Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories - Italo Calvino [51]
to the situation; but - slowly does it — even twenty-two years ago one had to bend the words a little to talk of being becalmed: they were years of acute social tension, of dangerous conflicts, of discrimination, of collective and individual drama. The word ‘becalmed’ has a certain good-natured calm to it that has nothing in common with the climate as it was then, nor with the situation today; but what it also expresses is that heavy atmosphere of dead calm weather at sea, so threatening and unnerving for sailing ships, as depicted in the novels of Conrad and Melville, from which of course my story takes its cue. Thus the success my metaphor enjoyed in Italian political journalism can be explained by the fact that it says something more than any political jargon word, as for example ‘immo-bilism’. It is the impasse in a scenario of conflict, of irreconcilable antagonism, and then corresponding to that an immobility within the two camps engaged: the innate immobility of the ‘Spanish’ since immobility suits their ends and aims; while in the ‘pirate’ camp we have the contradiction between the vocation for the ‘rapid war’ with its relative ideology ('the rules of Admiral Drake's fleet’) and a situation where recourse to cannonfire and grappling hooks is not only impossible but would be counterproductive, suicidal even … I didn't offer any solutions in my story — just as I wouldn't be able to offer any now — I just mapped out a sort of catalogue of possible responses. There were the two opposing command structures, united in their desire to perpetuate the situation with the minimum amount of change (for opposite but far from unfounded reasons) first and foremost within their respective ships and then in the balance of forces outside the ships. (In this regard one can hardly deny that there have been changes, mainly in the Communist Party and on the left in general, but also amongst the Christian Democrats if only as a result of exhaustion.) Then there were the supporters, on both sides, of direct conflict, people whose policies had more to do with temperament than strategy; and the supporters, on both sides, of dialogue. (The development of these two poles corresponds to what has actually happened, the conflicting policies of achieving broad understandings and of applying revolutionary pressure each giving the illusion of activity while hardly changing the situation at all.) There is also the apocalyptic point of view ('a hurricane perhaps that with a bit of luck would send everybody to the bottom’), an allusion to the discussions on the prospect of a nuclear war, which at the time divided the Soviets, who saw it as the end of civilization, and the Chinese, who tended to play down the risks. Likewise typical of the time the story was written is the reference to technological development, which people then hoped might offer a solution (there was a great deal of talk of ‘automation’ as of something that would radically alter the parameters of the problem). But the invention of the steam engine I evoked has perhaps remained at the level of the pirate who plays with his coffeepot.
A few ‘historical’ details: I am unable to establish the exact date of the story; I remember that there was a long delay in the publication of that issue of Citta aperta, so the story must have been written some months before when I was still in the thick of internal discussions for the renewal of the Communist Party. Among the people engaged in this debate my story was immediately praised by the supporters of revisionism, whether on the right or the left: both ‘revolutionaries' and ‘reformers' felt it supported their points of view; though it has to be said that the two camps were not always clearly defined then. After the issue of Citta aperta was published, the story then appeared in Espresso and hence reached a very wide audience. Avanti wrote an editorial about it. Later an extreme left-wing pamphlet, A^ione comunista, published a parody of the story, tying it in to particular situations and people. Maurizio Ferrara then replied to this parody with