The Experience of Pain

by Carlo Emilio Gadda

  At that point, they ran back up, the gate was locked, damnation! And so? as it should have been, seeing that the key had done its job. No one. What should they do? … It was a house, someone’s home. Private property … Caballero Trabatta had warned them in this respect, as if, instead, he had been warning the thieves … Taking a deep breath, removing his pince-nez, which he had carefully polished with his handkerchief. Private property.

  They shouted: ‘Giuseppe! Giuseppe!’ This was the name of the peon: no one answered. They thought now it was the peon who had gone out, though at such an hour it would have been most unusual. Now they thought of leaving, and this time for good: but on the west side of the house, where the terrace is on ground level (which they couldn’t see, since the gate overlooked the long, north-facing side), they heard a shutter of the French window banging, as if the patrolling wind, slipping into the house, had strangely lingered there.

  The French window from the staircase: the one … to be precise … through which the son, that afternoon, had gone out on to the terrace.

  Come on, let’s go! They climbed the wall, ran to the terrace. They called out once again, in dialect: ‘Giuseppe, Giuseppe!’, from the parapet wall of the terrace. Nothing; no one. They approached the French window, shone the light-circles of their torches. One of the two sliding shutters allowed entry. After the shutters, the glazed door, on the left, half open, also offered access: who had come out from there? they asked. Since the panes of glass seemed intact. They fully opened the door, which turned out to have been splintered close to the brass handle and latch, they shone their lights inside the house. The corridor was in darkness: the books on the bookshelves. No one! But at the foot of the staircase, immediately behind the window, by the table, there was a whole incredible jumble on the floor: a sorghum brush, a basket, two besoms, several stools, a watering-can, some sheets of newspaper. But why? They gazed inside with stunned curiosity, like two young boys peering, through a surgical aperture, at the mysterious interior of an organism. Bruno then remembered the precautions the Señora took, and in other circumstances he would have laughed: people used to gossip about it. This woman, who was not afraid of sleeping alone in a secluded country house, nevertheless barricaded herself inside the house each evening, with an inconceivable anguish. She used to position the most varied and unlikely objects behind the French windows of the terrace, behind the bolted shutters, and then behind the various bedroom doors: small armchairs, tables, seats … though with one kick they’d be away … stools, brushes and brooms, the green watering-can, empty, a jar of pickled peppers, so that with one shove, or less, everything could be pushed open just the same, despite those obstacles.

  In the dining room, she got Giuseppe to pile up against the bolted shutters the fairly heavy hulk of the sewing machine (which didn’t work, however, as a sewing machine) and, on top of it, a small basket chair and, on this, somewhat precariously, an old skein winder. ‘So at least, if they come, I’ll hear them,’ she used to say, not convinced about being deaf. She had great faith in that evening ceremony of closing and bolting each door, with which she sought to purge the imminent shadows and anxieties; and in the last few years had been helped by Giuseppe, now having insufficient energy to do it herself. It was more a liturgy than a precaution, a magical ritual rather than a technical compliance. Then finally the peon would leave through the kitchen door and the small outside door, spitting half-litres of chocolate-coloured liquid saliva as he fled; and then she fixed the chain on the outside door, and behind the double doors of the kitchen she placed another two chairs, side by side, one for each part of the door, so that this too was well barricaded, and behind the chairs two copper buckets, and finally the glass jar, the smallest, the one with cucumbers. Sometimes, as a final defence, a flat-iron.

  They called out: ‘Señora!’, then ‘Giuseppe!’ All was silent. Furniture. They didn’t dare say another word; no one, nothing.

  The wind, in short gusts, with intervals of slow and distant rustling, shook the poor branches of the almond trees (already lashed, through the night), branches skeletal from privation. It blew into the osmanthus, into the plum trees, into the robinias: into the single bay tree, into the single olive tree. And the wind left. No one, nothing. The two dared go no further. They were in someone else’s house, at night: uninvited. All was darkness. They were gripped by the fear of being found like that. Something could ‘happen’, even unintentionally. They looked up at the windows on the second floor, all shut. Home seemed a difficult word for them, now it inspired respect.

  They thought, hesitantly, about the ‘boundary’ wall, about leaving, about running off. They could jump over it without difficulty, there, straightaway, more easily than they had got in: right there, at the point just about two metres from the north-west corner of the house, between the long northern side and the short terrace side, facing west. And at the lowest point, where young urchins clamber over in September, lightly grazing their knees, given the absence of bottle-glass, and with light wear to their bottoms. The lowest point, where, outside, however, was the tallest bollard. They looked at each other uncertainly, now, in the darkness. Bruno indeed well remembered the morning, a year before, when he’d managed to take a basket of mushrooms to the Señora, and waited on the terrace for the money, with a glass of white wine in his hand into the bargain. The yellow and hairless face of the sacristan had suddenly emerged to peer inside, like a sinister heathland apparition, over the ridge of the wall, among the straight shoots of the plum-tree branches, almost as though the heath could foil such spies. His face all wrinkles, beneath the nits and the ragged cap. And in that kobold’s face was the opening of his mouth: and the kobold, in surprise, had allowed a half-circle of his cretinous tongue to hang from his lips.

  But now it was dark, all dark: and night. And no one could spy on them. But they were gripped by the terror of being caught. The gate was shut. They were shut inside. ‘Let’s go! let’s go,’ they said. They clambered over the wall, one after the other. Tumid drupes, from plum-tree shoots, struck their faces, came off, dropped on to the verge, bounced and rolled away in front of them, into the stones and into the darkness. They had jumped down on to the lane, oh! thank God, free. No ankles sprained on the pebbles.

  It was only then that they asked themselves ‘what do we do?’ and decided to raise the alarm in Lukones or the nearby villas: and that night is still remembered. For after an hour or two, in all the villas, there were zimarras and slippers, like dishevelled ghosts, with lights on everywhere.

  An hour later, or maybe more, with the express permission of the alcalde, a group of people went into the garden of the house, including Peppa, who, on being summoned from the street, had dressed in a great hurry, and cursorily, as if she were Beppina, the fishwife. They went into the garden from below, through the large wooden gate that had no lock, but a large nail inserted, inside, into two circular hooks, which Peppa knew all about. They went around the house, up the outside staircase; they called ‘Giuseppe, Giuseppe’ again, and even knocked loudly and repeatedly on the very door of his lodgings, as they went past. Shut. They also tried the front door to the main house. This too was shut. Then they came to the terrace. They hesitated, from fear of ridicule; they didn’t want to create a disturbance. But, after all, there was the French window open, on the terrace: and no one was answering. Where in God’s name had Giuseppe the peon got to? No one was answering. A short gust of wind shook the branches of the plum trees, the osmanthus, the skeletal limbs of the almond trees, which were just visible in the night. A door banged in the house. The wind moved off, like a thief. They had several rustic lanterns of the kind that were square glass boxes, with a wick inside, that hang down, swinging from a wire hook: they raised them every so often, faint triangles of a yellow light that flickered over the walls, over the terrace: they had weapons, someone even had a gun, the alcalde’s cousin a pistol, like the two young men.

  They called out the name of the mother, the son, shouting, up to the
first-floor windows, adding Señora, Señor to their names … But Peppa was sure the son had left that same evening, he couldn’t be there … She was sure indeed that she’d seen him go off … with a small suitcase … his mother had waved him off from the terrace, saying, ‘Goodbye! … don’t be upset.’

  Then they went resolutely to the foot of the staircase, but stumbled into something, from the half-open French window. They pushed the sliding half-shutter into its compartment. They all went in, with lanterns, Bruno with the electric torch: Gildo was going around the villas with someone from Lukones. They stumbled into several brooms, stools, and also a watering-can that Peppa quickly recognized (and explained to the others, gutturating in excitement, but in a low voice), as with the components of the evening barricade which the Señora felt confirmed the idea of closing expressed by the locks; locks made by a thief. Behind the two bolted French windows the Señora had piled up tables, stools, brooms, to stop the furtive footsteps of the night.

  The house seemed empty. Peppa, Bruno and others were immediately in the kitchen, then in the dining room; and Peppa, on a cursory inspection, found the room as she had left it in the late afternoon.

  They switched on the electric lights and went upstairs, the men in front, knocked at the son’s bedroom, called ‘Señor … Señor,’ got no reply, went in: Peppa switched on the electric light: no one. The bed unslept in. The large table in order. On the table an open book, a photograph of his brother, a boy with smiling face, after so many years!: with one hand on the handle of the machine-gun: the structure of the aircraft was partly visible. One of the intruders paused to look at the photograph, and then read a few lines of the open book. ‘… But the laws of the perfect city have to …’

  Some put down their lanterns. They held a brief council, in the upstairs corridor, anxiously. They decided first to look at all the other rooms. Two went down again to call the peon and reached the front door of his lodgings: and banged and shouted once again. The others were there between the corridor and the staircase, perplexed, not daring to knock at the Señora’s room. Someone then remembered that the peon, at the tobacco shop, and also at the hostería, had said he wanted to look for a new job since that brute of a son had sacked him … was threatening to sack him … And he’d have to go to Cabeza, on the other side of Prado, yes, no, on the other side of Cabeza, where perhaps there was the chance of an offer.

  But others claimed he had postponed the trip, that at six-thirty he was still at home, that the Señora had prepared his dinner: she in fact would personally cook and serve the dinner for her staff …

  Meanwhile, at the iron gate, another two or three or more arrived from Lukones, more lanterns and voices, and even one with a flaming torch: and they started calling from the closed gate and their Celtic yells merged with the Lombard calls of the two knocking at the peon’s door. And they recognized each other’s voices, like animals in the dark, prompting more commotion, shouting, explanations; encouragements, by the two inside, to the others, to pluck up courage and climb over the gate, and, in the Agilulf-Celtic mayhem, scarcely muffled by the night, warnings about impaling themselves like chickens on the points of those spikes on the gate, piercing their stomachs, skewering their bellies on the spikes, that they should be careful!, and coming out with names in dialect: trippa, büsekka; plural tripp, büsekk. And then jokes and mock surprise about the torch, about what had happened, and protests and more gutturations of cavemen roused by that alarm from their moonless caverns of sleep. A coming and going of voices, mostly monosyllabic, sharp, shouts, or two syllables at most, but in that case oxytones, fired out, in bursts … An oxytone-throated crowd bayed and grew bigger and bigger in the night, with perilous trousers, quadrupeding clogs, on the gravel, crunch-crunch, clogs … sabots, zòkur, triangles of light, smoke and candle wax and newspapers, blown down by a gust of wind. Meanwhile, inside the walls of Caballero Trabatta’s garden, the pines, the lime trees, stirred from time to time, in unison, in their majestic murmur. The distant rustle of the night had heralded each passage of wind: each breath of wind, which the almond trees, here, by the house, sought in vain to caress, as if to soften, to straighten out their dull foliage, like combs, with loose branches.

  Orangs clomped about the house, or behind the house, or along the avenue of plum trees: others on the terrace, in shy hesitation and indecent curiosity, asking questions: ‘what’s that? what’s that?’ In the house, where the electric lights had been switched on, among the chairs and stools constantly in the way, among the brooms and the watering-can, the lanterns at knee height were still emitting fumes, with a smell of burnt paint, the wicks dripped large drops of liquefied wax over sheets of paper, over the newspapers that were strewn across the floor, from the table in the corridor, and everyone trampled over them. The head of the collective snake was represented by those six or seven, including Bruno, Peppa, the alcalde’s cousin, who had toured the house, upstairs, as far as the washbasins and were now conferring in the corridor by the double door of the bedroom where the Señora slept. They plucked up courage, seeing that no one was answering. They knocked at the Senora’s bedroom, first softly, then louder, and calling her, one by one. No answer. But the Señora was perhaps deaf, with age. The double door opened on one side: then the other. One of the men leaned forward, said, ‘May I …?’, then held out the lantern; and they went in. The lights, reduced by half, intersected the shadows of the large bedroom, which was over the dining room. They switched on the light, called, ‘Senora, Senora!’, already distressed, facing the bed.

  In the large double bed, one side seemed occupied, beneath the covers. A blanket of very good wool, and fringed, coloured with a salt-and-pepper-coloured check, which the English call ‘tartan’ and used on their travels in the time of Dickens, concealed almost completely the pillow and the head of the sleeper. She was prone to feeling cold, Peppa thought: and perhaps she had shielded her head in that way. But to everyone that cloth seemed to be hiding death.

  The tramping of six or seven people on the wooden bedroom floor finally came to a halt. Those who had approached the bed on the occupied side, including the woman, were still calling, almost whispering, out of respect, ‘Señora, Señora,’ bending their heads. And old man Olocati uncovered her. The Señora’s eyes were open, not gazing at him, not gazing at anything. A hideous clot of blood had congealed, still fresh, on her grey, loose hair: two strands of blood were trickling from her nostrils, down on to her half-open mouth. Her eyes were open, her right cheek swollen, her skin torn, below the eye as well, hideous. Her two poor, raised, skeletal hands seemed to be stretched out towards ‘the others’ as if in defence or in a final supplication. They too appeared scratched: there were marks and smears of blood on the pillow and on the edge of the sheet.

  They noticed she was breathing, that only her hands were so, nearly cold: her pulse was still beating, slow, very weak. So the doctor was called for immediately, Bruno was sent running for him. In the village they had already woken him, as if in anticipation.

  Eventually he arrived, through the large wooden gate and up the outside steps: some thirty people had been sent out of the door by the alcalde’s cousin, then by the alcalde, who had also arrived, and they stood on the terrace, whispering, shuddering. No one could find the key to the iron gate. Still inside the house were Peppa, Beppina, the woman from the cemetery, authorized to make themselves as useful as they could: and various men, those ‘with permission’.

  The old doctor from Lukones made himself most useful in those very sad circumstances. He had a four-day beard, not entirely white, over his flabby cheeks, and wore no tie, with a starch collar that was frayed and as greasy as the skin of a salami, with eyes reddened as though with blepharitis, tired, small and swollen by exhaustion and lack of sleep: beneath the two small eye-sockets, the swollen, crescent-shaped bags seemed like two hammocks or two water-bags. He had brought the foreseeable requirements with him in his dirty black bag, which everyone recognized, equipped by instinct, as his lon
g years of drudgery in general practice had suggested to him, and which the ever-improved advances in first aid had then gradually corrected. He put it down on the table in a corner. Other encumbrances and bandages he had entrusted to Bruno, who put them down there as well. The doctor approached the bed, stared at that figure, motionless and so horribly injured: ‘is this how you found her?’ he asked, took her hand and stretched out her skeletal arm, as if with a certain difficulty, which the draping lace of her nightdress had allowed to appear in supplication and in defence, both of which were in vain. He felt her right wrist while, with the other hand, he rearranged the other arm of the poor, defenceless woman, stretching it out. He bent down to listen to her heart, then once again with the stethoscope.

  Then, not saying a word, he took what was required from his bag and placed each item on the table: the peasants fell silent, watching: Peppa made the sign of the Cross, repeatedly, vigorously: he asked her to climb on to the bed from the empty side, kneeling, and gently to raise her employer. Then, he bent down, administered three injections to the thigh, one after the other, of camphorated oil, strophanthin, the third yet another cardiac stimulant, adrenalin, which in fact revived the pulse. But the Señora showed no sign of regaining any facial movement, the eyelids of her right eye, swollen, couldn’t even be opened: nor, when gently questioned by those around her, or by the doctor, did she give any answer. Her whole right cheek was horribly swollen. She was breathing now with difficulty, her tongue seemed to have sunk down into her palate: as she breathed, there was a rattle. Between her lips, coated in blood and half open, the doctor could see her limp tongue, down, in the back of her mouth, blocking it. So, with two fingers, he tried to extract it and to put it back into its normal position. The lids of her left eye, with a slight pressure from his fingers, were closed again. The men groaned: ‘poor Señora, poor Señora!’, the women softly wept and prayed, then softly blew their noses, apart from the mannish Peppa, who, from time to time, just made the sign of the Cross.