A Quantum Diaries Survivor

My father’s death last July left me and my brothers with the difficult task of taking care of a few loose ends: among them, the donation of his private library and research archive to the Venice University, the division among the three sons of his possessions, and the management of a few business issues.

During his life Wladimiro Dorigo published dozens of books. None of them fruited him real money, of course, since most of his publications were about art, history, political issues revolving around the city of Venice - no bestsellers. But nonetheless, small royalties for the sales arrived sporadically in his bank account from the editors until last July.

In agreement with my brothers, I thus took the charge of putting order in the papers contained in several thick folders, supposedly containing documentation on the contracts and copyright issues. When I accepted to do it, I thought it would be costing me a really long time to sort through papers 10, 20, 30 years old or more.

I was wrong.

My father was a very tidy person, in a peculiar way. I do remember the living room of his house in Venice totally flooded with piles of books, documents, multi-square-meter topographic maps laid one on top of the other in complicated patterns over the large teck table where we had been dining together in our youth: this was the state of his house during the years from 1978 to 1980, when he was finalizing his work on the roman square divisions of the territory north of Venice (which romans used to create lots to be assigned to retiring centurions). You would not call that being tidy, and yet he was totally at ease in the complete mess of documents.

No, he was indeed a very tidy person. I of course knew that quite well - I have never met anybody topping him on that quality - but I had just yet another proof of that concept tonight, when I started opening the folders - some of them adjourned just a month before his death, some dusty and never touched for decades.

Each book he published matches to a folder containing, in chronological order and neatly clipped together in small bundles, all the correspondence with the editors, the institutions providing allowance to publish illustrations, receipts of payments to collaborators, carbon-copies of his own letters - everything.

By reading through the documents contained in a dusty folder titled “Late Roman Painting”, for instance, I found the complete mail exchange occurred between my father and Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, and then with the american editors who published the English version of the book,  in the period 1965 - 1972.  I found virtually every document that he dealt with during the long years of negotiations, proofreading, translation of his manuscript.

It was a jump to the past: a past I cannot fully recall - I was too young back then - but I do remember myself at four, crawling under dad’s table and spying him busy at the typewriter, writing on three sheets of tissue-paper alternated with carbon paper. 

Tonight I had those sheets in my hands, and everything - the folders, but just as much my father’s life - appeared suddenly all tidied up.