V. ERCOLI

The philosophy department was housed in a yellow building surrounded by a small park. Saint Francis of Assisi bent over a little bird by a pond, above the two of them the palm leaves swayed back and forth with eternal indifference. Brevi was the chair of Moral Philosophy at Sapienza University and ruled over his department with the equanimity of God the Father, which meant that he only put in an appearance every few years and that students waited mostly in vain outside his office door.

‘All men are intellectuals, but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals,’ Brevi quoted Gramsci as we made our way through a small side hallway up to the top floor. Behind a door, a series of metal steps led even higher and suddenly we were standing outside. Brevi ignored the handrail and evenly walked on ahead as I followed behind him teetering and doing my best not to look down.

‘I haven’t been here for ages. To be honest, all total, I’ve only been here three times. My goodness, Anton, the climb is a real challenge, don’t you think?’

I nodded, still making an effort to steady my breath. The space seemed as if it had been left in a hurry. Used coffee cups, a few exams weighed down by library books that must have been overdue for years by now.

‘At least we’ll be left alone here. Gramsci’s notebook, the notebook we’re looking for, number thirty-four, cannot have any confidants,’ he explained.

I let myself sink onto one of the desk chairs and looked at the pictures on the wall. On a world map the battles of the Russian Civil War had been marked with pins, next to it was an engraving of Pico della Mirandola.

‘Another one with a rather poor nose,’ Brevi remarked. He was standing in the middle of the room with sagging shoulders. I wasn’t sure how old he really was, at breakfast I’d thought he could barely be over sixty, and yet, upon my arrival in Rome, he seemed like the most antiquated professor I’d ever met, an eminence who exuded dignity due to his birthdate alone. Brevi shimmered. Brevi flickered.

‘Look here. I just recently got hold of this. What do you think?’

He handed me two typewriter-punched pieces of paper whose edges had been scribbled with notes in pencil: It is inadvisable to give photocopies to the family.

 

‘Dear Comrade Dimitrov!’ I read in German.

‘The family would like a complete set of the photocopies to stay with you. I am against such a decision and the Commission has also taken a position against this. My arguments are as follows:

(a) In principal, it is not right for two archives of Gramsci material to be created in just such a form; (b) Gramsci’s notebooks, almost all of which I have studied very closely, contain, in part, material which will only be able to be taken advantage of after precise preparation. Without such preparation, the material cannot be used and, in fact, were some parts to be used in their current form, they would be of no use to the Party. I therefore believe that it is necessary for the material to remain in our archive and to be edited here as well. I have complete trust in the wife of Comrade Gramsci; however, that everything be taken advantage of to the degree advisable and necessary is not a question of personal trust, but organizational safety (for today and, in particular, for the distant future)—I ask you to please give an opinion on this matter.

/Ercoli/

25 April 1941’

 

‘You know who Ercoli is?’

‘Palmiro Togliatti,’ I answered.

‘And what, my dear Tonio, did the head of the PCI hope to achieve with this letter?’

‘He wanted to have the Schuchts out of the way.’

‘And why?’

‘In order to have control over the estate. The Party always wanted control.’

‘Could it not be,’ Brevi asked, ‘that he did not want any witnesses? That he, if witnesses there had to be, desired no witnesses with evidence? That the editing of the materials, as he so beautifully calls it, signifies an abridgement? Perhaps the editing away of an entire notebook? That it did not have to do with what could be of use to the Party, but much more to do with what could be of harm?’

‘It would really have to do with what Gramsci might have written in the notebook.’

‘Please, he either railed against Stalin or praised him to the skies. In the former case, then Tania, Piero Sraffa and Togliatti too would have to have feared that this thinker would be completely erased from the communistic canon. And they’d have to fear for themselves as well and for Giulia and the children. The latter case already allows a bit more license. What did Sraffa think of Stalin? And Tatiana? Now, look here, there is also a third possibility. There is the possibility that Gramsci began to distance himself from communism, or let me put it this way: he laid it out in such a way that not only the Stalinists would have felt uncomfortable.’

‘Too liberal?’

‘Liberal! Libertine! Precisely what wouldn’t suit the communists!’

‘Did you ever believe in it? In communism?’ I asked.

‘My dear Tonio, I am a scientist. I do not take positions, I only call them into question. Be that as it may, this project will be my last. If it is unsuccessful . . . But it won’t be. Why should it?’ A thin, tall glass was pressed into my hand. Brevi pulled out a bottle of limoncello from his desk and poured one for each of us. ‘We have an enormous advantage. There isn’t any money, there isn’t any money anywhere, least of all at Italian universities. How can all these overly expensive restaurants, boutiques and jewellery stores keep going? Who lives in all the luxury flats in the city centre and who are all these people walking down Via Condotti in their bespoke clothes? In any event, this state has no money, this university even less, it is impossible for us to do any research, my colleagues spend their time hunting conferences abroad, but do you know what? That is an enormous advantage for us. We have no competition we have to take seriously. Do you like the limoncello?’ Brevi asked and had already refilled my glass.

‘I would like to find this notebook,’ he said after refilling his own and then downing the liquor in one go. ‘And, Anton, we are going to find it.’

And even if it was only the resolute way he opened his eyes up wide, what I now saw did indeed scare me. Brevi’s face usually did not show the least emotion, and I suspected that more than just the rest of his thin future hung on this notebook, more than those few years with emeritus honours and high-official invitations to pointless events. And similarly, if it went wrong—that much was obvious—it would break him.

‘But if that notebook never really existed?’ I replied. ‘Or if it got burnt decades ago in an ashtray somewhere on Via Sebino?’

‘If it is not to be found, Tonio,’ Brevi said, grabbing after my hands with his paws and holding them tight, ‘then we shall find it anyway. Do you understand?’

I pulled my hands back. I didn’t understand, to be honest, and didn’t want to understand. Brevi looked at me sleepily through his glasses, an absolute authority. Only those who were truly somebodies and not simply anybodies could afford that kind of drowsiness. I thought about Hedda and Lasse and the flat to which I’d return once I said goodbye to Brevi’s project. And I thought about what I really wanted: to destroy holy Gramsci once and for all.

‘Of course I understand,’ I said. Brevi pushed his glasses back up his nose and observed me curiously.

‘Maybe Gramsci was a Stalinist,’ I said, ‘or wanted to wring the Stalinists’ necks. But maybe, Brevi, maybe there’s something completely different in the notebook that we will find. And we’re going to find it, I know that as well as you do.’

‘Of course you know that. And I knew that, with you, I had made the right choice. Go to the Istituto Gramsci, Anton, do me the favour. Find something and tell me about it this evening. Soon we will expand our radius. We will look through Tatiana’s flat and the Quisisana clinic. We are going to find something, Anton. That we will.’

He led me to the door of his bureau and smiled shyly before closing it behind me. I listened for his steps, their steady, almost soothing back-and-forth. Then I climbed back over the roof to the main building. Students were sitting on the floor, laptops on their knees. A female lecturer rushed past me with a stack of papers. For a moment I was overcome by a feeling of melancholy there where I was neither authorized to be nor enrolled. Then I was back in the park, the sunlight falling through the tops of the palms. The Istituto Gramsci was no more than fifteen minutes away.

 

She was sitting at one of the tables near the window, a toasted panino in front of her she eyed more sceptically than eagerly. Incapable of moving or turning my eyes away, I stared at her fingers. The noises around me died down and once again I saw it all in front of me: her shoving an empty pack of cigarettes (Marlboro) into a rubbish bin.

She’d traded the poncho for a washed-out men’s shirt with rolled-up sleeves. Her head was sunk over the panino and her lips were chapped, which gave the beauty of her face a slightly vulgar touch. People bumped past me. From far away I heard her warm, effervescent voice and saw her mouth, her shirt, too large, it fell to her knees and the material seemed to grow transparent, her body to shiver slightly.

I pushed open the door, soon she would have to turn her face towards me, but then a fat kid waddled in between us, clumsily pulling his tunnel-like jeans up over his arse. The waiter wiped a cloth across the counter. As he began to work on the espresso machine, he shot me a glance. He snapped on a switch, concentrated on a new batch of ground beans, looked back at me once more and made a sign. Come all the way in or get lost.

I hesitated, let the door shut behind me, she didn’t notice. I stood there indecisively between a number of umbrella stands and slot machines. I stuck a few coins into the mouth of one of the latter and pushed the buttons. The machine twisted its apple- and cherry-filled eyes and then stopped at a hopeless point. Though it was July and Rome and the now-useless air-conditioning hung fuori funzione on the ceiling, I was freezing. She took a bite of her sandwich. I pushed in more coins.

‘Ma dai!’ the fat kid yelled, pulling at the arm of my shirt and pointing to the display. In four of the five fields there were cherries, the last still spinning, then growing slower, tipping forward, tipping back. The lights sprang like mad across the front of the machine, money rattled into a metal tray and from the inside of the machine came a fanfare that was so loud it filled the whole room. There was a draught from the door. By the time I turned around, she was gone.