 Section 8 of the late Mathieu Pascal by Luigi Pirandello, translated by Arthur Livingston. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. CHAPTER VIII. ARRIANO MAIS. Straight way. Not so much to deceive other people. They had deceived themselves, you understand, and with a haste and readiness which may not have been without some justification in my case, but which still was a trifle to precipitous. As to take my cue from fortune and to satisfy a real need of my own, I set out to make myself over into another man. I had scant reason to be proud of the miserable failure whom the people back home had insisted on drowning, whether he liked it or not, in the waters of a mill flume. In view of the life he had led up to that time, the late Mathieu Pascal deserved, surely, no better fate. So now I was anxious to obliterate, not only in exteriors, but substantially, intimately also, every trace of him that was left in me. Here I was alone, more wholly alone than I could ever hope to be again on this earth. Free from every present bond and obligation, a new man, my own master absolutely, with no past to drag along behind me, with a future that could be anything I might choose to make it. Oh, for a pair of wings! How airy, how light I felt! The attitude toward the world that past experiences had impressed upon me had no longer any basis in reason. I could acquire a new sense of life without regard to the unhappy trials of the late Mathieu Pascal. It was for me to decide. I had the opportunity, with every prospect of success, to work out a new destiny in just such ample measure as fortune seemed to be allowing me. One thing I'll be mighty careful of, I said to myself, I'll make certain to preserve this freedom of mine above all else. I will seek out paths that are ever level and ever new, and never let my liberty become sodden with troubles. The moment life begins to look unpleasant anywhere, I'll look the other way and move on. I'll concentrate on the things people ordinarily call inanimate, living in quiet, attractive places where there are beautiful views perhaps. Little by little I'll get a new training, a new education, working hard and patiently to make my very self-new, also. In the end I shall be able to boast not only of having lived two entirely different lives, but of having been two entirely different people. I began, for that matter, right where I was. A few hours before I left Alenga I went into a barbershop and had my beard trimmed close. I had first thought of getting a clean shave, but then I decided that such a radical step might arouse suspicion in such a little town. The barber was a tailor also, by trade, and the effects of this second calling were evident in his aged form, almost bent double by his long sittings in one cramped position, leaning over his work with his glasses poached on the end of his nose. I concluded, in fact, that he was more tailor probably than barber. Armed with a pair of cutters shears, with blades so long that he had to hold them up at the end with his other hand, he fell like the wrath of God upon the whiskers of the late Matia Pascal. I dared hardly draw a breath. I closed my eyes and kept them closed till, at last, I felt a tugging at my sleeve. The old man, streaming with perspiration, was holding a mirror up in front of me so that I might say whether he had performed the operation well. This was asking too much, it seemed, to me, and I parried. No, thank you. Never mind. I'm afraid the shock would break it. Break what? The mirror. A pretty thing it is too, antique, I imagine. It was a small round of glass with a heavy handle of carved ivory who knows from what boudoir of the aristocracy, and through what devious history had it ever gotten into that out-of-the-way shop of a rural barber tailor. However, in order not to hurt the old artisan's feelings, he stood there unable to grasp what I was talking about. I put the thing in front of my face. The destruction already wrought on my cheeks, jaws, and chin gave me warning in advance as to the kind of monster that would eventually come forth from the thicket behind which the late Matia Pascal had sculpted through his unhappy life. I had another good reason besides for detesting the fellow cordially. A tiny projection of a chin pointed and receding, and he had kept the mat quiet for so long. Henceforth, and it seemed downright treason to me, I should have to carry that chin around in the full light of day, and my dot of a nose above and that everlasting cock-eye. This eye, I reflected, straying away off here to one side will always be something belonging to him in the new face I am going to have. The best I can ever do will be to wear a pair of coloured spectacles which ought to help a great deal, indeed, to make me look reasonably attractive. I'll let my hair grow long, and what with this truly imposing brow I have already and the smooth chin and the glasses I am going to have, I'll look more or less like a German philosopher, especially when I fill out the picture with a long straight coat and a soft broad brimmed hat. There was no way out of it, starting with the raw materials actually available, a philosopher I had to be. But anyhow we'll do the best we can, I would work out some philosophy or other, a cheerful one, you may be sure, to serve me and my passage through the humanity about me, a humanity which, try as I would, I could regard only as a very ridiculous, a very small and petty affair. A name was at last provided, handed to me, one might say, on the train, a few hours north of Allenga on the line toward Turin. There were two gentlemen in my compartment, engaged in an animated discussion on early Christian iconography, a branch of learning in which, to an ignoramus like me, they both seemed very well versed indeed. The younger of the two men, a slight pale-faced fellow with a curly black beard, seemed to take a malicious satisfaction in supporting on the authority of Justin the Martyr, Tatullian, and I forget who else, an ancient tradition to the effect that Christ had a very ugly face. He delivered this opinion in a heavy cavernous voice that contrasted strangely with his pale, ascetic slenderness. Yes, sir, just that, just that, ugly, no more, no less, and Kirilos of Alexandra, you know, goes farther still. Yes, sir, Kirilos of Alexandra says, word for word, that Christ was the ugliest of all living men. His companion, a placid, tranquil old scholar, not over-attentive to his person, but with a smile of subtle irony drawing down the corners of his mouth, his head toppling forward on a long neck as he sat there erect, was inclined to think that little reliance could be placed on such primitive traditions. In those early days, said he, the church was all taken up with the teachings and the spiritual aspects of its founder. Little, or even, as one may say, no attention at all, was paid to his corporeal features. At a certain point the conversation turned to St. Veronica and two statues in the ancient city of Panera, which by some were held to be images of the Christ with the Lady of the Miracle before him. Nothing of the kind, the younger man declared. I didn't know there was any doubt about it either. Those two statues represent the Emperor Adriano, Hadrian, with the city kneeling in submission at his feet. The old scholar placidly stuck to his opinion, which must have been a contrary one, for his colleague, turning now toward me, insisted obstinately, Adriano. Veronica in Greek, and from Veronica we get Veronica. Adriano, still to me. So you see, Veronica, vera icon, a very natural distortion. Adriano, again to me. For the Veronica mentioned in the acts of Pilate, Adriano. And he said Adriano over and over again, looking at me as though he expected my support in the matter. The train came into a station and they got out, still arguing heatedly. I went to the window and leaned forward to watch them. They had taken a few steps when the old man lost his temper and stalked off by himself in another direction. Who's your authority? Who's your authority? The younger fellow called after him defiantly. The old man turned and shouted back, Camillo de Mace. I got the impression that he too meant his answer for me. I had been mechanically repeating the Adriano, which the other man had so drilled into my ears. I simply threw the dare away and kept the Mace. Adriano Mace, yes, that will do. Sounds quite distinguished and unusual. Adriano Mace. And I thought besides that, the name went well with the smooth face, the colored glasses, the straight coat and broad brimmed hat I was eventually to wear. Adriano Mace, fine. The squabbling Christians have baptized me. Deliberately suppressing in myself all thoughts of my life just passed and concentrating on the purpose of beginning a new existence from that moment, my whole being seemed to expand with a fresh childlike glee. It was as though I had been born again, guileless, limpid, pure, transparent. My senses and my consciousness awakened watchful to take advantage of everything that might contribute to the upbuilding of my new personality. My soul, meanwhile, soared aloft in the joy of this new freedom. Never had people and things looked to me as they did now. The air between us seemed suddenly to have lost its cloudiness. How approachable human beings now appeared. How easy and unstrained the relations I would henceforth establish with them, all the more since I would have very little to ask of men to satisfy the requirements of the placid felicity that would be mine. What a delicious sense of spiritual lightness. What a gentle, what a serenely ineffable intoxication. Fortune, quite beyond all my hopes and expectations, had swept off the complicated coils that had been strangling me. And drawing me aside from ordinary life made me an impartial spectator of the struggle for existence in which others were still entangled. Just wait, a voice whispered in my ear, and you'll see how amusing it all is when you view it from a point of vantage on the outside. That fellow, for instance. Here he was, souring his own stomach, goading a poor old man to rage, for the mere sake of proving that our good Lord was the ugliest of all living men. I smiled faturously, and I began to smile that way at everything. At the lines of trees that wheeled past me as my express rushed along, at the farmhouses scattered over the countryside where I could imagine peasants puffing and blowing at the chill fog that might come some night to see the olive trees. Or shaking their fists at the sky which refused and refused to send them rain. At the birds escaping in terror to right and left as the locomotive came thundering up. At the telegraph poles flitting by the car windows, hot with news, doubtless, like that of my suicide in the middle flume at Miranjo. At the poor wives of the flagmen who stood at the crossings waving their red warning signals, the regulation caps of their husbands on their heads. Until at last my eye chanced to fall upon the plain gold ring which encircled the third finger of my left hand. I came to myself with a violent start. I winced, I closed my eyes, then I clapped my right hand down over my left and tried to work the ring loose, stealthily, without attracting my own attention as it were. The ring came off. I could not help remembering that around the inside of it two names were engraved, Matia Romilda, with a date. What should I do with it? I opened my eyes, and for a time I sat there frowning at the ring as it lay in the palm of my hand. Everything around me had lost its charm. Here still was one last link in the chain that held me to my past. What a tiny bit of metal in itself, so light and yet so heavy. But the chain was broken, broken, thank God. Why so mortgaged then over this, the last of its fragments? I started to throw the ring out of the window, but then I thought, so far fortune has been with me, exceptionally, miraculously with me. I must not abuse her good nature now. I had come to a point where I believed everything possible, even this, that a small ring tossed off a train on a rarely frequented railroad track might be found by someone, a laborer, say, and passing from hand to hand, come to reveal in the end, by virtue of the two names inscribed upon it, the truth. The truth, that is, that the victim of the Milflume Tragedy at Muranio was not the librarian of Santa Maria Liberale, was not the late Matia Pascal. No, no, I murmured to myself, no, I must wait for a sureer place, but where? The train stopped at another station. A workman was standing on the platform with a box of tools. I bought a file from him. When the train started again, I cut the ring into small bits and scattered them out of the window. Less to control the direction of my thoughts than to give a certain substantiality to my new life hitherto floating impalpable in void. I began to think about Riano Meis, to create a past for him, giving him a father and a birthplace, setting about this problem also in a leisurely, methodical manner, trying to establish each detail vividly and definitely in my own mind. I would be an only son, that point seemed certain beyond dispute. I doubt if there was ever a more only son than I, and yet when you think of it, how many people like me must there be in the world? My brother's there for in a way. Your hat, your coat, a letter on the railing of a bridge, deep water underneath, but instead of jumping in, you take a steamer to America or elsewhere. A week later, they find a corpse, too far gone to identify. It's the man off the bridge, of course, and no one thinks of the matter twice. To be sure, I didn't arrange this business myself, no letter, no coat, no hat, no bridge, but otherwise my situation is the same. In fact, there's one thing to my advantage in it. I can enjoy my freedom without any remorse whatever. They forced it on me, they did. So then an only son, born, wonder if I had better say where? Well, how can you avoid it? A fellow doesn't come down from the clouds, the moon, for instance, as midwife. Though I remember reading in a book in the library that the ancients used the moon in some such way, prospective mothers praying to her under the name of Lucina. However, I was not born in heaven. I'll keep off the earth. Stupid, of course, at sea. You were born at sea, on a steamer. My parents were travelling at the time, travelling with the baby about to come. Hardly plausible. How get them to see? They were immigrants. Had to come home from America. Why not? Everybody goes to America. Even the late Mathia Pascal, poor devil, started for there in his time. So my father earned these 80,000 lira in America. Nonsense. If he had had that much money, his wife would have been comfortably fixed in a hospital. They would have waited for me to come before starting on their journey. Besides, you don't get rich so easily in America any more. My father, by the way, what was his name? Paolo, yes, Paolo Mace. My father, Paolo Mace, had a hard time over there, as so many do. Three or four years of bad luck, then discouraged, humble pie. A letter to his old man, my grandfather, that is. I insisted on having a grandfather. He lived long enough for me to know him well, a nice old man. Like that professor who got off the train some stations back. Professor of Christian iconography, I think he was. Strange how the mind works. Why was it I came so naturally to think of my father, Paolo Mace, as a no-account? Who, of course, how else? Had been the torment of my grandfather, marrying against the latter's will and eloping to America. I suppose he too believed that Jesus was the ugliest of living men. And he must have got his full desserts off there in South America, if, with his wife in a precarious condition, he bought the tickets the moment my grandfather's money came, and sailed for home again. Need I have been born at sea necessarily, though? Why not in South America, simply, in Argentina, a few months before my father returned? Yes, much better that way, in fact, because grandpa was tickled when he heard about me, who gave his scapegrace son just on my account. So I crossed the Atlantic, while still a tiny baby, third class, probably, and I caught the croop on the way over and almost died. That, at least, is what grandpa always told me. Now, some people would say I might be sorry I didn't die on that occasion, when I was too small to notice much. I am not of that opinion. What troubles, what trials, after all, have I been through in my lifetime? Only one to tell the truth, that was when my grandfather died. I had grown up with him, you see. For my father, Paolo Meis, scullowag that he was, never able to stick to any one thing, went back to South America again, after a few months, leaving his wife with my grandfather. Paolo Meis died over there, yellow fever. By the time I was three, I lost my mother too, so I never really knew them, only the few things I learned later on. And that isn't the worst of it. I never found out exactly where I was born. Argentina, yes, but that's a big place. What town in Argentina? Grandpa didn't know. Couldn't remember that father ever told him, and he never thought to ask. I, of course, was too young to remember such things. In short, A, an only son of Paolo Meis, B, born in South America in the Argentine Republic, locality unknown, C, brought to Italy when a few months old, group, D, no memory and little information about my parents, E, reared and educated by my grandfather. Where? Here, there, everywhere. First at Nice, rather vague recollections of Nice, Piazza Massena, the Promenade des Anglais, the Avenue de la Gare, after that Turin. I was on my way to Turin at present, and there I would attend to many things. I would pick out a street and a house where my grandfather boarded me till I was 10 years old in a family which I would settle just there, being sure it fitted the background well. There I would live, or rather relive, all the boyhood of Adriano Meis. This pursuit, this game of creating out of sheer fancy a life which I had never really lived, which I pieced together from details observed in people and in places here and there, and which I made my own and felt to be my own, amused me mightily in the first days of my wanderings, though the pleasure had ever an undercurrent of sadness. I made it my daily work, however. I lived not only in the present but in a past, the past which Adriano Meis had not as yet lived. I kept, I may say, very little of what I thought of originally. Nothing, I believe, is ever imagined unless it have roots of greater or lesser depth in actual experience. On the other hand, the strangest things may be true when this latter is the case. The human mind could never dream of certain impossible situations that rush out to meet you from the tumultuous inwards of life as it is lived. Though always the living, breathing, palpitating reality is different and how different from the inventions we erect upon it, how many things we need and how unutterably minute they are, how entirely inconceivable to reconstitute that reality from which we derive our fictions. How many lines we must bring together again in the complicated skein of life, lines which we have cut to make our situation something individual, something standing by itself. Now, what was I but a creature of the imagination? I was a walking fiction which was determined and, for that matter, obliged to stand by itself, though dependent on, immersed in reality. Daily witnessing, daily observing in detail the life that the world about me was living, I was conscious at once of its infinitude of inner concatenations and of the many bonds which I had severed between me and it. Could I reunite all those broken connections with reality? Who knows where they would finally drag me? They might prove to be the reins of wild horses pulling the frail chariot of my necessary fissioning to destruction in the end. No, I should be careful to do nothing more than reintegrate the imaginary experience. On the playgrounds, in the public gardens, about the streets I would follow and study children from five to ten years old, noting their ways, their language, their games, in order gradually to construct an infancy for Adriano Meis. And I succeeded so well that eventually his childhood had a relatively substantial existence in my mind. I decided not to create a new mother for myself. That I should have regarded as profaning a beautiful and sacred memory. But a grandfather, that was different, with real gusto I set about fashioning one, the one I had thought of in my first outline. How may real granddaddies, little old men whom I picked out and followed about, now at Turin, now at Venice, now at Milan, went into the delightful ancestor of my own dreams. One would give me his ivory snuffbox, and his checkerboard handkerchief with red and black squares. Another would furnish his cane, a third his glasses and his long two-pointed beard. A fourth his amusing walk and the thunderous way he sneezed or blew his nose. A fifth his curious high-pitched voice and laugh. The grandparent I eventually produced was a shrewd and canny old fellow, something of a grumpus, a wise connoisseur of the arts, a man contemptuous of modern things and therefore unwilling to send me to school, preferring to educate me by conversations with himself on long walks about the city, to the museums and picture galleries. On my visits to Milan, Padua and Venice, to Ravenna, Florence and Perugia, I had this dear old man always at my side, talking to me more than once, however, through the mouths of professional guides. At the same time I was keen to live my own life in the present, every now and then, the realization of my limitless, my unheard-of freedom would sweep over me, filling me with such exquisite delight that I would be caught up into a sort of beatified ecstasy. I would take in one deep breath after another to feel my whole spirit expand with my lungs. Alone, alone, master of myself, not an obligation to anyone, nor a responsibility for anyone. Where shall we go today? To Venice, to Venice we go. To Florence? Very well, to Florence then. And inseparable from me was my exultant felicity. I remember particularly one evening at Turin in the first weeks of my new life. The sun was setting. I was standing on the boulevard along the poor, near a mole thrown out into the foaming stream to shelter a fish-pound. The air was marvelously clear, so clear that everything seemed gilded, enameled in the limpid brightness of the twilight. The sense of my freedom now came over me with such intenseness that I really thought I was losing my mind. I tore myself away to put an end to my mad enjoyment. I had long since attended to the remodeling of my exterior semblance. My beard was gone. I had selected a light blue tint for my spectacles. Letting my hair grow, I had succeeded in giving it a touch of artistic unruliness. With these modifications, I was quite another person. Sometimes I would stop in front of a mirror and have a long conversation with myself, unable, meantime, to keep from laughing. Adriano Mice, you are a lucky dog on the whole. Pity I had to give you a make-up just like this, but after all, what does it matter? It gets by, it gets by. If it weren't for that cockey which belongs to him, really, you would not be half bad looking. In fact, there is something actually impressive about your features. You have personality, as they say. It's true the women laugh at you a little, but that's not altogether your fault. If he hadn't cropped his hair quite so close, you wouldn't be obliged to wear it quite so long. And certainly it's from no choice of your own that you go around as sleekly jowled as a priest. Anyhow, cheer up. When the ladies laugh, just give a snicker or two yourself, and you'll survive it. You'll survive it. For the rest, I lived almost exclusively by myself and for myself. If I exchanged a word occasionally with an innkeeper, a waiter, a chambermaid, a neighbour at table, it was never for the sake of conversation. My disinclination toward more intimate contacts showed me, furthermore, that I had an innate distaste for lying and deceit. Not that other people were so anxious to become better acquainted. On the contrary, my general appearance tended to keep them away, making me look like a foreigner, probably. I remember that on one of my visits to Venice I proved unable to convince an old gondolier that I was not a German, an Ostriaco. Whereas I was actually born in Argentina, if you wish, but still of Italian parentage. What really made me an outsider was something quite different and known to me alone. In reality, I was nobody. No public registry bore a record of me except the documents in Miranjo, and according to them I was dead and buried under my other name. I did not mind all this so very much, and yet I could not reconcile myself to passing for an Austrian. Never before had I had occasion to centre my mind on the notion of country. In the old days there had been plenty of other things to worry about. But now in my leisure and solitude I became accustomed to meditating on many things I should never before have regarded as of any possible interest to me. Indeed, I would often find myself following such trains of thought quite involuntarily, and be somewhat put out because they seemed to lead nowhere. Yet I had to do something to pass my time, once I had my fill of travelling and sightseeing. To escape my own reflections when these began to lie heavy on my mind I would sometimes turn to writing, filling sheet after sheet of paper with my new signature, holding my pen in a new way with the idea of producing a new style of hand. But sooner or later I would tear my paper up and throw my pen aside. I might very well be illiterate for all the writing I should have to do. To whom would I ever be called upon to write? Henceforth I could and would receive no letters from anybody. This particular thought, like many others, unfailingly plunged me into my past again. My home, the library, the streets of Mirano, the seashore would come into my mind. Wonder if Romilda is still wearing black? I suppose so just for appearances. What can she be doing now? And I would think of her as I had seen her in those days about the house, and of the widow Pescatore as well, cursing my memory every time she thought of me I could be sure. I'll bet neither one of them has paid a single visit to that poor man there in the cemetery, a terrible end he came to at that. Where do you suppose they put my grave? Probably Aunt Scholastica refused to lay out as much money on my funeral as she did for Mama's, and of course Belta wouldn't do anything. I can just hear him. Who obliged Mattia to go and do that? I didn't. He had two lira a day from his job at the library. How much did he need to get along? No, they turned the dirt up and buried me like a dog. In one of the townlots, too, I'll bet my hat. Well, what of it? What do I care? Just the same. I am sorry for that poor man. Ten to one he had a few people who were fond of him and would have treated him to a better send-off. And yet little he need worry now. He's over with his troubles. I continued travelling about for some time, going beyond the confines of Italy, down the Rhine, for instance, as far as Cologne, following the river on an excursion steamer, Mannheim, Worms, Mainz, Bingen, Koblenz. I had thought of keeping on up into Scandinavia, but then I considered that I would have to put some limits to my expenditures. My money had to last me for the rest of my days, and you couldn't call it very much for such a purpose. I could bank on living thirty years more, at least. Outside the law in the sense that I could produce no document to prove, let alone my identity, the fact that I was even alive, I could not possibly find any lucrative employment. To keep out of trouble, therefore, I should have to restrict my outlay to the bare comforts. Taking account of stock, I saw that I must not exceed two hundred lira a month, not rank luxury by any means. And yet, back home, the three of us had gotten along on half of that. Yes, I could manage. But away down underneath, I was getting tired of this going about from place to place, in silence and alone. I was beginning, despite myself, to feel the need for some companionship, as I discovered one gloomy evening in Milan, shortly after returning from my trip to Germany. It was a cold day, cloudy and threatening rain. I happened to notice an old man huddled up against a lamp post. He was selling matches, and the box, hanging from his neck by a strap, prevented him from drawing his ragged overcoat warmly enough about him. He was blowing on the back of his hands, and I observed that a string ran from one of his fists down between his legs. On looking closer, I saw it was the leash for a mere speck of a puppy, three or four days old at the most, lying there between the old beggars worn out shoes, shivering with cold and whining piteously. Want to sell that pup, I asked. Yes, the man answered, and for very little, though he's worth a lot of money, a fine dog he's going to make someday, this little brute, you can have him for twenty-five. The poor puppy continued whimpering, though that estimate of his worth might have set him up considerably. I suppose he understood, however, that in mentioning such a figure his master was appraising not the future merits of the dog, but the stupidity he thought he could read on my face. But I, meantime, was thinking hard. If I bought the puppy, I could be sure of having a faithful friend eventually, one who would tell no tales, and who would never ask, as the price of his confidence and affection, who I was, where I came from, nor whether my papers were in order. On the other hand, I would have to take out a license for him and pay a tax. Things obviously a dead man could not, or at least should not, do. A first deliberate aggression, a first gratuitous restriction, however slight upon my freedom. Twenty-five, what do you take me for, I snapped at the old man. I crammed my hat down over my eyes, turned up the collar of my coat, and hurried away. It was beginning to rain in a fine mist-like drizzle. A great thing, this liberty of mine, I muttered as I walked along, but a bit of a tyrant, too, if it denies me the privilege of even buying a poor puppy out of its misery. End of section eight. Section nine of the late Mathieu Pascal by Luigi Pirandello, translated by Arthur Livingston. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter nine. Cloudy weather. Whether that first winter was a hard one or a mild one, I am sure I do not know. I was too much absorbed in the excitement of travelling and in gloating over my newfound freedom. But this second one, frankly, was getting on my nerves. I was tired, I suppose, from being on the move so much, with the additional concern of keeping within a definite allowance. So that now, if it was cold and damp, I knew that it was cold and damp. And despite my struggles to keep my spirits free from the influence of the weather, a cloudy day would not fail to depress me. But it's going to clear up, it's going to clear up, I would assure myself. Fortune is on your side, and the freedom you owe to her will not be long disturbed. To tell the truth, I had seen enough of carefree idleness. Adriano Mace had had his youthful fling. Now it was time for him to grow up, become a man, take hold of himself, find an even tenor of modest, sensible living. Not so much of a problem either for a person entirely free without a responsibility in the world. So at least I thought, and I applied myself seriously to the question of selecting a town to fix my residency. I could not go on hopping from one place to another like a bird without a nest, if I ever intended really to settle down. Well, where, then? A big metropolis or some small centre? I could not make up my mind. I would shut my eyes and mentally review all the cities that I had visited, lingering in this square, on that street, among those scenes which I could remember with greatest vividness and pleasure. And in each case I would say, yes, I was there once, and how much of life I am missing, life that lives its tense nervous course here, there, in all its variety. How many times have I felt, yes, I should like to spend the rest of my days right here, and how I have envied the people who did live in such places, with their habits and occupations adapted to those beautiful surroundings, free from the sense of transiency which always keeps the traveller real at ease. This restlessness, this painful feeling of detachment, was my besetting torment, something that would never allow me really to be at home among the objects about me, or even to think of the bed on which I slept is really mine. Things, I believe, have value to us only in proportion as they have power for evoking and grouping familiar images about them. Certainly an object may sometimes be pleasing to us in itself, through its artistic lines, let us say, but more often our delight in it comes from wholly extraneous considerations. Our fancy beautifies it with a halo, as it were, of fond remembrances, whereby we see it, not at all as it really is, but as something alive, as something animated by the images we habitually associate with it. What we love is that portion of ourselves which we recognize in it, which establishes a harmony between it and us, giving it a soul that is known only to us because that soul is the creation of our own memories. Needless to say, I could never thus transform the atmosphere of the various hotel rooms in which I passed my nights, but a house, a home, a place that was really wholly mine, could I hope ever to have one? I had very little money to begin with, so make it a wee little house, just two or three rooms, but comfortable, or to be possible, but wait, not quite so fast. A number of things have to be thought of, very carefully weighed indeed. Free, free as the wind that blows, yes, but on one condition, your valise in your hand, today here, tomorrow there. You buy a house, settle down, and right away, deeds, public records, tax bills, your name in the directory, and on the voting lists, of course. Well then, what name? An assumed name. And after that, what? Who is that fellow? Where did he come from? Secret investigations by the police. Trouble in a word, annoyances, one thing leading to another. Out of the question then, a house, property of my own. Oh well, a furnished room, bored in a private family. Why so wrought up over nothing? It was winter, beastly weather, that set me thinking along such lines, the approach of the Christmas season, that always makes one long for a cosy corner by a hearth, with the intimacy and warmth of a home about one. Not that I missed the good cheer of my own family circle. The only home I ever thought of with any real regret was the one I had had before that, the old home of my father and mother, destroyed long since, and not by anything connected with my recent change of status. I could console myself with the reflection that I would probably be no happier over the holidays, were I to spend them back in Mirania with my wife and horrors, my mother-in-law. I treated myself to the pleasure of an imaginary return to them, a big loaf of nut bread under my arm. I knock on the door. Excuse me, do they live here still, Romilda Pescatore, Guido Pascal, and Mariana Dondi, Guido Pescatore? Yes, and who is calling, may I ask? Why, I am the late husband of Signora Pascale, you know, the fellow they found drowned in the flume a year or more ago. Thought I'd just drop in for a visit over the holidays, on leave from the other world, with permission, of course, from higher up. I'll be going back soon, however. Do you suppose the old woman would drop dead on seeing me walk in like that? She dropped dead. I should smile. I'd be the dead one, give her two days. No, the one real blessing, the one thing in my adventure that I could really be thankful for was, I had to admit, my escape from my wife, from my mother-in-law, from my debts, from the humiliating afflictions of my former life. These, indeed, I had shaken off for good. Well, then, what more could I ask for? And just consider, I had a whole, whole life before me, for the moment to be sure. Well, but there were plenty of people as lonely as I was. Yes, but such people, you see, it was cloudy weather and my spirits were low. Such people either are travellers abroad and have homes to go back to, or if they haven't, they can have if they choose. Meantime going to see their friends. Whereas I, I will always be like this, a stranger wherever I am. That's the difference. A stranger, a visitor forever in this life, Adriano Meis will be. Then I would get angry at myself and storm. Why this whimpering? Come, not so much fussing over little things. You have friends, or at least you can have. Friends? In the Trattorio, where I was taking my meals in those days, a man who sat at a table nearby had shown himself disposed to make my acquaintance. He must have been something over forty. Dark hair, what there was of it. Gold eyeglasses that didn't like to stay put. Perhaps because they had chain, gold also was so heavy. An amusing little chap, really. Just imagine, when he stood up and put on his hat, he looked like some boy dressed up as an old man. The trouble was with his legs, so short that when he sat down they didn't reach the floor. He never, you might say, rose from a chair. It was a case rather of slipping off it. He tried to mitigate this drawback by wearing high heels. Well, what of that? They did make a good deal of noise, those heels. But they gave a certain snap to his way of walking. Quick little steps that made me think of a partridge running. A solid person besides of some ability. A little testy, perhaps, and better as a talker than as a listener. But with original views on things, always his own point of view. And he had a decoration. He handed me his card one day, Cavaliere Tito Lanzi. I must say that this episode of the visiting card gave me quite a shock, for I imagined I must have cut a poor figure in not being able to return the courtesy. I had not as yet had any cards made, a certain self-consciousness I suppose, about putting my new name into print deliberately. All nonsense anyhow, such trifles. Why a visiting card, pray. Say your name right out and have done with it. And so I did. But as for telling the truth, my real name, well, you understand. What a good talker Cavaliere Tito Lanzi was. He even knew Latin and he could quote Cicero like anything. Once happiness comes from within, that's not the whole story, my dear sir. Your own inner self is not sufficient as a guide. It might be if our spirit were a private castle and not, so to speak, a public square. If, that is, we could think of our self as something quite apart from everything else, and if that self were not, by its very nature, visible, perceptible to everybody. In the mind, as I think, there is, to put it differently, an essential relation, essential notice, between me who do the thinking and the other beings whom I apprehend. Well then, I cannot be sufficient unto myself. Do you follow me? So long as the feelings, the inclinations, the tastes of these people whom I have thus made a part of myself, and you a part of yourself, do not affect me and you, neither you nor I can be contented, happy, easy in our own minds. And so true is this that we work as hard as we can so that our feelings, thoughts, interests, inclinations may find some response in other people. And if we fail in this because, well, how shall we say, because the atmosphere of the moment is not right for bringing the seed to fruition, the seed, my dear sir, of your ideas that you have planted in the minds of others. You cannot say that you are satisfied with your own inner life. How can you be? What's it really amount to? Well, yes, you can live all alone in the world, wrought away in the sterile darkness around you. But is that enough? Listen, my dear sir, I hate fine phrases. To my mind, they are so much pap to feed people unable to think for themselves. And here is one of them. I am content if I am true unto myself. Cicero said something like that. May I me he conscientia pluris est quam hominum sermo. But Cicero, let us be quite frank, Cicero was a great one for big words with little meaning. The Lord deliver us from such. Worse than a beginner on the violin. I could have hugged this delightful little old man who could talk so charmingly, except that he did not always confine himself to the acute and often witty disquisitions of which I have given you a sample. He began to be more personal in his remarks. And just as I was thinking that our friendship was well and easily underway, I had occasion to feel some embarrassment and an obligation to hold off at a safe distance. So long as he did the talking and the conversation dealt with general subjects, everything went smoothly. But finally Cavalliere-Lenzzi wanted to hear from me. You are not from Milana, gather? No. Just passing through? Yes. Interesting town Milana. Very. I must have sounded like a trained parrot. And the more he pressed me with his questions, the farther afield my answers took us. Before long I had landed in America. But the moment the Cavalliere learned that I was born in Argentina, he left from his chair and came over to shake my hand. Ah, Argentina! My heartiest congratulations, my dear sir. I envy you. America. America. I have been there myself. Time for me to be getting out of here, I reflected uneasily and then allowed. You have been there. Perhaps I ought to congratulate you rather. Because though I was born in Argentina, I can hardly say I was ever there. I was a few weeks old when they brought me away, so that my feet, you may say, never trod American soil. What a pity exclaimed Cavalliere-Lenzzi sympathetically. But I suppose you have relatives in those parts still. None that I know of. Oh, I see, your family came back to Italy for good. Where did you settle? I shrugged my shoulders. Why, we lived in various places, a short time here, a short time there, moving about a good deal. I have nobody left at present. I see a good deal of the world. How delightful. Lucky man, I must say. You just travel around and nobody to look out for. No one. How delightful. Lucky man, I envy you. I suppose you have a family, I decided to ask, to veer the conversation back upon him. Unfortunately, no, he sighed, knitting his brow. I'm quite alone, as I have always been. Your case then is the same as mine. And I can't say that I like it, my dear sir, he exclaimed. I find life very dull. For me, all this loneliness, well, in short, I'm tired of it. Or I have crowds of friends, of course. But believe me, when you get to a certain age, you don't like to go home every day to a house where you know you will find no one waiting for you. Well, after all, there are people who understand the game and there are people who don't, my dear sir. And those who do come out worse in the end than the others. Saps your energy, your initiative, you see. It's this way. When you're really wise, you say, I mustn't do this or I mustn't do that. Otherwise, I'll be putting my foot in it. Very well, you discover sooner or later that life itself means putting one foot in after the other. And the man who never made a fool of himself is the man who never really lived. And there you are. But you, I encouraged comfortably, you have time still. To make a mistake, my dear sir, as though I hadn't made many of them. And he smiled mischievously. You see, I've traveled, traveled a great deal as you have. And as for adventures, well, lots of them and some most amusing. Listen, for example, at Vienna one evening. And I was dumbfounded. Love affairs, that little old man. Three, four, five, Austria, France, Russia, even Russia. And such affairs, one more spicy than the other, as he retailed them to me. It was sufficient to look at his absurd, his utterly insignificant person to know that he was lying. And at first I was mortified, ashamed for him. Surely he could not realize the effect that all his boastings really had on those who heard them. But then I got angry. Here was this little fellow lying to me with the greatest zest and ease, and quite gratuitously, without needing to do so in the least. While I, who could not dispense with falsehood, was in fact a living lie, felt my soul tortured every time I had to deceive someone. But later I thought it over, if this agreeable little fellow took such pleasure in feeding me all this talk about imaginary love affairs, it was precisely because there was no reason for him to lie. He had almost a right to amuse himself in that way if he chose. Whereas with me it was a matter of constraint, an irksome, humiliating, debasing obligation. And what conclusion must I draw from the situation? Only one, alas, that I would be condemned to falsehood eternally, that therefore I could never have a friend, a true friend, for friendship presupposes confidence. And how could I ever entrust to anyone the secret of this second life of mine, a nameless life without a past, a fungus sprouting from the presumptive suicide of the late Mathia Pascal? No, the best I could hope for would be casual, superficial relationships with my fellow humans, short exchanges of indifferent words on subjects that did not matter. Well, again, what of it? Little inconvenience is incident to good fortune. Should I lose heart on account of them? By no means. I should go on living as I had lived by and for myself. Not a fascinating prospect altogether, to be sure. My own company, good as it was, would still improve from a little variety. Sometimes passing my hands over my face and finding it beardless, or running them through my hair and finding it so long, or adjusting those strange blue glasses to my little nose, I would experience a curious bewilderment, as though it were not myself whom I was touching, as though I were no longer the man I always had been. Facing issues squarely, the truth was that all this new make-up was for other people, not for myself. Well, then, why wear the mask in my own presence? And if all I had invented and imagined in connection with Adryon or Mace was not for the benefit of other people, for whose benefit was it? For mine? But I could take it seriously, if at all, only providing others should take it seriously. Accordingly, if this Adryon or Mace lacked the courage to lie, avoided people because he lacked that courage, went off by himself into hiding in his hotel, when, during those cloudy wintry days, he could no longer bear to see himself so much alone on the streets of Milan, just to pass the time in company with the late Mathia Pascal. It was easy to see that things would go worse and worse with me, that a gloomy outlook lay ahead, that my great good fortune, well. But I suppose the situation was really this. I was so absolutely free that it was difficult for me to bring myself to any particular kind of life. I would be on the point of making a decision, only to feel myself embarrassed, hampered, blocked by the many obstacles and uncertainties I would seem to perceive before me. So out I would go again upon the streets, watching everything, observing everything, pondering deeply on the least details. Then when I was tired, I would go into a café, look over the newspapers, and sit studying the people who went in and out, going out to myself in the end. Surely life, taken in this way, from the point of view that is, of a spectator wholly disinterested in it, was something meaningless, purposeless, without rhyme or reason. I felt lost in that swirling throng of human beings. The noise and the ferment of the city deafened me, drove me to distraction. Why, oh why, I would ask myself frantically, why do men strive to make the mechanism of life so more and more complicated? Why all these banging, crashing machines? What will we come of people when machines do everything for them? Will they then see that this so-called progress has nothing to do with happiness? From all these inventions with which science sincerely believes it is enriching humanity, really making us poorer because they cost so much, what satisfaction do we really get, even if we do admire them? In a streetcar the day before I had met one of those individuals who cannot help telling their neighbours everything that comes into their heads, and he said to me, What a wonderful thing these electric cars! For two cents I can go from one end of Milan to the other, and almost in as many minutes. All the poor man could see was the long ride he got for his two cents, oblivious to the fact that it was more than he could do to earn a living in that world of noise and uproar for all its electric cars, electric lights and electric everything. And yet science seems to make life easier and more convenient, granted that it really does I can still ask, What worse service can you do to a human being than reduce a life that is stupid and not worthwhile to the perfection of mechanical ease? And I would be back in my hotel again. In the window casing in one of the corridors a birdcage was hanging with a canary in it, since I could not talk with people and had nothing else to do, I began a conversation with the bird. He brightened up when I imitated a few notes of his and seemed really to understand that someone was talking to him, catching who knows what references to nests and green leaves and freedom in the sounds I made with my lips. He would hop about in the cage, turn around, stand on one leg, look at me crosswise, lower and raise his head, finally chirp an answer or a question and then listen again, poor little bird, he understood me though I did not know what I was saying to him. Well isn't that what happens to men more or less? Don't we imagine that nature talks to us? Don't we think we catch some meaning in her mysterious whispering? An answer which we interpret in accord with our yearnings to the many earnest questions we put to her. And nature meantime in her infinite grandeur has not the remotest consciousness even that we exist. Which illustrates the consequences the most idle diversion may have for a man condemned to his own society exclusively. I felt like boxing my own ears. Was I so far gone as to be turning really into a philosopher? No, no, there was no logic in the kind of life I was trying to lead, and I could not stand it much longer. I would have to overcome my reticences, make a decision, whatever the cost. My problem after all was to live, to live, to live. End of section 9. Section 10 of the late Mathia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello, translated by Arthur Livingston. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, contact LibriVox.org. Chapter 10. A font and an ashtray. A few days later I was in Rome to find a permanent abode there. Why Rome and not some other city? There was a reason as I see now, but I must not go into it. The discussion would break up my story with reflections which I believe would be quite irrelevant just here. At the moment I selected Rome because I liked it better than any other place of my acquaintance, and because with all the visitors who are constantly coming and going there it seemed the environment most likely to harbour a stranger like me without asking too many questions. To find a suitable room on a quiet street with a reliable family was not so simple a matter. I finally chose one on the Via Repetta, with a view over the river. The first impression I had of the people who were to house me was not, I must confess, at all favourable. So little so, in fact, that on returning to my hotel I debated for some time as to whether it would not be advisable to hunt father still. Over the door on the fifth floor were two name plates, Pagliari on the left, Papiano to the right. Under the latter was a visiting card fastened to the wall with two thumbtacks, Silvia Caporale. When I knocked an old man of at least sixty, Pagliari, Papiano, came to the door. He had literally nothing on but his underdraws and a pair of worn out slippers, so that I could not fail to observe the ruddy smoothness of the skin on his naked torso. His hands were covered with soap suds of which also there was a veritable turban on his head. Oh, excuse me, he apologised. I thought it was the servant. Beg your pardon. Hardly presentable, as you see. Adriana, de Rencio. Well, hurry, won't you? A gentleman here. Just a moment, if you don't mind, sir. Won't you come in? What can we do for you? You were advertising a furnished room, if I am not mistaken. Why, yes, my daughter will be here in just a moment. Adriana, Adriana, the room. A young lady, blushing, confused, embarrassed, came hurrying in, a short frail little thing with light hair, pale cheeks, and two soft blue eyes, filled with the same sadness which her whole face suggested. Adriana, I commented mentally. My name. What a coincidence. And where is Terencio? asked the old man of the shampoo. Why, you know very well, Papa. He went to Naples yesterday. But, Papa, go into the other room, please, if you could see yourself. The idea. There was a note of tenderness in the girl's scolding that showed the gentleness of her disposition despite her mortification at the moment. Oh, yes, I remember. I remember, said the old man, and he started away, dragging his mules along after him noisily and resuming the massage of his bald head and now his grey beard also before he reached the door. I could not repress a smile, but I softened it in order not to increase the confusion of the little young lady, who for her part looked the other way to conceal her chagrin. I had taken her for a mere girl at first, but now on closer inspection I observed that she was a grown woman. Why else, in fact, would she be wearing that absurd wrapper far too large for her tiny form? She was in half-morning also, as I noticed. Speaking in a very low voice and continuing to withhold her eyes from me, who knows the impression I must have given her, she led me along a dark hallway to the room that was for rent. As the door swung open, my lungs expanded to the flood of light and air that came streaming in through two large windows. We were on the river side of the building. In the distance, Le Monte Mario, Ponte Margherita, all the modern Prati quarter as far as the Castel Sant'Angelo. Directly below us, the old ripeta bridge and the new one in process of construction alongside it. Over here to the left, the Ponte Umberto and the old houses of Tordinona, following the broad bend of the Tiber, and beyond the green summit of the Gianiculum, with the great fountain of San Pietro in Montorio and the equestrian statue of Garibaldi. I could not resist these exterior attractions and engaged the room at once. For that matter, it was pleasingly furnished too, with neat hangings in blue and white. This little balcony next door belongs to us too, the girl in the big wrapper obligingly added, at least for the time being. They are going to tear it down someday, they say, because it infringes. It does what? It infringes. I mean, it overhangs the city's right-of-way, but it will be a long time before they get the river-drive along this far. I smiled at this very serious talk from such a tiny girl in such a big dress, and said, will it? She was embarrassed at my mirth and at my inane remark, lowered her eyes and pressed her teeth to her lower lip. To relieve her, I said, in a very business-like way. No children in the house, I suppose. She shook her head without speaking, perhaps detecting in my question an ironical note I had not intended. Again I hastened to make amends. You let no other rooms than this. This is our best one, she answered, still looking at the floor. I'm sure that if you don't like this, no, no, I wanted to know whether—yes, we do rent another, she interrupted, raising her eyes with a forced indifference, on the other side of the house facing the street. A young lady has been taking it for two years past. She gives piano lessons, but not at home. And her features hinted at a smile, but a very faint and sad one. There are three of us—father, myself, and my brother-in-law. Paleari—no, Paleari is my father's name. My brother-in-law is Terensio Papiano, but he is soon going away with his brother, who for the moment is staying with us, too. My sister died six months ago. To change the subject, I asked her what rent I should have to pay. There was no difficulty on that point. The first week in advance, I asked. You decide that, or rather, if you would leave your name. With a nervous smile, I began rummaging through my coat pockets. I'm sorry, I don't seem to have a single card with me, but I heard your father call you Adriana. My name is Adriano, like yours. Perhaps you don't feel flattered. Why shouldn't I, she asked, noticing my strange confusion and laughing this time like a real child. I laughed, too, and added, Well then, if you don't object, you may call me Adriano Maze. That's my name. May I move in this afternoon, or would you like tomorrow better? Just as you wish, said she. But I went away with the feeling that she would have been better satisfied if I never came back at all. I had committed the unpardonable breach of not holding her big grown-up wrapper in sufficient awe. Before many days, however, it was perfectly apparent to me that the ugly costume was a matter of necessity with her, though she probably would have liked to dress somewhat better. The whole weight of the household rested on her shoulders, and things would have gone badly had it not been for her. The old man, Anselmo Pagliari, who had come to the door with a turban of soapsuds on the outside of his head, had brains of about the same consistency on the inside. The day I entered the house to live, he came to my room, not so much as he said, to apologise for his unconventional attire at the time of my first call, as for the pleasure of making the acquaintance of a man who must certainly be either a scholar or an artist. Am I wrong? You are. Nothing of the artist about me, and very little of the scholar. I do read a book once in a while. And I see you have good ones, said he, examining the backs of the volumes which I had set in line on my writing table. Well, some day I'll show you mine, eh? For I have some good books too. However, he shrugged his shoulders and stood there in a sort of abstraction, a blank expression on his face, evidently quite oblivious to everything, forgetting where he was and with whom he was talking. He muttered, however, a couple more times, drawing the corners of his mouth down after each. Then he turned on his heel and went away without another word. At the moment I was moderately surprised, to say the least, at his behaviour. But later on, when he invited me into his room and showed me his books, as he had promised, I came to understand not only the man's distraction, but many other things about him. I noticed titles like this, Death and the Hereafter, Man and His Bodies, The Seven Principles of Life, Karma, The Astral Plane, A Key to Theosophy. For Mr. Anselmo Paleari was a convert to the Theosophical School. Office manager, formally in some department or other of the government, he had been put on the retired list before his time. And this had been his ruin, not only from the financial point of view, but because, now, with his whole day free, there was nothing to restrain his weakness for research in various branches of the occult. Half his pension, at least, must have gone into those books, of which he owned a small-sized library. Nor could Theosophy have satisfied him entirely. Traces of the blight of scepticism were also much in evidence on his bookshelves. Publications and reviews on philosophy, ancient and modern, treatises on science, and a whole collection on psychic research in which he was now making experiments. In Signorino Silvia Caporale, the piano teacher, old Mr. Paleari had discovered unusual psychic aptitudes. Not very well developed, to be sure, but promising much with time and proper exercise. In fact, he saw in this lady a future rival of the most celebrated mediums. For my part, I must testify that never in all my life have I seen, in a coarse, ugly face, more like a mask of Mardi Gras than a human countenance, a pair of such sorrowful eyes as those of Miss Silvia Caporale. Staring, bulging, intensely black, they gave the impression of being fixed in her head with lead weights to open and close them, like a doll's. The lady was well over forty, and in addition to the attractions of maturity, she had a rather handsome moustache under a nose that was a small bright red ball. I learned eventually that the poor woman drank, drank heavily to forget her age, her repulsiveness and a hopeless love. More than one evening she would come home, her hat on a skew, her nose red as a carrot, her eyes half closed and more sorrowful than ever, in a deplorable state in short. She would throw herself on her bed and then gradually discharge all the wine she had absorbed in the form of torrential tears. Whereupon the little lady of the wrapper would get up out of bed, go into the other room, and take care of the woman for a good part of the night. Sorry for the poor thing, you see, all alone like that in the world, with the bitterness and jealousy of unrequited love, likely to commit suicide at any time, as she had tried to do twice already. Diplomatically the little lady would extract from her invalid a promise to be good, never, never to do such a thing again. And sure enough you would see the piano teacher appear the next day in her best finery, tripping gaily, playfully about, with the winsome ways of a capricious debutante. Once in a while she would earn a day's pay by accompanying some nascent cafe-star at a rehearsal, and the result would be a new debauch that evening and some new article of finery the following morning. Never a penny for her rent, of course, nor for the very modest board served her in the family. However, she could not be sent away. For one thing, how could Mr. Anselmo Paleari go on with his psychic researchers without her? But there was still another reason. Two years before, Ms. Caporale's mother had died, leaving furniture which, on being sold, netted some six thousand lira. Coming to live at the Palearis, the piano teacher had entrusted this money to Terencio Papiano for an investment which he had represented to her as a sure thing. The six thousand lira had not been heard from again. When I got this story from Ms. Caporale herself, she wept copiously, as she told it. I was able to find some excuse for Sr. Anselmo, whom I had secretly been accusing of improper guardianship in bringing his daughter into contact with such a woman in selfish pursuit of his own folly and occultism. It is true that little Adriana was such an instinctively sound and virtuous little miss that she was really in no danger. In fact she was on her own guard, resenting her father's mysterious practices and all his talk about the evocation of spirits with the Caporale woman. For Adriana was a devout little person as I had reason to perceive during my very first days in the house. Fastened to the wall over the stand at the head of my bed was a small holy water font of blue glass. One night I lay smoking in bed trying to read myself to sleep with one of old Palearis' crazy volumes. Distractedly I knocked my ashes and finally put the stub of my cigarette into the blue glass receptacle. The next day the font had disappeared and on my stand I found an ashtray. I thought I would ask Adriana if she was the one who had made the change. Flushing slightly she replied, Yes I'm sorry but I thought you needed the ashtray rather. Was there any holy water in the font? There was. The Church of San Rocco was just across the street and she went away. That diminutive mamma must have taken me for a holy man if she brought extra water for me when she went to get her own at the Church of San Rocco. I imagined she did not take that trouble for her father. And as for Miss Silvia Caborale if she had a font at all it would have been for holy wine. Bin Santo rather. Suspended in a strange void as I felt myself to be, I would fall into long meditations on the slightest provocation. And this matter of the holy water font reminded me that since my early boyhood I had been quite neglecting religious practices. Yes I had not been to church since the last time Pinzone had taken me there with Berto under orders from mamma. I never thought of asking myself what my beliefs really were. And the late Mattia Pascal had come to a violent death without holy administrations. Suddenly now I found myself in a very surprising situation. As far as all my former acquaintances could know I had rid myself for good or for evil as the case might be of the most troublesome and disturbing worry that a living man can have, the fear of death. Who knows how many people back in Miranio might be saying lucky fellow after all, he has solved the one great problem. Whereas I had not solved anything at all. Here were these books of Anselmo Paleari and what did they have to say? They said that the dead, the really dead that is, found themselves in much the same fix as I was in. In the shells namely of the Kamaloka, in which a certain Dr. Leadbeater, author of the Astral Plane, the Astral Plane is the first sphere of the invisible world, places suicides especially, representing them as moved by all the desires and impulses that living people have, without being ever able to satisfy them, stripped as they are of their carnal bodies which mean time they do not know they have lost. If that's so I thought, I may very well have been drowned in the flume at the coops. This notion I have of being alive may be just an illusion. Certain kinds of insanity are, as is well known, contagious. Paleari's brand, though I rebelled against it for some time, at last attacked me. Not that I believed I was really dead. That would not have been so bad, for the worst thing about death is dying. After that I doubt whether people are so anxious to come back to life. But the point is that all at once I realised that I should have to die again. And that was a very painful discovery. After my suicide back there in the mill flume I had naturally taken it for granted that I had only life in front of me. And here was this Paleari fellow reminding me of death every other minute. He could talk of nothing else curses on him, but he talked of it with so much enthusiasm and every now and then he dropped such curious remarks with such unusual figures of speech that I was always changing my mind about going somewhere else to live in order to be free of him. Though Paleari's beliefs seemed to me a bit childish, they were optimistic on the whole. And once I had awakened to the fact that I should have to die an earnest someday, it was not unpleasant to hear the things spoken of in just his way. Is it reasonable, he asked me one afternoon after reading me a passage from a book by Fino. It was a sentimental and very gruesome treatise on death with speculations such as a grave digger addicted to morphine might make, picturing how the worms grow from the decomposition of human bodies. Is it reasonable? Matter I grant you, matter. Let us admit that it's all matter, but there are forms and forms of matter, kinds and kinds of matter, ways and ways of its manifesting itself. Here it is a stone, but there it is imponderable, impalpable ether if you please. Take this body of mine, fingernails, teeth, hair, and notice this delicate, delicate tissue of my eye. All matter. Well, who can deny it? The substance which we call soul may very well be matter, but not for heaven's sake matter like my fingernails or my teeth or my hair, but matter rather like ether. Understand? And you people, you admit that there is ether, but not that there is soul. I ask you, is it reasonable? Matter, all well and good. Follow my argument now and see where I come out, granting everything to the other side. Here is nature. Now we think of man as the air of a limitless series of generations, do we not, as the product of a slow natural creation. Oh I know, you my dear Mr. Mays, you think man's a brute beast anyhow and a cruel, stupid beast, one of the least respectable of all the animals. Well I grant you even that if you wish. Let us say that man represents a very low grade indeed in the scale of living beings. Here you have a worm and here a man. How many grades shall we put between them? Eight? Seven? Make it as few as five. But bless my soul, it took nature thousands and thousands and thousands of centuries to make a man five times better than a worm. It required some evolution, eh? For matter to change from this beast that crawls on its belly to this beast that steals and kills and lies and cheats, but that also writes a divine comedy, Mr. Mays, a divine comedy and is capable of the sacrifices your mother made for you and my mother made for me. And then zip, it's all over, eh? Nothing again, eh? Zero, eh? Is it reasonable? Oh yes, my nose, my foot, my leg, they become worm again, but not my soul my dear sir, not my soul. Matter, I grant you, but not matter like my nose or my feet or my leg, Mr. Mays. Is it reasonable? Excuse me, Mr. Pagliari, I interrupted. Here you have a great man, a genius, walking along the street. He slips on a banana peel, pumps the back of his head, and suddenly he loses his mind. Now where's his soul? Señor Ancelmo stopped and looked at me as though someone had just thrown a millstone down in front of him on the floor. Where's his soul? Yes, take you or me. Well, take me, though I'm not a great man. I've got, or let's be modest, some intelligence. However, I go walking along the street, I fall, I fracture my skull, I become a half-wit. Where's my soul? Pagliari joined his two hands with a smile of benign compassion. Then he answered, But why on earth should you fall and break your head, my dear Mr. Mays? Just for an hypothesis. Not at all, not at all. You go walking right along about your business. Why bother to fall? There are plenty of old people who lose their minds in the course of nature without needing to fall and break their heads. You are trying to prove, by that argument, that since the soul seems to weaken with the infirmity of the body, it must die when the body dies. But excuse me, just think of the matter the other way round. Take cases of very bad bodies that have nevertheless held brilliant souls. Giacomo Leopardi, for instance. Or old men like his Holiness Pope Leo XIII. What do you say to that? Now imagine a piano and a person playing on it. At a certain point the instrument gets out of tune, then one wire breaks, then two, then three more. With his piano in that condition the man is going to play badly, isn't he? Great artist though he be. Now finally the piano stops working altogether. Do you mean that the player has ceased to exist? I see. Our brain is the piano and the pianist our soul. Exactly, Mr. Mays, though the illustration is old and trite. If the brain goes wrong, the soul expresses itself badly, imbecility, madness, whatnot. Just as when the pianist, perhaps accidentally, perhaps carelessly, perhaps deliberately spoils the piano, he has to pay. And down to the last cent, too, he has to pay. There is exact compensation for everything. But that's another question. Excuse me, does it mean nothing to you that all humanity, as far back as history goes, has always had faith in another life? It's a fact, Mr. Mays, a fact, real proof. Maybe the instinct for self-preservation. No, sir, no, sir. What do I care about this bag of skin and bones I have to carry around with me? It's a jolly nuisance. I put up with it because I know I have to. But now if you come and demonstrate to me that after I've lugged it around for five, six, ten years more, there's nothing to it anyhow, that it's all over then and there, why, I just get rid of it right now, this very minute. So where is your instinct for self-preservation? I keep going because I feel that it can't all end that way. But you may say the individual man is one thing and the race another, that the individual perishes while the race continues its evolution. Fine reasoning that, I must say. Just consider, as though humanity were not I and our humanity, as though we were not all of us together, one whole. And doesn't every one of us feel the same way that it would be the most absurd, the most atrocious thing conceivable if there were nothing to us but this miserable breath of air which we call earthly life? Fifty, sixty years of hardship, of toil, of suffering, all for what? For nothing? For humanity. But supposing humanity itself comes to an end some day, just think of it. In that case all this life of ours, all this progress, all this evolution, for nothing. And they say meantime that there can be no such thing as nothing, non-being, pure and simple. Life is merely the convalescence of a sick planet, eh? As you said the other day. Very well call it that, but we must see what we mean by it. The trouble with science, Mr. Mace, is that it bothers too much about life, to the exclusion of other things. Naturally, I sighed with a smile, because we've got to live. But we've also got to die, Paliari rejoined. I understand, but why worry so much about it all the time? Why? Why, because we can't understand life unless we know something about death. The governing criteria for all our actions, the guiding line that will lead us from the labyrinth, the light of our eyes in short, Mr. Mace, must come to us from over there, from beyond the tomb, from beyond death. Light from so much darkness? Darkness? It may be dark to you, but light a little lamp there, the lamp of faith burning with the pure oil of the soul. Without such a lamp we grope about like so many blind men on this earth, for all of the electric lights we may have invented. Incandescent bulbs work all right for this life, Mr. Mace, but we need something that will give us a glimmer at least for death. By the way, Mr. Mace, I'm doing my bit with a little red lantern which I light on certain evenings. We all ought to contribute what we can to the common effort for knowledge. Just now my son-in-law, Mr. Terensio Papiano, is away at Naples, but he'll be back in a few weeks, and I will invite you to one of our séances. And who knows, perhaps that poor insignificant red lantern of mine? Well, anyhow, you wait and see. I need hardly say that Mr. Anselmo Pagliari did not make very agreeable company. But as I thought the matter over, could I, without risk, that is to say without feeling the constant obligation to deceive, hope for some society more in touch with the world? And my mind went back to Cavaliere Tito Lentzi. Now this old man, Anselmo Pagliari, took no interest in me whatever. He was satisfied so long as I would listen while he talked. Almost every morning after he had taken a long and careful bath, he would go with me for a stroll, now up the Gianiculum, now to the Aventine, now to Monte Mario, and sometimes as far as the Ponte Numentano. And all the while we would be talking about death. And this, I would mutter, is what I have gained by not really dying in the first place. Occasionally I would try to start a conversation on some other subject, but Pagliari seemed blind to all the life about him. He would walk along with his hat in his hand, every now and then raising it as though in greeting to some passing ghost. If I called his attention to anything he would comment, Nonsense! Once he turned on me suddenly with a personal question. Why are you living here in Rome? I shrugged my shoulders and answered, I rather like the place. And yet it is a gloomy city, he commented, shaking his head. Many people express surprise that nothing ever seems to succeed here, that no modern idea ever seems able to take root in the soil. That's because they don't understand that Rome is a dead city. Even Rome is dead, I exclaimed in mock consternation. She has been for a long time, Mr. Mace, and believe me, it's no use trying to bring her back to life. Sleeping in the dream of her glorious past, she will have nothing to do with this miserable petty life that is swarming around her. When a city has had a life such as Rome has had, a life with so many definitely individual features, it cannot become a modern city, a city that is like any other city. Rome lies over there, with her great heart broken to fragments on the spurs of the capital. New buildings go up, but do they belong to Rome? Look, Mr. Mace, my daughter Adriana told me about the holy water font that was in your room, and she took it out, remember? Well, the other day she dropped it and it broke on the floor. Only the basin itself was left. That is now on the writing desk in my room. I am using it deliberately, as you did, the first time, I believe, by inadvertence. Well, that's the way it is with Rome, Mr. Mace. The popes in their fashion made of her a vessel for holy water. We Italians have turned her into an ashtray. We have flocked here from all over Italy to knock the ash off the ends of our cigars. What but cigar ash is the frivolity of this cheap, this worthless life we are leading, and the bitter poisonous pleasure it affords us? End of section 10