History (87 page)

It had begun by chance a few months before, during one of his brief trips to Naples. Late in the evening, a young doctor, who had just taken his degree (whom Davide had known as a student in the days he had crossed the front lines with Ninnuzzu) had seen him suddenly arrive in his house. "Pyotr!" he had cried, recognizing him (he had introduced himself, in other days, with that name ), and even before hearing him, he had realized the boy had come looking for help. Later, he was to remember that his immediate impression, merely looking at that face, was that he was receiv ing the visit of a suicide. In the almond eyes, hollowed, there was a name· less darkness, tormented and yet shy; and the muscles twitched, not only in his face, but in his whole body, under a charge of savage energy which could be consumed only in the form of pain. As soon as he entered, without even greeting his host ( whom he hadn't seen, however, for per haps two years ), with the brutal vehemence of a housebreakP. with a threatening weapon, he said he needed some medicine, any medicine, provided it was strong, a remedy that would act promptly, immediately, otherwise he would go crazy. He couldn't stand it any longer, he hadn't slept for days, he saw fl everywhere, he wanted a
cold, cold
medicine that would keep him from thinking . . . He wanted his thoughts to be detached from him . . . life to be detached from him! Exclaiming these words, he threw himself on a little sofa, not seated, but tangled, half on his knees against the back, and he hit the wall with terrible blows of his fi threatening to fracture his knuckles. And he sobbed, or rather sobs formed in his chest, racking his body from within, though they found no release through his mouth, emerging barely in some painful and disjointed rattles. TI young doctor's apartment, where they were, wasn't an offi but still his student dwelling, hardly more than a bachelor's rooms. Fixed to the wall with thumbtacks, there were some cartoons, cut out of weekly maga zines . . . And Davide started ripping away those cartoons, shouting in sults and curses. Th host, who had always respected and admired him for his partisan exploits, did his best to calm him, to be of help. Here in the

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house, he didn't have a very well supplied dispensary; in his bag, however, brought home from the hospital where he was an intern he had an ampoule of Pantopon. He gave him that injection, and a little later he saw Davide grow more quiet, indeed serene, like a starving infant who sucks his mother's milk. Relaxing, he remarked softly in his northern dialect:
"L'e bona
. . . it's good . . . it's refreshing . . ." and at the same time he gave the young doctor smiles of gratitude, while his eyes, steeped in a radiant mist, were already closing. "Sorry to bother you, so sorry," he kept repeating, as his host, seeing him falling asleep, helped him lie down on the bed in the adjoining little room. There he slept profoundly the whole night, about ten hours; and in the morning he woke soothed, sober; he washed, combed his hair, and even shaved. He wan ted information about the treatment he had had, and his host straightforwardly explained it had been an injection of Pantopon, a medicine with a morphine base. "Mor phine . . . that's a drug!" Pyotr commented, pensively. And he added, frowning : "Then it's shit." "That's righ t," the doctor replied with severity and with professional scrupulousness, "it's not usually advisable. However, in certain exceptional cases, it can be advisable." Still Pyotr had a saddened look, like
a
boy who has done something cowardly, and he conti striking the bruised knuckles of his fi against each other softly. "Don't tell anybody, eh?, that I shot that stuff into my body," was the last thing he murmured, shamefaced, to his host, before going off again.

From boyhood Davide had conceived a disgust and contempt for narcotics and drugs in general. Among the Segre family memories, there was handed down the story of a great-aunt, a s tory told by the younger generations, about a relative identifi simply as
Aunt Tildina
who had died in the hospital, they said, through a habitual abuse of chloral. She had died a spinster, about fi and in the family album, at home, there was a photograph of her at the time. You could see a pathetic little person, a bit hunched, almost bald-however, with her scant hair arranged in a coiff with a black ribbon and little beads-in a tight striped jacket, a fur s tole around her shoulders. For him, as a boy, that senile creature, with her tight lips, thin nose and protruding eyes, sad and with an old maid's faint eccen tricity, had represented the archetype of bourgeois ugliness and squalor. And drugs, which traditionally he had always identifi with Aunt Tildina, seemed to him a characteristic vice of the degraded and repressed bour geoisie, which seeks escape from its guilt and its ennui. Wine is a natural release, virile and plebeian; whereas drugs are an unreal and perverse surr gate, something for old maids. Shame, which had depressed him already after his initial and almost involuntary Naples experience, came back to humiliate him more disastrously later on, at his every, voluntary relapse. And this shame gave him the strength to resist his own desire, up to
a

436 H I S T O R Y
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certain point, keeping him from falling into a total dependence on the enchanted medicine. There were some days, however, when the strange excess of energy that lacerated him, all directed towards an insoluble grief, drove him to an unbearable degree of anguish and horror. It was the breaking-point of his resistance. From this extreme point, the promise of his medicine opened to him like a great airy cleft at the end of a crumbling tunnel, from which he can take fl

During those months ( while accusing himself, in his own opinion, of illicit wealth ), Davide lived off private means. On his last trip to Mantua, he had given that surviving uncle, whom he didn't like very much, a complete power of attorney, to dispose of his personal inheritance, which amounted, in all, to that apartment of fi rooms where he had lived since childhood with his family. And as an advance against the sale of the apartment, his uncle sent him a postal money-order at the end of each month.

It was almost a miserable amount, but for him it was enough to survive meanwhile, given the gypsy existence he led. In his present life, there was no mistress, except for some poor mercenary aff picked up on his occasional nocturnal desperado prowls and consumed there on the spot (under a ruin, or beneath the steps of a bridge) without even looking the woman in the face. It seemed to him, in fact, that he could recognize, in each of these lost girls, his Mantuan G., whom others ( the ruling class of the time ) had used in the same way he at present was using this one! And such exploitation was the equivalent of pimping; he felt as disgusting as those men; he was unworthy to raise his eyes! Then he released his need with the angry haste of someone performing an act of disfi and he vastly overp his pickup, as if he were a ri America afterwards fi himself perhaps without a lira, not even cigarette money.

Sometimes he drank, but less often than before. For food, when he remembered it, he ate standing, without plates or cutlery, at a pizzeria counter. And besides the rent of the room, these were his maximum usual expenses, to which was added, now, the single luxury of the new medicines. The use of certain drugs, however, was not very widespread in Italy at that time, so there was no diffi ulty about buying them, even cheaply.

After the fi weeks, the fear of a fatal physical habit (which for him represented the ultimate dishonor) counseled him to replace opiates, on occasion, with substances of diff composition, and diff eff For the most part these were sleeping pills, freely sold in pharmacies, and Davide swallowed them not only against nights of insomnia, but also in the morning and afternoon and at any moment when his own presence became intolerable to him. With their help, he plunged rapidly into a lethargy, in which he could lie immersed for whole days. But when he came out again,

4 3 7

for him it was as if a moment had gone by since his falling asleep. TI1e interv was zero. And the burden of indestructible time awaited him at the door of his room, like a boulder he had to drag after him. Then he would duly load it onto himself, trying to react. He would go out, come back, linger on the bridges, look into movie theaters and taverns, leaf through books . . . What was he to do, with his body?

His only consolation, on such days, was the knowledge that, as a last resort, he still had his fi medicine, the Naples one, of which he always kept a supply on hand. None of the vari otner medicines he had tried could give him such a consolation, especially at the beginning, like a caress ing hand-"it's nothing, it's nothing"-relieving things of their weight and also cleari his memory. Even his solitude, in those moments, proved a light episode, casual and temporary: extraordinary beings did exist on earth, his future friends, already moving towards him . . . "There's no hurry, no hurry. When I go out, maybe tomorrow, I'll meet them."

And every so often, between one remedy and another, used as alibi or alternative, he would go back to that unique one, fascinated, like a rake returning to his fi love. He called these his
gala
days. They were his nourishment, but, unfortunately, ephemeral. Chemical solaces behave like the light bulbs in certain small hotels : they are regulated to remain burn ing just long enough for you to climb the steps to the fl above. But sometimes they go out when you are halfway up the stairs, and you fi yourself left there like a fool, groping in the darkness.

That day of their encounter with him, Bella and Useppe, after eating in great haste, immediately ran out of the house again, according to their custom when the weather was fi And, in fact, it was a summery day in May, the kind when, in Rome, all neighborhoods seem made of air and the whole city, terraces, windows, and balconies, seem everywhere bedecked with banners. Th pair's natural direction, in such weather, as the day's light lasted longer, would have been towards Viale Ostiense, and from there on and on and on to the famous place of their recent discovery ( the tr tent beside the water). But today Bella turned in the opposite direc ti towards Ponte Sublicio; and Useppe promptly guessed that, having taken Davide at his word, she was running on his trail, to the appointment with him. To tell the truth, Useppe hadn't allowed himself to be deceived by Davide's words, obviously spoken at random, just to say goodbye, indeed with the obvious aim of getting rid of them quickly. And now this anxious suspicion made him somewhat uneasy. But as Bella was pulling him on the leash, happy and determined, he followed her to the hypothetical appoint ment without arguing, indeed with ardent breath.

438 HISTORY . . . . . . 1 9 47

He had never known Davide's address; but Bella knew it on her own, having already been there in Ninnuzzu's company. And the prospect of this imminent visit made her gallop with enthusiasm. Here we must reca that Davide, despite his misanthropic ways which made everyone else, more or less, take a dislike to him, often enjoyed success with animals and with small children. Did he give off some mysteri odor, particularly endearing to kids, cats, dogs, and such types? It's a fact that some girls, after having slept with him, said his rather hairy chest at night smelled of grass.

When they had come into the Porta Portese square, Bella raised her head and barked at the windows of the Gabelli Reformatory, which im mediately reminded her of Poggioreale, where her fi Antonio was locked up. Then, beyond the Gate itself, she lowered her tail and ears, turn stealthily towards the right: because there, on the other side, rose the walls of the City Pound, from which some lost cry could be heard; but she preferred not to let Useppe know about this.

There was the tavern, from which the usual radio noises were coming; and the hovels, and the shapeless vacant lot sown with garbage and rubbish. At that hour, not many people were to be found in the area. You could see, on the other hand, various dogs, rummaging amid the garbage or sprawled napping in the dust; and Bella, in spite of her eagerness to keep the appointment, still lingered with them, to exchange the usual cere monies. One of those dogs was a tiny little cri like a dwarf monkey; another, big and rather swollen, resembled a calf. But Bella, who seemed a bear herself, recognized them nevertheless as her relations, and she cele brated their canine identity, greeting them peacefully and contentedly. With only one, a sturdy but slender type, of dappled color and w-ith erect ears, the meeting was not cordial; both he and Bella snarled and bared their teeth, ready to jump on each other. "Bella! Bella!" cried Useppe, worried. And at this cry, luckily, a youth from a hovel called in a masterful voice, "Wolf! Wolf!", his authority succeeding in averting the confl That dog obediently reentered the hovel, and Bella, forgetting herself and him and all those other dogs in a moment, headed gaily for the little door of the ground-fl room which she immediately recognized, and she scratched on the wood, like one of the family.