Message from the Shadows

  Translated by Tim Parks

  Against Time

  It’d gone like this:

  The man had boarded at an Italian airport, because everything began in Italy, and whether it was Milan or Rome was secondary, what matters is that it was an Italian airport where you could take a direct flight to Athens, and from there, after a brief stopover, a connecting flight to Crete on Aegean Airlines, because this he was sure of, that the man had traveled on Aegean Airlines, so in Italy he’d taken a flight that let him connect in Athens for Crete at around two in the afternoon, he’d seen it on the Greek company’s schedule, which meant this man had arrived in Crete at around three, three thirty in the afternoon. The airport of departure is not so important, though, in the story of the person who’d lived that story, it’s the morning of any day at the end of April of 2008, a splendid day, almost like summer. Which is not an insignificant detail, because the man taking the flight, meticulous as he was, gave considerable importance to the weather and would watch a satellite channel dedicated to meteorology around the world, and the weather in Crete, he’d seen, was really splendid: twenty-nine degrees Celsius during the day, clear sky, humidity within normal limits, good seaside weather, ideal for lying on one of those white beaches described in his guide, for bathing in the blue sea and enjoying a well-deserved vacation. Because this was also the reason for the journey of that man who was going to live that story: a vacation. And in fact that’s what he thought, sitting in the waiting lounge for international flights at Rome-Fiumicino, waiting for the boarding call for Athens.

  And here he is finally on the plane, comfortably installed in business class – it’s a paid trip, as will be seen later – reassured by the courtesies of the flight attendants. His age is difficult to determine, even for the person who knew the story that the man was living: let’s say he was between fifty and sixty years old, lean, robust, healthy looking, salt-and-pepper hair, fine blond mustache, plastic glasses for farsightedness hung from his neck. His work. On this point too the person who knew his story was somewhat uncertain. He could be a manager of a multinational, one of those anonymous businessmen who spend their lives in an office and whose merit is one day acknowledged by headquarters. But he could also be a marine biologist, one of those researchers who observe seaweed and microorganisms under a microscope, without leaving their laboratory, and so can assert that the Mediterranean will become a tropical sea, as perhaps it was millions of years ago. Yet this hypothesis also struck him as not very satisfying, biologists who study the sea don’t always remain shut up in their laboratory, they wander beaches and rocks, perhaps they dive, they perform their own surveys, and that passenger dozing in his business-class seat on a flight to Athens didn’t actually look like a marine biologist, maybe on weekends he went to the gym to keep fit, nothing else. But if he really did go to the gym, then why did he go? To what end did he maintain his body, stay so young looking? There really was no reason: it’d been over for quite a while with the woman he’d considered his life companion, he didn’t have another companion or lover, he lived alone, stayed away from serious commitments, apart from some rare adventures that can happen to everybody. Perhaps the most credible hypothesis was that he was a naturalist, a modern follower of Linnaeus, and he was going to a convention in Crete along with other experts on medicinal herbs and plants, abundant in Crete. Because one thing was certain, he was going to a convention of fellow researchers, his was a journey that rewarded a lifetime of work and commitment, the convention was taking place in the city of Retimno, he’d be in a hotel made of bungalows a few kilometers from Retimno, and a car service would shuttle him in the afternoons, but he’d have mornings to himself.

  The man woke up, pulled out the guide from his carry-on, and looked for his hotel. What he found was reassuring: two restaurants, a pool, room service, the hotel had closed for the winter and had only reopened in mid-April, and this meant very few tourists would be there, the usual clients, the Northern Europeans thirsty for sunlight as the guide described them, were still in their little boreal houses. The pleasant voice from the loudspeaker asked everyone to buckle their seat belts, they’d begun the descent to Athens and would land in about twenty minutes. The man closed the folding tray table and put his seat upright, replaced the guide in his carry-on, and from the pocket of the seat in front of him pulled out the newspaper that the flight attendant had distributed, to which he’d paid no attention. It was a newspaper with many full-color supplements, the usual weekend ones, the economics-financial supplement, the sports supplement, the interior-design supplement, and the weekend magazine. He skipped all the supplements and opened the magazine. On the cover, in black-and-white, was the picture of the atomic bomb’s mushroom cloud, with the title: THE GREAT IMAGES OF OUR TIME. He began leafing through, somewhat reluctantly. First came an ad by two fashion designers showing a young man naked to the waist, which at first he thought was a great image of our time, but then there was the first true image of our time: the stone façade of a house in Hiroshima where the heat from the atomic bomb had liquefied a man, leaving only the imprint of his shadow. He’d never seen this image and was astonished by it, feeling a kind of remorse: that thing had happened more than sixty years before, how was it possible he’d never seen it? The shadow on the stone was a silhouette, and in this profile he thought he could see his friend Ferruccio, who for no apparent reason, on New Year’s Eve of 1999, shortly before midnight, had thrown himself from the tenth floor of a building onto Via Cavour. Was it possible that the profile of Ferruccio, squashed into the soil on the thirty-first of December in 1999, looked like the profile absorbed by stone in a Japanese city in 1945? The idea was absurd, yet that’s what passed through his mind in all its absurdity. He kept riffling the magazine, and meanwhile his heart began beating erratically, one-two-pause, three-one-pause, two-three-one, pause-pause-two-three, the so-called extrasystole, nothing pathological, the cardiologist had reassured him after an entire day of testing, only a matter of anxiety. But why now? It couldn’t be those images provoking his emotions, they were faraway things. That naked girl, arms raised, who was running toward the camera in an apocalyptic landscape: he’d seen this image more than once and it hadn’t made such a violent impression, and yet now it produced in him an intense turmoil. He turned the page. There was a man on his knees, palms together, at the edge of a pit, a kid sadistically pointing a gun at his temple. Khmer Rouge, said the caption. To reassure himself he made himself think that these things were also from faraway places and distant times. But the thought wasn’t enough, a strange form of emotion, almost a thought, was telling him the opposite, that the atrocity had happened yesterday, it’d happened just that morning, while he was on this flight, and by sorcery had been imprinted on the page he was looking at. The voice over the loudspeaker stated that the landing would be delayed by fifteen minutes due to air traffic, and meanwhile the passengers should enjoy the view. The plane traced a wide curve, banking to the right, from the little window opposite he could glimpse the blue of the sea while in his own, the white city of Athens was framed, with a green spot in the middle, no doubt a park, and then the Acropolis, he could see the Acropolis perfectly, and the Parthenon, his palms were damp with sweat, he asked himself if it weren’t a sort of panic provoked by the plane going round in circles, and meanwhile he looked at the photo of a stadium where policemen in riot gear pointed submachine guns at a bunch of barefooted men, under it was written: Santiago de Chile, 1973. And on the opposite page was a photo that seemed a montage, surely retouched, it couldn’t be real, he’d never seen it: on the balcony of a nineteenth-century palazzo was Pope John Paul II next to a general in uniform. The pope was without doubt the pope, and the general was without doubt Pinochet, with that hair full of brilliantine, that chubby face, that little mustache, and the Ray-Ban sunglasses. The caption said: His Holiness the Pope on his official visit to Chile, April 1987. He began quickly leafing through the magazine, as though anxious to get to the end, barely loo
king at the photographs, but he had to stop at one of them, it showed a kid with his back turned to a police van, his arms raised as though his beloved soccer team had scored a goal, but looking closer you could see he was falling backwards, something stronger than he was had struck him. On it was written: Genoa, July 2001, meeting of the eight richest countries in the world. The eight richest countries in the world: the phrase provoked in him a strange sensation, like something that is at once understandable and absurd, because it was understandable and yet absurd. Every photo was on a silvery page as though it were Christmas, with the date in big letters. He’d arrived at 2004, but he hesitated, he wasn’t sure he wanted to see the next picture, was it possible the plane was still going around in circles? He turned the page, it showed a naked body collapsed on the ground, a man apparently, though in the photo they’d blurred the pubic area, a soldier in camouflage extended a leg toward the body as though he were kicking a garbage can, the dog he held on a leash was trying to bite a leg, the muscles of the animal were as taut as the cord that held it, in the other hand the soldier held a cigarette. The caption read: Abu Ghraib prison, Iraq, 2004. After that, he arrived at the year he found himself in now, the year of our Lord 2008, that is he found himself in sync, that’s what he thought even if he didn’t know with what, but in sync. He couldn’t tell what image he was in sync with, but he didn’t turn the page, and meanwhile the plane was finally landing, the landing strip was running beneath him with the intermittent white bands blurring to a single band. He’d arrived.

  * * *

  —

  Venizelos Airport looked brand new, surely they’d built it for the Olympic Games. He was happy with himself for being able to reach the boarding gate for Crete without reading the signs in English, the Greek he’d learned at school was still useful, curiously. When he landed at the Hania airport at first he didn’t realize he’d reached his destination: during the brief flight from Athens to Crete, a little less than an hour, he’d fallen fast asleep, forgetting everything, it seemed, even himself. To such a degree that when he came down the airplane’s staircase into that African light, he asked himself where he was, and why he was there, and even who he was, and in that amazement at nothing he even felt happy. His suitcase wasn’t long in arriving on the conveyor belt, just beyond the boarding gates were the car rental offices, he couldn’t remember the instructions, Hertz or Avis? It was one or the other, fortunately he guessed right, along with the car keys, they gave him a road map of Crete, a copy of the program of the convention, his hotel reservation, and the route to the tourist village where the convention goers were lodged. Which by now he knew by heart, because he’d studied and restudied it in his guide, nicely furnished with road maps: from the airport you went straight down to the coast, you had to go that way unless you wanted to reach the Marathi beaches, then you turned left, otherwise you wound up west and he was going east, toward Iraklion, you passed in front of the Hotel Doma, went along Venizelos, and followed the green signs that meant highway though it was actually a coastal freeway, you exited shortly after Georgopolis, a tourist spot to avoid, and followed the directions for the hotel, Beach Resort, it was easy.

  The car, a black Volkswagen parked in the sun, was boiling, but he let it cool down a little by leaving the doors open, entered it as though he were late for an appointment, but he wasn’t late and he didn’t have any appointments, it was four o’clock in the afternoon, he’d get to the hotel in a little more than an hour, the convention wouldn’t start till the evening of the following day, with an official banquet, he had more than twenty-four hours of freedom, what was the hurry? No hurry. After a few kilometers a tourist sign indicated the grave of Venizelos, a few hundred meters from the main road. He decided to take a short break to freshen up before the drive. Next to the entrance to the monument was an ice-cream shop with a large open terrace overlooking the little town. He settled himself at a table, ordered a Turkish coffee and a lemon sorbet. The town he saw had been Venetian and then Turkish, it was nice, and of an almost blinding white. Now he was feeling really good, with an unusual energy, the disquiet he’d felt on the plane had completely vanished. He checked the road map: to get to the freeway to Iraklion he could pass through the town or go around the gulf of Souda, a few kilometers more. He chose the second route, the gulf from up above was beautiful and the sea intensely azure. The descent from the hill to Souda was pleasant, beyond the low vegetation and the rooftops of some houses he could see little coves of white sand, a strong urge to swim came over him, he turned off the air-conditioning and lowered the window to feel the warm air smelling of the sea on his face. He passed the little industrial port and the residential zone and arrived at the intersection where, turning to the left, the road merged with the coastal highway to Iraklion. He put on his left blinker and stopped. A car behind him beeped for him to go: there was no oncoming traffic. He didn’t move, just let the car pass him, then signaled right and went in the opposite direction, where a sign said Mourniès.

  And now we’re following him, the unknown character who arrived in Crete to reach a pleasant seaside locale and who at a certain moment, abruptly, for a reason also unknown, took a road toward the mountains. The man proceeded till Mourniès, drove through the village without knowing where he was going, though as if he did. Actually he wasn’t thinking, just driving, he knew he was headed south: the sun, still high, was already behind him. Since he’d changed direction, that sensation of lightness had returned, which he’d briefly felt at the table in the ice-cream shop, looking down on the broad horizon: an unusual lightness, and with it an energy he no longer recalled, as though he were young again, a sort of light euphoria, almost a happiness. He arrived at a village called Fournès, drove through the town confidently as though he already knew the way, stopped at a crossroads, the main road went to the right, he took the secondary road with a sign that said: Lefka Ori, the white mountains. He drove on calmly, the sensation of well-being was turning into a sort of cheerfulness, a Mozart aria came to mind and he felt he could reproduce its notes, he began whistling them with amazing ease, but then went hopelessly out of tune in a couple of passages, which made him laugh. The road slipped into the rugged canyons of a mountain. They were beautiful and wild places, the car went along a narrow asphalt road bordering the bed of a dry creek, at a certain point the creek bed disappeared among the rocks and the asphalt ended in a dirt road, in a barren plain among inhospitable mountains, meanwhile the light was fading, but he kept going as though he already knew the way, like someone obeying an old memory or an order received in a dream, and at a certain point he saw a crooked tin sign riddled with holes as if from gunshots or from time, and the sign said: Monastiri.

  He followed it as though he’d been expecting it all along, until he came to a tiny monastery, its roof in ruins. He realized he’d arrived. Went down. The dilapidated door of those ruins sagged inward. He figured no one was there any longer, a beehive under the little portico seemed the only housekeeper. He went down and waited as if he had an appointment. It was almost dark. Then at the door a monk appeared, he was very old and moved with difficulty, he had the look of an anchorite, with his hair down to his shoulders and a yellowish beard, what do you want? he asked in Greek. Do you know Italian? answered the traveler. The old man nodded. A little, he murmured. I’ve come to change places with you, said the man.

  * * *

  —

  So it’d been like this, and no other conclusion was possible, because that story didn’t call for any other possible conclusions, but the person who knew this story was aware that he couldn’t let it conclude in this way, and at this point he made a leap in time. And thanks to one of those leaps in time that are possible only in the imagination, things landed in the future with regard to that month of April 2008. How many years ahead no one knows, and the person who knew the story remained vague, twenty years, for instance, which in the lifetime of a man is a lot, because if in 2008 a man of sixty still has all h
is energy, in 2028 he’ll be an old man, his body worn out by time.

  And so the person who knew this story imagined it continued like this, and so let’s accept that we’re in 2028, as the person who knew the story had wanted and had imagined it would continue.

  And at this point, the person who imagined how the story would continue saw two young people, a guy and a girl wearing leather shorts and trekking boots, who were hiking in the mountains of Crete. The girl said to her companion: I think that old guide you found in your father’s library doesn’t make any sense, by now the monastery will be a pile of stones full of lizards, why don’t we head toward the sea? And the guy responded: I think you’re right. But just as he said this she replied: no, let’s keep on for a bit, you never know. And in fact it was enough to walk around the rugged red-stone hill that cut through the countryside and there it was, the monastery, or rather ruins of the monastery, and the two of them approached, a wind blew in from the canyons raising the dust, the monastery’s door had collapsed, wasps’ nests defended that empty cave, the two of them had already turned their backs on that gloom when they heard a voice. In the empty space of the door stood a man. He was very old, looked dreadful, with a long white beard to his chest and hair down to his shoulders. Oooh, called the voice. Nothing else. The couple stood still. The man asked: do you understand Italian? They didn’t respond. What happened in 2008? asked the old man. The two young people looked at each other, they didn’t have the courage to exchange a word. Do you have photographs? asked the old man, what happened in 2008? Then he gestured for them to go away, though perhaps he was brushing away the wasps that whirled under the portico, and he returned to the dark of his cave.