Planus (10 page)

fingers, cuff-links, tie-pins that winked for a second in the palm of a grubby hand, bags and portfolios that were snatched away to be minutely examined, bunches of keys that were pocketed with a smile, victuals that were shared out, and the old man played the part of a patriarch, immobile, sure of his hold over his people, while these horrible old sorcerers stuffed his share into his clothing, or slipped it under his seat, and he did not even condescend to raise his eyelids, murmuring, occasionally making a gesture with his two stumps of forearms, cut off like the mouthpiece of a whistle, and his whole entourage hung on his words, his instructions, his orders, his secret intriguing. In the evening they carried him into a wineshop a few steps away. So that was the old Marquis, the leper, the King of la Salita! And since Pasquale had told me who he was, I had carried off my mother's opera-glasses and stationed myself on a high point of the wall, a death-trap but well concealed, and I had trained the glasses on the monstrous face of this frightening old man, adjusting the focus so as to see him as large and as close as possible, right up close to me, blotting out the universe, until I was giddy with the sight of him.

And one day the leper opened his eyes and saw me, as I saw him, and he raised his head and pointed me out with his two stumps, and he must have said something aloud, for I saw his tongue and his glottis move at the bottom of the hole, and the whole buccal cavity filled with thick mucus in the effort he was making to speak, and he fell backwards, and all the heads of the jackals and hyenas, all the unspeakable heads of his courtiers turned towards me, and I was seized with such terror that I fell back heavily, as one falls to the bottom of a chasm in a dream, from which one wakes heavily, not understanding what has happened.

Oh, that heavy look the old leper threw at me, as heavy as a malediction! All the pain of living. . ..

Is this the Wheel of Things to which Man is tied, sowing Evil, according to the old lama who taught Kim, this wheel whose hub is the brutish eye of suffering, the pain of living, this hypnosis?

'No, II Domatore is not dead,' said Pasquale, 'two or three years after their devils' kitchen was demolished, he made his first reappearance in la Salita, and afterwards he came back regularly every Leap Year, and the proof that it is really him is that, as long as he is here, the King of la Salita never leaves his den in the wineshop, and his followers keep him shut up an,d mount guard over the old leper. It's a battle for power between father and son, and who knows what might happen if those two antichrists met face to face one day? The young Marquis takes advantage of the situation and, all the time he is here, you will see him stationed in front of the statue of the Madonna, in his father's very spot, turning and turning the handle of his hurdy-gurdy. It's a unique instrument, antique old-fashioned, dilapidated, and it gives out the most heart-rending shrill cries and, as the flutes are made of glass and many of them are cracked, it jumps some notes and it makes sounds like moaning or the wind blowing, stifled breath or sobs and sighs, and, at th next turn, a sharp cry escapes, followed by a rattle or a mocking triplet, and the impassive Domatore turns the handle as if nothing were wrong with it, grinding and grinding out the notes, and people come running from every nook and cranny of the quarter an stand round that diabolical musician dressed like an Armenian with a wizard's cloak and a square cap on his head, his tow-coloured hair flowing on his shoulders, and, as the instrument plays ancient melodies, especially minuets, people remember, they fall a prey to nostalgia and melancholy and follow him everywhere, and when the villain disappears, which he does twice every seven years, there, are always local people missing, young men and women who have gone off with him, an,d they are never heard of again, and people wonder if the Devil's musician hasn't led them all straight to Hell? Anyway, you needn't go so far away nowadays, the
rampa
itself ; is a veritable hell! Believe me, it wasn't always so, once upon a time, the suburb of San-Martino was peaceful and almost countrified. But it's all changed now, and since your father started building! even on the Vomero itself, well, it's the end of the world for us,; Naples is damned and la Salita is a sink of iniquity and horrors with? out name since the old prelate and king of thieves came to settle here; the Monsignore has spread his infection just like his son, who has perverted everyone and thrown the district into a frenzy with his lewd dancing dwarfs, whom he hires out for the night. How can I explain to you, little one, you're too young to understand. But let! me tell you that II Domatore presents two little fiends, no taller than a cubit: La Figliuola, a lascivious dancer, and men ruin themselves and damn their souls and commit murder to sleep with her and Barbarossa, a shaggy creature, a vile billy-goat who makes the women lose all sense of shame and procreates monsters on them, twins joined by the skin of their backs, palmipeds, babies with harelips or dogs' heads, or two heads or six fingers and three feet, or with a rudimentary horse's tail; if they're alive, they're put on show at fairgrounds, and, if not, they're preserved in jars. These creatures make the midwives laugh and the matrons despair when they come, into the world with the organs of both sexes, and they present; wrongly, coming out feet first or all misshapen, and often they have* to be chopped up inside the mother's womb, or the womb has to be, slit in two because their heads are too big or the cord is knotted*'

But you can know nothing of all this, it takes place at night as a consequence of insane lusts and senseless couplings, dreams, longings and nightmares. I couldn't tell you whether this pair of lewd little dwarfs are survivors of the disaster at the Virgil paddock or if the Devil made them later, but God preserve you from meeting them, as He preserved me from meeting II Domatore this year, when I heard him grinding his organ on the night of Good Friday, and, if Carminella trembled, as I told you, I got the colic thinking that, in spite of all my wife's prayers, the saints are deaf or else, like me, they were ill until morning, the lazy pigs, they who have nothing else to do. Oh, Jesus Christ, and Mary the Madonna!'

tripod, and the two men started gesticulating and Ricordi set up his camera and the officer consulted his watch, and Ricordi examined the sky and focused his lens, and the sky grew pink and the first ray of sunlight flashed forth like an arrow, and Ricordi gave a signal, the officer drew his sword and the drums began to beat hollowly and roll louder and louder, and an order rang out and a sharp salvo^ followed by a single shot, and the wretched little soldier crumpled, his tongue lolling out, half-garrotted by his bonds; and the firing-^ squad filed past the corpse of the executed criminal, then the judges and the clerk of the court, then my father and myself and, behind; us, some civilians, probably the family, for an old woman was; shrieking and shuddering; then a fatigue party came forward to remove the body, and there was the priest, who had given his bless? ing to the whole proceedings, taken confession from the dead man and now accompanied him to the little cemetery of the Fort, a plot: bristling with the crosses of men who had died of cholera. And' everything was a quarter of an hour behind the official schedule, on account of the photographer.

Is this the Wheel of Things, to which Man is tied, sowing Evil* according to the old lama who taught Kim, this wheel that supports the chariot of State, of Siva and of Kali, the God of Absurdity and the Goddess of Destruction, this united couple who bring food for offspring?

But the Wheel turns and this universal sowing is a mockery. . . «

I am dizzy.

Max Jacob, who cast my horoscope, said to me one day: 'Cendrars, your stomach will save you !'

And, indeed, I was ravenous.

I was sitting in front of a bar in Pozzuoli, behind the promontory of the Posilippo, under a vine-trellis. I drank. I ate. I smoked. In the outer harbour there was a boat with a foreign rig, moored to a buoy. The sea was deserted, the shingle-rolling, earth-encircling, limitless sea. I ate, I smoked, I drank. The sea, seen through the vine-leaves, reminded me of a poem by Gerard de Nerval. I kept in the shade. With my Isfahan cane, I absent-mindedly traced patterns in the sand, semicircles, quarter-circles, the lips of a vagina, an erect shaft, and then I dug a hole with my wand, a little funnel-shaped hollow that collapsed when I kicked it. There was that sound like knucklebones all along the beach when the waves sucked back. Time passed. I ate, I smoked, I drank and gazed out at the open sea. Out there, the sea was empty, making a dark ridge. I drank. The wine of Pozzuoli is good. I drank again and started to draw new patterns in the sand, effaced them at once, and drank some more of the thick, black wine like printers' ink. What was the use of writing, everything was printed within me, and perhaps pure poetry was letting oneself become impregnated with the signature of things, and deciphering it within oneself. The sea and poetry. Poetry and death. Ach, the hell with it! I smoked. I drank.

'Hey, you there!'

The sun was sinking.

Someone challenged me.

'Hey, that man there ! Yes, you. . . .'

I did not move.

For some time already I had been keeping an eye on the manoeuvrings of a man who was standing in the stern of a dinghy that had been lowered from the boat riding heavily in the outer harbour. The mainmast was tilted well forward, the mainsail braced on a sprit which projected a long way behind the stern, pointed so as to facilitate hauling out with a tow-line in those narrow channels where smugglers nearly always load; I would have guessed it to be a boat from the Archipelago, and the man rowing towards me looked like a Greek sailor, with his long, flowing, floss-silk cap.

'Hey, you there!' he shouted.

But I did not answer.

Then he ran aground, jumped into the water, hauled up his dinghy, threw the anchor on to the sand and came running up to

me.

I still did not answer him, but pushed the
fiasco
of wine towards him. He swallowed a long draught without touching the bottle with his lips, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand, put the flask back on the table, pushing it towards me, swatted a fly, grinned and said : 'It's good, but not as good as our Samos wine. I am Papadakis from Samos, everyone knows me, come aboard. ..

He was a fat man, short, hairy, with curly moustachios, raven- black hair, a ring in his left ear, a proud eye, scowling eyebrows, dazzling teeth, a dimple in his chin, hands folded into fists (hands that were broader than they were long), small feet, broad toes, plump ankles, drill trousers rolled up to mid-thigh, the calves, knees and thighs seeming to form a solid mass without joints, his full-breasted torso encased in a kind of woollen wadding, brown and seamless like felt, and in that lingua franca composed of Turkish, Arabic, Spanish, Italian idioms and gallicisms which is spoken by all the sailors on the Levant, he volubly explained the situation, with ringing Greek declensions at the end of every sentence as if he were reciting a poem.

I was able to understand that he had come from Samos with a cargo of wine, and it had taken him two months, crawling from cape to cape because there was no wind, and that his crew had left him, either because they drank too much or because he put them ashore, three days ago; that he was once more becalmed, but was trying to make up another crew so that he could take advantage of the breeze that was getting up and set sail without further loss of time; he had taken on a Bulgarian, which made two with the ship's boy, his nephew, but he must have at least one more man, and it was difficult to find anybody in this deserted spot, but, at a pinch, he could make do with me.

'Embark with us, man, and you'll see,' he said.

I got up without saying anything and walked towards the longboat with my cane in my hand. The owner of the boat called the owner of the bar and settled my bill; they carried on a little confabulation and then the Greek started running after me and laughing.

I had already pushed the dinghy into the water and held it by the bow while Papadakis settled himself cheerfully on the thwart, holding on his knees some cob loaves which the
patron
had let him have.

I pushed the boat out, jumped in and seized the oar.

'Is this all your belongings?' the Greek asked, pointing to my Isfahan cane, which I was still holding in my hand, although it was getting in the way, 'haven't you got a bag?'

'Papadakis,' I said, 'get this into your head right now — I wouldn't exchange my cane for your ship and all its cargo.'

The skipper stared at me and winked.

D

A

PA P

Marina

S A

M

I

I spent two weeks on board ship. Under sail, with the sprit and the topsail hoisted, the inner and outer jibs and the storm-jib set,! and her brigantine mizzen spread, Papadakis's boat could go at a, good speed, and she was easy to handle.

I settled myself on the watch-bench. The ship was tugging at her moorings. The sun was gently sliding down into the rippling water, The sky was limpid, the sea deserted. Far out, near the horizon, the* water was indigo.

As a cargo of wine is not loaded in bulk, a quarter or a third was . put on as deck cargo, held by chains. The wine of Samos is shipped; in barrels, half- and quarter-barrels to facilitate transport and load- i ing, and the small casks stowed on deck confirmed me in my belief * that I was aboard a smuggler, but Papadakis's mark, or the same inscription as the one on the poop, was stamped on every cask, and this astounded me. What an idea, introducing Greek wine into Italy! But perhaps the cargo was destined for France and we were goings to smuggle it ashore in some creek near Marseille, which would be*, delightful for me.

As a general practice, wine-shippers allot an adequate supply to', the crew, so that the men are not tempted to quench their thirst by? siphoning off a little from each barrel of the deck cargo. Nevertheless, the temptation is strong and the means of getting drunk so; easily to hand that there is always, at the beginning of each trip^ a certain amount of disorder and lack of discipline among the sailors! but the skipper lets things ride until the men are sated with wine; after that, they drink no more than they can hold, and, in the end^f stop drinking altogether. Thus, the Bulgar, who had been on board since the previous evening and had been whooping with joy, was now howling like a sick child, laid out on his back, stiff and motionless, and suddenly he vomited, turning his greenish face towards me, It was disgusting.