Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories (8 page)

And the commission began its appointed task. Every evening the camp radio transmitted General Fedina’s report to HQ. ‘So many books examined. So many seized as suspect. So many declared suitable for officers and soldiers.’ Only rarely were these cold figures accompanied by something out of the ordinary: a request for a pair of glasses to correct short-sightedness for an officer who had broken his, the news that a mule had eaten a rare manuscript edition of Cicero left unattended.

But developments of far greater import were under way, about which the camp radio transmitted no news at all. Rather than thinning out, the forest of books seemed to grow ever more tangled and insidious. The officers would have lost their way had it not been for the help of Signor Crispino. Lieutenant Abrogati, for example, would jump to his feet and throw the book he was reading down on the table: ‘But this is outrageous! A book about the Punic Wars that speaks well of the Carthaginians and criticizes the Romans! This must be reported at once!’ (It should be said here that, rightly or wrongly, the Pandurians considered themselves descendants of the Romans.) Moving silently in soft slippers, the old librarian came up to him. ‘That’s nothing,’ he would say, ‘read what it says here, about the Romans again, you can put this in your report too, and this and this,’ and he presented him with a pile of books. The lieutenant leafed nervously through them, then, getting interested, he began to read, to take notes. And he would scratch his head and mutter: ‘For heaven’s sake! The things you learn! Who would ever have thought!’ Signor Crispino went over to Lieutenant Lucchetti who was closing a tome in rage, declaring: ‘Nice stuff this is! These people have the audacity to entertain doubts as to the purity of the ideals that inspired the Crusades! Yessir, the Crusades!’ And Signor Crispino said with a smile: ‘Oh, but look, if you have to make a report on that subject, may I suggest a few other books that will offer more details,’ and he pulled down half a shelf-full. Lieutenant Lucchetti leaned forward and got stuck in, and for a week you could hear him flicking through the pages and muttering: ‘These Crusades though, very nice I must say!’

In the commission’s evening report, the number of books examined got bigger and bigger, but they no longer provided figures relative to positive and negative verdicts. General Fedina’s rubber stamps lay idle. If, trying to check up on the work of one of the lieutenants, he asked, ‘But why did you pass this novel? The soldiers come off better than the officers! This author has no respect for hierarchy!’, the lieutenant would answer by quoting other authors and getting all muddled up in matters historical, philosophical and economic. This led to open discussions that went on for hours and hours. Moving silently in his slippers, almost invisible in his grey shirt, Signor Crispino would always join in at the right moment, offering some book which he felt contained interesting information on the subject under consideration, and which always had the effect of radically undermining General Fedina’s convictions.

Meanwhile the soldiers didn’t have much to do and were getting bored. One of them, Barabasso, the best educated, asked the officers for a book to read. At first they wanted to give him one of the few that had already been declared fit for the troops; but remembering the thousands of volumes still to be examined, the general was loth to think of Private Barabasso’s reading hours being lost to the cause of duty; and he gave him a book yet to be examined, a novel that looked easy enough, suggested by Signor Crispino. Having read the book, Barabasso was to report to the general. Other soldiers likewise requested and were granted the same duty. Private Tommasone read aloud to a fellow soldier who couldn’t read, and the man would give him his opinions. During open discussions, the soldiers began to take part along with the officers.

Not much is known about the progress of the commission’s work: what happened in the library through the long winter weeks was not reported. All we know is that General Fedina’s radio reports to General Staff headquarters became ever more infrequent, until finally they stopped altogether. The Chief of Staff was alarmed; he transmitted the order to wind up the enquiry as quickly as possible and present a full and detailed report.

In the library, the order found the minds of Fedina and his men prey to conflicting sentiments: on the one hand they were constandy discovering new interests to satisfy and were enjoying their reading and studies more than they would ever have imagined; on the other hand they couldn’t wait to be back in the world again, to take up life again, a world and a life that seemed so much more complex now, as though renewed before their very eyes; and on yet another hand, the fact that the day was fast approaching when they would have to leave the library filled them with apprehension, for they would have to give an account of their mission, and with all the ideas that were bubbling up in their heads they had no idea how to get out of what had become a very tight corner indeed.

In the evening they would look out of the windows at the first buds on the branches glowing in the sunset, at the lights going on in the town, while one of them read some poetry out loud. Fedina wasn’t with them: he had given the order that he was to be left alone at his desk to draft the final report. But every now and then the bell would ring and the others would hear him calling: ‘Crispino! Crispino!’ He couldn’t get anywhere without the help of the old librarian, and they ended up sitting at the same desk writing the report together.

One bright morning the commission finally left the library and went to report to the Chief of Staff; and Fedina illustrated the results of the enquiry before an assembly of the General Staff. His speech was a kind of compendium of human history from its origins down to the present day, a compendium in which all those ideas considered beyond discussion by the right-minded folk of Panduria were attacked, in which the ruling classes were declared responsible for the nation’s misfortunes, and the people exalted as the heroic victims of mistaken policies and unnecessary wars. It was a somewhat confused presentation including, as can happen with those who have only recently embraced new ideas, declarations that were often simplistic and contradictory. But as to the overall meaning there could be no doubt. The assembly of generals was stunned, their eyes opened wide, then they found their voices and began to shout. General Fedina was not even allowed to finish. There was talk of a court-martial, of his being reduced to the ranks. Then, afraid there might be a more serious scandal, the general and the four lieutenants were each pensioned off for health reasons, as a result of ‘a serious nervous breakdown suffered in the course of duty’. Dressed in civilian clothes, with heavy coats and thick sweaters so as not to freeze, they were often to be seen going into the old library where Signor Crispino would be waiting for them with his books.

Adalberto, the security man, had a hen. He was one of a team of security men in a big factory; and he kept this hen in a little courtyard there; the chief of security had given him permission. He would have liked, with time, to have set up a whole hencoop for himself; and he had begun by buying this one hen which they had promised him was a good layer and a quiet creature who would never dare upset the severe industrial atmosphere with any loud clucking. As it turned out he could hardly complain; the hen laid at least one egg a day, and apart from some subdued gurgling might have been entirely mute. To tell the truth the chief of security had only given Adalberto permission to keep the bird in a coop, but since the courtyard, only recently annexed to the purposes of industry, abounded not only in rusty screws but likewise in worms, it had been tacitly accepted that the hen could peck around at will. So it went back and forth reserved and discreet among the workshops, was well known to the men, and, for its freedom and irresponsibility, envied.

One day the old turner, Pietro, discovered that the equally old Tommaso, in Quality Control, was coming to the factory with his pockets full of maize. Having never forgotten his peasant origins, Tommaso had immediately appreciated the productive capacity of the fowl and linking this appreciation to his desire for revenge for injustices suffered, had embarked upon a stealthy campaign to woo the security man’s hen and encourage her to lay her eggs in a box of scrap on the floor by his workbench.

Every time he realized his friend was up to some secret trick, Pietro was annoyed, because it always came as such a surprise to him, and he at once tried to go one better. Ever since they had become prospective relatives (his son had got it into his head to marry Tommaso’s daughter), they were always fighting. So he too got hold of some maize, prepared a box using metal scraps from his lathe and in the brief respite the machines he ran allowed him, tried to attract the hen. Hence this game, where what was at stake was not so much the eggs as a question of revenge, was played out more between Pietro and Tommaso than between themselves and Adalberto, who, poor chap, searched the workers as they arrived and left, rummaged in bags and pockets and knew nothing.

Pietro worked alone in a corner of the workshop set apart from the rest by a section of wall so as to form a separate room, or ‘lounge’, with a glass door that looked out on to a courtyard. Until a few years ago there had been two machines and two workers in this room: Pietro and another man. But one day the other man had gone off sick with a hernia, and in the meantime Pietro had had to look after both machines at once. He learned how to regulate his movements accordingly: he would push down the lever of one machine and go to pull out the piece the other had finished. The hernia case was operated, came back, but was assigned to a different team. Pietro was stuck with the two machines for good; indeed, to make it clear that this was not just forgetfulness, a time-and-motion expert was sent to assess the situation and a third machine was added: the man had calculated that between the operations for one machine then the other there were still a few seconds free. Then, in a general overhaul of productivity bonuses, to have some dubious calculation come out, Pietro was obliged to take on a fourth. At sixty and more years old he had had to learn to do four times the work in the same hours, but since his salary was still the same, his life wasn’t radically transformed, if one excludes that is the development of chronic bronchitic asthma and the bad habit of falling asleep as soon as he sat down, in whatever place or company. But he was a tough old man and, what’s more, full of good spirits, and he was always hoping that major changes were just round the corner.

For eight hours a day, Pietro rotated round the four machines making the same series of movements every time, movements he knew so well now he had managed to shave off every superfluous blip and adjust the rhythm of his asthma to that of his work with perfect precision. Even his eyes moved along trajectories as precise as the stars, since every machine demanded a particular sequence of glances to check that it didn’t seize up and lose him his bonus.

After the first half-hour’s work Pietro was already tired, the factory noises blended in his eardrums into a single background hum with the combined rhythm of his four machines pulsing above. Thrust forward by this rhythm, he worked on in a near daze until, blessed as the first sight of land to the castaway, he caught the groan of the transmission belts slowing and stopping as a result of a breakdown or for the end of his shift.

But so inexhaustible a quality is man’s freedom, that even in these conditions Pietro’s mind was able to weave its web from one machine to the other, to flow on unbroken as the thread from the spider’s mouth, and in the midst of this geometry of steps gestures glances and reflexes he would sometimes find he was master of himself once again and calm as a country grandfather going out late in the morning to sit under the pergola and stare at the sun and whistle for his dog and keep an eye on his grandchildren swinging on a tree and watch the figs ripen day by day.

Of course, such freedom of thought could only be achieved by following a special technique that had taken time and training: all you had to do, for example, was learn how to break off your flow of thought when your hand had to move the workpiece under the lathe, then pick it up again, almost placing it on the piece as it now proceeded towards the grooving machine, and above all take advantage of the moments you had to walk, since one never thinks so well as when one walks a well-known stretch of road, even if here the road was no more than two steps: one-two, but how many things one could think of in that space: a happy old age, all Sundays in piazzas at political meetings listening hard near the loudspeakers, a job for his unemployed son, and then all at once off with a gaggle of grandchildren fishing on summer evenings, each with his rod on the walls above the river, and a bet on a cycle race to propose to his friend Tommaso, or about the collapse of the government, but something so wild as to knock the big-headedness out of him for a bit—and at the same time glance over at the transmission belt to make sure it wasn’t slipping off where it always did by the wheel.

‘If in… (pull up the lever!)… May my son marries that idiot’s daughter… (slide the piece under the lathe!) we can move out of the big room… (and taking two steps)… that way when the newly-weds lie in on Sunday morning they’ll get the view of the mountains from the window… (now push down that lever there!) and me and the old woman can move into the small room… (straighten out those pieces!)… since who cares if we can only see the gas tank from there,’ and, shifting now to another line of thought, as if the idea of the gas tank near his house had brought him back to everyday reality, or perhaps because when the lathe jammed for a second it inspired a more aggressive attitude: ‘Ifthelaminatesshopstartsindustrialactionoverpiecework, we can… (careful! it’s out of line!)… join them… (careful!)… with our cl… with our claim (it’s gone, damn it!)… for higher pay grades for our spe… cia… liz… a… tions…’

Thus the movement of the machines both conditioned and drove the movement of his thoughts. And little by little, softly and stealthily, his mind adapted itself to the confines of this mechanical mesh, as the slim muscular body of the young Renaissance cavalier adapts to its armour, learns to tense and relax biceps to wake up a sleepy arm, to stretch, to rub an itchy shoulderblade against the iron backplate, to tighten buttocks, to shift testicles crushed against the saddle, to twitch a big toe away from the others: in the same way Pietro’s mind stretched and loosened up inside its prison of nervous tension, automatic gestures, weariness.