The Oil Jar and Other Stories

by Luigi Pirandello

  “Cheer up, Uncle Dima,” that man said to him, seeing his face all upset.

  Uncle Dima raised one hand in a furious gesture. He opened the tin box that contained the cement, and raised it to the sky, shaking it, as if to offer it to God, inasmuch as mankind refused to acknowledge its efficacy: then with a finger he began to spread it all around the edges of the detached piece and along the crack; he took the pincers and the previously prepared small lengths of iron wire, and thrust himself into the open belly of the jar.

  “From inside?” asked the farmhand, to whom he had given the detached piece to support.

  He didn’t reply. With a gesture he ordered him to fit that piece to the jar, as he himself had done shortly before, and stayed inside. Before beginning to insert the rivets:

  “Pull!” he said to the farmhand from inside the jar, in a tearful voice. “Pull with all your might! See if it comes off again! The devil take anyone who doesn’t believe it! And bang on it, bang on it! Hear how it sounds, even with me inside here? Go and tell that to your fine master.”

  “The man on top gives the orders, Uncle Dima,” the farmhand sighed, “and the man on the bottom is damned! Put in the rivets, put in the rivets.”

  And Uncle Dima began passing every piece of iron wire through the two adjacent holes, one on either side of the mend; and with the pincers he twisted the two ends. It took about an hour to pass them all through. He sweated rivers inside the jar. As he worked, he quietly lamented his evil fortune. And the farmhand, outside, kept consoling him.

  “Now help me get out,” Uncle Dima finally said.

  But as wide as it was around the belly, that’s how narrow that jar was at the neck. That farmhand had had a true premonition! Uncle Dima, in his rage, had paid no attention. Now, try and try again as he would, he found no way of getting back out. And the farmhand, instead of helping him—there he was, doubled up with laughter. Imprisoned, imprisoned there, in the jar he himself had repaired, and which now—there was no other way—to let him out, would have to be broken again and for good.

  The laughter and shouting brought Don Lollò onto the scene. Uncle Dima, inside the jar, was like a maddened cat.

  “Get me out!” he was howling. “For God’s sake, I want to get out! Right away! Help me out!”

  At first Don Lollò just stood there stunned. He couldn’t believe it.

  “But how? Inside? He riveted himself up inside?”

  He went over to the jar and shouted to the old man:

  “Help? And what help can I give you? Stupid old man, how could you? Shouldn’t you have taken the measurements first? Come on, try, stick out an arm, like that! And your head, come on … no, easy does it! What? What have you done? And the jar, now? Keep calm! Keep calm! Keep calm!” he started to advise everyone around him, as if it were the others who were losing their composure and not he. “My head is on fire! Keep calm! This is a new case … The mule!”

  He tapped on the jar with his knuckles. It really did ring like a bell.

  “Beautiful! As good as new … Wait!” he said to the prisoner. “Go saddle my mule!” he ordered the farmhand; and, scratching his forehead with his fingers, he continued saying to himself: “But just look at what happens to me! This isn’t ajar. It’s a contrivance of the devil! Easy! Easy there!”

  And he ran over to steady the jar, in which Uncle Dima was violently writhing like a trapped animal.

  “A new case, my good man, which my lawyer needs to settle! I don’t trust myself. I’ll be back in a flash, be patient! It’s in your own interests … Meanwhile, be still! Keep calm! I look after my people. And before all else, in order to have a just claim, I do my duty. Here: I’m paying you for the job, I’m paying you for the day’s work. Three lire. Is that enough?”

  “I don’t want a thing!” shouted Uncle Dima. “I want to get out!”

  “You will get out. But in the meantime I’m paying you. Here, three lire.”

  He took them out of his vest pocket and threw them into the jar. Then he asked, solicitously:

  “Have you had lunch? A lunch over here, right away! You don’t want any? Throw it to the dogs! It’s enough for me that I gave it to you.”

  He ordered them to give the tinker lunch; he climbed into the saddle, and trotted off to town. Everyone who saw him thought he was going to commit himself to the insane asylum, from the extent and strangeness of his gesticulations, while talking to himself.

  Luckily he didn’t have to sit and wait at the lawyer’s office; but he did have to wait a good while for the lawyer to stop laughing, once he had explained the case. He was annoyed at the laughter.

  “But, tell me, what is there to laugh about? It doesn’t affect you! The jar is mine!”

  But the lawyer kept on laughing and wanted him to tell the whole story over again, just as it happened, so he could have another laugh. Inside, huh? He riveted himself up inside? And he, Don Lollò, what did he want to do? Kee … to kee… to keep him in there … ha, ha, ha … to keep him in there so as not to lose the jar?

  “Do I have to lose it?” asked Zirafa with clenched fists. “The loss and the shame?”

  “But do you know what this is called?” the lawyer said. “It’s called ‘illegal confinement.’”

  “Confinement? And who confined him?” exclaimed Zirafa. “He confined himself! How am I to blame?”

  The lawyer then explained to him that there were two cases. On the one hand, he, Don Lollò, was obliged to release the prisoner at once so as not to be liable to the charge of “illegal confinement”; on the other hand, the tinker was answerable for the damage he was causing through his lack of professionalism and his carelessness.

  “Ah!” said Zirafa, with a sigh of relief. “By paying me for the jar!”

  “Not so fast!” the lawyer remarked. “It’s not as if it were new, keep that in mind!”

  “And why not?”

  “Why, because it was broken!”

  “No, sir!” Zirafa rebutted. “Now it’s whole. Better than whole, he says so himself! And if I now break it again, I won’t be able to have it mended again. It’s a lost jar, counselor!”

  The lawyer assured him that this would be taken into account, by demanding a payment equal to the jar’s value in its present condition.

  “In fact,” he advised him, “have it appraised in advance by him himself.”

  “Many thanks, and goodbye,” said Don Lollò, hurrying away.

  Upon his return, toward evening, he found all the farmhands making merry around the inhabited jar. Even the watchdog was taking part in the fun. Not only had Uncle Dima calmed down; he, too, had begun to enjoy his unusual adventure and was laughing with the malicious gaiety that sad people have.

  Zirafa made them all move away, and leaned over to look inside the jar.

  “Ah! Are you comfortable?”

  “Fine. In the cooler,”6 he replied. “Better off than at home.”

  “Glad to hear it. Meanwhile I’ll have you note that this jar cost me four onze new. How much do you think it would be worth now?”

  “With me inside?” asked Uncle Dima.

  The countryfolk laughed.

  “Quiet!” shouted Zirafa. “It’s one or the other: either your cement works or it doesn’t work; if it doesn’t work, you’re a swindler; if it does work, the jar, just as it is, must have some value. What value? You judge.”

  Uncle Dima reflected for a while, then said:

  “I’m answering. If you had’ allowed me to mend it with nothing but cement, the way I wanted, first of all I wouldn’t be in here, and the jar would be worth just about the same as before. But sloppily mended with these ugly rivets that I was compelled to put in it from inside here, what value could it have? A third of its original value, more or less.”

  “A third?” asked Zirafa. “One onza, thirty-three?”

  “Maybe less, not more.”

  “All right,” said Don Lollò. “Let your words be good, and give me seventeen lire.”

  �
�What?” asked Uncle Dima, as if he hadn’t understood.

  “I will break the jar to let you out,” answered Don Lollò, “and you, as the lawyer says, pay me what it’s worth: one onza, thirty-three.”

  “I should pay?” sneered Uncle Dima. “You’re joking, sir. I’ll rot in here.”

  And, with some difficulty pulling his little tartar-incrusted pipe out of his pocket, he lit it and began smoking, driving the smoke out of the neck of the jar.

  Don Lollò began to sulk. This additional possibility, that Uncle Dima would refuse to leave the jar, neither he nor the lawyer had foreseen. And how could things be settled now? He was just about to give the command “The mule!” again, but restrained himself in time, reflecting that it was already evening.

  “Oh, is that so?” he said. “You want to take up residence in my jar? You’re all witnesses here! He doesn’t want to get out, to avoid paying for it; I’m ready to break it! Meanwhile, since he wants to stay there, tomorrow I’ll present him with a summons for squatting on my property, because he’s preventing me from using the jar!”

  First Uncle Dima sent out another mouthful of smoke, then he replied, calmly:

  “No, sir. I don’t want to prevent you from doing anything. Am I here for my pleasure? Get me out, but I’m not paying a thing! Don’t even say it as a joke, sir!”

  Don Lollò, in a fit of rage, lifted one foot to give the jar a kick; but he stopped short; instead, he seized it with both hands and shook it vigorously, trembling and shouting to the old man:

  “Scoundrel, who did the damage, you or me? And I’m supposed to pay for it? Die of hunger in there! We’ll see who wins!”

  And he went away, not thinking of the three lire he had thrown into the jar that morning. To begin with, it occurred to Uncle Dima to use that money to have a party that evening along with the farmhands, who, having stayed late because of that strange accident, were planning to spend the night in the countryside, outdoors, on the threshing floor. One of them went to make the purchases at a nearby tavern. As it turned out, the moon shone so brightly it seemed like daylight.

  At a certain hour Don Lollò, who had gone to bed, was awakened by an infernal racket. Coming out onto a balcony of the farmhouse, he saw on the threshing floor, in the moonlight, a swarm of devils: the drunken farmhands who had linked hands and were dancing around the jar. Uncle Dima, inside, was singing at the top of his voice.

  This time Don Lollò could no longer control himself: he dashed over like a maddened bull and, before they had time to ward him off, gave the jar a big push that sent it tumbling down the hillside. Rolling, to the accompaniment of the drunkards’ laughter, the jar smashed up against an olive tree.

  And Uncle Dima won.

  IT’S NOT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY

  Perazzetti? No. He was certainly in a class of his own.

  He would say things with the utmost seriousness, so that you wouldn’t even know it was him, while he looked at his extremely long, curved fingernails, of which he took the most meticulous care.

  It’s true that then, all of a sudden, for no apparent reason … exactly like a duck: he would burst out into certain fits of laughter that were like the quacking of a duck; and he would wallow around in that laughter just like a duck.

  Many, many people found in that very laughter the best proof that Perazzetti was crazy. Seeing him writhe with tears in his eyes, his friends would ask him:

  “But why?”

  And he would reply:

  “It’s nothing. I can’t tell you.”

  When people saw him laughing like that and refusing to say why, they got disconcerted, they stood there looking like fools and experienced a certain physical irritation, which in the case of the so-called “nervous types” could easily develop into a ferocious rage and an urge to scratch him.

  Unable to scratch him, the so-called “nervous types” (and there are so many of them nowadays) would shake their heads furiously and say in reference to Perazzetti:

  “He’s a lunatic!”

  If, instead, Perazzetti had told them the reason for that quacking of his … But frequently, Perazzetti couldn’t tell them; he honestly couldn’t tell them.

  He had an extremely active and terrifically capricious imagination, which, when he saw other people, would fly out of control and, without his volition, would arouse in his mind the most outrageous images, flashes of inexpressibly hilarious visions; it would suddenly reveal to him certain hidden analogies, or unexpectedly indicate to him certain contrasts that were so grotesque and comic that he would burst out laughing unrestrainedly.

  How could he make other people share the instantaneous interplay of those fleeting, unpremeditated images?

  Perazzetti knew clearly, from his own experience, how different the basic essence of every man is from the fictitious interpretations of that essence that each of us offers himself either spontaneously, or through unconscious self-deceit, out of that need to think ourselves or to be thought different from what we are, either because we imitate others or because of social necessities and conventions.

  He had made a special study of that basic essence of being, and called it “the cave of the beast,” of the primordial beast lurking inside each of us, beneath all the layers of our consciousness which have been gradually superimposed on it over the years. A-man, when touched or tickled on this or that layer, would respond with bows, with smiles, would extend his hand, would say “good day” and “good evening,” might even lend five lire: but woe to anyone who went and poked him down there, in the cave of the beast: out would come the thief, the impostor, the murderer. It’s true that, after so many centuries of civilization, many people now sheltered in their cave an animal that was excessively subdued: a pig that said the rosary, a fox that had lost its tail.

  In restaurants, for example, Perazzetti would study the customers’ controlled impatience. On the outside, good manners; on the inside, the donkey who wanted his grain immediately. And he enjoyed himself no end imagining all the species of animals who had their lair in the caves belonging to the men he was acquainted with: this man surely had an anteater inside him, and that man a porcupine and that other man a turkey, and so on.

  Often, however, Perazzetti’s bursts of laughter had a reason that I might call more permanent; and, indeed, that reason couldn’t be blurted out, just like that, to everybody; rather, it was to be confided, if at all, very quietly into someone’s ear. When thus confided, I assure you that it inevitably provoked the noisiest outbreak of laughter. Once he confided it to a friend to whom he was eager to prove that he wasn’t crazy.

  I can’t tell you the reason out loud; I can only give you some bare indication of it; try to comprehend it from my hint, because, if it were told out loud, among other things it might very well seem to be indecent, and it’s not.

  Perazzetti was not a vulgar man; on the contrary, he claimed to have a very high esteem for humanity, for all that it has managed to accomplish from ancient Greek times to our own day, in spite of the primordial beast; but Perazzetti was unable to forget the fact that man, who has been capable of creating so many beautiful things, is still compelled daily to obey certain intimate and unseemly natural necessities, which surely do him no credit.

  Seeing a poor man, a poor woman in a humble and modest attitude, Perazzetti didn’t think about it; but when he saw certain women giving themselves sentimental airs, certain pompous men loaded with self-conceit, it was a disaster: immediately, irresistibly there leaped into his mind the image of those intimate and unseemly natural necessities, which even they definitely had to obey daily: he saw them in that posture and would burst out laughing mercilessly.

  There was no masculine nobility or feminine beauty that could escape that disaster in Perazzetti’s imagination; in fact, the more ethereal and idealized a woman’s presence seemed to him, the more a man had put on an air of majesty, all the more did that accursed image awake within him unexpectedly.

  Now, with this in mind, just imagine Pera
zzetti in love.

  And fall in love he did, unlucky man, he fell in love with extraordinary ease! He no longer thought about anything, he was no longer himself, the moment he was in love; he immediately became another man, became that Perazzetti which others wished him to be, the sort of man that not only the woman into whose hands he had fallen wanted to mold him into, but also the sort of man that the future fathers-in-law, future brothers-in-law and even the friends of the bride’s family wanted to mold him into.

  He had been engaged at least twenty or so times. And he would make you split your sides laughing when he described all the different Perazzettis he had been, each one dumber and more idiotic than the last: the one with the mother-in-law’s parrot, the one with the young sister-in-law’s interest in the stars, the one with some friend or other’s stringbeans.

  Whenever the heat of passion, which had brought him into a state of fusion, so to speak, began to abate, and he gradually began to gell into his customary shape and recover self-consciousness, at first he felt amazement and alarm at observing the shape they had given him, the role they had made him play, the state of idiocy to which they had reduced him; then, as he looked at his fiancée, as he looked at the mother-in-law, as he looked at the father-in-law, the terrible laughter would start all over again, and he had to flee—there was no other way—he had to flee.

  But the trouble was that they were no longer willing to let him escape. He was an excellent young man, Perazzetti, well-to-do, extremely likable.

  If the dramas enacted in those twenty or more engagements were assembled in a book as narrated by him, they would be among the most amusing reading materials of our generation. But what would be laughs for the reader were unfortunately tears, real tears for poor Perazzetti, fits of rage and of anguish, and despair.

  Each time he promised and swore to himself that he wouldn’t relapse; he resolved to think up some heroic cure that would prevent him from falling in love again. But no! He would relapse shortly afterward, and always worse than before.