A Different Sea by Magris Claudio

Author:Magris, Claudio [Magris, Claudio]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011-05-31T04:00:00+00:00

IV

On 21st September 1933 Enrico transfers his place of residence from Gorizia to Umago in Istria. This change, recorded in the municipal archives, is one of the few irrefutable proofs of his existence. For there are no records of his flight to Argentina, where the memory of places and the sequence of events fade, making it difficult for him to reconstruct his time there with any precision. The registry records, however, are clear. Umago, of course, means Salvore, which is one of the areas under its administrative control.

There are a number of entries of interest in the civil and land records at this time. In 1934 Enrico marries the beautiful Anita Predonzani, who is now the postmistress at Salvore. She had always been drawn to him, and expects to be able to use her charm and gentle insistence to domesticate him a little. Emma Luzzatto Michelstaedter, Carlo’s mother, congratulates them, praising the suitability of the marriage in general and of the bride in particular, even if, as she says, “I still can’t get used to the idea of Mreule as a husband.” Paula too is married – to a Swiss called Winteler. It is strange to think of her with someone else’s name.

Enrico purchases four hectares from the Benedetti family: olives, a few vines, some fruit trees, and the pines along the shore where he, Carlo, Nino and Fulviargiaula spent that evening in August 1909. He brings with him from Gorizia some of the roughest and most worm-eaten pieces of furniture that had been stored in the cellar, and a supply of old clothes so that he would never need to buy any more. There are no clocks in the house, only a sundial attached to the grey exterior wall. Two chairs next to the bed are more than enough for laying out one’s clothes before going to sleep; pleasure comes from being independent of whatever is not absolute – although one should remain indifferent even to necessities. “Nacktes, kahles Selbst,” he writes in his blue notebook, the Self naked and stripped, peace of the will, not even a breath of wind in the heart.

No electric light, not even a radio. Anita finds him tougher than predicted. Not even the moments between the sheets are of much use in softening his ways. Carlo’s oil lamp is good enough to read by at night. He keeps his books either in a large studded trunk or else under the mattress. When in bed, propped on his pillows, he just feels with his hand and pulls them out. He does not need to look, for he knows the position of each book by heart – the discourses of Buddha or Carlo’s poetry – and in the darkness his hand is never more than five centimetres out. His favourite poem is To Senia: “Of what I have seen on the floor of the sea, I want you alone, Senia, my listener to be.”

Because Anita works at the post office, Enrico often does the cooking – a sbrodaus, a thick soup, that lasts three days.

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