It was a huge, long room, and they passed between two white rows of beds. Coming from the darkness of the stairs, they were dazzled, painfully, in perhaps what was only a sensation of defense, a kind of refusal to perceive in the white mounds of sheets and pillows the human-colored shapes that rose from them; or else it was a first translation, from hearing to sight, of a shrill, constant animal cry: geee... geee... geee... which rose from some part of the ward, answered at times from another point by a chuckling or barking animal sound: gaa! gaa! gaa! gaa!
The shrill cry came from a tiny red face, all eyes, the mouth opened in motionless laughter: a boy, sitting in bed in a white shirt, or rather not sitting, but emerging, trunk and head, from the bed’s opening as a plant peeps up in a pot, like a plant’s stalk that ended (there was no sign of arms) in that fishlike head, and this boy-plant-fish (At what point can a human being be called human? Amerigo asked himself) moved up and down, bending forward at each “geee... gee...” And the “gaa! gaa!” that answered him came from another boy who seemed even more shapeless, though a head stuck out in his bed, greedy, flushed, a large mouth, and it must have had arms—or fins—which moved beneath the sheets where it seemed sheathed (to what degree can a creature be called a creature of whatever species?), and other voices echoed, making more sounds, excited perhaps by the appearance of people in the ward, and there was also a panting and moaning, like a shout ready to burst forth but promptly stifled. This came from an adult.
In that wing, some were adults—it seemed—and some, boys and children, if one was to judge by the dimensions and by signs like the hair or the skin color, which count among people outside. One was a giant, with a huge infant’s head held erect by pillows: he lay immobile, his arms hidden behind his back, the chin on the chest which extended into an obese belly, the eyes looked at nothing, the gray hair hung over the huge forehead (an elderly creature, who had survived in that long fetus-growth?), frozen in a dazed sadness.
The priest, the one with the beret, was already in the ward, waiting for them, he, too, with his list in hand. Seeing Amerigo, he glowered. But at that moment Amerigo was no longer thinking of the senseless reason for his being there; he felt the boundary line he was supposed to check was now another: not that of the “people’s will,” long since lost from sight, but the boundary of the human.
The priest and the chairman had approached the Reverend Mother who was in charge of that wing, with the names of the four registered voters. The nun pointed them out. Other nuns came forward, carrying a screen, a little table, all the things necessary to the voting in there.
One bed at the end of the ward was empty, neatly made; its occupant, perhaps already convalescing, was sitting on a chair beside the bed, dressed in flannel pajamas with a jacket over them, and sitting at the opposite side of the bed was an old man wearing a hat, certainly the patient’s father, who had come to visit him that Sunday. The son was young, simple-minded, of normal stature but somehow, it seemed, numbed in his movements. The father cracked some almonds for the son and passed them to him across the bed, and the son took them and slowly put them to his mouth. And the father watched him chew.
The fish-boys burst out with their cries and every so often the Reverend Mother broke away from the polling group to go and quiet one who had become overexcited, but without much success. Each thing that happened in the ward was separate from the other things, as if each bed enclosed a world out of communication with the rest, except for the cries that stimulated one another, in a crescendo, and spread a general agitation, partly like the racket of sparrows, and partly mournful, moaning. Only the man with the enormous head was immobile, as if untouched by any sound.
Amerigo went on watching the father and son. The son had long limbs and a long face, which was also hairy and numb, perhaps half blocked by paralysis. The father was a peasant, also in his best suit, and in some ways, especially in the length of his face and his hands, he resembled his son. Not in the eyes: the son had the helpless eyes of an animal, while the father’s eyes were half shut, wary, the eyes of an old farmer. They were sitting obliquely on their chairs, at either side of the bed, so they could stare at each other, and they paid no attention to anything around them. Amerigo kept his gaze on them, perhaps to rest from (or to avoid) other sights, or perhaps, even more, because he was somehow fascinated.
Meanwhile the other officials were taking the vote of someone in bed. They did it like this: they put the screen around him, with the table behind it, and, as he was a paralytic, the nun voted for him. They removed the screen, Amerigo looked at him: a purple face, flung back as if dead, mouth gaping, gums bared, eyes wide. Only that face, sunk in the pillow, could be seen: it was hard as a stick, except for a gasping that seemed to whistle at the base of his throat.
Where do they get the nerve to have such creatures vote? Amerigo asked himself, and only then did he remember that it was his job to prevent them.
They were already setting up the screen at another bed. Amerigo followed them. Another hairless, swollen face, stiff, with opened, twisted mouth, the eyeballs sticking out of the lids without lashes. But this inmate was restless, disturbed.
“But there’s a mistake!” Amerigo said. “How can this man vote?”
“There’s his name: Morin, Giuseppe,” the chairman said. Then, to the priest: “This is the one?”
“Yes, here’s the certificate,” the priest said. “Motor impediment of the limbs. You’re going to assist him, Reverend Mother, aren’t you?”
“Oh yes, yes, poor Giuseppe,” the nun said.
The man in the bed jerked as if he were being given electric shocks, groaning.
It was up to Amerigo now. He tore himself forcibly from his thoughts, from that barely glimpsed, remote frontier territory—frontier between what and what?—and everything on this or that side of it seemed mist.
“Just a moment,” he said in an expressionless voice, knowing he was repeating a formula, talking in a void. “Is the voter capable of recognizing the person who is voting for him? Is he capable of expressing his wishes? Signor Morin, I’m speaking to you: are you able to do this?”
“Here we go again,” the priest said to the chairman. “Reverend Mother is with them day and night here, and they ask him if he knows her....” He shook his head, with a little laugh.
Reverend Mother also smiled, but her smile was for all and for no reason. The problem of being recognized, Amerigo thought, didn’t exist for her; and he was impelled to compare the old nun’s gaze with that of the peasant spending Sunday at Cottolengo to stare into the eyes of his idiot son. The nun didn’t need recognition from those she helped, the good she derived from them—in exchange for the good she did them—was a general good, of which nothing was lost. Instead, the old peasant stared into his son’s eyes to be recognized, to keep from losing him, from losing that little, poor thing that was his, his son.
When no sign of recognition came from that trunk of a man with a voter’s certificate, the Reverend Mother was the least concerned of all: and yet she bustled about, carrying out the election formality as one of the many formalities the outside world demanded which, for reasons she didn’t bother to investigate, affected the efficiency of her service; and so she tried to raise that body’s shoulders on the pillows, as if it could make a pretense of sitting up. But no position suited that body any more: the arms, in the great white shirt, were numbed, the hands were bent back, and so were the legs, as if the limbs were trying to turn upon themselves, seeking refuge.
“Can’t he speak?” the chairman asked, raising one finger, as if apologizing for his doubt. “Can’t he speak at all?”
“No, Mr. Chairman, he can’t,” the priest said. “Hey, can you speak? No? You can’t? You see: he can’t speak. But he understands. You know who she is, don’t you? She’s good, isn’t she? Yes? He understands. For that matter, he voted in the last election.”
“Oh, yes,” the Reverend Mother said, “this one has always voted.”
“He
’s in that condition, but he can understand...” the woman in white said then, in a tone that might have been a question, an affirmation, or a hope. And she addressed the nun, as if to involve her too in this question-affirmation-hope: “He understands, doesn’t he?”
“Ah, well...” the Reverend Mother held out her arms and raised her eyes.
“Enough of this farce,” Amerigo said. “He’s unable to express his wishes, and so he can’t vote. Is that clear? We must show some respect. Nothing more need be said.”
(Did he mean “some respect” toward the election or “some respect” toward the suffering flesh? He didn’t specify.)
He expected his words to start a battle. But instead, nothing happened. Nobody protested. With a sigh, shaking his head, he looked at the twisted man. “True, he’s been getting worse,” the priest agreed, in a low voice. “He could still vote, even two years ago.”
The chairman indicated the register to Amerigo. “What do we do? Leave a blank, or shall we write a report separately?”
“Skip it, skip it,” was all Amerigo could say; he was thinking of another question: Was it more humane to help them live or help them die? But he had no answer to that question either.
So he had won his battle: the paralytic’s vote hadn’t been extorted from him. But a vote: what did a vote matter? This was the argument Cottolengo kept repeating to him, with its moans and its cries: you see what a joke your will of the people becomes, nobody believes in it here, here they take their revenge on the secular powers, it would have been better to let even that vote go by, it would have been better if the part of power gained by such means were to be left ineradicable, inseparable from their authority, that they should assume and bear it forever.
“What about number 27? And number 15?” the Reverend Mother asked. “Are the others who were supposed to vote going to vote, then?”
After a glance at the list, the priest had gone over to one bed. He came back, shaking his head. “That one’s in a bad way, too.”
“He can’t recognize anyone?” the woman supervisor asked, as if inquiring about a relative.
“He’s got worse, much worse,” the priest said. “We’ll leave it at that.”
“Then we’ll cross this one off, too,” the chairman said. “What about the fourth? Where is the fourth?”
But the priest had caught on by now, he only wanted to cut matters short. “If one can’t vote, then the others can’t either. Let’s go...” and he took the chairman’s arm, to urge him out, as the old man was trying to check the numbers on the beds. At a certain moment the chairman stopped at the motionless giant with the huge head, and consulted the list as if to verify that it was the fourth voter’s number, but the priest pushed him away. “Come, let’s go out. I can see that they’ve all got worse in here...”
“The other years they had them do it,” the nun said, as if she were talking of injections.
“Well, now they’re worse,” the priest concluded. “Obviously, a sick person either gets well or he gets worse.”
“Not all of them are capable of voting, of course, poor things,” the woman in white said, as if apologizing.
“Oh, my goodness!” the nun laughed, “There are some that can’t vote, all right. You should see over there, on the veranda...”
“Can we see?” the woman in white asked.
“Why, of course, come this way.” The nun opened the glass door.
“If they’re the kind that frighten people, I’m afraid,” the clerk said. Amerigo, too, had drawn back.
The Reverend Mother was still smiling: “No, no, why be afraid? They’re good creatures....”
The door opened on a terrace, a kind of veranda; and there was a semicircle of huge high chairs, with a number of young men seated in them, their heads shaved, but not their faces, their hands resting on the chair arms. They wore blue-striped robes which fell to the ground, hiding the pot beneath each chair, but the stink and the trickles of the overflow were visible on the floor, between their bare legs, their feet in clogs. They too had the same fraternal resemblance that reigned at Cottolengo and their expressions were the same, with their shapeless, snaggle-toothed mouths open in a snigger that could also be a kind of weeping; and the racket they made was a single, lifeless bleat of laughter and tears. Standing in front of them, an assistant-one of those ugly but brighter boys—kept order, with a switch in his hand, and he intervened when one of the boys wanted to touch himself, or get up, or when he disturbed the others or made too much noise. A bit of sun shone against the glass panes of the veranda, and the young men laughed at the reflections, then passed abruptly to wrath, shouting at one another, then they immediately forgot.
The election watchers looked in for a moment, from the door, then drew back, and went along the ward. The Reverend Mother preceded them. “You’re a saint,” the woman in white said. “If there weren’t souls like you, these poor unhappy things...”
The old nun looked around, with her limpid, happy eyes, as if she were in a garden filled with health, and she answered the other’s praise with those ready-made remarks that express modesty and love of one’s neighbor, but her words were natural, because everything must have been very natural for her, there must have been no doubts, since she had chosen definitively to live for these inmates.
Amerigo, too, would have liked to express his admiration and fondness to her, but what occurred to him was a speech on how society should be, according to him, a society where a woman like her would no longer be considered a saint, because persons like her would be countless, instead of being relegated to the margin of society, shut off in their halo of sanctity; and living, as she did, for a universal goal would be more natural than living for any special goal, and it would be possible for each to express himself, his own, buried, secret, individual energy, in his social functions, in his personal relationship with the common good....
But the more he stubbornly thought these things, the more he realized that this, too, wasn’t what mattered to him at that moment: it was something else, for which he couldn’t find words. In short, facing the old nun, he still felt himself in his own world, confirmed in the moral feelings he had always (though inaccurately and with effort) tried to base his life on, but the thought that gnawed at him there in the ward was another, it was still the presence of that peasant and his son, who indicated to him a territory he didn’t know.
The nun had chosen this ward freely, she had totally identified herself—rejecting the rest of the world—in that mission or militancy, and yet—or rather for that very reason—she remained distinct from the object of her mission, mistress of herself, happily free. The old peasant, instead, had chosen nothing, the tie that bound him to the ward was not something he had wanted, his life was elsewhere, on his land, but he made this Sunday journey to watch his son chew.
Now that the young idiot had finished his slow treat, father and son, still sitting at the sides of the bed, kept their hands on their knees, hands heavy with bones and veins, and their heads were twisted—the father’s under his pulled-down hat, and the son’s shaved like a convict’s—so they could still see each other out of the corner of an eye.
“There,” Amerigo thought, “those two, as they are, are necessary to each other.”
And he thought: “There, this way of being is love.”
And then: “Humanity reaches as far as love reaches; it has no frontiers except those we give it.”
XIII
IT WAS growing dark. The “detachment” went on through the wards: the women’s wards now. The job of collecting votes from those beds, with the screens to be moved each time, seemed endless. These patients, these old women, sometimes took ten minutes, a quarter of an hour. “Have you finished, Signora? Can we collect the ballot?” The poor woman, behind the screen, might even be in her death agony. “Have you folded the ballot? You have?” They took away the screen: the ballot was still there, open, white; or else with a squiggle, a scrawl.
Amerigo was vigilant; th
e patient had to be left alone behind the screen; the business of failing eyesight or paralyzed hands was no longer tolerated; there was no further talk even of allowing the nun to make the “x”; Amerigo was inflexible: if the voter couldn’t vote by himself, too bad, then he just wouldn’t vote.
From the moment when he began to feel less alien to those poor creatures, the rigor of his political task had also become less alien to him. It was as if, in that first ward, the net of objective contradictions that held him in a kind of resignation to the worst had been broken, and now he felt lucid, as if everything were clear to him, as if he understood what should be demanded of society and what, on the other hand, couldn’t be asked of society; but you had to achieve this awareness in person, otherwise it was useless.
Everyone knows those moments when you seem to understand everything; perhaps the next moment you try to define what you’ve understood and it all vanishes. Perhaps nothing had changed very much in him; his actions and their motives, his self-defense and so on—it’s hard for that to change. You can talk about it all you like, but after a certain point a man is what he is.
However, what he thought he had finally come to understand was his relationship with Lia, and among those beds that seemed to conceal in a vague penumbra all the evil that can disfigure women’s bodies (he was in a central room that branched out in broad-vaulted wards, dimly lighted by the reflection of shaded bulbs against the whiteness of the sheets—contracted arms rested there, like red or yellow branches—and these vaults or wings converged on a column, at whose foot, from one bed, a constant, squeaking cry was raised, from a bonneted form that must have been—he didn’t want to look—a child, but reduced to the mere pulse of that cry, and everything around it—the scene and the shadows that rose from the pillows—seemed to exist only because of that single, infantile effort to live, and the chorus of moans and gasping from all the beds seemed to come to support that voice that was as if bodiless), Amerigo saw Lia, but it was the sadness of Lia’s gray eyes that he saw, the hint of flight at the back of the eyes that couldn’t be driven out or consoled, the meek way her hair had of falling over her soft shoulders, but with the quality of a crouching, wild creature that wriggles free the moment you touch it, and the helpless way in which the tip of her breast rose above her arm: everything about her demanded protection, pity, but you couldn’t communicate it to her, because at the moment when you thought you had, she would roll over with a little laugh of defiance, her gray, hostile glance darkening, the flow of her hair stretching down her back to the swelling of her hips, and the long leg advancing with a light step as if she were shrugging off her burden of before. But now this daydream of Lia, this love seen as reciprocal and constant challenge or corrida or safari, no longer seemed to him in contrast to those hospital shades: they were strings of the same knot or tangle in which—often (or always) painfully—people are tied together. In fact, for the space of a second (that is to say, forever) he thought he had understood how the same meaning of the word “love” could comprehend a thing like his affair with Lia and the peasant’s silent Sunday visit to his son at Cottolengo.