‘Il lungo viaggio’

First published in the newspaper l’Unità (21 October 1962), then included in Racconti siciliani, a non-commercial edition of Sciascia’s short stories published in Urbino in 1966. It was subsequently published in Il mare colore del vino (Einuadi, 1973).

Alberto Savinio

1891–1952

A man who refused to stick to any one identity, Savinio titled his first book Hermaphrodito: a diary that oscillates between genres (poetry and prose), languages (French and Italian, in addition to a little Greek) and tones (high and low). An accomplished musician, painter and writer – though he claimed to be a dilettante in all three – he was born Andrea Francesco Alberto de Chirico, in Athens. He studied classical piano and composition in Greece and Germany, then moved to Paris when he was nineteen, along with his older brother, who would become the world-renowned painter Giorgio de Chirico. As André Breton later admitted, the brothers’ artistic activity in Paris at the time sowed the seeds for the Surrealist movement which would explode in the 1920s. Savinio initially wrote in French, and Guillaume Apollinaire sponsored his first avant-garde recital in 1914. He became Alberto Savinio for the occasion. The new name was fundamental not only to inaugurate his creative self, but to distinguish himself from Giorgio. The following year the brothers left Paris for Ferrara to serve in the First World War – it was the easiest way to gain Italian citizenship – and it was there that Savinio abandoned music for writing. But in 1926, back in Paris, he started painting seriously, and his first exhibit was presented by Jean Cocteau. His paintings are oniric, with allusions to travel, classical antiquity, animals, childhood toys. They are also whimsical (he depicted his parents fused into their favourite armchairs, partially transformed into birds). In 1931, upon his return to Italy, he shifted gears again, and began writing seriously. He became a luminary of the avant-garde, but remained in the shadow of Giorgio’s greater fame. The selected story below, from a 1945 collection called Tutta la vita (The Rest of Life) exemplifies the Surrealists’ love of confounding the animate and inanimate worlds.

Bago

Translated by Michael F. Moore

‘Good morning, Bago.’

This is what Ismene says every day the moment she wakes up, and every night before going to bed she says, ‘Goodnight, Bago.’ Otherwise she’d feel as if she had started or ended the day wrong, indeed as if she had not started or ended it at all. The same way she would have felt in the past if she hadn’t said ‘Good morning’ and ‘Goodnight’ to Daddy and Mummy. And then only to Mummy after Daddy died. Then only to Bug after Mummy died too. Then only to Bago, after the death of Bug, with all that hair over his eyes and oh so human look. Sometimes Ismene forgets to say ‘Good morning’ or ‘Goodnight’ to her husband, but that doesn’t make her feel as if she has begun or ended the day wrong. Besides, Rutiliano is so rarely at home, so often on a trip … One morning when Rutiliano opened the door and asked, ‘Who were you speaking to?’ Ismene answered, ‘Maybe in my sleep’, an answer she had no trouble inventing. She didn’t even have the impression she was lying. The best part of her life is like a dream she dreams when she’s awake and when she’s asleep, and her secret conversations with Bago belong to the dream world, too. When she said that by saying ‘Good morning, Bago’ she was talking in her sleep, Ismene wasn’t lying.