The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories

by Jhumpa Lahiri

  Trachi seemed to calm down, ‘But his eyes were rolling around as if he were mad; and he seemed to be hearing voices.’ Suddenly, with a furious tug, Trachi pulled the chains from their wall mounts, and the end of one hit the blacksmith in the head, sending him to the floor in a faint. Trachi then threw himself against the door with all his weight, head first, his arms crossed over his head, and galloped off towards the hills while the four chains, still constricting his legs, whirled around, wounding him repeatedly.

  ‘What time did this happen?’ I asked, disturbed by a presentiment.

  The assistant hesitated: it was not yet night, but he couldn’t say precisely. But then, yes, now he remembered: just a few seconds before Trachi pulled the chains from the wall the time had rung from the bell-tower, and the boss said to him, in dialect so that Trachi wouldn’t understand: ‘It’s already seven o’clock! If all my clients were as currish as this one …’

  Seven o’clock!

  It wasn’t difficult, unfortunately, to follow Trachi’s furious flight; even if no one had seen him, there were conspicuous traces of the blood he had lost, and the scrapes made by the chains on tree trunks and on rocks by the side of the road. He hadn’t headed towards home, or towards the De Simones’: he had cleared the two-metre wooden fence that surrounds the Chiapasso property, and crossed the vineyards in a blind fury, making a path for himself through the rows of vines, in a straight line, knocking down stakes and vines, breaking the thick iron wires that held up the vine branches.

  He reached the barnyard and found the barn door bolted shut from the outside. He easily could have opened it with his hands; instead, he picked up an old thresher, weighing well over fifty kilos, and hurled it against the door, reducing it to splinters. Only six cows, a calf, chickens and rabbits were in the barn. Trachi left immediately and, still in a mad gallop, headed towards Baron Caglieris’s estate.

  It was at least six and a half kilometres away, on the other side of the valley, but Trachi got there in a matter of minutes. He looked for the stable: he didn’t find it with his first blow, but only after he used his hooves and shoulders to knock down many doors. What he did in the stable we know from an eyewitness, a stable boy, who, at the sound of the door shattering, had had the good sense to hide in the hay, and from there he had seen everything.

  Trachi hesitated for a moment on the threshold, panting and bloody. The horses, unsettled, shook their heads; tugging on their halters. Trachi pounced on a three-year-old white mare; in one blow he broke the chain that bound her to the trough, and dragging her by this same chain led her outside. The mare didn’t put up any resistance; strange, the stable boy told me, since she had a rather skittish and reluctant character, nor was she in heat.

  They galloped together as far as the river: here Trachi was seen to stop, cup his hands, dip them into the water, and drink repeatedly. They then proceeded side by side into the woods. Yes, I followed their tracks: into those same woods and along that same path, to that same place where Teresa had asked me to take her.

  And it was right there, for that entire night, that Trachi must have celebrated his monstrous nuptials. There I found the ground dug up, broken branches, brown and white horsehair, human hair and more blood. Not far away, drawn by the sound of her troubled breathing, I found the mare. She lay on the ground on her side, gasping, her noble coat covered with dirt and grass. Hearing my footsteps she lifted her head a little, and followed me with the terrible stare of a spooked horse. She was not wounded, but exhausted. She gave birth eight months later to a foal: in every way normal, I was told.

  Here Trachi’s direct traces vanish. But, as perhaps some may remember, over the following days the newspapers reported on a strange series of horse-rustlings, all perpetrated with the same technique: a door knocked down, the halter undone or ripped off, the animal (always a mare, and always alone) led into some nearby wood, and then found exhausted. Only once did the abductor seem to meet with any resistance: his chance companion of that night was found dying, her neck broken.

  There were six of these episodes, and they were reported in various places on the peninsula, occurring one after the other from north to south. In Voghera, in Lucca, near Lake Bracciano, in Sulmona, in Cerignola. The last happened near Lecce. Then nothing else; but perhaps this story is linked to a strange report made to the press by a fishing crew from Puglia: just off Corfu they had come upon ‘a man riding a dolphin’. This odd apparition swam vigorously towards the east; the sailors shouted at it, at which point the man and the grey rump sank under the water, disappearing from view.

  ‘Quaestio de Centauris’

  First published in Il Mondo (4 April 1961) under the title ‘Il centauro di Trachi’. It was then included in the collection Storie naturali (Einaudi, 1966).

  Tommaso Landolfi

  1908–79

  Landolfi was an aristocrat from the province of Caserta, once home to the Bourbon kings of Naples. He loved gambling and hated being photographed. He avoided literary events, granted very few interviews and insisted that his books’ flaps – precious commercial real-estate for most authors – be left blank. His work was just as eccentric; he eventually abandoned conventional forms altogether and played rigorously with language, manufacturing his own idiosyncratic lexicon. For this reason Landolfi can be grouped, in this anthology, along with authors like Gadda and Savinio: iconoclastic, verbally precocious, linked to Surrealism and experimentation. Landolfi’s writing, filled with archaic terms, can be challenging today even for an Italian reader. His creative output can be divided roughly into two phases, evolving from traditional narrative to deeply metaphysical texts, invented diaries and dialogues. An undisciplined student who nearly failed to finish high school, he excelled at learning languages and was a collector of grammars and dictionaries. A reader in French, Spanish, German and English, he also studied Arabic, Polish, Hungarian, Japanese, Swedish and was a lover in particular of the Russian language and its literature, writing his university thesis on the poetry of Anna Akhmatova. He also wrote a celebrated essay about the time Nikolai Gogol spent in Rome. The female protagonist of his first, fantastic novel, La pietra lunare (The Moonstone), published in 1939, is half-human, half-goat. His short stories are long, blasphemous, bitter, attuned to mystery and chance. This story, outlandish on every level, epitomizes Landolfi’s fascination for the circuitous and the irrational. It is an unreal and hyper-real commentary on the writing of literary biography and our ongoing obsession with writers’ lives. Landolfi received the Strega Prize in 1975 for a collection of short stories called A caso (At Random) and won the Viareggio Prize both in fiction and poetry.

  Gogol’s Wife

  Translated by Wayland Young

  At this point, confronted with the whole complicated affair of Nikolai Vassilevitch’s wife, I am overcome by hesitation. Have I any right to disclose something which is unknown to the whole world, which my unforgettable friend himself kept hidden from the world (and he had his reasons), and which I am sure will give rise to all sorts of malicious and stupid misunderstandings? Something, moreover, which will very probably offend the sensibilities of all sorts of base, hypocritical people, and possibly of some honest people too, if there are any left? And finally, have I any right to disclose something before which my own spirit recoils, and even tends towards a more or less open disapproval?

  But the fact remains that, as a biographer, I have certain firm obligations. Believing as I do that every bit of information about so lofty a genius will turn out to be of value to us and to future generations, I cannot conceal something which in any case has no hope of being judged fairly and wisely until the end of time. Moreover, what right have we to condemn? Is it given to us to know, not only what intimate needs, but even what higher and wider ends may have been served by those very deeds of a lofty genius which perchance may appear to us vile? No indeed, for we understand so little of these privileged natures. ‘It is true,’ a great man once said, ‘that I also have to pee, but for quite different
reasons.’

  But without more ado I will come to what I know beyond doubt, and can prove beyond question, about this controversial matter, which will now – I dare to hope – no longer be so. I will not trouble to recapitulate what is already known of it, since I do not think this should be necessary at the present stage of development of Gogol studies.

  Let me say it at once: Nikolai Vassilevitch’s wife was not a woman. Nor was she any sort of human being, nor any sort of living creature at all, whether animal or vegetable (although something of the sort has sometimes been hinted). She was quite simply a balloon. Yes, a balloon; and this will explain the perplexity, or even indignation, of certain biographers who were also the personal friends of the Master, and who complained that, although they often went to his house, they never saw her and ‘never even heard her voice’. From this they deduced all sorts of dark and disgraceful complications – yes, and criminal ones too. No, gentlemen, everything is always simpler than it appears. You did not hear her voice simply because she could not speak, or to be more exact, she could only speak in certain conditions, as we shall see. And it was always, except once, in tête-à-tête with Nikolai Vassilevitch. So let us not waste time with any cheap or empty refutations but come at once to as exact and complete a description as possible of the being or object in question.

  Gogol’s so-called wife was an ordinary dummy made of thick rubber, naked at all seasons, buff in tint, or as is more commonly said, flesh-coloured. But since women’s skins are not all of the same colour, I should specify that hers was a light-coloured, polished skin, like that of certain brunettes. It, or she, was, it is hardly necessary to add, of feminine sex. Perhaps I should say at once that she was capable of very wide alterations of her attributes without, of course, being able to alter her sex itself. She could sometimes appear to be thin, with hardly any breasts and with narrow hips more like a young lad than a woman, and at other times to be excessively well endowed or – let us not mince matters – fat. And she often changed the colour of her hair, both on her head and elsewhere on her body, though not necessarily at the same time. She could also seem to change in all sorts of other tiny particulars, such as the position of moles, the vitality of the mucous membranes and so forth. She could even to a certain extent change the very colour of her skin. One is faced with the necessity of asking oneself who she really was, or whether it would be proper to speak of a single ‘person’ – and in fact we shall see that it would be imprudent to press this point.

  The cause of these changes, as my readers will already have understood, was nothing else but the will of Nikolai Vassilevitch himself. He would inflate her to a greater or lesser degree, would change her wig and her other tufts of hair, would grease her with ointments and touch her up in various ways so as to obtain more or less the type of woman which suited him at that moment. Following the natural inclinations of his fancy, he even amused himself sometimes by producing grotesque or monstrous forms; as will be readily understood, she became deformed when inflated beyond a certain point or if she remained below a certain pressure.

  But Gogol soon tired of these experiments, which he held to be ‘after all, not very respectful’ to his wife, whom he loved in his own way – however inscrutable it may remain to us: he loved her, but which of these incarnations, we may ask ourselves, did he love? Alas, I have already indicated that the end of the present account will furnish some sort of an answer. And how can I have stated above that it was Nikolai Vassilevitch’s will which ruled that woman? In a certain sense, yes, it is true; but it is equally certain that she soon became no longer his slave but his tyrant. And here yawns the abyss, or if you prefer it, the Jaws of Tartarus. But let us not anticipate.

  I have said that Gogol obtained with his manipulations more or less the type of woman which he needed from time to time. I should add that when, in rare cases, the form he obtained perfectly incarnated his desire, Nikolai Vassilevitch fell in love with it ‘exclusively’, as he said in his own words, and that this was enough to render ‘her’ stable for a certain time – until he fell out of love with ‘her’. I counted no more than three or four of these violent passions – or, as I suppose they would be called today, infatuations – in the life (dare I say in the conjugal life?) of the great writer. It will be convenient to add here that a few years after what one may call his marriage, Gogol had even given a name to his wife. It was Caracas, which is, unless I am mistaken, the capital of Venezuela. I have never been able to discover the reason for this choice: great minds are so capricious!

  Speaking only of her normal appearance, Caracas was what is called a fine woman – well built and proportioned in every part. She had every smallest attribute of her sex properly disposed in the proper location. Particularly worthy of attention were her genital organs (if the adjective is permissible in such a context). They were formed by means of ingenious folds in the rubber. Nothing was forgotten, and their operation was rendered easy by various devices, as well as by the internal pressure of the air.

  Caracas also had a skeleton, even though a rudimentary one. Perhaps it was made of whalebone. Special care had been devoted to the construction of the thoracic cage, of the pelvic basin and of the cranium. The first two systems were more or less visible in accordance with the thickness of the fatty layer, if I may so describe it, which covered them. It is a great pity that Gogol never let me know the name of the creator of such a fine piece of work. There was an obstinacy in his refusal which was never quite clear to me.

  Nikolai Vassilevitch blew his wife up through the anal sphincter with a pump of his own invention, rather like those which you hold down with your two feet and which are used today in all sorts of mechanical workshops. Situated in the anus was a little one-way valve, or whatever the correct technical description would be, like the mitral valve of the heart, which, once the body was inflated, allowed more air to come in but none to go out. To deflate, one unscrewed a stopper in the mouth, at the back of the throat.

  And that, I think, exhausts the description of the most noteworthy peculiarities of this being. Unless perhaps I should mention the splendid rows of white teeth which adorned her mouth and the dark eyes which, in spite of their immobility, perfectly simulated life. Did I say simulate? Good heavens, simulate is not the word! Nothing seems to be the word, when one is speaking of Caracas! Even these eyes could undergo a change of colour, by means of a special process to which, since it was long and tiresome, Gogol seldom had recourse. Finally, I should speak of her voice, which it was only once given to me to hear. But I cannot do that without going more fully into the relationship between husband and wife, and in this I shall no longer be able to answer to the truth of everything with absolute certitude. On my conscience I could not – so confused, both in itself and in my memory, is that which I now have to tell.

  Here, then, as they occur to me, are some of my memories.

  The first and, as I said, the last time I ever heard Caracas speak to Nikolai Vassilevitch was one evening when we were absolutely alone. We were in the room where the woman, if I may be allowed the expression, lived. Entrance to this room was strictly forbidden to everybody. It was furnished more or less in the Oriental manner, had no windows and was situated in the most inaccessible part of the house. I did know that she could talk, but Gogol had never explained to me the circumstances under which this happened. There were only the two of us, or three, in there. Nikolai Vassilevitch and I were drinking vodka and discussing Butkov’s novel. I remember that we left this topic, and he was maintaining the necessity for radical reforms in the laws of inheritance. We had almost forgotten her. It was then that, with a husky and submissive voice, like Venus on the nuptial couch, she said point-blank: ‘I want to go poo poo.’

  I jumped, thinking I had misheard, and looked across at her. She was sitting on a pile of cushions against the wall; that evening she was a soft, blonde beauty, rather well covered. Her expression seemed commingled of shrewdness and slyness, childishness and irresponsibility. As for Gogol,
he blushed violently and, leaping on her, stuck two fingers down her throat. She immediately began to shrink and to turn pale; she took on once again that lost and astonished air which was especially hers, and was in the end reduced to no more than a flabby skin on a perfunctory bony armature. Since, for practical reasons which will readily be divined, she had an extraordinarily flexible backbone, she folded up almost in two, and for the rest of the evening she looked up at us from where she had slithered to the floor, in utter abjection.

  All Gogol said was: ‘She only does it for a joke, or to annoy me, because as a matter of fact she does not have such needs.’ In the presence of other people, that is to say of me, he generally made a point of treating her with a certain disdain.

  We went on drinking and talking, but Nikolai Vassilevitch seemed very much disturbed and absent in spirit. Once he suddenly interrupted what he was saying, seized my hand in his and burst into tears. ‘What can I do now?’ he exclaimed.

  ‘You understand, Foma Paskalovitch, that I loved her?’

  It is necessary to point out that it was impossible, except by a miracle, ever to repeat any of Caracas’s forms. She was a fresh creation every time, and it would have been wasted effort to seek to find again the exact proportions, the exact pressure, and so forth, of a former Caracas. Therefore the plumpish blonde of that evening was lost to Gogol from that time forth forever; this was in fact the tragic end of one of those few loves of Nikolai Vassilevitch, which I described above. He gave me no explanation; he sadly rejected my proffered comfort, and that evening we parted early. But his heart had been laid bare to me in that outburst. He was no longer so reticent with me, and soon had hardly any secrets left. And this, I may say in parenthesis, caused me very great pride.