A Tranquil Star by Primo Levi

Author:Primo Levi
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2006-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

PASQUALE WAS certain that his future biographers would remember him for nothing else: only for that “Annunciation.” He reread it and was enthusiastic, almost in love. He was about to take it to the photocopying machine when the boss called him in; he kept him for an hour and a half, and when Pasquale returned to his desk the copier was broken. By four o’clock the electrician had repaired it, but the photocopying paper was all used up. For that day there was nothing to be done: recalling the incident of the previous evening, Pasquale placed the sheet of paper in the drawer with great care. He closed it, then changed his mind and opened it, and finally he closed it again and left. The next day the piece of paper wasn’t there.

This business was becoming annoying. Pasquale turned all his drawers upside down, bringing to light papers that had been forgotten for decades: as he searched, he tried to retrieve in memory if not the whole composition at least that first line, that nucleus which had enlightened him, but he couldn’t: in fact, he had the precise sensation that he never would. He was different, different from that moment on: he was no longer the same Pasquale, and he never would be again, just as a dead man does not return to life, and you never put your foot in the same river twice. There was a nauseating metallic taste in his mouth: the taste of frustration, of nevermore. Disconsolate, he sat down in his office chair, and saw the page stuck to the wall, to his left, a little distance from his head. It was obvious: some colleague had intended to play a tasteless trick; perhaps someone had been spying on him and was on to his secret.

He seized the sheet of paper by one edge and detached it from the wall, encountering almost no resistance: the author of the trick must have used a poor-quality paste, or used very little. He noticed that the other side of the paper was slightly grainy. He put it under his desk pad, and for the entire morning made excuses not to leave his desk, but when the noon whistle sounded, and everyone got up to go to lunch, Pasquale saw that the sheet of paper was sticking out from under the desk pad by a good inch. He took it out, folded it in fourths, and put it in his wallet: after all, there was no reason not to take it home. He would copy it by hand, or take it to the copy shop; that would solve the problem.

He reread the poem in the evening as he was going home on the subway. Contrary to what he usually felt, it seemed perfect: not a line or a syllable had to be changed. Still, before showing it to Gloria he would think about it. Everyone knows how a judgment can change even in a short time: Monday’s masterpiece becomes insipid on Thursday, or even vice versa.

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