Summary:
Chapter 9
The narrative returns to the second person and the frame story of the reader. He is on an airplane reading On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon. He continues reading as he exits the plane and goes through the checkpoints at the airport. Suddenly, a person takes the book from him. It is a policeman confiscating the book because it is banned in the country in which the reader has arrived: the fictional Ataguitania. The reader tries to protest, but stops short when a woman behind him says, "Don't worry about the book; I have a copy, too" (211). The woman resembles Lotaria but has short hair and is wearing large sunglasses that hide much of her face. He follows her through airport customs and when she gets a taxi outside he gets in another and follows her.
The taxis stop in the countryside, and the woman, who tells the reader to call her Corinna, gets into the reader's taxi and gives him a book. Looking at the cover, the reader sees that it is not On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon by Ikoka but Around an empty grave by Calixto Bandera. She tells him that books only circulate with fake covers in Ataguitania. As the taxicab continues to drive, the reader looks at the text of the book; it is isn't the same story as On the carpet of leaves illuminated by the moon either. Corinna tells him that "Once the process of falsification is set in motion, it won't stop" (212) and says that everything in the country has been falsified. When Corinna tells the reader that the police and her organization are competing to exploit the falsification most, the reader notices the taxi driver is listening. Corinna tells the reader not to worry; the taxi they are in is fake, and the one behind them is fake as well though it could be a fake controlled by her organization or by the police. The reader sees yet another taxi following them, and Corinna responds that that could again be either sent by her organization or the police.
The second taxi passes the first, in which the reader and Corinna are riding, and armed men jump out yelling "Police!" (213). Corinna, the reader, and the taxi driver are handcuffed and forced into the second taxi. Corinna introduces herself as Gertrude to the policemen driving, asks to be taken to headquarters, and explains to the reader that they are actually part of her organization. Not long after, the third taxi cuts off the second. Corinna, the reader, and the original taxi driver have their handcuffs taken off and the fake policemen from the second taxi are handcuffed. Everyone is put into the third taxi. Corinna-Gertrude now introduces herself as Ingrid and asks to be taken to the command post. The leader tells her to shut up and puts her in a different car from the reader. The reader is blindfolded, and when his blindfold is removed he finds himself in a police inspector's office. An officer calls the name Alfonsina and Gertrude-Ingrid-Corinna emerges in a police uniform. She has him sign documents and other officers take his money and clothes and give him prisoner's overalls. When the other guards have turned, the woman explains that there are revolutionaries who have infiltrated the police and that he shouldn't worry about being sent to prison because it is also controlled by the revolutionaries. The reader suggests that Marana may be behind this all, but the woman says it doesn't matter; the chief could be fake too. As the woman continues to speak, the reader realizes that nobody can no anybody else's true allegiance. When he asks what his part is, she tells him that the prison has all of the country's banned books, so he should go on reading.
The narration breaks to discuss the reader's purpose in coming to Ataguitania. He had planned to search the entire country for Marana. He thinks of how he came here out of love for Ludmilla and now must put his trust in someone who he suspects to be Lotaria. The narrator states that since "her function in your story is similar to Lotaria's, so the name that fits her is Lotaria" (215). The reader asks about the sister of the woman he suspects to be Lotaria and her answer about the type of novels her sister likes convinces him even further.
Some time later, the reader is in an office at the prison. A prison official is responding to the reader's complaint that when he looked for Around an empty grave in the prison library, all he found was a few torn pages. Surprisingly, the prison official asks the reader for advice. He says that they already have machines to censor their works, but they want to compare the machine's findings with the reader's impressions since he has been determined as an average reader. When he is taken into the machine room, a female programmer is there. She is introduced as Sheila, but, perhaps predictably, it is the same woman he thinks to be Lotaria. The machine is printing out pages covered in words, which the officer says is the entire text of Around an empty grave.
The reader's first impulse is to start reading; after all, throughout the entire story he has not been able to continue a book once it breaks off. However, he suddenly feels that he cannot be "dragged passively by the plot" (218) anymore. He grabs the woman and shouts at her. He tells her to take off her uniform, knowing there is another uniform underneath. He undresses her, taking off the costume of Sheila, Alfonsina, Corinna, and finally Ingrid. When he takes off the uniform of Ingrid, the woman is entirely naked before him. She asks if this is a uniform, and he says it is not. She disagrees, telling him, "The body is a uniform! The body is armed militia!" (219). The woman tears off the reader's clothes and they have sex. As they have sex, the narrator speaks directly to the reader, noting that he seems to feel a right to have sex with all the female characters in the book. The flash of a camera goes off and an unseen photographer chastises the woman, who he calls Captain Alexandra, for being caught once again romantically involved with a prisoner. The photographer threatens to use the photographs as blackmail, but the woman does not seem upset. The reader finds himself wrapped in the story that has been printing from the machine. The woman goes back to work on the machine and realizes something is wrong; it should have printed the whole story but it has not. The reader sees that she has pressed the wrong button, causing the text Around an empty grave to print the words of the book out of order.
Around an empty grave
Around an empty grave takes place in an unnamed Spanish-speaking country. A young man named Nacho was sent by his dying father to the town of Oquedal to find his mother. Nacho had asked his father about his mother all his life, but he only got false and contradictory answers. Nacho's father, Don Anastasio Zamora, dies before he can tell his son the name of his mother, so Nacho sets off for the town not knowing exactly who he will seek out when he arrives.
He takes a road along the edge of a cliff. On his first day, he sees another man on horseback riding parallel on the other side of a valley. Nacho yells to the man but gets no reply. Nacho rides fast and gets ahead of the other man. When he looks over his shoulder, he sees the man pointing a rifle at him. Nacho reaches to pull out his own gun, but the other man puts his rifle back over his shoulder. For the rest of the journey, they simply ride at the same pace, parallel to one another.
When Nacho arrives in Oquedal he gives his name and the name of his father to an "old Indian" (224). The old man points to the palace of the Alvarado family. Nacho goes to the house and follows a servant who takes him through multiple courtyards. Nacho tries to recognize the place from his childhood but struggles to do so. In the last courtyard, Nacho is introduced to a woman named Anacleta Higueras. She gives him food and tells him "Eat, son" (226), and Nacho wonders whether this means he is really her son or if it is just a figure of speech. He eats the food, which is extremely spicy, and asks if she knows his father. She tells him that he brought evil to the Indian people and then disappeared. Nacho looks upon Amaranta, the daughter of Anacleta, and asks if they look the same. Anacleta responds that "All those born in Oquedal look alike" (226). He asks about a portrait he saw in one of the courtyards, and Anacleta responds that it is of Faustino Higueras, her brother who died when "the enemy crossed his path" (227).
Later, Nacho approaches Amaranta in another courtyard. He tells her that he wants to measure the similarity of their features by pressing them together. They begin to kiss and he pushes her against the sacks as she struggles against him. Anacleta finds them and yells at Nacho, grabbing him by the hair and slapping Amaranta. Nacho slyly questions Anacleta, revealing that the reason he kissed Amaranta is to make Anacleta tell him if she is his sister. Anacleta tells him that his mother is the mistress of the house, Doña Jazmina.
The narrative skips to evening. Nacho has been invited to dinner with Doña Jazmina and her daughter Jacinta. Doña Jazmina tells Nacho about how his father used to gamble in the very room where they are eating. He would always win a lot of money and then lose it all by dawn. She also says that he would go down to the Indians' quarters to sleep with women. When Jacinta laughs, Nacho thinks she looks like Amaranta, and he repeats Anacleta's quote about everyone from Oquedal looking the same. Doña Jazmina tells him that Faustino Higueras was half white and half Indian but that "In spirit, however, he was all Indian...He took their side..." (230). She segues from Faustino Higueras to talking about Don Anastasio, and she tells Nacho to ask the Indians about a song they sing about his father.
After dinner, Nacho gets Jacinta alone. Like with Amaranta, he suggests getting intimate; unlike Amaranta, Jacinta is completely willing. They tear off one another's clothing and realize they have a mole in the same place on their bodies. At this moment, Doña Jazmina catches them and yells at Nacho. He asks who his mother is and she says it is Anacleta Higueras, even if she doesn't want to admit it.
Nacho returns to Anacleta and asks about the song. Anacleta takes Nacho on a walk to the cornfields and tells him a long story. Nacho's father and Faustino had a fight and decided that they would dig a grave and fight over it until one of them died. All of the Indians gathered around as they fought with knives, and in the end, Faustino lost. Faustino was buried and Zamora, Nacho's father, left Oquedal forever. However, Nacho sees that the grave is empty. Anacleta explains that Indians from many other villages came to ask for relics, pieces of Faustino's body, to carry into battle for luck. When she went to Faustino's grave, it was empty. She tells Nacho that there are legends that Faustino is still out there, riding a black horse in the mountains.
Nacho thinks to himself that Faustino was the other man on horseback he saw on his journey to Oquedal. Looking around, Nacho sees that a group of Indians has formed a circle around the grave. A young man with a knife approaches Nacho and asks, "What gave you the right, Nacho Zamora, to lay your hands on my sister?" (233). Nacho asks who he is and the man responds that he is Faustino Higueras. The story ends with Nacho grasping his knife and preparing to fight.
Chapter 10
The reader is at tea with a man named Arkadian Porphyrich, Director General of the State Police Archives of Ircania. The reader has been sent to Ircania by Ataguitanian High Command on a mission. Ircania and Ataguitania have long been in cahoots to exchange banned books so that the government has something to fight against. They talk at length about the practice of banning books and the way that it actually strengthens the power of the written word. Like Mr. Cavedagna, Porphyrich expresses that there are two ways of reading books: reading summarily for work and actually stretching out to read for pleasure.
The reader asks whether Porphyrich knows about Marana and "the apocrypha conspiracy" (238). Porphyrich says that he does and that he even captured Marana once. However, they could not adequately deal with him because his motives were not power or money but a single woman they knew little about. What they did find out is that this woman, who the reader knows to be Ludmilla, read to hear "a voice that comes from an unknown source, from somewhere beyond the book, beyond the author...from the unsaid" (239). Marana's quest is to show this woman that "behind the written page is the void: the world exists only as artifice" (239). After holding and interrogating Marana for a week, Porphyrich came to believe the woman had already won. She could discover the truth behind the falseness.
Porphyrich says that after that they let Marana escape, and now Marana falsifies not for Ludmilla but for the sake of mystification itself. Porphyrich treasures the thought of Ludmilla, a reader who reads simply to read. The reader superimposes the images of Porphyrich and Ludmilla briefly, then changes the subject to the book Around an empty grave. Porphyrich says that it is not currently available but will be in a week or two. However, he says that an author named Anatoly Anatolin has been working on a version of the same novel but set in Ircania. This book, called What story down there awaits its end?, can be given to the reader very soon. The reader plans to go directly to Anatoly Anatolin and take the manuscript from him before it can be confiscated by the government.
That night the reader dreams of being on a train across Ircania. All of the travelers are reading thick books, and the reader believes these are all the books he has had to abruptly stop reading translated into many different languages. When one traveler gets up, leaving his book behind, the reader takes it and looks it over. The other travelers look at him in disapproval. The reader leans out the window and sees, through the window of another train, Ludmilla. He tries to call to her about the book, and she responds with yet another kind of book she is looking for. The trains move off in opposite directions.
Back in reality, the reader waits in a garden for Anatoly Anatolin to arrive with a manuscript of his new novel. Anatoly approaches and tells him that the garden is under observation. He passes him many small bundles of pages, which he separated so that there would not be a large bulge in his coat. As he takes out another bundle, one page blows away. When he follows the page, two agents jump out of a hedge and arrest him.
What story down there awaits its end?
A young man walks the streets of his city alone. As he walks, he vividly imagines erasing all the things he doesn't care to see. This begins with buildings like a ministry and three banks, then escalates to people who are either superior or inferior to him, since both types of people make him feel uncomfortable. In the beginning, he does not erase strangers, but then he begins to feel lonely surrounded by them, so he erases them as well. He rationalizes that with all other people erased, he will better be able to see the people he likes to meet, specifically a woman named Franziska. The narrator thinks at length about his relationship with Franziska; they get along very well when they run into one another in the street but they never make solid plans to meet up.
The man continues mentally erasing things. He now targets broad aspects of society: transportation, military, health, law, education, culture, economy, agriculture, then all of nature. He continues to walk down the street, but what he sees is now an "endless plain" (248). There is ice and some wind which blows snow around. A few items remain, including a novel that includes the name Amarata. Looking far into the distance, the narrator sees Franziska. With her are men in overcoats and hats. The narrator recognizes them as men from Section D. He thinks to himself that he already erased them, but when he tries to erase them again, they remain.
The men greet the narrator and tell him that he has helped them clean up. As the men talk about their mysterious plans, the narrator becomes uncomfortable and attempts to bring everything back into existence. He finds that he cannot. He feels that he is in a trap and needs to reach Franziska and escape. He runs toward Franziska, thinking that the world looks like a piece of blank paper. A crack forms in the ground between the narrator and Franziska and the narrator leaps across it. When he reaches Franziska, she greets him happily, acting as if nothing is out of the ordinary.
Chapter 11
The reader returns from his travels to the city where he began and decides to see if the library there has the books he has been prevented from finishing. All of the titles appear in the catalog, so the reader fills out a number of request forms. However, every one of the books is unavailable. While the reader waits for the staff to search for the books, he sits at a table where other people are reading. The people around the reader begin sharing their views on reading. The first says that they always read a book by reading a small section and then pausing to think for a long time. Another says that every time they re-read a book it is like reading a new book for the first time because so much of reading is about one's own experience. Seven readers speak before the main reader of the frame story chimes in, disagreeing with much of what the other readers have said.
Still frustrated about the books he desires not being available, the reader tells the other people that it seems the only books that exist are those that become suspended or get lost. The fifth reader thinks that the main reader is talking about the Arabian Nights, and he describes the story of the maiden who tells a long, interconnected story to appease the Caliph Harun-al Rashid. The main reader wants to add the story to his list of interrupted books, but the fifth reader has forgotten the title. The fifth reader tells him to name it, so he writes, "He asks, anxious to hear the story" (258). The sixth reader asks to see the main reader's list and he reads out all the book titles in order, beginning, "If on a winter's night a traveler, outside the town of Malbork, leaning from the steep slope without fear of wind or vertigo..." (258). When he finishes the list of titles, the sixth reader says that he has read a book that started like that. The main reader tries to correct him, saying that he looking for a continuation of all those books, not a single book starting with that quote. He is cut off by the seventh reader who tells him that in ancient times all stories ended with the hero and heroine marrying or dying. Hearing this, the reader decides to marry Ludmilla.
Chapter 12
Chapter 12 serves as a short epilogue of sorts. The reader and Ludmilla sit next to one another in bed reading. Ludmilla closes her book, turns off her light, and says to the reader, "Turn off your light, too. Aren't you tired of reading?" (260.) The reader responds that he is almost finished with Italo Calvino's book If on a winter's night a traveler.
Analysis:
One of the motifs underscored in this section of the novel is names—their importance and lack thereof. In the story-within-a-story "Around an empty grave," Nacho has the same name as his father. This is revealed in a climactic moment near the end of the story: "'But...I am Nacho Zamora....' / 'Your father, too, at that time was called Nacho" (232). Nacho and his father having the same name not only shows their familial tie, it foreshadows Nacho being put in the exact same situation as his father, dueling above an empty grave. While this story demonstrates the significance of names, names are treated as merely another layer of disguise and facade in Chapter 9. The reader meets a woman whose name is constantly changing; she takes on so many different names that the author begins to refer to her as collections of them such as "Corinna-Gertrude-Alfonsina" (217). Since this character lives in a fictional country where lies and disguises are the norm, she treats names as yet another way to hide the true self. The contrasting treatment of names in these juxtaposed chapters causes the reader to contemplate the importance of names depending on one's identity and circumstances.
Another reading of the lack of importance given to the name of the female character in Chapter 9 is that it underscores Calvino's treatment of women throughout the novel. Some scholars have accused Calvino of misogyny due to the fact that the main character of the frame story, as well as all of the narrators of the stories-within-a-story, are male, while females are only secondary characters with little substance. The reader comes to believe that the woman with many names is actually Lotaria, Ludmilla's sister. The narrator states, "The only thing you know for sure is that her function in your story is similar to Lotaria's, so the name that fits her is Lotaria, and you would not be able to call her anything else" (215). The reader defining the female character based on her function in his story rather than by her stated identity demonstrates a centering of male beliefs and objectification of women.
Just pages later, Calvino nuances a reader's perception of their role in the gender politics of the novel. In an unusually direct address, even within the bounds of If on a winter's night a traveler's nontraditional narrative perspective, the narrator says to the reader, "How long are you going to let yourself be dragged passively by the plot!...Your function was quickly reduced to that of one who records situations decided by others...Then what use is your role as protagonist to you?" (218.) With this quote, the book's reader must confront their lack of control over the story. Then, the reader within the book proceeds to undress the female character (who may be Lotaria) and have sex with her. The narrator again accuses the reader of having agency, stating, "Reader, what are you doing?...You're the absolute protagonist of this book, very well; but do you believe that gives you the right to have carnal relations with all the female characters?" (219.) This scene shows Calvino's awareness of the reader within the book's lust toward and objectification of the female characters in the book. Calvino pushes responsibility for these views and actions off of himself as the author and onto the reader, who supposedly has control over the situation. This raises the question of what control readers truly have over gender relations in novels. Surely they do have some control, as what readers are interested in reading controls what is produced in a capitalist system. And if, as Calvino implies with his assertion that his reader is male, Calvino means to implicate male readers in the production of male-centric novels, If on a winter's night a traveler could actually be seen as quite progressive with regard to gender representation in literature.
The theme of falsehood in Chapter 9 is particularly relevant given contemporary Western society's discourse on fake news. In Ataguitania, everything is fake. All of the citizens and politicians of the country lie to one another about which side they are on, to the extent that actual sides to the conflict cease to have meaning. According to the woman the reader meets, life in Ataguitania has become so fraught and politicized that she views even her own body as a "uniform" and an "armed militia" (219). In the 21st-century United States, particularly surrounding and following the election of 2016, many likewise feel that polarization and identity politics have led to a rise in biased and fabricated news, as well as a view of one's body as a political space.
After the nontraditional structure and narration of If on a winter's night a traveler, the end of the book is surprisingly traditional. When the reader visits a library to try to find full copies of all of the stories he has read part of, he gets into a conversation with seven other readers. One of these readers suggests that "In ancient times a story could end only in two ways: having passed all the tests, the hero and the heroine married, or else they died" (259). As soon as the reader hears this he decides to marry Ludmilla, and we discover in the very short twelfth chapter that he proceeds to do just that. This ending seems jarringly abrupt and somehow too simple—would fickle, mysterious Ludmilla really consent so easily to marrying the reader and living a life of quaint domesticity? The last sentence of the book is also intriguing. The reader says to Ludmilla, "Just a moment, I've almost finished If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino" (260). On one hand, a reader could perceive this as a simple fact; as long as they are reading the sentence, they can't have finished the book quite yet. On the other hand, the fact that the reader says he is "almost finished" leaves the audience with an unfinished, open-ended feeling as they finish the book, prompting them to continue thinking about the complicated story.
