“Fear” (“La paura”)

Translated by Lisa Sarti

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “Fear” (“La paura”), tr. Lisa Sarti. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2025.

The short story "Fear" ("La paura") was first published in the literary journal La Domenica Italiana on August 1, 1897. Pirandello himself never returned to this story in any of his collections, and it was not included in a printed volume until 1938, when it became part of the Appendix, a miscellaneous collection of stories that Pirandello had excluded from Stories for a Year (Novelle per un anno). The Appendix was edited by Manlio Lo Vecchio-Musti and Angelo Sodini and published in Milan by Mondadori.

"Fear" is notable in Pirandello’s corpus because here we find a short story that originated from an earlier play (and not vice-versa), in this case The Epilogue (L’epilogo, 1892). It would later be adapted into the one-act play The Vice (La morsa, 1910) with the support of Nino Martoglio, who at that time had founded in Rome what was known as teatro minimo ("minimal theater"), an experimental staging of one-act plays from both an Italian and foreign repertoire. In fact, Martoglio is widely regarded as the figure who launched Pirandello's theatrical career by staging some of his works and collaborating with him on regional theater productions, including plays in Sicilian dialect such as A vilanza (La bilancia; The Scale, 1916) and Cappidazzu paga tuttu (Cappidazzu Pays for Everything, 1916).

At the core of all three versions of this story lies the exploration of adultery, anxiety, and moral conflict. However, "Fear" sets itself apart by moving away from the naturalist conventions of the period’s typical theatrical staging, which privileged bourgeois drama and the popular motif of the love triangle. Unlike its theatrical adaptations, the short story takes a more introspective narrative approach, underscoring Pirandello's growing fascination with psychological realism during the late nineteenth century. This stylistic shift emphasizes the characters' internal emotional struggles over the overt moral judgments that were prevalent in the stage versions. We might even speculate that since The Epilogue never made it to the stage, after multiple rejections from directors, Pirandello turned to the literary text as a medium to continue exploring the psychological turmoil of his characters rather than condemning them for their moral failings to please the taste and expectations of the audience of the time.

The story revolves around a tense love triangle between Lillina Fabbri, her lover Antonio Serra, and her husband Andrea, although the husband is only evoked in the story and referenced through the conversations between Lillina and Serra. The highly dialogic plot, reflective of its theatrical source, unfolds with Lillina and Serra anxiously awaiting Andrea's return, gripped by fear that their affair has been discovered. Their tense dialogue reveals escalating emotional conflict as they grapple with guilt and uncertainty. Lillina, torn between hope for reconciliation and fear of exposure, undergoes profound introspection, emphasizing her psychological complexity.

Unlike the 1910 play The Vice, which concludes with the wife's suicide as a response to the unbearable shame of social condemnation, "Fear" displays a more ambiguous resolution. Lillina’s open-ended fate reflects Pirandello’s intent to focus on his characters' internal struggles rather than imposing definitive moral retribution. This narrative choice underscores Pirandello's evolving storytelling techniques, including visual poetics and narrative shifts, which enhance the work’s psychological layers (see Lisa Sarti, “When Storytelling Reframes Adultery: The Dramatics of Pirandello’s La paura”, in Romance Studies, Vol. 28, No. 4, November, 2010, pp. 268–78). Through its speculative, dialogue-driven form, “Fear” explores the fragility of human relationships and the profound consequences of unresolved distress, with Pirandello emphasizing the lovers’ anxiety even before any actual proof of the husband’s discovery of their affair. In a way, the story is ultimately crafted around the anticipation of tragedy, experienced through the protagonists’ stream-of-consciousness approach to their escalating anxiety.

The Editors

She drew back from the window with a gesture and an exclamation of surprise; she placed the crochet work she had in her hands on the small table and quickly but cautiously went to close the door connecting that room with the others; then she waited, half-hidden behind the curtain of the other door that would lead to the entrance.

“Here already?” she said softly, pleased, raising her arms to Antonio Serra’s Herculean chest. She was delicate, small, with her face tilted forward to receive at once the usual furtive kiss.

But the man recoiled, disturbed.

“You’re not alone?” asked Lillina Fabris, suddenly composing herself. “Where did you leave Andrea?”

“I came back earlier, last night…” Serra replied gruffly as if to soften his first words, adding: “With an excuse… It was true, anyway. I had to be here in the morning for business…”

“You didn’t say anything about it to me…” she gently reproached him. “You could have warned me… What’s wrong?”

Serra looked at her almost hatefully in the eyes; then, in a low, vibrating voice, burst out:

“What’s wrong? I’m afraid your husband suspects us…”

She froze, as if a lightning bolt had struck near her, and with fear-filled astonishment:

“Andrea? How do you know? Did you give yourself away?”

“No, both of us, if anything!” he hastened to reply. “The night I departed …”

“Here?”

“Yes, while he was going downstairs… Andrea descended before me, remember? With the suitcase… You were holding the light at the door, weren’t you? And as I passed…”

Lillina Fabris brought both hands to her face, then waved them in the air:

“Did he see us?”

“It seemed to me that he turned around as he descended…” he added in a dry, somber voice. “Didn’t you notice anything?”

“I didn’t, nothing! But where is he? Where is Andrea?”

As if he hadn't heard the anguished question of his small lover—whose greatness of spirit and depth of love he had never truly grasped— Serra gloomily resumed:

"Tell me: had I started to go downstairs when he called you?"

"And he greeted me!" she exclaimed. "Even with a wave of his hand... Then it must have been just as he turned from the landing below?"

"No, before... earlier..."

"But if he had seen us..."

"Glimpsed, perhaps ... For a moment!"

"And he let you come first?" she replied, her anguish growing. "But are you sure he hasn't left?"

"Absolutely sure! Of that, I'm certain... And there isn't another departure from town before eleven..."

He checked his watch, and his face darkened.

"He’s about to arrive... And in the meantime, here we are … in this uncertainty… hanging like this over an abyss..."

“Hush, hush, for heaven’s sake!” she begged. “Calm down… Tell me everything… What have you done? I want to know everything…”

“What do you want me to say? In this state, the most insignificant things may seem like allusions; every glance, a sign…”

“Calm down… calm down…” she repeated.

“Yes, calm down: how am I supposed to calm down?

And Serra began pacing the room, wringing his hands. Shortly after, he stopped and resumed speaking:

“Here, do you remember? Before leaving, he and I were discussing that cursed matter to deal with while in the city… He was getting heated…”

“Yes, well?”

“As soon as we were on the road, Andrea stopped talking. He walked with his head down; I looked at him, he seemed troubled, his brows furrowed… ‘He’s noticed!’ I thought. And I didn’t speak. I feared my voice would tremble; I was trembling all over… But then, all of a sudden, with a simple, natural air, in the fresh tranquility of the night, along the way: ‘It’s sad, isn’t it?’, he said to me, ‘traveling at night, leaving the house in the evening…’”.

“Just like that”

“Yes. He also seemed sad over who was left behind... Then, a phrase… (I broke out in a cold sweat!): ‘To say goodbye by candlelight on a staircase…’”

“Ah, that… how did he say it?” she exclaimed, struck.

“In the same tone…” replied Serra, “naturally… I don’t know; he did it on purpose! He told me about the children he left in bed, asleep; but not with that simple, reassuring tenderness… – and about you.”

“About me?”

“Yes, but he was looking at me.”

“What did he say?” she asked, completely on edge.

“That you love his children very much…”

“Nothing else?”

“On the train, he resumed the conversation about the dispute to be settled… He asked me about the lawyer Gorri, if I knew him.”

“Hush!” she interrupted him quickly.

The maid entered to ask if it was time to fetch the children, who had been sent that morning to their paternal grandparents. Wasn’t the master supposed to return that day? The carriages had already left for the station.

Lillina, uncertain, told the maid to wait a little longer and, in the meantime, to finish setting the table in the other room. Left alone again, Lillina and Serra looked at each other, bewildered; and he repeated:

“He’ll be here soon…”

She gripped his arm tightly, furiously:

“Just tell me something! Weren’t you able to figure anything out? Is it possible that he, being so violent, could have faked it so well to you when he has suspicion in his heart?”

“And yet…” he said, clapping his hands. “Could it be that my mistrust has made me so senseless? Many times, you see, through his words, I thought I was reading something… A moment later, I reassured myself, thinking: ‘No, it’s just fear!’”

“Fear, you?”

“Yes, me! Because he's right...” Serra stated abruptly, with the spontaneity of the most natural conviction. “I studied him, watched him the whole time: how he looked at me, how he spoke to me... You know, he’s not one to talk much... yet, in these three days, if you only knew! Often, though, he would retreat into a long, uneasy silence; but he would come out of it every time, picking up the conversation about his business. ‘Was he worried about this?’ I would ask myself, ‘or something else? Maybe now he is talking with me to conceal his suspicion...’ Once, it even seemed like he didn’t want to shake my hand... Mind you, he realized I was offering it to him: he pretended to be distracted; it was a bit strange, really – it was the day after we left. After taking a few steps, he called me back. ‘He regrets it!’ I noticed immediately. And in fact, he said, ‘Oh, sorry... I forgot to say goodbye! It’s okay...’ He spoke to me more about you, the house, but without any apparent intention... Yet, it seemed to me that he avoided looking me in the eye... He often repeated the same sentence three, four times, without any logical sense... as if he were thinking about something else... And while speaking about unrelated things, suddenly, he found a way to abruptly come back to talking with me about you or the children, staring me in the eyes, and would ask me questions... On purpose? Who knows! Was he hoping to catch me off guard? He laughed, but with a nasty joy in his eyes...”

“And you?” she asked, hanging on his words.

“Me? I was on alert the whole time...”

Lillina Fabris shook her head with angry disdain:

“He must have noticed your mistrust…”

“If he suspected already!” he said, shrugging his broad shoulders.

“He must have been trying to confirm his suspicions!” she retorted. “Is that all?”

“Yes… the first night, at the hotel…” Serra resumed, discouraged. “He wanted to share a room with two beds. We had already been lying down for a while… he noticed I wasn’t sleeping, well… he didn’t notice, no: we were in the dark! – he assumed. And look… imagine! I wasn’t moving – there at night… in the same room with him, and with the suspicion that he knew… – imagine! I kept my eyes wide open in the dark, waiting… who knows! To defend myself, if necessary… At the slightest movement, I would have jumped out of bed… And then… But, you understand? Life for life, better his than mine… Suddenly, in the silence, I hear these exact words: ‘You’re not sleeping.’”

“And you?”

“Nothing. I didn’t answer. I pretended to be asleep. But a little later, he repeated: ‘You’re not sleeping.’ Then I called out to him. ‘Did you speak?’ I asked. And he: ‘Yes, I wanted to know if you were sleeping.’ But it’s not true, he wasn’t asking, you know. When he said ‘You’re not sleeping’ he uttered the sentence with the certainty that I wasn’t sleeping, that I couldn’t sleep… do you understand? Or at least, it seemed that way to me…”

“Nothing else?” she asked again.

“Nothing else… I didn’t close my eyes for two nights.”

“But, with you, was he always the same?”

“Yes, the same…”

She paused for a moment, her eyes fixed on the void; then she slowly said, as if to herself:

“All these pretenses… him!… If he had seen us…”

“And yet he turned, going down the stairs…” Serra objected.

She looked him in the eyes for a moment, as if she hadn’t understood.

“Yes, but he must not have noticed anything! But how is that possible?”

“In that case…” he said.

“Even assuming that it’s possible! You don’t know him… Being able to control himself like this, not letting anything slip… What do you know? – Nothing! Let’s say that he did see us, while you were passing by and bending toward me… If the slightest suspicion had been born in him… that you had kissed me… he would have surely come back upstairs… oh, yes!, think, think how we would have felt!… No, listen, no: it’s not possible! You were scared, nothing else! Scared, you, Antonio!… No, no, he couldn’t have been questioning… He has no reason to suspect us: you’ve always treated me with formal cordiality in front of him…”

Feeling reassured by the sudden trust expressed by his lover, Serra still wanted to insist on the anguishing doubt for the pleasure of being further reassured by her:

“Yes, but suspicion can arise in an instant. Then, you understand? A thousand other facts, barely noticed and almost disregarded, suddenly take on meaning; every vague hint becomes proof; then doubt, certainty: that’s my fear…”

“We need to be cautious…” she replied.

Disappointed, Serra felt a sense of irritation toward his lover:

“Now? I’ve always told you!”

She looked at him scornfully:

“Are you reproaching me now?”

“I’m not reproaching anything!” he replied, increasingly irritated. “But can you deny that I’ve told you many times: Be careful! And you…”

“Yes… Yes…” she confirmed, as if disgusted.

“I don’t see the point,” he continued, “in letting ourselves be discovered like this… for nothing… for a mere imprudence… like three nights ago… It was you…”

“Always me, yes…”

“If it weren’t for you!”

“Yes,” she said, rising with a mocking grin, “fear!”

Struck, Serra burst out:

“But do you think this is something to be cheerful about, you and me? especially you!”

He started walking around the room again, stopping every now and then and speaking almost to himself:

“Fear… Do you think I don’t think about you too? Fear… We trusted too much, that’s it! Yes, and now all our imprudence, all our craziness jumps out at me, you see, and I wonder how it’s possible that he hadn’t suspected anything until now…”

Struck by the accusation from her lover, she put her hands to her face and confirmed:

“It’s true… it’s true… we’ve deceived him too much…”

They remained silent for a long time; then, uncovering her face, she resumed:

“Are you reproaching me now? It’s natural! Yes, I deceived a man who trusted me more than himself. Yes, and the blame is mine, indeed.”

“I didn’t mean that,” he said softly, continuing to walk.

“But yes, yes…” she continued feverishly, walking towards him. “I know, and look, you can even add that I ran away with him from my house, yes, and I almost pushed him to run away. – It was me, because I loved him, yes – and then I betrayed him with you! It’s right that you condemn me now, absolutely right! But listen, I ran away with him because I loved him, not to find all this peace, this comfort in a new home: I had mine; I wouldn’t have run away with him… But he, you see, had to excuse himself to everyone else before others for the folly he had fallen into, him, a serious man, poised… Ah, yes! The madness had been committed: how to remedy it now? Repair it, and immediately! How? By devoting himself entirely to work, by rebuilding a rich house, full of leisure… So, he worked like a mule; he thought of nothing but work, always; never desiring anything from me except praise for his hard work, for his honesty… and my gratitude, too! Yes, because it could have been worse! … He was an honest man, was he? He would have made me rich again, would he? More than before… All this for me, for me who waited for him every evening impatiently and happy for his return… He came home tired, worn out, happy with his workday, already worrying about tomorrow’s work … Well, in the end, I too got tired of having to almost drag this man to love me by force, to respond by force to my love. The esteem, the trust, the friendship of a husband sometimes look like insults to nature… And you took advantage of it, you, who now reproach me for love and betrayal, now that danger has come, and I see your fear: you’re afraid! But what do you have to lose? Me, on the other hand …”

“You advise me to stay calm!” said Serra coldly. “But if I’m afraid… it’s also for you… for your children…”

“My children, you, don’t mention them!” she shouted at him, her eyes flashing with hate. “Innocent!” she added, breaking into tears.

Serra looked at her for a while, then more upset than disturbed, he said:

“And now you’re crying… I’m leaving…”

“Now? Now?” she sobbed. “Of course, now that you have nothing more to do here…”

“You’re being unjust!” he resumed, pressing his words. “I loved you, as you loved me, you know that! I did advise caution: did I do wrong? More for you than for me: yes, because I, in this case, would lose nothing – you said so yourself… Come on, come on, Lillina… pull yourself together… It’s useless to recriminate now… He won’t know anything; you believe so, and it will be that way… Even now, it seems impossible to me that he could have controlled himself to such an extent… He won’t have noticed… and so… come on, come on… nothing is over… We will be…”

“Ah, no!” she interrupted him haughtily. “No! How can you want to continue, now? No, it’s better to end it…”

“As you wish…” Serra said simply.

“So that’s how you love!” she exclaimed indignantly. Serra came toward her almost threateningly:

“Do you want to drive me crazy?”

“No, it’s better to really end it…” she resumed, “and from now on whatever happens, everything is over between us. And listen, it would also be better if he knew everything… Better, better, yes! What life is mine? Can you imagine it? I no longer have the right to love anyone! Not even my children… If I bend down to give them a kiss, it seems to me that the shadow of my guilt falls on their innocent brows! No… no… Would he get rid of me? I’d do it if he doesn’t!”

“Now you’re not thinking rationally anymore…” he said calmly and harshly.

“Really!” Lillina continued. “I’ve always said so! It’s too much… it’s too much… I have nothing left now…”

Then, gathering strength to compose herself, she added:

“Go, go now… so that he doesn’t find you here…”

“How… should I leave?” Serra asked, puzzled. “Leave you? I had come for you… Isn’t it better if I…”

“No,” she interrupted him, “he must not find you here. But return when he comes, shortly. We still have to wear the mask together.[1] Come back soon, and calm, indifferent… not like this! Talk to me in front of him, address me often… understand? I will support you…”

“Yes… yes…”

“Soon. But… if ever…”

“If ever?”

She was lost in thought for a moment; then, shrugging her shoulders:

“Nothing, never mind…”

“What?” Serra asked, confused.

“Nothing… nothing… I bid you farewell!”

“But then, really…” he tried to say.

“Go away!” she immediately interrupted him with disdain. And Serra left, promising:

“See you soon.”

She stayed in the middle of the room, her eyes fixed with a sinister look, as if on a grim thought that took shape as a real image before her. Then she shook her head and released her internal anguish in a sigh of desolate fatigue. She rubbed her forehead hard but could not shake that dominant thought. She paced restlessly around the room; then stopped in front of a tilting mirror at the end of the room, near the door;[2] her own reflection in the mirror distracted her, and she moved away. She sat down at the small worktable, leaning over it with her face hidden between her arms; soon after, she raised her head, murmuring:

“Wouldn’t he have climbed the stairs? With an excuse… He would have found me there… behind the window, watching…”

She shook her head again, twisting her face in disgust and nausea, and added:

“If it weren’t for fear… He’s so afraid! Ah, but now it’s over… It’s over… God, thank you! My children… my children… Poor Andrea!”