Gogol's Wife

by Tommaso Landolfi

  All exclaimed at once: “God is not good!”

  “No, He is not good just as He is not bad. Your moral standards, Monsignor, do not apply to Him. God is not so degraded as to know good and evil. I said that it was man who invented sin, and then, out of cowardice, I remained silent when you objected. Well, what you chose to understand is not what I intended to say. I say that man has invented the very concept of sin, and this is his greatest, indeed, his only sin. You talk of free will! But do you realize that this, this is the real blasphemy, your belief in free will? Don’t you know that free will negates God, as none of your so-called sins ever could, that is if they existed . . .”

  “Not at all, free will affirms God, because . . .”

  “No, let me say what I’ve got to say—your canonical arguments have no place here. Free will negates God not because of the reasons which you have been taught to refute. It negates Him by the very fact that it limits Him—limits Him, I might say, in space. Let us suppose that God said to man: these are the two paths, follow one or the other—and here we won’t mention the respective rewards and punishments which you have so foolishly played at inventing—and let us suppose that man decides to follow the path of evil. Very well: in what terms, with what means, I ask you, within what bounds could he follow it? Must he not, in order to do it, make use of that which God Himself has given him? Don’t all the impulses of his heart come from God, as do all the instruments of his actions? Are not all these things part of God? But no, that doesn’t suit you, because then God would be responsible for evil. So according to you, there must be a path which does not pass through God, and things which elude His dominion. Nor does it help to invoke the stupid sophism that these things elude God’s dominion precisely because that is His will in the matter. How would such a will exist? It would only exist if God were something apart from His creatures, if God were not in all created things—as you yourselves admit He is—if God, in other words, were not God. And instead the whole universe is His living body. And there is only one thing that God Himself cannot do: deliver His creatures . . . because His creatures are nothing but Himself, and He is nothing but His creatures. God Himself cannot deny Himself without ceasing to be God, indeed without ceasing to be anything at all. All does not have the power to become nothing, even though nothing can become all. God who ceases to become God, who ceases to be! That is just a ridiculous play on words. But that’s not how matters stand, Monsignor . . .

  “But God . . .”

  “God—I don’t know what God is. A hundred times each day I curse Him and a hundred times I bless Him . . . I don’t know what He is, and perhaps for that very reason I am closer to Him. Sometimes I imagine Him as the general or abstract idea of all the countless things which are on earth, since the earth is all I know. The abstract idea of that hat of yours resting on the table is what binds it to all other conceivable hats; and so God would be that which binds and unites each thing to each other thing—the flower to the bird, the moon to the palm of my hand—that in which every conflict finds peace and all that is heterogeneous becomes homogeneous, while still remaining different. He would be what these objects have in common between them; and all that there is in common between what we call hate and what we call love, pride and humility. That is why I was saying before that God is unaware of good and evil, that one cannot call Him good or bad. He does not fit into any moral category, because nothing is outside of Him and He embraces everything. Therefore, everything comes to us from Him, the so-called good just as the evil, without distinction . . .”

  “Jesus help us!”

  “Have mercy!”

  “Saints above!”

  “No, no, don’t be alarmed, these are not blasphemies. I’m saying that evil is not evil perhaps, that all is good. But it’s not that either—I don’t know what I’m trying to say . . . God, I search for Him . . . well, yes, even what we call evil comes to us from Him: this is how I worship Him! I search for Him; this is man’s way to worship—the other way means to lose Him forever. I search for Him incessantly, without rest. I know I shall not lose Him because I shall never find Him. And I cannot find Him—because I am He, and when I say I search for Him, I mean I try to be as much as possible He . . . I know what you think: that I’m contradicting myself, because the other way of worshipping also comes to us from Him and is He . . . I myself have said that everything is He. But I don’t care if I contradict myself, and, besides, I’m not contradicting myself; it’s just that I lack the words to say what I want to say and I am forced to fall back on your, or our, terms. I’m aware that worshipping, according to my idea of God, doesn’t mean anything—how can one worship oneself, while being oneself?—since I am God, just like all other created things? By saying that I search for Him, perhaps I just mean that I am He already, with all that He contains, all that He is, of good and evil . . . and not even the word “creation” has more meaning. You cannot speak of created things if God is the created things, that and no more. God has created nothing. God is. I am. Everything is. Or, since in this context our distinctions no longer have any value, He is not, and I am not, and all is not: Or even, nothingness is; or it is not. Whichever way you like.

  “I also try to negate Him. I wish I could reach the point of knowing if He is or is not—again I am forced to fall back on our words—which would be the loftiest way of worshipping Him. But I can’t succeed. Because how could I negate Him without making use of what He has given me—without at least being? And by being, I affirm Him. I try to imagine Him, as though that were possible. I remember that at the seminary up North, one of my companions had written some sort of story and God appeared in it—as a newborn child. A newborn child? Why not? Or an old, bearded man, it’s all the same. I adore Him in all His creatures, which are part of Him and me. In all of His forms, each of which is perfect. I know about all the other infinite forms that man, in his pride, thinks he can invent; but it would be an illusion to think that they are more perfect or that they are not God. They are only different, less manifest forms of God. Each form is perfect in itself: therefore, it could not exist in any other way. I know I’m speaking obscurely and that I keep contradicting myself; but that doesn’t matter to me, so long as it is the truth. How many times have I found myself kneeling before a cat washing its face, before a squirrel—there was one at the presbytery—eating a nut, before a toad in the sun that is startled and freezes in mid-stride with one leg still stretched behind it and, looks and listens without moving. Or before any other thing, before a blade of grass as well as the house of a man, before the stars of the sky as well as the refuse from a living body. You see, I tell myself, this cat is the way it is and cannot be any other way, and it is perfect; another thing or form could never be a more perfect or beautiful cat than this, or would only be another thing, it would not be a cat. But this other thing would be equally perfect in itself. I have no hope that I can make you understand me. I could perhaps, with other words, but then you would understand me, that’s just it; and that would be proof that I was lying. . . . Well, Monsignor, these are my infinite altars: not mine, but those of all men of good will—as you’d call them. Among these altars the meanest and most melancholy is the altar before which your priests genuflect.

  “Some people have thought that man sins because evil and pain are more pleasing to him than good and his own good, or that evil is just as necessary to him as good. Blind and presumptuous affirmation! What evil and what good? Man sins only because he cannot help but sin; but, naturally, he does not sin. Nor can evil be more pleasing and necessary to him than good. Indeed it cannot even be necessary to him because it is, like good, he himself. And it is he himself because it is God Himself. There is no evil and there is no good. Good and evil exist because God only is. And they are like one thing, not one against the other. They too are the living body of God—God and nothing more.”

  The young priest had risen to his feet while he was speaking. Now he fell back into his seat with a crash, and a shadow seemed to darke
n his brow and the fire in his eyes. There was a brief pause. His listeners were breathless. Then Father Alessio became animated again, but with a different, sadder excitement.

  “Forgive me,” he resumed, “if I have talked about myself; or rather, forgive me if I have talked to you about God, a subject bound to displease you. . . . And so, the monkey has eaten the consecrated host, the monkey has said Holy Mass. So what, I ask you? Cannot everyone say Mass, if he likes to and if he really feels he must? What creature’s homage and worship, to use your language, can fail to find grace before the throne of its Creator? Hasn’t the monkey, even before this, perhaps eaten the body of God every day? Doesn’t everyone eat it every day? I know only too well that you will kill this being which seems to you deformed and unclean, this being which is as sacred and divine as God, of whom he is part; that you will kill him for a horrible misdeed which in him is only a natural impulse. But if you do, that will just be proof that so it must be, that so it shall be, undoubtedly. God—still using your language—who inspired the monkey to say Mass, will also inspire you with the cowardice, the blindness, the shame of your—and here it really fits—your misdeed. The monkey has made water all over the altar: and so what? God . . .”

  But at this point Tostini finally found his voice again, and the others with him; the strange spell, which they themselves could not fathom, was broken.

  “Enough, boy!” the Monsignor yelled, half rising from his chair. “Enough is enough! I have been able to keep silent as long as you were engaged in your obscure, certainly not commendable, speculations, but which I, ahem, might even excuse in an inexperienced and too ardent young man, ahem, ahem. . . . What am I saying, excuse?” he suddenly resumed, howling like a madman. “What am I saying! God forgive me! Inexperienced . . . ardent . . . indeed! You are tempted by the Devil! No, not tempted, you have already yielded to his temptation, to his flattery! You are his prey. You are casting doubt on the sacrosanct truth of faith, you are blaspheming like the most miserable, like the most impious of scoundrels, you. . . . This is the truth. And I, I must—for I would be betraying my most sacred duties if I didn’t—I must report this to the proper authorities. And now, my boy, as your superior, as a priest, as a man, I order you to remain silent!”

  And Tostini dropped back into his chair, gasping and hissing like a kettle.

  “Enough yourself, with your gibberish, by God! And with your my boy’s—luckily, at least, I’m no longer your dear young man! I may be young, but you are the living proof that old age is not always accompanied by wisdom, that is something I had to tell you sooner or later. Go and report to anyone you like, that’s the kind of sin you can handle! But you know what to do with that other sin, too, unfortunately. . . . Why didn’t I tell you a little while ago when you were asking me, with all those hems and haws, and other disgusting grunts, what we were supposed to do with this sin, my boy?”—and Father Alessio aped the Monsignor’s voice and tone—“Why didn’t I tell you to shove it down your pocket, by the blood of your God, not to mention up your behind! Report to anyone you like—I insist on it—go and confess what you’ve heard today. Ask permission of your superiors even to make peepee, with or without a candle. . . .”

  Tostini lurched back on the armchair, red as a turkey, clutching his hand to his heart. “I’m stifling!” he murmured.

  The scandal had reached its height. Father Alessio’s blasphemies and outrages, and above all his unheard-of vulgarity, were becoming intolerable even to himself. He had not actually lost his head, indeed he had acquired a sort of coldness; but he enjoyed being vulgar, he wanted to be vulgar, he felt he had to. Doing violence to his urbane nature, he forced himself to be as vulgar as possible and, if he hadn’t been even more vulgar, it was only because he didn’t know how.

  The two old maids, followed by Bellonia, had now gotten to their feet. Strange or not strange to say, the most indignant was Lilla, whose cause, in fact, the young man was in his own way pleading; she, however, could not find words and, with tears in her eyes, continually adjusting her pince-nez, trembled from top to toe. Nena, for an instant undecided, stared at the young priest who had also risen, and her lips were trembling, too. Bellonia emitted a series of stifled clucks, hastily crossing herself again and again. While Tostini, still holding his hand over his heart, now murmured: “The sacred viand . . . so, the sacred viand . . . the outrage of the sacred viand . . .”

  “I don’t give a screw for your sacred viand!” Father Alessio declared in a frigid voice, uttering the scurrilous sentence with a visible effort.

  “Leave this house immediately!” Nena finally said.

  “Out of this house!” repeated Lilla, in a whisper.

  “Away! Away! Out! Out!” Bellonia exclaimed in turn.

  “I’ll be delighted,” Father Alessio retorted. “But before I go, I have something else to say to you. And just to you, you bemustached and corrupt old hag. Why is your sister trembling and not saying a word? Why does she tremble just to look at you, and not only today? Just like that monkey, poor woman . . .”

  “I’m not tre-embl-ing at all,” Lilla blubbered.

  “Anyway,” the young man continued, without paying any attention to her, “why do you want to kill the monkey? What are, I want to know, your real reasons?” And he stared at Nena with an insane glare in his eyes.

  “I’ve already begged you to leave,” she replied with calm dignity. “And if you were, if not a priest, at least a man, I would point out to you that you possess perhaps the second of the cardinal virtues, but not the third and definitely not the first and fourth.”

  “This is a joke, a ridiculous riddle!” the young priest burst out, perplexed, despite himself, by her singular mode of expression, and, inevitably, a trifle deflated. “This is an absurdity worthy of you. As if I knew the four cardinal virtues in order! Why, I don’t even know them out of order! The four cardinal virtues, phooey!” He stopped to search for a vulgar phrase, but did not find it. “Why don’t you answer my question?” he finally continued, having regained his assurance.

  “Now how must I tell you to leave this house?”

  “Yes, leave,” Tostini, who had finally revived a bit, weakly came to her support.

  “I’m leaving! I’m leaving!” screamed Father Alessio, ramming his hat on his head. “Now, go ahead, sacrifice that poor creature, that monkey, sacrifice me, go ahead and sacrifice, as you’ve always done, sacrifice God’s whole world to. . . . Revenge yourself. Revenge yourself for your shame, your ridiculous impotence, your rancor, your rage. Revenge yourself for not having been chosen by a man, with whom you would have wallowed in all sorts of filthy pleasures. But love, the modest love which God inspires among men, you hate it, and that is why no one has chosen you; and that is why—with your hopeless jealousy—you’ve prevented your sister from experiencing the pleasure of being held by a man’s arms, of feeling on her lips the . . .”

  “Oh, Jesus have mercy!”

  “And what’s wrong with that? That was her right. Everyone has the right to happiness, and God has so arranged things that—whatever your blasphemous priests may claim—there is some in this world. Do you perhaps think that your sister would not be closer to God if . . . even now, even now! Revenge yourself for . . . Oh Lord, save her, deliver this poor creature from the others, from herself, from her putrid chastity! . . . So revenge yourself for . . .”

  “Oh blessed God! Oh Lord, Thy blessed will be done! . . .”

  “Enough, enough!”

  “Out, out!”

  And Bellonia interrupted the young man’s wild, frenetic speech, actually pushing him out by his elbows. Father Alessio, as if he had suddenly gone off the boil, waved his hand, shrugged, and left. Bellonia followed him all the way out to the stairs, and slammed the door after him.

  Nena was covering her eyes with her hand. Tostini, still utterly prostrated, did not lift his. There was a moment of profound and consternated silence. Then, shrill and loud, hysterically, rose Lilla’s voice.

 
; “Oh Lord, have pity on us!”

  And here all of them, joined at last by the Monsignor, began to exclaim, to scream, to outshout each other, and here we’ll leave the assemblage to its outcries!

  But poor Tombo! He couldn’t have hit upon a worse lawyer for his defense.

  8

  Yes, kill him, but how? The best way, Lilla said, was to give him to a . . . yes, to one of those organizations which painlessly. . . . No, they’d hurt him anyway, Nena retorted, pacing up and down the room and wringing her hands in her usual fashion. Ever since this whole story had begun the old maids appeared more rumpled than ever, because they often forgot to put on their hairnets and their wispy hair, standing on end or hanging limply, was yellowish and smoky white. Anyway, they’ll hurt the poor beast! “So,” was Bellonia’s comment, meaning that after all that wouldn’t be the end of the world. “So—a jab in his throat won’t hurt him at all.” The good maid was used to killing chickens.

  What about an unexpected blow on the head with a club? Or a crack at the base of the neck as they do with rabbits? Or a clout with a hammer as they do with cattle? Or a loop around the throat? What about holding his head under water as they often do with pigeons? Or what if we put the whole cage into the water like a mousetrap? Yes, but where would we find a large enough tub? . . . and they went on forever, and without realizing it, they labored to invent the most refined tortures for the unlucky animal. No, no, the thing to do is to send him to one of those organizations . . . But I’m telling you that they’d hurt him anyway! Besides, he’d understand that he’s going to die; no, no. . . .

  Two days had passed since Tombo had been caught in the chapel. The first day he had continued to show an insane fear and had been as good and humble as he could; on the second, when he saw that nothing was happening to him, he grew more and more assured and regained some of his customary vivacity. But now, seeing that council of women in front of his cage, he again became suspicious; perhaps he even understood some of their words, since, taking it for granted that he could not comprehend human speech, they did not abstain from using his name. In any case, the beast instinctively recognized the truth of that sad and ineluctable proverb which says: “Council of foxes, slaughter of chickens,” and he turned his eyes apprehensively from one old maid to the other (he attached less importance to Bellonia, for he was well aware of her position in the house), scrutinizing their faces, wailing faintly and every so often making a frenzied circuit of his cage.