XXXII. WELTANSCHAUUNG

Good wishes, see you soon, Tania telegraphs to Turi, that special prison for the ill, a new station on Gramsci’s odyssey, as if the fascists intended to have him get to know every jail of their, of his, country. Here in Turi he is allowed to write in his cell, an effective means against the unassailable power of time which in prison has no beginning and no end. To the degree that he can, he divides his day with calisthenics and grammar exercises, the books he reads and, above all, the notebooks he fills, the one place he can put his thoughts in order instead of letting them dissipate in the air, the one place he can speak—as he has been kept from taking action—and that his doctor sees as proof of his insanity.

It is shortly before Christmas. Gramsci is sitting in front of the small shaft of the window, a pallid light trickles in, for days it has not really been light and the temperature has gone down significantly. ‘The passage from utopia to science,’ he writes, and pulls his sweater up to his chin, ‘and from science to action (remember Karl Radek’s pamphlet on this subject)’ when a guard brings him the notice. Now the small message is lying on the pages of his notebook. Five words. ‘Good wishes, see you soon.’ Beneath them his handwriting again: ‘The foundation of a directive class (i.e. a state) is equivalent to the creation of a Weltanschauung.’ He does not understand what is so urgent about Tania’s message that she had to telegraph him. Just yesterday he received a Christmas card from her, why did she have to add this? He scratches his throat which begins to itch beneath the wool, and thinks about the odd message. Why was she sending him good wishes? Why see you soon? Does she want to say that she will only write him again in the new year? In late January perhaps? Is she ill again? Is she in a clinic? Is she sending the good wishes to herself? It doesn’t make any sense, and he doesn’t know if she means something else, if it’s really a secret message he simply does not understand which therefore means it is not Tania’s fault. She is not thinking from the universe of a prisoner for whom a ‘see you soon’ is too much of a promise, a person who clings to words in the absence of the people behind them. Gramsci lies awake until late, his stomach cramps over and over, around one in the morning he has to vomit. It is pitch black, and the acrid stench fills the room. He rinses his mouth with water, drags himself back to his bed; the vomit stinks in his bedpan. Nevertheless, he is exhausted and dozes off, then wakes back up, then dozes back off.

The next morning, the weak prisoner is ordered out of his cell and made to wait under a roof in the courtyard, but without knowing why. Giulia walks in. Gramsci can see her so clearly, just like on those bright, early summer mornings in Rome when the light washes all the colours clean. Then he hesitates. Only when she’s standing in front of him does he realize that it is Tania.

‘Pure Italian,’ the director instructs her. ‘Otherwise I’ll have to end your conversation.’

‘How are you, my dear?’

‘Why the telegram?’

‘Because I was on my way to you—’

‘I didn’t know that, it could have meant anything.’

‘I thought you knew—’

‘How so?’

‘The stamp on the postcard. Bari. I was almost here.’

‘You can’t just make me so anxious,’ he says. ‘Here everything weighs three times as much as it does with all of you outside. There’s a different force of gravity, a difference like that between the earth and the moon. You should know that by now.’

Tania turns away, silently observes the bored prison guard who is slouching lazily next to them.

‘You look pale,’ Tania whispers at last.

‘No, no, don’t worry about my health, I’m well, it’s just that, last night, no, I’m well, Tania, tell me, how was your trip? How are Giulia and the kids?’

Tania tells him about the Meccano construction kit Delio received and with her hands shows Gramsci the movements of the stuffed goose Giuliano has been playing with, its long, wobbly neck. He likes the rustling of newspapers, and Delio can differentiate between living and non-living things, the born and the unborn.

‘I had a rose for you,’ Tania says, ‘and socks and some chicory, but they took them away at the gate. I am only allowed to bring you the most necessary items. What do they even understand about what’s necessary here? They don’t understand a thing,’ she says.

The guard yawns and Tania adds: ‘They don’t understand a thing, just pure Italian.’

‘I was afraid,’ Gramsci says.

‘I know.’

‘No, you don’t,’ he counters strongly, and it is as if something has broken. As if a vent has let out everything which has been pent up and that he did not even know was there. ‘You cannot imagine what life here is like. What it’s like to be forgotten.’

‘I . . . ’ Tania attempts.

‘You simply have no imagination. You imagine everything to be soft, lyrical somehow. Yes, indeed, all the world a Romantic poem, right?’

‘Of course, Toni, you’re right,’ Tania says. ‘You are always right. I was worried about you, that was all. I couldn’t do any better. I simply cannot live for myself, I always just live someone else’s life.’

‘But we’re not in an animal-welfare organization!’ Gramsci cries.

The guard bleats into his moustache, stifling a laugh.

‘Do you think I always need to be loved and looked after? And the socks,’ he adds, ‘have to be white, otherwise they will not be allowed.’

Tania anxiously runs a hand across her forehead. Gramsci stops speaking and stands there silently, grimly, before at last adding the absolution: ‘I’m happy you’re here. With you here, Giulia is here a bit as well.’

He moves to take Tania’s hand, she shrinks; perhaps it isn’t even allowed. Once again, the guard snorts in laughter thinking that Gramsci has confused two distinct people. But it’s not as simple as this walrus thinks, there is no key to lock up anything it cannot understand. If he were to read Pirandello just once, he’d recognize what was going on, and if he would only think a bit for himself, he’d also understand that Gramsci is never simply speaking with Tania but with his family and Giulia and the Party. Tania is his mouthpiece to Moscow, and, even if he were not interested, Tania would be unable to stop it; beyond the thoughts of books and Giulia’s letters, she is the only thing that continues to reach him from a world that grows ever-more abstract as he can no longer enrich it with experiences, as it must remain what it is: a landscape of letters, a desert of speech, an abstract deafness.

In closing, he hands her a ball of papier-mâché he has made for Delio, a small, miserable thing that is hardly round at all.

‘That is not allowed,’ the walrus declares.

Tania and Gramsci look at each other.

‘You may not accept anything from the prisoner.’

‘It’s only paper.’

‘And certainly not take it with you.’ With disturbing speed, the walrus jumps up and removes the ball from Tania’s hand.

‘I have to give this to the head warden.’

‘A toy?’

‘This is no toy, this is an attempt to smuggle, Mr Gramsci.’

 

‘I am waiting for letters from you,’ Giulia writes him, ‘I do not cease waiting,’ and the papier-mâché ball is presented to the administrator of prisoner’s belongings, Giuliano gets his second tooth, the ball is handed on to the board of Cell Block A, Eugenia has to go to a sanatorium, the ball is passed from the board to the lawyer Ligursi, Giulia is almost paralysed by depression, the ball is presented by Professor Ligursi to the one responsible for visits, Delio has to go to his grandmother, the suitcases are packed, he will soon be picked up. When the door rings, he sits up and asks: ‘Perhaps it’s Papa?’ Giulia runs a hand through his hair, does not answer. His second mother sends a postcard from the sanatorium, and the daylight, as always, is too bright when Gramsci steps out of the eternal leaden gloom of the prison’s insides. His comrades are walking in a circle. Children’s photographs have been hung in the courtyard. The guards call it an exhibition, or were the prisoners the first to call it that? During their compulsory walks, they make their way past the series of children’s heads, their own and those of their fellow prisoners, Delio is there too, and with every round, he looks a bit different to Gramsci, almost as if he would grow into the wall. Gramsci must pull himself together in order to not stay still. He wants to walk up to the wall as if he could simply take his son down and lead him by the hand through the courtyard, feel Delio’s hand in his and show him this world which was not beautiful but all the same was his. He doesn’t stop, makes the next round. Some of the photographs have become unrecognizable, a thumb has run over them so many times, they have been stuffed into a pocket and pulled back out. Others look new, as if they’d just been taken, perhaps they were adoringly kept behind a piece of glass in a frame. What will the prisoners do, Gramsci wonders, when, going to sleep later tonight, they realize that everything they still have is out in the courtyard and they feel even lonelier than the hundreds of days they have already felt so lonely here?