The Oil Jar and Other Stories

by Luigi Pirandello

  Finally, one day the news that he had married burst like a bomb. And he had married none other than … But no, nobody wanted to believe it! Perazzetti had done all sorts of crazy things; but that he could go that far, to the point of tying himself for the rest of his life to a woman like that …

  Tying himself? When one of his many friends, visiting him at home, came out with that expression, it was a wonder that Perazzetti didn’t kill him.

  “Tie myself? What do you mean, tie myself? Why is it tying myself? You’re all stupid, foolish idiots! Tie myself? Who said so? Do I look tied to you? Come with me, come in here … This is my regular bed, isn’t it? Does it look like a double bed? Hey, Cecchino! Cecchino!”

  Cecchino was his trusty old servant.

  “Tell me, Cecchino. Do I come here every night to sleep, alone?”

  “Yes, sir, alone.”

  “Every night?”

  “Every night.”

  “Where do I eat?”

  “In that room.”

  “With whom do I eat?”

  “All alone.”

  “Do you prepare my food?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And am I still the same Celestino?”

  “Still the same, sir.”

  Sending away the servant, after that interrogation, Perazzetti concluded, opening his arms:

  “And so … ”

  “So it’s not true?” the other asked.

  “Of course, it’s true! True as can be! Absolutely true!” answered Perazzetti. “I married her! I married her in church and at the registry office! But what does that mean? You think it’s something serious?”

  “No, just the opposite, totally ridiculous.”

  “Well, there you have it!” Perazzetti concluded once more. “Get out of my way! You’ve all finished laughing behind my back! You pictured me dead, didn’t you? With a noose always around my neck! Enough, enough, friends! Now I’ve freed myself for good! All it took was that last storm, from which I escaped alive by a miracle … ”

  The last storm to which Perazzetti alluded was his engagement to the daughter of the head of a division at the finance ministry, Commendatore7 Vico Lamanna; and Perazzetti was perfectly right in saying that he had escaped it alive by a miracle. He had had to fight a sword duel with the woman’s brother, Lino Lamanna, an excellent swordsman; and because he was a very good friend of Lino’s and felt he had nothing, absolutely nothing against him, he had let himself be handsomely skewered like a chicken.

  It seemed as if this time—and anyone would have called it a sure thing—the wedding was definitely going to take place. Miss Elly Lamanna, brought up in English fashion—as could be seen even from her name—forthright, frank, solid, well-poised (read: American-style shoes), had doubtless succeeded in avoiding that usual disaster in Perazzetti’s imagination. Yes, a bit of laughter had escaped him when looking at his father-in-law the Commendatore, who even with him remained on his high horse and would sometimes speak to him with that pomade-like stickiness of his … But enough of that. He had courteously confided to his fiancée the reason for those bursts of laughter; she had laughed over it herself; and when that reef had been passed, Perazzetti too believed that this time he would finally reach the safe harbor of matrimony (so to speak). The mother-in-law was a kind old lady, modest and taciturn, and Lino, the brother, seemed perfectly suited to see eye to eye with him in every possible way.

  Indeed, from the first day of the engagement, Perazzetti and Lino Lamanna became two inseparable companions. You might say that Perazzetti spent more time with his future brother-in-law than with his fiancée: outings, hunting trips, horseback rides together, together on the Tiber at the boating club.

  He could imagine anything, poor Perazzetti, except that this time the disaster was to strike him because of his excessive closeness to his future brother-in-law, on account of another quirk of his morbid and ludicrous imagination.

  At a certain point, he began to discover in his fiancée a disturbing resemblance to her brother.

  It was at Livorno, at the seaside, where he had naturally gone with the Lamannas.

  Perazzetti had seen Lino in a sporting jersey plenty of times when rowing; now he saw his fiancée in a bathing suit. It should be noted that Lino really did look ever so slightly feminine, in the hips.

  What was the effect on Perazzetti when he discovered that resemblance? He broke out into a cold sweat, he began to feel an unconquerable repulsion at the thought of initiating marital intimacies with Elly Lamanna, who looked so much like her brother. He suddenly pictured those intimacies as something monstrous, almost unnatural, now that he saw the brother when looking at the fiancée; and he writhed at the slightest caress she gave him, seeing himself looked at by eyes now provocative and inciting, now languishing in the promise of a longed-for sensual pleasure.

  But, meanwhile, could Perazzetti shout to her:

  “Oh, for God’s sake, quit it! Let’s call it off! I can be very good friends with Lino, because I don’t have to marry him; but I can no longer marry you, because it would be like marrying your brother.”

  The torture that Perazzetti suffered this time was far greater than all those he had suffered in the past. It ended up with that sword thrust, which by a miracle failed to send him to the next world.

  And as soon as the wound had healed, he hit upon the heroic cure that was to bar the way to matrimony to him for good.

  “But how,” I hear you ask, “by getting married?”

  Of course! Maddalena: the one with the dog; by marrying Maddalena, of course, that poor nitwit that you could see every night on the street, decked out in certain hideous hats loaded down with fluttering greenery, pulled along by a black poodle that never gave her the time to finish those “killing” little laughs of hers, directed at policemen, young boys still wet behind the ears, and soldiers, because it was in such a hurry—damned dog—to get who knows where, to who knows what faraway dark corner …

  He married her in church and at the registry office; he took her off the street; he gave her an allowance of two lire a day and shipped her off far away, into the country.

  His friends—as you can imagine—gave him no peace for quite some time. But Perazzetti had now calmly returned to his habit of saying things with the utmost seriousness, so that you wouldn’t even know it was him, while looking at his nails.

  “Yes,” he would say. “I married her. But it’s nothing serious. As for sleeping, I sleep alone, at home; as for eating, I eat alone, at home; I don’t see her; she doesn’t bother me at all … You say, what about my name? Yes: I gave her my name. But, gentlemen, what’s a name? It’s not to be taken seriously.”

  Strictly speaking, nothing was serious to Perazzetti. Everything depends on the importance you attach to things. If you attach importance to the most ridiculous thing, it can become deadly serious, and vice versa, the most serious matter can become altogether ridiculous. Is there anything more serious than death? And yet, for those many people who attach no importance to it …

  All right; but his friends wanted to see him a few days later. Who knows how he would regret it!

  “No kidding!” Perazzetti would answer. “Of course I’ll regret it! I’m already beginning to regret it … ”

  When he came out with that sally, his friends would begin to cry out:

  “Ah! You see?”

  “But, you fools,” Perazzetti would retort, “at the exact moment I truly regret it, I’ll reap the benefit of my cure, because that will mean I’ve fallen in love again, to the point of committing the most vulgar of bestial acts: that of taking a wife.”

  Chorus of voices:

  “But you’ve already taken one!”

  Perazzetti:

  “That one? Go on, now! That one’s not to be taken seriously.” Conclusion:

  Perazzetti had gotten married to protect himself from the danger of taking a wife.

  THINK IT OVER, GIACOMINO!

  For three days Professor8 Agostino Toti
hasn’t had at home that peace, that laughter to which he thinks he is by now entitled.

  Yes, he’s about seventy, and you couldn’t even say that he was a fine-looking old man: on the short side, with a big bald head, no neck, an outsize torso on two skinny legs like a bird’s …

  Professor Toti is well aware of this, and doesn’t delude himself in the least, therefore, into thinking that Maddalena, his pretty little wife, who is not yet twenty-six, can love him for his own sake.

  It’s true that she was poor when he took her and that he improved her station in life: the daughter of a janitor in the high school, she became the wife of a permanent-staff teacher of natural sciences, with a claim to the maximum pension in a few months now; not only that, but also wealthy for the last two years thanks to an unexpected piece of good luck, truly like manna from heaven: an inheritance of nearly two hundred thousand lire, from a brother who had emigrated to Romania long ago and had died there a bachelor.

  And yet, even with all that, Professor Toti wouldn’t think he had a right to peace and laughter. He’s a philosopher: he knows that all this wouldn’t be enough for a young, pretty wife.

  If his inheritance had arrived before the wedding, he might possibly have been able to ask Maddalena to have a little patience, that is, to wait for his death, not far off now, in order to be compensated for the sacrifice of having married an old man. But those two hundred thousand lire had come too late, two years after the wedding, when already … when Professor Toti had already philosophically realized that the small pension alone that he would leave her one day couldn’t suffice to repay his wife for her sacrifice.

  Having already made all those concessions, Professor Toti thinks he is more right than ever in claiming peace and laughter now, with the addition of that respectable inheritance. All the more so because—being a truly wise and decent man—he wasn’t satisfied with benefiting his wife, but also decided to benefit … yes, him, his good Giacomino, formerly one of his best students at the high school, a shy, honest, very courteous young man, handsome as a cherub.

  Yes, yes—old Professor Agostino Toti has done everything, has thought of everything, philosophically. Giacomino Pugliese had been unemployed, and his idleness was troubling him and depressing him; all right, he, Professor Toti, had found him a job in the Farmers’ Bank, where he deposited the two hundred thousand lire he had inherited.

  There’s a child in the house, too, now, a little angel of two and a half, to whom he has become entirely devoted, like a loving slave. Every day he can’t wait for the lessons at the high school to be over, so he can run home and humor his little tyrant’s slightest whim. To tell the truth, after the inheritance he could have retired, giving up that maximum pension, so that he could spend all his time with the child. But no! It would have been a sin! Inasmuch as it exists, he wants to bear that yoke of his, which he has always found so burdensome, to the very end! After all, he took a wife for that very reason, just so someone could benefit from what had been a torment to him all his life!

  Marrying with this single purpose, to benefit a poor young woman, he has loved his wife solely with a quasi-paternal affection. And he started loving her more paternally than ever from the time the child was born, the child by whom he would almost prefer to be called grandfather rather than daddy. This unwitting lie on the pure little lips of the ignorant child hurts him; he feels that even his love for him suffers from it. But what’s to be done? He must receive with a kiss that name coming from Ninì’s sweet little mouth,. that “daddy” which gets a laugh from all the spiteful people who are unable to understand his loving feelings for that innocent creature, his happiness over the good that he has done and continues to do for a woman, a worthy young man, the little one, and himself as well—of course!—himself as well—the happiness of living these last years in cheerful, pleasant company, walking on the edge of the grave with a little angel holding his hand.

  Let them laugh, let all the spiteful people laugh at him! What does that matter to him? He is happy.

  But for three days …

  What can have happened? His wife’s eyes are swollen and red from crying; she says she has a bad headache; she doesn’t want to leave her room.

  “Ah, youth! … youth! … ” Professor Toti sighs, shaking his head with a sad, sly smile in his eyes and on his lips. “Some cloud … some little thunderstorm … ”

  And with Ninì he wanders around the house, troubled, nervous, also a little irritated, because … no, he really doesn’t deserve such treatment from his wife and from Giacomino. Young people don’t count the days: they have so many still ahead of them … But for a poor old man the loss of a day is serious! And it’s been three now that his wife has been leaving him alone in the house this way, like a fly without a head, and no longer treating him to those little airs and songs sung in her clear, impassioned little voice, and no longer lavishing those cares on him to which he is now accustomed.

  Ninì, too, is as serious as can be, as if he understands that his Mommy’s mind is too occupied to pay attention to him. The Professor takes him along from one room to the other, and has practically no need to stoop down to give him his hand, he’s so small himself; he leads him in front of the piano, presses down a few keys here and there, snorts, yawns, then sits down, gives Ninì a ride on his knees for a while, then stands up again: he’s on pins and needles. Five or six times he has tried to force his little wife to speak.

  “Bad, eh? You’re really feeling bad?”

  Little Maddalena persists in not wanting to tell him anything; she weeps; she asks him to close the balcony shutters and take Ninì to another room: she wants to be alone in the dark.

  “Your head, eh?”

  Poor thing, her head aches so … Ah, the quarrel must have been really a major one!

  Professor Toti moves on to the kitchen and tries to start a conversation with the young maid, to get some information out of her; but he beats around the bush, because he knows that the maid is hostile to him; she speaks ill of him, outside the house, like all the rest, and criticizes him. He fails to learn anything, even from the maid.

  And then Professor Toti makes a heroic resolution: he takes Ninì to his mother and asks her to dress him up nicely.

  “Why?” she asks.

  “I’m taking him for a little walk,” he replies. “Today is a holiday … He’s bored here, poor kid!”

  His mother is unwilling. She knows that evil-minded people laugh when they see the old Professor walking hand in hand with the little one; she knows that one insolent scoundrel went so far as to say to him: “My, how your son resembles you, Professor!”

  But Professor Toti insists.

  “No, for a walk, for a walk … ”

  And with the child he goes to Giacomino Pugliese’s house.

  Giacomino lives together with a sister of marriageable age who has been a mother to him. Unaware of the reason for the kindnesses showered on her brother, Miss Agata was at first very grateful to Professor Toti; now, instead—being extremely religious—she puts him on a par with the devil, neither more nor less, because he has led her Giacomino into mortal sin.

  Professor Toti has to wait in front of the door with the little one for quite some time after ringing the bell. Miss Agata came to look through the peephole and fled. No doubt she went to inform her brother of the visit, and now she’ll come back and say that Giacomino isn’t home.

  Here she is. Dressed in black, with a waxen complexion, thin as a stick, sullen, as soon as the door is open she attacks the Professor, all aquiver.

  “How’s this? … Excuse me … Now you’re coming to see him in his own house, too? … And what’s this I see? With the child, too? You brought the child, too?”

  Professor Toti wasn’t expecting this kind of reception; he’s dumbfounded; he looks at Miss Agata, looks at the little one, smiles, stammers:

  “Wh… why? … What’s wrong? … Can’t I … can’t … can’t I come to … ”

  “He’s not in!” s
he hurriedly resumes, in her arid, harsh manner. “Giacomino’s not in.”

  “All right,” says Professor Toti, bowing his head. “But you, Miss … forgive me … you treat me in a fashion that … I don’t know! I don’t think I’ve dealt with either your brother or you … ”

  “Now, Professor,” Miss Agata interrupts him, somewhat appeased. “Believe me, we’re … we’re extremely grateful to you, but even you ought to understand … ”

  Professor Toti half-closes his eyes, smiles again, raises one hand and then touches his chest several times with his fingertips to indicate that, when it comes to understanding, he’s the one for the job.

  “I’m old, Miss,” he says, “and I do understand … I understand so many things! And look, first and foremost, I understand this: that it’s necessary to let certain angers evaporate and, when misunderstandings arise, the best thing is to clarify matters … to clarify them, Miss, clarify them frankly, without subterfuges, without getting heated up … Don’t you agree?”

  “Of course I do … ,” Miss Agata acknowledges, at least in the abstract.

  “And so,” resumes Professor Toti, “let me in and call Giacomino for me.”

  “But I tell you he’s not in!”

  “You see? No. You mustn’t tell me he’s not in. Giacomino is at home, and you must call him for me. We’ll clarify everything calmly … tell him that: calmly! I’m old and I understand everything, because I was also young once, Miss. Calmly, tell him that. Let me in.”

  Ushered into the humble parlor, Professor Toti sits down with Nini between his knees, resigned to waiting a long time here, too, while Giacomino’s sister is persuading him to come.

  “No, here, Nini … that’s a good boy!” he says from time to time to the child, who would like to go over to a shelf on which some porcelain knickknacks are sparkling; and meanwhile he racks his brains wondering what the devil could have happened in his house that was so serious, without his having noticed it at all. Little Maddalena is so good-natured! What wrong could she have committed to cause such a fierce and strong resentment, here, even in Giacomino’s sister?