（原名：卡尔维诺之死）
作者：（美）Gore Vidal
俞宙 译
阮一峰 校
一九八五年九月二十日，一个星期五的清晨，这年第一场秋分时的雷雨骤降罗马城。我被雷声和闪电惊醒，恍然觉得又一次置身于二战。快到午时，我被车子接走，前去地中海海岸边的一个叫卡斯提格连的小镇，因为九点钟这里将下葬两天前去世的依塔洛•卡尔维诺，他将长眠于一个乡村墓地中。
两星期前，正在家里的园子中准备诺顿讲座的卡尔维诺突发脑溢血，这个讲座他原本是为今年秋季和冬季在哈佛的讲学准备的，他整个夏季都在为此孜孜不倦地工作。我最后一次见到他是五月。我恭维了一番他的勇敢：他打算用英语做讲座，这种语言他能轻而易举地阅读，可说起来却不很流利，不象法语和西班牙语，他能说得极好；他毕竟是两个意大利农业学家生在古巴的儿子，而且又在巴黎生活了好多年。
那晚我们俩在我罗马的公寓的凉台上；头顶的灯光使他深陷的双目幽深异常。他向我皱眉，那种隐含选择意味的皱眉方式；随后他笑了，他展颜时，整张脸仿似一个极度聪慧的孩子刚刚解出了统一场理论。“在哈佛我一定会打结巴”，他说：“不过反正我每种语言都要打结巴。”
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不象美国，意大利既有教育系统（是好是坏无关实质问题），也有大众文化环境，阳春白雪和下里巴人并存。这些年来卡尔维诺已成为意大利文化的代表人物。意大利因它贡献出一位国际性作家而骄傲，我不必自谦地说，自从我一九七四年五月三十日在《纽约图书评论》上介绍了他的全部小说作品，卡尔维诺在美国声望鹊起。到一九八五年，英国以外所有读书的地方都有人在读卡尔维诺（译者注：原文如此）。我甚至在莫斯科的官僚气十足的文学圈内找到一个卡尔维诺读书小组，我相信我能说服美国的出版商翻译更多他的作品。有趣的是他一九五七年脱离意大利共产党的事没有令任何一方感觉不舒服。
在卡尔维诺六十二岁生日到来前的三星期，他与世长辞；意大利举国陷入哀痛之中，仿佛失去了一位敬爱的王子。我从一个美国人的角度发现两国的反差是巨大的。当一位美国作家离世，假设他是名流（威望已经是我们不再可能企及之物），他的照片将出现在头版折缝的下方；随后一段评论将刊登在报纸的阅读栏（假如存在这个栏目），通常由一个记者写就，更糟糕的是可能它是由一个从未读过死者的任何作品的业余写手呆在家里用陈词滥调堆积起来的。那就是全部了。
这一回，美国新闻报刊登出的卡尔维诺的讣告仓促而苍白无力：联系我们的可怜地维持着文学声誉的国内英语系和新闻王国的纽带前所未有的单薄虚弱，而接收端总是故障不断。奇怪的是，尽管《时代》和《新闻周刊》都把这件事排在阅读版面，它们的表现不算坏，尽管一家认为他是“超现实主义者”，另一家称他是“幻想大师”；可他不折不扣是个写实主义者，坚信“惟有从文体的坚实感中才能诞生创造力：幻想如同果酱；你必须把它涂在一片实在的面包片上。如果不这样做，它就没有自己的形状，象果酱那样，你不能从中造出任何东西。”这个朴素的比喻来自卡尔维诺死后意大利电视台播出的对他的访谈。
《纽约时报》为解释卡尔维诺在这些领域里的重要，援引了厄普代克——我们文学界里记述庸庸大众的不懈的使徒（这样说并无恶意）、阿特伍德（一个我所知的新名字）、勒-古因（大约是科幻小说作者，可为什么叫她来给当代最复杂的一位作家写闭幕词呢？）、迈克-伍德（他的评论相当精彩），以及出色的安东尼-伯吉斯，不过这次他的发挥不如以前。此外，赫伯特-密特甘又一次摘录了厄普代克和约翰-加德纳（记叙底层阶级的使徒），口气仿佛天主教的福音书，把天堂看成一所标准的美国大学。
欧洲将卡尔维诺之死视为文化的一次灾难。一位文学批评家——有别于文学理论家——为此撰写长文以哀之，而在意大利，两个星期内的每一天医院都对外发布病情公告，全国因为共同的尊敬之情被团结在一起，这位伟大的作家不仅通过他收集的童话故事进入了小学生的心中，也不时地被每一个读书的人阅读着。
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第一次脑溢血过后，为卡尔维诺做了长达数小时的外科手术。他从昏迷中脱离。他显得神智混乱：他以为一个医疗助手是警察；随后他怀疑自己刚做了一次心脏手术。那时手术主治医师却变得乐观起来，甚至很是多话。他告诉传媒他从未见到过象卡尔维诺这样复杂而精密的大脑。这话立时使我联想起记载中最小的大脑，阿纳托尔-法郎士的大脑。主治医师对传媒说他感到有义务竭尽他的全力救治卡尔维诺。毕竟去年夏天他还和儿子为《马可瓦多》起了争执。这个使他们迷惑的大脑必须存活下来，包括它的每一处稀罕的分杈。大家可以想象一下这句话的美国版本：我真不敢相信现在我正亲眼目睹约翰-利佛司（译者注：为美国七十年代著名女喜剧演员）的神奇的大脑；就在上周六，她还使我和儿子们不停大笑。当然，这个约翰-利佛司的崇拜者完全有可能救活卡尔维诺；除非其实根本没有希望，从不曾有过。六月间卡尔维诺感觉一阵剧烈的头疼；其实是中风第一次袭来。而且他来自一个有动脉缺陷的家族。这是报纸上这么说的。媒体对卡尔维诺的最后时日的报道和最近为那个老演员（译者注：里根）做的手术的报道何其相近，这个老演员被我们国家的主宰们选来打扮成总统，类似主题使卡尔维诺莞尔——表演的总统，就是如此。
当我们在雨中向北驶去，我翻阅着他的最后一本小说《帕洛马尔》。他在一九八三年十一月二十八日给了我这本书。我打了个冷战——并感到罪愆——这是我第一次注意到他的题赠：“给戈尔，关于自然的最后的思索，依塔洛”。“最后”（Last）不是个艺术家轻易使用的词语。这里“最后”意味着什么？最新的（Latest）？或指他最后一次为现象世界写作的尝试？或许出于某种原因，他是否已经知道他已处于“学习死亡”的过程之中，这正是全书最后一章的题目？
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我读过那本书。它很短。内容主要是一个叫帕洛马尔的老年男子对不同的主题产生的沉思，他实际代表了卡尔维诺本人。小说的环境变化不定，有海滩、有森林边的小屋、有罗马带阳台的公寓、有巴黎的食品店。现在不是评论这本书的场合。但我还是在书中找到了一些痕迹，在某些段落还做了记号，我觉得它们似乎可以来证实我的猜想。
帕洛马尔在海滩上，他试图找出波浪的本质。仅仅跟踪一个波浪是否可能？还是它们全变为了一个更大的浪头？“合众为一”（E pluribus unum）和“化一为众”正好用来总结卡尔维诺对我们身处环境的思考。 我们是宇宙的一部分？或者，简单说，假设宇宙真的存在，我们本身就是宇宙？ 卡尔维诺经常象科学家那样写作，就象他父母一样。他精确地观察自然的各种细微之处：星星，浪花，壁虎，海龟，海滩上妇女的裸胸。在这个过程中，他在宏观和微观之间动摇。部分和整体。当然，这可能只是我们眼睛的错觉。这本书用现在时写成，就象一个科学家在对正在进行的实验做报告，实验的内容是考察生命。
浪花带给他的只是暗示，而不是答案：在某个方向看，它们好象并不是来自地平线那头，而是来自海岸本身。"这会不会就是帕洛马尔先生将要得到的真正的结论呢？使波浪倒转、时间倒流?超越感觉与理智的局限去发现世界的真谛呢?”但根本不是这么一回事，他不能“将这个认识扩展到整个宇宙”。在傍晚游泳时，他看到“阳光反射在海中，宛若一把亮闪闪的利剑，从岸边刺向他。帕洛马尔先生在这把闪光的剑中游泳…”但是当其他人在这个时间也这样做时，每个人都身处这把无所不在又无从发现的剑中。“那把剑平等地强加在每个人的眼睛中，想回避也回避不了啊。‘难道我们共有的东西恰恰是好象专赐给我们个人的东西吗?’”当帕洛马尔在漂浮的时候，他想知道他是否存在。现在他滑向了唯我论：“假若在这由海水和陆地组成的地球上，除了死人那暗淡无光的眼睛外，再也没有人能睁开眼睛来观看．那么这把闪光的剑也许不会再闪光了吧。”他躺在海水里，进一步发展了这个想法。“可能不是因为有了眼睛才产生了闪光的剑，而是因为有了闪光的剑才产生了眼睛，因为闪光的剑离不开眼睛，需要有只眼睛在它的顶端向它观看。”长日将尽，帆板爱好者都收工回家了，帕洛马尔先生也只好回到岸上：“他现在深信不疑，那闪光之剑即使没有他也会继续存在。”
在庭院里，帕洛马尔先生观察乌龟独特的交配方式；他对鸟儿的鸣叫产生了沉思，这听上去就象人类的口哨，也许它们都是同一种的交流。“他认为这个观点前途无量，因为人类行为与其它物种行为之间的差异，一直是不安定的源泉。他认为，人类如果像乌鸫啭鸣一般打口哨，那么就有可能在人与其它物种之间架起—座桥梁。”但他打算用类似的口哨声去和鸟儿沟通，却只能得到令双方都尴尬的结局。接着，他又将注意力转向了他的草坪和其中不同的草种，他被那里面的野草吓了一跳，打算精确地把野草的种类和数目统计出来，直到“他不再想草坪，而想整个宇宙。他要把自己对草坪的这些想法应用到宇宙中。宇宙是规则的、有序的，也许是混乱的、盲目的。”这种卡尔维诺一贯使用的类推，就停止在这里（想想他说的幻想是面包上的果酱），答案又是整体中无数个体，或者“集合的集合”。
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观察和沉思在继续，他写道：“月亮在黄昏时最不引人注意，然而这却是月亮最需要我们关注的时刻，因为这时它自身的存在尚成问题。”当黑夜来临，他想知道是否月亮明亮的光辉“是因为天空离得远了，沉入黑暗之中了呢，还是因为月亮离得近了，把原来散射在四周的光从天空中集聚起来，统统归入自己那个收集器的圆口之中。” 现在你可以看到什么是典型的卡尔维诺的沉思。他看；他描述；他有一种科学家似的对数据的崇敬（超现实主义者和幻想小说家就绝不会这样）。他要我们不仅看到他所看到的，还要我们看到不用足够的注意力就会忽略的部分。在他的作品里突然出现了伽里略是毫不奇怪的。多少个世纪以来，庸人占据主导，人们普遍接受的观念是地心说，但对如伽里略或卡尔维诺这样的精英分子来说，宇宙完全是另外一个样子。伽里略用他那个时代的科学方法；卡尔维诺用他的想象。他们要么得出了事实，要么收集了数据，令他人理解这种现象。
1982年，我正和其他几个人在洛衫矶参加一个公开的演讲会，那时正赶上“三个外行星相‘冲’，用肉眼就可以看到……就是说整个夜晚都可以同时看到它们。”不用说，“帕洛马尔先生便急急忙忙走上阳台。”比较卡尔维诺看到的星星和我看到的，他看得比我更清楚，也许这和他为报纸写过大量的政治评论有关。但在他离开共产党以后，他更多地是描述政治和它的各种表象，而不是分析它的原因。“在这个人人都竭力发表自己的观点与看法的时代与国家，帕洛马尔先生养成了一个习惯，就是在发表意见前先咬三次舌头。咬了以后，如果他还深信自己应该讲，便开口讲。”但是这样一来，“有了正确的想法也不值得夸耀，因为从统计学的角度看，他头脑里出现的众多荒诞的、平庸的或含糊不清的想法之中，不可避免地会有个别条理清楚的想法，甚至会有天才的想法。对他是如此，对其他人当然也是如此。” 他是一个作家，不是一个理论家，所以他是一个政治的观察家，而不是一个政治家。
卡尔维诺不仅对城里的居民感兴趣，对动物园的居民也同样如此。“帕洛马尔先生的小女儿看长颈鹿早已看厌倦了，这时抓着他的手把他拉向企鹅馆。帕洛马尔先生讨厌企鹅，很勉强地跟随着女儿走向企鹅馆，心里一边还盘问着，为什么他对长颈鹿如此感兴趣呢。也许是因为他周围的世界就是这样不协调，他常常希望在这不协调的世界上找到某些和谐的图案，找到某种不变的常数；也许是因为他觉得自己的头脑就像这样杂乱无章，仿佛脑海里各种思绪互不相干，越来越难以找到一种能使自己的思想处于和谐状态的模式。”
帕洛马尔先生被吸引到了散发着恶臭的爬虫馆。“玻璃笼子之中有人类出现之前的世界，亦有人类出现之后的世界，表明人类世界既非永恒的世界，亦非惟一的世界。”静卧不动的鳄鱼让他感到恐惧，“它们正等待什么呢?还是不再等待什么了?它们怎么看待时间呢?……这种超越我们经验的关于时间的思考，我们是无法进行的。” 帕洛马尔先生又去看白猩猩，“它是世界上惟一的白猩猩，但并非出于它自己的意愿与喜好。” 那只猩猩出于无聊，玩弄着一只橡皮轮胎；它长时间的把它按在胸口。这幅情景刺激了帕洛马尔先生。“‘白猩猩有个摸得着看得见的轮胎，这使它那些无声的话语得到了一个有形的支持。’他想，‘我有这个白猩猩的形象。我们大家手中都有一个旧的空轮胎，这使我们达到语言所不能达到的最终含义。’”这是一个作家的终极境界；在这个无法描述的境界中，语言的缺席并非因为动物园中兽笼铁栏的阻挡，而是因为血肉制造的二进制电子信号系统的极限，卡尔维诺的那个系统就在1985年9月19日崩溃了。
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突然，我已来到了卡斯提格连，它位于一座临海的山上。我左手边的海滩是帕洛马尔先生曾一度观察那光之剑的地点。海水泛起使人怏怏不乐的古怪的紫色，这颜色更适合卡尔维诺的出生地加勒比海岸，而不是在地中海。天空阴沉。空气闷热、潮湿而无风。我比预定时间早到了四十分钟。
墓园在镇子背后一座低矮的山上。我们把车停在已倾圮的塔以及一堵中世纪的土墙边。我回忆起卡尔维诺对水泥的深深的厌恶感。在他早期的一本书中，他描述了二十世纪五十年代建筑业如何将他的家乡掩埋在“可怕的混凝土”的海洋里。墓园入口的右方，墙壁的很大一块贴满了相同内容的小片的葬礼通知，把这件事复述了上百遍：他的名字“卡尔维诺”；镇子的名字卡斯提格连，“帕洛马尔先生的镇子”，通知自豪地使用了这样的称呼；以及城市市长、议会和老百姓表达的敬意。
墓园里面有许多被墙隔开的区域。首先是一处前厅，周围的墙壁里布满了一只只抽屉，死者就躺在里头，抽屉一个叠着一个，上面挂着死者的相片，由于拍照的时间相对此人的一生是太晚了，相片无法勾起敬畏的反面——怜悯之情。到处可见塑料花和一些天然的花。还有少数几个小礼拜堂，应该是富豪和世家的亡人摆放处。我感觉到一阵焦虑：他们应该不准备把卡尔维诺放进这样一个抽屉里吧？但在前厅尽头右手露天的一堵矮墙处，我看见一排巨大的更合适出现在美国或那波里的黑帮葬礼上的花圈， 以及一垄新坟，大小和中等豪华宾馆的浴缸相仿。我从一个花圈上读出“共产党”和“参议员”的字样，那这应该是意大利议会里共产党代表团敬献的花圈。顺便说说，意大利是一个多政党而少意识形态的国家，相对美、英两国的同行而言，它的普通议员的个人水平更高。莫拉维亚是欧洲议会的一员。夏侠被选入下议院。每个政党都力图在自己的竞选名单中加进更多的有才华的知识分子的名字。佛罗伦萨的现任市长直到最近还是巴黎歌剧院的院长：按照大众的逻辑，能调理那帮无赖的人自然能管好佛罗伦萨。
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目光越过围墙，便能望见紫色大海和红砖白漆的房子。当我有些郁然地眺望着帕洛马尔先生的国土，我被一个来自那波里的记者认了出来。不管怎样，我是他的邻居；我住在那波里旁边的拉佛罗。我就在墓地间接受了采访。请谈一下你和卡尔维诺见面的情形？几点微温的雨点滴落。一个摄影师从礼拜堂后面跑出来，给我拍照。国家电视台的摄制组也来了。十一年前，我说，我写了点关于卡尔维诺的作品的东西。你在此之前见到过他吗？在象意大利这样的小国家，作家间的恭维反而比在我们亲爱的《纽约时报》上更招人注意。不，在我写那篇东西的时候我还没有见过他。我只是读过他后对他很敬佩，我愿意为那些有机会读到我写的东西的人们介绍他的作品（这是批评家的唯一任务）。你后来和他见过面吗？是啊，他为此给我来了封信。是意大利语还是英语？意大利语，我说。信里说了点什么呢？你以为他在信里会说什么呢？我感到恼怒。他当然说我写的东西他很喜欢。
实际上卡尔维诺来信的特征是趣味盎然而点到即止。我在文章的结尾处写道：“对卡尔维诺的阅读带给我迷醉的感觉，仿佛我正在写下他已经写下的文字；这表明他的艺术有力地将读者和作者合成一体，亦不妨称之为太初的一。”他注意到了这句话。他在回信的起首先客气地说了些一向认为我的“尖刻的讽刺”很有吸引力之类的话，随后指出出于两点原因他很偏爱我对他的评论。首先，“评论本身使人觉得它是作者的尽兴之作，文中的赞扬、批评和保留都饱含诚意、洒脱和不尽的幽默感，这种愉快的兴致不可阻碍地传递给了读者。其次，我一向认为从我的作品里很难抽出统一的主题，因为它们之间是如此不同。现在你——用恰当的方法探索了我的作品，也就是通过一种并不系统的接近方式，这里停停，那里靠靠；有时毫不绕弯直取中心；有时又象个漫游者般徘徊——却成功地为我的全部作品提炼出一个更象是哲理的观念——即“整体和万象”等——我为此非常高兴，有人从我没多少哲学细胞的心智产品里也发现了哲理。” 随后卡尔维诺表达了这样的观点。“你文末的断语在我看来极其重要。我不肯定这感想是否为我而发，但它对于我们每个人所理想的文学都是正确的：作者和读者应合为一体，即太初的一。我将以一个完整的圆结束你我的讨论，让我们把这个一也指称那一切吧。”这样说来，此后出版的《帕洛马尔》正是一切哲学线索的集大成之作；由此也就能理解他的题词：“我关于自然的最后的思索”。
我没有把这些讲给那年轻的记者听。不过我确实告诉他在那次通信后不久，我见到了他和他的夫人齐琪塔，那是在一个美国出版商的家里，尽管在此之前他保证我那里只有我和卡氏夫妻，结果一屋子辉映着美国的文人才子。因为害怕和他们过早地合为一体，我乘夜色离去。
两年前，当我被授予拉佛罗的荣誉公民，卡尔维诺应邀也来参加这个仪式，仪式上他为我的作品作了精彩的评讲，尤其提到了《图卢斯》。而且，卡尔维诺的罗马公寓和我的在一条街上（我们之间隔着——哦，美妙的飘忽的象征——万神殿），我们时不时在此碰面。
× × ×
去年，卡尔维诺兴致勃勃地等待着去哈佛讲学的秋冬季的到来。他甚至集中精力于“文学理论”。他完全清楚我们大学的英语系已变成了何等臭不可闻的幼儿园，我也有些迫不及待地想知道他五个讲座想讲点什么。我打算助他一臂之力，向他提供一段出奇愚蠢的笨人所阐述的文学无市场的观点（摘自《党派评论》）。约翰-加德纳的话经常被尊敬地加以引用：“几乎所有的好小说里，基本的——逃不掉的——小说套路是：主角在追求，遇到阻力（也许包括他自己的疑虑），最后不外乎赢、输、达成交易。”想区别精英、庸人和笨人的差别吗，刚才那句话就是笨人贩卖的货物里的极品，金灿灿地镌刻在米高梅大楼的门口大堂中央，不过《党派评论》几个笔杆子不会亲手这么写。《党派评论》的“文评家”只肯从《纽约时报》的“文论员”那里摘录卡尔维诺为何受欢迎的解释。“如果生活失败了，还会重新开始；他小说中人物的生命能经历一次次新的开始，生活的复杂性没有显示的机会。和法国与俄罗斯伟大的小说家不同（这里表现出标准的庸人思维：哪个小说家，蠢货？把名字说出来，举你的例子，写清楚），他们追踪着小说人物漫长曲折的人生中的事变，卡尔维诺却在轻松的开头之后背离原来的布局，转向另一条轨迹。”此类的文字使美国的“文学闲扯”（告诉您这是我造的词）常背负着恶名。但我们的《党派评论》的文论家，一个今年走红的少数民族的女子，固执地声称这种“不确定性”绝不是真正的读书人喜欢的东西。“而卡尔维诺仅仅在文学理论家中流行——假如真有这回事——那都是些‘文本’的消耗者，根本不关心小说或者故事。”可惜我现在再无机会与卡尔维诺读着从布瓦尔和白居谢先生移民的国度（译者注：福楼拜所刻画的两个书呆子，是现代化的愚蠢的典型）发出的最新报告而一同大笑了。
一辆载满警察的大篷车来到了山脚下。人群等待着。前天，意大利的总统莅临西爱纳医院向卡尔维诺遗体告别。我可以想象出咱们美国一幕相似的场景。在图尔莎医院的顶层，令人尊敬的院长先生步入肃静的病房。“总统先生，都结束了。他已经跨过了闪光的河水。”演员总统的眼眸里泪光荧荧。“收场了，”他低语道。那个他身旁的矮小的人没有睫毛的大眼睛里充满泪水。“莫非世上再也没有滑稽小说了？”演员总统将她搂紧。“滑稽小说总是会有的，妈咪，”他说。“但那是两样的。因为没有了路易斯-拉马（译者注：美国著名的畅销小说家）。”
× × ×
这时数百位卡尔维诺的朋友挤满了墓园，有作家、编辑、出版商、媒体和本地名绅。我久久地握住齐琪塔的手；据说她已经有两星期在和渐渐死去的噩梦作斗争
《帕洛马尔》最后一章的开头是：“帕洛马尔先生决定从现在开始他就表现得如同已死之人，看世界在没有他的情况下如何运转。”至今为止，我觉得情况表现得不是很妙。墨西哥发生了地震，他的女儿因此将迟些才能来到葬礼上。再加一句，葬礼上没有牧师、仪式和悼词。突然数十台电视摄象机一起闪光，装着卡尔维诺的黑得发亮的木棺出现在前厅。我发现棺木很小。他难道比我记忆中的矮小吗？或者躯壳萎缩了？当然他已不在了，可恰如他写到的那样：“首先，你不要把死亡和活着混淆，死亡是这样一种状态，它绵延于你出生以前的无尽时空，并且明显地与另一半对称，我指的是蔓延于你死后的无尽时空。确切地说，我们在出生之前只是无数可能中的一种，它可能实现也可能不；然而，一旦死去，我们就不能实现我们的过去（那时我们已经完全拥有过去，却再也没有能力去影响它）和我们的未来（我们的影响即使能到达那里，也已经和我们无干了）。”
重重一声，执绋者将棺木放进浴缸相仿的浅坑中。帕洛马尔先生的鼻子现在低于他曾费心考察的地面四英寸。然后瓦片粗粗地置放在棺木上；匣子看不到了。大家在等他女儿的时候燥热难耐。我们面面相觑，仿佛置身于迟迟不开的晚会上。我认出了娜塔莉-金斯博格。我还看见个人应该是艾科，应了那句“人的一生是事件的集合，那最后一件也可能改变整体的意义”。我注意到人群里有数十个学生小孩。他们是卡尔维诺收集的童话的崇拜者；当然啦，他们大概算是早熟的“文本”消耗者和“童年”文学理论家。随后他的女儿和一桶桶水泥同时到达。一个泥水匠把水泥铺在瓦片上；他技巧娴熟地用铲刀刮平表面。可怕的水泥。“由此帕洛马尔准备好了成为一个怨气十足的死人，因为他不愿意接受他将停止变化的判决；可他也不愿意放弃任何一部分他自己，即使那不过是个负担。”最终水泥和地面齐平了；那就是全部了。
我站在一动不动的齐琪塔身后。终于我把目光从长方形的灰色新水泥处移开，另一处正凝视着我的是卡尔维诺的脸。他看上去焦虑、奇怪，有些不对劲。但错不了那是帕洛马尔先生，目睹着他自己的葬礼。有一刻我们相互对视着；然后他向棺木看去，那里装的是依塔洛，而不是他。我误当作依塔洛的人原来是他的弟弟，福罗里艾诺。
我比其他人早离开。在返回罗马的路上，阳光灼热；可雨点开始飘落。魔鬼在揍老婆了，意大利南方有这种说法。接着一道彩虹横贯东面的天空。对罗马人和伊特鲁里亚人来说，彩虹是世事将起变化的不祥之兆，君王驾崩，城市陷落，世界毁灭。我做了个赶走毒眼的手势。此刻时间可以停止了。但是，“‘如果时间终结了，它就能被一个瞬间一个瞬间的描述了，’帕洛马尔想，‘描述的时候，每个瞬间都会膨胀起来，看不见两端。’他决定致力于描述自己一生中每个瞬间，在他完成全部的描述之前，他不再去想死亡。就在这时他死了。就此结束了。”“我关于自然的最后的思索”就这样结束了，卡尔维诺与自然是一体了，回归太初的一。（完）
1985年11月21日《纽约书评》（NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS）
附英语原文：
CALVINO'S DEATH
by Gore Vidal
On the morning of Friday, September 20, 1985, the first equinoctial storm of the year broke over the city of Rome. I awoke to thunder and lightning; and thought I was, yet again, in the Second World War. Shortly before noon, a car and driver arrived to take me up the Mediterranean coast to a small town on the sea called Castiglion della Pescaia where, at one o'clock, Italo Calvino, who had died the day before, would be buried in the village cemetery.
Calvino had had a cerebral hemorrhage two weeks earlier while sitting in the garden of his house at Pineta di Roccamare, where he had spent the summer working on the Charles Eliot Norton lectures that he planned to give during the fall and winter at Harvard. I last saw him in May. I commended him on his bravery: He planned to give the lectures in English, a language that he read easily but spoke hesitantly, unlike French and Spanish, which he spoke perfectly; but then he had been born in Cuba, son of two Italian agronomists; and had lived for many years in Paris.
It was night. We were on the terrace of my apartment in Rome; an overhead light made his deep-set eyes look even darker than usual. Italo gave me his either-this-or-that frown; then he smiled, and when he smiled, suddenly, the face would become like that of an enormously bright child who has just worked out the unified field theory. "At Harvard. I shall stammer," he said. "But then I stammer in every language."
* * *
Unlike the United States, Italy has both an educational system (good or bad is immaterial) and a common culture, both good and bad. In recent years Calvino had become the central figure in Italy's culture. Italians were proud that they had produced a world writer whose American reputation began, if I may say so, since no one else will, when I described all of his novels as of May 30, 1974 in The New York Review of Books. By 1985, except for England, Calvino was read wherever books are read. I even found a Calvino coven in Moscow's literary bureaucracy, and I think that I may have convinced the state publishers to translate more of him. Curiously, the fact that he had slipped away from the Italian Communist party in 1957 disturbed no one.
Three weeks short of Calvino's sixty-second birthday, he died; and Italy went into mourning, as if a beloved prince had died. For an American, the contrast between them and us is striking. When an American writer dies, there will be, if he's a celebrity (fame is no longer possible for any of us), a picture below the fold on the front page; later, a short appreciation on the newspaper's book page (if there is one), usually the work of a journalist Or other near-writer who has not actually read any of the dead author's work but is at home with the arcane of gossipy "Page Six"; and that would be that.
In Calvino's case, the American newspaper obituaries were perfunctory and incompetent: The circuits between the English departments, where our tablets of literary reputation are now kept, and the world of journalism are more than ever fragile and the reception is always bad. Surprisingly, Time and Newsweek, though each put him on the "book page," were not bad, though one thought him "surrealist" and the other a "master of fantasy"; he was, of course, a true realist, who believed "that only a certain prosaic solidity can give birth to creativity: fantasy is like jam; you have to spread it on a solid slice of bread. If not, it remains a shapeless thing, like jam, out of which you can't make anything." This homely analogy is from an Italian television interview, shown after his death.
The New York Times, to show how well regarded Calvino is in these parts, quoted John Updike, our literature's perennial apostle to the middlebrows (this is not meant, entirely, unkindly), as well as Margaret Atwood (a name new to me), Ursula K. Le Guin (an estimable sci-fi writer, but what is she doing, giving, as it were, a last word on one of the most complex of modern writers?), Michael Wood, whose comment was pretty good, and, finally, the excellent Anthony Burgess, who was not up to his usual par on this occasion. Elsewhere, Mr. Herbert Mitgang again quoted Mr. Updike as well as John Gardner, late apostle to the lowbrows, a sort of Christian evangelical who saw Heaven as a paradigmatic American university.
Europe regarded Calvino's death as a calamity for culture. A literary critic, as opposed to theorist, wrote at length in Le Morde, while in Italy itself, each day for two weeks, bulletins from the hospital at Siena were published, and the whole country was suddenly united in its esteem not only for a great writer but for someone who reached not only primary schoolchildren through his collections of folk and fairy tales but, at one time or another, everyone else who reads.
* * *
After the first hemorrhage, there was a surgical intervention that lasted many hours. Calvino came out of coma. He was disoriented: He thought that one of the medical attendants was a policeman; then he wondered if he'd had open-heart surgery. Meanwhile, the surgeon had become optimistic, even garrulous. He told the press that he'd never seen a brain structure of such delicacy and complexity as that of Calvino. I thought immediately of the smallest brain ever recorded, that of Anatole France. The surgeon told the press that he had been obliged to do his very best. After all, he and his sons had read and argued over Marcovaldo last winter. The brain that could so puzzle them must be kept alive in all its rarity. One can imagine a comparable surgeon in America: Only last Saturday she had kept me and my sons in stitches; now I could hardly believe that I was actually gazing into the fabulous brain of Joan Rivers! On. the other hand, the admirer of Joan Rivers might have saved Calvino; except that there was no real hope, ever. In June he had had what he thought was a bad headache; it was the first stroke. Also, he came from a family with a history of arterial weakness. Or so it was said in the newspapers. The press coverage of Calvino's final days resembled nothing so much as that of the recent operation on the ancient actor that our masters have hired to impersonate a president, the sort of subject that used to delight Calvino -- the Acting President, that is.
As we drove north through the rain, I read Calvino's last novel, Palomar. He had given it to me on November 28, 1983. I was chilled -- and guilty -- to read for the first time the inscription: "For Gore, these last meditations about Nature, Italo." Last is a word artists should not easily use. What did this "last" mean? Latest? Or his last attempt to write about the phenomenal world? Or did he know, somehow, that he was in the process of "Learning to be dead," the title of the book's last chapter?
* * *
I read the book. It is very short. A number of meditations on different subjects by one Mr. Palomar, who is Calvino himself. The settings are, variously, the beach at Castiglion della Pescaia, the nearby house in the woods at Roccamare, the flat in Rome with its terrace, a food specialty shop in Paris. This is not the occasion to review the book. But I made some observations and marked certain passages that seemed to me to illuminate the prospect.
Palomar is on the beach at Castiglion: he is trying to figure out the nature of waves. Is it possible to follow just one? Or do they all become one? E pluribus unum and its reverse might well sum up Calvino's approach to our condition. Are we a part of the universe? Or is the universe, simply, us thinking that there is such a thing? Calvino often writes like the scientist that his parents were. He observes, precisely, the minutiae of nature: stars, waves, lizards, turtles, a woman's breast exposed on the beach. In the process, he vacillates between macro and micro. The whole and the part. Also, tricks of eye. The book is written in the present tense, like a scientist making reports on that ongoing experiment, the examined life.
The waves provide him with suggestions but no answers: Viewed in a certain way, they seem to come not from the horizon but from the shore itself. "Is this perhaps the real result that Mr. Palomar is about to achieve? To make the waves run in the opposite direction, to overturn time, to perceive the true substance of the world beyond sensory and mental habits?" But it doesn't quite work, and he cannot extend "this knowledge to the entire universe." He notes during his evening swim that "the sun's reflection becomes a shining sword on the water stretching from shore to him. Mr. Palomar swims in that sword . . ." But then so does everyone else at that time of day, each in the same sword which is everywhere and nowhere. "The sword is imposed equally on the eye of each swimmer; there is no avoiding it. 'Is what we have in common precisely what is given to each of us as something exclusively his?' " As Palomar floats he wonders if he exists. He drifts now toward solipsism: "If no eye except the glassy eye of the dead were to open again on the surface of the terraqueous globe, the sword would not gleam any more." He develops this, floating on his back. "Perhaps it was not the birth of the eye that caused the birth of the sword, but vice versa, because the sword had to have an eye to observe it at its climax." But the day is ending, the windsurfers are all beached, and Palomar comes back to land: "He has become convinced that the sword will exist even without him."
In the garden at Roccamare, Palomar observes the exotic mating of turtles; he ponders the blackbird's whistle, so like that of a human being that it might well be the same sort of communication. "Here a prospect that is very promising for Mr. Palomar's thinking opens out; for him the discrepancy between human behavior and the rest of the universe has always been a source of anguish. The equal whistle of man and blackbird now seems to him a bridge thrown over the abyss." But his attempts to communicate with them through a similar whistling leads to "puzzlement" on both sides. Then, contemplating the horrors of his lawn and its constituent parts, among them weeds, he precisely names and numbers what he sees until "he no longer thinks of the lawn: he thinks of the universe. He is trying to apply to the universe everything he has thought about the lawn. The universe as regular and ordered cosmos or as chaotic proliferation." The analogy, as always with Calvino, then takes off (the jam on the bread) and the answer is again the many within the one, or "collections of collections."
* * *
Observations and meditations continue He notes, "Nobody looks at the moon in the afternoon, and this is the moment when it would most require our attention, since its existence is still in doubt." As night comes on, he wonders if the moon's bright splendor is "due to the slow retreat of the sky, which, as it moves away, sinks deeper and deeper into darkness or whether, on the contrary it is the moon that is coming forward, collecting the previously scattered light and depriving the sky of it, concentrating it all in the round mouth of its funnel." One begins now to see the method of a Calvino meditation. He looks; he describes; he has a scientist's respect for data (the opposite of the surrealist or fantasist). He wants us to see not only what he sees but what we may have missed by not looking with sufficient attention. It is no wonder that Galileo crops up in his writing. The received opinion of mankind over the centuries (which is what middlebrow is all about) was certain that the sun moved around the earth but to a divergent highbrow's mind, Galileo's or Calvino's, it is plainly the other way around. Galileo applied the scientific methods of his day; Calvino used his imagination. Each either got it right or assembled the data so that others could understand the phenomenon.
In April 1982, while I was speaking to a Los Angeles audience with George McGovern, Eugene McCarthy, and the dread physical therapist Ms. Fonda-Hayden, "the three 'external' planets, visible to the naked eye . . . are all three 'in opposition' and therefore visible for the whole night." Needless to say, "Mr. Palomar rushes out on to the terrace." Between Calvino's stars and mine, he had the better of it; yet he wrote a good deal of political commentary for newspapers. But after he left the Communist party, he tended more to describe politics and its delusions than take up causes. "In a time and in a country where everyone goes out of his way to announce opinions or hand down judgments, Mr. Palomar has made a habit of biting his tongue three times before asserting anything. After the bite, if he is still convinced of what he was going to say, he says it." But then, "having had the correct view is nothing meritorious; statistically, it is almost inevitable that among the many cockeyed, confused or banal ideas that come into his mind, there should also be some perspicacious ideas, even ideas of genius; and as they occurred to him, they can surely have occurred also to somebody else." As he was a writer of literature and not a theorist, so he was an observer of politics and not a politician.
Calvino was as inspired by the inhabitants of zoos as by those of cities. "At this point Mr. Palomar's little girl, who has long since tired of watching the giraffes, pulls him toward the penguins' cave. Mr. Palomar, in whom penguins inspire anguish, follows her reluctantly and asks himself why he is so interested in giraffes. Perhaps because the world around him moves in an unharmonious way, and he hopes always to find some pattern to it, a constant. Perhaps because he himself feels that his own advance is impelled by uncoordinated movements of the mind, which seem to have nothing to do with one another and are increasingly difficult to fit into any pattern of inner harmony."
Palomar is drawn to the evil-smelling reptile house. "Beyond the glass of every cage, there is the world as it was before man, or after, to show that the world of man is not eternal and is not unique." The crocodiles, in their stillness, horrify him. "What are they waiting for, or what have they given up waiting for? In what time are they immersed? . . . The thought of a time outside our existence is intolerable." Palomar flees to the albino gorilla, "sole exemplar in the world of a form not chosen, not loved." The gorilla, in his boredom, plays with a rubber tire; he presses it to his bosom by the hour. The image haunts Palomar. " 'Just as the gorilla has his tire, which serves as tangible support for a raving, wordless speech,' he thinks, 'so I have this image of a great white ape. We all turn in our hands an old, empty tire through which we would like to reach the final meaning, at which words do not arrive.' " This is the ultimate of writers' images; that indescribable state where words are absent not because they are stopped by the iron bars of a cage at the zoo but by the limitations of that bone-covered binary electrical system which, in Calvino's case, broke down on September 19, 1985.
* * *
Suddenly, up ahead, on a hill overlooking the sea, is Castiglion della Pescaia. To my left is the beach where Palomar saw but sees no longer the sword of light. The sea has turned an odd disagreeable purple color, more suitable to the Caribbean of Calvino's birth than the Mediterranean. The sky is overcast. The air is hot, humid, windless (the headline of today's newspaper, which has devoted six pages to Calvino's life and work: CATACLISMA IN MESSICO). I am forty minutes early.
The cemetery is on a hill back of the town which is on a lower hill. We park next to a piece of medieval wall and a broken tower. I walk up to the cemetery which is surrounded by a high cement wall. I am reminded of Calvino's deep dislike of cement. In one of his early books, La Speculazione Edilizia, he described how the building trade had managed, in the 1950s, to bury the Italian Riviera, his native Liguria, under a sea of "horrible reinforced cement"; "il boom, " it was called. To the right of the cemetery entrance a large section of wall has been papered over with the same small funeral notice, repeated several hundred times. The name "Italo Calvino," the name of Castiglion della Pescaia, "the town of Palomar," the sign says proudly; then the homage of mayor and city council and populace.
Inside the cemetery there are several walled-off areas. The first is a sort of atrium, whose walls are filled with drawers containing the dead, stacked one above the other, each with a photograph of the occupant, taken rather too late in life to arouse much pity as opposed to awe. There are plastic flowers everywhere and a few real flowers. There are occasional small chapels, the final repository of wealthy or noble families. I have a sense of panic: They aren't going to put Italo in a drawer, are they? But then to the right, at the end of the atrium, in the open air, against a low wall, I see a row of vast floral wreaths, suitable for an American or Neapolitan gangster, and not a drawer but a new grave, the size of a bathtub in a moderately luxurious hotel. On one of the wreaths, I can make out the words Senato and Communist. . ., the homage of the Communist delegation in the Italian Senate. Parenthetically, since Italy is a country of many political parties and few ideologies, the level of the ordinary parliamentarian is apt to be higher than his American or English counterpart. Moravia sits in the European Parliament. Sciascia was in the chamber of deputies. Every party tries to put on its electoral list a number of celebrated intellectual names. The current mayor of Florence was, until recently, the head of the Paris Opera: According to popular wisdom, anyone who could handle that can of worms can probably deal with Florence.
* * *
Over the wall, the purple sea and red-tiled whitewashed houses are visible. As I gaze, moderately melancholy, at Palomar country, I am recognized by a journalist from Naples. I am a neighbor, after all; I live at nearby Ravello. Among the tombs, I am interviewed. How had I met Calvino? A few drops of warm rain fall. A cameraman appears from behind a family chapel and takes my picture. The state television crew is arriving. Eleven years ago, I say, I wrote a piece about his work. Had you met him before that? Logrolling is even more noticeable in a small country like Italy than it is in our own dear New York Times. No, I had not met him when I wrote the piece. I had just read him, admired him; described (the critic's only task) his work for those who were able to read me (the critic's single aim). Did you meet him later? Yes, he wrote me a letter about the piece. In Italian or English? Italian, I say. What did he say? What do you think he said? I am getting irritable. He said he liked what I'd written.
Actually, Calvino's letter had been, characteristically, interesting and tangential. I had ended my description with "Reading Calvino, I had the unnerving sense that I was also writing what he had written; thus does his art prove his case as writer and reader become one, or One." This caught his attention. Politely, he began by saying that he had always been attracted by my "mordant irony," and so forth, but he particularly liked what I had written about him for two reasons. The first, "One feels that you have written this essay for the pleasure of writing it, alternating warm praise and criticism and reserve with an absolute sincerity, with freedom, and continuous humor, and this sensation of pleasure is irresistibly communicated to the reader. Second, I have always thought it would be difficult to extract a unifying theme from my books, each so different from the other. Now you -- exploring my works as it should be done, that is, by going at it in an unsystematic way, stopping here and there; sometimes aimed directly without straying aside; other times, wandering like a vagabond -- have succeeded in giving a general sense to all I have written, almost a philosophy -- 'the whole and the many,' etc.-- and it makes me very happy when someone is able to find a philosophy from the productions of my mind which has little philosophy." Then Calvino comes to the point. "The ending of your essay contains an affirmation of what seems to me important in an absolute sense. I don't know if it really refers to me, but it is true of an ideal literature for each one of us: the end being that every one of us must be, that the writer and reader become one, or One. And to close all of my discourse and yours in a perfect circle, let us say that this One is All." In a sense, the later Palomar was the gathering together of the strands of a philosophy or philosophies; hence, the inscription "my last meditations on Nature."
I let slip not a word of this to the young journalist. But I do tell him that soon after the letter I had met Calvino and his wife, Chichita, at the house of an American publisher, and though assured that there would be no writers there but us, I found a room ablaze with American literary genius. Fearful of becoming prematurely One with them, I split into the night.
Two years ago, when I was made an honorary citizen of Ravello, Calvino accepted the town's invitation to participate in the ceremony, where he delivered a splendid discourse on my work in general and on Duluth in particular. Also, since Calvino's Roman flat was on the same street as mine (we were separated by -- oh, the beauty of the random symbol! -- the Pantheon), we saw each other occasionally.
* * *
For the last year, Calvino had been looking forward to his fall and winter at Harvard. He even began to bone up on "literary theory." He knew perfectly well what a mephitic kindergarten our English departments have become, and I cannot wait to see what he has to say in the five lectures that he did write. I had planned to arm him with a wonderfully silly bit of lowbrow criticism (from Partisan Review) on why people just don't like to read much anymore. John Gardner is quoted with admiration: "'In nearly all good fiction, the basic -- all but inescapable -- plot form is this: a central character wants something, goes after it despite opposition (perhaps including his own doubts), and so arrives at a win, lose or draw.'" For those still curious about high-, middle-, and lowbrow, this last is the Excelsior of lowbrow commercialites, written in letters of gold in the halls of the Thalberg Building at MGM but never to be found in, say, the original Partisan Review of Rahv and Dupee, Trilling and Chase. The PR "critic" then quotes "a reviewer" in The New York Times who is trying to figure out why Calvino is popular. "If love fails, they begin again; their lives are a series of new beginnings, where complications have not yet begun to show themselves. Unlike the great Russian and French novelists [this is pure middlebrow: Which novelists, dummy? Name names, make your case, describe], who follow their characters through the long and winding caverns [!] of their lives, Calvino just turns off the set after the easy beginning and switches to another channel." This sort of writing has given American bookchat (a word I coined, you will be eager to know) a permanently bad name. But our PR critic, a woman, this year's favored minority (sic), states, sternly, that all this "indeterminacy" is not the kind of stuff real folks want to read. "And Calvino is popular, if at all, among theorists, consumers of 'texts' rather than of novels and stories." I shall now never have the chance to laugh with Calvino over this latest report from the land to which Bouvard Pecuchet emigrated.
At the foot of cemetery hill, a van filled with police arrives. Crowds are anticipated. The day before, the president of the republic had come to the Siena hospital to say farewell. One can imagine a similar scene in the United States. High atop the Tulsa Tower Hospital, the Reverend Oral Roberts enters the hushed room. "Mr. President, it's all over. He has crossed the shining river." A tear gleams in the Acting President's eye. "The last roundup," he murmurs. The tiny figure at his side, huge lidless eyes aswim with tears, whispers, "Does this mean, no more Harlequin novels?" The Acting President holds her close. "There will always be Harlequins, Mommie," he says. 'But they won't be the same. Not without Louis L'Amour."
* * *
Now several hundred friends of Calvino, writers, editors, publishers, press, local dignitaries fill up the cemetery. l hold Chichita's hand a long moment; she has had, someone said, two weeks of coming to terms not so much with death as with the nightmare of dying.
The last chapter of Palomar begins, "Mr. Palomar decides that from now on he will act as if he were dead, to see how the world gets along without him." So far, not too good, I thought. Mexico City has fallen down and his daughter is late to the burial. On the plus side, there is no priest, no service, no words. Suddenly, as a dozen television cameras switch on, the dark shiny wooden box, containing Calvino, appears in the atrium. How small the box is, I think. Was he smaller than I remember? Or has he shrunk? Of course, he is dead but, as he wrote, "First of all, you must not confuse being dead with not being, a condition that occupies the vast expanse of time before birth, apparently symmetrical with the other, equally vast expanse that follows death. In fact, before birth we are part of the infinite possibilities that may or may not be fulfilled; whereas, once dead, we cannot fulfill ourselves either in the past (to which we now belong entirely but on which we can no longer have any influence) or in the future (which, even if influenced by us, remains forbidden to us)."
With a crash, the pallbearers drop the box into the shallow bathtub. Palomar's nose is now about four inches beneath the earth he used to examine so minutely. Then tiles are casually arranged over the coffin; and the box is seen no more. As we wait for the daughter to arrive, the heat is disagreeable. We look at one another as though we are at a party that has refused to take off. I recognize Natalia Ginzburg. I see someone who looks as if he ought to be Umberto Eco, and is. "A person's life consists of a collection of events, the last of which could also change the meaning of the whole . . ." I notice, in the crowd, several dozen young schoolchildren. They are fans of Calvino's fairy tales; plainly, precocious consumers of "texts" and proto-theorists. Then daughter and buckets of cement arrive simultaneously. One of the masons pours cement over the tiles; expertly, he smooths the viscous surface with a trowel. Horrible cement. "Therefore Palomar prepares to become a grouchy dead man, reluctant to submit to the sentence to remain exactly as he is; but he is unwilling to give up anything of himself, even if it is a burden." Finally, the cement is flush with the ground; and that's that.
I am standing behind Chichita, who is very still. Finally, I look up from the gray oblong of fresh cement and there, staring straight at me, is Calvino. He looks anguished, odd, not quite right. But it is unmistakably Mr. Palomar, witnessing his own funeral. For one brief mad moment we stare at each other; then he looks down at the coffin that contains not himself but Italo. The man I thought was Italo is his younger brother, Floriano.
I move away, before the others. On the drive back to Rome, the sun is bright and hot; yet rain starts to fall. Devil is beating his wife, as they say in the South. Then a rainbow covers the entire eastern sky. For the Romans and the Etruscans, earlier inhabitants of the countryside through which we are driving, the rainbow was an ominous herald of coming change in human affairs, death of kings, cities, world. I make a gesture to ward off the evil eye. Time can now end. But "'If time has to end, it can be described, instant by instant,' Palomar thinks, 'and each instant, when described, expands so that its end can no longer be seen.' He decides that he will set himself to describing every instant of his life, and until he has described them all he will no longer think of being dead. At that moment he dies."* So end "my last meditations on Nature," and Calvino and Nature are now one, or One.
THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
November 21, 1985
*Now that Calvino's work is done, one must praise the faithful William Weaver for his elegant translations over many years.