Innocence. Julian Barnes
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it doesn’t matter,’ Gramsci said. ‘How could it matter? Perhaps, anyway, you think I’m not strong enough to be a good friend for your father?’
‘No, sir, I don’t think that.’
Now Gramsci moved again, sidling a little towards the right and establishing himself fairly securely against the washstand with its jug and basin of enamelled tin. There he held out his hand.
‘Children don’t like sick people. Are you afraid to touch me?’
‘I don’t want to touch you if I’m going to catch anything,’ Salvatore said. ‘With my cousins, there are seven of us in the house at home.’
‘Seven!’ shouted Domenico. ‘What has that to do with it, why do you mention that?’
‘You won’t catch anything,’ said Gramsci, and the child stepped forward and felt his hand crushed as though the bones were being ground together under the thin skin. When the travelling fair came round in autumn there was a machine called ‘The Initiation’ which gave you, as you gripped the handle, an electric shock. But that was not for anyone under the age of twelve.
‘Now it’s your turn. Since you didn’t answer, I’m doing you more than justice. You can ask me anything you like.’
Another chance not to fail his father. It was a moment when he could do him real credit, and he knew very well what kind of credit was wanted. Immediately he could picture the two of them, their visit over, back in the station refreshment room where they had gone when they arrived, the street lights on by now, his father praising him for his good question while he himself melted a lump of sugar in a long-handled spoon, slowly, feeling satisfaction and pity.
‘Ask anything you want,’ Gramsci repeated. In his present position he could take out a cigarette, although his disease had eaten so far into the vertebrae that he had difficulty in balancing his head well enough to smoke it. Patiently Domenico struck match after match, trying to get the tobacco alight.
Salvatore knew by now the question he ought to put. He regretted that he hadn’t wanted just now to say what he had in his pockets. That had been a mistake. He was quite well used to being told to put questions, as well as answering them, in the presence of a school inspector. That was simply a matter of knowing what was wanted. The more important these men were, the easier it was to reply. One of them had told the whole class to remain standing and to answer the question in the first lines of the Fascist Chorus of Youth: ‘Duce, Duce, when the time comes, who will not know how to die for you?’ Impossible to go wrong there. But Salvatore had also half-absorbed from the long droning evenings in the passage room, and from what they had earnestly tried to explain to him, the concerns of his father and Sannazzaro. Supposing he tried: ‘Comrade Gramsci, sir, when the time comes, who will not want liberty?’
Courage. But the words he had formed in his mind suddenly made themselves scarce, and still wanting and intending to say something quite different he asked loudly: ‘Why are you bleeding?’
And in fact a trickle of blood had appeared at the corner of the mouth of his father’s friend. Gazing at the hunchback in his niche, seeing the first drop ooze past the clamped cigarette to the edge of the chin, Salvatore knew that everything could be saved if only it wasn’t allowed to fall. Blessed Mary, Mother of God, Shelter of the Homeless, don’t let it fall. But as Gramsci opened the other side of his mouth to answer as he had promised, and possibly even to smile, something final and disastrous happened, he leaned forward and dark liquids began to make their escape from several parts of the body. Domenico Rossi put his whole fist on the bellpush and with his other hand threw open the door. ‘Get help!’ The boy clattered down the shining corridors, weeping. So far in the clinic he had seen no women, but a woman was needed now. Behind one of the shut doors with their squares of frosted glass he might find one.
Domenico was right in believing that this visit to Rome would provide a lasting memory for his son. Salvatore’s resolution, as soon as he began to be able to translate his impressions into terms of will and intention, was this: I will never concern myself with politics, I will never risk imprisonment for the sake of my principles, I will never give my health, still less my life, for my beliefs. He also resolved to be a doctor. In the end we shall all of us be at the mercy of our own bodies, but at least let me understand what is happening to them.
The sight of his father’s tears as they walked back to the station was also disagreeable to Salvatore. He was reluctant to admit to himself that, for the moment, he was older than his parent, and ashamed that they hadn’t got a handkerchief between them. There had been a napkin, but that was left behind with the basket and the unwanted presents at the Clinica Quisisana. Eventually they stopped in front of a little shop, and Domenico, still much moved, sent his son, by himself, to ask for a handkerchief. The man behind the counter told him that he must buy three, they were only for sale in packets of three. Salvatore stood there, solidly occupying his ground. ‘My father only needs one. You must sell him what he needs.’ The shop-keeper put his hand to his ear, pretending not to understand. Salvatore repeated what he had said in clear Italian. ‘It’s the law,’ he added. He paid for a single handkerchief and counted his change with insulting care. On that afternoon he decided that as soon as possible he would be emotionally dependent on no one.
Hard work and opportunism are the secrets of biological success. Gramsci himself was fond of the proverb ‘Where one horse shits, a thousand swallows feed.’ But from the usual source of help, the family, Salvatore received very little. All that it really came down to was that during his years of medical training he was able to lodge at a reasonable rent over a greengrocer’s shop belonging to his great-aunt’s step-daughter’s niece.
As a medical student his call-up was deferred, and just before the Allies landed in Sicily he got himself transferred to Bologna. The following spring the great neurologist, Professor Landino, returned from a long exile, and Salvatore expected to be deeply influenced by him, but was disappointed. Honourable men are rare, but not necessarily interesting. Landino was not interesting. Neurology, however, made its appeal in the simplest possible way, for its own sake. As a junior he made notes on case after case of back injuries which had been caused two or perhaps three years earlier when the patients had come to grief in a truck or some military vehicle which had run over a mine or a pot-hole. The surgeons had removed the injured disc from the spine and fused the vertebrae above and below it to make as neat a job as possible. And now there was no inflammation, nothing to be read from X-rays or tests on the cerebrospinal fluid, and yet the patients complained of agonising pain. There were women, too, admitted to the hospital who were unable to move one arm or both, who couldn’t stoop down to lift their children, whose faces were distorted and fixed into a singer’s open-mouthed grimace. The pain was in their imagination, but as real, of course, as if it wasn’t. In fact, it was impossible in these circumstances to attach any meaning to ‘real’ or to ‘imagination’. There was no acceptable diagnosis to make. He was in the face of pain which left no trace, and healing without explanation. The specialists, however confident, knew no more, perhaps less, than a dog who lies down in the shade until it feels better. But whatever exists, can be known. Salvatore didn’t delude himself that he was capable of great discoveries. But he thought he might set himself to see why no discoveries had been made so far. ‘Gentlemen,’ Professor Landino began, with a smile which acknowledged the women students but implied that he was too old to learn new tricks, ‘not for nothing is neuralgia associated with artists, sensitives and degenerates.’ He paused on these last words, giving them equal weight. ‘We define neuralgia as pain whose origin is not clearly traceable.’
Salvatore’s natural associates in Bologna should have been the small group of students from the South, predictable in their habits, the civilian brothel