Her Husband

by Luigi Pirandello

  “Poor Giustino!” said Silvia with a smile, turning to her motherin-law. “Pay no attention to him.”

  Giustino snickered like a snail in the fire.

  “Go on! The woman understands me!” continued Uncle Ippolito. “It’s lucky, my dear signora, that this little fool doesn’t fly into the air! She, too, has heart, and it’s solid, you know? If she didn’t at this time … Her brain would sail like a ball … into the clouds … if there wasn’t a little ballast in the boat of her heart. I don’t write, don’t worry, but I speak well when I get started. And my niece steals my images. All tomfoolery!”

  With a shrug he went to smoke in the study.

  “A bit cuckoo, but a good man,” Silvia said to reassure the startled old woman. “He can’t stand for Giustino …”

  “I’ve already told Mamma!” he interrupted in annoyance. “I do everything. He smokes, and I think about earning money! After all, we’re in Rome. Listen, Silvia: let Mamma rest now–we’ll eat later. I have to dash off to the rehearsal. You know every minute is precious. Oh, yes, by the way, I meant to tell you that Signora Carmi …”

  “Oh, dear, no, Giustino!” Silvia begged. “Don’t tell me anything today, for pity’s sake!”

  “Eight! nine! ten!” exploded Giustino, finally losing his patience. “All on my back! Well, all right … I have to tell you, my dear! You can get over all your aggravation in one fell swoop, by receiving Signora Carmi.”

  “But how can I, in my condition?” Silvia asked. “Tell him, Mamma …”

  “What does Mamma know about it!” exclaimed Giustino, more irritated than ever. “What is she? Isn’t Signora Carmi a woman like you? She has a husband and children, too. An actress … Of course! If the play is to be performed it must have actresses! You can’t go to the theater to help with the rehearsals. So I go: I have taken care of everything. But you should understand that if she wants to clarify something about her role, she has to ask you. But you won’t receive her–you won’t even talk to me about it! What can I do?”

  “Later, later,” Silvia said, to end the discussion. “Let me think about Mamma now.”

  Giustino rushed off in a fury.

  He was so occupied with the imminent battle that he hadn’t noticed his wife’s aggravation every time he turned to the subject of the play.

  Really bad timing that The New Colony had to be staged just while Silvia was in this condition. Giustino had miscalculated the months: he had figured that his wife would be free by October, but instead …

  The Carmi-Revelli Company, engaging the Valle for just that month, was especially relying on The New Colony, which had been hot news for several months.

  Claudio Revelli, director and actor, heartily detested Italian drama, as did all his fellow directors and actors. But during these months of preparation, helped by all of those who, to his satisfaction, had begun to enjoy it, Giustino Boggiolo was able to make such a fuss around that play that its opening was now awaited as a great artistic event, and promised to bring in almost as much profit as a vulgar little Parisian farce. Therefore, Revelli thought he could give in this once to the ardent and eager wishes of his associate and leading lady of the company, Signora Laura Carmi, who displayed a passionate predilection for Italian playwrights, as well as a deep dislike for all the scheduling concerns. She didn’t want to hear about postponing the first performance of the play until November in Naples, because by doing so they might lose their priority in the theater at Rome. Another company, now performing in Bologna and waiting for the go-ahead from Rome to present their play, might take their place immediately, and after the reactions of the audience in Bologna, bring a newly revised play to Rome in December.

  Therefore, Giustino really couldn’t spare his wife these worries.

  Silvia had suffered a great deal during the summer. Signora Ely Faciolli had begged her to take a vacation with her at Catino, near Farfa. She had sent several affectionate letters and postcards from there, inviting Silvia to join her. Not only did Silvia not want to move from Rome, but she did not even want to leave the house, feeling disgusted, and even ashamed, of her unsightliness, almost seeing it as a sordid and cruel mockery of nature.

  “You are right, child!” Uncle Ippolito said to her. “Nature is a lot kinder to hens. An egg and maternal warmth.”

  “Oh, really!” grumbled Giustino. “A human chick has to be born, in fact …”

  “But from the she-ass, dear boy! Should a human being be born from a she-ass? Do you think it’s nice to treat a woman like an ass?”

  Silvia smiled wanly. Thank goodness her uncle was in the house. His sporadic rockets shook her out of her torpor, from the stupidity into which she felt she had fallen.

  Under the weight of such an oppressive reality, she felt a deep disgust these days with everything in the art field that is essentially, like life itself, banal. Even her own work seemed false and disgusting to her–work so often violated by life’s sudden eruptions, as if by gusts of wind and impetuous waves. Eruptions that sometimes worked against the logic of her concept.

  And the play?

  She forced herself not to think about it so as not to upset herself. But from time to time the rawness of certain scenes gripped her and left her breathless. That play now seemed monstrous to her.

  She had imagined a very fertile little island in the Ionian Sea, once a penal colony, abandoned after a disastrous earthquake that had reduced the little city there to a pile of rubble. After the few survivors cleared out, it had remained deserted for years, probably destined to disappear one day into the sea. That is the play’s setting.

  A first colony of sailors from Otranto, rough and primitive, has secretly gone to settle in the ruins in spite of the terrible threat of another earthquake that hangs over the island. They live there outside all law, almost outside time. Only one woman is with them, Spera, a woman with a doubtful past, but now honored like a queen, venerated like a saint, and ferociously protected by the man who brought her, a certain Currao, who has become the leader of the colony for that reason alone. But Currao is also the strongest, and because of his power over everyone, keeps the woman to himself, who in that new life has become another person. She has returned to her natural state of goodness, looks after the fires, comforts and cares for everyone, and has given Currao a son that he adores.

  But, one day, one of those sailors, Currao’s most ardent rival, whom Currao surprised and subdued in the act of raping Spera, disappears from the island. Perhaps he threw himself into the sea on a plank. Perhaps he swam to a ship passing in the distance.

  Sometime later a new colony disembarks on the island, led by the runaway. However, the other sailors bring their own women, mothers, wives, daughters, and sisters. When the men of the first colony under Currao’s command see this, they stop fighting the newcomers. Currao is isolated, suddenly bereft of his power. Spera immediately appears to all of them to be what she was before. But she is not as sorry for herself as she is for Currao. She can tell that he who was at first so proud of her is now ashamed, and she bears his contempt quietly. In the end Spera realizes that Currao, in order to hold up his head and keep the respect of the others, is thinking of leaving her. Some young sailors, the same men who had in vain yearned for her so ardently, come to tell her mockingly that he no longer cares for her because he has taken up with Mita, the daughter of an old sailor, Padron Dodo, who serves as the head of the new colony. When Spera hears this, she takes their son, hoping in this way to have a hold over the man who has spurned her. But old Padron Dodo will not agree to the marriage unless Currao brings the boy with him. Spera pleads, begs, turns to the others to intervene. No one pays any attention to her. Then she goes to plead with the old man and the bride, but they insist her son should remain with his father. Mita assures her that the boy will be well cared for. Spera, desperately wanting to keep her son, and wanting to break the heart of the man who abandoned her, embraces her child in a mad, screaming rage, and in that terrible embrace suffocates him. Sto
nes fall after that scream, and others fall lugubriously in the horrible silence following the crime. Other screams are heard in the distance. Spera lives on top of a hill, in the ruins of a house that had collapsed at the time of the first disaster. Now she wonders if she didn’t make those stones fall with her scream of horror. No, no, it’s the earth! It’s the earth! She jumps to her feet. Everyone is shrieking, overcome by terror, some flee, saved from disaster. The earth has opened up! The earth has caved in! Spera hears herself calling her son’s name with heartrending cries from the side of the hill; she staggers about with the others, leans over to look down, horrified, and into the clamor coming from below, she shouts:

  “Did it open under your feet? Did it half-swallow you? Your son? Because of you I killed him with my own hands. Die, die and be damned to hell!”

  What impression would this play make? Silvia closed her eyes and saw the theater and the audience flash before her and was terrified. No! No! She had written it for herself! When she wrote it she wasn’t thinking about the audience that would now see, hear, judge it. She had seen those characters and scenes on paper as she had written them down, translating her inner vision with the utmost fidelity. How would they make the leap from paper to the stage? With what voice? What gestures? What impression would those live words and real actions make on the boards, in front of the cardboard scenery in a fictitious and artificial reality?

  “Come see,” Giustino had advised her. “You don’t even need to go on the stage. You can watch the rehearsals from the orchestra or a box near the stage. No one is better suited to judge, advise, or suggest than you.”

  Silvia was tempted to go, but then, about to leave, had felt her strength and spirit weaken. She was afraid that the excessive emotion would harm that other being living in her womb. How could she appear in that condition? How could she talk to the actors? No, no, it would be torture.

  “At least tell me, how are they doing?” she asked her husband. “Do you think they understand their roles?”

  Giustino, returning from the rehearsals, eyes bright and face red as though slapped, would snort, raise his hands angrily: “They don’t understand a thing!”

  Giustino was dejected. That dark stage impregnated with mildew and damp dust, those stagehands hammering on the canvas, nailing together the scenery for the evening’s performance, all the gossip and pettiness and laziness and indifference of the actors clustered around in groups, that prompter in the prompt box in his skullcap, the script before him full of cuts and additions, the director, always surly and impolite, sitting near the prompt box, that man sitting at the little table who copied down the parts, and the property man working among the large boxes, sweating and puffing, were the cause of the cruel disappointment exasperating him.

  He had photographs of the sailors and inhabitants of Terra d’Otranto sent from Taranto to use as models for the costumes, as well as dresses, shawls, and caps. For the most part, the costumes made a big hit. But some stupid minor actress had declared she didn’t want to disguise herself in those rags. Revelli wanted to skimp on all the “savage” (as he put it) outdoor sets. And Laura Carmi, the leading lady, feigned indignation. Only Signora Carmi was a little bit of comfort to Giustino: she had wanted to read Stormy Petrel and House of Dwarves to better prepare herself, as she said, for acting her part. And she said she was enthusiastic about the part of Spera: she would make a “creation” of it! But she still didn’t know a word of her part. She would walk past the prompt box and mechanically repeat, like all the others, the lines that the prompter gave her, shouting and giving directions according to the script. Only the character actor Adolfo Grimi was beginning to give some shape to his role as the old Padron Dodo and Revelli to that of Currao. But to Giustino it seemed that they both overdid it somewhat. Grimi performed his part like a baritone. Giustino took him aside and politely pointed it out, but he couldn’t risk it with Revelli, so he just stewed inwardly. He would have liked to ask different actors how they would make this gesture, how they would utter that phrase. At the third and fourth rehearsals, Revelli, piqued by Signora Carmi’s showy enthusiasm, had begun to rudely interrupt everyone from time to time. Many times he would interrupt for no good reason, just when Giustino thought everything was going well and the scene had begun to warm up and assume a life of its own, gradually triumphing over the actors’ indifference and moving them to add feeling to their voice and gestures. Signora Grassi, for example, who played the role of Mita, had almost started to cry because of one of Revelli’s rude remarks. Confound it! He could at least be a little nicer with the women! Giustino did his utmost to console her.

  He didn’t notice that several actors on the stage, especially Grimi, were making fun of him. They even went so far as to ask him to recite the most difficult lines of the play, when Revelli wasn’t there.

  “How would you say this? And how this? Let’s hear it.”

  Right away! he would say. He knew very well he would speak badly. He didn’t take the applause and shouts of admiration of those scatter-brains seriously, but at least he could show them his wife’s intentions in writing those … what did they call them? Oh, yes, lines … those lines.

  He tried to inspire them in every way, to make them friendly collaborators for a supreme and crucial undertaking. It seemed to him that some actors were a little apprehensive about the boldness of certain scenes and the passionate violence of certain situations. To tell the truth, he wasn’t comfortable about several points, and sometimes he, too, was seized by apprehension when he looked out at the theater from the stage. All those rows of seats placed out there, as though waiting, the orderly tiers of boxes, all those dark spaces, those shadowy, menacing mouths encircling the theater. And then the ramshackle backstage, the backdrops pulled halfway up, the disorder on the stage in that humid and dusty half-light, the extraneous conversations of the actors, who would finish rehearsing some scene and then not listen to their companions rehearse, Revelli’s anger, and the prompter’s annoying voice all disconcerted him, upset him, kept him from formulating a clear idea of how the performance would be after a few evenings.

  Laura Carmi came to shake him out of these sudden despondencies.

  “Well, Boggiolo? Aren’t we happy?”

  “My dear signora …” sighed Giustino, opening his arms, breathing in with pleasure the perfume of the very elegant actress with the provocative figure and voluptuous expression–even though her face was almost totally artificial, her eyes lengthened, her eyelids darkened, her lips reddened, and beneath all the makeup the signs of age and tiredness were plain to see.

  “Chin up, darling! It will be a success, you’ll see!”

  “Do you think so?”

  “Without a doubt! Novelty, power, poetry: it has everything! And it’s not theater,“ she added with a grimace of disgust. “Neither characters, style, nor action qui sentent le ‘théâtre.’ Do you understand?”

  Giustino was comforted.

  “Listen, Signora Carmi: you have to do me a favor. You have to let me hear Spera’s scream in the last act, when she strangles her son.”

  “Oh, that’s impossible, my darling! That has to come at the time. Are you joking? It would tear my throat. And besides, if I hear it once, even from myself, that’s it! I’d imitate myself at the performance. It would come out cold. No, no! It has to come naturally. Oh, that sublime embrace! The rage of love and hate at the same time. Spera, you see? almost wants to bring into herself, into her own breast, the child they want to tear from her arms, and she strangles him! You’ll see! You’ll hear!”

  “Will it be your son?” Giustino asked her, overjoyed.

  “No, I’ll strangle Grimi’s son,” was Signora Carmi’s reply. “For your information, dear Boggiolo, my son will never set foot on the stage. Never! Never!”

  When the rehearsal was over, Giustino Boggiolo ran to newspaper editorial offices to find Lampini, Ciceroncino at one office and Centanni or Federici or Mola at others. He had struck up friendships with the
m and through them had made the acquaintance of almost all the so-called “militant” journalists in the capital, the nonacademic literary critics. Even these, it’s true, openly had their fun with him, but he didn’t take it badly; he had his sights on another target. Casimiro Luna had heard that at the Notary Public Office they had changed his name. A mean thing to do! Names should be respected, not distorted! And he had taken up a collection with his colleagues to give Boggiolo a hundred calling cards printed with the words:

  GIUSTINO RONCELLA

  né Boggiolo

  All right, fine. But in the meantime he had gotten a brilliant article out of Casimiro Luna about all of his wife’s works and had managed to have the papers emphasize the public’s eager anticipation for the new play, The New Colony, exciting curiosity with “interviews” and “gossip.”

  He came home evenings dead tired and beside himself. His old mother no longer recognized him. But by now he was in no shape to notice either her surprise or Uncle Ippolito’s mocking air, just as he wasn’t aware of the agitation he was causing his wife. He told her about the outcome of the rehearsals and what he said in the editorial offices.

  “Signora Carmi is great! And you should see that little Grassi in the role of Mita: adorable! Posters for the first performances are already up. This evening they begin taking reservations. It’s a real event, you know? They say the most important theater critics are coming from Milan, Turin, Florence, Naples, and Bologna.”

  The evening before opening night he returned home as though intoxicated. He brought three bits of news: two luminous as the sun; the other dark, slimy, and poisonous as a snake. The theater was sold out for three nights; the dress rehearsal had gone admirably; the best-known journalists and some literary figures who had seen it were all amazed, openmouthed. Except that Betti, Riccardo Betti, that affected, cold imbecile, had dared to say that The New Colony “was Medea translated into Tarentino dialect.”

  “Medea?” asked Silvia, totally baffled.