“Feather” (“Piuma”)

Translated by Robin Pickering-Iazzi

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “Feather” (“Piuma”), tr. Robin Pickering-Iazzi. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2024.

“Feather (“Piuma”) was first published in the monthly periodical Noi e il mondo on July 1, 1916. It was then printed as part of Pirandello’s miscellany collection And Tomorrow, Monday (E domani, lunedì; Milan: Treves, 1917) before being added to Candelora, the thirteenth Collection of Stories for a Year (Florence: Bemporad, 1928).

This story about a dying woman who seems to nevertheless hang onto the last thread of life is written in a more lyrical style than some of Pirandello’s earlier prose. The plot shows frequent use of free-indirect-discourse in dreamlike passages that depict the protagonist, Amina, at the threshold of two worlds – between life and death. In this respect, “Feather” might be grouped with Pirandello’s later short story prose, which some scholars have associated with a surreal tendency in his later works. At the same time, the themes it examines are central to Pirandello’s outlook from very early on, with a keen interest in the nature of human identity and the power of taking a distanced look not only at the world but also at oneself and one’s life. The sense of malicious but also compassionate humor expressed in these pages likewise demonstrates how closely aligned the story is with Pirandello’s guiding notion of humor, “umorismo,” which he theorized in his 1908 essay On Humor (L’umorismo). By taking a “typical” melodramatic plot – a husband who takes a lover and has illegitimate children, who he is trying to hide from his dying wife – and transforming the perspective from which it is recounted, Pirandello creates an estranging and ethereal tale whose poetic tenor resonates with the weightlessness implied in its title. As Lucio Lugnani points out in his notes on this story, that description of the protagonist’s state – light as a feather – ties her to another protagonist from a different short story, Matteo Sinagra in “By Himself” (“Da sé,” 1913), who is obsessed with the thought of ending his own life. But while Amina has accepted her coming end, she does not share the same raisonneur-like approach to planning her death, either. The story thus addresses a common Pirandellian theme through a different lens, one that resonates with the situation of the protagonist and sees death through her eyes.

The Editors

She had already realized that her relatives’ pity wasn’t so much at the cost of her own suffering as the pain she unintentionally gave them due to her incurable illness and that ultimately their anxious pity derived from an awkward remorse. Her heavy, bald, frowning husband and that woman, their heavy cousin, poor and armored with two imposing boobs under her chin, hair that looked like an iron helmet on her low forehead and a pair of appalling glasses on her big nose, even with a shadow of a mustache, poor thing, wanted to suffer for her because that was how they intended to pay for their comfort, the good her death would bring them.

And in fact, when she was suffering, they hovered around her breathless and attentive. But then, as soon as the pain gave her some peace and while lying on her bed she could relish a faint, innocent joy at the slightest thing, a sweet, new respite amidst the fresh pure whiteness of the newly made bed, neither one nor the other shared in her joy. On the contrary, they moved away from the bed and left her all alone.

Therefore, the terms were clear. They didn’t grant her the right to feel good, and in exchange they granted her the right to torment them with her illness, as much as she were able to and as much as she knew how. And it seemed as if they really wanted to be thanked for this trade off.

Wasn’t it too much?

Torment them, she had no choice but to torment them; she couldn’t go without doing it, it didn’t depend on her. That they then left her alone in the moments of respite not only didn’t matter at all to her, but on the contrary, it gave her great pleasure because she knew full well that those two wouldn’t have been able to even remotely imagine what she enjoyed, what she lived on.

On nothing, it seemed. And she really didn’t live anymore on what other people need in order to live. Thus, she could also believe she wasn’t taking anything away from the others by remaining there, awaiting the death that still wasn’t coming. But often her sapphire eyes, which still sparkled brightly, the only lively thing in the gaunt thinness of her small, translucent face, would laugh maliciously.[1]

Perhaps she saw herself as that little ant from the fable in the reader she had when she was a little girl, the little ant that while crossing the street asked passersby:

“Good people, what can this little straw shell of mine do to you?”

A little straw shell? Nothing! But the little ant expected all the traffic in the street, the people, and vehicles would stop to let it pass by with that little straw shell of his.

And if only it would have at least passed by! But it never passed by; it couldn’t pass by because time really didn’t pass for her anymore.

In that futile wait for death, it was as if the life beyond her room had gone deaf inside her.

For years and years, she lingered in that illness of hers that no doctor had been able to clarify so far, and nobody understood how she did so. In the light of that immense white room, on that large white bed, she’d become more fragile than those summer insects that at the slightest touch turn to light, gold dust between people’s fingers. Being so fragile, how did she manage to stand those recurrent fierce attacks of spasms from her illness? The pain didn’t seem human, as it ripped beastly, deep cries from her throat. But even still, she endured it. Shortly afterward, she was calm, as if it had been nothing. She became increasingly thin, this yes. And it was less of a fright to see her than to imagine how thin she would have become ten years from now, twenty years from now, who knows! Because perhaps she would have continued to become a living cadaver on that bed for another twenty years, and even more, though without losing her shape, without losing a certain childlike grace of hers, but rather gaining more of it so it seemed not so much that she was losing weight as that all of her was becoming smaller little by little as time passed, almost as if she would miraculously have to die not already in old age, but in reverse, in childhood.

Her eyes though, her eyes weren’t childlike with their sparkling blue light, on that gaunt, small, girlish face. Instead, they became ever more diabolically malicious, most of all after the attacks of her illness when she was still huddled up in the bed, her tousled small head hanging down from the pillow onto the folded border of the disheveled sheet, and she looked at the backs of her heavy husband and their heavy cousin walking away from the bed stooped over with their tails between their legs.

They were desperate, those poor things! Who knows what kinds of things they said between themselves in the other room over there, and what they thought over here, while they were keeping watch over her! Maybe they saw her as if she were caught in a strange impenetrable spell that made her appear far far away to them, though she was there nearby, right under their eyes.[2] What she called “sun,” what she called “air,” when she said “sun” and when she said “air” in a voice that no longer seemed human, perhaps didn’t seem to either one of them like it was their same sun, their same air anymore. It was in fact like the sun of another time, air that she asked to breathe elsewhere, far away, because here, now, it must have seemed to them like she no longer needed neither the sun nor air nor anything.

Far far away, in the happy time of her life, with the sun and air of those days when she was beautiful, healthy, and cheerful, and her clear sapphire blue eyes flickered with desire or charming anger, where the aspects of her life as it was back then were alive, bright, and precise in all their colors, as if they were reflected in a mirror in front of her.

She was so light! She swayed as she went through the dark arbor’s green tunnel with the dazzling sun at the end, her small rosy hands hanging onto the brim of her big straw hat, held tight on the sides by a black velvet ribbon tied in a knot under her chin. Oh that straw! It looks like an overturned basket in the blue crystal of the fountain at the end of the arbor where she’s now running to look at her reflection.

“Amina! Amina!”[3]

Who’s calling her like that? She goes down the stairs beneath the arbor. There’s no one on the beach. And now, alone in the boat on the rough sea, she feels assailed by the waves that lash her as if made of lead. And she feels like water, she feels like air, alive in the middle of the storm. And each time, at each lashing, ah!, it’s a divine soaking that almost makes her neigh with intoxication. An agile, wonderful, terrible force tosses her, then frighteningly rocks her. And in this vertiginous fear—what delight!

She mustn’t abuse this. Otherwise, the breathlessness will return, and those ferociously biting pains in her chest that make her scream like a wild beast. No no, she has to keep her life far away like that, to live it only there in her memory.

Oh how she likes certain days there, after it’s rained, with white clouds and the smell of wet dirt, and the plants and insects in the damp light that create the illusion it’s springtime again. At night the clouds flood the sky drowning the stars, then let them resurface briefly in deep, blue clearings. With her soul full of love’s most agonizing sweetness, there, she sinks her eyes into that nocturnal blue and drinks up all those stars.

Now, a few drops of water, some drops of milk, and nothing else. But when she dreamt like that, even with her eyes open, living perpetually in a dream, memories that were life for her came to abundantly nourish her. They no longer brought her materiality, but the fragrance and flavor of foods back then, of those she liked the most, fruits and herbs, and the air back then, cheerfulness and health.

How could she die anymore? After a light sleep her soul was fully restored, and a drop of water, a drop of milk, was all her body needed, reduced to that state so it almost didn’t exist.

By then her eyes and all her extremely acute senses perceived the awkward coarseness of bodies, not only her husband’s and their cousin’s, but of everyone who came up to the bed, as an unbearable weight, causing disgust and sometimes terror too. The diaphanous, delicate walls of her little nose’s nostrils would quiver in agony, perceiving those bodies’ nauseating odors, their thick, sour breath. And even their eyes resting upon her to commiserate almost weighed on her. Yes, yes, this commiseration, like all the other feelings and desires in those bodies, weighed on her and also smelled bad. So she often hid her face in the pillows until they went away from her bed. She watched them from afar with more space around the clear, airy lightness of her dream, and she laughed to herself about them, like big, strange beasts that weren’t able to see themselves, by themselves, like she saw them, condemned to worrying about stupid needs and serious, dirty passions.

She laughed to herself about her husband more than all the others when she saw him planted firmly in the middle of the room with the heavy, gloomy thoughtfulness of an ox. Even from afar like that, she saw his spongy skin speckled with tiny black dots. He certainly believed he washed himself well every morning, as well as all the others. But as much as all the others also washed themselves, those tiny black dots always remained on their skin. Only she could see them, as only she could see the crustiness of their noses and so many other things that delighted her intensely when seen from afar like that.

Their heavy cousin with glasses, for example, couldn’t keep from lowering her eyelids as soon as she set her eyes on her, with her head hanging down off the pillow onto the whiteness of the folded border of the sheet.

Her little face almost disappeared in that whiteness, and the only thing visible was two large, clear, sparkling sapphire eyes, like two living gemstones placed there.

They were laughing though, they were burning diabolically with laughter, not because they saw the long, thick hairs of her eyelashes, almost like insect antennae, behind her glasses, but because she knew perfectly well that when their cousin, came in to watch over her, looking so peaceful and as if nothing were amiss, in the other rooms over there she left behind a drama that was more awkwardly coarse than could have been imagined. The drama of her passion, poor heavy cousin with glasses. Certainly the drama of her shame and remorse, but also—oh God forgive!—also of her secret carnal pleasures with that heavy man, her cousin, poisoned by who knows how many tears, poor thing!

She would have liked to tell her, come on, she shouldn’t get so upset over it, because she knew, she’d guessed a while ago. And it seemed very natural to her, seeing as how death wasn’t coming here to free them both, her husband and their cousin, that they’d gotten together in the marital sense over there, with those heavy bodies of theirs—oh God, as everyone knows—each one tempted by the other due to their closeness and the need for mutual comfort. Very natural. And the poor thing had already been forced to disappear two times in six years, the first time for three months and the second for two. Because—as everyone knows, oh God—most of the time this burning need for mutual comfort isn’t without consequences. Her husband had told her she’d gone to the country to rest a while. However, he’d said it with such a dismayed, shameful look that she certainly would have broken out laughing in his face if she had still been able to laugh. But she couldn’t by then, except with her eyes. She could laugh, laugh heartily with her red lips and her splendid teeth, laugh insanely, only there in her living dream where she saw herself with her rosy, fresh image of health. There yes, there she had laughed, laughed, laughed, but so much, like a lunatic![4]

Perhaps she should have repented for it, like a sin, because this useless laughter of hers necessarily cost the others’ tears. But what could she do about it if she wouldn’t die? And besides, what should she repent for if each of them, tired of waiting vainly for her death, had come to an arrangement between themselves over there? Because they couldn’t normalize their union and the birth of the two children with her still there? They should have thought about the children first! They had them and now they were crying? It was certainly lucky that the two little ones still couldn’t take part in their troubles and, like her, were outside the awkwardness of coarse, complicated passions.

She had proof one day.

There was no one in the large, bright bedroom. Now and then it was convenient for their cousin to believe she was sleeping and could therefore leave her alone, despite her husband’s express advice. (The two of them had gotten together but certainly in a very curious way, in that their big yet tender hearts still bore affection for her, an affection that seemed so much more comic the more sincerity and emotion it showed, but which perhaps also had to give their cousin a certain tinge of jealousy sometimes. For example, if while he was supporting her during the attacks of her illness he straightened her long golden hair with his trembling fingers, a memory of distant intimate caresses.)

That day their cousin had left her with her eyes a bit open, but it doesn’t matter, she must have believed she was sleeping. She had gone out of the room a good while before the door suddenly opened and a heavy little girl with glasses came in, with her little arm holding a raggedy doll in a little red dress and missing a foot up to her chest, and a nibbled apple in her other hand. Bewildered and hesitant, she seemed like a plump baby chick that had escaped from the coop and come into a living room by chance.

Smiling, she had waved her to come up to the bed, but as if spellbound, the little girl remained looking at her from a distance.

With glasses, poor little babe, who knows how anyone couldn’t believe whose daughter she was. But well fed, healthy, calm and—one could swear—perfectly unaware of the difficulties it cost her mother to bring her illicitly into the world. Unaware and blessed with beautiful red apples that she could eat like that in the meantime, with all the skin and only the aid of little teeth, in this illicit world where for her the misfortune of losing a foot and a little flaxen wig could perhaps only happen to dolls.

She wanted to be compassionate, and a little while later when her mother rushed in all upset and nearly terrified to hastily remove that little girl from the room, which she’d certainly snuck into by eluding rigorous supervision, she closed her eyes and pretended to really be sleeping. She also pretended to be sleeping when their cousin, still all stirred up, came to take up her vigilant post again next to the bed. But God, God, what a temptation to suddenly open her laughing eyes and ask her out of the blue:

“What’s her name?”

Yes, come on, one day or another it would be necessary to arrive at this resolution. Who knows what kinds of turmoil continuing to keep all this useless mystery in this room was causing over there! And then she was dying of the curiosity to know if the other child was a little boy or another little girl, and if this second little girl might also have glasses, so as not to mistake them.

But the mystery shattered unexpectedly of its own accord a few days after the little girl had come furtively into the room.

Screams, crying, the crashing of chairs tumbling over, a huge turmoil came from the rooms over there at dinner time that day. She guessed that someone was being dragged with great difficulty, supported by the head and feet, from one room to the other, from the dining room to a bed. Her husband? An attack of apoplexy? The crying, the screams were desperate. He must have died.

Death had come into the home not for her, who had remained here waiting for it for so long, its guaranteed prey, but for another who didn’t expect it. It had come inside, perhaps passing in front of the open door to that white room. Perhaps it had stopped a moment to look at her on the white bed, then had gone into the dining room over there to strike her heavy husband’s shiny head with its crooked finger while he was unsuspectingly absorbed in devouring his daily lunch.[5]

Was she supposed to cry about this tragic misfortune now? That was for those who remained alive. The holidays, bereavement, joys, and pain of others hadn’t existed for her for a long time. From her bed she perceived them only like funny aspects of something that didn’t concern her anymore. She also belonged to death. That slim thread of life that she still retained was used to take her outside, far away, into the past among dead things where only her spirit still lived, asking for nothing from the life of others over here but a drop of water, a drop of milk. Therefore, it could no longer tie her to this life of others, which by now was unrelated to her, like a senseless dream.

She closed her eyes and waited for that turmoil over there to slowly calm down.

After a few days she saw their heavy cousin with glasses, exhausted from crying and dressed in black, come into her room standing between the two little girls dressed in black too. She planted herself there in front of the bed like a nightmare and then began to shudder, gasping, and finally thought it was right to yell in her face amidst endless tears about her desperation, pointing out the two little orphaned girls, and the by now irreparable damage that she had done to them by not dying before. How, how would those two little ones manage now?

At first, she listened dumbfounded, but then as the spectacle of that desperation, somewhat theatrical yet sincere, dragged on a long time, she didn’t listen anymore. She stared at the other little girl that she still didn’t know and was happy to see she didn’t have glasses. It seemed refreshing for her to feel so slender, almost impalpable, between the cool white sheets, so white in front of all that anguished, tempestuous black bathed in tears that was enveloping and devastating the heavy cousin. And it seemed really funny to her that she had dressed in mourning like that for her husband and had imposed it on those two poor little girls who fortunately appeared like they didn’t remember anything anymore and had a look of wonder in their wide-open eyes at having finally penetrated that forbidden room and at seeing her on the bed as she looked at them with affectionate curiosity.

Those two little girls certainly didn’t understand that she had done them a great wrong, that great wrong that their mama was screaming about so despairingly. But wasn’t there really a remedy? No remedy? She asked on behalf of the two little girls, to spare them the distress of all that crying and all that yelling. Was there? And therefore, why that crying and that yelling? What did it involve? To leave everything she owned to those two little girls? But right away! But she’s ready! Actually, she believed she no longer possessed anything for herself other than that thin thread of life, which only needed a few drops of water, a few drops of milk. What did all the rest matter to her? What did leaving the things that hadn’t been hers for a long time to others matter to her? It was a difficult and very complicated matter? Oh yes? And how? Why? But therefore life was really unbearably awkward if something so simple could become difficult and complicated.

And a few days later it seemed to her as if she saw the complicated awkwardness of life come into her room, personified by a notary who in the presence of two witnesses began reading an interminable document of which she understood nothing. In the end, she saw an object she hadn’t seen for a long time very tactfully held out to her. A pen, so that she would put her signature on the document not only at the bottom, but several times in the margin of each of its pages.

Her signature?

She took the pen. She observed it. She almost didn’t know how to hold it in her fingers anymore. And then she raised her clear, bewildered, and laughing sapphire eyes to look the notary in the face. Her signature? So she still had the weight of a name? A name to leave there on that paper?

Amina... and then what was it? Her maiden name, and then her married name. Oh, and she also had to put widow? A widow... her? And she looked at the cousin. Then she wrote: Amina Berardi of the late Francesco, widow Vismara.[6]

She remained to contemplate that shaky writing of hers on the paper for a while. And it seemed funny to her that people could believe that she was really in that line of writing and that the others could not only be satisfied about it, but so delighted, as if that signature were an immensely generous act that represented a real fortune for the two poor little girls dressed in black. Yes? And again, well then! Again... Amina Berardi of the late Francesco, widow Vismara... For her it was like a joke to drag that long awkward name on all those pages of legal stamped paper, like a little girl dressed up as a woman trailing the long train of her mama’s dress.