“Who knows?”
“It seems he won’t actually die…”
“But what does he say? What does he say?”
“Always the same thing. He’s talking nonsense.”
“Poor Belluca!”
And it didn’t occur to anyone that, given the most unusual conditions in which that unhappy man had been living for so many years, his case could even be considered quite natural, and that everything Belluca said which everyone thought was nonsense, a symptom of frenzy, could also be the simplest explanation of his quite natural case.
Actually, the fact that Belluca had boldly rebelled against his office manager the previous evening, and that, upon hearing his bitter reproaches, had almost flung himself on him, provided serious grounds for the supposition that his was a case of true mental derangement. Because one couldn’t imagine a more docile, submissive, methodical, and patient man than Belluca.
Confined… Yes, who had defined him so? One of his fellow clerks. Confined, poor Belluca, within those extremely narrow limits of his dull job as a bookkeeper, a job that allowed him to retain no other thought than those of open entries, single, double, or transfer entries, and of deductions, withdrawals, and postings; notes, registers, ledgers, copybooks, and so forth. He had become a walking file cabinet, or rather, an old mule wearing blinders, that quietly, very quietly pulled his cart, always at the same pace, and always on the same road.
Now then, this old mule had been whipped a hundred times, flogged pitilessly, as a joke, for the pleasure of seeing if one could make him get a little angry, or cause him at least to raise his drooping ears a little, if not to give a sign of wanting to lift his foot and kick out. Nothing! He had always accepted the unjust whippings and the cruel stings quietly, without batting an eye, as if he had deserved them, or rather as if he didn’t feel them anymore, accustomed as he was for many years to the continual, mighty thrashings meted out to him by destiny.
His rebellion, therefore, was truly inconceivable, unless it had been the result of sudden mental derangement.
What’s more, the preceding evening he had really deserved being reprimanded; his office manager really had all the reason in the world to let him have it. Already that morning he had shown up to work with an unusual and different air about him and, what was really serious, and comparable to what should I say? the collapse of a mountain, he had arrived more than a half hour late.
It seemed that his face had suddenly become broader. It seemed that the blinders had suddenly fallen from his eyes and that the spectacle of life all around him had suddenly revealed itself and thrown its doors wide open to him. It seemed that his ears had been suddenly unplugged, perceiving for the first time voices and sounds he had never before noticed.
He had shown up at the office so lighthearted, and his lightheadedness was indefinite and full of bewilderment. What’s more, the whole day long he hadn’t accomplished a thing.
That evening the office manager entered his office and, examining the account books and papers, asked:
“What gives? What did you accomplish during this entire day?”
Belluca had looked at him smilingly, almost with an air of impudence, as he opened his hands.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” his office manager then exclaimed, drawing close to him, taking him by the shoulder, and shaking him.
“Hey, Belluca, I’m speaking to you.’”
“Oh, nothing,” Belluca answered him, continually sporting that smile on his lips which indicated something halfway between impudence and imbecility. “The train, sir.”
“The train? What train?”
“It whistled.”
“What the devil are you saying?”
“Last night, sir. It whistled. I heard it whistling…”
“The train?”
“Yes, sir. And if you only knew where it took me! To Siberia… or, or… into the forests of the Congo… It only takes a second, sir!”
The other clerks, hearing the shouts of their enraged office manager, had entered the office and, hearing Belluca speaking in this manner, burst out laughing hysterically.
Then the office manager, who must have been in a bad mood that evening and was irritated by the laughter, became furious and mistreated the meek victim of so many of his cruel jokes.
But this time what happened was that the victim, to everyone’s astonishment and almost to their fright, had rebelled, had railed against his boss, and in a loud voice continually repeated that strange story about the train that had whistled. He had also cried out that, by God, now that he had heard the train whistle, longer could he, no longer would he, be treated in that way.
They had used force to seize, bind, and drag him to the insane asylum.
He still continued speaking about that train, even there, and he imitated its whistle. Oh, it was quite a mournful whistle, one that seemed to come from some distant place in the night. And it was heartrending. Immediately afterwards he would add:
“All aboard, all aboard… Gentlemen, your destinations? Your destinations?”
And then he would gaze at everyone with eyes no longer his. Those eyes, usually sullen, lackluster and knit into a frown, were now laughing and shining brightly like those of a child or of a happy man, and disjointed sentences poured from his lips. Things unheard of; poetic, fantastic, odd expressions that were all the more astonishing in that you could in no way explain how, or by what miracle, they could flower in his mouth. After all, until then he had never dealt with anything but figures, account books, and catalogs, as if he had been deaf and dumb to life, like a little bookkeeping machine. But now he spoke of the blue facades of snowy mountains, reaching up to the sky; he spoke of voluminous viscous cetaceans forming commas with their tails in the depths of the seas — things, I repeat, unheard of.
However, the individuals who reported these things to me and informed me of his sudden mental derangement were dumbfounded when they noticed that not only was I not astonished, but I wasn’t even the least bit surprised.
In fact, I received the news in silence.
And my silence was full of sorrow. I shook my head, while the corners of my mouth contracted downward in a bitter grimace, and then said:
“Gentlemen, Belluca has not gone mad. Rest assured that he hasn’t gone mad. Something must have happened to him, but it must have been something quite natural. None of you can understand what it is, because none of you is well-acquainted with the life he’s had up till now. Since I am, I’m sure that I’ll be able to understand the whole thing as something quite natural, once I see him and speak with him.”
As I was walking toward the asylum where the poor man had been admitted, I continued reflecting on Belluca’s case within myself:
To a man who has lived an “impossible” life, as Belluca has up till now, the most obvious thing, the most common incident, the most insignificant and unexpected obstacle as—what should I say?—a cobblestone in his path, can produce such unusual effects that no one can explain without taking into account the fact that the man’s life has been an “impossible” one. An explanation has to be sought in that fact, linking it to those impossible living conditions, and then it will appear simple and clear. Whoever sees only the tail of a monster, ignoring the body attached to it, might consider it in itself monstrous. But if one rejoins it to the monster, it will no longer seem monstrous, but rather as it should be, belonging to that monster.
A quite natural tail.
I had never seen a man live like Belluca. I was his neighbor, and not only I, but all the other tenants of that apartment building wondered as I did, how that man could continue living under such conditions.
He lived with three blind women: his wife, his mother-in-law, and the latter’s sister. Both his mother-in-law and her sister were quite old and had cataracts. His wife, on the other hand, had no cataracts but was permanently blind; her eyelids were sealed.
All three of them expected to be waited on. From morning to night they screamed bec
ause no one waited on them. His two widowed daughters, taken into his home after the deaths of their husbands, one with four children, the other with three, never had the time nor the desire to take care of them. If anything, they would sometimes lend a hand only to their mother.
With the meager earnings he derived from his modest position as a bookkeeper, could Belluca feed all those mouths? He secured other work to do at home in the evening: papers to copy. And he would copy them amid the frenzied screams of those five women and those seven children, until all twelve of them managed to find room to sleep in the three beds in his house.
They were large beds, double beds, but there were only three of them.
Violent scuffles, chases, overturned furniture, broken dishes, cries, shouts, thuds, because one of the children in the dark would run over and plunge into bed with those three blind women who slept in a separate bed. And every evening the women, too, would argue among themselves because none of them wanted to sleep in the middle, and each would rebel against the others when it was her turn.
At last there was silence, and Belluca would continue to do his copying late into the night until his pen would fall from his hand and his eyes would shut of their own accord.
He would then go throw himself — often fully clothed — onto a small rickety divan and immediately sink into a profound sleep from which he could hardly rouse himself in the morning, feeling more dazed than ever.
Now then, gentlemen, what happened to Belluca, living under such conditions, was a quite natural thing.
When I went to visit him at the asylum, he told me about it himself, in detail. Yes, he was still somewhat excited, but that was quite natural, considering what had happened to him. He laughed about the doctors, nurses, and all of his colleagues who thought he had gone mad.
“If only I had!” he said. “If only I had!”
Gentlemen, for many, many years Belluca had forgotten, actually forgotten, that the world existed.
Absorbed in the continuous torment of his unfortunate existence, absorbed all day long in the accounts of his office, with never a moment of respite, like a blindfolded animal yoked to the shaft of a waterwheel or of a mill, yes, gentlemen, for years and years he had forgotten, actually forgotten, that the world existed.
Two evenings before, feeling exhausted, he threw himself down on that dilapidated couch to sleep. But perhaps because of his excessive fatigue, he was unable to fall asleep as he normally did. And, all of a sudden, in the profound silence of the night, he heard a train whistling in the distance.
It seemed to him that, after so many years, his ears had mysteriously and suddenly become unplugged.
The whistle of the train had all of a sudden ripped open and carried away the misery of all those horrible sufferings. It was as if he had found himself flying out of an uncovered tomb and roving breathlessly in the airy void of the world that was throwing itself open all around him in all its immensity.
He had instinctively held on to the covers that he would toss over himself every evening, and mentally run after that train that was traveling farther and farther away into the night.
The world existed, ah! it existed outside that horrendous house, outside all his torments. The world existed. There was a lot, a lot of world far away that that train was traveling towards… Florence, Bologna, Turin, Venice…, so many cities that he had visited in his youth, and that were surely still sparkling with lights that night on the earth. Yes, he knew about the sort of life one lived there! It was the same sort of life he, too, had once lived! And that sort of life continued to exist, it had always continued to exist while he, over here, like an animal with blinders, turned the shaft of the mill. He had ceased thinking about it! The world had closed itself off to him in the torment of his house, in the arid, keen suffering of his bookkeeping job… But now, yes, as if through a violent transfusion, it was reentering his spirit. A moment which ticked for him here in this prison of his flowed like an electric shiver throughout the whole world, and now that his imagination had suddenly been awakened, he could follow that moment, yes, follow it to known and unknown cities, moors, mountains, forests, seas… This same shiver, this same palpitation of time. While he lived the “impossible life” here, there were millions and millions of men scattered about the entire globe who lived differently. Now, in the same instant that he was suffering here, there were solitary snowcapped mountains whose blue facades rose up to the nocturnal sky… Yes, yes, he saw them, he saw them, he saw them that way… There were oceans, forests…
And so, now that the world had returned to his spirit, he could in some way be consoled! Yes, by occasionally lifting himself up from his torment to take a breath of air in the world with his imagination.
That was enough for him!
Naturally, the first day he had gone too far. He had become intoxicated. The whole world, all of a sudden within him — a cataclysm. Gradually he would regain his composure. He was still tipsy from having breathed too much air; he could feel it.
As soon as he had completely regained his composure, he would go to his office manager and apologize, and he would resume his bookkeeping as before. Only now his office manager was not to expect too much from him as he had in the past; from time to time, between the recording of one entry and another, he had to allow him to make a brief visit, yes, to Siberia… or rather, or rather… into the forests of the Congo.
“It only takes a moment, my dear sir. Now that the train whistled…”
Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, Her Son-in-Law
Well, for heaven’s sake! Can you imagine that? It’s enough to drive us really crazy — all of us — just trying to figure out which of the two is mad, this Mrs. Frola or that Mr. Ponza, her son-in-law. This is the sort of thing that can happen only in Valdana, an unfortunate town which has become the mecca for all kinds of eccentric strangers!
Either she’s mad or he is. There’s no middle course; one of them must necessarily be mad. Because, we’re dealing with nothing less than this… No! I’d better start by telling the story in an orderly fashion.
I swear it, I am seriously concerned about the anxiety that has plagued the inhabitants of Valdana for the past three months, and I care little about Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, her son-in-law. Because, if it’s true that a serious misfortune has befallen them, it’s no less true that at least one of them has been fortunate enough to go mad on account of it, and the other has supported, and continues to support this madness so that, to repeat myself, it is impossible to find out which of them is really mad. Certainly they couldn’t provide any better consolation to one another than that. But, I ask you, do you think it a small matter that they subject an entire town to this nightmare by eliminating any possible basis for judgment, so that one can no longer distinguish between fantasy and reality? It’s agonizing, a perpetual consternation. Day after day, you can see those two people before you. You look them in the face. You know that one of them is mad. You examine them well. You look them up and down. You spy on them. And yet, after all this… nothing! You can’t figure out which of them it is, where fantasy ends and reality begins. Naturally, the sneaking suspicion arises in everyone’s mind that fantasy is just as valid as reality, and that every reality can quite easily be fantasy and vice versa. Do you think this a small matter? If I were in the prefect’s shoes, I would certainly force Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, her son-in-law, to leave town, if only to protect the inhabitants of Valdana from the danger of losing both mind and soul.
But let’s proceed chronologically.
This Mr. Ponza arrived in Valdana three months ago to work as a secretary at the prefecture. He moved into that new apartment building on the edge of town, the one people call “The Honeycomb.” Right there. A small apartment, on the top floor. It has three windows that look out over the countryside, high, gloomy windows (I say “gloomy” because that side of the building, with its northern exposure and its view of all those dismal fields, has for some inexplicable reason come to look so terribly gloomy, d
espite the fact that the building is new). On the inside, it has three other windows that look out over a courtyard surrounded by the railing of a gallery which is divided by grillwork partitions. Hanging down from that railing, way, way up there, are a number of small baskets, ready to be lowered on a thin rope, should the need arise.
At the same time, however, to everyone’s astonishment, Mr. Ponza made arrangements to rent another furnished apartment (three rooms and a kitchen) downtown or, more precisely, on Via dei Santi, No. 15. He said that it was to be occupied by his mother-in-law, Mrs. Frola. In fact, this woman did arrive five or six days later and Mr. Ponza went, all by himself, to meet her at the station. He then accompanied her to the new apartment and left her there, all by herself.
Now, then, it’s understandable that when a daughter gets married, she leaves her mother’s home and goes to live with her husband, even if it means going to another town. But then that this mother, unable to stand living far from her daughter, leaves her town and home and follows her, and that she goes to live in a separate house in a town where both daughter and mother are strangers — that is not so readily understandable. Unless you are ready to suppose that the incompatibility between mother-in-law and son-in-law is so great that it’s just impossible for them to live together, even under these circumstances.
Naturally, in Valdana, everybody at first thought that this was the case. And, of course, the one whose reputation suffered was Mr. Ponza. As for Mrs. Frola, there were some who supposed that perhaps she, too, was somewhat to blame, either because she seemed somewhat lacking in compassion or because she appeared stubborn or intolerant. Nonetheless, everyone took into consideration the motherly love which drew her close to her daughter, even though she was condemned to live apart from her.
Even the personal appearance of the pair, you’ve got to admit, played a great role in determining everyone’s attitude towards them; hence the special consideration for Mrs. Frola, while the image immediately formed and stamped in everyone’s mind of Mr. Ponza was that of a hard, or rather even cruel man. Stocky, no neck at all, as black as an African, with thick bristly hair over a low forehead, dense, severe, interlocking eyebrows, a heavy, shiny policeman’s moustache, and in his somber, glaring eyes that had scarcely any white, a violent exasperated intensity hardly kept in check (it’s unclear whether that look stemmed from deep sorrow or from the contempt he felt at the sight of others) — Mr. Ponza certainly doesn’t have the looks to win anyone’s affection or confidence. Mrs. Frola, on the other hand, is a delicate, pale, elderly lady, with features that are fine and quite noble. She has an air of melancholy, but it is light, vague, and gentle, and doesn’t prevent her from being affable with everyone.
Tales of Madness Page 13