Word is, you’ve never wanted to go on pippopippi. I’m glad, good for you, it’s always so full of windbags who are on there just to show off how much they know, what everybody likes this year, if that government official’s a good dresser or bad, if it would be better to vote a little this way or that, what’s going to happen with that hole in the ozone, or what if the world were square, you never know … who knows how many times you were invited on, especially after that prize you won in the States for your novel, that’s typicaclass="underline" they won’t even look at you, but win something in the States, and you’re a star, and there’s no escaping pippopippi … in your novel, you really make Tristano out to be a hero, but he’s afraid, too, and this I liked, heroes are afraid, the simpletons might not know that, but he overcomes his fear … there’s another twist, though — and here you’ve done something really clever — because maybe he’s managed to overcome his fear because his fear is overpowering?… in short, the hero overcomes fear because fear overcomes him. You didn’t quite get it right, but the idea’s intriguing … You’re a complicated guy — no one writes a book like that and lets pippopippi get the better of him … you’re also something of a senator — excuse me for that — what I mean is, you have this severe manner about you that you’ve done a good job of cultivating; when I imagined you, it was always in a white toga, like some Roman senator, a bit like Seneca, if I may, also considering your writing style, but maybe Seneca wasn’t a senator, I’m not sure … But listen, isn’t not going on pippopippi like going on, anyway? Sorry to be tricky here, but this way, everyone’s talking about your refusing to go on pippopippi, you’re on everybody’s lips, so in the end, not going on is like you went on … because pippopippi’s horrific, my dear writer, go on, don’t go on, either way, you’re fucked — that ever occur to you? I heard what they said about you on that pippopippi show Frau likes to call Tube Flush. I’m extremely informed about that thing over there even if I don’t watch it, Frau keeps me posted. Last month, when I was first bedridden, she shows up at the door and says, young sir, tonight on Tube Flush they talked about that writer you were reading yesterday. Get to the point, Renate, I say. Well, today’s program was, Having the Courage to Change Your Mind, and the host introduces his guests and says in his syrupy voice, we also invited a famous author on who wrote a prize-winning novel about courage, but unfortunately he declined our invitation, we can only hope he wasn’t too frightened to be on our program, oh famous writer … we’re waiting for you … see how nice we are? — let’s be brave now … Okay, Renate, I get it, and —? Well, aren’t you the one who said you needed someone to come listen to you and that he had to be a writer? But before I could answer, she shut the door again …
I feel good today, really good, and I’m going to tell you the whole thing, word for word, logically, it’s the set piece, in your book, it’ll be the set piece, listen and write, write and be quiet — ready?… It’s dawn. Tristano is alone in the goddamned woods, and he’s afraid. Because even heroes are afraid, you said so yourself. Besides, Tristano doesn’t know he’s a hero yet, he’s alone, hiding behind a boulder near the commander’s shelter, he knows he’s alone because all his comrades went down to the valley that night, under orders by that same commander, to attack a barracks, there were weapons, ammunition in the village, fascists standing guard, they had to go on a sortie, so his comrades went down to the valley, and Tristano’s alone on that goddamned dawn in the goddamned woods, on a dawn that should be pink and pale blue, soft, a dawn not made for days of tragedy but for loving, for holding onto a woman in bed, for love, not crouching behind a rock and trembling with fear; it’s an icy dawn. How many of them? They’re usually so cautious, there are never just a few when they make their raids, there could be ten, twenty, a whole platoon. Tristano heard shots, heard Maschinenpistolen fire, screaming, and now grave silence, the sun rising on that dawn, a dangerous dawn, because for Tristano, daylight’s the enemy, he’s alone behind that rock, and there are so many of them. After the slaughter, silence. But what are they waiting for? Why aren’t they leaving? What are they doing in there? Maybe looking for charts, maps, notes. They’d done it: in one master stroke, they’d eliminated the most dangerous commander of all, a great commander, not just any commander, that one, not some eager spur-of-the-moment partisan, no, an old soldier, in the Great War, already an officer in fifteen, with enormous responsibilities, a man who knows strategy, who’s calm, skilled, careful, strong-willed, he scares the Nazis, he’s caused many casualties, the order came down from the German High Command in Italy to eliminate him, the men under him don’t matter, he’s the one, crush the rebel head, the body goes too, just poor bastards on the run without a plan, it’s urgent to carry this out, and now they have. But someone led them there, otherwise how’d they find the shelter? Tristano knows this space, it’s also the headquarters, there are four rooms in that abandoned farmhouse, a kitchen on the main floor, where they meet, discuss their military actions, develop their plans, get their orders, and the adjoining room is where two soldiers from the Savoy Army sleep, two young soldiers, two sweet, inexperienced boys who are better off not seeing any action, who serve as sentries, the commander’s bodyguards; upstairs is a hayloft, where the peasants dry figs and chestnuts on straw mats, and then a room where the commander sleeps. The gunfire was downstairs. Tristano saw the flashes through the windows on either side of the sagging wooden door of that fairy-tale cottage at the edge of the woods. But why aren’t they coming out? It’s cold. It’s a cold dawn. Behind that rock, Tristano is afraid. Heroes aren’t afraid, but Tristano doesn’t know he’s a hero yet, he’s just a man, alone, clutching the submachine gun of a dead German, his hands frozen, his feet frozen, he can’t seem to think straight though his mind is racing, he keeps staring at that sagging door, now and then he looks around, barely glances, and doesn’t see a thing, all he knows is it’s growing lighter, soon it will be day. He thinks: how long since I heard the shots? — ten minutes — an hour? He’d slept in the shed near the woods where the peasants kept their pigs, he decided to sleep there that night instead of in the cave down by the stream where he usually slept with his comrades. Why? He can’t say why. Why, why, why …
… because, because, because. You came here to find out the answers to Tristano’s life. But there are no answers to life, didn’t anybody tell you?… why write? Or are you one of those, the kind looking for answers, wanting to put everything in its place?… Okay, listen, one answer, one because, is that he’d met the American girl in the mountains, I already brought her up, this Marilyn that he immediately started calling Rosamunda, and sometimes just Guagliona, but not too often, when he gathered her hair at her neck, her hair that she wore in a braid during the day, and he’d say undo your braid, Mary Magdalene, undo your braid, Guagliona … You want answers to other whys, why he wound up in the mountains, and how, and when, and Daphne, whatever became of her … You’re far too curious, writer — what do you care? Besides, listen, it made sense, what else could he do, he was a drifter by then, a deserter, he’d returned home after Badoglio sent everyone home, and he had to decide if he would hide under the straw in the barn with the Germans raking or go find his king in Brindisi or somewhere around there … He didn’t like the idea of hiding under the straw — would you? — if you were him, would you want to go join a king who’d left the Italians to rot while he went off and ate orecchiette with turnip tops?… But in a way, Tristano did the same thing by going off to fight in the Resistance in the mountains, because the turnip heads came along after … but that’s all in hindsight, if you could call it sight because I’ve had my morphine … Did you know Frau gave me two doses? She’s like that: one day stingy, the next day giving me a double-dose, she gets emotional … she’s annoying, you’ve seen that tough mug on her, but inside … you ask me, she’s always crying on the inside instead of the outside, I don’t know how she does it, if it’s just her or because she’s German, sometimes the Germans do seem like they might be people crying on the inside instead of the outside, just read some of what they’ve written … we’re different, we seem to be sobbing on the outside but inside nothing’s changed … a matter of hydraulics … you ask me, even the soul obeys the laws of hydraulics … I’m lost, where was I?… you’d like to know about Daphne, the whys and wherefores to his leaving her in Greece … patience, now, was he supposed to take her into the mountains, with everything she’d suffered in her own country?… and what do you care about Daphne anyway? Daphne’s the one beautiful thing in this whole damned story, the rest of it’s a mess … you don’t believe me? — look around, then, if you don’t believe me, and ask yourself why — no, ask yourself what good it was, what point there was to Tristano’s heading into the mountains with a telescope on his shoulder … ah, you didn’t know that, did you, that’s not something you’d ever think of, and I’m glad I’m telling you, you writers love this sort of thing, then you can start to embellish … up in the mountains, Tristano carried a submachine gun, sure, and he became the hero you know with that submachine gun, but up till then he carried a brass telescope he was fond of, that belonged to his grandfather; as a boy, he discovered the sky with that thing, and he brought it along to see the stars from mountain tops, because the higher up you are the better you see the stars … An Englishman who wrote books like you said we are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars, and maybe Tristano wanted to see the stars because his country was truly down in the gutter … And your country? — how do you like it now?