life really must matter to you, huh?

  The Abderites insisted that Tristano was raving mad, and I told you he was crazy, too, but the truth is, he just arrived too early … early arrivals always seem crazy, they’re fated to be Cassandras, they might just be little nothing Cassandras, but nothing Creons are still scared of them, that’s why they invented asylums, places to stuff those harmless Cassandras, while the dangerous people are on the outside, and they’re the ones in charge … You know what’s going to happen, writer?… I’ll tell you what Tristano thought after he figured out pippopippi’s true nature, because now it’s all coming to pass … pippopippi, with the solemn goal of obliterating from the mind any thought that might be harmful to him, to pippopippi, will slowly expunge all images carrying even the slightest trace of thought from all his glass boxes, until you’re all completely weaned, and anything with any sign of meaning will have completely disappeared, because the image itself, even the most paltry, wretched, repulsive image – like the ones they dish up to you every night – can lead to a thought, and thoughts are dangerous … and so you all will simply stare at the light, at the trembling electric lines, the crackling dots of light, where you’ll lose your thoughts, and the shipwreck will be sweet for you in that shimmering … a modern nirvana?, maybe the fateful mu, finally attained, that Buddhism speaks of. That’s what awaits you tomorrow, writer, because after all, as Scarlett said, tomorrow is another day, I can see you all there, at night, gathered in your carpeted caves, fixated on your electric fire, all of you together murmuring muuuu … and on the hearth I lay my war cross, that piece of junk, because he shall be the lord your god, and you shall have no other gods before him … not that the electric fires in other countries will be so different from yours, to each according to his due … I say your country because mine’s almost gone … I’m already more there than here, my feet practically swinging in the air, I’m stateless, I don’t belong to anyone, my passport’s useless for the customs I have to get through, and there’s no one who can grab hold of my feet and pull me down from the orange tree, like Tristano did for his Daphne, that I can assure you.

  … as I was saying, letters started arriving. No – voices – they arrived in the form of voices, even if he saw them as written, he could read each and every one of them written in the air, all with different handwriting, because each voice had its own handwriting, the timbre of the writing, each had its own tone, its own inflection, the color of the voice sending the letter. Doctor Ziegler had told him this sort of thing sometimes happened … sounds turned to colors, a type of aura … even the ink varied in color, with all shades of the color spectrum, mostly black, but also white on black sometimes, and yellows, and oranges like a summer sunset … reds … a few blues … a great many greens, all kinds of green, bottle-green, flag-green, Verona-green, and especially blister-green verging on brownish yellow. That green entered his auricle like a hiss, a green carried by the sound of sssssssssss … hissing, snaking letters, the green whistling in his ears turning magically bitter on his tongue, like chewing on a thistle. He called that green bitter-green. And he received numerous letters every day, ten, twenty, more, even at night, he’d finally fall asleep, after a great deal of effort, he might not even dream, he’d turn off like a radio turned off, no reception … actually he fooled himself into thinking he’d shut off all contact, over and out, but no, he might be over but he wasn’t out … the thing would start with a sizzle, I’m not sure how to describe it, like when you twist the radio dial and there’s a crackling, and he’d wake up, hoist his head off the pillows, frozen in the dark room, a letter was arriving, that strange mailman was ringing, the doorbell insisting, sizzling in the dark, as though they’d laid his ear on a red-hot grill, shssss shssss shssss, and they weren’t all written in black or bitter-green ink, maybe some were in blue, even a sky blue, a blur of childhood and lost memories … Dear Ninototo, you scratched Ninototo Ninototo all over the walls of the stable with a piece of coal, and I found that amusing, because no one taught you how to write, so you learned it on your own, but this morning, I found this same writing on the wall to the farm, and along with it, words I never heard you say, and I had to call Amilcare, and it took two buckets of lime to cover all that writing, all those words, my dear boy, you mustn’t write these things, because they shock peasants like Amilcare, on Sundays they go to mass, and the priest will scold them if they say these words, and finding them written here has an impact, these peasants are respectful, they believe in god, and we must let them believe in god, so you may only say these words to Nonno when we’re together, otherwise Nonno won’t take you to the town fair again for the Sa
n Giovanni Festival, like we did last year, is that clear, Ninototo?… His grandfather’s voice was written in blue. His grandfather kept a red shirt hanging in his wardrobe because he’d been in Garibaldi’s army, and there was a saber leaning against the red shirt that Ninototo saw on Saturday afternoons when he was allowed in his grandfather’s room. But even with that red shirt, his grandfather’s voice was sky-blue and Tristano, head hoisted off the pillows, completely awake at this point, frightened, would clearly see that blue voice in the dark. Nonno, he’d say into the darkness, why’d you wake me? – I was just falling asleep, I can barely sleep these days, listen, Nonno, that was so long ago, I don’t remember anymore, so much time has passed, Nonno, I’m as old as you – no, older – please, Nonno, rest in peace and let me rest, too, but what’s gotten into you, sending me a letter just now, I worked so hard to fall asleep, you know, I’m all alone now, I don’t have anyone anymore, that boy I loved like a son brought death with him … so gentle, so quiet, how’s that even possible?… Nonno, what I did back then was wrong, I know why you’re scolding me, but are you trying to tell me what I did as a grownup was wrong, too, is that why you’re writing me, Nonno?