 Section 0 of the late Mattia Pascal. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello. Translated by Arthur Livingston. Translators note. Shall we say that the theatre of Pirandello is a higher and more perfect expression of his peculiar art than his tales or his novels? That has been said. And a certain body of fact is there to support such a contention. It is Pirandello's drama that has won him worldwide recognition, whereas his prose work, though for 30 years that has held him in a high position in Italian letters, remained national in circulation and even in Italy was the delight of an elect few. Many of his comedies, besides, are re-workings of his short stories, as though he himself regarded the latter as incomplete expressions of the vision they contained. In the third place, one might say that since the novelty of Pirandello's art consists rather in his method of dissecting life than in his judgment of life, his geometrical, symmetrical, theorematic situations are more vivid in the clashing dialogue of people on a stage than in the less animated form of prose narrative. These considerations do not all apply, however, to the late Mattia Pascal. That we have a first-class drama in this novel is evident from the fact that Pirandello himself used the amusing situation in the first part of the story as the theme of one of his Sicilian comedies, Liola. And in a more important sense, the book as a whole is to be counted among the sources that have inspired the new theatre in Italy. Chiarelli's The Mask and the Face was a play that made a school, and that school, the grotesque, may be thought of as an offspring of the late Mattia Pascal. The novel also falls naturally into a special place in the repertory of Pirandello's more characteristic themes. It is a variation of the situation in Henry IV, where the mask, the fiction, is first offered by circumstances, then deliberately assumed to be violently torn off in the case of Mattia Pascal. To be retained and utilized in the case of Henry IV. But the late Mattia Pascal has this advantage over the Pirandello play. That whereas the latter, from the conditions of stage production, must show a situation cut out from life and given an almost artificial independence of its own, the novel presents the whole picture. It has leisure to demonstrate how the fiction grows out of life, how, if it be deliberately assumed, anyone would naturally and logically have so assumed it. And it shows besides some of the effects of the fiction on character. If Adriano Meis cannot escape wholly from Mattia Pascal, neither can Mattia Pascal escape wholly from Adriano Meis. The novel, in a word, possesses intrinsically that humanity, that humanness, which the Pirandello play more often suggests than contains. It is curious to note, however, that if the late Mattia Pascal, despite the fact that it was written 20 years ago, has entered into the patrimony of the new, the post-war, literature of Italy, that rejuvenation, rejuvenation rather than revival, has been due not to Pirandello's dramatic successes but to other influences. When we say Danunzianism, the term conveys a note of disparagement to Danunzio that is not intended. The disparagement is aimed at the imitators of an art which in its own time was new and which in its own domain was original. Nevertheless, religions are rarely destroyed without some attacks upon the idols that symbolize them and without the erection of new idols in the places of the old. Pirandello, along with Verga, who did not live to enjoy it, along with Oriani, along with Manzoni, real revivals, these last two, as profited by the reaction against the literature of Bravura, and of his works the one that has gained most is the late Mattia Pascal. These young Italians are doing many interesting things in many fields. They are asking their rulers to govern, their priests to pray, their teachers to teach, their workmen to work, and their writers to say something. The new vogue of the late Mattia Pascal rests on the fact that it says something and says something in such a way that the novel remains interesting because of what it says and not only because of the way it says it. The late Mattia Pascal is a compact, carefully developed novel with two good stretches of storytelling, each equipped with a psychological preparation worked out to the last detail. It has a big idea, exemplified in characters skillfully chosen and consistently evolved on the background of their particular environment. It is a work accordingly universal in its bearing, but specific in the milieu it describes. One or two things in this milieu may seem exotic to an American. The self-expressiveness on occasion of Mariana Dondi Pescatore might appear overdrawn to some of us, though it is not. We have to remember again that there is no divorce in Italy, that therefore Mattia Pascal cannot be free of Vormilda Pescatore, that therefore Adriano Mace cannot marry Adriana Paliari. We have to remember finally that life in overpopulated Europe is based on the defensive principle, that a man is guilty until proved innocent, that unless his papers are in order, unless he can tell who he is, where he came from and why he came from there, he cannot find employment, transact business or establish social connections of any important kind. Some critics may not agree with Pirandello in his attitude towards the episode, that trick for which he is sometimes accused of laughing at his audiences, arousing interest in situations out of which nothing comes. The criticism of such devices, if criticism there be, is, however, that they show excess rather than lack of technique. How many producers, for example, have not suggested an ending to Rightioire, Cosìe se vi pare, only an afterthought revealing that no ending is the most powerful ending of them all. The reserve and simplicity of Pirandello's language, a language de-regionalised and slightly coloured with a flat and unpretentious classicism, are of no great consolation to a translator. Pirandello ought to be clever when he isn't, and the fact that he isn't gives a tartness, a sharpness, a chuckle to the mood of his sentence before which I confess I throw up my hands. This man, Pascal, is always smiling at himself, however benevolently he smiles at other people. Adriano Meis, perhaps, is more plain and a matter of fact. I note the detail simply to point out that there is a slight difference in manner in the two parts of the book. The career of Adriano Meis being enclosed, as it were, by the jest of Mathieu Pascal and the outcome of that jest. I have suppressed a few paragraphs, details of Mathieu Pascal's education in poetry, characterisations at Monte Carlo of people not otherwise figuring in the story. The analysis of the style of L'Odoletta's obituary. I have adapted one or two scenes where a pun compelled a detour. I have given for special reasons a new ending to the episode of the wedding ring. Otherwise the rendering should be fairly exact, though not by any means literal. I have taken over with some liberty the unsyntactical free sentence, so characteristically Italian, since the syntax is supplied by the acting, by gesture and facial expression. This free sentence is, however, a native property of our own language, though I don't know how many generations of grammarians have tried to rob us of it. According to the morning papers of New York, January 25, 1921, Mr. Albert Heinz of Buffalo, having to choose between his love for his wife and his love for a second young lady, conceives the notion of inviting the two women to a conference with him that some decision may be arrived at in the matter. The women meet with him according to plan, and after a long discussion and agreement is reached, all three decide to commit suicide. Mrs. Heinz goes home and shoots herself, whereupon Mr. Heinz and the young lady discover that on the death of the wife all obstacles to their happiness have been removed. They conclude that it is wiser not to commit suicide as they had arranged, but to get married instead. The police think differently, however, and the couple is arrested. A commonplace solution to an interesting situation. Suppose now some unlucky author were to think of putting such a situation into a novel or a play. We may be sure that his first care would be to devise ways and means, even drastic ways and means, for correcting the absurdity of Mrs. Heinz's suicide, for making it seem natural and logical in some way or other. But we may be equally sure that, however ingenious he might be, 99 critics out of every hundred would still declare the suicide absurd and the work unconvincing. The reason is that life, despite its brazen absurdities, little and big, has the invaluable privilege of dispensing with that idiotic verisimilitude to which art believes itself in duty bound to defer. The absurdities of life need not look plausible for the simple reason that they are true, whereas the absurdities of art, to seem true, must be careful to appear plausible, and plausible as they now become, they cease to be absurdities. A situation in life may be absurd, a work of art, if it is really a work of art, may not. It follows that to call a work of art absurd and improbable in terms of life is sheer nonsense. We may call it such in terms of art, but in terms of art only. In the world of natural history there is a kingdom reserved for zoology because it is inhabited by animals. Among the animals which so inhabit it is man. And the zoologist may talk of man and say, for example, that man is not a quadruped, but a biped, and that he does not have the tale that the monkey, the donkey, or the peacock has. This man of which the zoologist speaks can never be so unfortunate as to lose, let us say, a leg and replace it with a wooden one, or to lose an eye and replace it with a glass one. The zoologist's man always has two legs of which neither is of wood, and always two eyes of which neither is of glass. And we cannot argue with this zoologist, for if we confront him with Mr. A. who has a wooden leg or a glass eye, he answers that he does not know the gentleman because Mr. A. is not man, but a man. It is true that we in our turn can retort to the zoologist that the man he knows does not exist, but that individual men do exist and may even have wooden legs and glass eyes. We may ask at this point whether certain commentators regard themselves as zoologists or as literary critics when, in reviewing a novel or a short story or a comedy, they condemn this or that character, this or that situation, this or that motive, not in terms of art, as would be proper, but in terms of a humanity which they seem to know to perfection, as though it really existed outside that infinite variety of individuals who were in a position to commit the above-mentioned absurdities. Absurdities which do not need to seem logical and natural because they are true. In my own experience with such criticism I have observed one curious thing, that whereas the zoologist understands that man is distinguished from other animals by the fact, among others, that he can think while animals cannot. These critics regard thinking, the tray most distinctive of mankind, that is, not if you please, as an excess, but rather as a downright lack of humanity in many of my not over-cheerful characters. Humanity would seem, in their view, to reside rather in feeling than in reasoning. But, if I may be permitted a generality in my turn, is it not true that a man never thinks so hard, I don't say so well, as when he is unhappy and in distress, precisely because he is determined to discover why he is unhappy, who is responsible for his being so, and whether he deserves it all? Whereas when he is happy, when everything is going well with him, he does not reason at all, accepting his good fortune as though it were his due. It is the lot of the lower animals to suffer without thinking. But for these critics a man who is unhappy and thinks, thinks because he is unhappy, is not human, from which it would follow that a man cannot suffer unless he is a beast, and that only when he is a beast can he be human. But recently I have found a critic to whom I am very grateful. In connection with the unhuman and it would seem incurable cerebrality, in connection with the paradoxical implausibility of my plots and my characters, he has asked such critics how they arrive at their criteria for so judging the world of my art. From normal life, so called, he asks, but what is normal life but a system of relationships which we select from the chaos of daily happenings and arbitrarily call normal? And he concludes that the world of an artist can be judged only by criteria derived from that world itself. To remove any suspicion that I am praising this critic because he praises me, I hasten to add that in spite of this view of his, in fact because of this view of his, he is inclined to judge my work unfavorably. For he thinks that I fail to give a universally human value and a universally human significance to my plots and my people. So much so that he is not sure whether I have not deliberately confined myself to the portrayal of certain curious individualities, certain psychological situations of a very special, a very particular scope. But supposing it should prove that the universally human value and significance of some of my plots and of some of my people in the conflict, as he puts it, between reality and illusion, between the individual aspect and the social reflection of this aspect, resides in the first instance in the significance and value we must assign to that primal conflict, which through the irony of life is always and inevitably found to have been an insubstantial one. For, necessarily alas, every reality of today is bound to prove an illusion tomorrow, a necessary illusion indeed, since outside of it there is no reality for us. Supposing again that the same universally human import should prove to reside in this fact, that a man or a woman placed by themselves or by forces outside themselves in a painful situation which is socially abnormal and as absurd as you care to make it, remain in that situation, endure it, act it out before others, only so long as they fail, whether through blindness or incredible good faith, to recognize it. Because the moments they do so recognize it, as in a mirror placed before their eyes, they refuse to endure it any longer, they realize all the horror there is in it, and they rectify it or failing in the attempt to do so succumb to it. Supposing finally it should reside in this further fact, that a socially abnormal situation may be accepted, even though it be thus revealed in a mirror, which in this case would be presenting our illusion itself to our eyes, and then we continue to act it. Submitting to all the horror it involves, so long as we can do so behind the breath stifling mask which we, or other people or cruel circumstances, have placed upon our faces, until that is under this mask some feeling of ours is so deeply hurt that we at last rebel, tear off the mask, hurl it aside and trample it underfoot. Then suddenly, says my critic, a flood of humanity engulfs these characters, these marionettes become creatures of flesh and blood, and words that burn the soul and wrench the heart, poor from their lips. Yes, assuredly, because these characters have now discovered their own particular individual faces hitherto concealed under the masks they have been wearing, masks which made these people marionettes in the hands of themselves or of other people, rendering them hard, wooden, angular, without finish, without delicacy, complicated, out of plum, as everything must be when, not freely but of violent necessity, it is forced into an abnormal and improbable, a paradoxical situation. A situation in their case so abnormal, so improbable, so paradoxical that at last they have been able to endure it no longer and have smashed their way out of it back to normality. The mix-up, if mix-up there be, is accordingly deliberate. The mechanism, if mechanism there be, is accordingly deliberate, but it is so willed not by me but by the story, by the characters themselves. And there is no attempt to conceal it either. Often the cogs are fitted together, deliberately fitted together, in plain view, so that we can see how the machine is made. It is a mask for the playing of a part. It is an interplay of roles. What we would like to be, or what we ought to be, what other people think us to be. While what we really are, we do not, up to a certain point, know even ourselves. It is an awkward, hesitant, uncertain metaphor of our real personality. It is a fiction, often childishly artificial, which we build up about our real life, or which others build up about us. At any rate, it is a real mechanism in which each, deliberately I repeat, makes a marionette of himself. Until at last, in disgust, he sends the whole thing flying with a kick. I believe I need now go no farther than to congratulate my own inventiveness. If, with all its scruples, it has revealed as real defects the defects which it has deliberately created. Defects of that factitious illusion which the characters themselves have set up about their own lives, or which others have built up about them. The defects, in short, that the mask has until it is torn off. But a greater consolation still has come to me from life, from the daily papers to be exact, some twenty years after the first publication of the late Mathia Pascal. This story, too, in spite of the gratifying commendation with which it was received, was also regarded by some people as implausible, if not impossible. Well, life has furnished me the proof of its essential verity, and with a surprising fullness even in my new details which I had thought out by myself in creating it in my own mind. I quote from an evening paper of Milan, the Corriere della Serra, under date of March 20, 1920. A living man visits his own grave. A remarkable case of bigamy, deriving from the alleged death of a husband, has just been reported from the Calvairate district. On December 26, 1916, some peasants discovered the corpse of a man floating in the so-called five-dam canal. He was dressed in a brown sweater and a pair of brown trousers. The matter was reported to the police, who started an investigation. The body was shortly identified by a certain Maria Tedeschi, a good-looking woman of about forty, by a certain Luigi Longoni, and by a certain Luigi Maioli, as that of the Tedeschi woman's husband, an electrician by trade, named Ambrose Cassati, son of Luigi Cassati, born in 1869. In fact, the description of the corpse tallied closely with that of Cassati. It is now apparent, however, that this identification was not wholly disinterested, at least as regards the man Maioli and the Tedeschi woman. The real Cassati was alive all the time. However, on February 21, 1915 he had been convicted of some crime against property and sent to prison. Before that he had not been living with his wife, although no legal separation had been obtained. After seven months of widowhood the Tedeschi woman was married to Maioli, without encountering any difficulties whatever at the Licence Bureau. Cassati was released from prison on March 8, 1917, but not till a few days ago did he discover that he was dead, that his wife had married again and disappeared. The discovery also was quite accidental. Cassati needed some document or other and went to the Hall of Records in Piazza Missori for the certificates of his civil status. The clerk at the window observed, however, But you are dead, my dear Mr. Cassati. Your legal residence is the Musocco Cemetery, City Lot 44, Grave 550. Cassati's protests were quite in vain. He must now take legal steps to have his resurrection verified by a court, so that his record with the City Registrar may be brought up to date. Such action on his part will automatically annul the second marriage of his widow. Cassati was not at all downcast over his strange predicament. He took the thing as a joke, and to enjoy the situation to the full he visited the Musocco Cemetery to honour his own memory, and while there even laid a bouquet and lighted a votive candle on his own grave. A man drowned in a canal. The corpse discovered and later identified by the wife and the person she is later to marry. The return of the dead man to his hometown and even a visit to his own grave. All the data are fact in short, though of course without any of the things essential to giving the situation a universally human value and significance. I cannot of course presume that the electrician Mr. Ambrose Cassati had been reading my novel, and that he laid flowers on his own grave in imitation of the late Mathia Pascal. Life at any rate, with a delightful contempt for plausibility and probability, was able to find a government bureau willing to issue a license to Mr. Maioli and Mrs. Cassati, and to find a clergyman willing to unite the couple in marriage without taking the trouble to verify something that might easily have been ascertained, namely that the husband, Mr. Cassati, was in a prison and not in a grave. No novelist would ever dare allow himself to be so careless, but now it is a satisfaction for me as I think of the charges of improbability leveled against my novel to point out the real implausibilities of which life itself is sometimes guilty, even in novels which unwittingly it plagiarizes from art. End of Section 0 Section 1 of the late Mathia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello Translated by Arthur Livingston This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 1 My name is Mathia Pascal One of the few things, in fact about the only thing I was sure of, was my name. Mathia Pascal. Of this I took full advantage also. Whenever one of my friends or acquaintances so far lost his head as to come and ask me for a bit of advice on some matter of importance, I would shrug my shoulders, squint my eyes and answer, My name is Mathia Pascal. That's very enlightening old man, I knew that much already. And you don't feel lucky to know that much? There was no reason why he should that I could see, but at the time I had not realized what it meant not to be sure of even that much, not to be able to answer on occasion as I had formally answered, My name is Mathia Pascal. Some people surely will sympathize with me, sympathy comes cheap, when they try to imagine the immense anguish a poor man must feel on suddenly discovering, well yes, just a blank, that he knows neither who his father was nor who his mother was, nor how, nor when, nor where he was born. If ever he was born at all. Just as others will be ready to criticize, criticism comes cheaper still, the immorality and viciousness of a society where an innocent child can be treated that way. Very well. Thanks for the sympathy and the holy horror, but it is my duty to give notice in advance that it's not quite that way. Indeed if need should arise I could give my family tree with the origin and descent of all my house. I could prove that I know my father and my mother, and their fathers and mothers under several generations, and the doings through the years of all those forebears of mine, doings not always to their untarnished credit I must confess. Well then? Well then it's this way. My case, not the ordinary one by any means, is so far out of the ordinary in fact that I have decided to recount it. For some two years I held a position, a mouse catcher and custodian in one, in the so-called Bocca Matza Library. A way back in the year 1803 a certain Monsignor Bocca Matza, on departing from this life, left his books as a legacy to our village. It was always clear to me that this venerable man of the cloth knew nothing whatever about the dispositions of his fellow citizens. I suppose he hoped that his benefaction as time and opportunity favoured would kindle a passion for study in their souls. So far not a spark has ever glowed therein, as I may state with some authority, and with the idea of paying a compliment rather than not to my fellow townsmen. Indeed our village so little appreciated the gift of the reverent Bocca Matza that it has, to this day refused money even for putting his head, neck and shoulders into marble. And for years and years the books he left were never removed from the damp and musty storehouse where they had been piled after his funeral. Eventually however they were transported and imagined in what condition to the unused church of Santa Maria Liberale, a building which, for some reason or other, had been secularised. There the town government entrusted them to any one of its favourites who was looking for a sinecure and who for too little a day was willing to care for them or to neglect them if he chose and to stand the noxious odour of all that mildewed paper. This plum in the course of human events fell to me and I must add that the first day of my incumbency gave me such a distaste for books and manuscripts in general, some of those under my charge were very precious I'm told that I should never, never of my own accord have thought of increasing the number of them in the world by one. But as I said my case is a very strange one and I now agree that it may prove of interest to some chance reader who in fulfilment of Monsignor Bocca Matza's pious hope shall someday wander into the library and stumble upon this manuscript of mine. For I am leaving it to the foundation with the understanding that no one shall open it till fifty years after my third, last and final death. There you have it exactly. So far I have died twice and the Lord knows the extent of my regret I can assure you. The first time I died by mistake and the second time I died but that's my story as you will see. End of section one. Section two of the late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello translated by Arthur Livingston. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter two. Go to it says Don Eligio. The idea or rather the suggestion that I write such a book came to me from my reverent friend Don Eligio Pellegrinotto the present custodian of the Bocca Matza gift and to his care or neglect I shall entrust the script when it is finished if ever I reach the end. I am writing it here in this little deconsecrated church under the pale light shed from the windows of the cupola here in the librarian's office one of the old shrines in the apps fenced off by a wooden railing where Don Eligio sits panting at the task he has heroically assumed of bringing a little order into this chaos of literature. I doubt whether he gets very far with it. Beyond a cursory glance over the ensemble of the bindings no one before his time ever took the trouble to find out just what kind of books the old Montignore's legacy contained we took it for granted that they bore mostly on religion. Well Don Eligio has discovered just my luck says he that their subject matter is extremely varied on the contrary and since they were gathered up haphazard just as they lay in the storehouse and set on the shelves wherever they would fit the confusion they are in is, to say the least, appalling. Odd marriages have resulted between some of these old volumes. Don Eligio tells me that it took him a whole forenoon to divorce one pair of books that had embraced each other by their bindings. The Art of Courting Fair Ladies by Anton Muzio Porro Perugia 1571 and Montauer 1625 The Life and Death of the Beatified Faustino Materucci one section of Muzio's treatises devoted to the debaucheries of the Benedictine Order to which the Holy Faustino belonged Climbing up and down a ladder he borrowed from the Village Lamplighter Don Eligio has unearthed many interesting and curious tomes on those dust laden shelves Every time he finds one such he takes careful aim from the rung where he is standing and drops it, broadside down, on the big table in the centre of the nave The Old Church booms the echo from wall to wall A cloud of dust fills the room Here and there a spider can be seen scampering to safety on the table top I saunter along from my writing desk, straddle the railing and approach the table I pick up the book, use it to crush the vermin that have been shaken out open it at random and glance it through Little by little I have acquired a liking for such browsing Besides, Don Eligio tells me I should model my style on some of the moldy texts he is exhuming here Give it a classic flavour, as he says I shrug my shoulders and remark that such things are beyond me Then my eye falls on something curious and I read on When at last grimy with dust and sweat Don Eligio comes down from his ladder I join him for a breath of clean air in the garden which he has somehow coaxed into luxuriance on a patch of gravel in the corner of abs and nave I sit down on a projection of the underpinning and rest my chin on the handle of my cane Don Eligio is softening the ground about a head of lettuce Dear me, dear me, say I These are not the times to be writing books, Don Eligio, even full books like mine Of literature I must begin to say what I have said of everything else Curses on Copernicus Oh wait now, exclaimed Don Eligio The blood rushing to his face as he straightens up from his cramped position It is hot at noontime and he has put on a broad brim straw for a bit of artificial shade What has Copernicus got to do with it? More than you realise perhaps, for in the days before the earth began to go round the sun There you go again, it always went round the sun, man alive Not at all, not at all, no one knew it did So to all intents and purposes it might as well have been sitting still Plenty of people don't admit even now that the earth goes round the sun I mentioned the point to an old peasant the other day and you know what he said to me He said, that's a good excuse when someone swears you're drunk Even you, a good priest, dare not doubt that in Joshua's time the sun did the moving But that's neither here nor there I was saying that in days when the earth stood still and man, dressed as Greek or Roman Had a reason for thinking himself about the most important thing in all creation There was some justification for a fellow's putting his own paltry story into writing The fact remains, says Don Elidio, that more trashy books have been written since the earth As you insist began going round the sun than there were before that time I agree, say I, at half past eight to the minute the Count got out of bed and entered his bathroom The millionaire's wife was wearing a low-necked gown with frills They were sitting opposite each other at a breakfast table in the Ritz Lucretia was sewing at the window in the front room So they write nowadays, trash I grant you, but that's not the question either Are we or are we not stuck here on a sort of top which some God is spinning for his amusement A sunbeam may be for a string, or if you wish on a mud ball that's gone crazy And whirls round and round in space without knowing or caring why it whirls Just for the fun of the thing At one point in the turning we feel a little warmer At the next a little cooler But after 50 or 60 rounds we die with the satisfaction of having made fools of ourselves at least once every turn Copernicus, I tell you Don Elidio, Copernicus has ruined mankind beyond repair Since his day we have all come gradually to realise how unutterably insignificant we are in the whole scheme of things Less than nothing at all, despite the pride we take in our science and the inventiveness of the human mind Well, why get excited over our little individual trials and troubles If a catastrophe involving thousands of us is as important relatively as the destruction of an anthill Don Elidio observes, however, that no matter how hard we try to disparage or destroy the many illusions nature has planted in us for our good We never quite succeed Fortunately man's attention is very easily diverted from his low estate And he is right I have noticed that in our village on certain nights marked in the calendar The street lamps are not lighted and on such occasions if the weather happens to be cloudy we are left in the dark Proof I take it that even in this day and age we fancy that the moon is put there to give us light by night Just as the sun is put there to give us light by day with the stars thrown in for decorative purposes And we are only too glad to forget what ridiculously small mites we are Provided now and then we can enjoy a little flattery of and from each other Men are capable of fighting over such trifles as land or money Experiencing the greatest joy and the greatest sorrow over things which we really awake to our nothingness would surely be deemed the most miserable trivialities To come to the point, Don Elidio seems to me so nearly right that I have decided to avail myself of this faculty I share with other men for thinking myself worth talking about And in view of the strangeness of my experience as I said I am going to write it down I shall be brief on the whole sticking closely to essentials and I shall be frank Many of the things I shall narrate will not help my reputation much But I find myself in a quite exceptional position as a person beyond this life There is no reason therefore for concealing or mitigating anything So I proceed End of Section 2 Section 3 of the late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello Translated by Arthur Livingston This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Chapter 3 A Mole Saps Our House I was a bit hasty in stating a moment ago that I knew my father I can hardly claim as much He died when I was four years old He went on a trip to Corsica in the coaster of which he was captain and owner And never came back A matter of typhus I believe which carried him off in three days at the untimely age of 38 Nevertheless he left his family well provided for His wife that is and two boys Mattia, I that was in my first life And Roberto, my elder by a couple of years The old people of our village enjoy telling a story to the effect that my father's wealth had a rather dubious origin Though I don't see why they continue to hold that up against him since the property has long since passed from our hands As they will have it He got his money at a game of cards with the captain of an English tramp steamer visiting Marseille The Englishman had taken on a cargo at some port in Sicily A load of sulphur it is specified consigned to a merchant in Liverpool They know all the details you see Liverpool give them time to think and they'll tell you the name of the merchant and the street he lived on After losing to my father the large amount of cash he had on hand The captain staked the sulphur and again lost The steamer arrived in Liverpool still further lightened by the weight of its master Who had jumped overboard at sea in despair Had it not been so well ballasted with the lies of my father's defamers I dare say the ship would never have reached port at all Our fortune was mostly in landed property An adventurer of a roving disposition My father was utterly unable to tie himself down to a business in one place With his boat we went around from harbour to harbour buying here and selling there Dealing in goods of every sort But to avoid the temptation of too hazardous speculations He always invested his profits in fields and houses about our native town Intending I suppose to settle down there in his old age And enjoy with his wife and children about him The fruits of his imagination and hard work He bought a place called Ledue Riviere Sure acres as it were for its olives and its mulberry trees He bought a farm we called The Coops with a pond on it which ran a mill He bought the whole hillside of the spur the best vineyard in our district He bought the San Roquino estate where he built a delightful summer house In town he bought the mansion where we lived, two tenement houses And the building that has now been fixed over for the armory His sudden death was the ruin of us Utterly ignorant of business matters My mother was obliged to entrust our fortune to someone She chose as her steward a man who had been enriched by my father And who, as anyone would have thought, would be loyal out of sheer gratitude if for nothing else All the more since a high salary for his services would make honesty a good policy also A saintly soul my mother was Naturally timid and retiring as trustful as a child She knew nothing at all about this world and the people who live in it After my father's death her health was never good But she did not complain of her troubles to other people And I doubt whether she lamented them much in her secret heart She seemed to take them as a natural consequence of her great sorrow The shock of that should have killed her so she reasoned Would she not be thankful therefore to the good lord who had vouchsafed her a few years more of life Be it indeed in pain and suffering to devote to her children For us she had an almost morbid tenderness full of worries and fancied terrors She would scarcely let us out of her sight for fear of losing us Let her look up from her work to find one of us absent And the servants would be sent calling through the great mansion where we lived The monument to my father's ambition to bring us back to her side Merging her whole existence in that of her husband she felt lost in the world when he was gone She never left the house except on Sundays and then only to attend early mass in a church nearby In company with two maids of long service with us whom she treated as members of the family Indeed to simplify her life still further she lived in three rooms of our big house Abandoning the others to the haphazard care of the maids and to the pranks of us two boys I can still feel the impressiveness of those mysterious halls and chambers All pretentiously furnished with massive antiques The faded tapestries and the false strings gave off that peculiar odour of mustiness Which is the breath as it were of ages that have died More than once I remember I would look around in strange consternation Upon those weirdly silent objects which had been sitting there for years and years Motionless and unused Among my mother's more frequent visitors was an aunt of mine on my father's side Scholastica by name, a billiards irritable old maid Tall, dark skin, stern of bearing and with eyes like a ferret Scholastica never stayed long at any one time Invariably her visits ended in a quarrel which she would settle by stalking out of the house Without saying goodbye to anyone and slamming the doors behind her I was terribly afraid of this redoubtable woman I would sit in my chair without daring to stir Gazing at her with wide open eyes Especially when she would fly into a temper turned furiously upon my mother And stamping angrily on the floor exclaim Do you hear that hollow, hollow underneath That mole, that mole That mole was Battista Malania, the man in charge of our property Who according to Scholastica was boring the ground away beneath our feet My aunt as I learned years later wanted mother to marry again at all costs Ordinarily the relatives of a dead husband do not give advice like this But Scholastica had a severe and spiteful sense of the fitness of things Her desire to thwart a thief rather than any real affection for us Moved her to protest against Malania's robbing us with impunity Since mother was blind to faults in anybody Scholastica saw no possible remedy except bringing a new man into the house And she had even picked her man A poor devil though a rich one named Gerolamo Pomino Pomino was a widower with one boy The boy also a Gerolamo is still living in fact he is a friend I can hardly say a relative of mine as my story will show in due season In those days Gerolamo, or Mino as we called him Would come to our house along with his father to be the torment of brother Berto and me Years before Gerolamo Pomino the elder had long aspired to the hand of my aunt Scholastica But she had spurned him as for that matter she had spurned every other offer in marriage It was not so much her lack of an impulse to love As she put it the faintest suspicion on her part that a husband might betray her Even in his thoughts would drive her to murder yes to murder downright And whoever heard of a faithful husband all males were hypocrites deceivers scallowags Even Pomino well Pomino no One exception that proved the rule but she had found that out too late Carefully watching all the men who had proposed to her and then married someone else She had found them in every case playing tricks on their wives Discoveries that afforded her a certain ferocious satisfaction But Pomino had always been straight in his case the woman rather had been to blame So why don't you marry him now Jimantia? Oh dear me just because he's a widower just because there has been a woman in his life And he may give her a thought now and then that might otherwise have been for you That's splitting things pretty fine Besides just look at him you can see a mile away that he's in love And there's no secret about who it is he wants poor man As though mother would ever have dreamed of a second marriage A sacrilege that would have seemed in her eyes I imagine that mother doubted besides whether Scholastica really meant everything she said So when my aunt would start one of her long orations on the virtues of Pomino Mother would just laugh in her peculiar way The widower was often present at such arguments And I can remember him hitching about uncomfortably on his chair as Scholastica would overwhelm him in words of extravagant praise And trying to relieve his torture by the most wicked of his oaths The dear Lord savers Pomino was a dapper little old man with soft blue eyes Pelto and I thought there was just a suggestion of rouge on his cheeks Certainly he was proud of keeping his hair so late in life And he took the greatest pains in parting and brushing it As he talked he was continually smoothing it with his two hands I don't know how things would have turned out had mother Not for her own sake surely but as a safeguard for the future of her children Taken aunt Scholastica's advice and married Pomino Surely nothing could have been worse than continuing with our affairs in the clutches of Malania the mole By the time Berto and I were in long trousers most of our inheritance had dwindled away Though something was still left enough to keep us if not in luxury at least free from actual need But we were careless youngsters with not one serious thought in our heads Instead of coming to the rescue of the remnants of our fortune We persisted in the kind of life to which our mother had accustomed us as boys Never for example would be sent to school We had a private tutor come to the house a man called Pinzone from the little pointed beard he wore His real name was Del Cinque but everybody called him Pinzone And I believe he grew so used to it that he ended by signing his name that way himself He was an absurdly tall and an absurdly lean fellow And there is no telling how much taller he might have grown And his head and neck not toppled forward from his shoulders in a stoop that became a real deformity Another feature was an enormous Adam's apple that went up and down as he swallowed Pinzone was always biting at his lips as though chastising a sarcastic little smile peculiar to him A smile which banished from his lips managed to escape through two sharp eyes that ever showed a glittering mocking twinkle That pair of eyes must have seen many things in our house to which mother and we two boys were blind But Pinzone said nothing perhaps because it was not his place to interfere Or as I believe more probable because he took a vindictive pleasure in the thought of us boys being as poor as he some day For Berto and I ragged him unmercifully as a rule he would let us do anything we chose But then again as though to ease his conscience he would tell on us at times when we least expected Once I remember mother had asked him to take us to church It was Easter time and we were to prepare for confession Thence we were to call at Malania's house and express our sympathy to Signora Malania who was ill Not a very exciting program for two boys our age and in such fine weather We were hardly out of mother's hearing when we proposed a revision of the day's work We offered Pinzone a fine lunch with wine provided he would forget church and Mrs Malania and go bird nesting with us in the woods There was a gleam in his eye as he accepted He ate our lunch and did not stint his appetite making serious inroads on our allowance for the month Then he joined us on our escapade hunting with us for fully three hours helping us to climb the trees and even going up himself On our return home mother asked after Mrs Malania and questioned us about confession We were thinking up something to say when Pinzone with the most brazen face in the world told the whole story of our day without emitting one detail The punishments we inflicted for this and similar treachery never won us a decisive armistice Though the tricks we played on him were not wanting in a certain devilish ingenuity Just before supper time for instance Pinzone would wait for the bell by taking a little nap on the couch in our front hall One evening of a wash day when we had been put to bed early for some prank or other We got up filled a squirt gun with water from the wash stealthily crept up to him and let him have it full in the nostrils The jump he gave took him nearly to the ceiling What we learned with such a teacher can readily be imagined though it was not all his fault Pinzone had a certain erudition among the classic poets and I who was much more impressionable than Bertho Managed to memorize a goodly number of verses especially Charades and the Baroque poetry of old I could recite so many of these that mother was convinced we were both progressing very well Aunt Scholastica for her part was not deceived and she made up for the failure of her plans for Pomino by trying to set Bertho and me in order We knew we had mother on our side however and paid no attention to her So angry was she at this scorn of her interest in us that I am sure she would have given us both the thrashings of our lives Had she been able ever to do so without mother's knowing One day when she was leaving the house in rage as usual she happened to encounter me in one of the deserted rooms I remember that she seized me by the chin and tightening her fingers till it hurt she said Mama's little darling, mama's little darling Then she lowered her face till her eyes were looking straight into mine and a sort of stifled bellow escaped her If you were mine, oh if you were mine I can't yet understand why she had it in for me especially I was a model pupil for Pinzone as compared with Bertho It may have been the rather innocent face for which I have always been noted An innocence accentuated rather than not by the pair of big round glasses they had fitted to my nose To discipline one of my eyes which preferred to choose independently of the other the objects it would look at Those glasses were the plague of my life and the moment I escaped from the authority of my elders I threw them away restoring a longed for autonomy to the oppressed member As I viewed the matter I was never destined to be a wonder for good looks even with both eyes straight Why go to all that trouble then? I was in good health, never mind painting the lily By the time I was 18 a red curly beard had come to monopolise most of my face To the particular disadvantage of a mere dot of a nose which tended to lose its bearing somewhere between that fulsome thicket And the spacious clearing of a rather impressive brow How comforting it would be if we could only choose noses to match our faces Imagine a man with an enormous proboscis quite out of keeping with lean, wizened features To such a man I would have said, look here friend, you have a nose that just suits me Let's exchange, it will be to the advantage of both of us For that matter I could have improved in the selection of many other parts of my physique But I soon understood that any radical betterment was out of the question I grew reconciled to the face the Lord gave me and dismissed the matter from my mind Brother Roberto on the contrary was not so easily distracted As compared with me he was a handsome well-built lad and unfortunately he knew it He would spend hours in front of a mirror combing his hair and dandying up in every way He invested a mint of money and neckties, linen and other articles of dress On one occasion he angered me with the fuss he made over a new evening suit For which he had bought a white velvet waistcoat Despite him I put the thing on one morning and went hunting in it The mole, meantime, was not idle Every season Malania would come around complaining of the bad crops And getting mother's consent to a new mortgage he was forced to take out Now it would be repairs on a building, now additional drainage for a field Now the extravagance of the boys A visit from him meant the certain announcement of another catastrophe One year a frost, as he said, ruined our olive groves on the shore acres Then the philoxera destroyed our vineyards on the spur To import American roots, immune from this plague of the vines We were obliged to sell one farm and then a second and then a third Mother was sure that someday Malania would find our pond at the coops dried up As for Berto and me I suppose we did spend more money than was wise or necessary But that does not alter the fact that Battista Malania was the meanest swindler That ever disgraced the surface of this planet Words more severe than these I could not charitably use toward a man who eventually became a relative of mine by marriage So long as mother was alive Malania allowed us to feel no discomforts Indeed he put no limit to our caprices and expenditures But that was just a blind to conceal the abyss into which on my mother's death I alone was to be plunged I alone because Berto was shrewd enough to make a profitable marriage in good season Whereas my marriage, I ought to say something about my marriage, oughtn't I Don Elidio? Don Elidio is up on his ladder again continuing his inventory He looks around and calls back Your marriage? Why of course, the idea, avoiding everything improper to be sure Improper, that's a good one You know very well that Don Elidio laughs and all this little de-consecrated church laughs with him Then he continues If I were you, Señor Pascal, I'd take a peep at bocaccio or bandello in passing That would sort of get you to the spirit of the thing Don Elidio is always talking about the spirit of the thing The tone, the flavour, the style Who does he think I am? Danuncio Not if I can help it I am putting the thing down just as it was And it's all I can do at that I was never cut out to be a literary fellow But having once begun my story I may as well continue I suppose End of Section 3 Section 4 of the late Mattia Pascal by Luigi Pirandello Translated by Arthur Livingston This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Chapter 4 Just as it was I was out hunting one day when I came upon a scarecrow in an open field A short pudgy figure it was stuffed with straw And with an iron pot inverted on the upright for a hat I stopped as a whimsical notion suddenly flitted through my head I have met you before said I, an old acquaintance After a moment I burst out Try the feel of this, Bati Malania A rusty pitchfork was lying on the ground nearby I picked it up and ran it into the belly of the man With so much zest moreover that the pot was almost shaken from its perch Yes, Bati Malania himself The way he looked when sweating and puffing in the long coat and a stiff hat He went walking of an afternoon Everything was loose, baggy, slouching about Bati Malania His eyebrows seemed to ooze down his big fat face Just as his nose seemed to sag over an insipid moustache and goatee His shoulders were a sort of drip from his neck His abdomen a sort of down flow from his chest This belly of his was balanced precariously on a pair of short stubby legs And to make trousers that would fit these along with the porch above The tailor had to devise something extremely slack at the waist From a distance Bati looked as though he were wearing skirts Or at least as though he were belly all the way down How Bati Malania with a face and a body like that Could be so much of a thief I cannot imagine I always suppose thieves had a distinctive something about their appearance or demeanour Which Bati seemed to lack He walked with a waddle, his belly all a shake And his hands folded behind his back When he talked his voice was a kind of muffled bleat Blubbering up with difficulty from the fat around his lungs I should like really to know how he reconciled his conscience With the depredations he made upon our property He must have had very deep and devious reasons For it was not from lack of money that he stole Perhaps he just had to be doing something out of the ordinary To make life interesting, poor devil Of one thing I am convinced He must have suffered grievously inside from the lifelong affliction of a wife Whose principal occupation was keeping him in his place Bati made the mistake of choosing a woman from a social station just above his own This was a very low one indeed Senora Gwendolina married to a man of her own sphere Would probably have made a passable help meet But her sole service to Bati was to remind him on every possible pretext and occasion That she was of a good family and that in her circles people did so and so So and so accordingly Bati tried his best to do No bumpkin ever set out to become a gentleman with more studious application But what a job it was How it made him sweat, in summer weather To make matters worse, my Lady Gwendolina Shortly after her death, she was married To make matters worse, my Lady Gwendolina Shortly after her marriage to Malania Developed a stomach trouble which was destined to prove incurable Since entirely to master it required a sacrifice greater than her strength of will Abstinence, namely from certain croquettes she knew how to make with truffles From a number of peculiarly ingenious desserts And above all else, from wines Not that she ever abused the latter I should say not Gwendolina was a lady and self-control is a test of breeding But a cure of the ailment in question demanded total avoidance of strong drink As youngsters Berto and I were sometimes asked to stay to dinner at Malania's house Bati would sit down at table and pitch in Meanwhile lecturing his wife with due regard for appraisals of course On the virtues of obstemiousness I for my part he would say balancing a mouthful on his knife Failed to see how the pleasure of tickling your palate with something you like to eat Transferring the morsel to his mouth Is worth buying at the price of a day in bed There's no sense in it I'm sure that if I, wiping his plate with a piece of bread Gave way to my appetite like that I should feel myself less of a man Damn good this sauce today Gwendolina Think I'll try just a little more of it Just a spoonful mind No, you shall not have another bit His wife would snap back angrily The idea, I wish the Lord would give you one good cramp like those I have That might teach you to have some regard for the woman you married Why, what in the world Gwendolina Some regard for you Meanwhile pouring himself a glass of wine Gwendolina would answer by rising from her place Snatching the glass from his hands and emptying it Out the window Why What's the matter Why did you do that Because, says Gwendolina You know very well that wine is poison to me Poison If you ever see me with a glass of wine Well, you just do what I did You take it and throw it out of the window too Sheepish, mortified But making the best of it Malania would look first at me Then at Bertho Then at the glass Then at the window You force you to be good Oh, I say You ought to be strong-minded enough To control your little weaknesses While you sit there enjoying yourself While you sit there smacking your lips Holding your glass up to the light Clinking it with your spoon Just to torment me Well, I won't stand it That's what I get for marrying a man of your antecedents Well, Malania went so far as to give up wine To please his wife and set her a good example I leave it to you A man who would do that is likely to steal Just to convince himself that he amounts to something However, it was not long before Batti discovered That his wife was drinking behind his back As though wine consumed in that way Would not do her any harm Whereupon Batti took to wine again himself But at the tavern So as not to humiliate his Gwendolina By showing that he had caught her cheating And a man who would do that The eventual compensation for this perennial affliction Batti Malania hoped to find In the advent of a male heir to his family That would be an excuse in his own eyes And in the eyes of anybody For all his thievery from us What may a man not do To provide a future for his children But his wife instead of getting better and better Got worse and worse Perhaps he never mentioned this burning subject to her There were so many reasons Why he should not add that worry to her troubles Ailing almost an invalid in the first place Then she might die if she tried to have a child Now God forbid Batti would be resigned Each of us has a cross to bear in this world Was Malania quite sincere in this considerateness If so, his conduct did not show it when Gwendolina died To be sure, he mourned her loss Oh yes, he wept till it seemed his heart would break And he was so thoughtful of her memory That he refused to put another lady in the place Which she had occupied No, no, I should say not And he might have, you know, he might have Man in his position in town And with plenty of money by this time No, he married a peasant girl The daughter of the farmer who worked one of our estates Strong, healthy thing, good natured, good housekeeper So that everyone could see what he wanted was children And the right woman to bring them up If he waited hardly till Gwendolina was cold in her grave That was reasonable too Batti was getting on in years And had no time to waste I had known Oliva Salvoni well since I was a little boy And she a little girl Daughter of Pietro Salvoni The land he worked was the farm of ours Which we called the Coops She had been responsible for the many hopes I had aroused in poor mother in my time Hopes that I was about to settle down And take an interest in our property Even turned to farming Which I had suddenly begun to like so well Dear innocent mama It was of course my terrible aunt Scholastica Who shortly disabused her But don't you see stupid That he's always hanging around Salvoni's Yes, why not He's helping to get the olives in Helping to take an olive in One olive, do you hear? Cabbage head Mother gave me a scolding That she thought would last me a long time The mortal sin of leading a poor girl Into temptation Of ruining an innocent creature To carry that kind of talk, you understand? I listened respectfully Really, there was not the slightest danger in the world Oliver was quite able to take care of herself And one of her charms lay precisely in the ease And independence born of this assurance Which enabled her to avoid insipid reticences And affected modesty How she could laugh Such lips as hers I have never seen before Nor since And what teeth From the lips I got not the suggestion of a kiss A bite once when I had seized her by the wrists And refused to let her go short of a caress upon her hair That was the sum total of our intimacy So this was the beauty and such youthful, fresh and thoroughly charming beauty That Malania took to wife Oh yes, I know But a girl can't turn her back on certain opportunities She knew very well where that rascal got his money One day indeed she told me exactly what she thought of him for doing it Then later on, because of that very money, she married him However, one year, two years went by And Malania's heir was still wanting During the period of his first marriage Malania had put all the blame on Gwendolyna and her stomach trouble But not even now did he remotely suspect that the fault might be his own He began to scowl and sulk at Oliver Nothing Nothing From the end of the third year his reproaches became quite undisguised Soon he was actually abusing her, shouting and making scenes about the house And claiming that she had made a show of her good health and good looks to swindle him A plain downright swindle, yes sir What had he married her for? A woman of her class Putting her in the place of a lady A real lady sir, had held And if it hadn't been for that one thing Do you suppose he would ever have thought of doing such a slight to the memory of the distinguished lady who had been his first wife? Poor Oliver said nothing, not knowing what there was to say in fact She just came to our house to tell my mother all about it And mother would comfort her as best she could Assuring her there was still some hope since Oliver was a mere slip of a girl Twenty about? Twenty-two Oh, why so downhearted then? Children came sometimes ten, fifteen, twenty years after a woman's marriage And her husband? Malania was getting on in years, that was true But Oliver from the very first had had her doubts wondering whether Well, how should she put it? Whether it might not be his fault There But how prove a thing like that? Oliver was a woman of scruples On marrying Malania for his money and for nothing else she had determined to play absolutely fair with him And she would not deceive him even for the sake of restoring peace to her household How do you know all that asks Don Elidio? Huh, how do I know? I have just said that she came to our house to discuss the matter with my mother Before that I said I had known her all her life Then, now, I could see her with my own eyes crying her heart out All on account of that disgusting old thief Finally, shall I say it right out, Don Elidio? Say it just as it was Well, she said no That's putting it just as it was Oh, I didn't mind being turned down so sharply In those days I had or thought I had Which amounts to the same thing A great deal to occupy my mind and afford distractions Money in the first place And money gives you along with all the rest Certain ideas you would never have in the world except for money The problem of spending I partly solved with the help of Gerolamo Pormino II Who was a genius in that line and whom wise paternal restrictions Always kept with pockets insufficiently lined Mino stuck to Berto and me like our shadows Now my shadow and now Berto's that is It was wonderful how Mino could change makeup according as it were I or Berto When he hobnobbed with my brother He became a regular dandy and his father would loosen up a little on the purse strings For Gerolamo the elder had a weakness for gentlemen But Berto did not find Mino so very congenial on the whole As soon as he began to notice that Mino, his young worshipper Was imitating not only his clothes and his neckties But even the gate with which he walked He would lose patience and finally say something that would drive the fellow away Mino would then take up with me And his father would duly draw the purse strings tight again I was more tractable with people than brother Berto I could swallow Mino's adulation for the fun I got out of him Then after a time I would be sorry For in my eagerness to show off in front of him I would almost always go a bit too far in getting Mino into scrapes Of which I would be bound to share the consequences Well one day while Mino and I were out hunting I began to gossip about how Malania was carrying on with his wife In the course of our conversation it developed that Mino had long had his eye on a girl Who happened to be the daughter of one of Malania's cousins The miss herself seemed not to be disinclined towards him But for all of that he had never been able to exchange two words with her I bet you never had the pluck to try I offered jestingly Mino averred he had but I thought he blushed too much in saying so I did have a talk with their maid he added And what I learned from her would make you laugh While according to the maid all of Malania is down there all the time these days And he seems to be trying to cook up something with the connivance of the mother She is an own cousin of his and a pretty poor sort I take it What is he trying to pull off? Why it seems that when Malania's first wife died This old witch she's a widow named Pescatore Got the idea of saddling her daughter off on him But he married Oliver of course Well the Pescatore woman called him everything she could put her tongue to Fool, thief, traitor to his own blood and so on And she even gave her daughter a thrashing because the girl had not exerted herself enough to catch the old fool's eye Now recently Batty has been going down there crying calamity because he has had no son to leave his money to Soves you right says the old lady for not having taken her daughter of course Who knows what scheme she may now be working up To tell the truth I was sincere in the horror with which I put my hands to my ears and bad Mino say no more In those days I liked to pose as a rounder of experience but at bottom I was as innocent as a child Nevertheless from my knowledge of the quarrels that had raged and were still raging between the Malanias man and wife I thought there might be some fire behind the smoke that maid was raising I made up my mind to try and discover the exact truth to help her leave her out a little if for nothing else I asked Mino for the address of this cousin of Malania He gave it to me willingly begging me besides to put in a good word for him if I ever met the girl He also asked me to remember that she was his Don't worry I replied to this latter caution I won't cut you out It so happened that the very next morning as mother told me a note we had given was falling due And he used that occasion for rooting Malania out in the pescatore cottage With a purpose in view I covered the whole distance on the run and broke panting and perspiring into the house Malania the note the note If I had not known already that this rascal's conscience was not so very clean I would have suspected as much that day from the utter consternation in which he rose pale stammering aghast to his feet What note why the money we owe to so-and-so mother is worried to death Batti Malania sank into his chair again with an ah of relief that gave the measure of the terror that had seized on him All arranged all arranged my how you scared me I renewed it of course for three months paying the interest a lot of money You mean to say you ran all the way down here just for that He was good-humoured now and he laughed and laughed his great belly shaking up and down He offered me a chair and introduced me to the ladies Mattia Pascal my cousin Mariana don de pescatore Romilda her daughter I call her my niece Then he insisted that I take a drink of something to cool off after my long and ridiculous run Romilda would you mind just a little something Evidently feels himself at home I commented to myself Romilda rose looked with a quick glance of inquiry at her mother left the room And presently returned with a glass and a bottle of vermouth on a tray Whereupon the widow snapped impatiently No no not that here I'd better do it myself She took the tray away from Romilda and hurried into the pantry When she came back it was a different tray a brand new red enameled one with a magnificent cordial set A silver plated elephant with a bottle of Rosolio on the cropper And a dozen little glasses hanging loosely in a rack and tinkling as she walked I should have preferred the vermouth but I accepted the Rosolio Malania and the widow took some too Romilda declined I did not stay long that first time in order to have a pretext for coming back again I excused myself by saying that mother would be uneasy about the note So I had better return another day to enjoy a longer chat with the two ladies From her manner of offering me her cold bony withered hand I judged that Signora Mariana Dondi Pescatore was not particular about having me call again She bowed very stiffly and said nothing But I was more than repaid by the smile of cordial interest Romilda gave me With a glance soft and at the same time sorrowful which drew my attention to her eyes again I had noticed them when I first came in quite unusual eyes A strange dark green shaded by wonderfully long lashes Eyes of night set like jewels between two waves of ebony black hair That made their way down over her temples and forehead As though to set off the luminous whiteness of her skin The house was quite plainly furnished But already among the original pieces a few newcomers were conspicuous from their pretentious And over ornamented elegance Two large lamps of expensive earthenware still unused apparently With globes of ground glass in fantastic design Sat on a very ramshackled dresser which had a discoloured marble top And a round mirror rising from the back In front of a sofa that had seen better days long since was a tea table With gilded legs and a top painted in lurid colours A cabinet against the wall was a valuable antique in Japanese lacquer I noticed a glitter of satisfaction in Malania's eyes as they rested on these gaudy objects A look I had observed also when the cordial set came into the room On the walls was a profusion of old and not intolerable prints Some of which Malania insisted that I admire They were the work, he said, of Francesco Antonio Pescatore, his cousin An engraver of great talent who died, as he added in a whisper In a lunatic asylum at Turin Here is a picture of him, Batty continued He drew it himself in front of a mirror I had been studying Romilda all the while And on comparing her with her mother I had concluded No, she must take after her father instead With the picture of the man before me now I did not know what to say It is not fair, I suppose, to venture libelous guesses as to the integrity of Mariana Dondi Though I know she was a woman capable of anything But that picture showed her husband as a very handsome man How could he ever have fallen in love with such an ugly harpy as she was? To do a thing like that he must have been a very loony lunatic indeed My impressions of that first visit I faithfully reported to Mino Speaking of Romilda with such warmth of admiration That his distant interest in the girl flared up at once into a passion He was delighted that I had found her so charming And that his choice had my whole heart at approbation So what are your intentions, I asked The widow I agreed with him was not a person to inspire confidence But I was ready to stake my oath on the virtue of the daughter There could be no doubt either as to the miserable designs of Malania The girl should be rescued therefore at any cost and without loss of time But how, asked Gerald Amino, hanging breathless upon my every word That's the question, said I First of all we must be sure about a number of things Keep our eyes open, study the terrain I can't say how right off in so many words, but we'll see Give me a free hand, meantime And I'll pull you through I'm getting interested in this affair, it's exciting Pomino noticed a certain undertone in my voice that worried him Well, but why, you say I ought to marry her? I'm not saying anything just yet But would you be afraid to? No, I'm not afraid Why do you ask? Why, you seem to be going a bit too fast Slow up a little now and use your head Supposing we discover beyond reasonable doubt that she is quite all she ought to be A good girl, virtuous, well-mannered, pure No need to mention her looks, she's a queen And you love her, don't you? Well, supposing also we find that through the viciousness of her mother And that other scoundrel, she is exposed to a very grave danger To a vulgar criminal bargain that will leave her disgraced forever Would you shrink from facing the situation like a man? Would you refuse to do an act as meritorious as it is holy? No, no, stammered Pomino, I wouldn't But how about Father? I think he would object, I doubt it Why should he? On account of the dowry perhaps? Surely on no other ground She's the daughter of an artist, you see An engraver of great talent who died in a... Well, anyhow, who died in Turin But your father is rich and he has only you to provide for You will be satisfied, so why should he care? And then besides, in case you can't bring him around by persuasion There's nothing to be afraid of You disappear with the girl some day and everything is arranged Lance, say Pomino You wouldn't let a little thing like a father stop you Pomino laughed and I proceeded to show him two times two or four That he had been born a husband much as some men are born poets I painted the joys and consolations of married life with a jolly little girl like Romilda The tenderness and adoration she would have for a brave man like Mino, her saviour For the moment I concluded you must find a way to attract her attention Get a word to her somehow, perhaps drop her a line Imagine the state of mind the poor thing must be in now A fly caught in a spider's web A letter from you might be the chip that would save her from drowning My job will be to stand watch I'll hang around the house and see what I can do At the first good chance I'll introduce you That's good sense, isn't it? Very good said Pomino Now, just why was I so anxious to get Romilda married? There was no reason whatever that I should be As I said I always liked to show off before Pomino Once I started talking I kept on all the difficulties vanishing I was inclined in general to do things impulsively and thoughtlessly Perhaps that was one of the things for which the girls liked me in spite of my cock-eye And my rather ungainly physique But in this case there was something else besides My little intrigue gathered zest for me from the prospect of check-mating that ridiculous old satyr In one of his infamous designs Of beating him at his own game and making a fool of him Finally came a sincere pity for Oliver And the hope of doing just a little something for that other girl who had really made a deep impression on me Now I must appeal to you again Was it my fault if Pomino proved to be a rabbit when it came to executing schemes of mine that required courage and decision? Was it my fault if Romilda fell in love with me instead of falling in love with him? I always praised him to the very skies Was it my fault finally if that devilish widow Pescatore was shrewd enough to make me believe That I had skilfully exorcised the diffidence in her And even by my jokes performed the miracle of bringing a laugh to hard thin lips which had never before been known to smile I saw her gradually change toward me I saw that my visits were at last welcome I concluded that with a young man frequenting her house A young man who was rich I still thought I was rich you see And who gave every indication of being in love with her daughter She had finally abandoned her iniquitous idea If such an idea had ever entered her head I was so far taken in that I actually began to doubt this latter Of course I should have paid more attention to two facts Surprising when you think of them First that I never again found Malania at her house And second that she would receive me only during the forenoon But how could I tell at just that time that those particular facts were significant Natural enough wasn't it to ask me to come early in the day I was always proposing walks in the woods and fields Which are more agreeable when the sun is not too high Then again I had fallen in love with Romilda myself Though I was always pleading the cause of Pomino I loved her with a wild impetuous passion Her dark green eyes under the long lashes Her nose, her lips, her cheeks, her everything Even a mole she had on the back of her neck And an almost invisible scar on one of her hands That I kissed and kissed and kissed with the abandonment of a lost soul All in the name of Pomino to be sure And yet probably nothing serious would ever have come of it Had not Romilda one day We were picnicking at the coops And her mother was inspecting the old mill-wheel a safe distance away Suddenly lost the laughter with which she greeted my standing jokes about Pomino Burst into tears and thrown her arms about my neck Begging me in the utmost distress to have pity on her Oh, take me away with you somewhere, Mattia, she cried Take me away, away, way off where I shall never see mother Or the house or Marlaña or anybody else again Take me away today, this afternoon Take her away, how could I take her away? And why? It is true that for some days thereafter Still under the spell of her mad abandonment I was thinking with my usual determination also Of doing the right thing by her I began preparing mother gradually for the news of my approaching marriage A marriage I could no longer in any decency avoid When, lo and behold, like a thunderbolt from a clear sky I get a short and polite note from Romilda Requesting me to cease my attentions to her To refrain from any further visits at her house And to regard our friendship as ended for good and all So that's that What can have happened, I wonder When, lo and behold again We come running over to our house, but Oliva Sobbing and taking on as though the world were coming to an end The most unhappy woman the Lord ever made House and home destroyed beyond repair Nothing more for her to live for Her man had secured the proof at last Proof that it was not his fault but hers He had just come in and made the announcement triumphantly I was present while Oliva told her story How I held my tongue I do not know Regard for mother's feelings more than anything else perhaps But I do know that I left the room with my hands to my head Shut myself up in my study And sick at heart began to ask myself how Romilda After what had occurred between her and me Could lend herself to such a despicable ruse A true daughter of her mother that she was Look, not only had they tricked that old idiot Malania A trick too mean to play even on a thief But they had made a fool of me Of me Of me And not only the mother Romilda too had used me for her own violins To get money from another man who was robbing me And poor Oliva, meantime Publicly disgraced her happiness and reputation gone forever I raged in my room there the greater part of the day But toward evening I could stand it no longer I went out and with Romilda's letter in my pocket Made for Oliva's house I found the poor girl packing her things and about to go back to her father's She had never as yet breathed a word to old Salvoni Of all she had had to put up with from Malania How can I think of living with him any longer? She moaned No, it's all over If only he had taken up with a different girl Then perhaps So you know who it is then? I interrupted In answer she covered her face with her hands And sobbed and sobbed and sobbed What a girl she finally exclaimed raising her arms above her head What a girl and her mother, her own mother Together, understand? You're not telling me anything I don't know I now burst out Here, just have a look at this I handed her the letter Oliva stared at it blankly for a moment Then she took it from me and asked A letter What about? Oliva had never been to school and she read with difficulty I seemed to beg me to spare her the effort of deciphering All those words at that moment of her supreme anguish Read, I insisted She wiped her eyes, unfolded the letter And spelled the words out one by one Whispering them to me syllable by syllable After a line or two, she turned to the page And looked at the signature Then she looked at me, her eyes bulging from their sockets You, she gasped Here, I answered Let me read it aloud to you I'll begin at the beginning But she clasped the letter to her breast To keep it from me No, she screamed This is mine, mine I can use this letter I smiled bitterly How can you use it? You might show it to him But my poor girl There isn't a word in the whole letter That would lead your husband to disbelieve something That he is only too anxious to believe They've made him swallow it Yes, that's so That's so, Oliver groaned And do you know what he did? He came and told me never to dare For the life of me to breathe one word Against the good name of that niece of his Why, exactly So you see, I answered You would gain nothing by telling him the truth That is the very last thing he should try to do Your game, rather, is to reassure him Keep him thinking it is as he thinks it is Don't you agree? What in the world could have happened A month later, more or less That Malania should one day give his wife A terrible beating And then his mouth still frothing Come storming into our front room Demanding that I make good For the dishonour I had brought upon An innocent girl, his niece His niece, if you please The niece of my father's best friend And a poor orphan A poor orphan with no one to protect her When he cooled off enough A little more intelligibly He added that, for his part He would have preferred to keep the mat acquired He had no children of his own, you see And he had made up his mind to take the baby When it came to bring it up as his own But now, since the good Lord had been so merciful As to give him a legitimate child by his own wife He couldn't He really couldn't, injustice to his future heir Adopt another's offspring To take the rightful place of his first born It's Mattia's work He began storming again And he must see to it at once At once, do you hear? I'm not going to waste any words I'm going to be obeyed or something will happen here That this town won't forget in a hurry Now, supposing we stop to consider a moment At this point in my story I've been through a good deal In the course of my checkered career To have my reader think me a fool Or even worse than that Would not hurt my feelings so very much As I said, I am a person quite beyond this life And nothing matters to me now I suggest that we stop and think a moment Not out of vanity, therefore But just to keep things straight It must be fairly evident that Romilda Could have done nothing really wrong So far as tricking her uncle is concerned Otherwise, why should Malania Have beaten his wife for her infidelity And denounced me to my mother For ruining his niece Romilda claims, in fact That shortly after our visit to the Coops She made known to her mother The situation that bound her to me inseparably But the old lady flew into a passion And avert that under no conditions whatsoever Which she allowed her daughter Romilda To marry a good for nothing Who would soon be losing the last scent to his name And be a beggar sleeping in the gutter Now, since Romilda, quite of her own accord Had brought upon herself the greatest misfortune That can happen to a girl There was nothing left for Signora Pescatore As a prudent mother to do Except to find the best possible solution To such a difficulty What this solution was I need not say When Malania came at his usual hour The mother found an excuse to withdraw Leaving Romilda alone with her uncle Then Romilda weeping hot tears, as she says Through herself at his feet Told him the plight she was in And hinted at what her mother was asking her to do She begged him to use his influence To bring her mother to a more reasonable And honorable frame of mind Since she belonged already to another man To whom she was determined to remain faithful Malania was touched by her story Touched the way a man like her Like him could be touched He reminded her that she was not yet of age And accordingly was still under her mother's control The mother having the power to take legal action Against me if she felt so inclined He, for his part, so he said Could not, in all conscience, recommend A man like me to any girl for a husband Libertine, waster, loafer that I was She, Romilda, therefore, should hold herself Ready to make some sacrifice of her emotions To her mother's very just displeasure And such conduct might in the end Be to her very great advantage He, for instance, might find a way Well, yes, if everything were kept absolutely quiet To provide for the child that was to come Become its father Exactly, yes, its father Since he had no children of his own And for years and years he had so longed To have an heir Tell me now, in all seriousness Could anybody be more square, more honest More upright than that Here's the point One from the real father From me, that is He would pass back by settling it on the future child Was he to blame if I, ungrateful scamp There after went and broke the eggs in his other basket One, all right But two, no, sir Two was too much Too much, I suppose, because as Malania Probably figured it out My brother, Roberto, had contracted a very advantageous marriage And there was no need to bother about the money That had been stolen from him So, you see, having once fallen into the hands Of these square, upright and honest people I was responsible for all the wrong that had been done What more natural, therefore, Than that I should take the consequences At first I stood my ground, refusing angrily But my mother already could foresee the ruin That was shortly to overtake us She saw in my marriage to Romilda A relative of the man who had our money A possible avenue of escape for me So I gave in The wedding took place But over my future with my young and beautiful wife Lowered the menacing, brothful, vindictive shadow Of Signora Mariana Dondi Pescatore Unwillingly the mother-in-law of a beggar like me End of section four