She had kept it for herself at the bottom of her closet for so many years. It now burned on a tall leaden candlestick as if to keep vigil over the humble and dear memories of her distant town, dissolving into tears that dripped down the stem, behind the head of the dead woman already laid out in the coffin, still open on the floor, where her bed had formerly been.
Whenever I happen to think of my first wife, this funereal vision appears to me with extraordinary lucidity. The holy woman laid out in that coffin is Amalia Sanni, Mirina’s older sister and, practically speaking, her mother. I again see the very modest bedroom, and, in addition to the blessed candle, two other somewhat smaller candles at the foot of the coffin, which are burning down a little faster and crackle from time to time.
I remain sitting by the window and, as if that unexpected misfortune had stunned more than saddened me, I gaze at the relatives and friends who have come together because of that death. They are sane and proper people, I surely wouldn’t deny that, but they are guilty of excessive zeal in making me aware of the dislike they felt for me. Certainly they had every reason to act that way, but in so doing they were not helping me regain my sanity, because in their glances, I found reason to sincerely pity them.
I loved Amalia Sanni as I would a sister. I now recognize in her only one fault: her soul, in its conception of life, coincided in all respects with mine. I wouldn’t say, however, that she was crazy. At worst, I would say that Amalia Sanni wasn’t sane, like St. Francis. Because there is no middle course, either you’re a saint or you’re crazy.
Both of us made a solicitous effort to reawaken Mirina’s soul without, however, spoiling the freshness of her disjointed and almost violent vitality, without at all mortifying that miniature doll-like body of hers, full of the most vivacious charms. We wanted to teach a butterfly, not to fold its wings and fly no longer, but rather to avoid settling on certain poisonous flowers. However, we failed to realize that what seemed like poison to us, was the butterfly’s food.
Enough said. I don’t want to dwell on my unhappy married life with Mirina. I’ll only say that she detested in me what she admired in her sister. And this seems quite natural to me now.
All of a sudden, one of my wife’s cousins, whose name I can no longer remember, entered the dead woman’s room, panting. She was plump and dwarfish and wore a large pair of round glasses that magnified her eyes monstrously, poor thing. She had gone outside to pick as many flowers here and there as she could find growing in the vicinity of the little villa, and now she was coming to scatter them over the dead woman’s body. Her disheveled hair still carried the wind that howled outside.
That gesture of hers was kind and compassionate, something I now recognize. But at that time… I remembered that, a few days before, when Amalia saw Mirina returning to the little villa with a large bouquet of flowers, she had exclaimed, quite distressed:
“What a shame! Why?”
In her sanctity, in fact, she maintained that those wildflowers do not grow for human beings, but are like the smile of the earth, which expresses gratitude to the sun for the heat it gives. For her, pulling up those flowers was a profanation. I confess that, being crazy, I couldn’t stand looking at that dead woman covered with flowers. I said nothing. I went away.
I still remember the impression that nature’s sudden spectacle made on me that night. Nature seemed to be almost completely in flight with the howling vehemence of the wind. Infinite formations of rifted clouds fled with desperate fury through the sky and seemed to drag along the moon, pale from consternation. The trees twisted and turned, rustling, creaking, and trembling ceaselessly, as if they were about to uproot themselves and flee, way, way over there, where the wind was bringing the clouds to a stormy encounter.
As I left the villa, my spirit, completely locked in the grief of death, suddenly opened up, as if the grief itself had opened up in the presence of that night. I felt that there was another immense sorrow in that mysterious sky, in those rifted, scrambling clouds; another arcane sorrow in the air, furious and howling in that flight. And, since the mute trees shook in that manner, an unknown spasm certainly must have been present within them. All of sudden, I heard a sob, almost a bubble of frightening light in that sea of darkness: a screech of a scops owl down in the valley; and in the distance, cries of terror: crickets chirping long and loudly over there, towards the hill.
Assailed by the wind, I sought refuge among the trees. At a certain point, I don’t know why, I turned to look towards the little villa, whose other side was now in view. After looking for quite a while, I suddenly leaned forward to ascertain in the darkness whether what I thought I saw was real. Near the low window of the room where Mirina had retreated to cry over her sister’s death, what seemed like a shadow was moving. Could that shadow have been just an optical illusion? I rubbed my eyes so hard that for an instant, I could no longer make anything out, as if an even greater darkness had descended around me to prevent me not from seeing, but from believing what I thought I had seen. A shadow gesticulating? The shadow of a tree shaken by the wind?
That’s how far I was from the suspicion that my wife was betraying me.
Really, I don’t believe I’m presuming too much in thinking that, on such a night, anybody would be far from suspecting such a thing, and that perhaps anybody, like me when I noticed that the shadow was actually a man in the flesh, would have believed that he was a thief in the night and, like me, would have secretly run off to get a shotgun to frighten him, and would have discharged it in the air.
What actually happened; however, is that when I discovered what sort of thief he was, I didn’t shoot him, nor did I shoot in the air.
Lying in wait there, hunched at the corner of the villa, quite close to the first window, where they were conversing, assailed by continuous shivers as sharp as razor-slashes in my back, I tried hard to hear what they were saying. I heard only my wife, who was frightened by the man’s incredible audacity. She was urging him to leave. He, too, was talking, but in such a low voice and so rapidly that not only did I not succeed in understanding his words, but I was also unable to recognize him as yet from the sound of his voice.
“Get out of here. Get out of here,” she insisted. And as the tears rolled down her cheeks, she added words that petrified me all the more. I caught a glimpse of the whole picture! He had come, that stormy night, to ask about the sick woman. And she told him: “We killed her.” Ah, so Amalia had known about the betrayal and found out about it before I did?
“Blame? Blame? No!” he said all of a sudden in a loud frenzied tone.
Vardi! Him, Cesare Vardi, my neighbor! I recognized him, I saw him in his voice: stocky and solid, as if nourished by earth, sun, and clean air.
Immediately thereafter, I heard the shutters bang violently shut, as if the wind had helped her hands. Then I heard him leaving. I didn’t move from the position I had assumed. Holding my breath, I continued listening to the sounds of his footsteps, which were much slower than my heartbeat. Then I got up, still shuddering from the effects of my initial shock, and then what I had seen and heard, almost no longer seemed true.
Is it possible? Is it possible? I asked myself, wandering again through the countryside, among the trees, as if inebriated. A muted, continuous whimpering issued from my throat, mingling with the violent rustling of the leaves, as if my body, having been wounded, was suffering on its own, while my soul, upset and amazed, paid no attention to it.
“Is it possible?”
Finally I heard that whimpering sound coming from me, and panting heavily, I stopped. I took a strong hold of each shoulder with both of my hands, crossing my arms on my breast as if to brace myself, and I sat down on the ground. I then burst out sobbing desperately. I cried and cried. Then, worn out but relieved by my tears, I began to take courage.
But I’ll just tell you what I did after having thought at length. It’ll be better that way. Already so many years have gone by, that I fear that my being still moved by this old
misfortune of mine does not befit a sane man; and all the less so, because it seems, or rather it is certain, that I behaved quite badly.
So, then, getting up from the ground, I began to wander again, Suddenly, feeling almost forced to hide once again, I crouched behind the hedge that divided my land from his. Vardi was slowly returning to his villa. As he passed in front of me, hidden there behind that hedge, I heard him sigh deeply in the night. That sigh drew him so close to me, that it almost repelled me. Ah, because of that sigh I was really on the verge of killing him. And I could have, if I had raised my shotgun a bit, without even taking the trouble to aim; that’s how close he was to me. But I let him pass.
Running back to the little villa, I found that the relatives had withdrawn from the dead woman’s room, and that only two servants had stayed behind to keep vigil. I relieved them of their sad task, telling them that I would keep vigil for them. I stopped a while to gaze at my sister-in-law. She seemed more peaceful, more serene, as if, having died in the shadow of the sin whose horrible secret she had wanted to keep, she had now been freed of it, since I knew everything. I then entered Mirina’s room.
I found her crying. As soon as she saw me, her face changed.
“Don’t be afraid,” I told her. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“With me. You’ll no longer feel any remorse.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I want to do, not say. And what you want. Come now, I’ll show you.”
I took her by the hand, pulling her forward. Trembling, quivering, she let me drag her to the dead woman’s room. I pointed out her sister to her.
“See?” I said. “Now she’ll forgive you. And you can repeat to me that you’ve killed her.”
“Me?”
“Yes, just as you told him a little earlier from the window. Quiet, don’t shout! I won’t do anything to you. You’ll just leave this house this very moment. Don’t cry! It’s your prison. I want to free you.”
She fell on her knees, her face on the ground, pleading for forgiveness, for compassion. I immediately helped her get up again, telling her to keep quiet. I pulled her out of the room.
“Go where? Where?” she asked, full of anguish.
“Wherever you want. Don’t be afraid. And if you want to be punished, that will be your punishment; and if you can still enjoy yourself, you’ll enjoy yourself freely. I’m freeing you! I’m freeing you!”
I still had my shotgun on my shoulder. Oh, how she looked at it, understandably suspecting that I was trying to coax her outside in a friendly manner! I noticed that, laughed bitterly, and ran to put my weapon down in a corner of the living room.
“I don’t want to hurt you, no. What obligation do you have to love me unwillingly?”
“Where are you taking me?”
“To the man who is waiting for you.”
Upon entering a house, I was thinking at that moment, we have to content ourselves with the chair that the host can offer us, and not ponder whether, to suit our taste and size, we would have fashioned a more stylish or larger one from the tree used to make it. For Mirina the chairs in my house were too tall. When she sat, her legs dangled, and she wanted to feel the ground under her feet.
But I promised to tell you only what I did. Fine, let’s overlook this brief sample of madness. But how much quicker it would have been to fire a shot… Goodness knows!
I was holding her hand and talking to her as we walked out in the open. I don’t remember exactly what I said to her, but I know that, at a certain moment, she freed her wrist from my hand, and fled racing, racing through the trees as if she had been swept away by the wind. I was perplexed and surprised by her sudden flight. I had thought she was following me so submissively. I called out like a blind man:
“Mirina! Mirina!”
She had disappeared in the darkness among the trees. For a long time I wandered about looking for her, but to no avail. At daybreak I continued to look for her until I had not a single doubt that she had gone on her own to take refuge where I had wanted to bring her without resorting to any violence.
I looked at the sky, veiled with scattered bands which were like the remaining traces of the great flight of clouds I saw the night before, and I felt dazed amidst a new, unexpected silence, getting the vague impression that something was now lacking in the land about me. Ah yes, that’s it: the wind. The wind had subsided. The trees were immobile in the damp, squalid light of that dawn.
What fatigue in that stupified immobility! I, too, was exhausted, and so I sat down on the ground. I looked at the leaves on the trees nearby, and I felt that if a breath of air had come to move them at that moment, they would have perhaps experienced the same feeling of sorrow that I would have felt if someone had come to tug at my hand.
It suddenly occurred to me that the dead woman was alone in the little villa, and that her relatives had perhaps awakened and were asking about me and my wife. I jumped to my feet and away I ran.
I consider it useless to describe to sane people what happened next. Those fine relatives rose up against my words, my explanations. They proclaimed me mad. What is more, while everyone was shouting, that fat, dwarfish cousin with the round glasses took courage from the general excitement to scream into my face with clenched fists:
“Imbecile!”
She was right, poor thing.
They hastened to transport the dead woman to the church in the next village, and left me alone.
Two years later, I see myself again traveling. Vardi deserted Mirina, and she, rescued from poverty, vice, and desperation, now lives at the home of a relative. However, she is in the grips of a horrible illness and is about to die from it. With my forgiving and peaceful spirit I had hoped and dreamt of comforting her remaining days by bringing her back to our countryside. I go to see her in that squalid room and say to her:
“Do you understand me now?”
“No!” she answers, withdrawing her hand as I am about to caress it, and looking at me odiously.
She, too, was right, poor thing.
4. The School of Wisdom
As everyone knows, to exercise any profession well, we need ample resources which can allow us to hold out for the best opportunities without having to seize the first ones, like dogs fighting over a bone, which is the fate of the person who finds himself in financial troubles and, to make ends meet today, is constrained to make his tomorrow, himself, and his profession, wretched.
Now this goes for the thief’s profession as well.
A poor thief who has to live from hand to mouth usually ends up badly. Instead, a thief who is not in such dire straits and has the ability and knowledge to await the proper time and to prepare himself well, will attain the highest and most revered positions, with the praise and satisfaction of everyone.
Therefore, please, let’s not be so generous as to call those who have stolen from me, wise men.
All those who exercised their profession on my considerable wealth do not deserve the praise of sane people. They could have robbed courteously, comfortably, and with caution and foresight, and thus could have created an honorable and quite respected position for themselves. Instead, without really needing to at all, they flocked to plunder, and naturally, they plundered badly. Having reduced me to poverty in just a few years, they deprived themselves of the means by which they could live comfortably at my expense. In fact, soon thereafter, they began to have a great number of problems they didn’t have before. And I know, and I’m sorry, that one of them even ended up badly.
My wife Marta shares this opinion with me. However, she observes that when a poor man who is fairly honest finds himself among so many thieves who are greedy in the administration of the resources of a rich imbecile or madman (namely, me), the tactic of being parsimonious in the theft is no longer wise; moderate, gentle, daily theft is no longer, then, a sign of foresight, but of stupidity and a weak heart. And this seems to be the case of Santi Bensai, my secretary and my dear Marta�
��s first husband.
Poor Santi (to whom I’m now indebted for not now being reduced to receiving handouts) knew the extent of my wealth and wisely estimated that it was sufficient to provide generously for myself, as well as for all those others who, like him, could be satisfied with discreetly scraping a bit off the top without causing exceedingly obvious damage. Perhaps, for the sake of their common interest, he didn’t fail to advise moderation to his colleagues. Certainly he wasn’t heeded. He created enemies for himself and suffered quite a bit, poor man. The others continued to bundle and cart off all they could. He, instead, pilfered like a sober little ant. And when I finally became as poor as Job, one could easily see that good old Santi was much more distressed than I was. He had scraped together just enough to live modestly, and could not resign himself to the fact that those others had not even condescended to leave me in the condition he was in.
“Persecutors!” he would exclaim, he who had drawn blood from me reluctantly and quietly, ever so quietly, using only a pin.
And more than once, seeing me a little too pale, he insisted on dragging me forcibly to his house for dinner. But he himself didn’t eat, so furiously angry was he with those others.
I remained silent and listened to Marta, who from time to time began giving me lessons in wisdom. She defended my persecutors against the accusations of her husband.
“Let’s be fair!” she would say. “With what right can we expect others to look after us, when we continually show them that we don’t at all look after ourselves? Mr. Fausto’s possessions belonged to everybody and everybody took them. A thief is not so much a thief as — pardon me, Mr. Bandini — as he who allows himself to be robbed is an imbecile.”
And at other times she would say, as if annoyed:
“Come on now, Santi, keep quiet! Imitate Mr. Bandini, who at least keeps quiet, because he knows all too well that he can’t complain about anyone now. If, in fact, he always looked after the others, even though it was no concern of his, what wonder, that these others have looked after themselves? He himself set an example, and the others have followed it. As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Bandini has been his own greatest thief.”
Tales of Madness Page 4