Her Husband

by Luigi Pirandello

  Dr. Lais persuaded her to leave the bedside. She looked at Graziella, who was crying, but she noticed behind her tears for the boy a hostile look for her. She didn’t feel indignant, but instead loved that old woman’s hate, which was an act of love for her child. And she turned to the doctor.

  “What happened? What happened?”

  Dr. Lais led her to the next room, to the same room where she had slept during the months of her stay there. The tears that had come to her eyes and that had been restrained and nearly dissolved by the emotional tumult of what she saw, now flowed freely and spontaneously. Here she felt her heart lacerated by live memories of that little creature, here she felt herself really a mother, with the heart of that earlier time, when every morning the nurse brought to her bed the little naked pink being fresh from his bath, and she, holding him to her breast, thought that soon she would have to leave him… .

  In the meantime, Dr. Lais told her about his sudden illness, what he had done to save him, and he told her that even for the father that misfortune had been an unexpected agony, because the evening before he had been at the theater to see her play, without knowing that the boy was so seriously ill.

  Silvia looked up with a shudder at this news: “Last night? At the theater? But how could he not know?”

  “Signora,” Dr. Lais replied, “when he heard that you would be in Turin …” And he made a gesture with his hand that meant: he seemed to have gone out of his mind.

  “His mother didn’t tell him anything, seeing him like that,” he added. “She didn’t think it was really so serious. It’s sad, believe me, sad! As soon as he arrived last night, around two, on foot from Giaveno, he found his boy dying. It was I who suggested notifying you by telegram. In fact, I took it myself, when the boy already, unfortunately … He died around six… . Listen! Do you hear him?”

  Suddenly on the stairs Giustino’s sobs were heard among the confused shuffling and shouts of the others who perhaps were trying to hold him back.

  Silvia jumped to her feet in distress and drew back in a corner as if trying to hide.

  Assisted by Don Buti, Prever, and his mother, Giustino appeared in the doorway as though on the verge of collapse, his clothes and hair in disarray, his face bathed in tears. He looked fiercely at Dr. Lais and said: “Where is she?”

  As soon as he saw her, his body gave a start, his legs and chin began to tremble, until tears, gradually distorting his features, gurgled in his convulsed throat, but as Prever and Don Buti tried to drag him out, he broke away furiously:

  “No, here!” he shouted.

  He stood there like that for an instant, unrestrained, perplexed. Then, gasping, he threw himself on Silvia and embraced her wildly.

  Silvia didn’t move, but stiffened to withstand that desperate impulse. She closed her eyes in pity, then opened them again to reassure his mother she need have no fear. She let herself be embraced out of pity and she knew how to control that pity.

  “Did you see? Did you see?” Giustino sobbed on her breast, grasping her harder. “He’s gone…. Rirì’s gone because we weren’t here…. You weren’t here … and I wasn’t even here anymore … and so the little one said: ‘What am I doing here?’ and he went away. If he could see you here now … Come! Come! If he could see you here …”

  He pulled her by the hand to the boy’s room, as if the joy of her coming could perform the miracle of bringing the boy back to life.

  “Rirì!.. . Oh, Rirì… oh, my Rirì. ..” He fell on his knees again at the bedside, burying his face in the flowers.

  Silvia felt faint. Dr. Lais ran to support her, taking her to the next room. Giustino was also pulled away from the bedside by Don Buti and Prever and led downstairs.

  “Silvia! Silvia!” he kept calling, overpowered by those two, and without the strength to rebel now that he had seen his dead son again.

  At the sound of her name fading in the distance, Silvia felt as though called from the depths of the life spent there a year ago: an obscure premonition of this tragedy had existed in the happiness of that time, and that premonition now called to her in the distant cry: Silvia! … Silvia! … Oh, if she had been able to hear her name called out like that, she would have found the strength to resist every temptation. She would have stayed here with her little one, in this peaceful nest in the mountains, and her little one wouldn’t be dead, and none of the horrible things that happened would have happened. The most horrible thing of all… Oh, that! Among the flashes of smothering images, she still felt her flesh burn with shame for the single embrace, attempted almost coldly, out of a terrible, inevitable necessity there in Ostia, and left desperately incomplete. She would feel sullied by it forever, more than if she had sinned thousands of times with all those young men rumored to have been her lovers. The cloying memory of that single inconclusive embrace had aroused an invincible nausea, a loathing, in which every desire for love would be forever drowned. She was sure that Giustino, if that were her wish, could be torn from his mother’s arms and from every shred of self-respect to return to her. But no, she didn’t want that, and she shouldn’t for both their sakes! Now the last bond between them had been broken by the death. And he was struggling down there in vain against the arms trying to hold him. Dr. Lais had been called to help. In there her dead son lay among the flowers. People were coming up to see him: women from the town, old people, children, and they all brought more flowers, more flowers. .. .

  A short time later Dr. Lais, hot and panting, came back to her with a sheet of paper in his hand, the draft of a telegram that her husband down below, shouting and struggling, had thought necessary to write. He wanted Dr. Lais to send it as soon as he showed it to her.

  “A telegram?” Silvia asked, surprised.

  “Yes. Here it is.” Dr. Lais handed it to her.

  It was a telegram to the Fresi Company. Several words were made almost illegible by the tears that had fallen on it. It announced the death of the boy, asking that the play performances be suspended, after announcing to the public the author’s grave loss. It was signed Boggiolo.

  Silvia read it and remained, under the eyes of the waiting doctor, absorbed, confused, and bewildered. “Does it have to be sent?”

  She knew it! After the embrace, he felt he had already become her husband again.

  “No, not like that,” she said to the doctor. “Remove the announcement to the public, and if you don’t mind the bother, go ahead and send it, but under my name, please.”

  Dr. Lais bowed. “I understand perfectly,” he said. “Don’t worry, it will be done.” And he went out.

  But after about half an hour, Giustino came up again with a foolish expression on his face, along with a journalist, the same young journalist who came from Turin a year ago looking for the writer of The New Colony.

  “Here she is! Her she is!” he said, bringing him in the room, and turning to Silvia: “You know him, don’t you?”

  Embarrassed by Boggiolo’s unseemly, almost jocular anxiety intruding on that tragic moment (although the poor man’s face was burned by tears), the young man bowed and shook Silvia’s hand, saying: “I am sorry, Signora, to find you here in such different circumstances from our first meeting. I learned at the theater that you had rushed here. I didn’t think that already . ..”

  Giustino interrupted him, taking him by the arm: “While the play was being performed last night in Turin,” he began telling him, with a great tremor in his voice and hands, yet with his eyes fixed on his, as if he were lecturing him, “the boy was dying here, and we didn’t know it, neither she nor I, you see? And she,” he continued, pointing to Silvia, “do you know why she came here the first time? Because our baby was born! And do you know when our baby was born? The same evening as The New Colony’s success the very same evening, which is why we named him Vittorio, Vittorino…. Now she has returned for his death! And when did this death happen? Just while her new play was being performed in Turin! Just think about it! What destiny … He is born and dies like that.
… Come here, come here, I’ll show him to you….”

  So taken up was he by the excitement of his endeavors, it was almost frightening. The young man looked at him, appalled.

  “Here he is! Here he is! Our little angel! See how beautiful he is among all those flowers? These are the tragedies of life, my dear sir, the tragedies that grip us… . There’s no need to go looking for tragedies on faraway islands, among savage people! I am telling you this for your readers, you know? The public doesn’t want to know some things… . You journalists must explain to them that if today a writer can get a tragedy out of… of her head, a savage tragedy, that everyone likes immediately for its novelty, tomorrow she herself, the writer, can be seized by one of these tragedies of life, that crushes a poor little boy and the hearts of a father and mother, understand? This, this is what you should explain to the public, those people who feel nothing when faced with the tragedy of a father who has a daughter living apart from him, of a wife who knows she cannot have her husband back except by taking in his child, and she goes there, she goes to her husband’s lover to get the child! These are tragedies … the tragedies … the tragedies of life, my dear sir. This poor woman here, believe me, can do nothing … she doesn’t… she doesn’t know how to get the most out of her work. … I, I want, I who know these things so well… but right now my head hurts … it hurts so much. Too much emotion … too much, too much … and I need to sleep. It’s the weariness, you know? that makes me talk like this. I need to sleep. … I can’t take any more… . I can’t take any more.”

  He went out, his head in his hands, repeating: “I can’t take any more … can’t take any more… .”

  “The poor man!” sighed the journalist, going into the other room with Silvia. “What a state he’s in!”

  “For heaven’s sake,” Silvia quickly begged, “don’t say anything, don’t refer to any of this in the paper. .. .”

  “My dear signora! What are you thinking?” he interrupted, fending off the idea with his hands.

  “It’s a double torment for me!” Silvia continued, almost suffocated. “It’s like being struck by lightning! And now … this other torment.”

  “It really makes you pity him!”

  “Yes, and just because of the pity I feel, I want to go away, I want to leave.”

  “If you want, Signora, I have here with me …”

  “No, no: tomorrow, tomorrow. As long my little boy is here, I’ll stay here. My uncle is buried here also. And the thought of my dear old uncle being in a stranger’s tomb makes me feel so sad. The dead, I understand, are neither friends nor enemies to each other. But I think of him among the dead who aren’t friends. Now he’ll have his little nephew with him and won’t be alone anymore. I’ll give him my little one tomorrow, and when everything is done I’ll leave.”

  “Do you want me to come tomorrow to take you back? I would be very happy to do it.”

  “Thank you,” Silvia replied, “but I still don’t know when.”

  “I’ll find out, don’t worry. Until tomorrow!”

  The young journalist left, very pleased. Silvia closed her eyes, with her lips in an expression more of bitterness than disdain, and shook her head. A little later, without looking at her, Graziella brought her something to drink. But she didn’t want to put it to her lips. Later she had the torment of a visitor: the doctor’s wife, more than ever overflowing with affectations. But fortunately, in her weariness and dazed condition, while the woman foolishly tried to comfort her, she found a new well of tears and turned her eyes to a corner of the room.

  On the dresser, as if conversing with one another, were Rirì’s toys: a papier-mâché horse attached to a four-wheeled cart, a tin horn, a boat, a little clown with a tambourine. The little horse, with a threadbare tail, a crushed ear, and a missing wheel on the cart was the saddest of all. The little sailboat with its prow turned toward the horse seemed far, far away, a large boat in a dream sea far, far away, and it was sailing along in that dream sea with Rirì’s little soul amazed and lost… . But of course not! The little clown, smiling, told her it wasn’ true, that the top of the dresser wasn’t the sea at all, and that Rirì’s little soul could sail no more on it.

  Rirì had left them there to do something very important, something that seemed unusual for a little boy: to die! The little horse, although lame and threadbare, as is the destiny of all toys, seemed to bob its head, almost as if it couldn’t understand. If only the horn could call him back from that sleep amid all those flowers there! But the horn was broken, too–it didn’t play anymore. Rirì’s mouth spoke no more … his little hands moved no more … his eyes opened no more … himself a broken toy, Rirì!

  What had those little two-year-old eyes seen, open to the spectacle of a world so big? Who keeps memories of things seen with two-year-old eyes? And now those little eyes that looked without keeping memories of the things seen were closed forever. Outside there were so many things to see: the meadows, the mountains, the sky, the church. Rirì had left that big world that had never been his, except in that little papier-mâché horse that smelled of glue, in that little boat with its sails spread, in that tin horn, in that little clown that laughed and beat his tambourine. And he hadn’t known his mother’s heart. Rirì …

  Evening came. The doctor’s wife went away; Silvia remained alone, in the enormous, total silence.

  She looked into the little mortuary room. There was Graziella saying her rosary and the nurse napping in a chair. Silvia was suddenly tempted to send them both to bed and stay alone with her little boy, to bar the window and door and lie down next to her little one, to let herself be absorbed by his cold death, killed by all those flowers. Dazed by their perfume that had made her head leaden, she felt suddenly overcome by a desperate weariness of everything in life, in the gloomy silence of that house crushed by death’s nightmare. However, looking out the window, she had the strange feeling that her soul had remained outside there all this time, and that she had just found it now with an infinite wonder and relief. It was that same soul that had looked up at the sight of another moonlit night like this one. But in the sweetness of the relief there was now a more intense heartache, a more urgent need to be free of everything. And with the wonder, a more eager awakening to new revelations, vaster revelations of eternal dreams. She looked at the moon hanging over one of the big mountains, and in the placid pure light that spread over the sky, she gazed at, drank in, the few stars that were appearing like pools of more vivid light. She lowered her eyes to the earth and saw again the mountains in the distance with their blue brows lifted to breathe in the light. She saw again the amazed trees, the meadows resounding with water under the limpid silence of the moon. Everything seemed so unreal that her soul, suffused in that unreality, became tree and silence and dew.

  From the depths of her spirit an immense darkness rose to join that limpid, dreamlike unreality: a vague, deep feeling for life, made up of so many inexpressible, whirling, gusting, overlapping impressions from the deepest darkness. Outside of all the things that gave meaning to our lives there was another meaning in the life of things that we couldn’t understand: those stars said it with their light, those grasses with their odors, that water with its murmur. A mysterious meaning that was bewildering. We had to go beyond the things that give meaning to our lives, to penetrate this mysterious meaning of the life of things. Beyond the petty necessities that we create for ourselves, there were other obscure, gigantic necessities taking shape in the fascinating flow of time, like those great mountains there, in the enchantment of the very silent lunar dawn. From now on she had to keep her mind fixed on them, to face them with the mind’s rigorous eyes, to give voice to all the unexpressed things of her spirit, to those things that until now had caused distress, and leave the miserable absurdities of daily existence, the absurdities of humans, who, without realizing it, stumble around immersed in the immense vortex of life.

  She stood at the window all night long until the cold dawn slowly came to ch
ange and solidify the appearances of her earlier vaporous dream. In this cold solidity of things touched by the light of day she also felt the divine fluidity of her own being almost congeal, and come up against the cruel reality, the brutal, hard dreadfulness of matter, that powerful, greedy, ferocious destroyer, nature, under the implacable eye of the rising sun. That dreadfulness and ferocity would now put her poor little boy underground and make him earth again.

  There, they were bringing the casket. The church bell rang gloriously in the light of the new day.

  How long is a day for a little dead body lying on his bed waiting to be buried? How long is the return of light not seen since the previous day? The light already finds him further away in the shadows of death, already further away in the survivors’ grief. Soon now grief will draw closer and howl at the horrible spectacle of enclosing the little body in the waiting casket. Then, immediately after the burial, this grief will go away again, to remake itself hurriedly in that brief, cruel return, until it slowly disappears in time where only occasionally will memory struggle to rejoin it, to recognize it, and then, oppressed and tired, it will retreat, called back by a sigh of resignation.

  What did Giustino, who had slept heavily, read in Silvias face, which seemed to have absorbed the pallor of the moon she had watched from the window all night long? He looked dazed as he stood before her. He was again racked by tears, but no longer dared embrace her as before. Instead, he dropped down next to the little body already lying in the flower-covered casket. Prever dragged him away. Graziella and the nurse dragged the grandmother away. No one troubled with Silvia, who hoped to have the strength to stay there until the end, after having kissed death on the little boy’s small, hard, cold brow. After the cover of the casket had been soldered, the young journalist came, and though his concern touched her, she didn’t want to leave.

  “Now … now it’s done,” she said to him. “Thank you. Leave me alone! Now I’ve seen everything… . There is nothing more to see. A casket and my love as a mother, there …”