… Hello? Who is this?… He blew up … What are you saying?… I’m saying your boy blew up, don’t you understand Italian … Who are you?… Never mind, I’m someone who knew him better than you did, but enough with the questions, listen and be quiet, listen now, he had the thing in his bag, and it blew up between his legs, the idiot, not too sharp your boy, he was all talk, plenty of philosophizing, the sun setting on the West, the decline of our civilization, but with some small jobs you need a brain, you need real smarts, one time maybe he did it all right, but that was just a matter of leaving it and getting the hell out of there, not handling anything, and that spot was easy, you just dropped the bag and left … listen, you bastard, you shot at us years ago, but we forgive you, we like you all the same, respect you, in our way, at least you didn’t go on some transcendent quest to India … you listening?… you’re tough, we know that, and you loved your boy, we loved him, too, we assigned him the role of Saint George slaying the dragon, the idiot democrat with communist leanings … listen, do something for me, he must have left a bunch of evidence lying around, a tad disorganized, your boy, all talk, and we put too much trust in him … you listening?… listen up, do me a favor, go to his room and have a good look around, there must be datebooks, notepads, take it all and burn it, and especially if you find anything referring to this bad ass we all called omaccio, with the initials om, o as in Otranto and m as in Milan — got it? — take it all and burn it — you don’t want your good little boy to be exposed, right? — not with that bag that blew him up, balls first … listen now, do what I tell you … click … Youuu youuu youuu … end of call, got it, writer? End of call, for Tristano … Keep that lamp lit on the dresser, the one with the shade with the glass droplets, and lay a handkerchief over the top, I don’t want to be here in the dark tonight, yes, I’ll say it’s night, though it might be morning, but that’s your problem, for me it’s night. Good night.
… and I saw my entire life reduced to that insect, a minuscule, complicated instrument for flight and hibernation, the buzzing rage and fragile beating of wing casings and filthy feet, I tossed it all into the gutter, bits of rubber, smell of burning cork, that’s all that ties me to this world … You know what I’m referring to, it’s that piece Frau tortured me with, it didn’t just come to me, it’s because Tristano started getting letters, one after another, a steady stream. But I don’t feel like talking about that now, I don’t feel like saying anything — but stay here anyway — please — stay here anyway and I’ll have other things to tell you … you have to be patient. Be patient.
… Could you explain a bit more, said Doctor Ziegler, about what you mean when you say you feel as if everything has stopped? Tristano was sprawled in the wicker chair, one arm dangling, the other covering his eyes from the noonday sun: it’s like this afternoon, he said, everything has stopped, don’t you feel it?… a stillness has settled over everything, wiped out space and time, like with some medieval paintings when you see a saint in rapture, under his own mystical spell, an eternal moment … any sound at all now and the glass bell covering the countryside will crack; a rooster might crow, a dog might bark, and the spell will be broken … okay, what I mean is I have these moments when I feel like it feels this afternoon … everything has stopped … and I feel like I’m stopped in the middle of time that’s stopped, as if I’ve been momentarily transported to another world. Even Doctor Ziegler had stopped pacing back and forth on the porch, he’d stopped beside Tristano, hands behind his back, deep in thought. Go on, Herr Tristano, go on … Or maybe I’m feeling other things, Tristano continued, like I’m dreaming though I’m awake, and forgotten memories from long ago start coming back … memories I didn’t even know about … they well up so fast and flash before me like a movie projected on a wall, and it’s my eyes doing the projecting. And what do you feel? Doctor Ziegler whispered, can you tell me? Tristano was quiet. Ziegler waited patiently. If you feel like sighing, the doctor whispered, then sigh … don’t breathe in, sigh, sighing is what our bodies invented for expelling that diffuse, insidious anxiety from the pneuma that the British call spleen … yawning serves the same function, though less extreme, for common boredom, but yours is a different kind of boredom … it’s a weariness of being … so sigh, Herr Tristano. Tristano breathed deeply, and he let out a long, weak sigh, as though releasing evil humors composed of air. Go on, Doctor Ziegler said. What I was referring to, Tristano said, was a very intense sense of nostalgia … too intense … devastating … but it’s not nostalgia exactly, more of a yearning, something frightening, more abstract, because nostalgia implies the object you have nostalgia for, and the truth is I don’t feel nostalgia for the images flashing before my eyes like a film; often, they’re memories that don’t matter, banalities buried in my memory because they’re banal, and so they carry no nostalgia … no, the nostalgia I’m feeling is outside, unrelated to those images, I’m not sure I can explain: it feels like they’re not the cause of this nostalgia but that this nostalgia is a condition, and without it I couldn’t see them … so this isn’t really nostalgia, it’s a vague restlessness that’s also become a fear of sorts, but mixed with the absurd, and inside this sense of the absurd there’s a terror that’s destroying me, as though my body’s convulsing and about to blow apart, you must have seen in the movies how they’ll bring down old city-buildings so another can go up, they collapse in on themselves, crumple, implode … that’s how I feel … my body’s imploding, and I feel terribly cold, my hands and feet are freezing and that’s when I get a splitting migraine: ferocious, unbearable. Doctor Ziegler was sitting on the low wall by the pots of lavender, he’d plucked a flowering sprig and was brushing it over his face, breathing in the smell now and then. Angor mortis, the doctor murmured, that’s what they called it in the ancient world … you’ve described the most complicated symptoms of the migraine aura, Herr Tristano, cluster headaches, probably, and they never just come on their own, when these empresses come calling, they’re preceded by an ambassadorship of the most distinctive creatures, a madhouse of heralds, trumpeters, courtiers, female dancers, shouting street vendors, fire eaters, tightrope walkers … if I were to take a census of all the different kinds of auras preceding headaches, I’d be here until evening, and I’d have to insist, Herr Tristano, that you invite me to stay for dinner … I think tonight we’re having rabbit with rosemary, Tristano answered, it’s a dish that Agostino’s wife prepares that’s just sublime, and maybe Frau will make a chocolate cake. Doctor Ziegler removed the white coat he always wore, even when he saw his patient at home, and he hung it on a hook on the pergola. Chocolate’s not recommended for headaches, he said, but I love it and you can avoid it, rabbit on the other hand will be fine for us both, since it’s white meat.
You came here to gather up a life. But you know what you’re gathering? Words. No — more like air, my friend — words are sounds composed of air. Air. You’re gathering air.