by Dino Buzzati
There were ten of them, men and women, against her.
“She’s mad!”
“Fetch a straitjacket!”
“Take her to the first-aid post!”
The police van had just drawn up, they opened the door and she was lifted off the ground by the impetus of the crowd. The Violet Cross lady seized the child firmly by the hand. “Now, you come with me. They are going to teach your mummy a lesson.”
No one remembered that sometimes an injustice suffered can unleash terrifying power.
“For the last time, let me go!” shouted Gilda while they were trying to lift her into the van. “Let me go before I kill you!”
“That’s enough! Take her away,” ordered the Violet Cross lady, determined to subdue Antonella.
“Well, then, you shall die first, damn you!” cried Gilda, struggling more than ever.
“Oh, God,” groaned the white-clad one, and fell lifeless to the ground.
“And now you who are holding my hands, you too,” said the cleaner.
There was a confused mass of bodies, then one of the policemen fell down dead, a second one fell down immediately after, as soon as Gilda had spoken.
They all retreated in nameless terror. The mother found herself alone, surrounded by a crowd who dared not do anything.
She took Antonella by the hand and stepped out confidently.
“Make way, make way—let me pass.”
They made way, not daring to touch her. They followed her, though at a distance of twenty yards as she walked away.
Meanwhile, through the milling crowd, armored cars arrived amid the wailing of ambulance and fire-engine sirens. A vice commissioner of police took command of the operations.
A voice was heard: “Hoses! Tear gas!”
Gilda turned around angrily.
“Use them if you dare.”
Here was a mother offended and humiliated, an unleashed force of nature.
A circle of police surrounded her. “Hands up, you wretch!” A warning shot was heard.
“My little girl—you want to kill her too?” cried Gilda. “Let me pass.”
She walked on fearlessly. They hadn’t even touched her and six policemen collapsed in a heap on the ground.
So she reached home. It was a large block of flats standing in the fields on the outskirts of the town. The police surrounded the building.
The Chief of Police advanced with a loud megaphone, and all the tenants were given five minutes to get out, and the mother was ordered to hand over her child lest she should come to harm.
Gilda leaned out of the window on the top floor and shouted words they couldn’t understand. The group of police at once fell back as if some invisible force were pushing them.
“What are you doing? Close ranks!” thundered the officials. But even they stumbled back.
There only remained Gilda and her child in the building. Probably she was cooking supper, for a thin wisp of smoke issued from the chimney.
As evening fell, detachments of the Seventh Armored Regiment formed a wide circle around the house. Gilda leaned out of the window and shouted something or other. A heavy armored car began to wobble, then tipped over sideways—then a second, a third, a fourth. Some mysterious force tossed them about here and there like tin toys until they remained immobile in the most grotesque positions, completely smashed.
A state of siege was declared and U.N.O. forces intervened. A wide zone around the city was evacuated. At dawn the bombardment began.
Standing on a balcony, Gilda and the child quietly watched the spectacle. No one knew why none of the grenades succeeded in hitting the house. They all exploded in midair three hundred yards short. Then Gilda went in because Antonella, frightened by the noise of the explosions, had begun to cry.
They meant to get her through hunger and thirst. The water supply was cut. But every morning and every evening the chimney gave out its plume of smoke—a sign that Gilda was cooking.
The generals decided to attack at “X” hours. At the “Xth” hour the ground for miles around trembled, the war machines advanced concentrically with the boom of the apocalypse.
Once more Gilda showed herself.
“Stop it!” she cried, “Leave me alone!”
The ranks of armored cars heaved as though moved by an invisible wave, the steel pachyderms loaded with death twisted up with horrible grating noises, changing into little heaps of scrap iron.
The Secretary General of the U.N.O. advanced holding a white flag. Gilda invited him to enter.
The Secretary General of the U.N.O. asked the cleaner for her peace terms: the country was exhausted, the nerves of the people and of the armed forces could stand no more.
Gilda offered him a cup of coffee and then said, “I want an egg for my little girl.”
Ten trucks stopped before the house. They were loaded with eggs of all sizes and of fantastic beauty for the little girl to choose. There was even one of solid gold studded with precious stones, fourteen inches in diameter.
Antonella chose a small one of colored cardboard, just like the one that the Violet Cross lady had taken from her.
The Enchanted Coat
ALTHOUGH I APPRECIATE GOOD CLOTHES I DON’T USUALLY notice the perfection or otherwise of the cut of my fellow creatures’ apparel.
One evening, however, during a reception at a house in Milan I noticed a man, aged about forty, who was literally resplendent in the beauty of the fine, exact cut of his clothes.
I don’t know who he was. I met him for the first time and when introduced, as always happens, couldn’t catch his name. But at some time during the evening I found myself standing beside him and we began to talk. He seemed a civil and well-bred man, but who nevertheless had an aura of sadness about him. Perhaps with exaggerated confidence—would that God had deterred me—I complimented him on his appearance and even ventured to ask the name of his tailor.
The man had a curious little smile, almost as if he had anticipated the request.
“Hardly anyone knows of him,” he said. “Nevertheless he is a great master. He only works when he is in the mood. For a few initiates.”
“So that I . . . ?”
“Oh, you can try, you can try. His name is Corticella—Alfonso Corticella, Via Ferrara 17.”
“He will be expensive, I imagine.”
“Presumably, but to tell the truth I don’t know. He made this suit for me three years ago and has not yet sent me the bill.”
“Corticella, Via Ferrara 17, you said?”
“That’s correct,” the stranger replied and left me to join another group.
At Via Ferrara 17 I found a house like many others, and like that of many other tailors’, the dwelling of Alfonso Corticella. He himself opened the door to me, a little old man with black hair which was certainly dyed.
To my surprise he made no difficulties. On the contrary he seemed anxious for my business. I explained how I had got his address. I praised his cut and asked him to make me a suit. We chose a smooth-textured gray, then he took my measurements and offered to come to my house for the fitting.
I asked him what it would cost. He replied that there was no hurry, we could always come to some arrangement. “What a nice man,” I thought at first. However, later on when I was at home I became aware that the little old man had left me with an uneasy feeling (perhaps on account of his too frequent and honeyed smiles). In short, I had no desire to see him again. But now the suit was ordered and after about twenty days it was ready.
When it was brought to me I tried it on for a few seconds in front of the mirror. It was a masterpiece. But, I don’t quite know why, perhaps it was the memory of something unpleasant about the little old man, but I had no desire to wear it and several weeks passed before I decided to do so.
I shall remember that day for the rest of my life. It was a Wednesday in April and it was raining. When I had slipped on the suit—jacket, trousers and waistcoat—I noticed with pleasure that it didn’t pull or pinch
anywhere, as nearly always happens with new clothes. In fact it fitted me to perfection.
Usually I never put anything in the right-hand pocket of my coat, I keep my papers in the left-hand one. This explains why it was only after a couple of hours in the office that I casually put my hand in my right-hand pocket and noticed there was a piece of paper there. Perhaps the tailor’s bill?
No. It was a ten-thousand-lira note.
I was completely nonplussed. I had certainly not put it there myself—on the other hand it was absurd to believe it was a joke of the tailor Corticella. Still less a present from my daily woman, the only person who, other than the tailor, had had occasion to touch my suit. Oh, perhaps it was a forged note? I held it up to the light, I compared it with others. It couldn’t be more genuine.
There was only one possible explanation, a piece of absentmindedness on Corticella’s part. Perhaps a customer had come in to pay his account at a time when the tailor hadn’t had his wallet on him and rather than leave the note lying about had tucked it into the pocket of my coat which was hanging on a dummy. Such things have been known to happen.
I rang the bell for my secretary. I would have written to Corticella and returned the money that was not mine had I not (I don’t know why) put my hand once more into my pocket.
“What is the matter, doctor? Do you feel ill?” asked my secretary, who had just come in. I must have turned as pale as death. In that pocket my fingers encountered the edge of another piece of paper which a few moments before was not there.
“No, no, it’s nothing,” I said, “a slight dizziness. I get it now and again. Perhaps I am a little tired. Never mind, signorina, I was going to dictate a letter, but I’ll put it off till later.”
Only after my secretary had gone did I dare to take the paper from my pocket. It was a ten-thousand-lira note. Then I tried a third time, and a third banknote came out.
My heart began to gallop. I felt myself involved, for some mysterious reason, in the middle of a fairy story which one tells to children and which nobody believes to be true.
On the pretext of feeling unwell I left the office and went home. I had to be alone. By good luck my daily woman had already gone. I shut the door and pulled down the blinds. I began to pull out banknotes one after the other as quickly as possible from a pocket that seemed inexhaustible.
I worked in a high state of nervous tension, fearing that at any moment the miracle would cease. I would have liked to continue all through the evening and night so as to accumulate a billion. But at a certain point I had no more strength.
In front of me lay an impressive pile of banknotes. The important thing now was to hide them so that no one would suspect their existence. I emptied an old trunk full of pieces of carpet and at the bottom, stacked in so many heaps, I placed the money which I began to count. It came to over fifty-eight million.
I was wakened the next morning by the daily woman, who was astonished to find me on my bed still fully dressed. I tried to laugh it off, explaining that I had drunk a little too much the evening before and had been unexpectedly overtaken by sleep.
Another anxiety. The daily offered to take my coat and at least give it a good brush.
I replied that I had to go out at once and hadn’t time to change. Then I hurried off to a ready-made-clothes shop and bought another suit of similar material. I would give that to the maid, “my own,” the one that would make me in the course of a few days the most powerful man in the world, I would hide in a safe place.
I wasn’t sure whether I was living in a dream, whether I was happy or whether on the other hand I was suffocating under the weight of a destiny that was too much for me. Walking along the street I continually felt for the magic pocket through my raincoat. Each time I sighed with relief. Beneath the material I heard the comforting crackle of paper money.
But a curious coincidence chilled my joyful delirium. The morning papers carried headlines of a robbery that had taken place the day before. The armored car of a bank, after having done the rounds of the branches, was carrying the takings to their head office, when it was attacked and robbed in the Viale Palmanavo by four bandits. When members of the public came running up, one of the gangsters, in order to make his getaway, opened fire and a passerby was killed. But what shocked me most was the amount of the booty. Exactly fifty-eight million (the same as mine).
Could there be a connection between my unlooked-for wealth and the bank robbery occurring almost at the same time? It seemed absurd to think so, and I am not superstitious. Nevertheless, the fact left me very perplexed.
The more you have the more you want. I was already rich, taking into account my modest way of life. But the mirage of a life of unbridled luxury urged me on. And the same evening I went on with my work. Now I proceeded more calmly and with less strain on my nerves. Another hundred and thirty-five million was added to the treasure of the preceding day.
That night I never closed my eyes. Was it a presentiment of danger? Or the tormented conscience of one who obtains a fabulous fortune undeservedly? Or a kind of confused remorse? As soon as it was light I leaped out of bed, got dressed and ran out in search of a paper.
As I read I caught my breath. A terrible fire which had broken out in a fuel depot store had half-destroyed a block of buildings in the middle of the Via San Cloro. Among those destroyed were the strong rooms of a large estate office which contained more than one hundred and thirty million in cash. On this funeral pyre two firemen had died.
Must I now list my sins one by one? Yes, because now I knew that the money which the coat produced for me came from crime, from blood, from despair, from death—it came from Hell. But yet there was within me the snare of reason which mockingly refused to admit any responsibility on my part. Then temptation seized me again—my hand, it was so easy just to put it in my pocket—and my fingers closed with voluptuous haste on the edge of a note that was always new. Money, heavenly money!
Without leaving my old lodgings (so as not to arouse suspicion) I soon bought myself a large villa, acquired a priceless collection of pictures, drove around in luxurious cars and, leaving my job “for reasons of health,” traveled up and down the world.
I knew that every time I drew money from my coat something evil or tragic happened in the world. But it was always only a vague consciousness, unsupported by logical proof. Meanwhile with every new acquisition of money my conscience grew more degraded, became more and more vile. And the tailor? I telephoned him to ask for my bill, but there was no reply. When I went to look for him in the Via Ferrara they told me he had emigrated abroad, they didn’t know where. Everything, therefore, conspired to prove that, without knowing it, I had made a pact with the Devil.
Finally, one morning in the house where I had lodged for so many years, they found a seventy-year-old pensioner asphyxiated by gas. She had killed herself because she had lost her monthly pension of thirty thousand lira which she had drawn the day before (and which had ended up in my hands).
Enough, enough! In order not to fall at last to the bottom of the abyss I must get rid of the coat. Not by giving it to someone else, because the infamy would be continued (who would ever be able to resist such a temptation?). It was indispensable that it be destroyed.
I drove to a remote valley in the Alps. I left my car on a grassy slope and walked up through a wood. There wasn’t a soul in sight. I walked beyond the wood and reached the stony summit of the moraine. Here between two huge rocks in the cleft of the mountain I took out the infamous jacket, soaked it in gasoline and set light to it. In a few minutes nothing remained but ashes.
But at the final leap of the flame I heard a voice behind me (it seemed to be two or three yards away) call out “Too late! Too late!” Terrified, I darted around as quickly as a snake: but I saw nobody. I looked all around, jumping from one large stone to another to discover the evil one. Nothing. There was nothing there but stones.
Notwithstanding the fright I had experienced, I walked down to the bottom of the val
ley with a sense of relief. Free at last and by good luck wealthy. But when I reached the grassy space my car was no longer there. And when I returned to the city my luxurious villa had disappeared: in its place an uncultivated field with boards announcing “Communal Land for Sale.” And the deposits in my bank had all gone, no one could explain how. Disappeared too were all the large packets of stocks and shares I had placed in numerous safe deposits. And there was dust, nothing but dust, in the old trunk.
Now I am working again, with difficulty, I can hardly make ends meet—and what is so strange, nobody seems surprised at my unexpected ruin.
And I know that this is not yet the end. I know that one day my doorbell will ring, I shall open the door and find confronting me with his obsequious smile and final demand, the tailor from Hell.
The Saints
EACH OF THE SAINTS HAS HIS OWN LITTLE HOUSE BESIDE the shore with a balcony overlooking the sea—and that sea is God.
In summer when it is hot they refresh themselves by plunging into the cool water—and that water is God.
When the news gets around that a new saint is about to arrive, they at once set about building a new house beside the others. They form a very long line beside the seashore. There is certainly no lack of space.
Even St. Gancillo, when he reached his allotted place after his admission, found his little house ready alongside the others, with furniture, linen, crockery, some good books and so on. Also, leaning against the wall was an ornamental fly whisk, for even in this zone there are plenty of flies, though they are not troublesome.
Gancillo wasn’t a spectacular saint, he had lived the humble life of a peasant and it was only after his death that somebody considering his life recollected the grace that had filled this man, radiating from him by at least three-quarters of a yard, and the Provost (with not too much faith, it must be admitted) took the first steps toward the process of beatification. After that nearly two hundred years passed.
