For Thomas Paine

Periodic Table , Primo Levi

Page 40.

I R O N

Night lay beyond the walls of the Chemical Institute, the night of Europe: Chamberlain had returned from Munich duped, Hitler had marched into Prague without firing a shot, Franco had subdued Barcelona and was ensconced in Madrid. Fascist Italy, the small-time pirate, had occupied Albania, and the premonition of imminent catastrophe condensed like grumous dew in the houses and streets, in wary conversations and dozing consciences. But the night did not penetrate those thick walls; Fascist censorship itself, the regime’s masterwork, kept us shut off from the world, in a white, anesthetized limbo. About thirty of us had managed to surmount the harsh barrier of the first exams and had been admitted to the second year’s Qualitative Analysis
  laboratory. We had entered that enormous, dark, smoky hall like someone who, coming into the House of the Lord, reflects on each of his steps. The previous lab, where I had tackled zinc, seemed an infantile exercise to us now, similar to when as children we had played at cooking: something, by hook or crook, in one way or another, always came of it, perhaps too little, perhaps not very pure, but you really had to be a hopeless case or pigheaded not to get magnesium sulfate from magnesite, or potassium bromide from bromine. Not here: here the affair had turned serious, the confronta- tion with Mother-Matter, our hostile mother, was tougher and closer. At two in the afternoon, Professor D., with his ascetic and distracted air, handed each of us precisely one gram of a certain powder: by the next day we had to complete the qualitative analysis, that is, report what metals and non-metals it contained. Report in writing, like a police report, only yes and no, because doubts and hesitations were not admissible: it was each time a choice, a deliberation, a mature and responsible undertaking, for which Fascism had not prepared us, and from which emanated a good smell, dry and clean. Some elements, such as iron and copper, were easy and direct, incapable of concealment; others, such as bismuth and cadmium, were deceptive and elusive. There was a method, a toilsome, ageold plan for systematic research, a kind of combined steamroller and fine-toothed comb which nothing (in theory) could escape, but I preferred to invent each time a new road, with swift, extemporaneous forays, as in a war of movement, instead of the deadly grind of a war of position. Sublimate mercury into droplets, transform sodium into chloride, and identify it as trough-shaped chips under my microscope. One way or another, here the relationship with Matter changed, became dialectical: it was fencing, a face-to-face match. Two unequal opponents: on one side, putting the questions, the unfledged, unarmed chemist, at his elbow the textbook by Autenrieth as his sole ally (because D., often called to help out in difficult cases, maintained a scrupulous neutrality, refused to give an opinion: a wise attitude, since whoever opens his mouth can put his foot in it, and professors are not supposed to do that); on the other side, responding with enigmas, stood Matter, with her sly passivity, ancient as the All and portentously rich in deceptions, as solemn and subtle as the Sphinx. I was just beginning to read German words and was enchanted by the word Urstoff (which means “element”: literally, “primal sub- stance”) and by the prefix Ur which appeared in it and which in fact expresses ancient origin, remote distance in space and time. In this place, too, nobody wasted many words teaching us how to protect ourselves from acids, caustics, fires, and explo- sions; it appeared that the Institute’s rough and ready morality counted on the process of natural selection to pick out those among us most qualified for physical and professional survival. There were few ventilation hoods; each student, following his text’s prescriptions, in the course of systematic analysis, consci- entiously let loose into the air a good dose of hydrochloric acid and ammonia, so that a dense, hoary mist of ammonium chloride stagnated permanently in the lab, depositing minute scintillating crystals on the windowpanes. Into the hydrogen sulfide room with its murderous atmosphere withdrew couples seeking privacy and a few lone wolves to eat their snacks. Through the murk and in the busy silence, we heard a Piedmontese voice say: “Nuntio vobis gaudium magnum. Habemus ferrum.” “I announce to you a great joy. We have iron.” It was March 1939, and a few days earlier an almost identical solemn announcement (“Habemus Papam”) had closed the conclave that had raised to Peter’s Throne Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, in whom many put their hopes, since one must after all put one’s hope in someone or something. The blasphemous announcement came from Sandro, the quiet one. In our midst, Sandro was a loner. He was a boy of medium height, thin but muscular, who never wore an overcoat, even on the coldest days. He came to class in worn corduroy knickers, knee socks made of homespun wool and sometimes a short black cape which made me think of the Tuscan poet Renato…