Her Husband

by Luigi Pirandello

  Maurizio Gueli felt himself overcome by a rebellious impulse, a powerful rush of pride. At that moment his irritation focused on Livia Frezzi, the irritation for the wrong he believed he really had committed–first by his visit and then by the note. To get rid of that man waiting for an answer, he promised he would come.

  “You have to encourage her!” Giustino now said to him as he was leaving. “Urge her, urge her, even force her… This blessed play! She’s finished the second act; she just needs to finish the third, but she has it all thought out, and, believe me, it seems good. Even … even Baldani heard it and says it’s. …”

  “Baldani?”

  By the tone in which Gueli asked this Giustino realized he had touched a nerve. Giustino didn’t know that Paolo Baldani had recently unleashed a scathing series of articles in a Florentine newspaper about Gueli’s entire literary and philosophical works, from the Demented Socrates to the Roman Fables.

  “Yes … Yes, he came to see Silvia, and . ..” he acknowledged awkwardly, hesitantly, “Silvia really didn’t want to see him. It was my idea, you know? To … to give her a nudge.”

  “Tell Signora Roncella that I will come this evening,” Gueli broke in, seeing him out the door with a hard look.

  Giustino was lavish with his bows and thanks.

  “Because I’m leaving tomorrow for Paris,” he wanted to add, already on the first landing, “to attend the …”

  But Gueli didn’t give him time to finish. He bowed his head slightly and closed the door.

  That evening he went to Villa Silvia. He returned the next day after Giustino Boggiolo had left for Paris, and after that every day, either in the morning or afternoon.

  They were both aware that the slightest act, the slightest concession, the slightest relaxation of scruple would turn their lives upside down.

  But how long could they keep their resolve if they both felt so exasperated in their souls and each observed it so clearly in the other? If their eyes locked on contact, and their hands trembled at the thought of a fortuitous touch? If restraint kept them in such a state of anxious, unbearable suspense as to make them consider what they most feared and most wanted to avoid as a relief and liberation?

  The mere fact that he came and she received him, and that they both stayed there together alone, though almost without looking at each other and without ever touching, was already a sinful concession for both of them, a compromise they came to feel was without remedy.

  They both realized they were gradually, inevitably, giving in not to the passion they had for each other, but to a united effort to resist it and to keep each other at a distance, both feeling that their union would not really be what either wanted.

  Oh, to be able to release one another from the odious conditions without having to do what struck her with disgust and horror and him with fear and remorse!

  These emotional upheavals were caused by their having to commit a serious transgression more powerful than they, but essential, unavoidable, if they wanted to free each other. And they were put there to do it, trembling, ready, and reluctant.

  Looming over him was the fierce shadow of that stiff, angry, harsh woman. Her words were already ringing in his ears: he “could never return to her, could never again lie or deny he had taken advantage of his freedom to get close to another woman: that woman there! Honest, isn’t she? As honest as he, like him in every way. Oh, yes, that woman! That one, by taking his hand, could lead him back to art, to live in poetry, and his sluggish blood would be rekindled with the fire of youth. Well, then, why so timid? Come on! Ah, perhaps love … Yes! Love had stunned him… . Isn’Isn’t that a lovely little hand, with those little blue veins branching outt that a lovely little hand, with those little blue veins branching out…. To put it on his forehead, to pass that little hand over his eyes … and kiss it, kiss it there on her pink nails … Those nails don’t scratch, no. Nice little kitten, nice little kitten … Go on, just try to stroke her! Mew or bleat? Poor little lamb that a dreadful husband wanted to shear …” How could he face such mockery again? He heard those words as if Livia were standing behind him.

  And behind her, nudging her on, Silvia felt her husband who had left her alone with Gueli and had gone off to Paris to make a spectacle of himself there, too, to turn into money the entertainment he offered the French actors, actresses, writers, and journalists there, too–certain that she would be writing a new play with Gueli’s help. She wanted to write it! She wanted nothing more! And just as he was impervious to all the laughter, so he didn’t care now if the gossips were suspicious of his wife, whom they would see Gueli visit during his absence. Gueli, now free of Livia Frezzi, Gueli whose interest in Silvia had already been such a topic of discussion.

  Sticking to the task at hand, they both kept their tempest pent up inside, keeping a prudent distance from each other, concentrating on that new play whose title seemed to mock and goad them: If Not This Way… .

  Was that why he suggested a change of title? The act of the protagonist, Ersilia Arciani, when she went to the house of her husband’s lover to get his little girl, made him think of a hawk swooping down on a nest of baby birds. So perhaps the play could be called The Hawk.

  But did the image of cruel greed that the hawk invoked suit the character of Ersilia Arciani, or the reasons and feelings that motivated her action? It wasn’t suitable, according to Silvia. But she understood why he, with his suggestion for changing the title, wanted to alter the protagonist’s character to suggest vengeance and an aggressive purpose in her action: he undoubtedly saw in the closed, austere character of Ersilia Arciani something of Livia Frezzi, and since he couldn’t stand her having noble, blameless motives, he wanted to change her nature. However, if her entire nature were transformed, wouldn’t that be another play? She would have to rewrite it, rethink it from the beginning.

  He paid close attention to those sage explanations she made in a tone that clearly let him know she understood and didn’t want to touch a still painful wound.

  Newspapers from Rome, Milan, Turin had already published her husband’s long conversations with correspondents from Paris, who, though commenting seriously on the play and on the Parisian public’s avid interest in seeing it, worded it in a way that left no doubt as to the underlying mockery; they reveled in the prodigious activity, the zeal, the admirable fervor of that little man “who considered his wife’s work so much his that it was only proper he receive some of her glory.” Finally, Giustino’s telegram came announcing the triumph, and following the telegram he sent one newspaper after another with the most influential critics’ judgments, which were for the most part favorable.

  Silvia kept Gueli from reading those newspapers in her presence, for both their sakes.

  “No, no, please! I can’t stand to hear any more about it! I swear I would give … I don’t know, it all seems like such a small thing. I would give anything not to have written that play!”

  In the meanwhile, Èmere came almost every hour to announce a new visitor. Silvia would have liked to have him tell everyone she wasn’t home. But Gueli convinced her that would not look good. She would go down to the living room, and he would stay there, hidden in the study waiting for her, scanning those newspapers, or rather, thinking. In the meanwhile she would be downstairs with Baldani or Luni or Betti.

  “Ah, youth!” Gueli once sighed at seeing her return to the study with a flushed face.

  “No! What are you saying?” she erupted promptly and fiercely. “I’m fed up! I’m fed up! This has to stop. If you only knew how I treat them!”

  Already enormous, heavy silences in which they felt their blood tremble and tingle and their souls fret in anxious expectation had fallen on their tired, forced conversation. He only needed to put a hand on hers: she would have left it there and leaned her head on his chest, hiding her face, and their destiny, by now inevitable, would have been sealed. So why delay it any longer? Ah, why indeed! Because each one could still think him-or herself to blame. The s
elf-restraint continued, although privately they had hopelessly surrendered to each other.

  The unthinkable moment had yet to arrive!

  They could see themselves coming up to the outer edge of an act that would signal the end of their former life without having spoken a word of love, merely while discussing art like a student with her teacher. They would suddenly be at the beginning of a new life, lost, anxious, bewildered, not knowing which road to take at once so she, at least, could get far away from there.

  They felt such an absolute need to get away, more out of self-pity than love, that their disgust with the dillydallying over details constrained them even more.

  Of course, he too would have to leave a house that was chock-full of memories of that woman. Where to go? Some refuge had to be found, at least in the beginning, a haven in which to hide from the explosion of the inevitable scandal. The situation disheartened and disgusted them profoundly.

  Didn’t they have the right to live in peace, humanely, in the uncorrupted fullness of their dignity? Why lose heart? Why hide? Because neither her husband nor that woman would have accepted in silence the reasons they could have flung in their faces even before the betrayal, the assertion of their rights trampled on so long and in so many ways. Giustino and Livia would have argued, tried to stop them… . Another revulsion, stronger than before.

  They were suspended and tethered in these thoughts, when Gueli–on the eve of Giustino’s return from Paris–began a discussion that Silvia at once understood as a scheme to end their painful state.

  That difficult play she had started and couldn’t finish weighed on them like a curse. Up to this time the anxiety of their indecision had been entangled in discussions about its characters and scenes. Now, his suggestion that they put that play aside and write another one together–a play based on a vision that he had had many years ago of the Roman countryside, near Ostia, among the Sabine people, who come there to spend the winter in miserable huts–clearly signified the end of the indecision. And still more clearly she found him ready to put an end to all delay and face their new noble and industrious life when he invited her the next day, the very day her husband was to arrive, to go with him to see those places near Ostia. Those foreboding places toward the sea, where a solitary tower looms, Tor Bovacciana, beside the river crossed by a cable along which passes a service boat for ferrying some silent fisherman or hunter …

  “Tomorrow?” she asked, her manner and voice expressing total acquiescence.

  “Yes, tomorrow, tomorrow. When will he arrive?”

  She knew at once who “he” was and responded: “At nine.”

  “Fine. I’ll be here at nine-thirty. You don’t need to say anything. I’ll do the talking. We’ll leave right after that.”

  No more was said. He rushed off; she was left shaking under the dark mystery of her new destiny.

  The tower … the river crossed by a cable … the boat carrying the rare passerby through those menacing places …

  Had she dreamed it?

  Was that the haven, then? At Ostia … She didn’t have to say anything… . Tomorrow!

  She would leave everything here. Yes, everything, everything. She would write him. She wouldn’t have to tell any lies. For this more than anything she was grateful to Gueli. Even when she left tomorrow she wouldn’t have to lie. In that play, with that play he suggested, she would enter a noble new life, with art and in art. It was the way. It wasn’t a means or a pretext for deceit. It was the way to get out, without lying and without shame, away from that hateful house no longer hers.

  3

  “Hurry, hurry, quickly, quickly: you won’t get there on time!”

  From the gate Giustino shouted this last recommendation to the two driving off in a carriage, expecting that Silvia at least, if not Gueli, would turn to wave at him. She didn’t.

  Exasperated by his wife’s persistently haughty attitude, Giustino shrugged and went up to his room to wait for Èmere to tell him when his bath was ready.

  “What a woman!” he was thinking. “To make that disgusted face even at such a kind invitation. The cathedral at Orvieto: wonderful! Old art… a subject for study.”

  To tell the truth, he really wasn’t so very glad, because on that very day, in fact almost the moment he had come back from Paris, Gueli had come to invite his wife on that artistic excursion. But if Gueli hadn’t known he was arriving that morning! Gueli had been out of sorts because he had to go to Milan the next day and wouldn’t have much time to show Silvia all the marvelous art there–in the cathedral at Orvieto.

  Beautiful, beautiful was the Orvieto cathedral: or so he had heard… But of course it wouldn’t have made a big impression on him, since he’d just come from Paris, but… old art, a subject for study …

  How irritating that disgusted face. All the more because, confound it, Gueli had been kind enough to keep her company these past few days, and he had encouraged her so charmingly not to worry about her husband’s arrival just then. No doubt he had had a good time in Paris and so wouldn’t mind if his wife had some recreation for a few hours, until evening….

  Giustino himself had even said: “I’ll be happy for you to go!”

  Giustino tapped his forehead with a finger, made a face, and crooned: “I don’t waaant to. … I don’t waaant to… .”

  Èmere came to announce that his bath was ready.

  “Good. I’m ready, too!”

  In a short time he was delightfully stretched out in the white enamel tub, the water taking on a soft bluish tint. Thinking back over the sensational whirl of Parisian splendors in the clean quiet of his bright bathroom, he felt lucky. He felt this really was the reward of the victor.

  Delightful also there in that warm bath was the sensation of tiredness reminding him how hard he had worked to earn that triumph.

  Ah, that Parisian victory, that Parisian victory had been the crowning glory of all his work! Now he could say he was thoroughly satisfied, even happy.

  All told, it was also a good thing that Silvia had gone on that trip. Considering how tired he was, and in the excitement of his arrival, he might have ruined the effect of all that he wanted to tell her.

  Later, after his bath, he would have some refreshment and take a nap. Then, rested, in the evening he would make a complete report to his wife and Gueli of the “great things” in Paris. It would have been nice to have some journalists present so they could report it to the public in the form of an interview. But tomorrow, just wait! He’d find one, he’d find a hundred, very happy to oblige him.

  He woke up toward eight in the evening and for the first time thought about the gifts he had brought his wife from Paris: a wonderful dressing gown, all frilly with lace; a very elegant traveling bag of the latest fashion; three combs and a hair clip of clear, very fine tortoise shell; and then a silver set for her desk, very artfully decorated. He wanted to get them out of his suitcase so his wife’s eyes would fill with surprise and pleasure the minute she walked in: the combs and the bag on the dressing table, the gown on the bed. He had Èmere help carry the pieces of the other gift to the desk. After putting them down, he remained in the study to see what his wife had done in his absence.

  What? What? Nothing! Could it be possible? The play … oh, no! Still at the end of the second act… On the top sheet of paper the title had been struck out and next to it, between parentheses, The Hawk was written, followed by a question mark.

  What did this mean? How could that be! Nothing at all? Not even a line after so many days! Was it possible?

  He rummaged through the desk drawers: nothing!

  From the play manuscript a small piece of paper fell out. He picked it up. Some words were scribbled here and there in a tiny handwriting: fleeting lucidity … then, underneath: cold impediments to loving… then further down: in such prosperity lies abound . .. and then: Many steady ideas staggering like a drunk … and finally: bells, drops of water lining the balcony railing … crazy trees and crazy thoughts … white cur
tains of the parish house, ragged dress over shabby shoe …

  Hum! Giustino made a long face. He turned the paper over. Nothing. There was nothing else.

  This was all his wife had written in nearly twenty days! It wasn’t worth a thing, then, not even Gueli’s advice…. What did those broken phrases mean?

  He rested his hands on his cheeks for a while. His eyes returned to the second phrase: impediments to loving …

  “But why?” he said out loud, shrugging his shoulders.

  He began to pace the study, his face still in his hands. Why and what impediments, now that everything, thanks to him, was smooth and easy? The road was open and what a road! A wide, unobstructed road for running from triumph to triumph!

  “Impediments to loving… Cold impediments to loving… Cold and to loving . .. Hum! What impediments? Why?”

  And with his hands behind his back now, he continued to pace. Suddenly he stopped, deeply absorbed, started walking, stopped again, repeating at every pause now, pulling a long face:

  “Crazy trees and crazy thoughts …”

  He had expected the play to be finished, and he had counted on working it into the conversation the next day when he talked to the journalists about the triumph in Paris!

  Èmere came in to bring him the evening newspapers.

  “How come?” Giustino asked him. “Is it already so late?”

  “It’s after ten,” Èmere answered.

  “Really? How come?” Giustino repeated, having slept so late he lost all track of time. “What are they doing? They were supposed to be here at nine-thirty at the latest. The train arrives at eight-fifty.”

  Èmere stood stock-still, waiting for his employer to finish his comments, and then he said: “Giovanna wants to know if we should wait for the signora.”