Now Mrs. Frola gave the townsfolk immediate proof of this affability — which comes so naturally to her — and, as a result, the aversion for Mr. Ponza immediately grew stronger in the hearts of everyone. Her disposition seemed clear; not only is she mild, submissive, and tolerant, but also full of indulgent compassion for the wrong her son-in-law is doing to her. Moreover, it was discovered that Mr. Ponza is not satisfied with relegating this poor mother to a separate house, but pushes his cruelty to such a point as to forbid her from even seeing her daughter.
What happens, however, is that Mrs. Frola, during her visits with the ladies of Valdana, immediately protests that it’s not cruelty, not cruelty, as she extends her little hands before her, truly distressed that one can think this of her son-in-law. And she hastens to extol all his virtues, and to say as many good things as possible and imaginable about him. What love, what care, what concern he shows not only for her daughter but for her as well… Yes, yes… for her as well. He’s thoughtful and unselfish… Oh, no, not cruel, for heaven’s sake! There’s only this: Mr. Ponza wants his dear little wife all, all for himself, and so much so that he wants even the love that she must have for her mother (and which he, of course, admits is only natural) to reach her not directly, but through him, by way of him. That’s all! Yes, it might seem cruel, this attitude of his, but it isn’t. It’s something else, something else that she, Mrs. Frola, understands quite well. It disturbs her a great deal that she can’t find the words to express it. It’s his nature. That’s it… Oh, no, it’s perhaps a kind of illness… so to speak. My God, all you have to do is look into his eyes. Perhaps at first they make a bad impression, those eyes, but they reveal everything to anyone like her, who knows how to read what’s in them. They speak of an entire world of love all bottled up within him, a world in which his wife must live and never leave, not even for a moment, and in which no other person, not even her mother, may enter. Jealousy? Yes, perhaps, but only if you care to define this total exclusivity of love crudely.
Selfishness? But a selfishness which gives itself totally, like giving a whole world of love, to the woman he loves! All things considered, she herself is perhaps the selfish one, as she is trying to force open this closed world of love, to forcibly enter it, when she knows that her daughter lives so happily in it and is so adored. This ought to be enough for a mother! After all, it’s not at all true that she doesn’t see her daughter! She sees her two or three times a day. She goes into the courtyard of that apartment house, rings the bell and her daughter immediately appears on the balcony up there.
“How are you, Tildina?”
“Very well, Mama. And you?”
“As the good Lord wishes, my daughter. Let down the small basket! Let it down!”
Then she always places a letter in the small basket — just a couple of words — with the news of the day. Yes, that’s quite enough for her. This sort of life has been going on for the past four years now, and Mrs. Frola has already gotten used to it. Yes, she’s resigned herself. It hardly hurts anymore.
As you can easily understand, Mrs. Frola’s resignation and this tolerance she claims to have acquired for her martyrdom increases Mr. Ponza’s discredit, and all the more so because she does her utmost to excuse him with her lengthy explanations.
It is with real indignation, therefore, and fear, I might add, that the ladies of Valdana who received Mrs. Frola’s first visit, receive the announcement the following day of another unexpected visit, that of Mr. Ponza. He begs them to grant him just a couple of minutes of their time to hear “a declaration I feel duty-bound to make,” if it wouldn’t inconvenience them.
Mr. Ponza shows up, his face flushed, the blood almost bursting from his veins, his eyes sterner and gloomier than ever. The handkerchief he holds in his hand, as well as the cuffs and collar of his shirt, clash in their whiteness with his swarthy complexion and his dark hair and suit. He continually wipes away the perspiration dripping from his low forehead and bristly purplish cheeks, a gesture due not so much to the heat, but to the extreme, obvious, violent effort he makes to control himself, and which causes even his huge hands with their long fingernails to tremble. In this living room and in that, in front of the ladies who gaze at him almost in terror, he first of all asks whether Mrs. Frola, his mother-in-law, came by to see them the day before. Then, with pain, distress, and excitement increasing by the moment he asks if she talked to them about her daughter, and if she said that he absolutely forbids her to see her daughter and to go up and pay her a visit in her apartment.
Seeing him so troubled, the ladies, as you can well imagine, hasten to answer him. They report that yes, it’s true, Mrs. Frola told them about his prohibiting her to see her daughter, but that she also said every possible and imaginable good thing about him, going so far as not only to excuse him, but as also to deny that he deserves even the slightest hint of blame for the prohibition itself.
But instead of calming down, Mr. Ponza becomes even more upset at this reply from the ladies. His eyes become sterner, more fixed, more somber; the huge drops of perspiration become more frequent, and finally, making an even more violent effort to control himself, he gets to the “declaration I feel duty-bound to make.”
Simply put, it’s this: Mrs. Frola, poor thing, though it doesn’t seem so, is mad.
Yes, she’s been mad for the past four years. And her madness consists precisely in this: she believes that he refuses to allow her to see her daughter. Which daughter? She’s dead — her daughter has been dead for the past four years. And Mrs. Frola went mad precisely as a result of her grief over this death. She was fortunate to go mad. Yes, fortunate, because madness was a way of escaping her desperate grief. Naturally, she couldn’t have escaped in any other way than this, that is, by believing that it wasn’t true that her daughter had died, and that instead, her son-in-law refuses to allow her to see her any longer.
Simply because he feels it’s his duty to be charitable towards an unhappy soul, he, Mr. Ponza, has been humoring this piteous folly of hers for the past four years at the cost of many grave sacrifices. He maintains two homes at a cost well beyond his means: one for himself, and one for her. And he obliges his second wife, who fortunately lends herself willingly and charitably to the scheme, to humor her in this folly, too. But charity, duty… mind you, they can only be stretched so far. Moreover, because of his position as a civil servant, Mr. Ponza cannot allow the people in town to believe such a cruel and unlikely thing of him, that is, that either due to jealousy or to something else, he is forbidding a poor mother so see her own daughter.
Having made this declaration, Mr. Ponza bows before the astonished ladies and goes off. But the ladies don’t even have time to recover slightly from their astonishment when, there she is again, Mrs. Frola with her vague, sweet, melancholic air, begging their forgiveness if, on account of her, those good ladies might possibly have been frightened by the visit of Mr. Ponza, her son-in-law.
And Mrs. Frola, with the greatest spontaneity and ease in the world, also makes a declaration in her turn, but she first tells the ladies to keep what she is about to say a strict secret — yes, for heaven’s sake! Because Mr. Ponza is a civil servant, and this is precisely why she refrained the first time from saying anything about it. Yes, indeed!, because it could seriously jeopardize him in his career. According to her, Mr. Ponza, poor dear, is an excellent, a really excellent and irreproachable secretary at the prefecture. He’s so well-mannered, so precise in his every thought and deed. Full of so many fine qualities is this Mr. Ponza, poor dear. Only in this one matter can he no longer-no longer think rationally. Yes, that’s it. He’s the one who’s mad, poor dear. And his madness consists precisely in this: in believing that his wife has been dead for the past four years and in going about saying that she’s the one who’s mad, she, Mrs. Frola, because she believes that her daughter is still alive. No, he doesn’t do it to somehow justify in everybody’s eyes that almost maniacal jealousy of his and the cruelty which causes him to
forbid her to see her daughter. No, he believes, he seriously believes, that poor dear man, that his wife is dead and that the woman who’s living with him is his second wife. It’s such a pathetic case! Because, with the excessive passion of his love, this man at first actually risked destroying, risked killing his young and delicate little wife. It got so bad that they had to secretly take her away from him and shut her up in a sanitarium without his knowing about it. Well, the poor man, his mind already seriously unbalanced as a result of that frenzy of love, went mad. He believed that his wife had really died. This idea became so deeply rooted in his mind that there was no longer any way to drive it out, not even when, almost one year later, his wife, having regained her former good health, was brought back to him. He thought she was some other woman, and so much so that they had to simulate a second wedding for the couple with the help of everyone — friends and relatives alike. Only then did he fully regain his mental balance.
Now, Mrs. Frola believes she has good reason to suspect that her son-in-law completely regained his sanity some time ago. She contends that he’s pretending, only pretending to believe that his wife is his second wife, so that he can keep her all to himself and prevent her from coming in contact with anyone. Perhaps it’s because from time to time there still flashes in his mind the fear that they might again secretly take her away from him. Yes, of course! How else can you explain all the care, all the consideration he shows her, his mother-in-law, if he really believes that the woman he lives with is his second wife? He shouldn’t feel the obligation to show so much consideration for a person who, in reality, would no longer be his mother-in-law. Right?
This, mind you, is what Mrs. Frola says, not to demonstrate all the more that he is the one who’s mad, but rather to prove even to herself that her suspicion is well-founded.
“And meanwhile,” she concludes, with a sigh on her lips that assumes the form of a sweet and extremely sad smile, “meanwhile my poor daughter has to pretend that she’s not herself, but someone else, and I, too, am forced to pretend that I’m mad because I believe my daughter is still alive. It doesn’t cost me much, thank God, because my daughter is there — healthy and full of life. I can see her, I can talk to her. But I’m condemned to live apart from her and to see and talk to her from a distance so that he can believe — or pretend to believe — that my daughter (oh, God forbid!) is dead, and that the woman he lives with is his second wife. But I repeat, what does it matter if, by doing this, we’ve succeeded in giving them both their peace of mind? I know that my daughter is adored and happy. I can see her, I can talk to her. And I resign myself out of my love for her and for him to living like this and even to passing for a madwoman. My dear lady…, one must have patience…”
I ask you, don’t you think that in Valdana there’s reason enough for all of us to stand about staring into one another’s eyes, openmouthed like so many fools? Which of the two should we believe? Which of them is mad? Where does reality begin? Where does fantasy end?
Mr. Ponza’s wife could tell us. But you can no more rely on her if, in his presence, she should say she’s his second wife than if, in Mrs. Frola’s presence, she should agree that she’s her daughter. You would have to take her aside and have her tell you the truth privately. But that’s not possible. Mr. Ponza, whether or not he’s the one who’s mad, is really quite jealous and doesn’t allow anyone to see his wife. He keeps her up there under lock and key, as if in a prison. And this fact undoubtedly reinforces Mrs. Frola’s argument. But Mr. Ponza says he’s forced to do so, and that actually it’s his wife herself who insists on his doing it, out of fear that Mrs. Frola might enter their home at any time to pay her a surprise visit. It could be an excuse. But there’s also the fact that Mr. Ponza doesn’t keep a single servant in the house. He says he does it to save money, since he’s obliged to pay the rent for two apartments. In the meantime, he takes it upon himself to do the daily shopping while his wife, whom he maintains is not Mrs. Frola’s daughter, takes it upon herself to do all the housework—even the most menial chores—depriving herself of the help of a servant. She does all this out of compassion for her, that is, for the poor old woman who was her husband’s mother-in-law. It all seems a bit preposterous to everyone. But it’s also true that this state of affairs, even if it can’t be explained in terms of compassion, can be viewed as resulting from his jealousy.
Meanwhile, the prefect of Valdana has expressed his satisfaction with Mr. Ponza’s declaration. But certainly Mr. Ponza’s appearance and, to a great extent, his behavior, don’t speak in his favor, at least as far as the ladies of Valdana are concerned, all of whom tend rather to believe Mrs. Frola. She, in fact, comes along to eagerly show them the affectionate little letters that her daughter lowers to her in a little basket. She also shows them a good many other private documents whose authenticity, however, is utterly denied by Mr. Ponza. He states that they have been issued to her only to further comfort her in this piteous deception.
At any rate, there’s one thing that’s for certain: they both show a marvelous spirit of self-sacrifice towards one another. It’s most touching! And each has for the presumed madness of the other the most exquisitely compassionate consideration. Both of them argue their cases marvelously. So well do they reason, that in Valdana it would not have occurred to anyone to say that one of them was mad, if they themselves had not said so, Mr. Ponza about Mrs. Frola, and Mrs. Frola about Mr. Ponza.
Mrs. Frola often goes to see her son-in-law at the prefecture to ask him for some advice, or else she waits for him at the exit to have him accompany her on one of her shopping errands. As for Mr. Ponza, very often during his free time and every evening he pays Mrs. Frola a visit in her furnished apartment. And whenever one of them happens to run into the other along the street, they immediately get together with the utmost cordiality. He walks along the street side and, if she’s tired, offers her his arm. And they proceed along together like that, amid the puzzled annoyance and the stupor and consternation of the people who examine them well, look them up and down, spy on them and… nothing comes of it. They still are unable in any way to find out which of the two is mad, where fantasy ends and where reality begins.
The Wheelbarrow
When there’s someone around, I never look at her, but I feel that she’s looking at me, she’s looking at me without taking her eyes off me for a moment.
I’d like to make her understand in private that it’s nothing, that she should relax, that I couldn’t allow myself to perform this brief act in front of others, that for her it’s of no importance, but for me it’s everything. I perform it every day at the right moment in utmost secrecy and with frightful joy because, trembling, I experience the delight of a divine, conscious madness that for an instant frees me and allows me to get even with everything.
I had to be certain (and it seemed I could have this certainty only with her) that this act of mine wouldn’t be discovered. Because if it were, the damage that would result, and not only to me, would be incalculable. I would be a ruined man. Perhaps, stricken with terror, they would seize me, tie me up, and drag me off to an insane asylum.
The terror that would take hold of everybody if this act of mine were discovered, yes, there it is, I can read it now in my victim’s eyes.
I have been entrusted with the life, honor, freedom, and possessions of countless people who besiege me from morning to night for my work, advice, and help. I’m burdened with other extremely great responsibilities, both public as well as private. I’ve got a wife and children, who often don’t behave as they should, and who, therefore, continually need to be kept in check by my strict authority and by the constant example of my inflexible and faultless fidelity towards all my obligations, one more serious than the other: that of husband, father, citizen, law professor, attorney. So heaven help us if my secret were discovered!
It’s true, my victim can’t speak. Nonetheless, for some days now, I’ve no longer felt sure of it. I’m upset and restless because, though it�
��s true she can’t speak, she does look at me, she looks at me with such strange eyes, and the terror in those eyes is so obvious that I fear someone might become aware of it from one moment to the next and be led to seek an explanation.
I would be, I repeat, a ruined man. The value of the act I perform can be appraised and appreciated only by those very few individuals whose lives have revealed themselves to them as mine all of a sudden did to me.
It’s not easy to put it into words and make it comprehensible, but I’ll try.
A couple of weeks ago I was returning from Perugia, where I had gone to take care of some business relating to my profession.
One of my most onerous duties is that of ignoring the fatigue that assails me as a result of all the enormous responsibilities I have taken upon myself and that have been placed on me, and of resisting the need for a bit of distraction that my tired mind occasionally demands. The only distraction I can permit myself, when fatigue gets the better of me after I’ve been attending too long to a particular case, is that of directing my attention to a new one.
For this reason I had brought along my leather folder with some new papers to study on the train. At the first problem I encountered in my reading, I raised my eyes and looked towards the window of the coach. I looked outside but saw nothing, so engrossed was I in that problem.
Tales of Madness Page 14