Tales of Madness (19 page)

And it didn't occur to anyone that, given the most unusual conditions in which that unhappy man had been living for so many years, his case could even be considered quite natural, and that everything Belluca said which everyone thought was nonsense, a symptom of frenzy, could also be the simplest explanation of his quite natural case.

Actually, the fact that Belluca had boldly rebelled against his office manager the previous evening, and that, upon hearing his bitter reproaches, had almost flung himself on him, provided serious grounds for the supposition that his was a case of true mental derangement. Because one couldn't imagine a more docile, submissive, methodical, and patient man than Belluca.

His rebellion, therefore, was truly inconceivable, unless it had been the result of sudden mental derangement.

What's more, the preceding evening he had really deserved being reprimanded; his office manager really had all the reason in the world to let him have it. Already that morning he had shown up to work with an unusual and different air about him and, what was really serious, and comparable to what should I say? the collapse of a mountain, he had arrived more than a half hour late.

It seemed that his face had suddenly become broader. It seemed that the blinders had suddenly fallen from his eyes and that the spectacle of life all around him had suddenly revealed itself and thrown its doors wide open to him. It seemed that his ears had been suddenly unplugged, perceiving for the first time voices and sounds he had never before noticed.

He had shown up at the office so lighthearted, and his lightheadedness was indefinite and full of bewilderment. What's more, the whole day long he hadn't accomplished a thing.

That evening the office manager entered his office and, examining the account books and papers, asked:

"What gives? What did you accomplish during this entire day?"

Belluca had looked at him smilingly, almost with an air of impudence, as he opened his hands.

"What's that supposed to mean?" his office manager then exclaimed, drawing close to him, taking him by the shoulder, and shaking him.

"Hey, Belluca, I'm speaking to you.'"

"The train? What train?"

"It whistled."

"What the devil are you saying?"

"Last night, sir. It whistled. I heard it whistling..."

"The train?"

"Yes, sir. And if you only knew where it took me! To Siberia...
or, or... into the forests of the Congo... It only takes a second, sir!"

The other clerks, hearing the shouts of their enraged office manager, had entered the office and, hearing Belluca speaking in this manner, burst out laughing hysterically.

Then the office manager, who must have been in a bad mood that evening and was irritated by the laughter, became furious and mistreated the meek victim of so many of his cruel jokes.

But this time what happened was that the victim, to everyone's astonishment and almost to their fright, had rebelled, had railed against his boss, and in a loud voice continually repeated that strange story about the train that had whistled. He had also cried out that, by God, now that he had heard the train whistle, longer could he, no longer would he, be treated in that way.

They had used force to seize, bind, and drag him to the insane asylum.

He still continued speaking about that train, even there, and he imitated its whistle. Oh, it was quite a mournful whistle, one
that seemed to come from some distant place in the night. And it
was heartrending. Immediately afterwards he would add:

"All aboard, all aboard... Gentlemen, your destinations? Your destinations?"

And then he would gaze at everyone with eyes no longer his. Those eyes, usually sullen, lackluster and knit into a frown, were now laughing and shining brightly like those of a child or of a happy man, and disjointed sentences poured from his lips. Things unheard of; poetic, fantastic, odd expressions that were all the more astonishing in that you could in no way explain how, or by what miracle, they could flower in his mouth. After all, until then he had never dealt with anything but figures, account books, and catalogs, as if he had been deaf and dumb to life, like a little bookkeeping machine. But now he spoke of the
blue facades
of snowy mountains, reaching up to the sky; he spoke of voluminous viscous cetaceans forming commas with their tails in the depths of the seas — things, I repeat, unheard of.

In fact, I received the news in silence.

As I was walking toward the asylum where the poor man had been admitted, I continued reflecting on Belluca's case within myself:

To a man who has lived an "impossible" life, as Belluca has up till now, the most obvious thing, the most common incident, the most insignificant and unexpected obstacle as—what should I say?—a cobblestone in his path, can produce such unusual effects that no one can explain without taking into account the fact that the man's life has been an "impossible" one. An explanation has to be sought
in that fact, linking it to those impossible living conditions,
and then it will appear simple and clear. Whoever sees only the tail of a monster, ignoring the body attached to it,
might consider it in itself monstrous. But if one rejoins it to
the monster, it will no longer seem monstrous, but rather as it should be, belonging to that monster.

A quite natural tail.

I had never seen a man live like Belluca. I was his neighbor, and not only I, but all the other tenants of that apartment building wondered as I did, how that man could continue living under such conditions.

He lived with three blind women: his wife, his mother-in-law, and the latter's sister. Both his mother-in-law and her sister were quite old and had cataracts. His wife, on the other hand, had no cataracts but was permanently blind; her eyelids were sealed.

All three of them expected to be waited on. From morning to night they screamed because no one waited on them. His two widowed daughters, taken into his home after the deaths of
their husbands, one with four children, the other with three, never
had the time nor the desire to take care of them. If anything, they would sometimes lend a hand only to their mother.

They were large beds, double beds, but there were only three of them.

Violent scuffles, chases, overturned furniture, broken dishes, cries, shouts, thuds, because one of the children in the dark would run over and plunge into bed with those three blind women who slept in a separate bed. And every evening the women, too, would argue among themselves because none of them wanted to sleep in the middle, and each would rebel against the others when it was her turn.

At last there was silence, and Belluca would continue to do his copying late into the night until his pen would fall from his hand and his eyes would shut of their own accord.

He would then go throw himself — often fully clothed — onto
a small rickety divan and immediately sink into a profound sleep from which he could hardly rouse himself in the morning, feeling more dazed than ever.

Now then, gentlemen, what happened to Belluca, living under such conditions, was a quite natural thing.

When I went to visit him at the asylum, he told me about it himself, in detail. Yes, he was still somewhat excited, but that was quite natural, considering what had happened to him. He laughed about the doctors, nurses, and all of his colleagues who thought he had gone mad.

"If only I had!" he said. "If only I had!"

Gentlemen, for many, many years Belluca had forgotten, actually forgotten, that the world existed.

Absorbed in the continuous torment of his unfortunate existence, absorbed all day long in the accounts of his office, with never a moment of respite, like a blindfolded animal yoked to the shaft of a waterwheel or of a mill, yes, gentlemen, for years and years he had forgotten, actually forgotten, that the world existed.

The whistle of the train had all of a sudden ripped open and carried away the misery of all those horrible sufferings. It was as if he had found himself flying out of an uncovered tomb and roving breathlessly in the airy void of the world that was throwing itself open all around him in all its immensity.

He had instinctively held on to the covers that he would toss over himself every evening, and mentally run after that train that was traveling farther and farther away into the night.

The world existed, ah! it existed outside that horrendous house, outside all his torments. The world existed. There was a lot, a lot of world far away that that train was traveling towards... Florence, Bologna, Turin, Venice..., so many cities that he had visited in his youth, and that were surely still sparkling with lights that night on the earth. Yes, he knew about the sort of life one lived there! It was the same sort of life
he, too, had once lived! And that sort of life continued to exist, it
had always continued to exist while he, over here, like an animal with blinders, turned the shaft of the mill. He had ceased thinking about it! The world had closed itself off to him in the torment of his house, in the arid, keen suffering of his bookkeeping job... But now, yes, as if through a violent transfusion, it was reentering his spirit. A moment which ticked for him here in this prison of his flowed like an electric shiver throughout the whole world, and now that his imagina
tion had suddenly been awakened, he could follow that moment,
yes, follow it to known and unknown cities, moors, mountains, forests, seas... This same shiver, this same palpitation of time. While he lived the "impossible life" here, there were millions and millions of men scattered about the entire globe who lived differently. Now, in the same instant that he was suffering here, there were solitary snowcapped mountains whose blue
facades
rose up to the nocturnal sky... Yes, yes, he saw them, he saw them, he saw them that way... There were oceans, forests...