“A Call to Duty” (“Richiamo all’obbligo”)

Translated by Julianne VanWagenen

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “A Call to Duty” (“Richiamo all’obbligo”), tr. Julianne VanWagenen. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2022.

First published in the periodical Il Ventesimo on June 10, 1906, “A Call to Duty” was then included in the volume Tercets (Terzetti; Milan: Treves, 1912) before Pirandello added it to the eleventh Collection of Stories for a Year, The Jar (La giara, 1928).

This short story examines a “typical” topic from 19th-century realism but applies both a new narrative lens as well as the outlook of Pirandello’s distinctive vision of humor (umorismo) to change our engagement with both the story and its characters. In some sense a typical account of a love triangle and the jealousies and plots born of it, at the same time the story depicts the ways in which the protagonist hides his own affair behind the appearance of wanting to help others and thus illustrates the ways in which we (mis-)represent ourselves to others, and even to ourselves. The story thus contains elements of criticism of the social restrictions and limitations we impose on our relationships as well as the ways in which we deceive society along with ourselves. The dramatic structure of the narrative uses the fragmented communication of partial information, tethered to the self-representation of the protagonist, as a way to only gradually allow the reader to understand the dynamics of the relationship at play – a technique that Pirandello would develop and perfect in numerous other works across genres, from well-known plays like Right You Are (If You Think So) (Così è (se vi pare), 1917) and Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore, 1921) to modernist novels like The Late Mattia Pascal (Il fu Mattia Pascal, 1904) and Shoot! (Si gira…, 1916). We might think of this as a poetics of confusion that Pirandello liked to deploy to achieve his aims. Likewise, he blends elements of tragedy and farce, depicting the protagonist and other characters in an ironic way that simultaneously invites laughter and compassionate reflection on their suffering. Indeed, Pirandello himself later defined the story (when he adapted it for the stage) as “a tragedy drowned in farce” (“una tragedia annegata nella farsa”).This story had a long afterlife in Pirandello’s corpus, as he adapted it into a theatrical work, Man, Beast, and Virtue (L’uomo, la bestia e la virtù), which premiered on May 2, 1919 in Milan. The play fits with the teatro grottesco (grotesque theater) movement of the time in its farcical exaggerations.

While the play’s initial reception was rocky, it eventually became one of the mainstays of Pirandello’s dramatic corpus, being restaged throughout Italy and the world. Indeed, the play was in turn later adapted into a film of the same name in 1953, directed by Stefano Vanzina (Steno) and featuring Orson Welles alongside the famous Italian comedic actor Totò.

The Editors

Paolino Lovico threw himself down,[1] exhausted, on a stool in front of Pulejo Pharmacy in Marina Square.[2] He looked inside at the counter and, drying the sweat that ran down his flushed face, he asked Saro Pulejo:[3]

“Has he been in yet?”

“Gigi? No. But it won’t be long. Why?”

“Why? Because I need him! Because… You’re so nosy!”

He left the handkerchief spread on his head, leaned his elbows on his knees, chin in hands, and remained there looking at the ground morosely, with his brows knitted. Everyone knew him there in Marina Square. A friend passed:

“Hey, Paoli?”

Lovico lifted his eyes and lowered them again grumbling:

“Leave me alone!”

And another friend:

“Paoli, what’s wrong?”

This time Lovico ripped the handkerchief from his head and sat almost facing the wall.

“Paoli, do you not feel well?” Saro Pulejo asked him from the counter.

“Oh, holy hell!” Paolino Lovico snapped as he dashed into the pharmacy. “What the devil does it matter to you, can you tell me that? Who asked you? Are you sick, are you well, what’s wrong, what’s not wrong? Leave me alone!”

“Geez,” Saro said. “Did a tarantula bite you?[4] You asked about Gigi, and I thought that…”

“Am I the only person on the face of the earth?” Lovico yelled with his arms in the air and his eyes popping out of his head. “Can’t I have a sick dog? A turkey with a cough? Mind your own business, all of you, for the love of God and all His saints!”

“Oh, here comes Gigi!” Saro said, laughing.

Gigi Pulejo hurried in, headed towards the wall cubbies to see if there were any messages for him.

“Hi, Paoli!”

“Are you in a hurry?” the frowning Paolino Lovico asked without responding to his greeting.

“Yes, a big hurry,” Doctor Pulejo sighed, pushing his hat back on his head and fanning his forehead with a handkerchief. “Recently, my dear man, there’s been a bad business about.”

“You don’t say?” Paolino Lovico sneered angrily with his fists extended at his sides. “Which epidemic is it, then? a cholera outbreak? the bubonic plague? some pestilence that’ll carry us all away? You have to listen to me! Listen: all deaths being equal, I’m right here in front of you! Mine takes precedence. Hey, Saro, don’t you have anything to grind in your mortar?”

“Nothing, why?”

“Okay then, let’s get out of here!” Lovico said, grabbing Gigi Pulejo by the arm and dragging him outside. “I can’t talk in here!”

“Is it a long story?” the doctor asked him as they walked.

“Very long!”

“My dear man, I’m sorry, but I don’t have the time.”

“You don’t have the time? You know what I’ll do? I’ll throw myself under the tram, I’ll break a leg, and it’ll force you to spend half your day with me. Where do you have to go now?”

“My first stop is nearby, Butera Street.”[5]

“I’ll accompany you,” Lovico said. “You go up to your appointment; I’ll wait for you downstairs, and we’ll keep talking afterwards.”

“Well, so what the devil is wrong?” Doctor Pulejo asked him, stopping a moment to observe him.

Paolino Lovico opened his arms, and, as the doctor gazed at him, he bent at the knees, relaxed his entire disheveled little body, and replied:

“My dear Gigino, I’m a dead man!”

And his eyes filled with tears.

“Go on, go on,” the doctor encouraged him. “Let’s have it, what happened?”

Paolino took a few steps, then he stopped again and, taking Gigi Pulejo by the sleeve, he started mysteriously by saying:

“I am talking to you as a brother, do you hear! Actually, no, a doctor is like a confessor, isn’t that so?”

“That’s right. We also keep professional confidentiality.”

“Good. Then I’m telling you this under the seal of confession, as if to a priest.”

He placed his hand on his stomach and, with a penetrating glance, added solemnly:

“To the tomb, eh?”

Then, opening his eyes wide and uniting his thumb and index finger, almost as if to weigh the words he was about to say, he whispered:

“Petella has two houses.”[6]

“Petella?” Gigi Pulejo asked, bewildered. “Who is Petella?”

“Petella the captain, by God!” burst out Lovico. “Petella of the shipping company, NGI.”

“I don’t know him,” Doctor Pulejo said.

“You don’t know him? So much the better! But, to the tomb anyways, eh! Two houses,” he repeated with the same grave and melancholy tone. “One here and one in Naples.”

“And so?”

“What! That doesn’t seem important?” Paolino Lovico asked, visibly agitated by the anger that devoured him. “A married man, taking cowardly advantage of his job as a seaman to set up another house in another town, that doesn’t seem like much to you? It’s sickening, by God!”

“It is sickening, quite. Did I say otherwise? But what do you care? What do you have to do with it?”

“What do I care? What have I to do with it?”

“Sorry, but are you a relative of Petella’s wife or something?”

“No!” Paolino Luvico yelled with blood rising in his eyes. “She’s a poor woman, who’s suffering like hell! An honest woman, got it? Betrayed in such a disgraceful way, don’t you see? By her own husband. Do you need to be her relative for that to get you stirred up?”

“But what do you want me to do about it?” Gigi Pulejo asked, shrugging his shoulders.

“If you won’t let me explain, for God’s sake! Jesus Christ!” Lovico huffed. “Aren’t you hot? I’m dying. That dear man, Petella, that oh-so-dear Petella doesn’t content himself with cheating on his wife, with having another home in Naples; he has three or four kids there, with that lady, and one here with his wife. He doesn’t want any more! But the ones over there, you must understand, aren’t legitimate: if he has some more and they start to be a nuisance to him, he can ditch them no problem. Whereas here, with his wife, he wouldn’t be able to get rid of a legitimate child. And so, what does he do, the dirty rascal? (Oh, this has been going on for two years, you know, this whole thing!) What he does is, on the days that he disembarks here, he finds the smallest pretext to fight with his wife, and at night he locks himself up to sleep alone. The next day he departs again, end of story. For two years it’s been going on!”

“That poor woman!” Gigi Pulejo exclaimed with a look of commiseration that can’t hide a smile. “But what have I, sorry… I still don’t understand.”

“Listen, my dear Gigino,” Lovico picked up again in a new tone, draping his arm around him. “I have been teaching Latin to Petella’s son for four months. He’s 10 years old and in 6th grade.”[7]

“Ah,” replied the doctor.

“If you knew how much pity that disgraced woman has inspired in me!” Lovico went on. “How many tears the poor thing has shed, how many tears… And how good she is! And she’s even pretty, you know? If she were ugly, I’d understand, but she’s beautiful! To get treated that way, betrayed, scorned and discarded like an old rag. I’d like to see who could have endured it! Who wouldn’t have rebelled! And who could blame her? She’s an honest woman, a woman who absolutely needs saving, my dear Gigino! Don’t you understand? She finds herself in a horrifying condition now. She’s desperate!”

Gigi Pulejo stopped walking and looked sternly at Lovico.

“No way, pal!” he said to him. “I don’t do that sort of thing. I want nothing to do with breaking the law.”

“You imbecile!” Paolino Lovico snapped. “Now what are you thinking? What do you think I want from you? Who do you take me for? Do you think I have no morals? That I’m a scoundrel? That I want your help to…. Oh! It makes me sick, how horrible, just thinking of it!”

“Well, what the devil do you want from me then? I don’t understand.” Doctor Pulejo howled, losing his patience.

“I want what’s fair!” Paolino Lovico yelled back at him. “I want what’s right! I want Petella to be a good husband and not to close the door in his wife’s face when he disembarks from his ship!”

Gigi Pulejo burst out in a resounding laugh.

“And what… and what do… and what do you think… ohhhhh my… ha ha ha… you think… you think that I… puh… puh… poor Pet… ha ha ha… you can lead a horse… you can lead a horse to water… ohhhh ha ha ha…”[8]

Paolino Lovico was trembling all over and shaking his fists. “What’s so funny, what’s so funny?! You animal!” he bellowed. “There’s a tragedy waiting to happen, and you laugh? There’s a scoundrel out there who doesn’t want to perform his duty, and you laugh? A woman’s honor and life threatened, and you laugh? And I won’t even get started about myself! I’m a dead man, I’ll throw myself into the sea if you won’t help me, do you understand that?”

“But how can I help you?” Pulejo asked, still unable to contain his laughter.

Paolino Lovico stopped in the middle of the street with an air of determination and took the doctor firmly by the arm.

“Do you know what will happen?” he said to him grimly. “Petella will arrive tonight; he will depart tomorrow morning for the Ligurian Riviera; then he goes to Izmir; and he’ll be away a month. There’s no time to lose! It’s now or never! For goodness’ sake, save me Gigino! Save her, that poor martyr! You must have a way. You must have a solution… Don’t laugh, for Christ’s sake, or I’ll throttle you! Or laugh even, laugh if you want, at my desperation, but help me… a solution… some way… some medicine…”

Gigi Pulejo had arrived at the house on Butera Street where he had his first visit. As best he could, he held back his laughter and said:

“So, you want to stop the captain from finding some reason to pick a fight with his wife tonight?”

“Exactly!”

“For morality’s sake, is that right?”

“For morality’s sake. Are you still joking about this?”

“No no, I’m being serious now. Listen, I’m going up. You go back to the pharmacy, go to Saro, and wait for me there. I’ll arrive shortly.”

“But what are you going to do?”

“Leave it to me!” the Doctor assured him. “Go to Saro and wait for me.”

“Hurry up, okay?” Lovico yelled after him with pleading hands.

By sunset, Paolino was at the Port waiting for Captain Petella to arrive on the Segesta.[9] He wanted to see him, at least from afar, though he didn’t know why exactly; to get a sense of his mood and send in his wake a string of curses.

After his assault on Doctor Pulejo and the help he managed to extract from him, Paolino hoped that the agitation that had gripped him since the morning would cease at least a bit. Nonsense! Having brought a certain mysterious container of cream-filled pastries to Mrs. Petella (since the captain loved sweets) and having then left her house, he’d started aimlessly roaming the streets, and his agitation had only grown as he walked.

And now? Evening had arrived. He would have liked to go to bed as late as possible. But he soon tired of wandering the city, with his agitation exacerbated by the fear of picking a fight with one of his countless acquaintances, if any of them got the villainous idea to approach him.

Because Paolino had the misfortune of being “an open book.” Of course! And this transparency of his came across as hilarious to all those hypocrites in the world who could armor themselves with lies. It seemed that a clear and open aspect, one that revealed even its most miserable and agonizing passions, had the power to provoke laughter in those who either had never experienced such passions or who were so used to masking their feelings that they didn’t recognize them any longer in a poor, unlucky guy like him who didn’t know how to hide and control them.

He holed up at home; he threw himself, fully dressed, on his bed.

How pale she was. How pale that poor woman was when he’d brought her the box of pastries! So pale and with those frightened eyes, her gaze so agonized, wasn’t she truly lovely…

“Smile, dear!” he had told her, his throat tight from holding back tears. “Do something nice with your hair, for heaven’s sake! Put on that Japanese silk blouse that suits you so well…. And above all, I’m begging you, don’t let him find you like this, as if it were a funeral… Take heart! Have you prepared everything nicely? Make sure not to give him any reason to complain! Courage, my dear, I’ll see you tomorrow! We’ll hope for the best… Don’t forget, for goodness’ sake, to hang the kerchief as a sign, from that twine there, in front of the window in your bedroom. Tomorrow morning my first thought will be to come here to look for it… Let me see that sign, my love, let me see it!”

And before leaving, he had used his turquoise pencil to place an ‘A’ and an ‘A+’[10] in the translation notebook of that knucklehead son of theirs, who became like one possessed when he heard Latin.

“Nonò, show this to your dad… Your dad will be so happy! Keep going like this, dear lad, keep going like this and, in a few years, you’ll know Latin better than a goose at the Capitoline Hill. Those geese, Nonò, made the Gauls flee, did you know that?[11] Long live Papirius! Let’s be happy! Happy, I say! We all must be happy this evening, Nonò! Your dad’s coming home! Be good and be happy, Nonò! Cleaned up and composed! Let me see your nails… Are they clean? Good boy! Be careful not to get them dirty! Long live, Papirius, Nonò, long live Papirius!”

The pastries… If that idiot Pulejo was pulling his chain? No, no, it couldn’t be. He’d made him understand the gravity of the situation. To trick him would have been too cruel for words. Then again… then again…. then again… if the remedy wasn’t as effective as he’d assured him it was?

The disregard, no, the disdain that man had for his wife, made his blood boil as if he had been directly offended himself. But of course! This woman so pleased Paolo Lovico, she not only pleased him but he felt her so desirable and deserving of love. How could it be that this woman didn’t count for anything to that philanderer? How could it be that he, Paolo Lovico, was so happy with another man’s rejects, with a woman who was worth nothing to another man. Oh, was it possible that that other woman in Naples was somehow better? More beautiful than Petella’s wife? He would have liked to see her! Put them next to each other, the two women, and then show them to him and scream right in his face:

“Ah, so you prefer that other woman? Well, that’s because you’re an undiscerning animal without any taste! It’s not because your wife isn’t worth 100,000 times more than her! Just look at her! Look at her closely! How can you have the heart not to touch her? You don’t understand the finer things… you don’t understand delicate beauty… the gentleness of melancholic grace! You’re a beast, you’re a pig, and you just can’t understand these things; so, you disdain them. So what, you want to compare these two? An unremarkable shrew with a refined lady, with an honest woman?”

Aah, what a horrible night it was for him! He didn’t get a minute’s rest…

When it finally seemed to him that dawn was on its way, he couldn’t stay still any longer.

Mrs. Petella had a separate bed from her husband, in another room: therefore, she might have been able to hang the kerchief from the twine on the window frame, even before morning, so as to relieve his anguish as soon as possible. She must have figured that he wouldn’t have been able to close his eyes even a wink that night, and as soon as dawn appeared, he’d have come by to check.

These were his thoughts as he ran to the Petellas’ house. Seduced into belief by ardent desire, he was so sure he’d find the sign on the window that, when it wasn’t there, it felt like someone had died. His legs gave out beneath him. Nothing! Nothing! And what a mournful aspect those closed shutters had…

A wild desire suddenly arose from deep within him: to go inside, storm into Petella’s bedroom, and strangle him in bed!

And as if he really had gone in and committed the crime, he suddenly felt exhausted, spent, emptied out. He tried to think positively; he thought maybe it was still early; maybe he expected too much, counting on her to get up in the middle of the night and hang the sign so he could find it at dawn; maybe she hadn’t been able to… who knows!

Buck up, it wasn’t time to despair yet… he’d have to keep waiting. But there at the house, no…. To wait there, every minute, an eternity… His legs though…. His legs, he could no longer feel them!

Luckily, turning down the first alleyway he came to, he saw a little café open just ahead, a hole-in-the-wall type place for workers headed out early to the nearby shipyard. He went in and let himself collapse onto a wooden bench.

It was empty; he didn’t even see the owner; it was dark in the back, but he heard a bustle and chatter; perhaps they were just turning on the stove.

When, soon after, a big man in shirt sleeves showed up to ask him what he would like, Paolino Lovico turned a stunned gaze to him and said to him menacingly:

“A handkerch… that is, I mean… a coffee! Make it strong, very strong!”

He was served immediately. But of course! He spilled half of it on himself and the other half spurted from his mouth as he jumped to his feet. Good God! It was boiling.

“What happened, mister?”

“Aaaaaah…” Lovico gasped with his eyes and mouth wide open.

“Some water, some water…” the barista suggested. “Here, have a little water!”

“And my pants?” Paolino groaned, looking down at himself.

He reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, wetted it a bit in the water glass, and started to wipe aggressively at the stain. How chilly his thigh would be now!

He held the handkerchief out in front of him and looked at it; he paled, threw some money down on the tray, and hurried out. As soon as he turned out of the alley though, boom! Right in front of his face, Captain Petella.

“Ohhh, Mr. Lovico, what brings you to these parts?”

“Yes, I… I…” Paolo Lovico babbled without a drop of blood left in his veins. “I… I got up early… and…”

“A little morning stroll?” Petella said, finishing the phrase. “Good for you! Worry-free… Nothing to stop you… Freedom! Bachelor life!”

Lovico searched deeply in the man’s eyes to discover if… But the fact alone that the brute was out at that hour, with a ruffled and blustery air about him… ah, the wretch! He must certainly have fought with his wife again the night before! (I’m going to kill him! Lovico thought, I swear to God, I am going to kill him!) Meanwhile, with a smile:

“I see you’re also…”

“Me?” Petella grunted. “What?”

“I mean, at this hour…”

“Ah, why do you find me out so early? What a night I had, my dear man! The heat, perhaps… I don’t know!”

“Didn’t… didn’t you… didn’t you sleep well?”

“I didn’t sleep well at all!” Petella yelled, exasperated. “And you know? When I don’t sleep… When I don’t get enough rest… I get angry!”

“And how… I’m sorry… how is that the fault of….” Lovico went on babbling, as his body trembled and his face smiled, “how is that the fault of others?”

“Others?” Petella asked confused. “What have others got to do with it?”

“But… if you say that you get angry? Who do you get angry with? Who do you take it out on when it’s hot?”

“I take it out on myself, I take it out on the weather, I take it out on everyone!” Petella exploded. “I want air… I’m used to the sea… and the land… my dear man, especially in the summer, I really can’t handle the land…. The house… the walls… all the nuisances… the women.”

(I’ll kill him! I swear to God, I’m going to kill him! Lovico said to himself with a shudder.) And with the smile unchanged on his face:

“Even the women?”

“Ah, you know? With women… really… You travel… you spend a lot of time apart… I’m not talking about now that I’m old… But when I was young… Women! But I’ve always had this going for me, you know? When I want it, I want it… when I don’t, I don’t. I’ve always been the one in control.”

“Always?...” (I’ll kill him!)

“It’s always when I want it, got it? Not her, eh? Does she always submit willingly? A small smile, a hand gesture… a demure air, a bashfulness… tell me, eh? Tell me the truth…”

Lovico stopped walking and looked him straight in the face.

“If I’m being honest? If I had a wife…” Petella burst out laughing.

“But we’re not talking about wives now! What have wives got to do with this? Women! Women!”

“And aren’t wives women? What are wives then?”

“Well, they are women too… sometimes!” Petella exclaimed. “But, in any case, you don’t have a wife, my dear man; and I wish for your own wellbeing that you never have one. Because wives, wives you know…”

And with this, he took Lovico by the arm and went on talking and talking. Lovico trembled. He looked at his face, he looked at the dark circles under his puffy eyes, it could be… eh, it could be that his eyes were in such a state because he hadn’t been able to sleep. And now it seemed to him from a few of Petella’s words that one could reason that the woman was saved, but then, others filled him with doubt and desperation. And this torture lasted an eternity because Petella was in the mood to walk, the brute, and he dragged Lovico all along the seashore. Finally, he turned to head home.

I’m not leaving him! Lovico thought to himself. I’m going home with him and, if he hasn’t done his duty, then this day will be our last, for all three of us!

He was so fixated on this grim thought, the anger and violence of his all-consuming nervous energy had him so tense, that he felt his limbs simply melt away, fall to pieces, as soon as – having turned the corner onto their street and raised his eyes to the window of the Petella home – he saw hanging from the twine, oh God, oh God, oh God, one… two… three… four… five handkerchiefs!

He wrinkled his nose, opened his mouth, reeling, he exhaled an ‘aaaaah’ in throes of joy that choked him.

“What’s wrong?” Petella yelled at him as he held him up. And Lovico:

“Oh, dear Captain! Oh, my dear Captain, thank you! Thank you! Ahhh, it has been a delight for me… this… this lovely walk… but I’m tired… I’m dead tired… I’m falling down, really falling down… Thank you, I thank you with all my heart, dear Captain! I’ll see you later! Have a safe trip, eh? I’ll see you later! Thank you, thank you…”

And, as soon as Petella was inside, he took to the street, running, jubilant, exultant, tittering, and with eyes that were luminous, cheerful, expressive, as he held up the five fingers of his hand to all those he passed.