Back to the Fields! (“Alla zappa!”)

Translated by Marella Feltrin-Morris

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “Back to the Fields!” (“Alla zappa!”), tr. Marella Feltrin-Morris. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2021.

Originally published in Il Marzocco (September 7, 1902), this story was later included in Pirandello’s collection Two-Faced Herm (Erma bifronte, Treves: Milan, 1906). In 1923, “Back to the Fields” was included in Stories for a Year as a part of the sixth Collection, In Silence (In silenzio), published by Bemporad.

This story dates to Pirandello’s earlier phase of prose writing, in which he was heavily influenced by Luigi Capuana and Giovanni Verga, masters of the realist style of Sicilian verismo. The naturalist tendencies here are focused on exploring both a vexing social problem as well as the protagonist’s emotions, highlighting a poor peasant in a way typical of social realism. Siroli, the peasant, may be uncultured, but he is nevertheless moved by a deep sense of justice and morality. In contrast, the Church appears here as less concerned with justice than upholding appearances, and the story can thus be grouped among those that address the hypocrisy or limits of religious morality as part of Pirandello’s anti-ecclesiastical stance. As timely now as then, it also speaks to the enduring reality of abuse at the hands of the clergy and Church strategies to avoid the repercussions. Pirandello’s interest in depicting a purer form of natural, “peasant” justice aligns with themes typical of realist prose as well as numerous other stories that Pirandello set in rural Sicily, such as his famous humorous tale, “The Jar” (“La giara”). The conjunction of rural justice and clerical hypocrisy also appears in stories including “Faith” (“La fede”), “This Year’s Mass” (“La messa di quest'anno”), “The Starling and the Angel One-Hundred-and-One” (“Lo storno e l'Angelo Centuno”).

The Editors

For over a month, old Siroli had been going around stunned by the tragedy that had befallen him, and could no longer fall asleep. That night, hearing the rain pouring down in torrents, he roused himself at last and said to his wife, who was lying next to him, sleepless and heavyhearted as he was:

“Tomorrow, God willing, we’ll break up the soil.”

At dawn, his three sons, worn out and jaundiced by malaria, could be seen, one next to the other, hoeing along with a couple of day laborers. Every now and then, one of them would stretch his back, grimacing with the pain of having bent down for so long, and wipe the sweat from his eyes with a large cotton handkerchief:

“There, there!” the day laborers would say. “After all, it’s not as if someone died!”

But the brother would shake his head, spit on his muddy, callous hands, and resume hoeing.

From the thick groves by the coast occasionally came something like a fierce lament. The father, old but still able-bodied, was there, pruning the fruit trees and accompanying his hard work with that lament.

The countryside, infested with malaria during the summer months, now seemed to be finally breathing, thanks to the abundant rain that, during the night, had filled the gorge. Indeed, after so many months of drought, the Drago river could be heard again gushing cheerfully. [1]

Siroli had been working these fields in the Sant’Anna valley of Agrigento as a tenant farmer for about forty years. [2] In the last several seasons, he and his wife had managed to defeat the disease and become immune to it. God willing, as years went by, his three sons who now suffered from it would become immune, too. Three more of their children, however, two boys and a girl, had died from it, and so had his eldest son’s wife. She was survived by him and their five-year-old daughter, but the little girl might yet succumb to the disease, too.

“God is our master,” the old man used to say, half-closing his eyes. “If He wants her, let Him take her. He was the one who put us on this earth, and on this earth we must toil and suffer.”

So blind was his faith that he would constantly bow down to the harshest misfortunes, regarding them as God’s will. It had taken a tragedy like the one that had struck him to beat him down and reduce him to the state he was now in.

Although he needed a lot of help in the countryside, he had offered one of his sons up to God. It was the dream of many farmers to have a son become a priest, and he had been able to make his dream come true—not out of ambition, but exclusively to acquire merit with God. By dint of much saving and all kinds of sacrifices made over the course of many years, he had been able to support his son’s studies at the seminary in a city nearby. At last, he had been rewarded with the consolation of seeing him ordained as priest and watching him celebrate his first mass.

The memory of that first mass had etched itself in the old man’s soul. On that day, in church, he had truly felt God’s presence. He could still see his son, garbed for the solemn occasion in a splendid chasuble covered with gold threads. Pale and jittery, his son moved slowly, carefully, on the altar step before the tabernacle; he had knelt and folded his immaculate hands in prayer. He had opened them again, turned to the congregation and, with his eyes half-closed, whispered the ritual prayers, then returned to the missal on the lectern. The mystery of the mass had never seemed so holy to the old man. He had followed it, trembling in awe, his soul almost estranged from his senses, feeling a lump in his throat as he reveled in that sweet agony. He had heard, next to him, his wife, his blessed old woman, cry with tenderness, and he, too, had started crying uncontrollably, in spite of himself, kneeling down so low that, when the bell rung at the highest moment of the consecration, his forehead brushed the floor.

At that moment, although he was old and had seen much in his life, he had felt almost like a child before his son, the priest. What was his life worth, no matter how virtuously he had lived it through all that misery and hardship, next to the purity of that son who was so close to God? And so he had begun to talk about him as if he were a saint whose words one could drink from, with one’s mouth open in bliss, every time he came to the countryside to visit from the Collegio degli Oblati where, thanks to his brilliance and zeal, he had become a mentor. [3]

The other sons, destined to toiling in the fields and to the constant threat of death, had showed no envy for their brother’s fortune. On the contrary, they had felt proud of him, the gem of their family. Through their illness, they had often found comfort in the thought that Giovanni was there praying for them.

The news that he had stained himself with a heinous crime against the poor little boys who had been entrusted to his care at the orphanage hit old Siroli’s rural home like a lightning bolt. Initially, his wife, in her ancestral innocence, hadn’t even been able to comprehend what her son had done; her old husband had had to explain it to her as best as he could. And then she had reacted with shock, horror, and almost disbelief:

“Giovanni? What are you saying?”

Siroli had gone to the city to obtain more substantial information, secretly hoping the whole thing might be mere slander. He had confronted a number of acquaintances, and they all, seeing him, had looked disturbed, almost repulsed, and had answered him harshly, tersely, avoiding his stare. He insisted on making one more stop to see Lobruno, the owner of the land where Siroli worked as a tenant farmer. Lobruno, a scheming town councilor who was chummy with everybody from the bishop to the prefect, had received him grudgingly, angrily even:

“Serves you right! Serves you right! A priest, huh? From the hoe, straight to the altar! Are you happy now? This is what you get, with your anxiousness to climb up at all costs, without preparation, without the necessary education!”

Later Lobruno calmed down and promised to do everything in his power to make sure the scandal was buried.

“Let me make it very clear: I’m only doing it for the sake of human decency! Only for the respect we all owe to religion! I’m not doing it for the sake of that pig, nor for you, either!”

The poor old man had returned to the countryside like a beaten dog. He was certain now that the crime was real and that Giovanni, his disgraced son, had fled, disappeared from the city, to avoid people’s fury. Siroli knew by then that, under the burden of the infamy brought upon the family by his son, he would never find any peace nor the courage to raise his eyes to look anyone in the face ever again.

Now, perched on a tree, he kept himself busy with pruning. No one could see him up there and, as he worked, he could finally cry. He hadn’t shed a tear since that day. He examined his irreproachable existence, as well as that of his old wife, and could not fathom how they had given birth to such a monster. How could he have been mistaken about his son for so many years, to the point that he had thought of him as a saint, and had decided to offer him up to God? It was for Giovanni’s sake that he had sacrificed his other children—kind, meek, devoted children, who now were hoeing over there, poor innocent creatures, still not fully recovered from the latest bout of malaria. Ah, God had been obscenely wronged by that monster, and would never, ever forgive. God’s curse would always be over his household. Men’s justice would get hold of that wretched being, drive him out of whatever place he had retreated to in order to hide his shame; and Siroli and his wife would die from the humiliation of knowing he had ended up in prison.

All of a sudden, while he was wrapped up in these bitter thoughts, he heard the voice of one of his children. It was Càrmine, the eldest:

“Papa! Come! He’s here!”

Siroli, startled, grabbed onto the branch of the tree where he was perched, and started trembling all over. Giovanni? Here? What did he want from him?

And how did he dare set foot again in his father’s house? Or look up into his mother’s eyes?

“Go!” he replied in a rage, shaking the tree branch. “Run and tell him to go away right now! I don’t want him in the house. I don’t want him here!”

Càrmine looked to his brothers for advice, then he headed towards the farm, motioning to his little orphaned niece, who had cheerfully brought the news that her uncle, the priest, had arrived, to run ahead.

In the courtyard, Càrmine found one of Lobruno’s watchmen sitting on the low wall by the door. The priest must have come with him.

“And your father?” asked the watchman, lifting his hand and holding up a little wooden rod with which, as he waited, he had been whipping a tiny weed that was growing among the pebbles of the courtyard.

“He doesn’t want to see him,” answered Càrmine. “And he doesn’t want him in the house. I’ve come to tell Giovanni.”

“Wait,” said the watchman again. “First go back to your father and tell him I need to talk to him on behalf of his master. Go!”

Càrmine opened his arms resignedly and went back. The watchman then called over the little girl, who had been looking on with surprise, unsure of what to make of all the mystery. Why wasn’t everybody celebrating her uncle’s arrival? The watchman locked her between his knees and muttered, smirking under his mustache:

“You stay here, doll, don’t go in. You’re a little one, too, and… one never knows!”

A short while later, Càrmine came back, followed by his two brothers.

“He’ll be here soon,” he announced to the watchman, and went with his brothers into the large, humid, smoky first-floor room.

On one side was the trough; a donkey was patiently chewing its ration of straw. Across from it was a large bed with iron feet that wobbled on the cobblestones of the sloping room. The three brothers slept there, but never all at the same time, because one of them would typically spend the night keeping guard outside. The rest of the room was crowded with farm implements. A wooden ladder went up to the loft, where old Siroli, his wife, and the little orphan slept.

Giovanni was sitting on the bed slats, hunched over the rolled-up mattress with his face buried in his arms. His old mother kept her eyes on him and wept, wept endlessly in silence, as if all of her heart, all of the life she had left to live, wanted to undo itself and dissolve in those tears.

Hearing people come in, the priest looked up and cast a sinister look around, then he buried his head in his arms again. For a moment his brothers got a glimpse of how his face had changed: he looked pale, with a scruffy beard he didn’t used to have. They stared at him for a while with a mixture of disgust and pity. They saw that his cassock was ripped in a few places. Then, looking down, they noticed the silver buckle of one of his shoes was missing.

Seeing the other three sons, the old mother burst out sobbing and covered her face with her hands.

“Ma’, be quiet, ma’!” said Càrmine, roughly, his voice shaking with emotion. He sat down on the chest by the bed next to his brothers and waited in silence for their father.

All three of them, as they sat in a row with their yellowed faces, their long, knitted black caps hanging behind their heads, had taken on the same expression.

Finally, the old man appeared in the courtyard, stooped, his hands behind his back, his eyes fixed on the ground. He also wore a cap similar to those of his sons, but tattered and turned greenish by the sun and the dust. He hadn’t shaved in a month, and he needed a haircut.

“Cheer up, Siroli!” exclaimed Lobruno’s watchman, pushing the little girl aside and getting up to approach him. “Cheer up, I say! It’s all fixed.”

Siroli stared at the watchman without saying anything, as if he hadn’t heard or understood, his eyes still bright but hardened by torment.

At that, the watchman, a big, burly man with a massive chest and a ruddy complexion, put his hand on Siroli’s shoulder in a gesture of cocky, somewhat teasing protection, and repeated:

“It’s all fixed—or healed, rather!” and he burst out in a vulgar laughter. When he regained his composure, he added: “When one has the luck of having masters who love us for our devotion and our honesty, certain… slip-ups, let’s say, can be remedied. After all, it’s minor stuff, you know what I mean? No harm done. Still, I didn’t let this innocent little one go in there. Better to be safe, huh?”

The old man restrained himself, though he was quivering with anger.

“Get on with it: what have you come to tell me?”

The watchman removed his hand from Siroli’s shoulder, folded it behind his back with the other, pushed his chest out, lifted his head up so he could tower over the old man, and blurted out:

“What I’m getting at is that your master, first of all out of respect for the habit that your son has defiled, but also out of mercy for you, entreated so much with the relatives of those poor little children that he convinced them to withdraw their lawsuit. The medical examination appears… favorable. Your son will leave for Acireale.” [4]

Old Siroli, who up to this point had listened staring fixedly at the ground, suddenly looked up:

“Acireale?”

“That’s right. Our bishop has set it all up with the bishop over there.”

“Set it all up?” asked the old man. “Set what up?”

“You know, regarding the… the whole mess. By God, don’t you get it?” exclaimed the watchman, growing impatient. “They’re turning a blind eye on it! It’s all over and done with.”

The old man clenched his fists and murmured, as his face turned pale:

“Is that what the bishop is doing?”

“That and more,” answered the watchman. “Your son will spend a year or two in Acireale atoning for his sin until people around here no longer bring up what happened. Then he’ll come back, and he’ll be able to say mass again, don’t worry.”

“He will?” screamed Siroli, pointing towards his house. “He will again touch the holy wafer, with those soiled hands?”

The watchman shrugged his shoulders with cheerful casualness.

“If Monsignor forgives—”

“Monsignor forgives, but I don’t!” retorted the old man, indignantly, hitting his hollowed chest with the palm of his gnarled hand. “You watch!”

He entered into the first-floor room, ran over to the bed where the priest was still sitting in the same position, grabbed him by the arm and yanked him up:

“Go upstairs, you pig! And get undressed!”

The priest, standing in the middle of the room with his cassock all crumpled up against his buttocks, revealing his calves, raised his arms to hide his face. The three brothers and their mother, who had remained sitting, looked in dismay from Giovanni to his father, whom they had never seen like that. The watchman witnessed the scene from the doorway.

“Go upstairs and get undressed!” repeated the old man.

As he said that, he pushed Giovanni up the wooden ladder. Then he turned to his wife, who was sobbing loudly, and ordered her to be quiet. The old woman immediately stopped and nodded several times, obediently. It was the first time her husband had ever raised his voice with her.

The watchman, bothered by all this, shrugged his shoulders and muttered from the doorway:

“But why, you old fool, if it’s all fixed?”

“You be quiet!” shouted the old man, heading straight towards him. “Go and tell Monsignor!”

Siroli slowly climbed up the wooden ladder. Upstairs, Giovanni had taken off his cassock and was sitting in his shirt sleeves, vest and breeches next to his father’s bed. As soon as he saw him, he hid his face in his hands.

The old man stared at him for a moment. Then he commanded:

“Rip off that buckle from your shoe!”

Giovanni bent down to comply. His father approached him, saw he still had his skullcap on, and yanked it off his head, along with a tuft of hair. Giovanni jumped up, enraged, but his father raised his hand with a threatening gesture and pointed to the ladder:

“Go downstairs and wait. There’s a hoe there. I’m showing you mercy, because you aren’t worthy even of that. Your brothers have been hoeing the fields, and you cannot work next to them. You will work alone, and your labor will be cursed by God!”

Once he was alone, old Siroli picked up the cassock, brushed it off, folded it carefully, and kissed it. He picked up the silver buckle from the floor and kissed it. He did the same with the skullcap. Then he opened an old, long fir wood chest that looked like a casket and that contained the clothes of his three dead children, preserved with loving devotion. He made the sign of the cross and put away, with them, the clothes of his other dead son—the priest.

He closed the lid of the chest, sat down on it, buried his face in his hands, and burst into tears.