“A Challenge” (“Una sfida”)

Translated by Aracely Medina Garcia and Michael Subialka

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “A Challenge” (“Una sfida”), tr. Aracely Medina Garcia and Michael Subialka. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2024.

“A Challenge” (“Una sfida”) is one of Pirandello’s late stories, first published in the Corriere della Sera on January 1, 1936 (just a few months before Pirandello’s unexpected death from illness). It was collected posthumously and added by the editor to the fifteenth Collection of Stories for a Year, A Single Day (Una giornata), which was published in Milan by Mondadori in 1937.

This story is one of the few Pirandello wrote that are set in New York City, a location he visited multiple times during his life. He went first in the 1920s as part of his theatrical company’s tours, but he returned in 1935, just before his death, in an effort to negotiate a film contract with MGM for the proposed adaptation of his theatrical masterpiece, Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore, 1921/25). It is also one of the few stories in which he focuses on Jewish characters, sitting alongside “A ‘Goy’” (“Un ‘goj’,” 1922). Yet this short tale picks up on numerous themes that run throughout Pirandello’s production, especially the idea of sudden, capricious decisions that lead to unexpected consequences and the ambivalent use of humor (Pirandello’s notion of umorismo) where comedy meets tragedy. The story’s narrative voice creates ambiguity for the reader, offering hypotheses about Jacob Shwarb’s seemingly irrational decision as well as about Jo Kurtz’s possible inner motivations; but it denies readers access to a clear, direct (omniscient) understanding of the “true” state of affairs driving both of the story’s primary two characters. The final result, which signals a humorous reversal, could seem reminiscent of earlier works, like “The Jar” (“La giara,” 1909, adapted for the stage in 1916) or “The License” (“La patente,” 1911), where a legalistic proceeding upends a hierarchical relation or validates a seemingly comical character. As such, the story is both in a foreign setting with characters who belong to an “other” group (Jews) but is also a repetition of familiar themes and ideas that span Pirandello’s long and prolific artistic career.

The Editors

Maybe Jacob Shwarb wasn’t thinking anything bad.[1] Only, perhaps, to blow up the whole world with dynamite. But it would have been bad, of course, to blow up only one. The whole world exploded with dynamite meant nothing at all. For what it’s worth, he thought it was convenient to have his forehead hidden under a large tuft of reddish hair.

A big tuft of hair. Hands buried in his trouser pockets. Unemployed worker.

He rebelled when his hair was shorn upon his admission to the Israel Zion Hospital in Brooklyn for a serious liver disease.[2] Without his hair anymore, he had the sensation as if his head had vanished. He searched his head with his hands. It no longer seemed like his anymore, and it made him furious.

He wanted to ask if with this arrogance that had been done to him, they weren’t treating him more like a life prisoner than a sick person.

For the sake of hygiene?

He didn’t give a damn about hygiene.

Oh, would you look at that!

Well at least in the absence of his hair, he still retained his large sloping eyebrows, always frowning, to nourish the rancor of his turbid eyes against everything and against life itself.

For the entire time he remained in the hospital, Jacob Shwarb could not say what color he actually was, whether more yellow or green, because of the liver disease which caused him endless torment and a mood that one can well imagine.

Terrible stomach pains.

It was summer, two months in a ward where all day and night the sick complained, and when they no longer complained it was a sign that they were dead; cravings; snorts; blankets fluttering now on one bed and now on another, or in a fit of exasperation were thrown into the air, and then immediately there was a hasty rush of nurses or nighttime patient sitters.[3]

Jacob Shwarb knew all those patient sitters one by one, and for each one he had a particular dislike. Most particular was that for a certain Jo Kurtz who sometimes, because of the annoyance he aroused in him, would even make him laugh; you know, that laugh a dog makes when it wants to bite.[4]

In fact, this Jo Kurtz had his own special way of being spiteful. He never talked if he wasn’t forced to. He wouldn’t do anything. He only smiled frigidly, a smile which, not being content to stretch the thin white lips of his mouth, also sharpened his pale gray eyes. And he always had his head leaning against one shoulder, a head of ivory without a hair; and his large washed hands were always almost hanging from his chest onto his long white shirt.

Maybe he didn’t understand how much and the amount of incompatibility there was between this perpetual smile of his and the continuous moans of the poor sick people, because it really wouldn’t make sense that if he understood this he could continue to smile like that. Unless it was that, unknown to the sick, all those cries of theirs had something comical and even pleasant to his ears, since they were in various tones with different intensity. Some from habit, others a way of venting or comforting themselves, and all in sum such that they composed a curious and amusing symphony for him.

Forced to keep watch the whole night, each person guards himself against sleep as best he can.

But then perhaps Jo Kurtz had reason to smile like this at his thoughts. He could also be in love, although he was late in age. And perhaps he abstracted himself from all those moans in a blissful silence that belonged only to his well-born soul.

Now, one night when the ward was unusually calm, and Jacob Shwarb alone suffered so much that he could no longer find rest for a moment in the bed that had known all his torments for two months, the guard on duty was this patient sitter Jo Kurtz.

With all the lamps turned off, except for the patient sitter’s, which was sheltered by a green mantle fan on the table of the back wall, bright moonlight enters from all the windows of the ward and in particular from the largest one, which was opened in the middle of the opposite wall.[5]

Holding back his spasms as much as possible, from his bed Jacob Shwarb observes Jo Kurtz sitting in front of the table with his face of ivory illuminated by the lamp; and as much as he hates humanity, he questions how he can smile like that. How can he remain so indifferent, standing guard in a hospital ward where a patient is struggling the way he is, with a sickness growing from point to point until almost making him crazy, crazy, crazy. Suddenly, who knows how, an idea pops into his head, that of seeing if Jo Kurtz would stay like this if he were to leave his bed and throw himself out of that open window at the end of the aisle.[6]

He still doesn’t see clearly how this idea popped into his head so suddenly: if it was more from the uncontainable exasperation of his suffering from that unbearable calm night in the ward, or more from the spite that Jo Kurtz inspires in him.

Up to the moment of leaving his bed, he still isn’t sure whether his true intention is to throw himself out the window or rather to test the indifference of Jo Kurtz, to challenge that smiling placidity because he desperately needed to provide himself an outlet through him – Kurtz, who certainly has the obligation to rush to restrain him, seeing him get out of bed without permission.

The fact is that Jacob Shwarb throws the covers in the air and jumps upright, explicitly issuing a challenge right under Jo Kurtz’s nose. But Jo Kurtz not only doesn’t move from the table, but he doesn’t seem bothered either.

In August it’s very hot. Kurtz could believe that the patient wants to get some air from the window.

Everyone knows that he, Jo Kurtz, is permissive and indulgent towards the sick people who transgress certain useless prescriptions from doctors.

Perhaps upon careful consideration one might discover in that smile of his that he would turn a blind eye even if he were to guess that the intention of the sick person was precisely to go and throw himself out of the window.

Does Jo Kurtz perhaps have the right to prevent him from doing so? What if the poor patient suffers so much that he cannot stand it anymore? If anything, he has only the duty because that patient is under his surveillance. But if one is able to go on supposing that the patient left his bed only for a moment of relief, then his conscience is clear and he can explain why he didn’t move. And besides, the patient will do what he wants: if he wants to commit suicide, then he can go on and do so. It’s his business.

Meanwhile Jacob Shwarb is expecting to be stopped before reaching the big window at the end of the hallway; he’s already almost there, and turns trembling with anger to look at Jo Kurtz. He sees him still there, sitting impassively at his table, and all of a sudden he feels as if he has been disarmed: he no longer knows whether to go on or to go back.

Jo Kurtz continues to smile at him, not to spite him, but to make him comprehend that he understands perfectly well that a sick person may have many reasons to need to leave their bed momentarily. It’s enough to ask for permission, even with a small sign. Now he could certainly interpret that by stopping to look at him, the patient had asked him for permission; he bows his head several times to tell him that he’s fine and signals him with his hand to go ahead, go ahead.

For Jacob Shwarb it’s the height of his derision, the most insolent response to his challenge. Roaring, he raises his fist, gnashes his teeth, runs towards the big window, and plummets down.

He doesn’t die. He breaks his legs; he breaks an arm, two ribs, and also seriously injures his head. But, gathered up and treated, not only were his wounds healed, but thanks to one of those miracles that certain violent assaults on the nerves can perform, his liver disease was also healed. He should thank God that, even at the cost of those wounds, falling so recklessly out the window saved him from the death that was perhaps reserved for him had he stayed and waited for it amidst the torments of the hospital. No sir. As soon as he’s recovered, he consults a lawyer and sues the Israel Zion Hospital to pay him twenty thousand dollars in damages for the injuries sustained in the fall. He has no other means of taking revenge on Jo Kurtz. The lawyer assures him that the hospital will pay and that Jo Kurtz will certainly be fired. In fact, if he happened to throw himself out of the window, the fault lies with the negligence and lack of supervision of the hospital.

The judge asks him: “But did someone grab you and force you to throw yourself out the window, perchance? Your act was voluntary.” Jacob Shwarb looks at the lawyer, and then responds to the judge:

“No sir, I was sure that he would have stopped me.”

“The hospital sitter?”

“Yes sir, it was his duty. Instead, he didn’t move. I waited for him to move. I gave him so much time that before I jumped, I turned around to look at him.”

“And what did he do?”

“Him? Nothing. As he always does, he smiled and, with his hand, told me ‘go ahead, go ahead’.”

In fact, even there in front of the judge Jo Kurtz is smiling. The judge is outraged by this and asks him if what Jacob Shwarb says is true.

“Yes, Your Honor,” responds Jo Kurtz, “but because I thought he wanted to get some air.”

The judge pounds his fist on the table.

“Ah, you believed that?”

And he condemns the Israel Zion Hospital to pay Jacob Shwarb twenty thousand dollars in damages.