“Berecche and the War” (“Berecche e la guerra”)
Translated by Julie Dashwood
How to cite this work:
Pirandello, Luigi. “Berecche and the War” (“Berecche e la guerra”), tr. Julie Dashwood. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2021.
This long story has a complex publication history, as the eight chapters that make up its final form were written and published in different moments and only later collected into a single entity. The first two chapters, “The Beer-House” (“La birreria”) and “In the Evening on the Way Home” (“Di sera, per via”), were first published together in the Rassegna contemporanea (September 25, 1914) under the title “Another Life” (“Un’altra vita”). The following year, five more of the present chapters were added together and published as parts two and three of the story in one of Pirandello’s collections, Weeds from Our Garden (Erba del nostro orto; Milan: Studio Editoriale Lombardo, 1915): the first three were grouped together with the title “Little History and Big History” (“La piccola e la grande storia”), comprising the chapters currently titled “The War on the Map” (“La Guerra sulla carta”), “The War in the Family” (“La Guerra in famiglia”), and “The War in the World” (“La Guerra nel mondo”), currently chapters three through five of the collection; what are currently chapters seven and eight, “Berecche Reasons” (“Berecche ragiona”) and “In the Dark” (“Nel bujo”), were published together as “In the Dark” (“Nel bujo”) in the same collection. So by 1915 seven out of the eight current chapters had been published, but grouped differently into three parts. These three parts were subsequently collected together with another story four years later, adding in the short story “Fragment of the Chronicle of Marco Leccio and His War on Paper at the Time of Europe’s Great War” (“Frammento di cronaca di Marco Leccio e della sua guerra sulla carta nel tempo della grande guerra europea”); these were published as a volume with the title Berecche and the War (Milan: Facchi, 1919). What is currently chapter six, “Mr. Livo Truppel” (“Il signor Livo Truppel”) derives from the “Fragment of the Chronicle of Marco Leccio…”, but it did not appear as a chapter in the collection with this title until Pirandello returned to the story and collected it in its definitive form as a volume of Stories for a Year in 1934 (Collection 8, Berecche and the War; Milan: Mondadori). The complete text of “Fragment of the Chronicle of Marco Leccio…” was included posthumously in the Appendix of Stories for a Year in 1938. So, in sum, the story was written in pieces and gradually stitched together into the complete version the reader finds here, accumulating material throughout the years of the Great War and compiled shortly after it ended.
Pirandello’s own involvement in the war was very much similar to that of his protagonist Berecche, here: he saw it from the sidelines, as he was too old to participate actively. He was, however, a proponent of Italy’s entrance into the war against Austria-Hungary (an interventionist, in the Italian terminology), and and also felt guilty for his support of a war that he would not fight. This is attested in various sources, including another short story from the war period, his autobiographical and metafictional tale “Interviews with Characters” (“Colloquii coi personaggi”), the first part of which was originally published as “During the War: Interviews with Characters” (“Durante la Guerra: Colloquii coi personaggi”) in the Giornale di Sicilia (August 17-18, 1915), and then republished as part of the 1919 collection Berecche and the War, alongside the material listed above. Likewise, Pirandello’s eldest son, Stefano, volunteered for the war and was taken prisoner by Austrian forces; his younger son, Fausto, was called to arms but did not go to the front lines for health reasons. These biographical resonances, including the use of the name Fausto, are present throughout the chapters of “Berecche and the War.”
In addition to these biographical themes, the story also articulates a series of typically Pirandellian concerns, including the perspectival situation of knowledge and thus the limits of human understanding, the absurdity of the struggles into which humans pour their emotions, and the humorous way in which people, opinions, histories, and everything else are subject to change and reversal. The final note of the story, despite all the blustering and the bathos of its reversal, strikes a tone of compassion that is likewise typical of Pirandellian humor.
Pirandello added his Author’s Note to the publication in 1934, stating (erroneously) that the whole thing was written “in the months preceding our entry into the World War.” This fictional dating of the story before World War I can be read, in part, as an effort to establish a greater level of unity to the eight chapters now that they were collected together; but it also resonates with Pirandello’s own preoccupations about censorship in 1934, when Berecche and the War was being published as a single volume of his Stories for a Year. These worries are attested explicitly in a letter Pirandello wrote to his beloved prima donna, Marta Abba, on June 4, 1934, where he decries the difficulties facing authors who confront low-level bureaucrats with the power to deny them permission to publish (quoted in Lucio Lugnani’s notes to Pirandello, Tuttle le novelle, Vol. III 1914-1936, Milan: Rizzoli, 2007, p. 679).
This translation is a slightly revised version of the one published as Berecche and the War, trans. and intro. Julie Dashwood (Market Harborough: Troubador, 2000). The translator and editors gratefully acknowledge the kind permission of Troubador to make this translation accessible in our new edition.
The Editors
Author’s Note
To the 1934 Edition
I’m placing Berecche and the War, a story in eight chapters written in the months preceding our entry into the World War, in this the XIVth volume of my collected Stories for a Year. It reflects a case I witnessed, with astonishment to begin with and almost laughingly, then with compassion, of a studious man educated like so many others at that time in the German fashion, and especially in the disciplines of history and philology. During the long period of our alliance Germany had, for such people, become not just spiritually but also in their thoughts and feelings, as an intimate part of their lives, their ideal native land. As our intervention against her, called for by the most vital and sound part of the Italian people and then accepted by the whole nation, became imminent, they therefore felt, as it were, lost; and, compelled in the end by the very force of events to take back their true native land to themselves, they suffered a crisis which, from this aspect, seemed to me to be worthy of representation.
I
The Beer-House
Outside, another hot and sunny day. Southern streets beneath the burning blue of the sky; scored by harsh violet-purple shadows. And people are walking there, light and airy yet bursting with life and color. Voices in the sun and cobbles ringing underfoot.
Inside, the good expatriate German has recreated a bit of his native land around him, between the four wood-paneled walls of his beerhouse; and he breathes in its air in the stench of the barrels coming from the cellar next door, in the fatty smell of the würstel piled up on the counter, in the pungent smell of the boxes of appetizing spices, all labelled in stiff, upright German letters. They're there as well, those cherished German letters of his – larger, stiffer, more upright – in the shiny, brightly-colored deep-blue, yellow and red posters hanging on the walls. And the tankards, the krügel decorated with figures, the beer mugs, set out in orderly fashion on the shelves, act as sentinels guarding his illusion. [1]
What faraway, anguished voice, from time to time, when the beer- house is empty and dark, sings deep in his heart the song:
Nur in Deutschland, nur in Deutschland
Da will ich sterben...? [2]
With his large, tawny-red face assuming a wide, friendly smile, until yesterday he greeted his faithful Roman customers with welcoming guttural sounds. Now he stands frowning and still behind his counter and no longer greets anyone.
Always the first to arrive at the beer-house, Berecche, much concerned, watches him from the little table at the back of the room, with his worthy kriigel in front of him. Concerned as he is, his face is grim, because his situation, too, has all of a sudden become difficult.
Up to a few days ago Federico Berecche made much of his German origins, clearly apparent from his square physique, reddish hair and light blue eyes but also from his surname, Berecche, a corrupt pronunciation, in his view, of a typically German name. [3] And he was proud of all the benefits Italy had gained from her long alliance with what were then the Central Powers, not to mention the outstanding virtues of the Germanic peoples which he, for so many years had striven rigorously to put into practice, both in himself and in the ordering of his life and his household; above all else method. Method, method.
In that beer-house, on the marble top of a small table, they have drawn a caricature of him: a chess-board with Berecche walking over it, goose-stepping like a German foot-soldier and a pointed helmet, with a spike, on his large head.
The essence of the caricature is in the chess-board: meant to show that Berecche sees the world like that, in squares, and walks through it in the German way with a deliberate, measured tread like an honest pawn dependent on the king, the castles and the knights.
Under the caricature some wag has written: Middle Ages, with a big exclamation mark.
"Germany, back in the Middle Ages?" Federico Berecche asked indignantly when he saw that drawing on the marble table top, not recognizing himself, of course, in the caricature but recognizing the spiked German helmet. "Back in the Middle Ages, Germany? Come on! My dear friends! Way, way ahead in culture, in industry, in music and the most fearsome army in the world."
As proof of which, taking his deep-blue and yellow wooden box out of his pocket he had lit his pipe with a streichholz, [4] as Berecche despises the use of Italian wax matches as soft.
So when the first announcement was made of Italy's declaration of neutrality in the European conflict he felt a spurt of anger against the Italian Government. [5]
"What about the pact of alliance? Is Italy withdrawing? And from now on who will ever be able to trust Italy again? Neutral? So is this the moment to stand idly at the window while everyone is mobilizing? You have to make your position clear straightaway, for heaven's sake! And our position is..."
They didn't let him finish. A chorus of vehement protests, of abuse and insults rained down on him from all sides and overwhelmed him. "The pact of alliance? After Austria has torn it up by her offensive? after Germany's gone mad, declaring war to the right, war to the left, war right up to the stars, without letting us know, completely ignoring our situation? [6] Idiot! Imbecile! A fine way to keep your word! Fight against our own interests? Help Austria to win? Us? And what about our unredeemed lands? [7] And our coasts and islands, with the British and French fleets against us? Can we be against Britain? Idiot! Imbecile!"
To begin with Federico Berecche tried to stand up to them, retaliating by reminding his furious opponents of the wrongs and insults they had suffered at the hands of France.
Then, interrupted at almost every word, he tried to show that in any case... "Well, allow me to say... we're neutral? But we can't be! In name only! Because in fact could there be a more hostile act than this? It's an inestimable advantage, especially for France. You're just like sheep... neutrality... What about Niccolò Machiavelli... (they had the audacity to call him, a retired teacher of history, an idiot), yes, Machiavelli, Machiavelli, on the dangers of neutrality, the great dilemma: If two powerful neighboring states of yours come to blows..." [11]
A general howl of disapproval cut short his quotation. But since he himself said it was neutrality in name only, how did Machiavelli and his dilemma come into it? A hostile act, yes indeed! Against Austria, yes indeed! Because Austria is harming our interests. To the point where she took action without letting us know. And we should thank our lucky stars, because she's released us from our obligation by her own rash behavior. And you talk about tomorrow? Do you think that France and Russia, when they win, will ignore the advantages they've gained from us staying out? Oh, come on, Britain will take care of us, because in her own interests she can't allow our power in the Mediterranean to shrink.
With these and similar arguments Italy's neutrality was defended; with such heat that, in the end, Berecche had to give up and didn't dare open his mouth again. The idea that Italy's geographical position will tomorrow allow her to steer the course of events made a deep impression on him. Steer the course of events! That means that fortune will shift in whichever direction we, at the opportune moment, choose. And there can be no doubt as to the right direction.
"Well at least let's arm ourselves, for goodness' sake!" Berecche boomed out, exasperated, raising his hairy fists.
And as he shouted, at the cry "there's no point" Federico Berecche felt himself, in the depths of his heart, to be German.
However, yesterday evening at the beer-house he no longer dared defend the Germans against the terrible accusations of his friends. Not a single one of them, not even good, sleepy old Fongi, who always agreed with him for the sake of peace and quiet, supported Germany.
Good old Fongi said nothing, but from time to time turned to look at him fearfully out of the corner of his eye, perhaps expecting a rebellious outburst from him at any moment. And Berecche was almost tempted to give him a punch in the face. He began to breathe again when his friends moved on from talking about the Germans to more general considerations. One of these particularly impressed itself on him, also because of the sad and serious way his friend opposite, in a moment of silence, pronounced it, looking at the spittle-like foam left by the froth on top of the beer inside his little beer-mug.
"In the end, however terrible the events and dreadful the consequences we can at least be glad of this: that it has been our fate to witness the dawn of another life. We've lived for forty, fifty, even sixty years with the feeling that things couldn't go on as they were; that the stresses and strains were gradually becoming more intense, and we'd reach breaking-point; that in the end there'd be a war. And now it's here. Dreadful. But at least we're seeing it. The anxieties, the hardships, the torment and the longings of such a long and unbearable wait will come to an end and find a release. And we shall see the great tomorrow. Because everything will necessarily change, and we'll all certainly come out of this terrifying upheaval completely transformed."
At once Berecche's gaze fell on a little table and three chairs in the room which the customers were just getting up to leave. He stared at them for a long time, feeling more and more and with each passing moment a strange, melancholic envy for those three empty chairs and that deserted table.
He turned away from them with a deep sigh when another of his friends began to say:
"And who knows! Just think that there were once great world civilizations in India, China, Persia, Egypt, Greece and Rome. A light is lit and shines for many centuries in one region, in one continent; then, little by little, it dies down, flickers and goes out. Who knows! Perhaps it will now be Europe's turn. Who can foresee the consequences of such an unprecedented conflict? Perhaps no-one will win and everything - wealth, industry, civilization – will be destroyed. Perhaps the next great civilization will start in the Americas, while our ruin will gradually become complete and the time will come when ships will land on the shores of Europe as you would if you came as conquerors."
Heaving another and deeper sigh Berecche saw himself far, far away with the whole of Europe, thrust back into the obscurity of a fabled prehistoric age. Shortly afterwards he got to his feet and brusquely took leave of his friends to go home.
II
In the Evening on the Way Home
Berecche lives in an isolated side-road at the end of via Nomentana. [12]
On the left, in that side-road, which is barely marked out and still without street lamps, there are just three recently-built houses; on the right is a country hedge surrounding plots of land still to be sold and from where, on the moist evening air, comes a fresh smell of new-mown hay.
It's just as well that one of the three houses has been bought by a very rich old prelate who lives there with three nieces, withered spinsters who, as dusk is falling, take it in turns to mount a portable ladder to light a little lamp in front of the small blue and white porcelain figure of the Madonna, placed about a month ago at one corner of the house.
At night that merciful little lamp shines in the darkness of the lonely road.
Living there is like being in the countryside; and just as in the open countryside you can hear in the silence the night trains roaring along in the distance. Behind the gates of the houses the dogs hurl themselves forward, barking furiously every time they hear footsteps. But at least Berecche can enjoy a bit of open countryside in front, and the peace and quiet.
From the four ground floor windows, in a wide expanse of sky, he can see the stars, which he talks to at length during his leisurely evenings as a peaceful pensioner. The stars and the moon, when there is one. And beneath the moon, the pine-trees and cypresses of Villa Torlonia.[13] He has a little bit of garden as well, for his exclusive use, with a tiny fountain, whose gurgling in the silence of the night is dear to him.
But, alas, his wife, the two daughters who still live with him and his only son, already an Arts student at the University, his servant and now, as well, the elder daughter's fiancé feel nothing of the poetry of the solitude, the starry sky and the moon above the cypresses and pines in the patrician villa, and they heave great sighs or yawn plaintively like hungry dogs at the monotonous, endless gurgling of that delightful little fountain. It seems to them that they're banished, in exile. But Berecche – method, method, method – holds firm, and has renewed the lease for three years.
Now, the deeper he plunges into the darkness of the isolated, deserted street beneath the fourfold row of big, motionless trees the heavier the nightmare of the general destruction which will extinguish every light of science and civilization in the old continent of Europe weighs down on his spirit.
What kind of new life will it be when the terrible chaos has subsided into its ruins? How will he, at fifty-three years of age, come out of it completely transformed?
There will be other needs, other hopes, other thoughts and other feelings. Everything will inevitably change. But not, for all that, these big trees which have the good fortune neither to think nor to feel! When humanity all around them has changed they will still be the same trees, just as they are now.
And alas Federico Berecche is very much afraid that it's now far too late for him, as well, to change, deep down, whatever happens during the time still remaining to him. He's grown used to conversing with the stars, every night; and under their cold light all earthly feelings have, as it were, become rarefied within him. You wouldn't think so, because on the outside his will to live in that particular, methodical, German way of his is still clearly and stubbornly apparent. But deep down he is tired and sad, with a sadness that that is unlikely to be affected by what is happening in the world outside.
Let the French, the Russians, and the British win, or the Germans and the Austrians; let Italy, too, be dragged into the war or not, and let there be the hardships and gloom of defeat or let victory triumph frenetically in all the towns of the peninsula; let the map of Europe be changed; what will never change – and this is certain – is the animosity, the deep rancor his wife feels against him, and his regret at reaching the evening of his life without a single memory of any real joy. And no power on earth or in heaven can restore sight to the eyes of his youngest daughter, who has been blind for six years.
Now, when he goes back into the house, he will find her still sitting in one corner of the little dining room, with her wax-like hands on her legs and her little blond head leaning against the wall, and since from her sightless face it’s impossible to tell if she’s asleep or awake he will ask her, as every evening:
"Are you asleep, Ghetina?" [14]
And Margheritina, without moving her head from the wall, will reply:
"No, papa, I'm not asleep…”
She never speaks, she never complains, she seems to be asleep all the time; perhaps she never sleeps.
Continuing on his way under the big trees Berecche clears his throat, because as a strong man brought up in the German fashion he doesn't want to choke with distress. But everyone lives in the light; he himself lives in the light and can resign himself to his fate, while instead there's this horrible thing in life: that his daughter lives in the darkness, always, and stays there, in silence, with her little head leaning on the wall, waiting to die; and who knows how long that wait will last.
Another life: other thoughts, other feelings. Yes, that's right! Carlotta, his eldest daughter, stopped going to university a year ago because she got engaged to a fine boy from the Val di Non in the Trentino who'd graduated just a year earlier in literature and philosophy from the University of Rome; a fine boy, with plenty of spirit and noble sentiments and full of good intentions: but still without a position in life; and now, more than ever, uncertain about his future. Three of his brothers, at San Zeno, have been called up. His father is the mayor of San Zeno. So those three poor brothers of his weren't able to escape from the hateful obligation to fight for Austria, and who knows, if things go badly for us, perhaps, tomorrow, against Italy as well. What a terrible thing! He, in the meantime, didn't report when he was called up, and so it's goodbye to the Valle di Non, goodbye to San Zeno, goodbye to his old parents: as a deserter in time of war he would tomorrow, if captured, be hanged or shot in the back. But he hopes that Italy... who knows! He would rush off and volunteer, even at the cost of finding himself fighting against those poor brothers of his. He would rush off, together with Faustino.[15]
Berecche starts to clear his throat again even harder, so that he nearly tears it, at the thought that Faustino, his only son, his favorite child, who fortunately this year isn't old enough to be called up, might go and enlist as a volunteer together with his future brother-in-law. He couldn't any longer forbid him to do it; but by God – damn his throat! damn the damp evening! – even though he is a good fifty-three years old, and with all that flesh which has come to weigh him down, he too would then go and enlist, so as not to let Faustino go alone, so as not to die of terror once a day whenever there was news of the fighting, knowing that Faustino was under fire; yes indeed, he, Berecche, with his great paunch, would volunteer as well even... even against the Germans, yes he would!
And yes... there it was already, straightaway, the other life. War, with his young son on one side and, on the other, his other, new son, going to conquer the unredeemed lands. Who knows? It might happen tomorrow.
Berecche has arrived; he turns right; he goes into the lonely side-road. There in the thick dark is the little red light in front of the Madonna. Miracles of the other life. Berecche stops in front of that light; he takes off his hat, unseen by anyone, to say something to that little Madonna.
And let the dogs carry on barking furiously behind the gates, if they want to.
III
The War on the Map
Berecche remembers. Forty-four years ago.[16] Little French flags and little Prussian flags – only those at that time – fixed as now with pins onto the map spread out on a small table in the dining room. The theatre of war. What a lovely game for him, then a boy of nine!
As if in a dream he sees again that yellow dining room in his father's house, with the brass oil lamps and the green silk lampshades; lots of chests all around draped in flowery covers; over here a bow fronted chest of drawers, over there a bracket and in the corners two sets of shelves, with baskets of colored marble fruit and wax flowers on the different levels; on the shelves to the left a little porcelain clock in the shape of windmill, which he particularly loved, with one sail broken.[17]
Around that little table which, the only decrepit survivor, is now, hidden by a new cover, in his son's bedroom, he sees his father and some friends discussing the Franco-Prussian War. Ill-fitting jackets buttoned right up to the neck and wide, straight-legged trousers. Waxed moustaches and a tuft of hair on the lower lip like Napoleon III or beards running under their chin from ear to ear like Cavour.[18] Bending over that map they were tracing the routes taken by the armies with their fingers, according to the information and forecasts in the few, out-ofdate newspapers of that time, and they talked excitedly and no-one allowed the finger of one of the others to linger peacefully on any particular trail. Another finger came along, and then another and another: everyone wanted to put in his own. And each of those fingers – he remembers – straightaway, to his childish eyes, took on a strange personality: one of them, squat and stubborn, stayed obstinately put in one place; another, wiry and insolent, stood in front of it quivering with the desire to move on from that same point; and now a third, a crooked little finger, came up stealthily to help one of the others, and crept in between those two which drew aside to let it pass. And what cries, what snorts of impatience, what exclamations or strident peals of laughter over all those fingers, amidst a cloud of smoke! From time to time, a name rang out like a cannon-shot:
"MacMahon!"[19]
Berecche smiles at the distant memory, then frowns and sits intent, knees wide with his clenched fists resting on them. He contemplates the map which is in front of him, now, with so many little flags in so many colors. If the little nine-year-old boy who had then played at war could come alive out of his memory, there in his study, in front of himself grown old, goodness knows how he would enjoy himself playing the new, bigger, more varied and complicated game with all those gaily-colored little flags! Belgium, France and Britain over here, against Germany; and Russia against Germany over there in Eastern Prussia and Poland;[20] Serbia and Montenegro down there against Austria; and, still against Austria, Russia, further up, in Galicia.
What an irresistible urge the little nine-year-old boy would feel to make those little German flags speed along, flying over Belgium among the bowing and scraping of the little Belgian flags; take them to Paris in a few leaps and bounds; plant a couple of them there victoriously and then, in a few more leaps and bounds, send them back and hurl them against Russia alongside the Austrian ones!
And it's that – incredibly – just what he as a little nine-year-old boy would have done in the game that the Germans thought they could now do in earnest, after forty-four years of military preparation! They really thought that neutral Belgium would tranquilly let itself be invaded and let them through without putting up the least resistance, at Liège or Namur, so as to give France, as yet unprepared, time to gather its armies and Britain to land its first auxiliary troops: just that!
Every evening his friends at the beer-house denounce the iniquity of the invasion and the acts of barbarous cruelty at the top of their voices; as for himself, Berecche doesn't protest, he remains silent, even though consumed with anger within, because he can't shout at them to their faces as he would like to:
"Imbeciles! It's no use screaming and shouting! It's war!"
He doesn't protest, and he swallows his anger, because he is shaken. Shaken not by the invasion, not by the acts of ferocity but by the colossal bestiality of the Germans. Shaken to the core.
From the heights of his love and admiration for Germany, which had grown out of all proportion over the years, this colossal bestiality has come crashing down like an avalanche to smash all he had: everything he believed in, the world as he had little by little constructed it for himself from the time he was nine years old, in the German way, with method, with discipline in everything: in his studies, in his life, in his habits of mind and body.
Oh, what a disaster! The nine-year-old boy had grown up, yes he had; it was all he had loved, all he had admired; and it had become a florid, prosperous giant who knew everything better than anyone else, who did everything better than anyone else, and now after forty-four years of preparation had turned out to be a brute beast: brawny, indeed, with well-drilled and powerful hands and hind legs; but which seriously thought it was still possible to play at war like a naughty, savage little nine-year-old boy, or as if it were alone in the world and everyone else counted for nothing: crossing Belgium in leaps and bounds and going to plant the little flags, a couple of them, on Paris, and then away again at great speed, in a few more leaps and bounds, to plant them on Petersburg and Moscow. And Britain?
"Incredible! Incredible!"
Shaken as he is Berecche keeps on exclaiming like this, he can't find anything else to say:
“Incredible!”
And he scratches his head with both hands and breathes out heavily, and some of the little flags fly away, some bend and others fall over onto the map.
Shut away there in his study, so that no-one can see him, Berecche feels his heart rebel at the memory of what he meant by German method, when he was a student, at the memory of the inexpressible satisfaction it brought him when, with his eyes tired by his laborious, patient interpretation of the texts and documents, but with his conscience at rest and certain of having taken everything into account, of not having overlooked anything, of not having neglected any useful and necessary piece of research, his hands lingered, in the evening, on returning home from the libraries, on the wealth of information there on his little study table, contained in his voluminous card-indexes. And he feels his heart bleed all the more because he is now aware, with a dull resentment, that because of the satisfaction he derived from that method, deep down he was cowardly enough to ignore a certain voice of his reason secretly rebelling against some German assertions which not only offended his sense of logic but also, in his heart of hearts, his Latin sentiment: the assertion, for example, that the Romans had no gift for poetry; and, alongside this assertion, the demonstration that the whole early history of Rome was a legend. Now, it could only be one or the other. If that history was a legend, that is fiction, how could they deny the gift of poetry? Either poetry or history. Impossible to deny both at the same time. Either true history, and great; or poetry, no less great and true. And at this point he remembers what Goethe,[21] in his old age, said after reading the first two volumes of Niebuhr's History of Rome up to the first Punic war:[22]
"Up to now, we believed in the greatness of a Lucretia, of a Mucius Scaevola;[23] why should we destroy the greatness of such figures with our petty arguments? If the Romans were great enough to believe they were capable of such things, should we not at least be great enough to credit what they say?’
Goethe, Schiller, and first Lessing and then Kant, Hegel…[24] Oh all these giants, when Germany was small, when she was not yet Germany! And now she is a giant, and has flung herself belly down on the ground, hands clasped under her chest, with one elbow here, on Belgium and in France, and the other there, on Russia and in Poland:
“Move me, if you can!”
For how long will the brute beast hold out in that position?
“Oh, brute beast, there are so very many of them! And you thought you could settle it all with two blows of your paws! You were wrong! You saw nothing; you didn’t have a quick victory; you flung yourself down like that on the ground, with your elbows out on both sides; can you hold out for long? one day soon they’ll move you, they’ll dismember you, they’ll tear you to pieces!”
Berecche jumps to his feet, flushed and panting, as if he had made the supreme effort to shift the brute beast from where it lay.
IV
The War in the Family
What's happening in there?
Screams and sounds of weeping in the dining-room. Berecche comes running; there he finds his elder daughter's fiancé, Dr. Gino Viesi from the Valle di Non in the Trentino, pale, with his eyes full of tears and a letter in his hand.
"News?"
"His brothers!" shouts Carlotta, trembling with rage and staring at him, her eyes red with weeping but accusing.
Gino Viesi, without looking at him, shows him the letter in his trembling hand.
Two of his three brothers, 35-year-old Filippo, father of four children, and 26-year-old Erminio, married a few days ago, had been called up by Austria and sent to Galicia... "What's happened?" No-one replies.
''Both of them? Dead?"
The young man, racked by a fresh outburst of sobbing, makes a sign – one – with one finger, before hiding his face.
"One of them, certainly" Berecche's wife says to him in a low voice, with hatred, venom even, in it. Carlotta gets up to comfort her fiancé and to weep with him. "Erminio?"
His wife, harsh, stocky and disheveled shakes her head: no. "The other one? the one with four children?"
Gino Viesi begins to sob even louder on Carlotta's shoulder. "And Erminio?"
Irritated, his wife says:
"No-one knows: he's reported missing!"
Margherita, the little blind girl, doesn't have eyes to see how the others are weeping, what they look like (she doesn't even know what one face, that of Gino, her sister's fiancé, whom she too calls Gino, is like), she doesn't have eyes to see, no, but she still has eyes to weep with; and she weeps in silence, tears that she doesn't see, that no-one sees, over there, set apart, in her little corner.
''And not one of you is speaking up for us!" Gino Viesi finally bursts out, raising his head from Carlotta's shoulder and coming towards Berecche. "Not one of you is speaking up for us! No-one's doing anything! They've sent all the men from the Trentino and Trieste to the slaughter! And down here you all know that we feel exactly the same as you do; and that up there they're waiting for you, as you well know! But right now not one of you is personally affected by the torment we feel when we see our brothers being forced to violate those feelings we all share and sent to the slaughter up there! Not a single one of you... And those few of us here from Trento and Trieste are like exiles in our own country; and it's a miracle that a loyalist like you isn't shouting at me that my real place is there, fighting and dying for Austria with my other brothers!"
"Me?" exclaims Berecche, in amazement.
"You, all of you!" the young man goes on in his rage and grief. "I've seen you, I've heard you; you don't care at all; you say it isn't worth Italy's while to bestir herself to take Trento, as probably Austria will let her have it without a fight, one day, or to take Trieste, which doesn't want to be Italian... Isn't that what you say? That's what you say and that's what you think! And that's why you've let us be trampled on, always; and you've never been able to achieve anything for us at all!"
Gino Viesi is young and grief-stricken; and so, with his handsome face ablaze and his lovely blond locks in disarray, he cannot understand that nothing is quite so irritating, at certain times, as hearing someone put forward and state out loud feelings we secretly share, but which we want to keep well hidden, stifling them so we can maintain a position which has already shown itself to be false; at such times we flare up in defense of our position, and against the feelings we share but see held up as the opposite of ours, and we see ourselves drawn into upholding what, fundamentally, we consider to be false and unjust.
This is what happens now to Berecche. Angrily he shouts at the young man:
"What would you like us to do? Should Italy prevent Austria, when she's at war, from sending the men of Trento and Trieste against Russia and Serbia? As long as you're under her control, she's within her rights!"
"Oh really! you're talking about rights?" shouts Gino Viesi in turn. "And so, if this is Austria's legitimate right what am I doing, according to you? Am I failing in my duty by staying here? We should all go and die for Austria, shouldn't we? Go on, say it! Of course it's her right... that of the master who whips his slaves into going wherever he wants! But who has ever recognized Austria's right to control Trento, Trieste, Istria, and Dalmatia?[25] Austria herself knows that she doesn't have the right! To the point where she's doing everything to suppress us, to blot out all traces of Italian culture and identity from our regions! Austria does know it; and you don't, you who let her do as she likes! And now, in the face of a war which right away, from the very beginning, was obviously harmful to us, against our interests, it was right to decide on neutrality, wasn't it, and not on arming yourselves to liberate us and to defend our interests right there where Austria first began to threaten them?"
"But neutrality..." Berecche ventures to say.
Gino Viesi doesn't give him time to continue: "Yes, it's all very well for you" he goes on. "Because no-one could come here and force you to march and fight against your beliefs and interests! But have you thought about us, up there, who should be what your beliefs are all about, who are exactly where what you call 'your interests' lie? By being neutral you've let us from up there be taken and dragged to the slaughter; and you still say that this was Austria's right; and no-one cries out for revenge for the blood of my dead brothers! They all shout instead: Long live Belgium! Long live France! Just now, on my way here, I met the columns of demonstrators on the streets of Rome. All feverish with excitement!"
"And Faustino?" Berecche asks all of a sudden, turning to his wife. "He's with the demonstrators as well!" Gino Viesi replies at once. "Long live Belgium! Long live France!''
In a fury Berecche points his finger, threateningly, at his wife:
"And you've let him leave the house? And you didn't say a thing to me about it? Don't I count for anything any longer? Is that how my ideas and feelings are respected now? I'm telling you and I'm telling everybody! So that's it? Long live Belgium, long live France... Well then I want to see what France will do, tomorrow, when she's won with other people's help! Tomorrow the cockerel will turn on us again, when it has raised its victorious crest once more, with other people's help... Fools! fools! fools!"
And after this outburst Berecche rushes off to shut himself in his study again, deeply upset and trembling at the effort he has had to make to control himself.
Oh what a terrible business... oh God, what a terrible business...
Everything within him has collapsed. But can he really allow the others to see that? Germany, until yesterday, was the source of his prestige, of his authority at home; it was everything to him, Germany was, until yesterday. And now... this is how it is: now every morning – to cap it all – as soon as the servant returns from doing the daily shopping his wife rounds on him, demanding that he justify all the increases in food prices – so much on bread, so much on meat, so much on eggs – as if he had wanted, as if he had started, the war! Stricken to the heart and with his beliefs shattered, he also finds himself being deluged by the flood of trivia coming from his wife, and it's a miracle she doesn't hold him responsible as well for the danger Faustino runs of being called up early and sent to fight, if Italy, too, is dragged into the war! Isn't he the one who represents Germany at home; Germany, that wanted the war?
And yes indeed, for the sake of his prestige in the family, he has to carry on representing Germany, if not... If not, what? This is what it has come to: his son slips out of the house and goes to shout Long live France through the streets of Rome with the other imbeciles; and that other poor boy in there, two of whose brothers have been killed, holds him responsible for Italy's neutrality and for the slaughter of the men from the Trentino and Trieste over by Lemberg![26]
Oh, how infamous Germany is! She didn't even begin to foresee the harm she was doing, the tragedy she was causing for the multitudes who, in Italy and in other countries too, with such great effort and bitter sacrifices, stifling so many yawns, gulping down so much indigestible stuff, erudition, music, philosophy, had learnt to love Germany and to make a profession of this love! Infamous Germany, so this is how she now repays her victims for the love and admiration they've professed for her for so many years!
Powerless to do anything else, Berecche would like to stab her over and over again, in secret, on the map, with the pins of all the little French, British, Belgian, Russian, Serbian and Montenegran flags!
V
The War in the World
Evening has come. But he stays in his study in the dark and paces around with one hand over his mouth, looking from time to time at the last glow of the twilight in the panes of the two windows. From one of them he sees the little red lamp, already lit, of the little Madonna of the house opposite; he knits his brows and goes over to the window.
Then, in the light of the big lamp which shines into the hall, he sees his wife, holding Margheritina by the hand, leave the house and cross the garden.
You wouldn't guess from her walk, dear little thing. You almost wouldn't guess, if you didn't know. At least seeing her like that, from behind. Perhaps because she trusts the hand that guides her. Only, if you look closely at her, she holds her small head a bit stiffly on her neck and her thin little shoulders a bit hunched. The gravel doesn't crunch under her little feet, because her whole being is striving upwards to avoid touching what she can't see, and her tiny body weighs almost nothing.
But where is she going with her mother at this time of night? And how is it that Faustino hasn't come home yet? Has Gino Viesi left?
Berecche goes to put all these questions to Carlotta. There's no-one left in the dining room. Carlotta has shut herself away in her room and in the dark, like him, is still weeping; she replies to the questions in the same curt, rude tone as her mother: "Gino? He's gone." "Faustino? How should she know?" "Mummy? Gone with Ghetina to Monsignor's house for the novena."
For the last three nights, in Monsignor's house opposite, they've been saying prayers for the Pope who is ill, for the Pope who is dying.[27]
Berecche goes back into his study, goes over to the window again and looks at the house opposite, saddened now and full of grief for this Pope, a holy old peasant, made worthy of his great office only through the complete sincerity of his faith. Oh, who more than he, truly pious like his name, wanted to call Christ back into the hearts of the faithful? And he's dying as the war rages around him, dying of grief because of the war. Certainly he, on his deathbed, won't say, as some close to him are perhaps quietly saying, that this war, for France, is God's just retribution for the wrongs she has done to the Church. For him those others who have dared to call on God to protect the progress and the carnage of their armies, and who have dared to see and extol the sign of divine protection in the victories which have come from their acts of atrocity, are certainly far more iniquitous sinners. He hasn't said another word; horrified, he has withdrawn that hand that some wanted him to raise to bless this monstrous wickedness; and he has shut himself up in the grief which is killing him.
Damned light of reason! Damned reason that is unable to blind itself with faith! By its light he, Berecche, sees, or believes he sees, so many things that now prevent him from praying with his little daughter Margherita, blind in her blind faith, for the good Pope who is dying. But he is glad, yes he is, that his Margheritina is praying over there; he is glad that one part of him, so painfully loved, which does not have his light of reason, should blindly pray over there for the good Pope who is dying. It really seems to him that, with the pale, delicate hands of his little blind daughter joined in prayer, he, from his soul which itself is unable to pray, is giving something now - what he can - in intercession for the good Pope who's dying.
In the meantime eight o'clock in the evening comes, then nine; then ten, and Faustino still hasn't come home.
His mother, who came back some time ago with Ghetina from Monsignor's house, and his sister, Carlotta, have come into the study several times to express their dismay, to beseech him with hands clasped to do something, to go and look for him, so that at least they'll know, which God forbid, that something terrible hasn't happened to him during those accursed demonstrations.
Berecche drove them out in a rage, and shouted at them point blank that he wouldn't do anything because he doesn't care at all any more about that young scoundrel, no longer considers him to be his son, and if he's been trampled to the ground, wounded or arrested that's absolutely fine by him.
Finally, a little after half past ten, Faustino comes home, in fear and trembling at the thought of his father but still enraged and full of what has happened to him. He's been arrested. But he is quivering with indignation and disgust at the anger of the soldiers, fortunately just a small group, who arrested him, manhandling him and shouting at him:
"You coward, you're doing this because tomorrow you don't have to go and fight!"
And now all that he wants to do is to go and fight, so as to reply in the only way possible to those soldiers who arrested him.
"Be quiet!" his mother shouts at him, more disheveled than ever. "If your father in there should hear you!"
But Berecche doesn't move from his study. He doesn't want to see him. When his wife comes to tell him that he has come back, he orders her to tell him not to dare show his face. A little later, Carlotta puts her head round the door:
"Supper is ready. Fausto's in his room."
"I'm staying here! Tell the maid to bring me my supper in here. I don't want to see anyone."
But he can't eat. He has a lump in his throat more from rage than from anguish. Little by little, however, he begins to calm down and to fall, almost, into a deep sense of oblivion and detachment which is very familiar to him. It is his philosophical mood which gradually, as evening falls, regains the ascendant over him.
Berecche gets up, goes over to the nearest window, sits down and starts to look at the stars.
He sees this little planet Earth in endless space, as perhaps none or maybe just one of those stars can see it, going on and on, for no known purpose, in that space whose end is unknown. It goes on, the basest of specks of dust, a tiny drop of black water, and the wind, as it speeds along, cancels out the lights marking the places where men live, in that very small part where the speck is not liquid, turning them into a violent, faintly glimmering blur. If in the heavens they knew that in that faintly glimmering blur there are millions and millions of restless beings, who seriously think that from that little speck of dust they can lay down the law to the whole universe, impose their way of thinking and feeling on it, and their God, the little God created by their tiny little souls and whom they believe has created those heavens and all those stars; and there they are, taking him, this God who has created the heavens and all the stars and worshipping him, and clothing him in their fashion and asking him to take account of all their small afflictions and to protect them even in their sorriest doings, in their stupid wars. If in the heavens they knew that, in this hour of time which has no end, these millions and millions of imperceptible beings, in this faintly glimmering blur, are all involved in a furious brawl for reasons which they believe to be supremely important for their existence, and which the heavens, the stars, the God who has created these heavens and all these stars, should all concern themselves with minute by minute, committed to the hilt on one side or the other. Are there some who believe there is no time in the heavens? That everything is swallowed up and disappears in this dark, endless void? And that on this very same speck, tomorrow, in a thousand years, nothing will remain or scarcely a thing will be said of this war which now seems so appalling and dreadful to us?
Berecche remembers how, just a few years ago, he taught history to his secondary-school pupils: Around 950, after the Danes who had rebelled against him had been reduced to obedience, Otto went into Bohemia to fight Duke Boleslas, who had made himself independent, and pushing on as far as Prague he forced that Duke to become a vassal of the German kingdom again. At the same time his brother Henry went out to fight the Hungarians and drove them beyond the Theiss, taking from them the lands they had conquered during the reign of Louis the Child…[28]
Tomorrow, in a thousand years, another Berecche, a teacher of history, will tell his pupils that around 1914 there were, still powerful and flourishing, two empires in the center of Europe; one called the German Empire, on whose throne sat a certain Wilhelm II of a dynasty which has now disappeared and which was apparently called Hohenzollern; and the other called the Austrian Empire, on whose throne sat a certain very old Franz Joseph of the Habsburg dynasty.[29] These two Emperors were allies, and both, or so at least certain facts seem to indicate, although this does not seem very probable in the light of logic, also allies of the King of Italy, a certain Victor Emanuel III of the dynasty of Savoy, [30] who, however, at least at the outset did not join in the war which that German Emperor, taking – it appears – as his pretext the assassination of someone called Franz Ferdinand, hereditary Archduke of Austria, by the Serbs, stupidly declared against Russia, France and Britain, at that time also allies and very powerful, and one in particular, Britain, having dominion over the seas and countless colonies.
That's how, in a thousand years' time – thinks Berecche – this truly atrocious war, which now fills the whole world with horror, will be reduced to a few lines in the great history of mankind; and there will be no hint of all the little stories of all these thousands and thousands of obscure beings who are now disappearing, swept away in it, each one of whom will nevertheless have held the world, the whole world in himself and, for at least one brief moment in his life, will have been eternal, his soul filled with this earth and this sky glittering with stars and his own little home far, far away, and his dear ones, his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, in tears and, perhaps, unknowing still and intent upon their games, his little children, far, far away. How many wounded, not picked up, dying in the snow, in the mud, collect themselves waiting for death and look straight ahead with pitiful, vain eyes, and can no longer see the reason for the violence which, in an instant, has shattered their youth and loves in their prime, once and for all, as though they were nothing! No trace. No-one will know. Who even now knows all the little, countless stories, one for each soul, of the millions and millions of men facing each other to kill each other? Even now, there are just a few lines in the bulletins of the General Staff: we've advanced, we've retreated; three or four thousand dead, wounded or missing. And that's all.
What will remain tomorrow of the war diaries in the newspapers, where only a minute part of these little, countless stories is barely sketched out in a few brief words? Those cockerels, those cockerels which crowed at dawn in a Belgrade deserted and bombarded by the Austrian guns, at the beginning of the war... Oh, my dear cockerels, that's it, if Berecche could come back to the world in a thousand years' time to teach the history of a thousand years before, when all memory of the events which now seem so dreadful to us has been wiped out and the whole of this appalling war will, for the men of the future, be contained in a few lines, that's it, Berecche would like to remember you, dear cockerels, and say that you crowed at dawn, in Belgrade, as though nothing was wrong, among the bombs which exploded on the abandoned, smoking houses.
No: this is not a great war; it'll be a great slaughter; but it isn't a great war because it isn't based on and sustained by any great ideals. This is a war about economic interests; the war of a brutish people, grown up too quickly and too busy and know-it-all, which went on the attack in order to impose its goods and, well-armed and with claws out, its precious knowledge, on everyone.
At this last consideration Berecche gets up; frowning, he walks for a little while longer around his study; then he goes out into the passage; he sees that the door of his son's bedroom is ajar; he stretches out one hand and very gently pulls it open. Faustino is in bed with the blankets pulled right up to his nose; but his eyes are wide open in the dark of the little bedroom, still angry and bright with indignation. When he sees his father coming in he closes them at once and pretends to be sleeping peacefully.
Berecche watches him, frowning; he shakes his head, seeing all around how untidy the little bedroom is; then, with his hands in his pockets, as he prepares to leave, he says softly, drawing out the words in a tone which seems to be mocking his son, but which in reality expresses his own change of heart:
"Long live... yes! Long live Belgium... long live France..."
VI
Mr. Livo Truppel
Teutonia, the eldest in the family, whom her mother always called Tonia for as long as she had her at home, and which is, what's more, what she herself has always wanted to be called by her two younger sisters and her brother and then by her husband, left home three years ago on her marriage to Mr. Livo Truppel, a very decent and kindly man with no inclination for politics, a native of German-speaking Switzerland, but now no longer Swiss and even less German.
It wasn't Mr. Truppel who gave himself that surname, or chose it for himself; it came to him from his father, who died years ago in Zurich; and he doesn't like it very much.
Perhaps there in Zurich the name Truppel meant something; but outside one's native land, that is, outside one's circle of friends, family and acquaintances what is a surname? When you're a stranger, being called Truppel is no different from being called anything else. If it weren't for the need to have your papers in order...
As for himself, Livo within himself knows that he is a peaceful soul, without a surname, without civil status or nationality; he's a person with both eyes open, here as elsewhere, to the deceptive nature of things, which are certainly not as they seem if one moment they can be seen in one way and the next in another, according to your state of mind and mood. He does everything possible never to change his way of seeing things, and he contents himself with little because he can enjoy that little in peace and wisely, like the innocent pleasures of nature which, if truth be known, is the same for everyone and knows no native land or frontiers.
Candid as he is, and tender-hearted, Mr. Truppel especially likes days of light cloud, those you get after rain when there is a smell of wet earth and in the damp light the plants and insects have the illusion that spring has come again. At night, he looks at those clouds which spread over the stars and blot them out only for them to appear once more against fleeting, deep patches of blue. Like his father-in-law he looks at those stars; he dreams dreamlessly, and he sighs.
By day Mr. Truppel considers that in life he is a decent fellow. A decent fellow, and that's the beginning and end of it. Not in Rome, that is in Italy, or anywhere else: no, in life. And that's the beginning and end of it. Or rather, more precisely, a good clock- and watch-maker, in life.
Firmly ensconced within the bounds of his counter which, covered in spotless oilcloth stands inside the window of his shop in via Condotti, he fixes his loupe into his right eye and, bending over the tweezers fixed to his bench, he tries out over and over again, with inexhaustible patience, the many little tools of his most patient trade, files, saws and callipers, on the part needing repair, in the silence laced with the assiduous, sharp, light ticking of his hundred clocks.
It doesn't even enter his head as, with infinite delicacy, he uses those tiny little tools on the fragile, complicated mechanism of the clocks that, in that very moment, elsewhere, throughout the greater part of Europe, millions of men like him are using very different tools – guns, cannons, bayonets, hand grenades – for work which is very different from his own of mending clocks; and that the silence vibrating here all around him with the sharp notes of that continuous, scarcely audible, ticking is rent in other places by the hideous boom of shells and mortars.
His world, his life, are concentrated there, during the day, into the case of a clock; just as, at night, the life of his spirit, freed now from almost all earthly passions, is engrossed in the contemplation of the harmony of very different spheres: the celestial ones.
Although Mr. Truppel seems stupid, you could swear from the way he smiles when he turns round, recalled from his contemplation of the heavens, that he doesn't consider the firmament to be a system of clockwork.
So he was just like someone coming down from the clouds the other evening when, as he went out into the street to lower his outside shutter, he found himself being attacked by a crowd of demonstrators which, arriving like a whirlwind, hurled itself at his clockmaker's shop and, in a twinkling, smashed his shop sign, his folding shutters, his window, everything.
After his first shock at the crash of the breaking glass Mr. Livo Truppel was not so much afraid for himself as for his brother, his partner in the clockmaker's and very different in nature from him: touchy, gloomy and bestial.
Very round and very blond, Mr. Livo flung himself forward, trying to ward them off with his little fat, white hands, with his eyes full of tears, those eyes which usually have the limpid, smiling clarity of sapphires, to shout at those demonstrators that he was Swiss, not German, Swiss not German, Swiss, Swiss and had been in Italy for more than twenty five years, and was the son-in-law of an Italian, a teacher, Mr. Berecche. Yes, but who was he shouting it at? At the neighboring shopkeepers who know him well and all know what a gem of a man he is. The damage done, the demonstrators had already moved on some time before, quite convinced of having performed an act which, if not exactly heroic, was certainly very patriotic. The damage itself didn't really amount to much. The trouble, the real trouble, was with his brother, whom Mr. Truppel thought was still inside the shop, but instead wasn't there any longer. Terteuffel!,[31] he'd run after those demonstrators, in a furious rage.
Now what had happened, which for the peaceful Mr. Truppel amounted to a simple misunderstanding between himself and the population of Rome because of his German surname (a deplorable misunderstanding, indeed, but not one to make too much of), would certainly not have led to serious upsets in the family if his brother hadn't recognized Faustino, his young brother-in-law, among that crowd of demonstrators.
It's true that his brother hasn't ordered him to leave his wife and conjugal home to go back to living with him in a separate house. No, but he has demanded and made him promise and swear that at least he will never set foot in his father-in law's house again, and that if his father-in-law comes one evening to visit his daughter, if he can't find an excuse on the spot to leave the house he won't speak to him apart from saying hello, and after saying hello to him he'll spit on the ground: like this!
Spit on the ground?
Yes, spit on the ground; like this!
Mr. Truppel, deeply distressed, looked at his brother's spittle on the floor, and very nearly took a handkerchief out of his pocket to go and wipe it up.
"No! no! you have to spit on the ground,” his brother shouted at him, "spit on the ground. Like this!'
And he spat again.
In the name of all that's holy! He is quite incapable of spitting, he never spits, even into his handkerchief, like the decent fellow he is! Yes, very well, agreed: Mr. Truppel promised and swore in order to placate his brother, but you know what value certain promises and oaths have once the first moment has passed, even for those they are made to.
In the meantime Mr. Livo Truppel, with the best of intentions, resolves to go in secret to his father-in-law's to implore him not to come to his house, at least for some time.
But the day he goes there, he finds his father-in-law's house in such turmoil, and for such an unexpected reason, that Mr. Livo Truppel decides it is prudent to go back home without anyone seeing him.
VII
Berecche Reasons
He's gone, they've both gone, vanished six days ago, Faustino and the other boy, Gino Viesi – vanished.
The little flat in the out-of-the-way house, the peace dreamt of for those final years in that secluded, almost rural spot, with the patrician villa in front – that screen of cypresses there, hateful to the women who see it as an ill omen of death – but still lovely to look at, those cypresses, knowing nothing of the melancholy function mankind has assigned to them and they turn gold in the sun, the beautiful sun which comes in through the four windows overlooking the garden and spreads through the rooms; and they're still lovely by moonlight, in the evening, while the little fountain gurgles nearby... oh, yes, the fountain; but who listens to it any longer? And is the sun shining? Who sees it? Who cares about the moon? Now, as soon as they hear the gravel crunching in the garden under someone's feet, all that they see out there in front, right before their eyes, are those hateful, bristling, gloomy cypresses.
"No... no... It's the caretaker..."
And from a long way away the tears, screams and shouts can be heard; from as far away as via Nomentana "and, for goodness' sake, in times like this it gives respectable people a fright! ... Is this any way to behave?" A typical irascible passer-by, with his newspaper whose pages are entirely given over to news of the war open in his hands, stops and stops other passers-by.
"Is there a fight? What's going on? Are they killing each other over nothing?"
Two or three of them give in to their curiosity and run into the barely marked-out side-road, and two
or three more follow them, but are baffled; they turn round to look at those, less curious or more prudent, who have stayed on the main road; they look around (what a wonderful smell of hay! it's like being in the country!); they make up their minds and come running as well: outside the gate they look with alarm at the four windows from which those tears, screams and shouts are pouring forth. What's going on? No-one moves. They're shouting and yelling in there; but all around everything is peaceful, and the caretaker of the house, oh, there he is, peacefully eating. So it's nothing, then! Some misfortune, a death, perhaps?
"Oh, nobody even knows, and they're screaming like that?"
"What d'you mean, they've vanished?"
"Gone to fight? Where? In France?"
"It's nice, that villa! ls it for rent? Six flats? The rent won't be all that high. Oh, really, as much as that? That's why they haven't been let... It's lovely, yes, in the sun... a beautiful garden... too far out, though... almost in the country...”
But good God, screaming like that... It's the mother, isn't it?
"The fiancée?"
"No, that's the mother..."
The caretaker makes a sign as if to say: ... "She's gone off her head..." – and goes back to his meal. There really are madmen in the world, by God, with the war hanging over all our heads, wanting to go before they have to, as though it were a party they can't wait to get to...
"No, this is why it is, if they've gone to France…"
"Come on, it can't be France! France, my dear sir..."
"Is defending herself after being attacked! The real danger for us..."
"Oh come off it, because either on one side or the other..."
"We're neutral, we're neutral..."
"Oh let's go and get something to eat" concludes a workman, a typical Roman, philosophically.
If only it were possible! For six days they haven't eaten and haven't slept in Berecche's house.
Two unleashed furies, that's what his wife and his daughter Carlotta have become. Especially his wife. Her hair all disheveled, screaming and howling endlessly until she chokes, she runs through the house with her arms flailing, as though seeking an outlet for her desperate grief. Carlotta runs after her; after her run the three poor spinsters, the Monsignor's sisters, who have come from the house opposite: all three identically thin; all three with their hair done identically, and all dressed in grey with a little black shawl over their chests for the death of the Holy Father; behind her, one after the other, with their lips drawn tight, their eyes wide open and full of pity, straightening the little shawls over their chests with restless hands, all three with a thimble on one finger, because they came running at the screams while they were sewing, and they are quite unable to comfort that mother.
"Mrs. Berecche..." says one. And another says:
"But Mrs. Berecche..." And the third:
“But my dear Mrs. Berecche..."
The mother, in her despair, can't listen to anything: she screams and screams until she is hoarse, raising her arms and shaking her hands in a frenzy as soon as someone tries to say something to her. Oh! Lord bless us and keep us. Lord bless us and keep us! Even Monsignor, who came yesterday, met with the same reception.
The servant... do the sweeping? She snatched the broom from her hands and ran after her to hit her over the head with it! She threw pillows, blankets, sheets into the air from the beds which the servant had started making; she snatched the table cloth from the table which had been laid for a meal: the plates, glasses and bottles crashed down onto the floor, smashed to pieces... If she could at least see poor Margheritina's terror as she jumped up from her silent weeping in her usual little corner with her hands clenched and trembling in front of her chest! She sees nothing; she hears nothing; from time to time she hurls herself against the door of the study; she forces it open by battering it with her hands, her shoulders and her knees and she rages at her husband, rearing up at him with her fingers like claws in his face, as though she wanted to tear him to pieces, and she shouts at him, ferociously:
"I want my son! I want my son! Murderer! I want my son! I want my son!"
Berecche, who has aged twenty years in six days, says nothing: although he is deeply offended by her complete lack of restraint, he respects the torment in which that mother finds herself, which is the same as his own. However, he is angered by the sheer, unbridled rage with which it is turned against him and his torment, too, almost turns to rage, almost explodes with the same ferocity. But he controls himself and looks into his wife's eyes with such piercing agony that she first of all opens wide her own crazed eyes and then, bursting into wild, heart breaking sobs she clutches at his chest, rubs her dishevelled head on his chest and whimpers:
"Give me my son! Give me my son!"
And then Berecche, first with a silent heaving of his chest and shoulders, and then with a deep, painful sobbing in his nose, bends over and he, too, weeps on the grey, tousled head of his old, unloved companion.
For the whole of the first day – six days earlier – their anxiety had grown hour by hour, together with a deep sense of misgiving and a veiled irritation, both of which also gradually increased, at their son's lateness in coming home; a lateness which was all the more inexcusable and inexplicable because there were no more demonstrations in Rome which might have led them to think he had been arrested, like the last time; – then, that evening, rushing anxiously hither and thither to look for him, in places he might have stayed so late, in the cafés, at some friend's house, in Gino Viesi's furnished room – and the surprise, here, on learning that he, Gino Viesi, had also gone out that morning at seven, and hadn't been seen since; then the night, that first night when their son wasn't at home, with the house seeming empty and fearful, just as his mind was empty and fearful; and the hours went by one by one, slowly, eternally, with his anxiety made worse by his dismay at seeing them pass like that, one by one, waiting in vain at the window, haunted by thoughts of the roads his son might have taken, along which he was still perhaps walking in the night, going further and further away from his home, wretched and ungrateful child! but going where? Heading for where? – and then the dawn and the silence of the whole house, dreadful, with the women finally falling asleep amidst their tears, over there on the chairs, with their heads on the table, beneath the light which was still burning – oh, that yellow light in the dawn, and those bodies there, which gradually of their own volition had mercifully settled down, arranging themselves so as not to suffer so much, so that they at least could find some rest, even if their sleep was too troubled for their souls to find any! – and then, in the morning and for the whole of the following day, rushing around again, three or four times to the police headquarters, first to report the disappearance of his son and the other boy, so that an order to arrest them could be issued at once and put into general circulation; then to see if there was any news; and there was never anything! – all those nos... that no of the freckled, red-headed policeman, even though that morning he seemed to have taken the matter seriously on hearing that perhaps it was a case of two young men who were trying to get to France to enlist in the Garibaldi legion;[32] and now nothing, he was all intent on something else now as though he didn't even remember the order that had been given; – and the reproaches, the aggression becoming more violent by the hour of his wife and his daughter Carlotta, because they were sure that Faustino and the other boy had run away because of him, but of course, because of him, the one who had oppressed his son from childhood with German method, with German discipline, with German culture, to the extent of making him conceive an unconquerable, undying hatred for Germany, may God damn her to all eternity! and – just recently, in front of that other boy who was mourning two of his brothers who had been killed, hadn't he had the gall to shout that Austria was completely within her rights to send those two brothers to the slaughter? Yes, him! – that was why they had run away, to give him a fitting reply, to find a fitting revenge for the feelings he had hurt of one of them and oppressed, of the other, right from his childhood: well, isn't all this enough? There is still more to explain why Berecche has aged twenty years in six days.
But it isn't enough just to say that he's aged.
Berecche now maintains that he doesn't suffer at all any longer, really not at all. At the most, yes, he can admit, he does admit that he can entertain the idea of his grief in the abstract. In the abstract, perhaps, yes. But not of his own grief as such. Of the grief of a father, in general, to whom the same has happened as to him. In reality, however, he feels nothing. He weeps, yes... perhaps, but like a play-actor, like an actor on the stage, merely for the idea of his grief, not so that he feels it. He imagines he feels it and he shows it. What is there to be afraid of if he talks like this? The most convincing proof is this: that he rea-sons, he rea-sons; he is perfectly well, more than perfectly well able to reason.
"I'm telling you, by God, that I'm reasoning!" he shouts at good, sleepy old Fongi, who has come from the beer-house to visit him. "I'm reasoning."
As though good, sleepy old Fongi was saying anything different.
"And things would be much worse if I, at least, didn't reason in this house! Have you seen them, have you heard them, those two furies? It's my fault! Go on, you tell me, you tell me as well that it's my fault! I'd be pleased, you know? I'd rise even further above all these tears, all these screams, proud in the certainty that I alone am still capable of reasoning, here, right here!"
And he strikes himself hard on the forehead.
"Right here, so as to feel pity for my accusers! right here to sympathize both with those two poor, unfortunate women and with this wretched Italy of ours, a woman like them, which will never have what is called a SENSE OF DISCIPLINE! But don't you see, don't you see what is happening in this wretched Italy of ours because she has opted for a measure of such harsh discipline – that is, neutrality? Your children run away! Their mothers shriek and shout! Do you think I'm not reasoning? Good old Fongi, with his big, fleshy nose, keeps his head down and looks at him as though afraid from over the platinum frames of his pince-nez. As a retired doctor, perhaps he thinks to himself that there is no clearer sign of madness than reasoning, or believing you're reasoning, at certain times. In any case, if not quite afraid, good old Fongi does at least seem dumbfounded, and doesn't reply either yes or no, however much Berecche fixes his angry gaze on him, expecting a reply in the affirmative.
"No? You're saying no?"
"Me? Really, I ..."
"Do you perhaps think that when Italy first announced her neutrality I turned on the government?"
"No, I don't think..."
"But you must think, you must think, by God! I need to think right now, and there you are sitting in front of me like a dormouse!"
Good old Fongi gives himself a little shake; he hastens to say to him: "Yes, go ahead, think..., if it does you good..."
"You have to think with me!" Berecche shouts at him. "You have to think that there and then I was prompted by a feeling of loyalty, do you understand? A feeling of loyalty towards that nation which had taught me DISCIPLINE, which... – do you know what that means? – It means curbing, curbing, stifling, if need be, your natural feelings, as a father, as a son, all the natural feelings that deny constraints! Do you understand? Curbing nature which rises up against reason. Do you understand? But at once I saw the error of my ways; I understood that the real discipline for us must lie in stifling this feeling of loyalty as well; and I've stifled it! And I've even reached the point of recognizing that Germany acted rashly, do you see? That Germany was wrong, that Germany's lost her head... I 've even, I've even come to this!'
Good old Fongi shrinks more and more into himself, and his nose seems to grow bigger and bigger. Berecche looks at that nose and, bit by bit, he feels an unjustifiable irritation with that nose growing in him. What kind of a nose is that! What an unbearable reality that nose is! He hurls such a weighty confession at it and nothing, simply nothing, happens: it stays there quite still; it shows no emotion. It's as tranquil as it is voluminous. It shows no emotion. A real Roman nose!
"I've even come to this!" shouts Berecche. "And to admitting as well, if you like, that Germany has turned against us by helping Austria, on a mere pretext, in an offensive war which, breaking the pacts of alliance, was inevitably going to make Austria our enemy. The alliance with Austria was a discipline for us! Germany has shattered that discipline because, on declaring war, she should have understood that we could no longer be the allies of Austria; and even more that we had inevitably to be against Austria! I 'd even come to this! And even to thinking that if we, too, started to take action, and if my son, either because he was called up early or because he was driven on by a feeling which I would then have been unable to oppose, had gone to fight as a volunteer, I would have gone as well, me, too, just as you see me, a volunteer at fifty-three years of age and with my huge belly, I 'd have gone as well! But now do you see what my son has done? He wanted to set himself against me! He meant to set himself against me! And why? Because like all the others he doesn't know what discipline means! And he's set his poor mother against me, and his sister; and this should really scare you now, Fongi, he's also set me against myself! Yes he has, because in me there's also a father who's weeping, and at whom I, who know what discipline means, am forced to shout: 'Come off it, you buffoon, don't cry, because you're wrong to cry!' Let the others cry! I'm not crying, I won't cry any longer, not even if the news comes, you understand? that he's dead! Not just that; but I tell you this, and I tell you loud and clear so that it can be heard as well by those two furies out there who would like to stop me from reasoning, coming here and shouting at me that they want their son or their fiancé from me, as if I were as mad as them; I tell you this: that now I'm on Germany’s side again, yes I am, I'm telling you loud and clear, on Germany's side again, on the side of Germany which has probably committed an act of folly, indeed has done so for certain, but you see what a magnificent sight she still offers to the rest of the world? She's aroused the whole world against her and she's keeping it at bay! They're all powerless against her power! What a sight! And you want to demolish her? to destroy her? Who does? France, rotten to the core, Russia with her feet of clay, Britain? And are they worth more than her? What are they worth by comparison with her? Nothing! Nothing! No-one can defeat her!"
Oh at last! good old Fongi with his big nose wakes up all of a sudden from his torpor, which has been so battered, crushed and bludgeoned by the ferocity of the invective. In order to protest? No. He has news, news which he has been clutching to himself since he arrived and which, under the onslaught of all those tears and shouts, he has not yet found a way of delivering.
"I" he says "have here a letter from Faustino."
It's a miracle if Berecche doesn't drop down all of a heap in a dead faint. He turns very pale, and then all of a sudden purple in the face; he flings himself on Fongi as if Fongi were trying to get away:
"You?" he shouts at him. "A letter? from Faustino?"
And he weeps and laughs and shakes all over and runs stumblingly to shout in the passage:
"There's a letter... a letter from Faustino! ... come quickly! ... Margheritina, Margheritina, bring Margheritina as well!"
And while his wife and Carlotta with Margheritina by the hand burst panting and trembling with impatience into the study, with his hands shaking he snatches the letter from Fongi's hands and tries to read it out.
"Sent to him."
"To you?"
"Yes..."
"Dear... here we are... Dear Mr.... oh, God... Dear Mr. Fongi…:”
He can't go on. His eyes, his voice, his breath, even his legs fail him. He drops into a chair and hands the letter to Carlotta for her to read.
The letter is dated from Nice, and reads like this:
Dear Mr. Fongi,
I know the great affection you have for my father and I'm writing to you to ask you to go and see him as soon as you receive this letter to tell him what he has probably guessed by now, with what anger and grief I leave you to imagine.
But please tell him, Mr. Fongi, that I haven't come here to fight for France. He will be pleased at that! I've come here because I'm convinced (and I wish to God I was wrong!) that Italy, always the 'maidservant' and now without masters, will do nothing. The two she used to have – one of them hateful and who has always treated her badly and the other who always appeared to protect her, little old lady in decline as she is – have both, all of a sudden, without even dismissing her, without even telling her that they could do without her services, left her to her own devices and started to manage by themselves. Now poor Italy, who isn't even sure that she's been dismissed, doesn't know what to do or where to go. She's afraid of her old masters, and she's afraid of taking service with new ones which via the employment agencies, called Embassies, are asking for her and making her pressing offers. Which way should she turn, among those who tell her to stretch out this arm or that to take back from here and from there what used to be hers and everyone has taken from her? The poor lady in decline is quite incapable of being alone, by herself, used as she has now been for so long to serving masters for little reward in the apartments of her ancient, magnificent, airy house, full of sun, in a pleasant and flower-filled setting. There are many beautiful things, I know, and many great and glorious things in this ancient house, which the poor lady in decline has turned into a boarding-house; but there are also sad things and a deep sense of affliction, especially in the souls of this lady's sons, born as servants. Their mother has brought them up to be prudent, to be tolerant, to pretend not to understand or to hear; even to accept peaceably, if that is what happens, a slap by way of a tip, replying with a fine bow: “Thank you, sir!”; she has brought them up to wear all liveries without blushing, as though each were the outfit which best became them, to brush away without embarrassment from the folds of each of them the marks of the kicks they've received, and to take great care when drawing up the accounts, as often, alas, poor mother, they've come out wrong, to her detriment. Well then, Mr. Fongi, tell my father that I'm here in France, not for France, with some of my companions – not many, oh, not many! – but just to demonstrate that in the midst of all that prudence and tolerance, and all that astuteness used to get the accounts right and that uncertainty about which 'livery it is best to wear at the moment, there is, even in Italy... nothing really, a bit of wasted youth, and a bit of youth which doesn't know how to do the accounts or to be astute arid prudent, in short, a bit of real youth. Our mother Italy doesn't need it, perhaps won't need it, and it may harm her internally; we've come here to fling it into action for her. My own little mother will say: – What do you mean? And I wasn't there, and aren't I a mother as well? And I need you! – That's true, mother, but just think that this is a time when all little mothers, like their sons, have to feel that they too are the little daughters of a greater mother. I'm here for you, if I've come here for this great mother we have in common, although perhaps at this moment you believe the opposite.
Kiss her hand for me, Mr. Fongi, and assure her that I will send news often; comfort my father, who is perhaps suffering so much that he can't forgive me; kiss my sisters and tell Carlotta that Gino is here with me and will write her a long letter tonight. To you, Mr. Fongi, I send my warmest thanks and my respectful and cordial greetings.
Your devoted FAUSTO BERECCHE
They're all in tears
They've been crying quietly during the reading so as not to miss a syllable. Now that the letter is finished, they continue to weep quietly for a little longer, as though not to disperse the echo of a distant voice.
Fongi murmurs, softly, almost to himself:
"So noble... so noble..."
In the end, Berecche jumps to his feet feeling suffocated, and crying out hoarsely flings himself on his wife; he clasps her in his arms, once more bends his face over her head, and both of them, clasped together like that, weep bitterly, trembling with sobs. Carlotta embraces Margheritina and they too weep bitterly. Good old Fongi, for his part, twists and turns to pull his handkerchief from the back pocket of his long frock-coat. In the end his big, tranquil nose has been deeply moved, and he blows if several time-s, loudly, repeating each time and nodding his head with deep conviction:
"So noble... so very noble..."
VIII
In the Dark
That evening when the caretaker of the house has turned out the light on the stairs and the garden is in darkness Berecche, wary and distraught and keeping his head well down re-opens the main door which the caretaker has just closed and calls him:
"Psst! Psst!"
The caretaker, who isn't expecting it, turns round almost scared; Berecche beckons him to come over in silence, without making too much noise on the gravel, and begins to talk to him in great secrecy:
"Well, for less than six hundred..." says the caretaker at a certain point.
"Keep your voice down!"
"Because the Government has already requisitioned them from all the dealers... at least so they say... You know what it's like at times like this..."
"Yes, of course; but for six hundred liras...."
"Oh, a good pony, yes... even a saddle-horse..."
"But it has to be a saddle-horse!"
"You want it for... ?"
"Keep your voice down!"
"A saddle-horse, certainly... you'll find one for six hundred liras..."
"On which, for the moment, I'll put down a deposit... of two hundred... or possibly two hundred and fifty liras... like this... Because I hope to be able to use it, but just in case I can't... well, I'll only lose the deposit... But please keep it a secret... don't tell anyone. Deal with the matter yourself."
And Berecche, distraught, keeping his head well down and on tiptoe goes back into the house and leaves the caretaker there in the darkness of the garden, rooted to the spot with amazement at that mysterious commission to buy a horse given to him in such secrecy, in the dark, by the sole tenant of the house, a good and worthy man and a man of learning... well! A saddle horse... and no-one must know about it...
After closing the main door very quietly and going back into his flat Berecche, still on tiptoe, crosses the corridor, shuts himself in his study, sits down at his little table, takes a piece of paper from his briefcase begins to write:
To His Excellency the Minister of War – Rome: he raises the index finger of the hand holding the pen and places it on his lips. He meditates at length.
He has clearly in mind what he wants to ask of H. E. the Minister of War; but he is uncertain about the precise military terms. Does one say Voluntary Mounted Guides Corps, or something else? He'd better find out first from the War Ministry. And then, since he has to declare his age – fifty-three – wouldn't it be better to send a medical certificate saying that he is physically fit and healthy with his request? He can get it from Fongi tomorrow.
"No, not from Fongi... not from Fongi..." he murmurs. It must be kept secret from everyone. And then, he's given Fongi such very clear proof that he is in full possession of his reason and shouted at him with such vehemence that he is once more entirely on Germany's side...
"No, not from Fongi..."
Except that if he goes to see some other doctor who isn't his friend, can he be sure of getting this certificate that he is physically fit and healthy? There's his heart... for some time now his heartbeat has been irregular; his heart is tired and sometimes his head is so heavy... Who knows! He'll go first to see another doctor; if he can't get the certificate he'll appeal to Fongi, asking him to keep it a secret. Berecche, too, wants to go to war.
He puts the headed piece of paper back in his brief-case, gets up and goes over to one of his bookshelves; he takes down a Hoepli manual on Horse-riding; goes back to sit at the little table; leans his elbows on it, takes his head between his hands and immerses himself in a preparatory reading:
CHAPTER ONE
Horse-riding: history and advice for beginners
The next day he's at the Riding School in via Po.
With one bundle under his arm (his leather riding boots and a riding whip, bought just now) - and another, smaller one in his hand – (his spurs) – Berecche presents himself before Mr. Felder, the riding master.
"A crash course? But, may I ask, has Sir already had some experience of riding?"
Berecche shakes his head.
"No."
"Well, then?" Mr. Felder exclaims with a smile of pity and wonder. For a short while he looks at that solid, square, sober figure of a man standing frowning in front of him; then, after asking permission, feels his leg muscles, which really are a bit flabby, really a bit thin in proportion to his ample trunk; he takes him by the hand – (if I may) – and invites him to bend his knees, keeping his feet together and balancing on the tips of his toes.
"I'll hold you."
Berecche, frowning more than ever, shakes his head again; he rejects the hand; he's done that exercise at home, locked away in his study; and now he performs it by himself, without help, once, twice, three times, with suppleness, with his eyes dosed, in front of Mr. Felder, who says approvingly:
''Ah, good... good... very good…"
Berecche straightens up and informs Mr. Felder, who is more and more astonished at the somber way in which this new client speaks to him, that he has studied all night and therefore, as far as theory is concerned, he can say he's already firmly in the saddle. He points to the wooden exercise horse standing on a spot in the arena and makes the gesture of brushing it aside with his hand, to show that he can do without it because, in theory, he already knows all the positions and exercises and maneuvers of the horse, set paces, half-pace, parade, pesade, pirouette...
"A bit of practice, just a bit of quick practice," he concludes. "Look, I've brought this pair of riding boots with me. I'll put them on. Let me mount and let's try straight away, even on a horse that's a bit restive... lively, I mean. It'll be better! It doesn't matter if I fall off."
Mr. Felder tries to raise a number of objections; but Berecche interrupts him, repeating each time: "I'm telling you it doesn't matter if I fall off!" in such a peremptory tone that in the end he shrugs his shoulders and yields to the wishes of his strange client.
That first time Berecche doesn't fall off; but if he wants to do it all his own way why on earth has he come to a riding stables? If he carries on like this he'll break his neck not once but ten times over, and once is enough. He doesn't care? But he, Mr. Felder, cares as he doesn't want the responsibility; because in his school...
"Look," he adds, "go gently, to begin with, in the English style."
"Which means?" asks Berecche from up on his horse, breathless and scarlet in the face.
"Well it means," Mr. Felder resumes, "that as you know there is the Italian style of riding and the English style of riding. Try going gently, in the English style. Look, sit with a bit of your weight on the stirrups... like this... and make yourself rise and fall with the motion of the horse... of course, leaning forward a bit with your head and body... like this, go on, towards the neck of your mount... not too much... I'm saying that, you know, to stop your head from being shaken around too much... I see that... yes, you're a bit flushed..."
"Oh, don't worry about that!" exclaims Berecche. "Well then let's go ahead and try in the English style... Come on, let go of the bridle..."
"Gently does it, to begin with..."
"Let go, I tell you!"
The riding master lets go; the horse sets off at a gallop, and then Berecche... oh, God... oh, God! ...
"Keep firmly in the saddle! ... keep firmly in the saddle!" Mr. Felder shouts, running after him across the arena.
Berecche bounces around awkwardly, wobbles, sways to and fro and in the end falls off with a crash, with one foot still in its stirrup so that the horse drags him some way over the arena.
Nothing! He's done nothing to himself... But the English style doesn't work!
"I'm telling you it's nothing! I'm very pleased... Nothing... I hurt my foot a bit... but it's better already... The English style doesn't work! Let me get back up. I'll do better in the Italian style, like before. And give me my whip!"
Mr. Felder takes a step backwards, putting the whip behind him.
"Oh, no whips, my dear sir!"
"Give me my whip, I say!"
"I'd have to be mad!"
"But do you realize that I wouldn't have fallen off if I'd had my whip?"
Berecche laughs, panting, from the back of the horse. He's really pleased, yes, even with the fall. It was a wonderful moment, a great joy to him, to be galloping along and bouncing around like that: he thought of Faustino, of the war, of Faustino charging with his bayonet against the Germans and... he wants to be off and away, at a gallop, with him, into the fray with his eyes closed. He wants to feel the same joy again now.
"Come on, stop fussing, give me the whip!"
He moves up on his horse; leans over; snatches the whip from behind Mr. Felder's back; and he's off, whipping up his horse, off again at a gallop across the arena, with his eyes closed, plunging back into the violent vision of the Garibaldi legion at the charge, with Faustino at their head. And the faster his boy goes in front of him in his red shirt and with his bayonet fixed, the harder he whips his horse; onwards! onwards! Long live Italy! Oh, how red those shirts are! A bit of youth... A bit of wasted youth!
Who is shouting like that in the arena? ... Oh... everything's whirling around! ... Who's running up? What on earth? Lying here? What happened? They're shouting, they're coming running...
Berecche has crashed to the ground; flat on his face, with his forehead split open. He's gasping for breath, but he's full of joy; he doesn't feel any pain; he's just sorry for that good man Mr. Felder, who's shouting with rage; he'd like to tell him that it's nothing; that he shouldn't worry about anything; that no-one will hold him responsible for the damage he's done to his head.
"Is it serious?" he asks the people who have come running to pick him up from the ground.
Seeing the way those people are looking at him, he understands that it is serious; but he is obviously unable to see his own face, with that open wound on his forehead; and he laughs, with his face covered in blood, to reassure those people.
"Well," he says, "so we're off to the war?"
They take him by the shoulders and the feet and carry him outside; they lay him down in a cab to take him to the hospital.
"So off to the war, then?"
Contrary to every supposition that others might make, Berecche continues to reason; and he gives further proof of it, that evening, when, with a turban of bandages covering not just the whole of his head but also half his face, hiding both his eyes, they take him home from the hospital.
"I fell... I fell..."
That's all he says: not how or where he fell. He fell. But he reasons: so much so that he understands at once that if he says this without explaining how and where he fell his wife and his daughter Carlotta might suppose that he tried to kill himself. And so he adds:
"It's nothing... I felt giddy in the street... Don't be afraid... my eyes are alright: it's just my forehead, a cut on the brows... It's nothing. It'll get better."
He wants to be taken to his study and put to sit in his usual place for the evening. He only wants to have Margheritina with him. He sits her on one of his knees; he hugs her. He reasons; but it seems to him that Margheritina, if nothing else, will at least be able to see if the little red lamp in front of the little Madonna of the house opposite is alight; and he asks her if it is.
Margheritina doesn't reply. Berecche understands that his dear little Margheritina can't even see that; and he hugs her closer to his chest. Perhaps Margheritina doesn't even know that opposite there's a little house with a little Madonna at one corner and a little red lamp burning. What does the world mean to her? Well, now he can well understand. Darkness. This darkness. Everything outside can change; the world can become something other; a people disappear; a whole continent be redrawn; a war pass close by, to overthrow and destroy... What does it matter? Darkness. This darkness. For Margheritina, always this darkness. And if Faustino is killed, tomorrow, there in France? Oh, then, for him as well, even without that bandage, with his eyes open again to see the world, everything will be darkness, always, like this, for him as well; but perhaps worse because he will still be condemned to see life, this atrocious life of men.
He again hugs his little blind daughter, forever enclosed in her dark silence, to his chest; he murmurs:
"And for this, my little girl, for all this let thanks be given to Germany!"
Rome, end of 1914, beginning of 1915
Endnotes
1. ‘Würstel’ are German sausages; ‘Krügel’ are stoneware beer-mugs decorated with figures. [Translator’s note]
2. “Only in Germany, only in Germany/ There do I wish to die.” [Translator’s note]
3. ‘Berecche’ is derived from the German verb ‘berechnen’, meaning ‘to calculate’. [Translator’s note]
4. A wooden match. [Translator’s note]
5. Italy declared her neutrality in World War I on August 2, 1914. [Translator’s note]
6. Hostilities began when Austria attacked Serbia after the Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip assassinated the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. Germany declared war on Russia on August 1st and on France on August 3rd. Italy, then an ally of Austria and Germany, was not given prior warning. [Translator’s note]
7. The Trentino and Venezia Giulia were then in Austrian hands. [Translator’s note]
8. Tunis was occupied by the French in 1881, thus constituting what Italy saw as an economic and military threat to her coast, so Italy joined the Triple Alliance with Austria-Hungary and Germany in 1882. [Translator’s note]
9. There were claims that France tried to help the Turks by smuggling arms to them during Italy’s war against Turkey for the conquest of Libya (1911-1912). [Translator’s note]
10. The references are to the Treaty of Campoformio (1797), when Napoleon ceded Venice to Austria, and the armistice of 1859 agreed at Villafranca when Napoleon III halted his attack on Austria-Hungary, so ending the second Italian War of Independence. [Translator’s note]
11. Machiavelli (1469-1527), The Prince, Chapter XXI. [Translator’s note]
12. Identified with via Bosio, where Pirandello lived in 1914 and returned before his death on December 10, 1936. [Translator’s note]
13. A large neo-classical villa in Rome, whose construction began in 1841. [Translator’s note]
14. Ghetina and Margheritina are both diminutives of Margherita. [Translator’s note]
15. Faustino is the diminutive of Fausto, the name of Berecche’s son – and also of Luigi Pirandello’s second son, Fausto Pirandello. [Translator’s note]
16. A reference to the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, which ended with the defeat of France. [Translator’s note]
17. Berecche’s love for this clock in the shape of a windmill links him to Don Quixote. [Translator’s note]
18. References to the French Emperor Napoleon III (1808-1873) and the Piedmontese statesman Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour (1810-1861). [Translator’s note]
19. Patrice MacMahon (1808-1893) was the victor against the Austrians at the battle of Magenta (1859), at a time when France was allied to Piedmont. He was later President of the French Republic (1873-1879). [Translator’s note]
20. I here follow the text in L. Pirandello, Novelle per un anno. Il viaggio. Candelora, Berecche e la Guerra. Una giornata, ed. L. Sedita (Milan, Garzanti, 1994), p. 361, in which Russia is against Germany in Prussia and Poland. [Translator’s note]
21. The famous German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). [Translator’s note]
22. Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776-1831), a Danish historian of German origin, author of a 3-volume History of Rome. [Translator’s note]
23. The wife of Tarquinius Collatinus, in legend Lucretia was raped by Sextus, son of Tarquinius Superbus. She took her own life. Mucius Scaevola, again in legend, held his right hand in the fire to show his indifference to physical pain. [Translator’s note]
24. Four of the great German writers and philosophers: Christoph Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805); Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781); Immanuel Kant (1724-1804); Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). [Translator’s note]
25. The Adriatic regions Istria and Dalmatia, which had belonged to the Venetian Republic, passed under Austrian control in 1797. [Translator’s note]
26. A city in Galicia then in Austrian hands which was occupied by Russia in August 1914. [Translator’s note]
27. Pope Pius X, born Giuseppe Sarto in the province of Treviso in 1835, elected Pope in 1903 and died on August 20, 1914. [Translator’s note]
28. Otto (912-973) was Duke of Saxony, King of Germany and from 962 Holy Roman Emperor with the title Otto I; Boleslas I (909-967), Duke of Bohemia, fought against Otto but had to submit to his authority; Henry I (925-955) of Saxony became Duke of Bavaria; Louis the Child (893-911) was proclaimed King of Germany in 900. [Translator’s note]
29. Wilhelm II (1859-1941), Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia (1888-1918); Franz Joseph (1813-1916) was Austrian Emperor from 1848. [Translator’s note]
30. Victor Emanuel III (1869-1947) King of Italy from 1900 to 1946. [Translator’s note]
31. “Devil take it.” [Translator’s note]
32. A legion of Italian volunteers led by Garibaldi’s nephew (also Giuseppe). [Translator’s note]