The eyes of those who witnessed a miracle

Siri Hustvedt’s eyes light up when, at the Festivaletteratura, she recounts how she met Paul Auster: it is clear that she is still delighted to have chance-met the man with whom she shared forty years of love, until his death in 2024. As she discusses her memoir on marriage, "Storie di fantasmi" (Einaudi, 296 pp., 20 euro), the sparkle in her eyes breaks free from the formality of the presentation in this splendid setting; it is clear that she does not wish to talk so much about the book – why should she? Almost all of us in the audience have bought it and read her previous works – as about the truly infinitesimal probability that a man and a woman might look at one another, take a liking to one another and stay together forever. They are the eyes of someone who has witnessed a miracle, eyes that shift in intensity and listen with curious grace to the questions and observations put forward by Gaia Manzini as a discerning reader.

She veils it all in benevolent irony: on the one hand, aware that no third party will ever understand what really happened between her and her husband; on the other, intensely grateful for the attention paid to this enormous private fortune that has been transformed into literature: This occurs, for example, when the presenter argues that the narrative voice in "Storie di fantasmi" reminded her of Beckett’s Krapp, intent on listening to a jumble of old tapes to hear himself speak when he was young, immersed in a past that is right there before him and yet eludes him.

When the interpreter, the formidable Marina Astrologo, steps in, Siri Hustvedt shifts her position: the arms she had been waving towards the stage whilst recounting her love at first sight fall back onto her lap, and her eyes—oh, her eyes—frown as she attempts to scrutinise, word by word, the Italian terms (does she understand them? Does she not? It’s a mystery) chosen on the fly to translate for the benefit of non-English speakers; she nods – perhaps because she agrees, perhaps because she realises that there is no word – Italian or otherwise – truly suited to conveying the feeling she has harboured for so long. But, after all, isn’t this meticulous act of telling a story and having it told to you in a different language, whilst assiduously seeking common ground, precisely what every marriage is founded upon, and what keeps it going?