Vincenzo Consolo Il sorriso dell`ignoto marinaio

Vincenzo Consolo
Il sorriso dell’ignoto marinaio
Pages 141
ISBN 978 8804634737
Book Excerpt and Translation Sample: pages 128-130
L’opera completa © 2015 Mondadori Libri
English Translation © Wendell Ricketts
Foreign Rights
Emanuela Canali
[email protected]
Einaudi1976, Mondadori 2015
12 settembre 1852
Festa del Santissimo Nome di Maria
E ora si scorgeva la grande isola. I fani sulle torri della costa erano rossi
e verdi, vacillavano e languivano, riapparivano vivaci. Il bastimento
aveva smesso di rullare man mano che s’inoltrava dentro il golfo. Nel
canale, tra Tindari e Vulcano, le onde sollevate dal vento di scirocco
l’avevano squassato d’ogni parte. Per tutta la notte il Mandralisca, in
piedi vicino alla murata di prora, non aveva che fragore d’acque, cigolii,
vele sferzate e un rantolo che si avvicinava e allontanava a seconda del
vento. E ora che il bastimento avanzava, dritto e silenzioso dentro il
golfo su un mare placato e come torpido, udiva netto il rantolo lungo
e uguale, sorgere dal buio, dietro le sue spalle. Un respiro penoso che
si staccava da polmoni rigidi, contratti, con raschi e strappi risaliva la
canna del collo e assieme a un lieve lamento usciva da una bocca che
s’indovinava spalancata. Alla fioca luce della lanterna, il Mandralisca
scorse un luccichio bianco che forse poteva essere di occhi.
Riguardò la volta del cielo con le stelle, l’isola grande di fronte, i fani
sopra le torri. Torrazzi d’arenaria e malta, ch’estollono i loro merli di
cinque canne sugli scogli, sui quali infrangonsi di tramontana i venti e i
marosi. Erano del Calavà e Calanovella, del Lauro e Gioiosa, del Brolo…
Al castello de’ Lancia, sul verone, madonna Bianca sta nauseata.
Sospira e sputa, guata l’orizzonte. Il vento di Soave la contorce. Federico
confida al suo falcone:
O Deo, come fui matto
quando mi dipartivi
là ov’era stato in tanta dignitate
E si caro l’accatto
e squaglio come nivi…
Dietro i fani, mezzo la costa, sotto gli ulivi giacevano città. Erano
Abacena e Agatirno, Alunzio e Apollonia, Alesa… Città nelle quali il
Mandralisca avrebbe raspato con le mani, ginocchioni, fosse stato certo
di trovare un vaso, una lucerna o solo una moneta. Ma quelle, in vero,
non sono ormai che nomi, sommamente vaghi, suoni, sogni. E strinse
al petto la tavoletta avvolta nella tela cerata che s’era portato da Lipari,
ne tastò con le dita la realtà e la consistenza, ne aspirò i sottili odori
di canfora e di senape di cui s’era impregnata dopo tanti anni nella
bottega dello speziale.
Ma questi odori vennero subito sopraffatti d’altri che galoppanti sopra
lo scirocco venivano da terra, cupi e forti, d’agliastro finocchio origano
alloro nepitella. Con essi, grida e frullio di gabbiani. Un chiarore
grande, a ventaglio, saliva dalla profondità del mare: svanirono le stelle,
i fani sulle torri impallidirono.
Il rantolo s’era cangiato in tosse, secca, ostinata. Il Madralisca vide
allora, al chiarore livido dell’alba, un uomo nudo, scuro e asciutto come
un ulivo, le braccia aperte aggrappate a un pennone, che si tendeva ad
arco, arrovesciando la testa, e cercava d’allargare il torace spigato per
liberarsi come di un grumo che gli rodeva il petto.
Una donna gli asciugava la fronte, il collo. S’accorse della presenza del
galantuomo, si tolse lo scialletto e lo cinse ai fianchi del malato. L’uomo
ebbe l’ultimo terribile squasso di tosse e subito corse verso la murata.
Tornò bianco, gli occhi dilatati e fissi, e si premeva uno straccio sulla
bocca. La moglie l’aiutò a stendersi per terra, tra i cordami.
«Male di pietra» disse una voce quasi dentro l’orecchio del barone. Il
Mandralisca si trovò di fronte un uomo con uno strano sorriso sulle
labbra. Un sorriso ironico, pungente e nello stesso tempo amaro, di
uno che molto sa e molto ha visto, sa del presente e intuisce del futuro;
di uno che si difende dal dolore della conoscenza e da un moto continuo
di pietà. E gli occhi aveva piccoli e puntuti, l’arco nero delle sopracciglia. Due pieghe gli solcavano il viso duro, agli angoli della bocca,
come a chiudere e ancora accentuare quel sorriso. L’uomo era vestito da
marinaio, con la milza di panno in testa, la casacca e i pantaloni a sacco,
ma, in guardandolo, colui mostravasi uno strano marinaio: non aveva
il sonnolento distacco né la sorda stranianza dell’uomo vivente sopra il
mare ma la vivace attenzione di uno vivuto sempre sulla terra in mezzo
agli uomini e a le vicende loro. E, avvertivasi in colui, la grande dignità
di un signore.
«Male di pietra» continuò il marinaio. «È un cavatore di pomice di
Lipari. Ce ne sono a centinaia come lui in quell’isola. Non arrivano
neanche ai quarant’anni. I medici non sanno che farci e loro vengono
a chiedere il miracolo alla Madonna negra qui del Tìndaro. Speziali e
aromatari li curano con senapismi e infusi e ci s’ingrasano. I medici
li squartano dopo morti e si danno a studiare quei polmoni bianchi
e duri come pietra sui quali ci possono molare i loro coltellini. Che
cercano? Pietra è, polvere di pomice. Non capiscono che tutto sta a non
fargliela ingoiare.»
E qui sorrise, amaro e subito ironico, scorgendo stupore e pena sul
volto del barone. Il quale, pur seguendo il discorso del marinaio, da
un po’ di tempo si chiedeva dove mai aveva visto quell’uomo e quando.
Ne era certo, non era la prima volta che l’incontrava, ci avrebbe
scommesso il fondo di Colombo o il cratere del Venditore di tonno
della sua raccolta. Ma dove l’aveva visto?
Vincenzo Consolo
The Smile of the Unknown Mariner
Translation by Wendell Ricketts
Einaudi 1976, Mondadori 2015
12 September 1852
The Feast of the Most Holy Name of Mary
And now the great island hove into sight. The signal fires in the towers
along the coast blazed red and green; they flickered and died down,
then returned, lively and bright. In the channel between Tindari
and Vulcano, the sirocco had whipped the waves and shook the ship
from end to end, but the vessel had gradually ceased its rolling as they
advanced into the gulf. The Baron of Mandralisca had spent the entire
night on his feet in the ship’s bow, surrounded by the roar of water,
the creaking of beams, the lashing of sails, and the gasp of wind as it
advanced and retreated. Now that the ship was progressing, true and
silent, into the gulf upon a becalmed, even lethargic sea, he heard that
gasping again clearly, long and unvaried, rising up out of the darkness
at his back. An anguished sigh loosed itself from his stiff, contracted
lungs, rasped and wrenched its way along his windpipe, and left his
gaping mouth together with a faint groan. In the weak light of his
lantern, the Baron of Mandralisca spied a white glint in the darkness
that might have been eyes.
He looked up again into the vault of the sky filled with stars, at the
great island before him, at the signal fires in the towers. Constructed
of sandstone and mortar, their merlons rose thirty feet over the cliffs,
against which the north wind sundered the massive breakers. These
were the towers of Calavà and Calanovella, Lauro and Gioiosa, Brolo….
On the balcony of Lancia Castle in Brolo stands Bianca, nauseated.
She sighs and spits, eying the horizon fearfully. The wind from Soave
bends her in two. Federico tells his falcon:
O Lord, how mad was I
When I left the place
Where I had lived in such eminence!
And I am paying for it dearly
And melt like snow….
Along the coast, behind the signal fires and beneath the olive trees,
cities lay. Abacena and Agatirno, Alunzio and Apollonia, Alesa .... cities
where the Baron would have clawed at the earth on hands and knees
if he’d been certain of finding a vase, a lamp, or even a coin. By now,
in truth, such places had become little more than names; they were
vagaries, sounds, dreams. He clasped to his chest the painting wrapped
in waxed cloth that he had brought with him from Lipari. With his
fingers he tested its tangibility, its substance. He breathed in the subtle
odors of camphor and mustard that had impregnated the painting
during its years in the apothecary’s workshop.
But these odors were quickly overwhelmed by others that rode in
swiftly from the land on the back of the sirocco, dark and strong: wild
olives, fennel, oregano, laurel, calamint. With them came the cries and
fluttering of seagulls. A bright glow began to rise and fan out from the
depths of the sea. The stars disappeared; the signal fires in the towers
faded away.
He heard a wheezing that became a cough, dry and stubborn, and
then the Baron saw, in the pale light of dawn, a naked man, as dark
and fleshless as an olive branch, clinging with open arms to a spar. The
man was bent into an arc, his head thrown back, and he was trying to
expand his chest as if attempting to free himself of some mass that had
lodged there.
A woman dried his forehead and his neck. Becoming aware of the
presence of the gentleman, she removed her shawl and tied it about the
flanks of the stricken man. The man was engulfed by a last, terrible,
violent fit of coughing and ran toward the bulwarks. When he returned,
he was white, his eyes dilated and staring, and he pressed a rag against
his mouth. His wife helped him to lie down among the riggings.
“It’s the stone sickness,” said a voice that seemed close enough to have
come from within the Baron’s own ear. Standing before him was a man
with an odd, ironic smile on his lips, simultaneously penetrating and
bitter. It was the smile of a man who knew much and had seen much,
who understood the present and could intuit the future, who could
fend off both the pangs of conscience and a constant impulse toward
compassion. His eyes were small and sharp beneath the black arc of
his eyebrows. Two deep furrows ran down his hard face, one at each
corner of his mouth, as if to enclose that smile or call greater attention
to it. The man was dressed in the costume of a sailor: a cloth beret, long
in the back, sat upon his head, and he wore a cloak and baggy breeches.
On more careful observation, however, he appeared a very odd sailor
indeed. He possessed neither the somnolent detachment nor the dull
eccentricity of a man who spent his life on the sea, but rather betrayed
the keen attentiveness of one who had always lived on dry land among
men and their affairs. What was more, the grand dignity of a gentleman
was palpable in him.
“Stone sickness,” the sailor went on. “He’s a quarryman in the pumice
mines on Lipari. There are hundreds like him on that island. They don’t
live as long as forty. The doctors have no idea how to help, and so the
men visit the Black Madonna of Tindari to ask for miracles. Druggists
and herbalists offer them mustard poultices and infusions and get fat
off the treatments. Once the men are dead, the doctors cut them up
to examine their lungs, white and so hard and stonelike they could
sharpen their knives on them. What are they looking for anyway? It’s
stone. Pumice dust. The trick would be making sure they didn’t swallow
the dust in the first place, but they don’t understand that.”
The sailor smiled then, bitter at first and then quickly ironic as he
discerned surprise and distress upon the Baron’s face. For his part,
though he had been attentive to the sailor’s discourse, the Baron had
for some time been asking himself where and when he had seen the
man before. He was certain he had done. It was not the first time they
had crossed paths, and on that he would have bet the lands of his
Colombo estate or the krater known as The Tuna Seller that he held in
his collection. But where had he seen the man?