Gogol's Wife

by Tommaso Landolfi

  Night was falling; the kitchen, squalid like all kitchens when the stove is not lit and no one is moving about preparing a meal, was immersed in a funereal twilight. Nena spoke, continuing to pace up and down with her waddling step; ridiculous in her senile obesity; wearing a short vest, but without a skirt. She spoke, at once feverish and dreamy:

  “When your dog has served you for many years and must die; when you want to get rid of him or he has sinned; when his skin is covered with scabs and minute animals, his ears are frazzled and bleeding, his nose is always dry and he drags his hind legs, limply hanging to one side, like dead things; or when the sight of him has become unbearable to you, do not entrust this dog who was your friend to the hands of a stranger, not even to the hands of your brother; he does not know him as you do; don’t let him sense that he is dying, don’t deprive him of this last token of respect: you yourself must be the one who puts him to death. Call him to a corner of the garden, give him the last bone to gnaw, caress his head with one hand and with the other, without his noticing. . . . This is, I think, what I once read. I myself will kill him, if that’s how it must be. And I also remember having read, long ago, about a peasant who killed a traveler to steal his watch, and at the moment he struck he said to him: ‘Forgive me, brother . . .’ It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? It’s ridiculous, I mean, that I should remember all these things now . . . But enough. Yes, I will do it with my own hands: now I know how . . . But what am I crying about, fool that I am! And you, why are you standing there like dummies? You are crying, too, my poor sister . . . But enough, I said. Come, put on the light, and caress him, kiss him, say good-bye to him, and above all he must not worry! Come, get busy . . . Now, right away: I’ve found the way, now you’ll see.”

  “No, not right away,” Lilla whimpered. “Can’t we wait till tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow? Why tomorrow? It would be worse,” Nena replied, and left the kitchen.

  Soon after she called the others into her room and showed them a long hatpin, one of those objects which in respectable families are handed down from generation to generation. It was a pin in an antique style; a pin of gold, terminating at one end in a kind of trefoil set at an angle, with a faintly reddish stone imbedded in one of its lobes, not a ruby, however; it was, given its use, extremely sharp.

  “See, with this it will take just a moment.”

  But, unfortunately, despite their precautions the monkey must have noticed something. All that bustle did not promise any good. They had put on the lights, closed the window, placed the cage on the floor so as to clear the large table on which it usually stood and on which the operation was to take place. Then, having let out the prisoner, they had first given him a succulent tidbit, one of his favorites. And now they were caressing Tombo, as they did sometimes, tickling his belly, his chest where he had almost no fur, holding him down with his back against the table and his arms spread open, just like Dante’s Caiphas; they addressed him by his most endearing nicknames. But he would not be deceived and turned his eyes rapidly, now desperate, now beseeching, between the two who held him, that is, Lilla and Bellonia. He wailed loudly, wrinkled his forehead, tried to shake them off, to turn over, but, mainly thanks to Bellonia, couldn’t succeed. He even tried to bite her since he felt she was gripping him more firmly (but also because, of the two, she was the maid). And yet, it was quite clear that he didn’t want to displease them by seeming not to appreciate their games, and was trying as much as possible to check such manifestations of his instincts—almost as though he did not hold them responsible for the terror and dismay by which he felt overwhelmed. Despite his anguish, one could sense that in his heart he had thrown himself on their mercy; he was even trustful, no matter what might come to him from those wills stronger than his own—as it is with all animals, this being the sole weapon left them against human wickedness. But perhaps he did not really believe that his situation was so serious. At this point Lilla broke down and, using as an excuse “something that didn’t agree with her,” let go her hold; nevertheless she remained there, wandering dazedly about the kitchen.

  Killing him was not a matter of just a moment. Now Tombo sensed only too clearly that he was to die. Nena, holding her weapon behind her back, had approached him, and she too fondled and petted him with her free hand. Then she crossed herself rapidly and stroked him again, at the same time holding his legs—Bellonia was taking care of his arms. And suddenly she struck. But, as one could have predicted, the hatpin did not follow the desired path: it penetrated a trifle higher or lower than the heart, or encountered a rib. It was necessary to repeat the blow once, twice, three times. A tomblike silence had fallen; which was torn by Lilla’s hysterical scream, a sentence howled out precipitously, almost a single word: “We’re killing our brother!”

  “Shut up, ninny!” Nena snapped, between gritted teeth; and this was the first and last time she ever said such a thing to her sister.

  At last Tombo, who had struggled furiously, expired; the violence of his jerks died, his eyes died, his eyes which at the final moment expressed nothing but dismayed wonderment. The wounds did not bleed; but a thin trickle of blood came from the corner of his mouth.

  The following day Nena had a small box made which was suited to that tiny body, lined with zinc like those for human beings. She put him inside and carefully sealed it. Since the evening before, she had relapsed into one of her spells of mutism, and when Lilla mourned for Tombo, she had to do so in secret with the maid. Nena simply announced that it would be a good idea to take a trip to their home town to see to their affairs, and that she was planning to leave the next day. The reason she gave looked very much like a pretext; however, she left early in the morning.

  And at their home town, in a corner of the garden attached to their old house, in the earth which spring was beginning to crack and at the foot of a young walnut tree which was putting out its first leaves, she buried Tombo with all the honors.

  It was a mild day; a smell of sage and the clucking of chickens came from the nearby kitchen gardens; the sun was just beginning to sting. And in that distant place, I hope, the hero of this story still rests in peace.

  EPILOGUE

  Of the few characters herein encountered, some, like Bellonia and Monsignor Tostini, are prolonging a decrepit old age; and some, like the two old maids, are already dead. It seems incredible, and perhaps it actually is, but such is the usual conclusion. Imperceptibly stooping and growing colder we approach our beginning—so sang (or croaked) the poet. Anyway, we’ve had more than one day to become used to this; is not this a world in which incredible things take place and, I would say, only incredible things?

  Father Alessio could not say Mass for a long time. This may seem a small matter, but, as luck would have it, during that same period, I mean at the time of his brainstorm in the old maids’ house, he contracted some sort of mental illness which gave rise to fears for his sanity, and liver trouble, too; so that “his superiors” were quite happy to seize this opportunity and avoid a greater scandal. Why he didn’t defrock himself, is another matter. But in the meantime he too has grown older.

  The graveyard of T. is not far from town and the dusty carriage road. One can also get there by a twisting short cut, bordered here and there by dry stone walls over which one can see olive groves, cultivated fields, the peasants’ small houses. But, either because at that spot the horizon is naturally cramped, or God knows for what other reason, one has no feeling at all of being in the country, in our Lord’s vast countryside. First of all, before reaching the open country, one passes behind certain houses sunk below the road and with their facades on the opposite side; then, higher up, on one side the hill falls sheerly to the road, and there is even a contorted olive tree which juts over it so low that one must be careful not to bump one’s head. And the shrubs beyond the narrow valley are equally sad and faded.

  Inside the graveyard the horizon is balked and encircled by huge eucalyptus trees with shining, scaly trunks, which always seem t
o ooze a sickly sweat, and also by an almost ruined retaining wall. On one side all that one can see is the arid, bluish hump of a mountain. On these eucalyptus and cypress trees—their innocent neighbors—there sometimes alights and whistles an agitated thrush or a more placid blackbird; but here the magpies live and flutter all year round. A melancholy population! Afflicted by some mysterious hypochondria and natural languishment, they fly and emit their song as all birds do; but when they croak, a brief, fluid croak of sonorous consonants, they do so in a weary, hopeless tone; and when they fly, theirs is a drooping flight, laboriously resumed just when it is about to fall to the ground. They bear a strange resemblance, chiefly because of that whirring sound, to a man trudging through the streets of a city during the dog days. They do not seem to have any commerce with other birds. And when, God knows how, a lively jay bird happens to alight on one of those trees, its screeches sound like those of a child crying in a house deserted or struck by misfortune, and the very air of this somnolent world is shaken. But, of course, a mocking and exuberant jay cannot be befriended by a gathering of magpies; and so he soon goes back to the sowed fields, the oaks and apples trees.

  Here in fact are buried the two old maids, who, so I hope, are resting in peace. And to anyone who looks about him, it seems that an impalpable gray dust has fallen on everything.

  Translated by Raymond Rosenthal

  Wedding Night

  AT THE END of the wedding banquet the chimney sweep was announced. The father, out of joviality, and because it seemed proper to him that a ceremony such as the cleaning of the chimney should be celebrated on just that day, gave the order to let him come in. But the man did not appear; he preferred to remain in the kitchen, where the great hearth was. Not all the toasts had yet been given, and this was why some of the guests, in their heart of hearts, criticized the interruption; nonetheless, due to the uproar made by the children, everyone rose from the table.

  The bride had never seen a chimney sweep: she had been in boarding school when he used to come. Going into the kitchen she saw a tall, rather corpulent man, with a serious gray beard and bent shoulders; he was dressed in a corduroy suit the color of linseed oil. His stoop was counterbalanced by the weight of two huge mountain boots which, seemed to hold his entire body erect. Although he had just washed very carefully, the skin of his face was deeply tinted with black, as though many blackheads of varying dimensions had taken root there; a black deposit, gathered between the lines of his forehead and cheeks, conferred a quality of meditative wisdom on that physiognomy. But this impression quickly dissolved, and the man’s great timidity became quite obvious, especially when his features broke into a sort of smile.

  He nearly frightened the young bride, because he was standing behind the door, though he acted frightened himself; and, as if he had been caught doing something reprehensible and had to justify his presence in that place, he began to repeat, speaking directly to the young bride, some sentences which she did not hear or did not understand. He stammered insistently and behaved as if he thought that what he said concerned her greatly and, all the while, he looked at her with the eyes of a beaten dog and yet significantly. From the very first moment the young bride was aware of his caterpillar nature.

  He took off his jacket and began to unbutton his vest. She slipped out through the other door, but continued to follow what was going on in the kitchen; she had the feeling that something improper was about to happen and that her presence might make him uneasy in the performance of his rites. Somehow she almost felt ashamed for him. But there was no noise to feed her imagination and so she went back in again. The children had been sent away and he was alone. At that moment he was climbing a ladder set up inside the hood of the fireplace; his feet were bare and he was in his shirtsleeves, a brown shirt. Across his chest, fastened with leather straps, he had a tool which resembled the scraper for a kneading trough but whose use remained forever unknown to the young bride. And he had a kind of black gag, tied up behind his ears, which fitted over his mouth and nose. But she did not see him enter the flue of the chimney, because she ran away again.

  When she came back the second time, the kitchen was empty and a strange smell, a terrible smell, had spread through it. Looking around her, the young bride connected it first with the man’s large shoes set in a corner next to a bundle of clothes; it was, however, the death smell of the soot which was piling up on the hearthstone, falling in intermittent showers to the rhythm of a dull scraping which gnawed at the marrow of the house and which she felt echoing in her own entrails. In the intervals, a muffled rubbing revealed the man’s laborious ascent.

  An instant of absolute silence fell, an instant of lacerating suspense for the young bride. She continued to stare at the mouth of the flue, there under the hood at the end of the fireplace’s black funnel; this mouth was not square but narrow, a dark slit.

  Then a very high, guttural, inhuman cry sounded from some mysterious place, from the well, from the stones of the house, from the soul of the kitchen’s pots and pans, from the very breast of the young bride, who was shaken by it through and through. That bestial howl of agony soon proved to be a kind of joyous call: the man had burst through onto the roof. The muffled rubbings resumed more rapidly now; finally a black foot came down out of the slit searching for support—the foot of a hanged man. The foot found the first rung of the ladder and the young bride ran away.

  In the courtyard, as the bride sat on a millstone, the old housekeeper, one of those women for whom everything is new, assumed the task of keeping her informed; she walked back and forth bringing her the news with a mysterious air. “Now he is doing his cleaning under the hood,” and the young bride pictured him as he shook off the soot, standing upright on the pile like a gravedigger on a mound of earth. “But what does he put on his feet to claw into the wall?” And then she ran after him to ask him: “My good man, what do you put on your feet to claw into the wall?” A gay reply followed which could not be heard clearly. “Now he is eating breakfast,” and the housekeeper remained inside. Then she reappeared with a few small edelweiss; she said that the man had taken them out of a very clean little box and had offered them for the young bride.

  After some time he himself came out, dressed again and with a pack on his back. He crossed the courtyard to leave, but the father stopped him and began to question him benevolently about his life. The young bride approached, too. Here the man, in the weak sun of winter, his face darker, his beard flecked with black and his eyes puckered by the light, looked like a big moth, a nocturnal bird surprised by the day. Or rather he looked like a spider or crab louse; the fact is that the hood of the hearth, when seen from below and if there is enough light outside, is not completely black but leaks a gray and slimy sheen.

  He said that for thirty-five years he had been traveling through those towns cleaning the chimneys, that next year he would take his young son along to teach him the trade, that picking edelweiss was now forbidden and he had been able to gather those few flowers on the sly, and other such inconsequential things. Yet, whether astute or halting, it was quite clear that he only wished to hide himself behind those words, that he let the curtain of words fall in the same way that the cuttlefish beclouds the water.

  He knew about all the deaths in the family, yet none of them had ever seen him!

  By now the young bride felt that she was no longer ashamed for him, but was actually ashamed of herself.

  After the chimney sweep had gone, she placed the few edelweiss beneath the portraits of the dead.

  Translated by Raymond Rosenthal

  The Death of the King of France

  Clown admirable en vérité!

  (Banville)

  “. . .CHINS up, lads. In five hours, at dawn, our fate with be decided. After the stirrup cup, the timid and disheartened can stay in the galley. But there won’t be any of those, isn’t that so? (Piercing and decisive glances into the eyes of all present.) Of course, we go forth and we do not know whether we’ll return, b
ut that’s what makes life worth living! And if it is true that you have faith in me . . . I have not taught you anything, and it is not true that, as you often say, I am in any way your superior, but . . . (observing their reactions) but we have been comrades in a thousand glorious undertakings, and our destiny (satisfaction at his auditors’ reactions) will not be a niggardly one, with our shinbones being used as pitchforks by those savages. Now go and try to sleep and dream of your women. You (noticing a motion made by the man he is addressing), yes, you, since you are on watch, wake me at four. And make sure, even if you have to douse me with a bucket of cold water. Is that clear? (Negligent sign of salute, two fingers touching forehead.) You, you and you stay here, for there’s still something we have to discuss. (To all.) Just a moment, the orders for tomorrow.” Intense semicircular glance: swift signs to call out the leaders one by one. Mutterings, stern looks in the eye, strong decisive gestures to each of them. Obviously, these are the assignments for the positions which must be held at all costs, and also the instructions on how to behave in all possible situations. Now his hands point to a mountain, now to a ravine, but without either his head or eyes moving to accompany the gesture. Then, to each man, a movement of the chin which means: “Back to your post”; and, almost at the same time, addressing one man or another with his outflung hand, (to a Chinaman in Chinese) “You understand? Nobody must go past that point!” (to an Italian in a southern dialect) “No noise, imagine that you are going to meet Peppe’s wife at his house (sly smile) and don’t smoke.” (to a German in German) “Tomorrow morning, no beer drinking!” (Circular salute. The men have left. To two or three members of the general staff, in a southern Italian dialect and as if after heavy labor) “Well, let’s hope for the best! It takes a lot out of you . . . (a bit tired) but that’s the way you’ve got to talk to them. But the way I see it, it’s going to be a dreadful mess tomorrow—that’s the truth. Now then, let’s take a look at . . . (Interrupted by knocks at the door. A crowd. Sound of yelling. But once again he is utterly authoritative and imperious.) What’s going on here? What is it? (Still in dialect. Then:) What do you want, boy? Do you want to come with us? (Signs with hand, motioning men away from the back of the poop deck. Draws his large revolver with firm gesture and balances it, juggling it swiftly in his hand.) Now watch this. (Tosses up a large coin with left hand. A shot. The coin, hit, strikes against the rail and falls to the planking with a dull thud.) Now let’s see you do it. And tell me, boy, do you have a mother? (Hands revolver to boy, barrel first.) It’s your turn to show us something now. (Boy whirls about quickly. Simultaneous shot; the pipe is shattered between the teeth of the boatswain, who rubs his jaw, stunned. Sensation.) Excellent, by Christ! So you’ll come with us.” (All leave. Brief salute. Listens to something the man at his right is saying; does not approve but seems to be tempted. Lifts his eyebrows and lowers his head, as though to say: “Who knows? Maybe, perhaps . . .” Pretends absentmindedness. Reloads revolver with a jerk, thrusts it back into holster. Still in dialect.) “By God, I’m dead tired.” (Gets up, making vague gesture. . . . )