One, No One & 100,000

by Luigi Pirandello

  That’s how I wanted to be alone. Without myself. I mean, without that “me” that I already knew, or thought that I knew. Alone with some stranger who I already darkly felt I could never get away from again, and who was really myself: the stranger who was an inextricable part of me.

  At that moment I only felt one stranger! And already this one, or my need to be alone with him, to confront him and really get to know him and chat with him a bit, was so disturbing, it provoked a feeling somewhere between disgust and dismay.

  If others didn’t see me the way I’d always seen myself up to now, then who was I?

  Living my life, I’d never stopped to consider the shape of my nose, whether it was large or small, or the color of my eyes, or how wide or narrow my forehead was, or anything like that. This was my nose, those were my eyes, that was my forehead—all integral parts of me. Busy with my own affairs, lost in my own thoughts, swept away by my own feelings, I never took the time to think about stuff like that.

  But now I was wondering: “What about everyone else? Other people obviously aren’t inside me. For them, looking at me from the outside, my thoughts and feelings have a nose. My nose. And they have a pair of eyes, my eyes, which I don’t see, but they do. How are my thoughts related to my nose? They’re not, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t think with my nose, nor do I pay any attention to it when I do think. But everybody else? They can’t look inside me to see my thoughts, but they see my nose from out there. To them, my nose and my thoughts are so closely connected, that, just for the sake of argument let’s say, if my thoughts are dead serious but my nose is shaped really funny, they’d start laughing.”

  I carried on like this, sinking into a fresh neurosis—while I was alive, I could never picture myself doing things a living person does, never see myself the way others saw me, never stand in front of my body and see it live like someone else’s body. When I stood in front of a mirror, something froze up inside me. All naturalness vanished. Every movement I made seemed false or rehearsed.

  I couldn’t see myself live.

  A few day later I had evidence for this notion which had been afflicting me, so to speak, when I was walking and talking with my friend, Stefano Firbo, and unexpectedly happened to encounter a mirror along the way, one I’d never noticed before. I glanced at myself for what couldn’t have been more than a second before suddenly freezing up inside. My naturalness disappeared, and the scrutinizing began. I didn’t recognize myself at first. I had the impression some stranger was walking along, engaged in conversation. I stopped. I must’ve gone very pale.

  “What’s wrong?” Firbo asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. And overcome by an odd sense of dismay, coupled with disgust, I thought to myself: “Was that really my image, the one I caught a quick glimpse of? Am I really like that, from the outside, when I’m living my life instead of thinking about myself? Do others see me that way, as that surprised stranger in the mirror? That guy, and not the me that I know? That guy there that I didn’t even recognize at first glance? I’m that stranger I can’t see living except like that, in a brief moment of surprise. A stranger that only others can see and know, but not me.”

  From then on, I became obsessed with this reckless pursuit of the stranger inside me who kept running away from me, the one I couldn’t get to stop in front of a mirror without immediately becoming the me that I knew. He was the one who existed for others, the one I could never meet, the one others saw living, but was invisible to me. I wanted to see and know him too, the way others saw and knew him.

  To repeat, I still believed there was only one of these strangers—the same one to everybody, just like I believed I was just one person to me. But my atrocious predicament went downhill quickly when I discovered I was 100,000 Moscardas, not just to others, but also to me, and that they all shared the same name Moscarda, ugly to the point of cruelty. They also shared my poor body that likewise was just one. And alas, if I stood that body in front of a mirror, held still and looked straight into its eyes, doing away with all its feeling and willpower, then it was one and no one.

  When my predicament took that turn for the worse, my unbelievable insanity began.

  5 ~ Chasing the Stranger

  Now I’ll talk about the lively, early stages of my insanity, when I started acting out little scenes in front of every mirror in the house, keeping one eye peeled so my wife wouldn’t catch me as I frantically waited for her to go out and see someone or buy something, so I’d finally be alone for a little while.

  I wasn’t trying to study my movements, like an actor does, contorting my face to express different feelings and emotions. Just the opposite—I wanted to surprise myself, catching my natural gestures and the way my face would abruptly change to express every surge of emotion. Unexpected surprise, for example (and any little thing would make me shoot my eyebrows up to my hairline and open my eyes and mouth wide, stretching my face like a hidden string was pulling on it). Or deep sorrow (and I would furrow by brow, imagining my wife’s death, and somberly half-close my eyelids, like I was brooding over my grief). Or bitter rage (I would gnash my teeth, thinking about someone slapping me, and crinkle my nose, stick my jaw out, and shoot a withering glance).

  But first, that surprise, that sorrow, that rage—it was all fake. They couldn’t be real, because if they were real, I wouldn’t have been able to see them, because they would’ve immediately vanished the second I glimpsed them. Second, there were so many different things that could surprise me, and my expressions were also unpredictable and infinitely variable, depending on the moment and my state of mind. The same applied to sorrow and rage. Finally, even supposing that for a single, specific surprise, for a single, specific sorrow, for a single, specific rage, I’d really expressed those emotions, they would have been the way I saw them, not how others would’ve seen them. My expression of rage, for example, wouldn’t be the same for someone who was scared by it, as it was for someone willing to excuse it, or for a third person inclined to laugh at it, and so on.

  Oh! All the common sense I still had to understand all this wasn’t even enough to help me see the natural consequences of my crazy plan’s obvious impracticality and make me give up this reckless undertaking and simply be happy living my life, without seeing myself and without worrying about everyone else.

  The idea that others saw in me someone who wasn’t the me I knew, someone that they could only know by looking at me from the outside, with eyes that weren’t mine, giving me an appearance destined to remain forever foreign to me, despite being inside me, despite being mine to them (meaning a “mine” that didn’t exist for me!), a life which, despite being mine for them, was one I couldn’t set foot in—this idea never gave me a moment’s peace.

  How could I put up with this stranger in me? This stranger who was myself to me? How could I carry on without seeing him? How could I not know him? How could I remain forever condemned to carry him with me, in me, in plain sight of others and invisible to myself?

  6 ~ At Last!

  “You know what, Gengè? It’s been another four days. There’s no doubt about it now, Anna Rosa must be sick. I’m going to go see her.”

  “Dida, dear, what are you doing? Do you think that’s a good idea? With this awful weather? Send Diego. Send Nina to ask how she’s doing. Do you want to take the chance of catching something yourself? I don’t want you to go. Absolutely not.”

  When you tell your wife to absolutely not do something, what does she do?

  My wife, Dida, firmly planted her bonnet on her head. Then she handed me her fur coat to hold for her. I was overjoyed. But Dida noticed my smile in the mirror.

  “Oh, so you’re laughing?”

  “My dear, when I see how well you obey me…”

  Then I told her at least not to stay and chat too long if her friend really did have a sore throat. “A quarter of an hour, no longer. I insist.”

  That way, I could be sure she’d stay out all evening.

  The second she lef
t, I joyfully spun on my heel, eagerly rubbing my hands together. “At last!”

  7 ~ A Draft of Air

  First I wanted to pull myself together, wait for every trace of worry and joy to vanish from my face, and for every surge of thought and emotion to freeze inside me, so I could set my body in front of a mirror like it was a foreign object, unrelated to me.

  “C’mon,” I said, “let’s go!”

  Eyes closed, arms stretched out in front of me to feel the way, I walked. When I felt the closet door, I paused to wait, keeping my eyes shut, maintaining complete inner calm and total indifference.

  But that damned voice in my head was whispering that he was there, too, the stranger, right in front of me in the mirror, waiting for me, with his eyes closed.

  He was there and I didn’t see him.

  But he didn’t see me, either, because he had his eyes closed just like I did. But what was he waiting for? To see me? No. I could see him, but he couldn’t see me. He was to me what I was to everyone else. They could see me, but I couldn’t see myself. But when I opened my eyes, would I see him like everyone else?

  That was the key.

  Many times I’d happened to catch the eyes of someone in the mirror as they were looking at me in that same mirror. I didn’t see myself in the mirror, but I was seen. The same way the other guy didn’t see himself, but instead saw my face and saw me looking at him. If I’d leaned forward to look at myself in the mirror as well, perhaps I still could’ve been seen by the other, but then I no longer would’ve been able to see him. You can’t simultaneously see yourself and someone else looking at you in the same mirror.

  Thinking that over, still with my eyes shut, I wondered: “Is my situation the same now, or different? As long as I keep my eyes shut, there’re two of me—one here and one in the mirror. I have to stop him from becoming me and vice versa when I open my eyes. I have to see him without being seen. Is that even possible? The second I see him, he’ll see me, and we’ll recognize each other. Thanks anyway! I don’t want to recognize me—I want to see what he’s like outside of me. Again, is that even possible? That has to be my top priority: not see me in me, but to be seen by me, with my very own eyes, but as if I were someone else—that same someone else everybody else sees but I never do. Okay, well then, deep breath, put everything on hold, and take a good look!”

  I opened my eyes. What did I see?

  Nothing. I saw me. It was me there, frowning, full of worries, looking rather disgusted.

  A vehement anger took hold of me, and I felt like spitting in my own face. I controlled myself. I relaxed the wrinkles off my face and tried to soften my sharp gaze. Sure enough, as I slowly softened my focus, my image faded and practically pulled away from me. But I was fading away, too, nearly collapsing. I felt that continuing would make me lose consciousness. I locked onto myself with my eyes. I tried to counter the feeling that those eyes in front of me were likewise locked onto me, that is, that those eyes were boring into mine. I failed. Those eyes—I felt them. I saw them right in front of me, but I also felt them here, in me. They felt like mine, not just looking at me, but looking at themselves. And if I somehow managed not to feel them looking at me, then I didn’t see them anymore. Oh God, that’s exactly how it was—I didn’t just see them, I saw them looking at me.

  And so, as if overwhelmed by this realization that reduced my experiment to a game, my face in the mirror suddenly attempted a dismal smile.

  “Be serious, you imbecile!” I shouted at him. “There’s nothing to laugh about!”

  My spontaneous anger caused an instantaneous change in my reflected image’s expression, followed by an equally sudden wave of astonished apathy in which I managed to see my body detached from my arrogant soul in the mirror in front of me.

  Finally! There he is!

  Who was it?

  Nothing. No one. A poor, humiliated body, waiting for someone to claim it.

  “Moscarda…” I murmured, after a long silence.

  He didn’t budge. He stood there staring at me astonished.

  He might even have a different name.

  There he was, like a stray dog without a home or a name. You could call him Max or Rex or whatever you wanted. He didn’t know a thing, not even about himself. He lived moment by moment and didn’t realize he was even alive—his heart was beating and he didn’t realize it. He was breathing and he didn’t realize it. He was blinking his eyes and didn’t even notice.

  I looked at his reddish hair, his frozen, hard, pale forehead, those eyebrows that looked like funny French circumflex accents, his blank, dazed greenish eyes with the corneas that looked like they were poked here and there with tiny yellowish spots, that fine aquiline nose that bent to the right, his full, reddish moustache that hid his mouth, his strong chin that stuck out a bit too far.

  Well. There he was. They’d made him like that, with that complexion. He didn’t exactly have a choice about his appearance—he couldn’t change his height, obviously. Sure, he could somewhat alter his look by shaving his moustache, for example, but for the moment this was how he looked. Over time he’d go bald or gray, get wrinkled or flabby, toothless. He could also be disfigured by some terrible accident and wind up with a glass eye or wooden leg—but for the moment, this was how he looked.

  Who was it? Was that me? But it could also be someone else! That guy in the mirror could be anyone. He could have that reddish hair, those eyebrows that looked like funny French circumflex accents, and that crooked nose not just because he was me, but also because he was someone who wasn’t me. Why did that guy there have to be me?

  I never assigned a flesh-and-blood image to myself, so why did I have to see that body in front of me as some inevitable image of myself?

  That image stood there before me, practically non-existent like a ghost from a dream. And I could so easily fail to recognize myself in it. What if I’d never seen myself in a mirror before, for example? Then wouldn’t I perhaps have continued thinking my same thoughts in that stranger’s head there? Yes, and so many others. What did my thoughts have to do with that hair—that particular color, when it could’ve been gone, or been white or black or blond? Or with those eyes that looked greenish there, but could just as well as been black or blue? Or with that nose that could have been straight or pug? I could also quite easily have felt a deep aversion to that body there—and in fact, I did.

  And yet, that’s basically how everyone saw me: that reddish hair, those greenish eyes, and that nose—that entire body there that meant nothing to me. That’s right, nothing! Anybody could take that body and turn it into the Moscarda that he wanted and liked best—making it one way today and totally different tomorrow, suiting his whims and the situation at hand. And me too! Sure! Maybe I did know him. What could I know about him? Just what I gathered in that moment when I looked at him, that’s all. If I didn’t like what I saw or didn’t feel the way I looked in the mirror, then that guy was a stranger to me as well—a stranger who happened to have those particular features but could just as easily have had different ones as well. Once the moment I saw him in had passed, he was already someone else; in reality he was no longer who he’d been as a boy but wasn’t yet who he’d be as an old man. And today I was trying to recognize him as he was yesterday, and so on. I could put all the thoughts I wanted in that firm, unmoving head there, igniting a whole series of visions: a calm, mysterious wood darkening under the starlight; a secluded shoreline tormented by fog where a ghostly ship slowly sets sail at dawn; a city street, teeming with life under a storm cloud sparkling with sunlight that casts crimson glints on faces and multicolored flickers of light on the reflective surfaces and windows of all the shops. I suddenly blocked out the visions, and that head stayed right there, still firm and unmoving, still lost in apathetic wonder.

  Who was that guy? No one. A poor, nameless body waiting for someone to claim it.

  Then, suddenly, as I was thinking those thoughts, something occurred that frightened me greatly and somewh
at surprised me as well.

  I didn’t mean to see it, but right there in front of me the stunned, apathetic face of that poor mortified body pitifully lost its composure—nose scrunching up, eyes rolling back, lips twitching up, brows trying to pull into a frown as if he were about to cry. He stayed like that, frozen in place for a moment, then everything suddenly came crashing down with two explosive sneezes.

  That poor mortified body had been shaken by a draft of air blowing in from who knows where, without a word to me and completely outside my control.

  “Gesundheit!” I told him.

  And in the mirror I saw my first insane chuckle.

  8 ~ So Now What?

  So, nothing. This. You’ll probably think it’s trivial! Here’s a rough draft of a list of disastrous observations and terrible conclusions resulting from the fleeting, innocent pleasure that my wife, Dida, had allowed herself. Of course I’m referring to when she pointed out that my nose was bent to the right.

  OBSERVATIONS:

  1. Others didn’t see me the way that I’d seen myself up to that point.

  2. I couldn’t see myself living.

  3. Since I couldn’t see myself living, I remained a stranger to myself. That is, I was someone that others could see and get to know, each in his own way, but I couldn’t.

  4. It was impossible to put the stranger in front of me to see and get to know him. I could see myself, but not him.

  5. If I pondered my body from the outside, it was like a ghost from a dream, something that didn’t know it was alive, something waiting for someone to claim it.

  6. Just as I sometimes considered this body of mine to be what I wanted or felt it to be, someone else could just as easily impose his own reality on it.

  7. Finally, this body on its own was so much nothing and so much no one, that a draft of air could make it sneeze today and carry it away tomorrow.