I just remembered a little more of Frau’s poem, a very long poem, she recites it bit by bit, and it’s torture … I saw a toad leap from the ditch and carry away my truest love; this smooth, loathsome creature, soft and velvety pale, stole an old locket and brought it back again, corroded with spit, an old locket, a picture inside, her sleeping echo.
… The cicadas have stopped … it must be dark out, maybe you’re tired of writing. But isn’t this why you came? I’m tired of talking, too, but this is why I sent for you; if Frau comes in and disturbs us, tell her we’ll go on for a little yet, just ten more minutes, because I’m not so sure tomorrow I’ll have the strength to go on. And it’s important, you know this better than me, you reconstructed this in your book, you even won a prize, am I right? If I send you away now you might have trouble sleeping tonight, might sleep worse than me, worrying I might lose hold of the thread, and that you’ll be screwed, right? — that you’ll have traveled all this way to listen to me in the stink of carbolic acid, of gangrene, and right at the best part, I’ll lose the thread … don’t worry, I haven’t lost it, because that sagging door is swinging open, and the house is dark, and Tristano can’t see a thing. Out, he thinks, out, you monsters. And there’s one, finally. But he looks familiar — it’s Stefano, who was always so friendly, the school janitor down in the village, who’d made it clear he could be trusted. And now he’s dressed in black, a tassel on his fez — the pig. Stefano looks around, cautious, checking no one’s there to see him, he signals toward the house, out comes a German, then two, three, four … Fire, Tristano tells himself, it’s just four assholes. He presses down on the trigger, impatient, but, no, hold back — any more inside, he’s fucked. And now the others are advancing toward him through the meadow, coming closer, if they see him he’s a dead man — what now — it’s a poker hand, this waiting, throw down your cards, Tristano, fire. And then he hears a woman’s voice, singing, a lovely voice singing a slow melody, strange, strange words, an old lullaby, old like that voice is old — but how can a woman be singing up here in the woods, the dawn after a slaughter? And is that voice even real? Tristano listens, and he remembers what the church fathers wrote, that it’s an internal voice, that it can’t come from outside of him, and he alone hears it, and these are the voices of the angels, the church fathers said, and the only ones who hear them are those that can hear them or want to hear what they long to hear; it’s an old woman’s voice, an enchanting voice singing … I had a pony all dappled gray, that counted clip-clops to the moon, I had a dark-haired boy who went away, oh love and I are out of tune … and he knows it’s a cradle song, and then the meadow, the mountains, the woods, everything begins to sway, as though an unseen hand, a woman’s hand, is rocking a cradle, and there’s only that voice singing, I had a pony without a tail, I tied that pony on a rope, and on that rope it used to pull, like a man in love and full of hope … and everything is swaying in front of him, and now all the Germans are finally out in the open, gathered together, caught, enraptured by this woman’s voice that’s rocking the whole countryside to sleep, it’s beddy-bye, now beddy-bye, you’re nonna’s little baby … so sings the siren’s voice, casting its spell over the Germans, who are almost asleep, lost to oblivion, frozen, side by side, like a family photo, a monument to the dead. Tristano fires his first volley, a second, a third, he’s firing and singing along with that voice that’s saved him, it’s beddy-bye, now beddy-bye, you’re nonna’s little baby, oh … the woods echo with machine-gun fire, clusters of echoes bouncing off the hillsides, from mountain to valley, then fading into the distance, like rolling thunder. Now Tristano is the new commander of the partisan brigade, the mantle of the old commander killed by the Germans has passed to him, though he doesn’t know it yet, he doesn’t know anything, Tristano, as he stands there, in the open, out past the rock he hid behind, stands there, lit by the rising sun, which seems fitting, how heroes appear in the movies. Go on, Tristano, approach your fallen prey, set your foot on a German’s chest and raise your machine gun high in triumph, that’s how we want to remember you, these are your memories, we’re writing your life. And now you can go, writer, it must be late, enough for today, you’ve heard what you wanted to hear.
Life isn’t arranged in alphabetical order like all of you believe. It seems … a little here, a little there, sprinkled as you will, granules, the problem’s gathering them up later, a pile of sand, and which granule supports the next? Sometimes what’s on top, what seems supported by everything else, is really holding everything in place, because that sand pile doesn’t obey the laws of physics, take away a granule you didn’t think held up anything else, and the whole pile collapses, sliding, spreading out, and all you’re left to do is trace in the sand with your finger, making squiggle marks, comings and goings, paths leading nowhere, and you go on and on this way, tracing back and forth, but where did that damn grain of sand get to that held everything in place … and then one day your finger stops all on its own, and can’t go on with its squiggling, and there’s a strange outline in the sand, a drawing that’s meaningless, absurd, and you have the sneaking suspicion the meaning of this whole business was just in the squiggling.