Tristano Dies by Antonio Tabucchi
Copyright © Maria José de Lancastre, 2015
English language translation © Elizabeth Harris, 2015
First Archipelago Books Edition, 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the prior written permission of the publisher.
First published as Tristano Muore by Feltrinelli in 2004.
Tristano Muore copyright © Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore Milano, 2004
Archipelago Books
232 3rd Street #A111
Brooklyn, NY 11215
www.archipelagobooks.org
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tabucchi, Antonio, 1943-2012.
[Tristano muore. English]
Tristano Dies : a life / Antonio Tabucchi; translated from the Italian by Elizabeth Harris. – First Archipelago Books Edition.
pages cm
eISBN 978-0-914671-25-1
I. Harris, Elizabeth (Translator) II. Title.
PQ4880.A24T89513 2015
853’.914–dc23 2015023969
Cover art: Pablo Picasso
The publication of Tristano Dies: A Life was made possible with support from Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
v3.1
Who bears witness for the witness?
PAUL CELAN
It’s hard to contradict the dead.
FERRUCCIO
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
First Page
Author’s Note
Translator’s Note
… Rosamunda Rosamunda on such a lovely evening I truly am believing it’s fairy dust I’m breathing a thousand voices thousand choices thousand hearts are all rejoicing such happiness is ours such joy beneath the stars Rosamunda if you look at me Rosamunda I’ll your sweetheart be … You like that one?… that’s from my time, when Rosamunda looked at Tristano and the more she looked at him the more he liked her … Rosamunda if you look at me Rosamunda I’ll your sweetheart be … Oh Rosamunda all of my love is for you oh Rosa-munda the more I look at you the more I like you Rosa-mu-u-u-undà … Hearts are all rejoicing such happiness is ours – not that it was so happy back then, it was cold in the mountains, frozen, really, outside, inside, I’ll tell you about it, get comfortable, you’ve got a bit ahead of you, but not too long, don’t worry, rough guess, maybe a month or so, you’ll see, I’ll be gone before the end of August, how was the drive?… it’s not easy finding your way around here with all the twists and turns, I told Frau to be really careful giving out directions, I expected you earlier, but I’m sure she did her best to confuse you, not that her Italian isn’t good – it’s better than mine – been here her whole life – but when she doesn’t want to do something she starts turning German, just for spite. You’ll take Daphne’s rooms, tell her I said so.
… You know, all told, life’s more what you don’t remember than what you do … Frau popped her head in, not a ripple now, she told me, where you once swam with a woman, and she shut the door again. I don’t know if that was Sunday’s poem or some decree … Frau gets moralistic when there’s work to be done. But what work? – what’s there left to do in this house, and today’s not exactly Sunday, right?… You’ve got to have the memory of an elephant, but that’s not what we men have, who knows, one day maybe they’ll come up with an electronic memory, a card the size of your fingernail that they’ll slip into your brain to record your entire life … Speaking of elephants, of all the creatures of this world and all their funeral rites, I’ve always admired elephants’ the most, they have this strange way of dying – you know about it? When an elephant feels his time has come he leaves the herd, but not alone, he chooses a companion, and they leave together. They start out across the savannah, often at a trot, depending on how urgent the dying elephant is feeling … and they wander and wander, sometimes kilometers and kilometers, until the dying elephant chooses his place to die, and he goes round and round again, tracing a circle, because he knows it’s time to die, he is carrying death inside him but needs to find it in space, as though he has an appointment, as though he wants to look outside himself, look death in the eye, and tell her, good morning madam death, here I am … of course it’s an imaginary circle, but it helps to geograph death, if you will … and he’s the only one who can enter this circle, for death is a private act, extremely private, so no one else can enter except the one who’s dying … and at this point he tells his companion he can leave, goodbye, thanks so much, and the other returns to the herd … I started reading Pascal when I was a young man, I used to like him, especially his Jansenist beliefs, it was all so black and white, so clear; see, back then, in the mountains, life was black and white, your choices had to be precise, here or there, black or white, but then life teaches you the different shades of gray … But I’ve always liked Pascal’s definition, a sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere, it reminds me of the elephants … And in a way, this has something to do with why I called you here … like I said, you’ll need to be patient because it’s not quite my time yet, but you knew at once to trot along beside me, to accompany the one who’s dying … I’m the only one who knows my circle, I know when the moment will arrive; it’s true that the hour chooses us, but it’s also true that you have to agree on being chosen, it’s something the hour decides but in the end it’s something you decide as well, as if you’d made your choice and were only giving in … For now, let’s trot along together, and while it might seem we’re moving forward, we’re really going backward, because I’m an elephant who’s called you to go backward, but I’m going back to reach my circle that’s ahead. So for now, just listen and write. When the time comes for us to say goodbye, I’ll let you know.
I have something to confess … after I called you I had second thoughts. I’m not sure why, maybe I don’t believe in writing, writing falsifies everything, you writers are falsifiers. Or maybe it’s that a person must carry his life to the grave. I mean a person’s real life, the one he lives inside. What should be left to others is just the life outside, what’s already plain to see, obvious. But I feel like writing my life – telling it – writing it down by proxy – you’re the one doing the writing, though it’s me. Strange, don’t you think?
… I’d like to try and start from the beginning, if a beginning even exists, because … where does the story of a life begin, I mean, how do you decide? You can start with a fact, that’s true, and so I have to pick a fact, a fact concerning this life of mine you’ve come to write. So I’ll pick a fact. But does a fact begin with a fact? Sorry, I’m confused, I’m not sure how to explain … I mean, someone does something, and this thing determines the course of his life, but this thing he’s done, it probably doesn’t happen by a miracle, it’s probably inside him already, and who knows how it started … Maybe a childhood memory, the glimpse of a face, a dream from long ago that you thought you’d forgotten, and here it is one day, this thing that occurs, but its origins … who can say … Tristano talked about Schubert that day in Plaka, it was winter, and in that eerie square people were lined up, bowl in hand, waiting for their koinè soup – you know what that is? – the swill those in charge back then gave to Greek citizens so they wouldn’t starve: nasty, lukewarm water, a few shreds of potato and cabbage floating on top … variations, said Antheos, though Tristano called him Marios because he reminded him of his friend in the outskirts of Turin, the spitting image of his dear friend Marios who hid in a barn with his lover, an extraordinary woman, until thirty-nine, when he said I prefer not to, and he started his own resistance early on, meaning, before the real R
… Frau couldn’t set you up in Daphne’s rooms, there’s nothing left now, just the bare walls. Don’t get mad, I just wanted to see what she’d do when you asked, even if I already knew; she put you in my study, that’s where she puts the guests – all of them – a government minister came once, and Frau asked me right in front of him if she should put him in my study, and his assistant, there by protocol, stared at her, scandalized, outraged, and said: the esteemed minister will return to Rome tonight … but you like my study, I know you do, you came looking for the truth and it’s as if she’s right there in the room beside you, in among the mold and trash … congratulations. You know what happened to the truth? She died and never found a husband.
Who understands matter’s slippery ways? Scientists? You writers? You might understand how things work, but no one knows their secrets. Listen, things have an agreement among themselves that we’re not privy to, a different kind of logic … Gravity doesn’t behave the way we think, and neither do the chemical combinations we studied in school, an oxygen molecule attached to two hydrogen molecules that forms the liquid we call water … you have to know the tactics of the universe, because the universe does have its tactics, but they won’t show up in any lab … Newton’s binomial theorem is wonderful, but there are other depths, other mysteries to mathematics. Am I waxing philosophical? Say something – no – just let me talk, all right? You intellectuals, you’re always philosophizing, always explaining the world to us, everybody’s always wanting to explain the world … A rose is a rose is a rose. Not true. Did you know the rose bush and the pear tree both belong to the family Rosaceae? Study your botany: the pear tree produces pears and the rose bush, roses; do they seem the same to you … So let me philosophize … I have so little left, you see … Please don’t look at my leg – no – pull the sheet up … There’s a big fly, you hear it? – it keeps hitting the mirror, stupid thing wants out, thinks the mirror’s a window. I told you, don’t look at my leg, it’s disgusting, even if I can’t see it, the way they’ve got me lying back against the pillows, the doctor made his ruling that the leg had to be amputated and I told him if he felt so inclined to amputate something, then he could just go ahead and cut off his own balls, but my leg, rotten as it was, was going into the grave to rot alongside the rest of me – if you please; I know it’s disgusting, eaten away with gangrene, up to the groin now, in a little while everything will be eaten away, what’s left of my manhood, if I don’t die first, but there’s not much left to chew on, my sack’s empty, and this too gives me the right to philosophize as much as I see fit, it’s the philosophy of someone who’s all dried up, humorless, like stone … Have you seen what the world’s come to, at least our world?, I’m talking about our part of the world, where we live … all gone to fat, oily, look at them, those I was talking about earlier, the windbags, they’re full of humors circulating under fat … triglycerides, all cholesterol, and here I am instead, practically a mineral, see?… stones … stones don’t say a thing … I’m a talking stone, a rock on a riverbank that just sits there being oh so good watching the water saying, go on, go on now, sister water, keep on flowing, who knows who you think you are, I’m staying put here on my riverbank, still as stone, because I’m a stone, brother stone … Did Frau give you a nice room? Frau’s like that, she loves me but she does things out of spite, she likes being spiteful, it’s what’s left to an old woman, being spiteful to others; if she didn’t love me so much, she’d be the same with me, and maybe she is already, and I just don’t notice – we grew up together, you know – she’s my same age even if she thinks she’s my mother, but women are like that, they always t