“Bobbio’s Hail Mary” (“L’avemaria di Bobbio”)

Translated by Marella Feltrin-Morris

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “Bobbio’s Hail Mary” (“L’avemaria di Bobbio”), tr. Marella Feltrin-Morris. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2021.

This story was originally published in the newspaper Corriere della Sera (February 21, 1912) and then included in the Collection A Prancing Horse (La rallegrata) in the initial set of volumes of Stories for a Year issued in 1922.

This brief short story features strong elements of Pirandello’s typical humor (umorismo), a form of irony that in this case turns a toothache into an occasion for philosophical speculation. The story also dramatizes the idea that arcane forces may rule our lives, a theme that recurs in other works by Pirandello, including in his earlier novel, The Late Mattia Pascal (Il fu Mattia Pascal, 1904) and a late play, We Don’t Know How (Non si sa come, 1934). In the story’s plot, a notary, Bobbio, refuses to give in to superstition by acknowledging that his toothache has been cured thanks to having prayed a Hail Mary at a roadside shrine. The toothache thus becomes a metaphorical scale to weigh Bobbio’s skepticism against the apparent miracle. References to Saint Augustine and Montaigne shift the conversation towards a philosophical reflection on religious belief and the protagonist’s existential crisis as he questions his own faith. Other short stories with similar themes and reflections include “The Wax Madonna” (“La Madonnina”) and “Chants the Epistle” (“Canta l’epistola”), another story included in the same Collection, A Prancing Horse.

The Editors

A very peculiar event happened many years ago to Marco Saverio Bobbio, one of the most esteemed notaries in Richieri. [1]

During the little free time that his profession afforded him, he had always taken delight in philosophy. He had read many books of both ancient and contemporary philosophy, some of them even more than once, and he had pondered them at great depth.

Unfortunately, Bobbio had, in his mouth, more than a few bad teeth. And nothing, in his mind, predisposed a person to the study of philosophy better than a toothache. Every philosopher, according to him, must have at least one bad tooth. Schopenhauer, for sure, had more than one. [2]

Toothache, philosophy. And philosophy, little by little, had caused him to lose his faith, which had been most fervent when Bobbio was a little boy and used to go to Mass every morning with his mom and take the Holy Communion every Sunday in the little church of Badiola al Carmine. [3]

However, what we know about ourselves is only a part, perhaps a minimal part, of what we unconsciously are. Indeed, Bobbio used to argue that what we call consciousness is comparable to the little bit of water we see on the surface of a bottomless well. What he meant, somehow, was that beyond the limits of our memory are impressions and gestures that remain unknown to our present awareness. This is because within us live not only the people we currently are, but also the people we once were. Those people still feel and reason inside of us with emotions and thoughts that our memory has long forgotten, shadowed, erased and extinguished, but a sudden sensation—a flavor, a color, or a sound—can still awaken them, revealing an unsuspected being still alive within us.

Marco Saverio Bobbio was well known in Richieri, not only for his qualities as an excellent, very scrupulous notary, but also, and maybe more so, for his gigantic height, which his top hat, three chins and enormous stomach made quite spectacular. Now faithless and skeptical, he still had inside of him—and didn’t know it—the little boy who went to Mass every morning with his mom and two young sisters, and who took Holy Communion every Sunday in the little church of Badiola al Carmine. Perhaps even now, unbeknownst to him, as he went to bed at night, that little boy put his tiny hands together on his behalf and recited the old prayers, the words of which Bobbio didn’t even remember.

He had clear proof of this many years earlier, when the above-mentioned peculiar event happened to him.

He was vacationing with his family in a little property he owned a couple of miles away from Richieri. Mornings he would ride his donkey (poor donkey!) into town and go to his office to take care of his cases, which were always a headache. At night, he would return to the countryside.

Sundays, however, he wanted to be completely and blissfully on holiday. Relatives and friends came over and they would have huge feasts outdoors. The women prepared lunch or chatted; the children chased each other loudly; the men went hunting or played bocce.

It was hilarious and terrifying to watch Bobbio run after the bocce balls, his three chins and stomach bouncing around.

“Marco!” his wife would yell at him from a distance. “Don’t tire yourself out! Careful, Marco, or you’ll start sneezing!”

If Bobbio started sneezing—then heaven help them! Every time it was a terrible explosion, from all parts of his body. And not rarely, dripping all over the place, he would have to run for cover, one hand hiding the front and the other the back.

He had no control over that monstrously-oversized body of his. It looked as if it were kicking over the traces and running away in a mad dash, while everybody’s soul was left reeling in the attempt to hold it back. When his body regained its control and balance, it brought back with it some strange aches and sudden breakdowns that affected Bobbio’s arm, leg, or head.

Most often, it was his teeth.

Those teeth, those teeth were Bobbio’s affliction! He had had five of them pulled, or maybe six, he had lost count. But those few that were left seemed determined to torture him even more on behalf of the ones that were gone.

One of those Sundays, when his brother-in-law had come down from Richieri with his whole family—wife, children, her relatives, and relatives of other relatives, five carriagefuls of them—and everybody had been having a jolly good time… bam! All of a sudden, right when it was time to sit down to lunch, he felt a horrible, excruciating pain.

So as not to ruin the fun for the others, poor Bobbio withdrew to his room with a hand pressed against his cheek, his mouth half open, and his eyes like lead, insisting that the others go ahead and eat without worrying about him. But an hour later he reappeared, looking like someone who no longer knew where on earth he was, someone who just had a roaring steam mill—that’s right, a steam mill—plow straight into his mouth and start furiously grinding. The guests were aghast and dismayed as they stared at his mouth, as if they were truly expecting to see flour pouring out of it. Flour? No, foam. Foam, that’s what it was. But that was not the only absurdity; everything in the world was absurd, horrendous and brutal. Weren’t they all partying and merrymaking while he turned rabid with pain? While the entire universe shattered inside his head?

Panting, his eyes wide open, his face ablaze, hands fluttering about his mouth, he bounced from one leg to the other like a circus bear, bobbing his head as if he wanted to bang it against the wall. All of his gestures aimed to convey rage and violence, but they manifested themselves weakly, ineffectively, perhaps so as to not bother the pain or provoke it even more.

For heaven’s sake, why didn’t they sit down? God, let them all sit down! Were they trying to drive him even crazier, leaping on him like that? Sit down! Sit down! Nothing. No one could help him! Nonsense... rubbish. Nothing, please! He couldn’t speak... Just one... let just one of them go and have the horses hitched to one of the carriages that had arrived that morning. He wanted to ride straight to Richieri and have his tooth pulled. Right away! Right away! Meanwhile, everybody just sit down! As soon as the carriage was ready... No, he wanted to go alone! He couldn’t bear to hear anyone talk, didn’t want to see anybody... Please, alone! Alone!

A short while later, as he was riding in the carriage—alone, as he had demanded— abandoned, submerged, lost in that throbbing, agonizing pain while the horses worked their way uphill at a dead slow pace into the descending night... What happened? In the tumult of his consciousness, all of a sudden Bobbio felt a tremor, a tremor of anguished tenderness towards himself. He was suffering, oh God, suffering so much he couldn’t take it anymore. At that moment the carriage was passing by a plain votive shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Grace, its little hanging lantern casting off its light through the grating. In that tremor of perturbed tenderness, his consciousness in turmoil, no longer aware of what he was doing, Bobbio gazed tearfully at the little lantern and...

“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

All at once, inside of him everything was filled with quiet, infinite quiet. Outside of him, too, a mysterious, boundless quiet seemed to encompass the whole world. A coolly overflowing quiet, inscrutably gentle and sweet.

He removed his hand from his cheek and sat there dazed, dumbstruck, listening. A long, long sigh of relief restored his soul to him. Oh, God! But how could that be? His toothache was gone, really gone, as if by a miracle. He had said a Hail Mary and—wait, he had done what? That’s right. And it was gone, there was no other way to put it. Because of the Hail Mary? How could one believe it? It had simply come over him to say it, just like that, all of a sudden, like a sissy...

In the meantime, the carriage had kept climbing up towards Richieri; and Bobbio, stunned and mortified, hadn’t thought to order the driver to go back to the villa.

The stinging shame of recognizing first of all that he, like a sissy, had uttered a Hail Mary and that right after that his toothache had stopped for real made him irritated and mystified him. Not only, but he felt remorse at acknowledging that he was being ungrateful, now that he had been granted his wish, by not believing, by refusing to believe, that he had been relieved of his pain thanks to that prayer. And on top of it all, he was gripped by a secret fear that, because of his ingratitude, the pain might soon start plaguing him again.

Nonsense! The pain hadn’t resumed. And returning to the villa, light as a feather, smiling and jubilant, he announced to all the guests who had run over to meet him:

“Poof! It just went away all of a sudden, by itself, right after I passed the shrine of Our Lady of Grace. All by itself!”

Bobbio was just thinking back, with a skeptical snicker lingering on his lips, about that very peculiar phenomenon from many years earlier as he lounged on the sofa in his office after lunch, the first volume of Montaigne’s Essays open before him.

He was reading Chapter XXVI, which demonstrates how “it is folly to measure truth and error by our own capacity.” [4]

In spite of that skeptical snicker, Bobbio was feeling somewhat restless and, as he read, from time to time he would rub his hand over his right cheek.

Montaigne was saying:

“When we read in Bouchet the miracles of St. Hilary’s relics, away with them: his authority is not sufficient to deprive us of the liberty of contradicting him; but generally and offhand to condemn all suchlike stories, seems to me a singular impudence. That great St. Augustine testifies...” [5]

“Oh, sure!” Bobbio exclaimed at that point, his snicker more forceful. “Oh, sure! ‘That great St. Augustine testifies,’ or rather, attests that he saw a blind boy regain his sight upon the relics of St. Gervasius and St. Protasius at Milan, and a woman in Carthage recover from cancer after another woman, recently baptized, made the sign of the cross over her. But in the same way that great St. Augustine could have affirmed, or rather, attested to the veracity of my testimony: that Marco Saverio Bobbio, one of the most esteemed notaries in Richieri, was once healed of a fierce toothache by saying a Hail Mary...”

Bobbio closed his eyes, shaped his mouth into an O like a monkey, and blew out some air.

“Bad breath!”

He tightened his lips and, leaning his head to one side, still with his eyes closed, he again rubbed his hand over his jaw, this time harder.

Christ, his tooth! It was hurting again, and it hurt badly, too. Christ, not again!

He fumed. He struggled to get up, threw his book on the sofa and started pacing up and down the room with his hand pressed against his cheek, snorting and frowning. He stood before the mirror over the mantelpiece, stuck his finger into a corner of his mouth and pulled his cheek outward to get a better look at this cavity. The contact with the air triggered a sharp fit of pain and he immediately contracted his lips, his whole face contorting into a spasm. He looked up at the ceiling and shook his fists in exasperation.

But he knew from experience that becoming discouraged or angry would only make his pain worse. Therefore, he made an effort to remain in control. He went to stretch out on the sofa again and lay there for a while with his eyes half closed, almost lulling the pain. Then he reopened them and resumed reading his book.

“...by a woman newly baptized; Hesperius—” No, further on... there: “A woman in a procession, having touched St. Stephen’s shrine with a nosegay, and rubbing her eyes with it, to have recovered her sight, lost many years before...” [6]

Bobbio sneered. His sneer immediately twisted into a grimace as he suddenly felt another sharp fit of pain. He pressed his hand, balled up into a fist, against his cheek. His sneer was one of defiance.

“Well then,” he said. “Let’s see. Let Montaigne and St. Augustine be my witnesses. See if it goes away now, as it did back then.”

He closed his eyes and, his lips twisted into a frozen smile from the agony, he slowly, slowly recited the Hail Mary, in Latin this time, struggling to remember the words: “...gratia plena... Dominus tecum... fructus ventris tui... nunc et in hora mortis...” He reopened his eyes, “Amen...” He waited a little, probing his tooth in his mouth... “Amen...”

Nothing at all! It wasn’t going away. It was actually getting worse... There, ouch, ouch... worse... worse...

“Oh Virgin Mary! Virgin Mary!”

Bobbio was flabbergasted. This last, repeated invocation had not been his; it had come out of his lips in a voice that was not his, with a fervor that was not his. And already... he could feel it already... a respite... a relief... Was that possible? Again?... Nonsense, no! Ouch, ouch... ouch, ouch...

“To hell with Montaigne and St. Augustine!”

Bobbio squashed his top hat on his head, and bathed in sweat and with his hand pressed against his cheek, he frantically rushed to look for a dentist.

Did he, or didn’t he say again, unwittingly, another Hail Mary while he was on his way? Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. The fact is that, in front of the dentist’s door, he again stopped short, soaked in sweat, rivers of it pouring down his large face, looking so comically confused that a friend called out to him:

“Signor Bobbio!”

“Hey...”

“What are you doing there?”

“Who, me? Nothing... I had a... a toothache...”

“Did it go away?”

“Right... by itself...”

“And you say it like that? Bless the Lord!”

Bobbio glanced at him like a rabid dog.

“Bless the Lord? Bless the Lord my foot! I’m telling you, by itself! But precisely because I’m telling you that, I bet that perhaps, in a minute or so, it’ll come back. But you know what I’m going to do? It doesn’t hurt anymore, but I’ll have it pulled anyway! All of them, I’ll have all of them pulled, one by one, right now. I don’t want these tricks... I want no more of these tricks, no sir! All of them, one by one I’ll have them pulled!”

And as his friend burst out laughing, Signor Bobbio darted furiously through the door and into the dentist’s office.