The Experience of Pain

by Carlo Emilio Gadda

  An easy footstep, in a light and thoughtless hurry, and the quick crunch of the gravel after the unexpected squeak of the gate, warned them that someone was arriving, definitely a boy. From behind the corner of the house a boy came rushing, in a sweat; suddenly, on seeing the two men, he stopped his rush, with an expression of some disappointment, almost as if he had seen his chocolates disappear. With coffee-coloured jersey, exercise book in his hand, his legs quite bare. His knees, covered in bruises and scratches, were the main thing, after the childishness of a round face, pearled with sweat. He was panting slightly, like a locomotive that continues puffing even after it has stopped, notwithstanding the presence of the enginemen. He was a healthy young boy, with coffee-coloured chest, about twelve years old, with eyes devoid of any judgement: the whole world, for him, could have been a kind of unripe pear, into which he couldn’t sink his teeth. His wordless soul was a testimony of anamnesis. Now he stood silent, watching, erect and still, with those legs: ‘What d’you want?’ the son yelled rudely, as though irritated by the silence. The boy, without coming forward, stammered something from a distance about the lesson, French … the Señora. ‘Clear off!’ ordered the son. With unimaginable severity, he sent the boy away: … and left the doctor bewildered.

  ‘… But isn’t that the young grandson of Di Pascuale?’ he asked.

  ‘… I don’t know who he is, nor whose grandson he is … What I do know is that my mother is going soft in the head … like all old folk …’: he spoke excitedly. The doctor tapped his calf with the cane. ‘… that she needs to drool kindness over the first young colt that comes along … the first stray dog that turns up … Now even the colonel’s grandchildren on holiday … getting them to repeat choux, bijoux, cailloux, poor darlings … So that they all become goodie goodie!’ He shouted. He seemed to be going mad. ‘Goodie goodie! … they become … So that the geraniums, the violets, reward us for our good conduct … our last kindness …’

  ‘He’s a good medical man …’ ventured the doctor in that slightly grumbling voice of his, uttered with head bowed, almost a monologue ‘… and, I believe, an officer of the highest integrity …’: poor man, he seemed to be performing ‘a part’ in a court theatre.

  ‘That’s no reason to bring his whole litter of grandchildren into the house! … They learn French at school … that’s what school is for … And if they don’t learn,’ he fixed the doctor in the eye: ‘if they don’t learn … thwack!’ He motioned to whip the legs of someone, a horse?; that had long, bare, straight legs. He lowered his head to accompany the jolt of his shoulder, the impetuous gesture of the arm, as though he actually had a whip in his hand. An incredible anger distorted his incoherent countenance. ‘And they don’t learn … and they’ll never learn! … for young colts don’t speak languages … They can hardly write two sentences in Castilian … And so thwack, thwack, thwack! … on their bare legs … There’s charity, kindness for you!’ He was shouting. ‘For French lessons, they turn up! On the necks of young colts … gratis. One foot in the grave … for others …! for the peon … for the little grandson … whatever, so long as it’s for others … for others!’

  The doctor kept silent, confused: feeling embarrassed, it might have been thought, for that half-centimetre of beard: in reality astonished, distressed. Unable to justify in any way what he was hearing, what he was seeing, he understood nevertheless that something dreadful was churning in that soul. He thought of drawing the patient’s ideas, if they were ideas, elsewhere.

  The son pulled himself together: he seemed to be waking from a hallucination: he looked at him: stared at him, as if to ask: ‘what did I say?’, as if to implore: ‘tell me what I said! … I was ill! didn’t you see? Didn’t you see I was ill? … Why didn’t you want to believe me, why didn’t you help me?; … I had lost the thread … what were we saying …’ His eyes resumed an expression of anguish. There were footsteps outside, running downhill; those of a stupid imp; under which the gravel crunched in the rough lane, after the creak of the gate that was painted green.

  ‘… I was once a child myself …’ said the son. ‘… Then perhaps I deserved some kindness … affection, no; it was too much to afford … it was too much!’, and anger returned to his face, but vanished. Then he resumed: ‘… My mother has grown frighteningly old … she’s ill … perhaps it was me … I can find no peace … But I had a frightening dream …’

  ‘A dream? … a dream, you say? … It’s a confusion of the soul … the fantasy of a moment …’

  ‘I don’t know, Doctor: you see … perhaps it’s forgetting, putting an end to things! It’s rejecting the hard and fast patterns of dialectics, things seen according to force …’

  ‘According to force? … what force? …’

  ‘The systematic force of character … this glorious oil lamp that smokes inside us, … and forms the thread, and blackens us with lies, inside, … with meritorious lies, enormous, greasy lies … and it has a fine opinion of itself, of itself alone … But dreaming is a deep river, that plunges down to a distant spring, re-emerges in the morning of truth.’

  It seemed incredible to Dr Higueróa that a man of normal build, tall in fact, of such ‘elevated’ social standing, could cling to such foolish ideas as these. But the sadness and dismay were all too apparent in his look; of someone who fears, who has something on his mind, some remorse; terror, hatred? Even in full sunlight: in the enchantment, in the gentle and spacious plenitude of the land.

  ‘… A dream … dragging me towards the heart … like a serpent’s snare. Black.

  ‘It was night, perhaps late evening: but a ghastly, eternal evening in which it was no longer possible to work out the time of what perhaps was going on, nor wipe out despair … nor remorse, nor ask forgiveness for anything … for anything! The years were past! In which we could love our mother … cherish her … ah! help her … Every purpose, every possibility, was petrified in the darkness … All souls were far away, like fragments of worlds: lost to love … in the night … lost … weighed down by the silence, conscious of our old scorn … cast away from us unkindly in the desperate night …

  ‘And I was here, as I am now. On the terrace. Here, you see? … in our deserted house, emptied of souls … and in the house there was still something of mine, of mine, remaining … but it was an unspeakable shame for the souls … documents, receipts … I didn’t remember for what … the law’s delays had been brought to a close … Time had run out! Everything, in the darkness, was petrified memory … a definite, indelible notion … Receipts … that everything, everything was mine! mine! … at last … like remorse.

  ‘And the dream, an instant!, it returned in a dark figure … there! … there, where I had been just now, you saw? at the corner of the house … You see? There … black, silent, very tall: as though back from the cemetery. Perhaps, in her silence, she was as high as the eaves: she seemed to have a funereal veil, that hung down from her … Perhaps she was beyond all dimension, all time …

  ‘Not marked by any evidence of love, or pain … But in silence. Beneath the dark sky … Perhaps Veturia, the mother of Coriolanus, motionless, veiled … But it was not the mother of Coriolanus! oh! the veil did not dispel my dark certainty: it did not disguise her from my pain.

  ‘I was aware, I knew, who it was. It couldn’t be anyone else … tall, motionless, veiled, black …

  ‘She said nothing: as though a dreadful and superhuman force were holding her back from every sign of love: she was still … She was a thought … in the dark catalogue of eternity … And this black, inescapable force … weightier than a tombstone … fell upon her! like an insult that has no prospect of remedy … And it had surfaced within me, from me! … And I remained alone. With the documents … dark writings … receipts … in the house emptied of souls … Every delay had reached its time, time dissolved …’

  The cicadas sank into the unchanging continuity of time, spoke of persistence: they reached to the bounds of summertime. Dr Higueróa seemed to
be looking for the birch trees, white commas among the oaks to the north of Lukones.

  He continued rapping his right calf: this time with light taps, repeated as if following a rhythm, or to get rid of the dust on his trousers. His unusually horizontal gaze was fixed on the wall, then wandered off, towards the mountain, with heavy, swollen eyes that protruded as he stared. A slight reddening of the conjunctivae conferred on the country doctor’s two poor instruments the tired expression of hard work: like a tormented dog, running about all day: a compassionate and bewildered gentleness, the sadness of one who has now lost any urge to travel onwards, to journey: and who asks only for the help of the weather and the clouds, over the short distance that is left. The prickle of his beard, on his chin, seemed to take the place of the shards, of the spikes of bottle-glass that were absent from the ridge of the wall. It was a Pirobutirrico wall; with no slivers of bottle, no shards of plates.

  ‘… I don’t know what came over me …’ the son repeated: ‘… I don’t know what to do any longer … why isn’t she back? … she’s grown dreadfully old. Her face, her lips, you might say that they hide some idea that isn’t hers … that they harbour unspeakable words … but she is already distant … My mother! … I hadn’t seen her for several weeks; how can I help her now? … her hands are skeletal …’ Since every judge kept silent, he continued to justify himself: ‘… it’s true … I shouted: but not because of her … because of that wretch for whom we pay taxes …’

  ‘But you shouted all the same,’ said the doctor soberly: ‘and you shouted with her there! … In any event, if you think fit, we could examine her … even today …’: in professional circumstances he used the royal ‘we’: ‘an examination is little trouble …’

  ‘Oh! … little trouble? … Perhaps for you, Doctor, you’re used to it. But my mother! … it’s been years! … I’m desperate … it’s like winching a corpse to the top of the Eiffel Tower …’: his voice became agitated again, then sank into gloom: ‘… a deaf resistance … Untreatable …’ Then he was filled with anger, with scorn: ‘… the brain of women …, if they manage to reach thirty, … it’s marble … Their soul is no longer moved. The tablets of the one with the long beard, the one with the two radioactive horns who brought enlightenment to the Hebrews, … his tablets … they must have been made of flour and water, in comparison …’

  ‘… We’ll try to persuade her … what can I say? … If you don’t wish to rely … on my services, and would like to consult someone else, why! of course! it wouldn’t be the end of the world … Nothing wrong with that: we’re here to help each other: if there’s not one, there’s another … We can take her to Novokomi, to Dr Balanza, by motor car, Pina will be delighted, poor Señora! … or to Dr Oliva, that’s right … better still! Or even to Terepáttola, if you prefer, Professor Lodomez, the one who treated Caçoncellos …’: he gazed at the wall, the perimeter wall.

  The son looked doubtful: ‘My mother won’t want to know, I’m sure: with her, there’s nothing to be done … It’s a mania, a true psychosis … from the time she gave birth to us … perhaps even, who knows, from when she was a child: when she couldn’t abide the doctor’s spectacles … and they frightened her, … with the beard of a nasty little man … Perhaps it’s because she’s always had excellent health …

  ‘She says: let’s be thankful for fresh water … the best medicine to keep the doctor away …’

  ‘… She’s not entirely wrong, after all …’

  ‘All right: but now? … now? … She says: I’m very well. Just leave me in peace … Leave me a little in peace!

  ‘A fine way to look after herself! … to say: nothing’s wrong with me. I never needed help from anyone! … for me, the farther away that doctors stay, the better I feel … I can look after myself, I’m sure I’m not wrong … I, I, I!’

  And once more he was swept away by a notion, and raised his voice, angrily: ‘Oh! The world of ideas! what a fine world! … oh! I, I … among the almond blossom … then among the pears, and Battistinas, and Giuseppe! … I, I! … The foulest of all pronouns! …’

  The doctor smiled at the outburst: he didn’t understand. But he took the opportunity to steer the conversation, if not the mood and thoughts, slightly more into the open.

  ‘… And why, for goodness’ sake? What harm have pronouns done to her? When someone thinks something, he has to say: I think … I think the sun passes over the patch of gourds, from right to left …’ (In South America, in fact, and in the Canzone di Legnano.)

  ‘… Je pense; that’s right: mais j’en ai marre de penser …’ murmured the son. ‘… Pronouns! They’re the lice of thought. When thought has lice, you start scratching, like all those who have lice … in the fingernails … that’s where you find pronouns: personal pronouns …’

  The doctor burst out laughing in spite of himself, with half of his mouth: with the left cheek. Like when you end up smiling at a child, even though you don’t want to: when, in his worst tantrum, in a frenzy of anger, stamping his feet, among pearls of tears, screaming the place down, he roars, ‘Go away, howwible!’ to all those who want to calm him down with affection: and everybody thinks it’s funny.

  The riddle, to decipher it, not a chance, he wouldn’t even try: a chess puzzle, and that was beyond him.

  He drew in a full, healthy draught of the warm air, so pure, a breath of life. He thrust out his whole ribcage and breastbone beneath his lank tie, to breathe in: to fire up his lungs. He looked across towards Prado, partially hidden by the shiny gloom of the osmanthusfn1 to the right: the distant houses seemed to shimmer in that August gold: but those lice, those lice pronouns, even those he had to listen to! He, who, in order to say ‘my wife’, used to say ‘my señora’: in Castilian of course: mi señora.

  ‘… the mere fact that we continue proclaiming … I, you … with our filthy mouths … with our niggardly greed, predestined to putrefaction … I, you … this fact alone … I, you … reveals the baseness of the common language … and is proof of our impotence in preaching anything about anything, … since we ignore … the subject of every possible preposition …’

  ‘… Which would be? …’

  ‘… It’s pointless for me to take its name in vain … that which has just finished coming out across there …’, with his face he indicated the tower, ‘from the base of those Maenads thrust belly up … with clapper in the air … Mad beasts! For which I starved, as a child, starved! Five hundred pesos! Five hundred: Pirobutirric munificence: five hundred pesos! … with patched-up jersey … chilblained fingers … my feet wet in my shoes … punished! because my frozen fingers couldn’t properly hold the pen … with sore throat over Phaedrus … with six degrees of paternal love on me … and smoke fumes to turn my brain cells green … so that the dear old clapper came out well … well for hymns and glory … the clapper … to deafen the dear old villa, with its dear old potatoes, in dear old Lukones … to split the eardrums for forty years! … take away the peace of the living and the dead, believe me: they stop me from writing: from reading … they make me even throw away the Gospels, … from the din they make, after two minutes! … such is the pandemonium that breaks out, morning to evening … from four to eleven … A real Russian campaign! stuff to make anyone shoot himself …’

  They set off again around the corner of the house, little by little. They went down the back step: ‘I, you: the thieving pork butcher ignores the rogue pork butcher across the way: he might be more of a thief than him, but heavens! since they’re both thieving rogues … Caçoncellos, the Camöens of Terepáttola, said that Virgil is a stupid idiot: since Palinuris is a lie, and the naval games just play-acting by spongers … Oh yes, … like hell! …

  ‘… eight years of naval war that starved Rome seemed, for him, like a tamarind and soda … and Sextus Pompey a boatload of sardines … Whereas his Terepattolese dimeters were the mystery, the tomorrow! … I have given immortal expression to the most modern ideals of my people! I have plumbed the depth of so
uls … Yes … at Villa Giuseppina! … I, I, he as well! … he watered the flowers with a leaky watering can, that sprayed half of it over his shoes … And then, if one idea is more modern than another, it suggests that neither of them is immortal …