The Experience of Pain

by Carlo Emilio Gadda

  ‘… I, you … When the immensity coagulates, when the truth becomes wizened in a long coat … of a politician at Congress, … I, you … in a mean and twisted person, when righteous anger gets weighed down in a belly, … in mine, for example … whose sole purpose and destiny, in the universe, is to cram in tons of bismuth, at five pesos for ten grams … down, down, into the duodenum … bismuth by the shovel-load … waiting … day after day, until the end of time … When being is choked, into a sack, into a foul tripe, whose confines are more miserable and more inane than this taxable wall … that you can jump over in one leap … when this fine event takes place … Then … it is then that the I is determined, with its fine monad on top, like the caper on the rolled anchovy on the lemon slice on the Viennese cutlet; … Then, then! It is then, at just that moment, that this asparagus of an I sprouts forth … swanky … erect … plumed with attributes of every kind … purple, and feathered, and taut, and turgid … like a turkey … strutting with engineering diplomas, knighthoods … blazoned with family glories … wreathed with baubles and clam shells like a negro king … or else’, they had reached the corner of the house, he lowered his voice, ‘… or else saturnine and alpine, with eyes hollowed in distrust, sphincter screwed up with avarice, and red under the shadow of its nits … a dark red … the redness of a Celt living wild among the mountains … who fears the pallor of Rome and is terrified of its dactyls … militem, ordinem, cardinem, consulem … the I of the shadow, the animalesque I of the forests … and fine red, fine sweat … the I with sweaty feet … with armpits even more sweaty than the feet … with good air in its arse … between onions and espalier pears … claiming its right … like that thief there … who has all morning to take seed from the onions! …’ With his chin, hands in pockets, he pointed towards the peon: who, now kneeling in the grass, could be seen and heard scraping the inside of a cooking pot with a small knife. On the stroke of midday he had stopped work, of course, to prepare the puchero. The doctor, in silence, had let that angry torrent fall, making no attempt even to open his mouth: he had sad, swollen eyes, looking at the mountains.

  ‘… I, I, I! … But I’ll drive him out of the house! With his parcel of rights tied to his tail … out, out! … on all fours on the other side of the wall … clomping over the stones, down and up from Iglesuela, from where he came …’ The peon finally raised his head and hat from the cooking pot, but he couldn’t understand. He didn’t think the conversation related to him: the señori are often talking metaphysics.

  ‘… The wall has a hump, I see, and even the souls of the departed can get over it … of the poor departed! to return to sleep in their bed … which is there, white … as they left it when they went away … and it seems to wait for them … after so much war! … It is twisted, all humps: I know: but its significance, its meaning remains, and for honest folk it has to be enough, for people: it has to be enough. It has to be. For it proves possession: the sacrosanct private, most private mine, mine! … my own and particular possession … Which is possession of my fingernails, ten fingernails, of my ten very own fingernails! …’ he took his hands from his pockets and put them right under the eyes of the doctor, both together, with fingers hooked, as though they were the claws of a vulture.

  ‘… And your toenails, where do you put them? …’

  ‘… Inside, I, in my house, with my mother: and all the Giuseppes and Battistinas and the Pi … the Beppes, all the idiotic grandsons of all the colonels in Maradagàl who’ve flunked French or maths … Away, away! out! … all of them out! This is, and must be, my house … in my silence … my poor house …’

  IV

  The doctor with his cane, swinging one leg, or rather first one and then the other, alternately filling the void, had now put his left leg on top of the perimeter wall and gave it repeated fleshy slaps, with his palm and open fingers, as one might hit the warm, full flank of a fine horse, to value it, or stroke it; the flank of the wall, in cement smoothed by a trowel, had shaken off the cool morning shadow which the house had carried over it and, with the turn of the day, had appropriated a warmth of its own, like that of an animal, and soon indeed it could be called the heat of a stove.

  ‘This wall, for sure, never seemed much good to me …’ he complained quietly, to fend off the furies: and to get into a more reasonable line of conversation. The wall reached the brim of his hat, and the son’s nose: but it was a passageway for climbing, darting lizards, with its rough, rustic rendering, full of claw holes, beneath the smoothed ridge: above it flitted the blue dragonfly, oblivious: appearing from who knows where: emerging in the sunlight, almost a vain thought of summer. Diaphanous and theatrical, it enjoyed straying into Pirobutirro territory without a passport: and without asking anyone’s permission. She too! Just like that. With that air of a beautiful woman roaming aimlessly, with slender wings and life, to say nothing of her brain, which lets her be summoned here and there by a thousand vague alternatives, golds, fabrics, flowers, trinkets, at summer’s boundless bazaar.

  ‘… It never seemed much to me,’ repeated the doctor, ‘you’re right: one single leap and you’re in.’

  ‘… But outside there’s another half-metre …’ said the son: almost as if it allowed him, despite his own hesitant worry, to guarantee the impregnability of the wall. He now spoke calmly, and reasonably: but yet with apprehension. The doctor shrugged:

  ‘Yes … with those bollards … they seem to have been put there on purpose … to make it easier to jump over. Like stools … You know, those jockeys with short legs … and perhaps with rather too plump a backside … who need a stool to get into the saddle …’

  That wall, in fact, was only there for show: like every wall, perhaps, of every landholding. Very low, particularly at that point, namely close to the north-west corner of the house. It sloped down from the metal gate, following as best it could the external cataract of the lane and the internal, gentler, course of the small avenue or pathway that skirted it, with espalier plum trees. It ran at a slant to the north wall of the house, and there came within about two metres of the corner: enough for a little grass below it, and a plum tree to hide it, at that very point: and to allow space for the crunch-crunch gravel path. The road outside was slipping away, with great stones, which were large, sharp flints and pebbles like tennis balls, and it dropped more rapidly: and while at the gate there were three steps down, just in order to enter, the level of the cataract at that same point was already almost half a metre lower than the path inside. But that half, or even three-quarters, of a metre was eaten up by the bollards: so that, with a little care, one leap was enough to get into the saddle.

  Lost in thought, the son hesitated for a moment. ‘That’s right,’ he said. Then: ‘After all, it’s merely a symbol … Like the large gate, down there: which is half rotten: and a kick would be enough to knock it down … Besides, what’s the point of all these walls, bars, barriers, gates? They’re even less effective than the “no spitting” signs in the trams in Pastrufazio. Oh! twenty-seven million bipeds … my equals in the eyes of the law of Maradagàl … don’t hold back for this … I mean from spitting to their hearts’ content, on the pavement, wherever they gather … A propos, Doctor, isn’t saliva an internal secretion? What does internal secretion mean? That you have to spit it all out in one go? I thought it was an inner secretion: but I’m sure I’m wrong: I thought it was a juice, a viscous slime, what pigs do, well all right, but with which God Almighty has enabled us to salivate over croconsuelo, that other mouldy, yellow, worm-ridden filth … to help us swallow it down, the fetid: the nauseous …’

  ‘… But it’s the king of cheeses! … they’ve even baptized it Rex … with its own registered trademark …’ (the doctor had got it wrong: Rex was another cheese altogether, imported from Europe). ‘… In any event, returning to the wall …’

  ‘… Yes … returning to the wall. But what can I do, Doctor? I’m tired … I’m sick …’ The doctor didn’t think so. ‘… A few hard-earned sav
ings as a lieutenant out in the open … under cold stars … The one who was loved is beneath the ground … In that face of his there was a light … a smile … Under cold stars … in the burning fumes and among the shards of infernal mountains … The miserable wage of a tired, tormented engineer … And these walls here: I’ve had to pour my blood into these ruins, here inside … in plastering these walls … in taxes … in plugging the hole in the mortgage …

  ‘Now I’m tired … I’m sick …’

  His pain had been dissolved away by years that could never be repeated. The child had been tortured by the lunacy of his guardians. Death was all that remained.

  ‘And anyway, what walls, what boundary? Didn’t you once tell me yourself that the people in these villages are good as gold? … You know them better than I. They’re good people: no? … Rather rough, perhaps, rather guttural in the way they speak: this is true: halfway between the house on stilts and the cave … but good people. In wartime they behaved magnificently. They were dropping down like ninepins. Straight off. And in peacetime they’ve never complained; poor folk …’

  After the varied phases of a more or less capricious tantrum, all of a sudden, he was like the child begging for reassurance who seeks the authority of grown-ups, against the terror of the darkness, to be comforted.

  ‘… Good people … good people …’ chuckled the doctor, thinking about the invective of a little earlier, against the peon. ‘… When they’re not wielding a knife, certainly, they’re good people …’

  ‘… But I’ve never heard a thing …’ repeated the son. ‘… Besides, my mother’s stubborn: that’s for sure: A thousand times! I’ve told her. Keep someone in the house, at least at night. Keep a servant, a peasant, a dog, whatever you like … so at least there’s someone. She might still need help … might not feel well … She’s no spring chicken.

  ‘Keep just one servant, I say, rather than fifty clomping around the house. But someone who’s there at night. Peppa, the woman who washes the sheets, if you like, since you get along with her … oh! all the recruits in Pomerania, at inspection, would put on a pretty poor show: compared to Peppa …’

  ‘… That one! you just have to look at her …’

  ‘… That one there, to get rid of an intruder, she doesn’t need a gun, or a knife … She takes off a clog, and wham: the thief is well and truly done for …’ The whole idea of Peppa seemed to cheer him up. The Pirobutirro estate guarded, protected, overseen by Peppa: given the inadequacy of the wall, the absence of bottle-glass, and having exposed the whole treachery of the bollards, and the infamous Giuseppe. She, Peppa, who a little earlier had been numbered among the foul and worthless: now a Michelangelesque soul, and two-headed, with her clog of victory brandished and hurled in the night, her shoulder flashing, white, from the opening of her nightdress. ‘… The other day, her father’s now over seventy … and began quarrelling … down there … in their field … with those to do with the water … you know, those to do with the artesian well … those two cockroaches from the local council … searching for water that’s not there; … using the excuse that they fought in the war …

  ‘Well: she heard them arguing … and then saw them, too: from the window … as she was tidying my mother’s room … You should have seen her! She flew. The broody hen pouncing on the viper, all feathers …

  ‘Of course; of course … That would be the practical solution. But not a chance! Waste of breath. I’m all right just as I am, she says, I don’t need anyone. At night I prefer to sleep. And then if they strangle her in bed? I don’t want servants around the house, at night …

  ‘And in the daytime? …’: he counted them on his fingers. ‘… Peppa, Battistina, Pina the dwarf at the cemetery, Giuseppe, Giovanna, Beppina sans-culotte, Luigina, Marietta on temporary leave … I forgot Giovanna … ah! Gaetanina …’ he opened another two fingers; ‘one for the sheets, the other for the stockings, this one here for the lingerie … and one for the coloureds … or for the whitefish … and Luigina for the ironing … and Marietta for bottling tomato … Or with the excuse that she brings figs for her … which she doesn’t even eat …’ His face grew miserable at the hopelessness of the case, like a maniac, like at Cogoleto. ‘… But she gives them to the coffee-coloured grandson … Because he manages to read a few owls and cabbages with the x … hiboux, choux … to learn half a dozen words wrongly … With that fancy pronunciation of his … that grandson … It makes me feel ill just listening to it:

  ‘Maitre corbeau sur un arbre perché … Oh! nolite margaritas. La Fontaine for such an idiot. And my mother, my mother! She gives him figs, peaches, sweets … the dimwit. And she pets him. And the more stupid he is, the more she pets him … And chocolates. And she smiles at him … As though she were his mother … And biscuits, words of praise, and even the goodbye kiss at the end … because he’s been stupid, superbly stupid … and hasn’t understood a thing … and he suddenly asked to go for a wee-wee … and she waited, for him to get back from his wee-wee, patiently … and then they carried on trying to read … or rather, to get him to read … and “skier” immediately became “scier” … And mother began to laugh. And she was happy; happy!, with that stupid dimwit that had popped up from who knows what hole, after whatever grim mechanics …

  ‘He’d understood nothing, scratched his knees, picked his nose, stuck his pen in his ears … And instead of the caning, which he should have been given, there are sweets, figs, biscuits, praise … Until the beloved little grandson gets tummy-ache; and even the military doctor’s little grandson’s tummy-ache has to be paid for, poor darling!, even the little grandson’s funeral, the tomb, with the sweet little angel that lets a rose petal drop on to it, the funeral Mass … with eight priests … and the whole school behind, all of them …

  ‘If only he’d drop dead! Since I’ll have to pay …; pay … after the church bells, after the mortgage, after the subscription for the public commemoration of Caçoncellos … for the pension payment to Caçoncellos’s servant … She’ll have contributed as well, I imagine, to brighten up the old age of faithful Giuseppina … For Lukones here means holidays. And holidays mean paying out: and the Pirobutirros pay, and donate, and give, and give away … Away, away, away! All that can be given away, given away to others … to dear old others … and if the little grandson drops dead, after stuffing himself with figs and chocolates, I’ll be to blame. And I’ll have to pay out, as always. To pay for his, for the dimwit’s, place in Purgatory. For we will be to blame; we the Pirobutirro family. And therefore we’ll have to pay out. Since we’re to blame for everything. Everything is our fault … whatever happens … even in Tokyo … in Singapore … the fault is ours. The Pirobutirro, marquises of Lukones … And we’ll have to pay. Pay everything to everyone …’ He was lost once more in his delirium. Compulsive ideas encircled that cranium with their iron crown. Only a psychiatrist, and one who knew all about the torment of his wretched history, could have properly diagnosed the ailment. But the good doctor smiled: ‘Come, come … You should thank the Lord.’

  ‘… If someone gets impaled on the spikes of the gate, because he’s a thief, and was climbing the gate to get inside and steal, well … we’re the ones responsible! And we have to say sorry with cap in hand, and pay him a pension for his full natural life; because he’s stabbed himself in the scrotum coming to steal … Oh! Christ, for Christ … Whatever next, even the law, the whole mass of laws! …’

  This had actually happened, years before, behind the vegetable plot of one of the rustier villas, full of nettles and lizards, towards Iglesia, where some youngsters stealing figs had roped themselves together, one Sunday, over the spikes of the garden gate: and one of them, having impaled himself, had cut short his youth a few days later from the intervening tetanus infection. His disconsolate parents, after several years, had obtained three thousand pieces from the heirs of the owners – (who during the legal delays had, in due course, died) – on whom they’d sought to point the blame, and their lawye
r, Avvocato Buscagliene, had demanded eight thousand: and then, exasperated, nine thousand five hundred on the second appeal.

  ‘… But come, Señor Gonzalo!’ said the doctor. ‘Even the sun looks black to you!’

  ‘They are good people, they are good people. But aren’t you to blame for having a house? I say: a house? …’, he raised his finger under the doctor’s chin, ‘which they themselves covet? which everyone covets? Then you pay out. You pay the taxes, maintenance, caretaker, church bells, hearth tax, special supplement A, special contribution B, fire insurance, district pharmacy, parish church, rubbish collection, even though there’s no rubbish, no refuse to clear away … given that even that cesspool gets used up by José, even that … “his” cesspool … poured straight on to “his” tomatoes, on to “his” cabbages …’ The doctor stood listening, his head bowed, tapping himself.

  ‘And what the devil is this? … You even want exemption from taxes, now? … But if you actually read the Gospels, as you suggested a little earlier … It’s written … that taxes have to be paid …’

  ‘Certainly. I agree. Tithes are sacrosanct. Caesar sacrosanct … which means our beloved Congreso … But why the peon? why pay the caretaker? since he doesn’t take care of a single thing … not the border with Gaul, seeing that he went into hiding at Imatapulqui, nor the vegetable patch at home, where the only thing that ripens is hay … or onion seeds? The peon is not Caesar. He’s a swine. He steals my trousers, steals from my cesspool … And the murderer who climbs over the wall, or the gate, isn’t Caesar … He’s a thief. Why pay even the thief, why pay the person who comes to steal?, who while coming to steal impales his testimonials on the spikes? …

  ‘Pay the thief, pay the caretaker! If the thief steals, you pay all the same, since it’s no fault of the caretaker! If the caretaker steals, you thank the thief for being less thief than the caretaker … The important thing is that in some way you have to pay …’