1888, Turin, Via Carlo Alberto 6, top floor
The room is at the back of the second floor, with the window onto Via Carlo Alberto and the corner of the Galleria Subalpina just visible above the iron balcony of the apartment opposite. I have chosen it on the second visit and not the first, because on the first visit I had not stood at the window for long enough to discover that the afternoon light from the south-west enters the room at an angle that places the desk in shadow at three and in lamplight by half-past four, which is the interval in which the working hour begins. The desk is against the second pier. The bed is to the left of the door. The wash-stand is in the corner that the wash-stand should be in, and the small table that I will use for the Outgoing is beneath the window. I have arranged the room in my head on the walk from the Hotel Nazionale before I have signed the rental papers, and the arrangement is the arrangement; Davide Fino has corrected only the rent.
The piles are kept apart. The Götzen-Dämmerung proofs are on the small table by the window, the Antichrist pages on the large desk against the second pier, and the notes for Ecce Homo, which I have not yet begun in the hand but have begun in the head, are on the corner of the chest of drawers in the manner of a pile that is not yet officially a pile. Each of the three has its own hour. The proofs in the morning. The Antichrist between three and half-past five. Ecce Homo, when it begins, in the evenings after the chocolate. The schedule is not flexible because the schedule is what is keeping the three from interfering with one another, and the order in which the three are to reach the printer in Leipzig is the order in which the months of the coming year are to receive what they are owed. Naumann does not yet know that there are three. He knows of Götzen, which he is printing. He does not know of the Antichrist, which I have decided will reach him on the heels of Götzen and not before. He does not know of Ecce Homo at all. He will know in the order that suits the work, not in the order that suits him.
The Fino household occupies the floor below and the kitchen at the back, which is the kitchen whose pots can be heard on the staircase between eleven and one. Davide Fino is a printer himself, in a small way, for the local sheets; he does not know what I am writing and does not ask, which I have decided is the form of respect that the Piedmontese small bourgeoisie reserves for a foreign professor on the top floor. Frau Fino cooks. The daughter brings the meals up. The son, whom I have seen twice, is at the technical school and does not pass the landing. The staircase carries the sounds of the household upward, the pots at eleven, the smell of the broth at twelve, the daughter on the second flight at seven, the door to the courtyard at half-past nine when Davide returns from the press. I have mapped these sounds in the first week. They are now the punctuation by which I know what hour it is without consulting the watch on the desk, and the watch on the desk is therefore a redundant instrument that I keep wound for the morning post only.
The post arrives twice. The morning collection at eight, the afternoon delivery at half-past three. I walk down to the post office at eight, because the porter does not bring up to Via Carlo Alberto unless the weight requires it, and because the walk down is the only walk I make in the day that is not the walk to the café. The side-table by the bed is for incoming. The letter from my sister in Paraguay has been on it for ten days. The letter from my mother in Naumburg has been on it for four. Neither has been opened. The post is opened in the order I choose, and the order is not the order in which the letters have arrived; the order is the order in which the addressees are to be permitted, on a given afternoon, into the room in which the work is being prepared. Köselitz is permitted daily. Overbeck weekly. Brandes by return of post. My sister is not yet permitted, and may not be permitted before the Antichrist is at Leipzig. My mother will be answered when the answer can be written without reference to which book is being prepared, and the answer that can be written without reference is the answer that has not yet been found.
The chest has been worse on the stairs in the past week, which I have decided not to report to Köselitz, because Köselitz will mention it to Overbeck and Overbeck will write to my mother, and the order in which my health is to be known to Naumburg is an order I have reserved for myself. The eyes are no worse than they were in Sils, which is to say bad, which is to say that the proofs are corrected at the desk with the lamp at the right shoulder and not at the café where the afternoon light is wrong for proofs. The Piedmontese air, which I have praised in three letters and will praise in a fourth, is in fact heavier than the air at Sils and not lighter, but the writing to Köselitz, to Overbeck, and to my mother that the air is lighter is what the writing requires, and the requirement is the truth that the letters are establishing. The body is the instrument, and the instrument is at the hour I have set for it. The lamp at half-past four is the hour at which the instrument begins. The lamp at five is the hour at which the landlady has decided the instrument begins, and the landlady is wrong, and the wrongness of half an hour is the wrongness by which the announcement is being asked to absorb an interference it should not have to absorb at the scale it is being prepared for.
The landlady has brought the lamp earlier than usual, and I keep the new pages turned face down on the table because if she sees how quickly they are accumulating she will write to my sister, and the printer must receive them before the family begins interfering again.
