When the kidney patient saw that the others did not seem surprised, he started at the beginning again. All hell had been let loose in the city while they had been absent, as if down a rabbit hole. “The era we were in no longer exists, see? The times have moved on. Hours, days are passing and we are still stuck somewhere — I don’t know how to describe it. Out of time. In reverse or minus time.”
“I don’t understand this,” said a patient on crutches. “Say it straight. What’s this new time you’re talking about?”
“It’s called a new order. It’s what happens when the system changes. The first day is usually called zero hour. Then the numbering starts, one, two, three and so on. When they gave us the anaesthetic it was, let’s say, a certain time on such-and-such a day. We went under, and out of time. But time paid no attention. Time doesn’t wait, it goes on, and we were left behind. They’ve reached day two but we’re not even at zero. We’re minus. Now do you see it?”
“I see bullshit,” said a third patient.
“We have a time deficit,” he continued, ignoring him. “We’ll have to hurry to catch up to zero, and then we’ll see.”
“You’ve got us in a proper muddle,” said the appendix case. “Just tell us who’s won. In fact, I don’t care who it is as long as it’s not the communists.”
“I think it’s them,” said the third.
“No!” said the other patient. “Anyone but them!”
“In this new order you mentioned, are you allowed to kill your wife?” asked one patient on crutches. “Like in Yemen for instance.”
“What can you be thinking about?”
“I told you what I was thinking about.”
“Your wife? I don’t think so. But other people. . perhaps.”
A SEQUENCE OF DAYS AND MONTHS
Of all the expressions involving time, the most common was “the new era”.
On some days it seemed that such a thing really had come to pass. Everything appeared bathed in triumphant, dazzling sunlight, as if fresh from the suds of the washtub. But then another morning would dawn, ashen and exhausted, to confirm the view that time is the last thing in this world that is capable of renewal.
Nevertheless, if this “time” never seemed exactly reborn, there was something youthful about it. It was always a little hectic. There were incessant campaigns, one after another. There was a touch of fever especially in the chatter of the activists, who promised and threatened all kinds of things. Down with soil erosion! Glory to the martyrs! Hang the speculators! Forwards with reforestation!
There was no end of meetings. Hoarders of gold were denounced, along with the Corfu Channel incident, the rhymes of Blind Vehip and Nietzsche’s idea of the Superman. The rejection of the concept of perpetual motion was for some reason connected to the latter. The idea of “the new era” was always closely associated with “reconstruction”. Slogans were painted and songs sung everywhere about the new era, as if she were a bride.
“Work” and “reconstruction” usually meant digging irrigation channels. People got up before dawn, unfurled a banner and marched off in single file to start digging. It turned out later that some of the new ditches didn’t raise the level of water but merely diverted it from other channels, or failed to drain away flood waters and actually increased them. When people were punished for this it gradually became clear that the ditches, besides their ostensible function, had a different purpose that was more important.
“Don’t stare like that. There’s no great mystery here,” said a newly arrested engineer to his two cellmates. They were all in prison for sabotaging ditches. “It’s the same old story. It goes back to the Babylonians. That’s where tyranny began, they say. Either too much water, or too little. Water wanted in one place, but not in another.”
Two sensational items of news, about the start of the Cold War and Tito’s treachery, seemed to have something to do with the ditches. Other questions, including some of a purely mental nature, however remote they might appear, were also related.
Farewell to wandering thoughts, to whatever crossed your mind — ancient decrees, women’s private parts — to any thought either elevated or shameful. It became clearer every day that you had to think about some things a lot and others much less, if at all.
One of the things in the latter class was the famous dinner with the Germans. It was as if it had never happened. In fact anyone mentioning it even in passing was firmly rounded on. “What, you still believe those old tales about the German and the doctor being old school friends and all that blah-blah?” Yet this did not stem the rumours that somewhere, at a secret level you didn’t dare think about, the dinner was still being investigated. Indeed, the recently appointed chorus master at the House of Culture was suspected of being one of two undercover investigators. You would never guess the other in a thousand years, although it was generally known that this person had planted the suspicion that there had never been any dinner at all. He claimed that the gramophone had played to an empty room and a secret meeting in the guise of a dinner had taken place somewhere else, in order to leave no evidence behind.
A SEQUENCE OF SEASONS
It was winter. A few weeks before, the Cold War had started. This was no longer the laughing matter it had been at first (Eskimos etcetera), but nor was it as frightening as it later became (silent and as frigid as death). It was something to be worried about, like the Iron Curtain, invented by an English lord.
In order to demonstrate that it was possible to live with these fears, and even cheerfully, the number of festivals increased. Sports days were the favourite: they were cheap and needed no preparation. You gathered a few dozen time-wasters with itchy feet and all it took was a sign reading “Spring Cross-Country” for them to pelt off like lunatics. Along the road others would join in and then they would stop in some square to catch their breath and cheer, “Long live. . ” and just as often “Death to. . ”, for there were as many things that had to live as to die, and the quicker the better.
Almost as frequent were concerts, races, inaugurations and, in particular, award ceremonies. These latter were often of an unusual nature. For instance in the first week of April there were celebrations for Big Dr Gurameto’s twelve-thousandth operation.
As one can imagine, the little doctor was not forgotten although, as a lesser light, he had barely reached his nine-thousandth. That afternoon and evening old memories revived of the time when these two rivals had been the centre of attention. As in the old days, one was weighed against the other. This was a hard task because everybody knew that their relative status still depended primarily on the international situation.
After its defeat in the war Germany had been divided into a bad part and a good part, leaving Big Dr Gurameto roughly neutral. Italy was not as bad as West Germany, but not as good as East Germany, so he and Little Dr Gurameto were more or less quits. In short, they had emerged from the global upheaval fifty-fifty, as the English say.
The wave of affection for Big Dr Gurameto was all the stronger because of the memory of the rivalry between the two doctors, which had become a symbol of a past now recalled, for some reason, with nostalgia.
“Oh, how touching,” said Marie Turtulli, one of the city’s great ladies. “What sweet memories,” she repeated after a moment. “Just like in la Belle Époque.”
The rosy aureole surrounding the two doctors was best described in a rhyme by Blind Vehip,
The Gurametos, doctors both,
True to the Hippocratic oath.