I once asked him why he came to the Oratorio, since everyone said he was an atheist. He told me that it was the only place he could see people. And, besides, he was not an atheist but an anarchist. At that time I did not know what anarchists were, and he explained that they were people who wanted freedom, with no masters, no kings, no state, and no priests. “Above all, no state, not like those Communists in Russia, where the state even tells them when they have to use the crapper.”
I asked him why he associated with the Garibaldini, who were Communists, if he was against the Communists. He replied that, No. 1, not all of the Garibaldini were Communists, there were socialists and even anarchists among them, and, No. 2, the enemies at the moment were the Nazi-Fascists, and it was no time for splitting hairs. “First we’ll win together; we’ll settle our differences later.”
Then he added that he came to the Oratorio because it was a good place. Priests were like the Garibaldini – they were an evil breed, but there were some respectable men among them. “Especially in these times, when who knows what’s going to happen to these kids, who until last year were being taught that books and muskets make perfect Fascists. At the Oratorio, at least, they don’t let them go to the dogs, and they teach them to be decent, even if they do make too much fuss about jerking off, but that doesn’t matter because you all do it anyway, and at most you confess it later. So I come to the Oratorio and I help Don Cognasso to get the kids to play. When we go to Mass, I sit quietly in the back of the church, because Jesus Christ I respect even if I don’t respect God.”
Gragnola and I talked about everything. I would tell him about the books I was reading, and he would discuss them passionately. “Verne,” he would say, “is better than Salgari, because he’s scientific. Cyrus Smith manufacturing nitroglycerin is more real than that Sandokan tearing his chest with his fingernails just because he’s fallen for some bitchy little fifteen-year-old.”
Gragnola taught me about Socrates and Giordano Bruno. And Bakunin, about whose work and life I had known very little. He told me about Campanella, Sarpi, and Galileo, who were all imprisoned or tortured by priests for trying to spread scientific principles, and about some who had cut their own throats, like Ardigò, because the bosses and the Vatican were keeping them down. Since I had read the Hegel entry (“Emin. Ger. phil. of the pantheist school”) in the Nuovissimo Melzi, I asked Gragnola about him. “Hegel wasn’t a pantheist, and your Melzi is an ignoramus. Giordano Bruno might have been a pantheist. A pantheist believes that God is everywhere, even in that speck of a fly you see there. You can imagine how satisfying that is – being everywhere is like being nowhere. Well, for Hegel it wasn’t God but the State that had to be everywhere; therefore, he was a Fascist.”
“But didn’t he live more than a hundred years ago?”
“So? Joan of Arc, also a Fascist of the highest order. Fascists have always existed. Since the age of … since the age of God. Take God – a Fascist.”
“But aren’t you one of those atheists who say that God doesn’t exist?”
“Who said that? Don Cognasso, who can’t even grasp the most trifling thing? I believe that God does, unfortunately, exist. It’s just that he’s a Fascist.”
“But why is God a Fascist?”
“Listen, you’re too young for me to give you a theology lecture. We’ll start with what you know. Recite the Ten Commandments for me, seeing as the Oratorio makes you memorize them.”
I recited them. “Good,” he said. “Now pay attention. Among those Ten Commandments are four, think about it, only four, that promote good things – and even those, well, let’s review them. Don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness, and don’t covet your neighbor’s wife. This last one is a commandment for men who know what honor is: on the one hand, don’t cuckold your friends, and, on the other, try to preserve your family, and I can live with that; anarchy wants to get rid of families, too, but you can’t have everything all at once. As for the other three, I agree, but common sense should tell you that much at a bare minimum. And even then you have to weigh them; we all tell lies sometimes, perhaps even for good ends, whereas killing, no, you shouldn’t do that, ever.”
“Not even if the King sends you off to war?”
“There’s the rub. Priests will tell you that if the King sends you off to war you can – indeed, you should – kill. And that the responsibility lies with the King. That’s how they justify war, which is a nasty brute, especially if Fat Head is the one who sends you off. But notice that the commandments don’t say that it’s O.K. to kill in war. They say don’t kill, period. And then …”
“Then?”
“Let’s look at the other commandments. The first commandment says you shall have no other God before him. That’s how the Lord prevents you from thinking, for instance, about Allah, or Buddha, or maybe even Venus – and, let’s be honest, it wouldn’t have been bad at all to have a piece of tail like that as your goddess. But it also means that you shouldn’t believe in philosophy, for instance, or in science, or get any ideas about man descending from apes. Just Him, that’s it. Now pay attention, because the other commandments are all Fascist, designed to force you to accept society as it is. Remember the one about keeping the Sabbath day holy? What do you think of it?”
“Well, basically it says to go to Mass on Sunday – what’s wrong with that?”
“That’s what Don Cognasso tells you, and, like all priests, he doesn’t know the first thing about the Bible. Wake up! In a primitive tribe like the one Moses took for a walk, this meant that you had to observe the rites, and the purpose of the rites – from human sacrifices on up to Fat Head’s rallies in Piazza Venezia – is to addle people’s brains! And then? Honor thy father and mother. Honor thy father and mother means respect the ideas of your elders, don’t oppose tradition, don’t presume to change the tribe’s way of life. See? Don’t cut off the King’s head, although, God knows, if we have a head on our own shoulders we should, especially with a king like that dwarf Savoy, who betrayed his army and sent his officers to their death. And now you can see that even ‘Don’t steal’ isn’t quite as innocent a commandment as it seems, because it orders you not to touch private property, which belongs to the person who got rich by stealing from you. If only it ended there. There are three commandments left. ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ The Don Cognassos of the world would have you believe that this commandment means ‘Don’t commit impure acts,’ and its only purpose is to keep you from wagging that thing that hangs between your legs, but to drag in the stone tablets for the occasional wank seems a bit much. What’s a guy like me supposed to do, a failure? That beautiful woman, my mother, didn’t make me beautiful, and I’m a gimp to boot, and I’ve never touched a woman who’s a woman, and they want to deny me even that release?
“God could have said, for instance, ‘You can screw, but only to make babies,’ especially since at that time there weren’t enough people in the world. But the Ten Commandments don’t say that. So, on the one hand, you can’t covet your friend’s wife and, on the other, you can’t commit impure acts. When is screwing allowed? I mean, really, you’re trying to make a law that works for the whole world – when the Romans, who weren’t God, made laws it was stuff that still makes sense today – and God tosses down a Decalogue that doesn’t tell you the most important things?
the art is inside
