There are many Palermos breathing one inside the other in Roberto Andò’s new beautiful novel, «The crocodile of Palermo» (The Ship of Theseus), in bookstores simultaneously with the release of his new film, «L’abbaglio», with Servillo, Ficarra and Picone.
A sort of showdown with Palermo, that of Rodolfo Anzo, narrator of the novel and alter ego of Andò, talented director of prose theatre, opera and cinema. Rodolfo is a documentary director who returns to Palermo after ten years because thieves broke into his now deceased parents’ apartment. An attempted theft which however allows him to discover in the study of his policeman father, a cultured man with whom he had a conflictual relationship, six reels of wiretaps which he had illegally kept. Fragments of lives and relationships, a crossroads of voices from which it is impossible to derive a complete meaning, which the “living” voice of the father asks him to return to those from whom they had been stolen. An almost “police” investigation, which underlies another investigation, the one into the causes of the father’s death and, again, the one into “an inseparable and also terrible city” and its ghosts.
Rodolfo, and those who read with him, find themselves in the breath of the city, opaque and luminous, in the crack of a present which, through the “conversation” with a rediscovered father (Rodolfo realizes that he doesn’t know much about his father, like everyone else) must dig (and the act of writing itself is an excavation) into the network of “those secrets that we do not want to keep only with others but above all with ourselves”.
A novel full of traces and echoes, beautiful and multifaceted, with a cultured and essay-prone writing, according to the lesson of Sciascia, friend and mentor of Roberto Andò. And enriched by the exergues of Thomas Bernhard, an author much loved by Andò, which introduce each chapter.
An incursion, that of Rodolfo, into the lives of others which turns into a real investigation…
«There is a father who forces a man, Rodolfo, to enter the lives of others and somehow look for clues, and it’s like getting lost in a labyrinth of voices and then getting a bit of an image of the city from it, mirroring it to that of the Palermo crocodile. But it is a failed, unsuccessful investigation, which is worth a journey into the illegibility of a city.”
Here, the crocodile of Palermo is precisely the paradigm of the border between the possible and the impossible, between truth and imagination.
«Yes, I discovered it with Salvo Licata who took me to the Vucciria tavern where the carcass of this crocodile is kept, which according to legend went up the currents of the Nile to reach the Papireto river in Palermo… Here , this, ultimately an emblem of the novel, seemed to me an amazing idea, an extraordinary geography of the imagination, almost a Borgesian image and therefore it seemed to me the best way to give an account of the congeries of facts, layers, stories, voices of this labyrinth”.
To return to the investigation, Rodolfo sets in motion what she calls the “art of mending”, which unfortunately does not serve to mend tears, but perhaps only to fill some gaps. Which gap is filled by Rodolfo?
«Rodolfo finds further information about a father from whom he has neurotically distanced himself, it is as if he reconnects with a father with whom he had a problematic relationship in life, while his mother is instead the object of unconditional love. There are two possibilities: that this father committed suicide or that he was killed by his former friend-colleague who is a traitor and this clearly introduces a theme of the city. The paradox is that it is now impossible to reach a certain conclusion, but the investigation ends up having a resonance both on the level of memory and on the level of guilt; therefore, perhaps, the only fragments of mending are those that concern memory in a city that is forgetful or even worse…”.
Speaking of the city, I quote some passages from his book: a gloomy and squalid city, enchanting if it weren’t perverse and vicious, indeed “a deadly disease”, as Bernhard says. Therefore, a sort of showdown with Palermo, dangerously fictional, as you write.
«Literature is often the occasion for this showdown, if we think, for example, of “Mortal Wounded” by La Capria, which is a showdown with Naples. Those who leave or those who remain find themselves in the position of having to make these calculations. Rodolfo has a kind of modesty towards his city even if then, in the end, perhaps precisely in the distance he reconciles with it. I can say that I fully embrace this fury as a writer, like Roberto Andò.”
A book of ghosts. But what is the main ghost that Rodolfo faces?
«Here I face the place, the city that promises things, which has lost the charm that I found there as a child and which today presents itself to me as a place where absences speak more than presences. And this is terrible, in fact it is a very painful book for me.”
His book, according to Sciascia’s lesson, has both a socio-anthropological essay and a novel. Is it a figure of his writings or is it peculiar to this?
«It is a figure of my writings. This mixture with reflection interests the novel as the possibility of insinuating the thought that searches for something in the dark and this is constant in everything I have written. The essay is interesting because in itself writing is the place where opposites can be reconciled: where there is something that ultimately cannot be reconciled, then non-fiction writing is needed there.”
Reality and fiction are mixed equivocally and often inseparably. And Rodolfo pursues “the concatenation of truths down to the last element”, to quote Bernhard. But this is Pirandellian.
«Of course, you know that I dedicated a film to Pirandello, where in some way I attempt a possible backstory for the birth of the “Six Characters” and therefore I delve into the mental penumbra of the writer at the moment in which he comes to terms with his own imagination without yet being clear where this idea will take him. And this aspect also concerns Rodolfo’s research in a reality that has become fictional, bearer not only of that level which is ascertainable but also of that which fluctuates through what has been deposited there over time, through all the stories that have traveled, and also through all the blood that has traveled through it. So yes, certainly Pirandello’s voice is very important and also that of Bernhard, a writer I love very much, who made this showdown, this melee with Austria, the central nucleus of his work.”
Bernhard states in a dazzling phrase, which she quoted, that a book must be like a crossword. Is this yours like this too?
«Yes, exactly like that. This dazzling phrase was the guide of the novel. As if Rodolfo was trying to put order, to fill in the boxes of this crossword, but which he cannot complete like his mother’s unfinished crosswords that he finds at home. I like it because it is an idea that Sciascia had and it is, in fact, also the title of one of his beautiful collections of essays.”
Will this book, which is also very photographic, become a film?
«Well, I haven’t thought about it yet. It is a book that is precisely literature and literature is the place where you come to terms with what you have lost and also with ghosts. The cinema is something else, although the cinema can also be the place where you look for what you have lost. I don’t know whether it will become a film, but it seems difficult to say today.”