The air along the shoreline was riven with a metallic shiver.
From the shaded streets formed by the high walls of the warehouses I passed out into the terrible clarity of the sun; I was jostled on all sides; the bright flags of the ships rippled in the wind; further down, between a black wall and the red side of a transatlantic vessel, men were incessantly beating the boat with hammers: this huge demonstration of power and wealth, piles of merchandise and animals kicking as they hung in the air, struck at me with anguish.
And I came to the inevitable conclusion:
‘It’s useless, I’ll have to kill myself.’
I’d had a vague presentiment of this.
Already I had been seduced by the theatrical glamour that accompanied the idea of mourning at a suicide’s wake.
I envied the corpses around whose coffins wept beautiful women, and my masculinity was painfully intimidated when I saw them bent over at the side of a coffin.
I would have liked to have occupied a dead man’s sumptuous bed; like dead men I would have liked to be adorned with flowers and made beautiful by the gentle light of candles, to receive into my eyes and onto my forehead the tears poured out by young ladies in mourning.
This was not the first time I had had this thought, but at this moment I was touched by its certainty.
‘I do not have to die… but I must kill myself,’ and before I could react, the singular nature of this absurd idea took hungry possession of my will.
‘I do not have to die, no… I cannot die… but I have to kill myself.’
Where did this illogical certainty come from, which has since that moment guided my whole life?
My mind freed itself of secondary sensations; I was only a heartbeat and a clear-sighted eye open to interior serenity.
‘I do not have to die, but I have to kill myself.’
I went up to a zinc warehouse. Nearby a group of young men was unloading bags from a truck, and the ground was covered by a yellow carpet of corn.
I thought:
‘It must be here,’ and realised, as I took the revolver from my pocket, ‘not through the temples, because it’ll make me ugly, but in the heart.’
Some unshakeable certainty guided my arm.
I asked myself:
‘Where is my heart?’
The dull blows coming from inside me revealed its position.
I looked at the cylinder. I had loaded five bullets. Then I pressed the barrel of the revolver against my jacket.
A sudden lightness made my knees tremble and I leant against the wall of the warehouse.
My eyes fixed on the yellow carpet of corn, and I pulled the trigger, slowly, thinking:
‘I don’t have to die,’ and the hammer fell… But in that very brief instant that separated the blow of the hammer from the action of the fulminant, I felt my spirit spreading out into a shadowy space.
I fell to the ground.
When I woke up in bed in my room, a ray of sunlight was tracing the outline of the curtains onto the white wall.
Sitting on the edge of the bed was my mother.
She bent her head over me. Her eyelashes were wet, and her sucked-in cheeks seemed dug out of a wrinkled block of tormented marble.
Her voice trembled:
‘Why did you do it?… oh, why didn’t you tell me everything? Why did you do it, Silvio?’
I looked at her. I met a face that was a terrible image of pity and remorse.
‘Why didn’t you come?… I wouldn’t have said anything. It’s fate, Silvio. What would have become of me if the revolver had fired properly? You’d be here now, with your poor little cold face… Oh, Silvio, Silvio!’ And a heavy tear flowed down the red bag under her eye.
I felt night falling in my spirit and I leant my head on her lap, as I thought I would wake up in a police celclass="underline" in the fog of my memory I saw a circle of uniformed men waving their arms above me.
Chapter 4. Judas Iscariot
Monti was an active and a noble man, as excitable as a swashbuckling soldier of fortune, skinny as an impoverished gentleman. His penetrating gaze did not invalidate the ironic smile that curved his thin lips, lips that had the silky threads of his black moustache to overshadow them. When he got angry his cheeks would redden and his lower lip would tremble down as far as his sunken chin.
The office and paper store of his business consisted of three rooms that he rented from a Jewish furrier, and was separated from the Hebrew’s stinking storeroom by a corridor that was always filled with dirty red-headed kids.
The first room was something along the lines of an office-cum-fine paper display room. Its windows let onto Rivadavia Street and the passers-by could see, neatly lined up in a pine display case, reams of salmon-coloured paper, green paper, blue and red paper, rolls of impermeable stiff marbled paper, blocks of silk paper and what was called ‘butter’ paper, cubes of labels with multi-coloured flowers on them, sheaves of rough-surfaced paper with flowers and a watermark in the form of a pale vase.
On the off-blue wall a print of the Gulf of Naples showed the lacquered blue sea and the dark coast sown with little white squares: the houses.
In this room, when he was in a good mood, Monti would sing in his clear and tuneful voice.
I liked hearing him. He sang with feeling; it was clear that by singing he called up the spaces and daydreams of his homeland.
When Monti hired me on commission, giving me a set of samples of paper classified by quality and price, he said:
‘Okay, time to sell. Each kilo of paper gets you three centavos commission.’
Hard beginnings!
I remember that for a whole week I spent six hours per day walking pointlessly. It was unreal. I didn’t sell a single kilo of paper after walking forty-five leagues. In desperation I went into greengrocers’ shops, into stores and warehouses, I went round the markets, I stood outside butchers and pharmacies, but all in vain.
Sometimes people, extremely politely, would send me to the devil, others would tell me to come back next week, others would claim that ‘I’ve already got a salesman who’s been serving me for a while’, others would refuse to see me, some would say that my merchandise was far too expensive, a few would say that it wasn’t of a good enough quality, and some strange people that the quality was too high.
At midday, when I got back to Monti’s office, I would collapse onto a column made of stacked reams and say nothing, dulled by fatigue and disappointment.
Mario, another salesman, a sixteen-year-old slacker, tall as a poplar, all arms and legs, laughed at my useless travails.
How shameless Mario was! He looked like a telegraph pole with a tiny head on top, and a fabulous forest of curly hair on top of the head. He walked with huge strides, with a red leather briefcase under one arm. When he got to the office he would throw the briefcase into a corner and take off his hat, a round derby that was so greasy you could use it to lubricate the axle of a cart. He was a devil for selling and was always happy.
Leafing through a dirty notebook he would read out the long list of orders he had made, and opening his whale’s mouth he would laugh until you could see the red back of his throat and two rows of protruding teeth.