Her Husband

by Luigi Pirandello

  For fear of being besieged again by that different, horrible reality that lived beyond ordinary sight, almost outside the pattern of human reason, perhaps without any suspicion of human self-deception or with a condescending sympathy for it, she would immediately avert her gaze, but without being able to focus on any other object. She felt the horror of the sight. It seemed to her that her eyes could pierce everything. She closed them and anxiously searched her heart for any kind of help in reassembling the shattered fiction. However, in that unfamiliar confusion her heart withered. Nothing like the machine Zio Ippolito spoke of! She was unable to draw any idea from that deep dark feeling: she didn’t know how to reflect, or rather, she had never allowed herself to do so.

  As a child she had witnessed painful scenes between her father and her mother, who had been a saintly woman entirely devoted to religious practices. She remembered her mother’s look as she pressed her rosary to her heart when her husband ridiculed her for her faith in God and for her lengthy prayers. She remembered the spasmodic contortion of her mother’s face, almost as if by shutting her eyes she could shut out her husband’s blasphemies. Poor Mamma! And with what effort and tears she would then stretch out her arms to her little girl and draw her to her breast and stop her ears. Then just as soon as her father’s back was turned, her mother would have her kneel with hands joined and repeat a prayer to God that He might pardon that man whose honesty and goodness were surely a sign that he had Him in His heart and just didn’t want to acknowledge it outwardly! Yes, those were her mother’s words. How many times after her mother’s death had she repeated them! To have God in her heart and not want to acknowledge it outwardly. As a child she had always gone to church with her mother, and after her death had continued to go alone every Sunday. But hadn’t the same thing happened to her that had happened to her father? Did she really acknowledge God outwardly? She followed religious practices externally, like so many others. But what did she have inside? Like her father, a deep and dark feeling, a dread, the same that both had discerned in the other’s eyes when they stood over her dying mother’s bed. Now, of course, she tried to believe. But wasn’t God perhaps a supreme fiction created by this deep, dark feeling to calm itself? Everything, absolutely everything, was a fictional contrivance that you mustn’t tear apart, which you had to believe–not out of hypocrisy, but out of necessity–if you didn’t want to die or go crazy. But how could you believe, knowing it a pretense? Alas, without a purpose what sense did life have? Animals lived just to exist, but human beings couldn’t and didn’t know how to. Human beings had to live, not just to exist but for something fictitious, illusory, that gave meaning and value to their lives.

  Back in Taranto the look of ordinary things, familiar to her from birth and becoming part of her daily life almost unconsciously, had never disturbed her very much, although she had discovered so many marvelous things hidden from others, shadows and lights that the others had never noticed. She would have liked to stay down there near her sea, in the house where she was born and grew up, where she could still see (but with the strange impression that it was someone else) another self that she struggled to recognize. She seemed to see herself from such a distance with another’s eyes and perceive herself as … she didn’t know how to put it … different … curious… . And that girl down there wrote? She had been able to write so many things? How? Why? Who had taught her? How could those things have occurred to her? She had read only a few books, and in none of them had she ever found a passage, an idea that had the vaguest resemblance to anything that had come to her to write, spontaneously, out of the blue. Perhaps she shouldn’t have written such things? Was it a mistake to write about them like that? She, or rather the girl down there, didn’t know. It would never have occurred to her to publish them if her father hadn’t discovered them and ripped them from her hands. At first she had been ashamed. She was afraid of seeming strange when she wasn’t at all. She knew how to do all the other things well enough: to cook, sew, look after the house, and she spoke so sensibly, then… . Oh, like all the other girls in town . .. However, there was something inside her, a crazy sprite that didn’t appear, because she herself didn’t want to hear its voice or follow its pranks, except at some leisurely moment during the day or in the evening before going to bed.

  More than satisfaction at seeing her first book favorably received and warmly praised, she had felt a great confusion, an anguish, a befuddling consternation. Would she know how to write as before? When no longer writing only for herself? The thought of praise occurred to her and disturbed her; it came between her and the things she wanted to describe or portray. For about a year she hadn’t touched her pen. Then … oh, how she had rediscovered that little demon of hers grown and how wicked, malicious, discontented it had become. It had become such a bad demon that it almost frightened her, because now it wanted to talk loudly when it shouldn’t, and laugh at certain things that she, like the others in the daily business of living, would like to consider serious. Her inner battle had begun at that time. Then she met Giustino.

  It was clear that her husband didn’t understand her, or rather, didn’t understand that part of herself that, in order not to appear different from others, she kept locked inside, that she herself didn’t want to investigate or penetrate in depth. If some day this part got the upper hand in her where would it drag her? At first, when Giustino (though without understanding) had begun to urge her and force her to work, enticed by an unexpected source of revenue, she had been pleased, but really more for him than for herself. However, she would have liked him to stop there, and above all–after the stir caused by her novel House of Dwarves–not to have schemed and planned to come to Rome.

  When she left Taranto, she had the impression that she was lost, and that it would take a tremendous effort to find herself again in such a vastly different life. How would she do it? She didn’t understand herself yet, and didn’t want to. She would have to talk, to be on exhibit … to say what? She was ignorant of everything. What was deliberately provincial, primitive, homely in her had rebelled, especially when the first signs of pregnancy appeared. How she had suffered during that banquet, on display as if at a fair! She had appeared to herself like a badly assembled windup mechanism. For fear that she might go off any moment she held herself in with all her strength. But then the thought that inside this automaton the germ of a life was growing for which she would soon have such tremendous responsibility had given her sharp pangs of remorse and had made the spectacle of that fatuous and foolish vanity unbearable.

  Once the bewilderment and confusion of the first days had passed she had begun to walk around Rome with Zio Ippolito. What nice conversations they had had! What delightful explanations her uncle had given her! It had been a great comfort having him in Rome with her.

  It was enough merely to utter this name–Rome–for many to feel obligated to express their admiration and enthusiasm. Yes, she had also admired it, but with a constant feeling of sadness. She had admired the solitary villas guarded by cypresses, the silent gardens on the Celio and Aventino hills, the tragic solemnity of the ruins and of certain ancient roads like the Appian Way, the clear freshness of the Tiber. She had little interest in what men had done and said to shore up their greatness in their own eyes. And Rome … yes, was also a large prison where the more exaggerated the prisoners’ talk and gestures, the smaller and clumsier they appeared.

  She still sought refuge in the most humble occupations, applying herself to the most modest and simple, almost elemental, things. She knew she couldn’t say what she would wish, what she was thinking, because that same wish and thought often made no sense even to her, if she reflected a little.

  To keep Giustino from sulking, she forced herself to be cheerful, to strike a certain attitude, to maintain a certain humor. She read, she read a lot, but among the many books only Gueli’s were able to interest her greatly. There was a man who must have an inner demon similar to hers but was much more learned!

  I
t wasn’t enough for Giustino that she read. He also wanted her to feel comfortable speaking French and to practice it with Signora Ely Faciolli, who knew many languages, and to go to museums and galleries of ancient and modern art with her in order to be able to speak about such things if the occasion arose. He also wanted her to take more interest in her appearance and even to do her hair better, for goodness sake!

  Sometimes she started laughing in front of the mirror. She was fascinated by her reflection. Oh, why did she have to be like this, with this face, this body? She would raise her hand unconsciously, and the gesture would remain there suspended in the air. It seemed strange that it was she who had performed that gesture. She watched herself live. With that suspended gesture she resembled a statue of an ancient orator she had seen (she didn’t know who he was) as she went up the steps of the Quirinal one day from Via Dataria. That orator, with a rolled parchment in one hand and the other hand outstretched in a solemn gesture, seemed astonished that he had remained there as stone for so many centuries, suspended in that attitude before all those people going up and down those steps. What a strange impression it had made on her! She had been in Rome only a few days. One February noon. Pale sun on the wet gray stones of the deserted Quirinal piazza. Only the sentry and a carabiniere at the Royal Palace door. (Perhaps at that time of day the king was yawning inside his palace.) Under the obelisk, among the great prancing horses, the fountain murmured. And, as though the encircling silence had suddenly spread into the distance, she had the impression that the incessant roar was her own sea. She turned: on the cordon in front of the palace she saw a chipper sparrow hopping around on the stone pavement, shaking its little head. Did it also feel a strange emptiness in that silence, like a mysterious pause in time and life, and, looking on it in fear, want reassurance?

  She was very familiar with this sudden and fortunately brief and silent sinking into the mysterious abyss. However, the impression of awful dizziness lasted a long time, in conflict with the stability of things (so misleading): ambitious and yet paltry appearances. The small, everyday life wandering among these appearances then seemed unreal to her, like a magic lantern show. Why give them importance? Why treat them with respect, that respect, that importance that Giustino wanted?

  And yet, one has to live… . Yes, she realized that he, her husband, was basically right and she was wrong to be that way. She must now do as he did. And she decided to do as he wished and let herself be led, conquering her distaste and making herself appear to favor what he had done and was doing for her.

  Poor Giustino! So economical and moderate. The expense of putting her on display didn’t even bother him…. That beautiful dress he had secretly bought and had altered for her! And now she had to go to Marchesa Lampugnani’s house against her will, squarely against her will? Yes, yes, she would go. Like a mannequin in that beautiful new dress: a mannequin not very presentable, not very … slender right now, but never mind! If he really believed it necessary, she was ready to go.

  “When?”

  Overjoyed at seeing her so compliant, Giustino told her that they would go the next evening.

  “But wait,” he added. “I don’t want you to be embarrassed. I know there are so many little formalities, so many … Yes, they are probably even foolish, as you think, but it’s good to know them, my dear. I’ll find out. To tell the truth I don’t have much faith in Signora Ely for these things.”

  And that evening after leaving the office, Giustino Boggiolo went off to make the visit he had promised Dora Barmis.

  4

  Propped against the chest in the entry hall, a crutch. On the crutch, a felt hat. The double doors leading into the parlor were closed, and in the dim anteroom a yellowish green light was diffused through the checkered paper on the glass panels.

  “No, no, no. I told you no. Stop it!” He heard the angry shouts from inside.

  The maid, coming to open the door, was a little uncertain after this outburst whether it was the right moment to announce the new visitor.

  “Is this a bad time?” Giustino asked timidly.

  The maid shrugged her shoulders, then took heart and after knocking on the glass panel, she opened it: “There is a gentleman… .”

  “Boggiolo,” Giustino prompted in a low voice.

  “Ah, you Boggiolo? How nice! Come in, come in,” exclaimed Dora Barmis, inclining her head and quickly forcing a smile to replace the scornful, spiteful expression on her flushed face.

  Giustino Boggiolo entered a little flustered and nodded to Cosimo Zago, who, downcast and very pale, was getting up. Bowing his large disheveled head, he leaned painfully against the back of a chair.

  “I’m going. Good-bye,” he said in a voice he hoped sounded calm.

  “Addio,” Dora replied at once, contemptuously, without looking at him; and she turned to smile at Giustino. “Sit down, sit down, Boggiolo. How good of you … About time, eh?”

  As soon as Zago, limping badly, was gone, she threw herself into a chair and, arms in the air, sighed deeply: “I can’t take anymore! Ah, my dear friend, how people can make you regret having a little heart! But if a poor unfortunate man comes to tell you: ‘I’m ugly … I’m crippled …’ what can you say? ‘No, dear: why? Then just think how Nature has compensated you with other gifts.’ It’s the truth! You know what beautiful poetry that poor man can make. I tell everyone. I even told him. I’ve published it. But now he makes me regret it. C’est toujours ainsi! Because I’m a woman, you see? But I told him tout bonnemont, you can believe that. Just like a colleague … I’m a woman because … because I’m not a man, for God’s sake! But I don’t often even think about being a woman, and that’s the truth! I completely forget about it. You know how I’m reminded of it? By the way some men look at me… . Oh, God! I burst out laughing. Yes, of course! I say to myself. I really am a woman. They love me. Ha, ha, ha. And now, what can I do, dear Boggiolo, I’m old now, aren’t I? Come on, for heaven’s sake! Give me a compliment, tell me I’m not old.”

  “There’s no need to say it,” Giustino said, blushing and lowering his eyes.

  Dora Barmis burst out laughing in her usual way, wrinkling her nose: “Darling! Are you embarrassed? But no, come on! Will you have some tea? Vermouth? Here!”

  She offered him the box of cigarettes with one hand and with the other pressed the button of the electric bell situated under a shelf loaded with books, knickknacks, statuettes, and photographs.

  “Thank you, I don’t smoke,” Giustino said.

  Dora placed the cigarettes on the bottom shelf of a small, round coffee table in front of the divan. The maid entered.

  “Bring the vermouth. For me, tea. Bring it here, Nina. I’ll pour myself.”

  The maid returned shortly with the tea, the vermouth, and sweet rolls in a silver-plated bowl. Dora poured the vermouth and said: “Now that I think of it there’s something else you should be ashamed of, silly boy! Pay attention, because I’m serious now.”

  “What should I be ashamed of?” asked Giustino, who had already caught her drift. So much so that a foolish smile took shape under his mustache.

  “Nature has given you a treasure, Boggiolo!” Signora Barmis said in a threatening and admonishing tone, wagging a finger. “Have a fondant… . Your wife doesn’t belong just to you. Your rights, darling, must be limited. If it won’t make your wife unhappy, you should even … Tell me, is your wife jealous of you?”

  “Of course not,” Giustino replied. “Anyway, I can’t say, because .. .”

  “You’ve never given her the slightest reason,” Dora finished his sentence. “You really are a good boy. That’s obvious. Perhaps too good. Huh? Tell the truth. No, you must spare her, Boggiolo. Besides … men give a bad name to the thing.” She bent the middle and ring finger of one hand to make the sign of the cuckold. “But a woman with any spirit doesn’t give a hoot: women have their peccadilloes, too. Look at me! Why don’t you look at me? Do I seem very peculiar? Oh, fine, just like that! You laugh? Certainly, da
rling, being a good boy is not enough when one has the good fortune of having a wife like yours. Do you know the poetess Bertolè-Viazzi? She didn’t come to the banquet because, poor woman …”

  “She is, also?” Giustino Boggiolo asked piteously

  “Eh … but much more serious!” Dora exclaimed. “She has a really awful husband!”

  Giustino shrugged his shoulders and sighed with a sad smile. “On the other hand …”

  “What do you mean, the other hand!” Dora Barmis exploded. “In certain cases a husband has to be considerate and think that … Look, for four or five years Bertolè has worked on a poem–very beautiful, I assure you, interwoven with memories of her courageous family: her grandfather was a real patriot, exiled to London, then a soldier with Garibaldi. Her father died at Bezzecca in the War of Independence. Well, then, to think that she already had a gestation like that in her head, a poem I tell you, a poem! And then to see the poor woman simultaneously oppressed, pulled down for another reason. No, no, believe me, it’s just one of many, a cruel oppression! Either one thing or the other!”

  “I see,” said Giustino, distressed. “But do you think she’s a little annoyed with me, too? However, Silvia won’t be doing anything all this time.”

  “And it will be precious time lost!” exclaimed Dora.

  “You’re telling me?” continued Giustino. “Everything lost and nothing earned. A growing family … and who knows how many expenses and cares and worries. Then, the separation. Because we’ll have to send the boy or girl to a wet nurse, near its grandmother.”