Catastrophe and Other Stories

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• Publisher: Alma Books
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781847497369
• eBook ISBN: 9780714548999
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Classici

These stories show how strange and unexpected events can creep into everyday life and draw ordinary people towards mystery, disquiet and, ultimately, catastrophe. This volume brings together twenty of the best stories written by Dino Buzzati - author of the celebrated novel The Tartar Steppe and one of the most original voices in twentieth-century literature - stories which show the Italian master's taste for the bizarre and the humorous, and for exploring the darker recesses of the human psyche. From `The Collapse of the Baliverna', where a man is racked with guilt at the thought that he might have been responsible for the loss of many lives, to `The Epidemic', which describes the spread of a "e;state influenza"e; contracted only by people who don't step into line with the government, and `Terror at the Scala', where the higher echelons of Milan society are gripped with the fear of an impending revolution - these stories show how strange and unexpected events can creep into everyday life and draw ordinary people towards mystery, disquiet and, ultimately, catastrophe.

The Collapse of the Baliverna

In a week the inquiry into the collapse of the Baliverna begins. Will I be involved, I wonder? Will they contact me?

I am terrified. It’s no use my telling myself that no one will give evidence against me, that the examining magistrate has not the slightest inkling of my responsibility, that, even if I were to be accused, I would certainly be acquitted, that my silence about the matter can harm no one and that any confession I might volunteer would not benefit the accused. But this doesn’t console me. Also, since the Borough Engineer Dogliotti, on whom the brunt of the accusation rested, died three months ago, the only other defendant will be the Public Health Officer. And in any case the accusation is purely formal: how could he be convicted if he had assumed office only a week beforehand? The real culprit, if any, was probably the previous officer, but he had died the month before. And legal vengeance does not extend beyond the darkness of the grave.

The cataclysm in question occurred two years ago, but it is still very much alive in people’s minds. The Baliverna was a huge, grim brick building put up outside the town during the seventeenth century by the monks of San Celso. After the order died out, in the nineteenth century, the building was used as a barracks, and until the war it belonged to the military authorities. But then it was abandoned and, with the tacit acquiescence of the authorities, it became the home of a whole crowd of evacuees, homeless people who had been bombed out, of tramps, deadbeats, even a small group of Gypsies. As time passed, the Corporation, who had taken possession of the premises, had introduced a degree of discipline, registering the inhabitants, organizing basic services, keeping away troublemakers. Nonetheless the Baliverna did not have a good reputation, possibly because there had been several robberies in the neighbourhood. It was not exactly a den of vice, but people avoided it at night.

The Baliverna had originally stood in the open countryside, but the town had grown so much over the centuries that it now stood almost in the suburbs. Still, there were no other houses in the immediate vicinity. Grim and ghastly, the great building towered above the railway embankment, above the untidy fields and the sordid corrugated-iron shacks which stood scattered among rubbish and debris and which housed the local down-and-outs. It looked like a prison, hospital and fortress combined. It was built on a square base, about eighty yards long and half as wide. The interior was a huge blank courtyard.

I often used to go there, on weekend afternoons, with my brother-in-law Giuseppe, an entomologist, as the surrounding fields were apparently well stocked with insects. It was an excuse to get into the countryside for a breath of fresh air.

I must say that the hideous building’s state of repair had impressed me the first time I saw it. Its decrepitude could be seen in the very colour of its bricks, in the rough repairs, the various beams acting as supports. The back wall was particularly horrifying – blankly bare, with a few small irregular openings more like loopholes than real windows; for this reason it looked higher than the façade, which was lightened by rows of windows.

“Don’t you think that that wall’s leaning at an angle?” I remember asking my brother-in-law one day.

He laughed. “Let’s hope so. But it’s just your imagination. High walls always give that impression.”

One Saturday in July, we were out there on one of these walks. My brother-in-law had with him his two daughters, little girls at the time, and a colleague from the University, a Professor Scavezzi – a pale, boneless man of about forty whom I had always disliked for his hypocrisy and condescension. My brother-in-law always said he was a positive well of knowledge and a very worthy person besides. But I thought he was a fool: this seemed to me proven by the fact that he treated me extremely high-handedly, just because I was a tailor and he was a scientist.

When we arrived at the Baliverna, we went behind it, along the wall I have described: here there was a wide stretch of dusty ground where the boys played soccer. There were no boys that day – just women with children, sitting in the sun at the edge by the grass verge at the roadside.

It was early afternoon and the only sound from inside the tenement was that of an occasional voice. The sun shone on the gloomy expanse of the wall, though without sharp brightness; poles protruded from the windows, covered with piles of drying washing, which hung as lifeless as flags on a still day – there was not a breath of wind.

In the past I had been a keen mountaineer, and while the others were looking for their insects I felt a sudden desire to climb up the great expanse of wall: the holes, the jutting-out edges of some of the bricks, the bits of old iron embedded here and there in crevices between bricks, all offered convenient holds. I had no intention of climbing to the top. I simply wanted to stretch my limbs, to exercise my muscles. Rather childish, admittedly.

Without difficulty I climbed about six feet up the support of a big door which had been walled up. As I reached the lintel I stretched out my right hand towards the series of irradiating rusty iron spikes, shaped like spears, which closed in the lunette (in the old days, perhaps, the cavity had housed the image of some saint).

I managed to grasp the point of one of them and pulled myself up on it. But suddenly it gave way and broke. Luckily I was only about six feet off the ground. I tried, though in vain, to hold myself up with my other hand. I lost my balance and fell backwards to the ground, landing on my feet unhurt, though with a sharp jolt. The broken piece of iron fell down after me.

Almost immediately afterwards, behind this iron spike, another one broke: it was longer than the one I’d broken at first and had been placed vertically so as to meet a sort of corbel above it. It must have been a sort of prop, an attempt at repairing a weak point. Without its support, the corbel too – a slab of stone about the width of three bricks – gave way, though it didn’t actually fall: it hung there precariously.

But that was not the end of my involuntary act of demolition. The corbel was supporting an old pole, about five feet in height, which in its turn helped to support a sort of balcony. Of course it was only now that I noticed all these flaws in what at first sight had merely been a vast expanse of wall. The pole was simply wedged in between the two projections – it was not actually fixed to the wall. Seconds after the displacement of the corbel, the beam fell forward, and I only just had time to jump backwards and avoid being hit by it. It fell to the ground with a thud.

Was it over? To be on the safe side, I moved away from the wall, towards the others, who were about thirty yards away. All four were standing, looking in my direction: but it was not me they were looking at. They were staring at the wall above my head, and I shall never forget the expressions on their faces. Suddenly my brother-in-law shouted: “My God, look at that – look at it!”

I turned around. Above the balcony, but farther to the right, the great wall, which was solid and regular in that section, was swelling like a piece of stretched material pressed sharply outwards. First a slight shudder crept through the whole wall, then a long narrow weal appeared and the tiles began to break apart, like so many rotten teeth, and then, amid showers of dusty rubble, a dark crack appeared.

Was it a matter of seconds or of minutes? I simply don’t know. But while it was happening – it sounds mad to say so – from the depths of the building there came an ominous rumbling, not unlike a bugle call. You could hear the dogs howling for miles around.

At this point, my memory provides me with pictures of a whole series of simultaneous events: myself running as fast as I could to catch up with the others, who were already some way away; the women by the roadside who had jumped up and were shrieking, one of them rolling on the ground; the figure of a young girl, almost naked, leaning in curiosity from one of the highest windows while, beneath her, the abyss had already opened; and, for a split second, the electrifying spectacle of the great wall hurtling downwards. Then, as I saw through the rents made in the top part of the building, the whole immense remainder, piled behind it beyond the courtyard, began to move slowly, drawn on by some irresistible force of destruction.

There followed the most terrifying crash, as if hundreds of liberators had released their bombs simultaneously. The ground shook, and a great cloud of yellowish dust im...

Table of contents

• The Collapse of the Baliverna