“Either of One or of No One” (“O di uno o di nessuno”)

Translated by Ellen McRae

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “Either of One or of No One” (“O di uno o di nessuno”), tr. Ellen McRae. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2024.

Given its length, “Either of One or of No One” (“O di uno o di nessuno”) was first published only in part in the journal Roma. Rassegna illustrata dell’Esposizione del 1911 on April 15, 1912, where just the first three chapters (out of the total five) appeared in print. The story was later republished in its complete form in the miscellany volume The Trap (La trappola), printed by Treves in Milan in 1915. Eventually, it was included in the third Collection of Stories for a Year, titled The Prancing Horse (La rallegrata), in 1922.

“Either of One or of No One” explores the complex interplay of friendship, morality, and societal constraints through the story of Melina, Tito Morena, and Carlino Sanni. Two close friends, Tito and Carlino, attempt to solve their shared loneliness by bringing Melina—a former companion from their university days in Padua—to live near them in Rome, establishing an arrangement where they share her love and companionship without jealousy. However, their equilibrium shatters when Melina becomes pregnant, and the father’s identity is uncertain. While this unbearable uncertainty undermines their friendship, it also exposes the men’s immaturity and egoism, as well as their inability to distance themselves from deeply ingrained societal pressures that hold them back from taking responsibility toward Melina. In fact, the story highlights the difference between the men’s callous behavior and Melina's dignified and respectful desire to reclaim her life. The story focuses on the corrosive effects of uncertainty on human relationships and moral decision-making; Pirandello thus dramatizes the consequences of doubt—particularly regarding paternity—as a destructive force that can strain loyalty, fracture identity, and erode empathy. The cynical unfolding of the events likewise allows Pirandello to critique societal constructs of masculinity, responsibility, and the tendency to prioritize personal interest over shared humanity. In this way, the themes of “Either of One or of No One” resonate with recurring motifs in Pirandello's oeuvre, particularly the exploration of identity, relational ambiguity, and the impact of societal expectations on decision-making. The weight of doubt and ambiguity is in fact central to his seminal novel One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand (Uno, nessuno e centomila, 1926), where the protagonist undergoes an existential crisis sparked by him questioning the multiplicity of his identities and how others perceive him. Likewise, the way relationships are described in works such as Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore, 1921) and The Rules of the Game (Il giuoco delle parti, 1918) as transactional bonds fraught with miscommunication echoes how Melina’s and the two friends’ arrangement becomes a source of strife and moral conflict here.

Interestingly, “Either of One or of No One” inspired a three-act comedy of the same name, written in the spring of 1929 and staged that November at the Teatro di Torino by the Almirante-Rissone-Tofano company. While based on the plot of the short story, the comedy takes a lighter approach to its themes, softening the sharp edges of the story’s humorous logic and its depiction of the trap contained in the characters’ relations.

The Editors

I

Who had it been? Definitely one of the two. Or maybe a third, a stranger. But no—in all conscience, neither of the two friends had any reason to suspect that. Melina was good, modest; and besides, she was so disgusted by her previous life. In Rome, she knew no one; she lived on her own, and if not actually happy, she appeared very grateful for the situation they had set up for her two years ago after bringing her from Padua, where they had met her as university students.

Having won the concorso together to work at the War Ministry,[1] their lives joined together in all respects, Tito Morena and Carlino Sanno had considered it prudent and judicious—two years ago, that is, at the first increase in their salaries—to also make a joint arrangement for their indispensable need of a woman. As each continued on his own account to search for some solid stability of love, this woman would take care of them and save them from the risk to which they were exposed of entering into an unhappy relationship, no less onerous than a marriage, which was for now, and perhaps forever, denied them because of the straitened circumstances and difficulties of their lives.[2]

And the Paduan students had thought of Melina, a caring, sweet friend who they would visit on Via del Santo, in the winter and spring evenings up there.[3] You see, Melina would have been the most suitable one for them: she would have brought all the happy memories of their former carefree youth with her from Padua. They had written to her, she had accepted, and then (judiciously, as always) they had arranged for her not to live with them. They had rented two modest little rooms in a remote neighborhood, away from the city gate, and there they would visit her, first one and then the other, just as they had agreed, without envy or jealousy.

Everything had gone well for two years, to the satisfaction of both.

A reserved woman of few words and a very tender disposition, Melina had proved herself to be a friend to both of them, without a hint of any preference for either one or the other. They were two fine young men, well-mannered and congenial. Certainly, one of them—Tito Morena—was better looking, but Carlino Sanni (who was not that ugly either, even though his head had a curious shape) had much more spirit and charm than the other.

The unexpected news of this unforeseen situation threw the two friends into a state of deep consternation.

A child!

It had been one of them, certainly, but which one of the two, neither they nor Melina herself could know. It was a catastrophe for all three, and neither of the two friends risked being the first to ask the woman “Whose do you think it is?” out of fear that the other would suspect that he intended to evade responsibility in this way, laying it on only one of them. Nor did Melina make the slightest attempt to convince one or the other that he was the father.

She was in the hands of both of them, and she wanted to rely on both of them, not just one or the other. It had been one of them, but which of the two? Not only could she not say, but she didn’t even want to speculate.

Still bound to their own families far away, with all their memories of domestic intimacy, Carlino Sanni and Tito Morena knew that they could no longer have such intimacy, separated forever as they already were. But deep down, they were like two little birds with feathers already grown and, out of necessity, accustomed to flying, who had preserved and wanted to keep hidden the warmth of the nest that had embraced them when they were featherless. Furthermore, they were almost ashamed of it, as if it were a weakness that might have made them look ridiculous if confessed.

And perhaps acknowledgment of this shame caused them secret remorse. And the remorse, without their knowledge, manifested itself in a certain bitterness in their words, their smiles, their manners, which they believed instead was the result of that barren life, devoid of intimate care, in which no true affection could take root anymore—a life they were forced to live and to which they now had to become accustomed, like so many others. And the look in Tito’s blue eyes, reminiscent of a baby’s, would have liked to be as hard as ice. Often it was, but also sometimes that gaze would cloud over because of the sudden emotion from some distant memory, and then that veil of ice was like the fogging of windowpanes caused by warmth inside and cold outside. As for Carlino Sanni, he scraped his shaven cheeks with his fingernails and with the rasp of the regrowing hairs broke some painful inner silences and called himself back to the bristly reality of his masculine vigor that, after all, now demanded that he be a man—in other words, a bit cruel.

They realized, at the woman’s unexpected news, that without knowing it and without wanting it, each of them, forgetting about the other one and also about their intended callousness and intended cruelty, had put his whole heart into that relationship with Melina, because of that secret, burning need for domestic intimacy. And they felt an unyielding rancor, a sharp bitterness of resentment, not exactly against the woman, but against her body, which unaware of its abandonment, had evidently needed to take more from one than from the other. Not jealousy, because the betrayal was not intentional. The betrayal came from nature, and it was an almost mocking betrayal. Blindly, stealthily, nature had amused itself by ruining that nest, which they wanted to believe was built more by their prudence than by their hearts.[4]

In the meantime, what was to be done?

Through their conscience, the pregnancy in that girl took on meaning and value, which disturbed them all the more deeply because they knew that she would not have rebelled in the least if they didn’t want to respect the pregnancy, but in her heart she would have judged them as unjust and mean.

There was so much sorrowful, uncomplaining sweetness in her! With her eyes, whose gaze sometimes expressed the melancholy smile of her immobile lips, she clearly said that, in spite of her uncertain state, for the past two years, thanks to them, she felt reborn. And it was precisely from this rebirth of hers to the modesty of ancient emotions, due to them, to the way in which they almost unknowingly had treated her, that her pregnancy derived and caused her to flourish, she who had for so many years been barren in the sad aridity of unloved sin.

Now, would they not be suddenly, cruelly, failing to fulfill, their own endeavor, by driving Melina back into her former humiliation, by preventing her from reaping the benefits of all the good that they had done for her?

The two friends confusedly perceived this in the turmoil of their conscience. And perhaps, if either of them could have been sure that the child was his, he would not have hesitated to assume the burden and responsibility, convincing the other to retreat. But who could give this certainty to either of them?

Given this unavoidable doubt, the two friends decided that, without saying anything about it to Melina for now, when the time came they would send her off to get rid of it in some maternity hospice,[5] from which she would then return to them, alone.

II

Melina didn’t ask for anything. She knew intuitively what they had decided, but she also knew intuitively the spirit in which they each had made that decision. She let some time pass. When it seemed the appropriate moment, with her eyes lowered and a shy smile on her lips, she showed Carlino Sanni, who was with her that evening, a piece of cloth bought the day before with her savings.

“Do you like it?”

At first, the young man pretended not to understand. Drawing near to the light, he examined the cloth, with his eyes, with his touch. “Nice,” he said. “And ... how much did you pay for it?”

Melina looked up at him with eyes in which mischief smiled imploringly. “Oh, not much,” she replied. “Guess?”

“How much?”

“No... I mean, because I bought it...”

Carlino shrugged his shoulders, still pretending not to understand.

“Oh fine! Because you needed it. But you bought it yourself, and you didn’t have to. You could have told us that you needed it.”

Melina then lifted the cloth and hid her face in it. She stayed like that for a bit; then, with tear-filled eyes, shaking her head in dismay, said:

“No, then? Really no? I shouldn’t ... I shouldn’t prepare anything?”

And seeing that the young man appeared confused, disturbed, and emotional at this beseeching question, she immediately took his hand, pulled it toward her and hastened to add with passion:

“Listen, Carlino, listen, for heaven’s sake! I don’t want anything. I’m not asking for anything else. Just as I bought this cloth, I could provide everything with my other small savings. No, listen, listen to me first, without shrugging your shoulders, without giving me those nasty looks. Look, I swear to you, I swear to you that I will never be a bother to you, never a burden, ever! Let me speak. I have so much spare time here. I’ve learned how to work for you. I will always continue that work. Oh, you can be sure that you’ll never lack my care! But look, you see, taking care of you as I do, of your linen, of your suits, still leaves me so much time, so much that—as you know—I have learned to read and write, by myself! So, now I’ll leave that, and I’ll look for other work to do here at home, and I will be happy. Believe me! Believe me! I will never ask you for anything, Carlino, ever! Grant me this favor, for heaven’s sake! Yes? Yes?”

Carlino avoided looking at her, turning his head this way and that, and he raised one shoulder and opened and closed his hands and snorted.

First of all, come on, it didn’t take much to understand that he couldn’t give her an answer on the spot and without consulting the other one. And then, yes, it was easy to say no burden, no bother. The burden, the bother would be the least of it! The responsibility, the responsibility for a life, for God’s sake, that definitely belonged to one of them, but to which of them it was impossible to know. Look, it was this! This was the point!

“But to me, Carlino?” Melina replied promptly, with passion. “It definitely belongs to me! And the responsibility ... why should you take it on? I will take it on myself, I tell you, completely.”

“How?” the young man shouted.

“How? Just like that, I will take it on! Listen to me, for heaven’s sake! Look, in ten years from now, Carlino, who knows how many things will have happened to you two! In ten years from now... And even if you wanted to continue living like this, both of you together, in ten years, what will have become of me? I certainly won’t be good for you anymore; you’ll certainly be tired of me. Well then, for the next ten years, my son will still be a child, and won’t cause you any expense or bother, because I’ll provide everything for him through my work. But do you understand that now that I have learned how to work, I can no longer throw that away? I will keep him with me; he will give me comfort and companionship here, and then, when you don’t want me anymore, I will at least have him. I’ll have him, do you understand? I know, you don’t have to say yes now, on your own. Nor can you. Why did I tell you this first, and not Tito? I don’t know! My heart guided me to do so. He too is so good, Tito! You speak to him about it, as you think best, when you think best. I am here, in your hands. I won’t say anything more. I will do what you want.”

Carlino Sanni spoke to Tito Morena the next day. He acted really annoyed with Melina, and truly believed that he was angry with her, but as soon as he saw Tito agree with him about turning down Melina’s proposal, he realized that the anger in his body was not against her, but because he had anticipated Tito’s opposition. He had anticipated the opposition, and yet maybe, deep down, he had hoped that Tito would instead take on the role of making Melina happy—that is, the very role that he would have quite willingly assumed himself, had he not feared making things worse. The immediate agreement angered him, and Tito was bewildered by that unexpected anger. He looked at him for a bit, and then asked him:

“But, I’m sorry, aren’t you saying what I’m saying?”

And Carlino replied:

“Yes! Yes! Yes!”

Logically, in effect, they couldn’t not agree. And they were even feeling the same way. Except that this shared feeling, instead of harmonizing them, not only divided them but turned them into enemies.

Tito, who was the calmer one at that moment, understood well that allowing their feelings to erupt would certainly cause an immediate rupture between them that couldn’t be repaired; therefore, he would have liked to leave the discussion there, where his reasoning and that of his friend, coldly and so distantly, could remain in agreement.

But Carlino, in his angry state, couldn’t restrain himself. He said so much that, in the end, he made Tito lose his temper too. And, suddenly, the two of them, until now, side by side, the most like-minded friends, discovered in each other’s eyes, face to face, the most like-minded enemies.

“Furthermore, I would like to know why she talked to you first and not to me!”

“Because last night I was there, and so she told me.”

“She could have easily waited until tomorrow and told me! If she said it last night, when you were there, it’s a sign that she thinks you’re more tenderhearted and more willing to renege on what the two of us together, in full agreement, had established.”

“Not at all! Because I told her no, no, no, exactly as you are saying! But you’ll understand that she insisted, she cried, she begged, she made so many promises and so many vows, and faced with these tears and these promises, I don’t know, I couldn’t know, how you would have reacted, and whether you too, on your own, would have wanted to tell her no!”

“But it was settled, wasn’t it? So then, no!”

Carlino Sanni shook angrily.

“All right! And now you’re going to go and tell her so.”

“Great! I like that!” bleated Tito. “This way I play the part of the hard heart, of the tyrant, and for her you remain the one who was won over, moved, and touched.”

“And what if it were so?” Carlino sprang up and looked him closely in the eye. “Are you sure that you wouldn’t have been ‘won over, moved, and touched’ if you had been in my place? And would you have had the courage, so moved and touched, to tell her no, also on behalf of another, who perhaps in your place would have been, like you, moved and touched? Answer me this! Answer me!”

Thus challenged, eye to eye, Tito didn’t want to capitulate, and he lied, impassively.

“Me, moved? Who says so?”

“So it’s true,” Carlino then exclaimed triumphantly. “You’re the hardhearted one, and you can go ahead and tell her that!”

“Oh, do you know what I say to you instead?” seethed Tito, who was at boiling point. “That I’ve had enough of it, of this story, and I want to put an end to it!”

Carlino drew near to him again, menacingly.

“Meaning ... meaning ... meaning ... slowly, my dear man, wait—put an end to it, now, in what way?”

“Oh,” said Tito with a strained smile, looking down on him, “you don’t think that I want to dodge my responsibility? I’ll continue to give my share, so long as she’s in that state; then she can do what she wants. If she wants to keep the child, she can keep it; if she wants to get rid of it, she can get rid of it. As for me, I won’t want to know anything more about it.”

“And what about me?” Carlino asked.

“You can do whatever you want too!”

“That’s not true at all!”

“Why not?”

“You understand very well why not! If you don’t go there anymore, I can’t go there anymore either!”

“And why?”

“Because you know very well that I can’t shoulder all the burden of support on my own. I can’t and I shouldn’t have to, for that matter, because I don’t know for certain whether the child is mine, and you can’t leave all the burden of a child that could be yours on my shoulders.”

“But if I’m telling you that I’ll continue to give my share!”

“Thank you very much! I can’t accept! Oh, yes, I will always be in the middle, and more.”

“Because you want to remain there!”

“But excuse me, excuse me, excuse me, and why don’t you want to stick to the arrangement? What is she asking for, after all, that you can’t grant her? If she doesn’t make us take on any of the burden of the child! She will support it herself. Listen... listen...”

And Carlino started to follow Tito, who was backing away and shaking, around the room in order to hold him to reason. And by taking on that persuasive tone now, that calm defense of the woman, he wasn’t intending to make things worse.

Finally, Tito yelled at him:

“It may be an unfair suspicion, but what do you want to do about it? I got myself involved; I can’t just toss it off now! I can’t continue a relationship, together like this, that was only possible so long as no disagreement arose between us.”

“So let’s go together, then,” proposed Carlino. “The two of us together to tell her no. I’ve already told her on my own behalf. Now let’s go and tell her together, and if you want, I’ll speak louder. I’ll show her that it’s not possible to give her what she’s asking for.”

“And then?” said Tito. “Do you think that she’d be more—what she has been until now? If she has such a strong desire to keep the child! Believe me, Carlino, we will make her unhappy for no reason. Because... I feel it. I feel it strongly. It’s over for me! It will be foolish spite. I don’t want to do it; I feel like I can’t do it. And then? I can’t. I don’t want to go back there anymore. That’s it!”

“So should we just abandon her like this?” asked Carlino, scowling.

“Abandon her! Certainly not!” exclaimed Tito. “I told you over and over again that I’ll continue to pay my share, so long as she’s in this state and can’t find another way to provide for herself! You then, on your own account, do whatever you want. I say this to you with no resentment, mind! And with the utmost candor.”

Carlino remained silent, scowling, scraping his shaved cheeks with his fingernails. And, for that day, the discussion ended there.

III

It wasn’t brought back up again. But it carried on in both their souls, and it gradually became more violent, the more they inflicted violence on themselves to stay silent.

Neither of them went to see Melina anymore. And Carlino, by not going, wanted to show Tito that he was the one committing violence—that he was preventing Tito from going, and Tito, for his part, that Carlino instead wanted him, Tito, to use violence against Carlino through his refraining from going. Yes! To force him, in that way, to back down from his resolution, and having won, even though going back on his word, unexpectedly, regarding what had already been agreed upon between them.

Was he supposed to overlook everything? Do what they wanted, both of them together, against his own will? Wasn’t it enough that he continued to pay, leaving the other one free to go visit the woman?

No, sir. Carlino didn’t want to take advantage of this freedom, and not just that, but he didn’t want to give him any credit for granting it either. He rejected it! Without understanding that, if he had given in, if he had gone back to Melina’s in order to make him, Tito, go there too, the entire victory would have belonged to the two of them, since in the end each would have done what they both wanted. And wasn’t this violence? No, by God! He was continuing to pay, and that was enough!

Yet, however much he tried with these arguments to reaffirm his resolution to not give in and to conclude that right was on his side, day by day Tito became more agitated by Carlino’s passive obstinacy. He felt that his friend’s sullen silence was taking on a weight in his consciousness that he did not want to bear on his own.

If that girl, invited by them to come from Padua to Rome, made a mother by one of them, now, in that state, was struggling in torturous uncertainty, whose fault was it? What was she ultimately expecting, without inconvenience, without encumbrance, or responsibility on their part? That they not commit the violence of getting rid of the child, which most certainly was one of theirs.

Well then, they wanted to leave it alone to feel remorse for this violence.

If Carlino had continued to visit Melina, he would have been able to, at least partly, obviate this remorse with the thought that, despite continuing to pay her, he, Tito, no longer derived any pleasure from the woman.

But no sir! Carlino was no longer going either. Carlino was also no longer deriving any pleasure from the woman, and so he was not only preventing him from obviating the remorse with that thought, but he was actually making it worse.

By depriving only himself of the pleasure yet continuing to pay his share regardless, he might have even thought that he was making a foolish and perhaps even unnecessary sacrifice, since it had hardly been proven that he should have remorse for wanting to get rid of his own child, seeing as it might very well belong, instead, to the other man. Oh yes, but to reason thus, to admit, that is, that it was the other man’s child, could he then insist that this other man take on all the remorse for getting rid of his own child, in order to please him? If he, Tito, had been certain he was the father and Carlino had insisted that the child be gotten rid of, wouldn’t he have protested?

This certainty did not exist!

But look, it was because of that doubt that Carlino wanted the violence not to be committed.

They needed to be together, in agreement, all three, to want to commit the violence and to do so. The remorse, if shared, would be less. Well then, they had betrayed him. And the angrier he was about it, the more he saw that revenge, which he instinctively felt compelled to bring to it, made him, in opposition to his own feelings, cruel. The more he saw that even if he didn’t take any revenge, it, the betrayal, remained, as did the agreement of those two to be the first to go back on what had been agreed upon, so that the loathsome part would always remain attached to him alone. And therefore, no, by God, no! Why give in now? It would be futile even!

Meanwhile, the moment came when they both saw themselves obliged to talk about Melina again: the beginning of the month arrived, and it was necessary to give her the money for her provisions and to pay the rent for the two rooms.

Tito would have preferred to avoid the discussion. Drawing his share from his wallet, he placed it on the table, without saying anything.

Carlino, after looking at the money for a bit, finally came out and said:

“I’m not taking it to her.”

Tito turned to look at him and said tersely:

“And nor am I.”

Silence, from both of them, after this exchange of words. With extreme effort they kept it up for a long stretch, their internal seething causing them to shake all over in agony as each waited for the other one to speak. The first words, dull, flat, came from the lips of Carlino:

“Then it can be done in writing. It can be sent by mail.”

“You write it,” said Tito.

“We’ll write it together.”

“Fine, together; since you like to play the victim, and for me to play the tyrant.”

“I do,” replied Carlino, standing up, “precisely what you do. No more and no less.”

“All right,” repeated Tito. “And so you can write and tell her that as far as I’m concerned, I’m willing to respect her feelings and do what she wants—willing to pay, until she herself says that’s enough.”

“But what then?” slipped out from Carlino’s heart.

Tito, at this exclamation, could no longer restrain himself, and he left the room, furiously shaking his arms in the air and shouting:

“But what then! What then! What then!”

Left alone, Carlino thought for a bit about what meaning to glean from that initial compliance by Tito, which had then, so abruptly, been followed by the outburst, which so flagrantly reaffirmed his unwavering decision. It appeared that he was no longer angry with Melina now, if he was willing to respect her feelings and do what she wanted. Then was he angry with him? It was clear! And why, if they were now in agreement? For not recognizing earlier that he had no reason to object? Ah yes! Now it seemed too late to him, and he no longer wanted to admit defeat. Ah, what a mistake Melina had made by not turning to Tito first! And another mistake, a bigger one, had then been made by him by reporting her proposal to Tito. No, no. He shouldn’t have reported it to him. He should have told Melina to speak to Tito about it directly—indeed, without letting him know that she had first spoken to him. That is how he should have done it! But could he ever have imagined that Tito would take it so badly?

Carlino was sure, now, that if Melina had first approached the other man, he would have found nothing to argue about.

Enough. It was necessary to write the letter, now. What should he say to that poor girl, in that condition? Better not to say anything about what had taken place between the two of them; find a plausible excuse for neither of them going to visit her. But what excuse? The only one could be this: that they wanted her to be calm in light of her condition. Calm? Oh, that’s overdoing it, for a poor woman like her, accustomed to so little consideration from men. And then, calm, fine—but why didn’t they at least go to see her? To ask her how she was doing? Whether she needed anything? So much consideration in one respect and so much disregard in another—a fine sense of calm they would have given her!

But, all right, in the end, in the letter he could give her the most steadfast assurance that she would not be denied the financial support and all the help she could have from them. She would have to be satisfied with that, for now.

And Carlino wrote the letter accordingly, with great prudence, so that Tito, in reading it (and he wanted him to read it) wouldn’t become more agitated.

A few days later, as was to be expected, Melina’s reply reached both of them. A few lines, almost indecipherable, that, hindering sympathy because of the ridiculous way in which her anguish and desperation were expressed, produced a strange effect of rage in the souls of the two young men.

The poor creature begged the two of them to go and see her together, repeating that she was ready to do whatever they wanted.

“Do you see? Because of you!”

The two of them had the same words on their lips—Carlino because of Tito’s stubbornness in not giving in; Tito because of Carlino’s stubbornness in not going. But neither of them could utter them. They looked at each other. They each read in the other’s eyes the struggle to speak. But they also clearly read the hatred, which now united them, in place of their long-standing friendship, and they immediately understood that they could not and should not mention the subject again.

That hatred commanded each of them, not only to not let the anger that was consuming them erupt, but rather to harden their resolutions with livid cold-heartedness.

They needed to stay together, no matter what.

“Let’s write to her again and tell her to stay calm,” hissed Carlino between his teeth.

Tito barely turned to look at him, with his eyebrows raised:

“Oh yes, you can tell her: extremely calm!”

IV

Now, every evening, when leaving the Ministry, they no longer went off together, as before, for a walk or to some café. They waved goodbye to each other coldly, and one went this way, the other that way. They would meet again at dinner, but often without arriving at the trattoria at the same time and not finding a place to sit next to each other; one would eat at a little table and the other at another. So much the better. Tito realized that he had always felt embarrassed, without admitting it, by the enormous appetite Carlino put on display when he was eating. After dinner as well, each one set off on his own to pass the two or three hours out of doors before going to bed.

They became increasingly angry, their bitterness festering in that solitude.

But neither wanted to let the other see the chafing that he had from that chain no longer dragged along the same path, but pulled, yanked from here and from there spitefully, in that pretense of freedom that they wanted to give themselves.

They knew that the chain, despite being pulled and yanked in that way, could not and should not snap, but they did it deliberately, to hurt themselves more, as much as they could. Perhaps, through this torment, they were trying to dull their searing pain and remorse toward the woman, who continued in vain to ask for comfort and mercy.

She had already for some time given in to what she believed to be their desire. But no—now it was them who absolutely insisted that she keep the child. And why then had they suffered so much, and made her suffer so much? At this point, it was no longer possible to go back to the way it was before. And so, no, no—she needed to keep her child. There was nothing more to discuss in this regard.

United as they were by the same feeling, which could no longer in any way develop into a shared act of love, they couldn’t admit that it was now coming to an end; they wanted it to endure in order to thus develop, instead, necessarily, into an act of mutual hatred.

And so much did this hatred blind them, that neither of the two thought for a moment about what they would do tomorrow when faced with that child, whom they could not both love together.

He needed to live. Not being able to live for either one or the other exclusively, he would live for his mother, at their expense, like that, without either of the two even seeing him.

And indeed, neither of the two, even though both felt consumed by the desire to do so, gave in to Melina’s invitation to hurry to see the newborn baby.

Inexperienced in life, they couldn’t even remotely imagine what atrocious difficulties that poor girl, so alone and abandoned, had struggled through in bringing that baby into the world. They made this terrible discovery a few days later, when an old woman, a neighbor of the poor girl, came to see them, to tell them to rush immediately to her bedside, where she was dying.

They hurried over and were left shocked before that bed, where lay a skeleton dressed in skin, with an enormous, parched mouth, all her teeth already horribly exposed, with enormous eyes, whose eyeballs appeared to be already heavy and hardened by death, who wanted them to celebrate.

That, Melina?

“No, no... there,” said the poor girl, pointing to the cradle—indicating that they would find her there, the Melina they used to know, by searching there, in that cradle, and all around, in the things prepared for her baby, and in which she had destroyed herself, or rather, imbued herself.

Here on the bed, now, she was no more. All that was left were her remains, wretched, unrecognizable—just barely a thread of her soul held back by force, in order to see them again one last time. All of her soul, all of her life, all of her love, were in that cradle, and there, and there, in the drawers of the commode, where the baby’s layette was, full of lacework, of ribbons and embroidery, all prepared by her, with her own hands.

“Even... even monogrammed, yes, in red... Everything... piece by piece...”

She wanted the old neighbor woman to show them to them piece by piece: the little bonnets, look... look at the little bonnets, yes... that one with the red bows... no, that other one, that other one... and the bibs, and the little nightgowns, and the long christening gown, embroidered, with red silk backing...red, yes, because it was a boy, her Nillì, a boy... and...

She abruptly collapsed onto the bed, face down. In launching that celebration, perhaps unhoped for, she quickly consumed that last thread of soul that she had been saving for them.

Horrified by that sudden fall onto the bed, the two men rushed over to lift her up.

Dead.

They looked at each other. With that look, they each drove the blade of an inextinguishable hatred all the way into the soul of the other.

It was just for a moment.

Remorse, for now, stunned them. They would have time to tear each other apart for the rest of their lives. For now, here, they still needed to agree on how to provide—to provide for the victim, to provide for the baby.

They couldn’t weep in front of each other. They felt that, albeit briefly, in the excitement, had they yielded to their emotions, at the sound of the other’s weeping each of them would have become enraged, each would have pounced on the other’s throat to strangle it, that weeping. They must not weep! They were both shaking; they couldn’t look at each other anymore. They felt that they couldn’t remain like this, watching the dead woman with lowered eyes. But how to move? How to talk to each other? How to make arrangements and assign roles? Which of the two should think about the dead woman, for the funeral? Which of the two should think about the baby, for a wet nurse?

The baby!

He was there, in the cradle. Whom did he belong to? With his mother dead, he was left to both of them. But how? They felt that neither of them could approach that cradle now. If one of them had taken a step toward it, the other would have run to pull him back.

How should they act? What should they do?

They had barely caught a glimpse of him, there, through the lace canopy, rosy, sleeping peacefully.

The old neighbor woman said:

“How much she suffered! And never a moan from her lips! Ah, poor creature! God should not have denied her this consolation of the child, after all that she suffered for him. Poor, poor creature! And now? As for me, if you want... here I am...”

She took over the task of attending to the body, along with other neighbor women. As for the baby... “To the orphan asylum, yes? Is that right?” Well then, she knew a wet nurse, a peasant from Alatri,[6] who had come to give birth at the San Giovanni Hospital. She had been discharged a few days ago. Her little son had died, and that very evening she would be going back to Alatri. A good, fine young woman. Married, yes. The husband had departed a few months ago for America. She was healthy, strong. Her baby boy had died through misfortune, during the delivery, not because of illness. Besides, they could have a doctor examine her; but there was no need. What’s more, the baby had already been feeding from her for two days, since the poor mother could not have nursed him, reduced as she was to that state.

The two men let the old woman continue to speak, approving each proposal with a nod of their heads, after looking at each other for a moment out of the corner of their eyes, sullenly. A better opportunity than that wouldn’t exist. And it was better, yes, better that the baby went far away, entrusted to the wet nurse. They would go to see him in Alatri, alternating each month, since they couldn’t go together.

“No! No!” they yelled at the old woman at the same time, stopping her from showing him to them.

They made an agreement with her concerning the arrangements for transporting the body and the burial. The old woman worked out an approximate sum. They left the money, and departed together, without speaking.

Three days later, once the baby had left with the wet nurse for Alatri with all the layette prepared by the poor Melina, they parted ways forever.

V

At first, that daylong trip to Alatri, on alternate months, was a distraction. They left on Saturday evening; they returned Monday morning.

They went to visit the child out of duty. He, hardly existing yet for himself, did not even properly exist for them either, except like this, as an obligation, but not an onerous one.[7] In short, they took some fresh air; they had an outing in the countryside, albeit alone. From the top of the acropolis, standing on the majestic cyclopean walls, a marvelous view revealed itself.[8] And that monthly visit, after all, had no other purpose but to check that the wet nurse was taking good care of the child.

They instinctively felt a certain nervous diffidence, if not exactly an outright repugnance toward him. Each of them thought that that little ball of flesh and blood there might not even be his, but the other’s, and at such a thought, because of the bitter hatred that they bore for each other, they immediately felt an invincible repulsion toward not only touching him but also looking at him.

Gradually, however—that is, as soon as Nillì started to form his first smiles, to move, to babble—each of them, instinctively, was drawn to recognize himself in those first signs, and to rule out any doubt that the boy was not his.

Then, suddenly, that first feeling of repugnance changed for each of them into a feeling of ferocious resentment toward the other. At the thought that the other one was going there, with the same right as him to take the child into his arms and kiss him, to caress him for an entire day, and to believe him to be his own, each felt his fingers clench, as he writhed in a vise-grip of indescribable torture. If by chance they had encountered each other there in the wet nurse’s home, they would have killed each other, most definitely, or they would have killed the child for the horrendous satisfaction of removing him from the other’s caress, which was intolerable.

How could this situation be endured over the long term? For now, Nillì was very little, and could stay there with the wet nurse, who assured them that she wanted to keep him with her, like a son, at least until her husband returned from America. But he couldn’t stay there forever! As he grew, he would be in need of a certain education.

Yes, it was useless, for now, to become more embittered, thinking about the future. The current torture was enough.

They each had confided in the wet nurse, who, struck by the fact that those two uncles never came together to visit their nephew, had innocently asked the reason. Each of them had assured the wet nurse that the child was his, drawing certainty from this and that trait of the child, who certainly did not clearly resemble either one or the other, because he had taken much from his mother. But, look, for example, the head... was it not perhaps a little like Carlino’s? A little, yes... just barely... a hint... but this was a sign too! The baby’s blue eyes, on the other hand, were a tell-tale sign for Tito Morena, who also had blue eyes. Yes, but his mother, to tell the truth, also had blue eyes, but not as light and tending toward green, you see.

“Yes, it seems...” the wet nurse replied to one and then to the other, at first dismayed and distressed by that stubborn duel over the child, but later fully reassured by the advice given to her by her relatives and neighbors—that it was better, that is, for her as well as for the baby, to keep them both at bay like that, without ever confirming or denying anything outright. It was indeed a competition, between the two of them, of affection, of lovely thoughts, of gifts, in order to win the heart of the child as much as possible. Meanwhile, she gave instructions to the child, not out of treachery, but out of foresight: if Uncle Carlo came, do not mention Uncle Tito, and vice versa; if one asked him something about the other one, say little, a yes, a no, and that’s it; if they then wanted to know who he loved more, reply to each one: “You more!”—only to make them happy, that is, because in the end he should love them both in the same way.

And truly, for Nillì, it required no effort at all to reply according to the wet nurse’s advice to each of the two uncles, “You more!”, because, whichever one he was with, it always seemed to him that he couldn’t be better off, with so much love and so much attention lavished on him by each of them, ready to satisfy his every whim, each hanging on to his every signal, no matter how slight.

Suddenly, but when Carlino Sanni and Tito Morena were already more anxious than ever about the steps to be taken for Nillì’s education, now that he was five years old, the wet nurse received a letter from her husband summoning her to America.

Carlino Sanni and Tito Morena, without the other’s knowledge, upon receiving this news, went separately to see a young lawyer, a mutual friend of theirs, whom they had met long ago in the trattoria, where they used to go to dine together.

The lawyer listened to first one and then to the other, without telling either of them that the other one had come shortly before to tell him the very same things and make the very same proposal to him, that is, that the boy, whether his or not, be left entirely in his charge (neither of the two said in his loving care), in order to get out of that unbearable situation.

But there wasn’t, nor could there be, a way to get out of it, as long as neither of the two was willing to relinquish the boy completely to the other. Nor was Solomon’s opinion applicable.[9] Solomon had been involved in much easier situations, because then it had been a matter of two mothers, and one of them could be certain that the child was hers. Here both of them, being denied this certainty and animated by such a ferocious mutual hatred, would have allowed the boy to be split into two in order for them each to take half. No? That wasn’t possible? Therefore, a solution. The only one, for the moment, was to put the boy in boarding school, and agree to visit him on alternate Sundays, and that he would spend some of the holidays with one and some with the other. This would do for the time being. If then they truly wanted to resolve the situation, the young lawyer saw no other means than this: that since the boy could not belong to just one of them, he could no longer belong to either. How? By looking for someone who wanted to adopt him. If they wanted, he could assume this responsibility.

Neither of the them wanted that. They balked. They shook off the proposal furiously. They went back to shouting the most vicious insults at each other, in order to demonstrate the abuse of power that he fully intended to use. The boy was his! He was his! He couldn’t be anything but his! Because of this sign and because of this other one! And Carlino Sanni also believed he had a greater right, because he, he, Tito, had caused the death of that poor woman, for whom Carlino had always felt sympathy! But in the same vein, Tito Morena believed he had the greater right, because he, he, had suffered no less from the callousness that he had been forced to show toward Melina, because of Carlino!

Futile, then, to try to get them to agree. Nillì was put away in boarding school. The torture began again, given their proximity, and was more bitter and more proud than before. And it lasted for about a year. Finally, a situation presented itself that made the proposal of the young lawyer possible and acceptable to the two.

During that year in boarding school, Nillì had befriended a fellow student, the only child of a colonel, to whom Carlino Sanni and Tito Morena had both been obliged to speak, since the two little boys (the youngest in the boarding house) would enter the Sunday visiting room holding hands without wanting to let go of each other. The colonel and his wife were very grateful to Nillì for the affection and protection that he gave his little friend, who, despite being the same age, appeared younger, because of his blond, girlish delicateness and shyness. Nillì, raised in the country, was dark-haired, robust, rosy-cheeked, and very lively. The love of that little one for Nillì was somewhat obsessive, and the colonel’s wife was quite moved by it. At the end of the school year, the boy died suddenly one night, there in the boarding school, like a little bird, after asking for and drinking a sip of water.

The colonel, in order to make his inconsolable wife happy, having learned from the director of the boarding school that Nillì was an orphan, and that those two gentlemen who came on Sundays to visit him were uncles, made through the director himself the proposal to adopt the boy, to whom the deceased little child had been so lovingly bound.

Carlino Sanni and Tito Morena asked for time to think about it. They thought that their situation and Nillì’s would become more and more difficult and sad over time. They thought that that colonel and his wife were two splendid people—that the wife was very rich and that therefore for Nillì the adoption would be a stroke of luck. They asked Nillì if he would like to take the place of his little friend, in the heart and the home of those two poor parents, and Nillì, who through the talk and advice of the wet nurse must have understood, intuitively, something, said yes, but on the condition that the two uncles came to visit him often, but together, always together, in the home of his adoptive parents.

And this is how Carlino Sanni and Tito Morena, now that the boy could no longer belong to either of them, gradually became friends again.