History (100 page)

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first meeting in the Marrocco home. The two didn't greet each other, in any event, or show signs of recognition; nor could Davide, for his part, have indulged in greetings or such formalities, now overwhelmed by his verbal fl like certain sick people forgotten in wards.

Every now and then, true, his eyes roamed around the table, question ing and bewildered, lingeri a moment on this face or that, as if begging for a reply; but the only interlocutor (if such he could be called ) who remained still at his disposal was Clemente Black Hand. He, latterly, had not stopped looking at Davide, a bit obliquely, only from the lower part of his eye, always with the same irked expression of boredom and sarcasm. He seemed to have condemned, in advance, as stale and nonsensical chatter, everything the other might say.

At the moment of telling his joke, Davide had made another attempt to stand on his feet, but he had soon slumped down again, overwhelmed by the exhaustion that almost made him faint, and at the same time drove him to speak, as in unhealthy states of insomnia. His voice was becoming more and more dim and hoarse; while he kept feeling the frequent but discontinuous sensation that he was shouting, as if at a rally. This exagger ated and involuntary volume of his voice now embarrassed him, also be cause the tortuous thread he was trying to unravel, as he displayed it now, was bleeding in his hands like a bared nerve :

"1,"
he muttered, sweating, "am a murderer! In war, some can kill

heedlessly, like going hunting. But not me. Every time, I was murderi One day, I murdered a German : a hateful, repulsive being! And while he was dying, I gave myself the pleasure of fi him off kicking him, stamping on his face with my boots. Then, in that very act, I was overcome with the thought:
Here I have become just like him: an SS slaughtering another SS
.
. . And I went on stamping on him . . .
"

From the other side of the table, Black Hand's lungs emitted their usual hollow notes, which Davide perceived as mocking laughter. And he suddenly felt singled out in that room, an object of overpoweri inde cency. Like someone in the confessional who suddenly realizes he has raised his voice so that his secrets are echoing through the vaults and along the naves, crammed with people. It seemed to him, in fact, in his familiar delusion, that he had shouted these last sentences in an excessively loud voice: "All of us," he then blurted desperately, in his own defense or salvation, "carry an SS hidden inside us! And a bourgeois! and a capitalist! and maybe even a Monsignor! and . . . and . . . a Generalissimo all decked with fringe and medals like Mardi Gras! All of us! bourgeois and proletarians and . . . anarchists and communists! All of us . . . Th why our struggle is always a hamstrung action . . . a misunderstanding

. . . an alibi . . . false revolutions, to evade the true revolution, and to

498 H I S T O R Y . . . . . . 1 9 4 7

preserve the reactionary inside us !
Lead us not into temptation
means :

help us eliminate the Fascist inside us!"

He was addressing Black Hand, as if expecting from him a plenary indulgence or, at least, a partial absolution . But Clemente Black Hand had drawn back again to cough into his lapel, into the little overcoat of his poverty, with the attitude of a man deliberately turning his back on the talk. So, at least, it seemed to Davide. Who, all the same, staring at him, was sure he could read within him, as if through an x-ray, the following tacit reply: "Keep your moral maxims for yourself. If you have a General issimo inside you, that's your business. Who gives a damn? For myself, as the naked eye can see, I carry nothing inside me but a simple infantry private of the ex-ARMIR, with a permanent discharge, unemployed, muti lated, with rotten lungs." This was enough to make Davide blush, like a schoolboy being punished. Inopportunely, at this point, the old man with the medal raised one eye towards him from the cards:

"After all is said and done," he asked, "are you a Christian?"

". . . me?! . . . What christ are you talking about? The Galilean, who was crucifi . . ."

" . . . died and was buried . . ." the old man with the medal recited, in a tone of good-humored teasing. His neighbors laughed, also good humoredly.

"There's no a rgument about him : he was a real chri if he's the one you're talking about," Davide declared, confused and blushing. He used the
voi
form, out of respect, addressing the old man with the medal. And meanwhile he moved closer to the man's face (since the player still kept his eye on his cards ) in the eager concern of a kid explaining his motives to an adult: "We have to get this clear," he insisted, fi with anxiety,
"
that one
mustn't be confused with the ghost of the same name that History puts on altars, and on platforms, and thrones . . . and . . . and pastes on signs advertising its usual frauds . . . slaughterhouses . . . and thieves' stands . . . always using him to conceal its one real idol : the puppet of Power! Christ isn't a ghost; he is the only real substance in movement . . . And that christ, historically speaking, was a real Christ: that is, a man ( ANARCHIST! ) who never denied total consciousness, for any reason! Obviously, then, there can be no argument: anybody who looked at him, saw heaven! And anybody who heard him, heard God! GOD isn't a word! it's THE word!!" More people were coming into the tavern It was that hour, towards sunset, when many inhabitants of the neighborhood, return from the movies or an excursion, dropped by
a
moment before going home, where their wives had preceded them, mean while, to fi supper. I remember with particular exactness the song broad cast by the radio (it was one, in fact, I already had in my head, perhaps

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beca it had come out just after the war, or at least in time to be sung by Ninnuzzu; it was from him, I think, that I learned it) . I still know a few lines by heart . . .

Boogie woogie, how they dance, They could make a buff prance

Seven whiskies here, and twenty sheriff there And okay-okay everywhere . . .

Davide's hands and knees were seen to sway for a moment, to an absent rhythm, futile and meaningless, accompanying the tune of the song. However, he undoubtedly perceived its notes unaware, through a sublimi nal hearing, all intent, as he was, on proceeding with labored breath along the spinning track of his obstacle race : "the term
christ,"
he informed those present, forcing his voice : "is not a personal name or surname: it's a common title, to designate the man who transmits to others the word of God, or the total consciousness which means exactly the same thing.
That
Christ was named, according to the documents, Jesus of Nazareth, but on other occasions, in various times, the christ has presented himself under different names, male, or female-he pays no attention to gender-and with light skin or dark-he puts on whatever color comes along-and in the east and the west and in all climes-and he has spoken in all the languages of Babel-always repeating the same word ! In fact, that is how you recognize christ: from the word! which is always one and the same:
that one!
And he has said it and repeated it and said it again, orally and in writing, and from the mountaintop and in the jails and . . . and from insane asylums . . . and
departut,
everywhere . . . Christ pays no atten tion to places, or to the historic hour, or to the techniques of slaughter

. . . That's right. Since the scandal was necessary, he had himself slaughtered obscenely, with every available means-when it's a question of slaughtering christs, nobody economizes . . . But the supreme off against him was the parody of mourning! Generations of
Christians
and of
revolutionaries-all
accomplices!-have gone on whining over his body and meanwhile, they took his word and turned it into shit!"

Davide's cru problem in this late phase of his race was physical strain; his breath almost failed him. But he still exerted himself all along his course, as if between the exhausting track and his broken and drugged limbs-fl there on a seat-there was only an unreal relationship : "And so, from now on," he stumbled on, clearing his throat at every phrase, "if he comes back, he won't say words any more, because anyway, the ones he had to say, he's already shouted to the four winds. \Vh he appeared in Judaea, the people didn't believe he was the true speaking God, because he

500 H I S T O R Y
. .
. . . .
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presented himself as a poor man, not in the uniform of authority. But if he comes back, he'll present himself even more miserably, in the person of a leper, a poor misshapen beggar-\\"oman, a deaf-mute, an idiot child. He is hidden inside an old whore-fi
nd
mel-and you, after using the old whore for a screw, leave her there, and when you're out in the open air, you seek in the sky :
'ah, Christ, for two thousand years we've been awaiting your return!' 'I,'
he answers from his refuges,
'have NEVER left you. You're the ones who lynch me every day, or worse still, walk by without seeing me, as if I were the shadow of a corpse rotted underground. Every day I pass close to you a thousand times, I multiply myself in every one of you, my signs fi every inch of the universe, and you don't recognize them, you claim to be waiting for who knows what other vulgar signs
. . .' They tell of a christ (it doesn't matter which; he was a christ) who once was walking along a country road and he was hungry so he wen t to pick a fi from a tree. But since it wasn't the right season, the tree had no fruit: only inedible leaves . . . And then Christ cursed it, damning it to perpetual sterility . . . The meaning is clear: for anyone who recognizes Christ as he passes, the season is always right. And he who doesn't recognize him denies him his own fruit with the excuse of the time and the season, and is cursed. There's no arguing. There's no excuse to postpone, because Christ isn't going to descend from the stars, or from a past and futme God knows where; he's here, now, inside us. This is no news; it's well known, shouted to the four winds : that there's a Christ inside each one of us. So what's needed then, for the total Revolution? Nothing. An elementary move ment, two seconds, like laughing or stretching when you fi wake up. It would be enough to recognize the Christ in everybody : me, you, the others

. . . Yes, the news is so elementary it's sickening to have to repeat it. It would be enough . . . And then the fruit of the revolution would be born, beautiful and spontaneous, on all the trees, we would all exchange it happily; no more hunger exists then, no wealth, or power, or diff

. . . All past History is discovered for what it was : a grotesque Grand Guignol, lunatic, a store of fi in which we've stubbornly infected our selves for centuries, rummaging with dirty fi . . . And then the folly of certain questions would be obvious :
are you a revolutionary do you believe in God?
like asking somebody if he was born!! Are you a revolutionary . . . do you believe in God? are you a revolutionary . . . do you believe . . .
"

In a sing-song tone, snickering, Davide went on repeating these two questions, several times, until they were a kind of meaningless tongue twister. But by now his speech had necessarily become a monologue, be cause his voice had sunk so low that not even his nearest neighbors, had they wanted to, could have made out his words. He had taken on a sullen

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look, as if threatening or accusing someone or other, and he stared into his glass, just like Clemente, without drinking a drop, as if overcome with disgust: "I must still make a rectifi he was mumbling, "about that German, at that crossroads at the Castelli : I, who was murdering him, had become an SS, all right. But he, who was dying, was no longer an SS or a soldier of any army! He had a look in his eyes :
where am I? what are they doing to me? why?;
his eyes were very pale and stupid, as if they were just opening, as if he were being born, not dying. Me, an SS : but he had become a baby again . . .
"

"Let's say : a brat," at this point, whispering into his ear like a little mocking lash, the Superego made himself heard once more. Davide laughed :

"That's right! Better: a brat," he corrected, obediently. And this, as I recall, was the last point scored in their match by the Superego, who at that very moment, with a kind of victorious spin, left him, vanishing defi tively, abandoning him to his disastrous weakness.

"He was a baby!" Davide shouted after him. His face, now, had a spoiled-child's expression, a look that came over him at times when he was absolutely exhausted. But he exerted himself still, with incredible obsti nacy, in the fi dash . . . even if the prize was now revealed to him, irremediably, for what it might be : nothing but a little paper fl at most, very worn, and ripped as well . . . "A man who kills somebody else, al ways kills a baby!" he insisted, breathless, wringing his hands. "And now," fi with bewilderment, he confi to his own glass, "I see him again, that one, fl there in the pile. In the pile!" he repeated, frightened, "in the same heap with the
veci,
and the
putela
. . . Together, not Germans or Italians, not pagans or Jews, not bourgeois or proletariat : all the same, all naked christs, with no diff . . . and no guilt, as they were born