“In Defense of Meola” (“Difesa del Mèola”)

Translated by Maria Enrico

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “In Defense of Mèola” (“Difesa del Mèola”), tr. Maria Enrico. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2021.

This story was first published in the periodical Il Marzocco (August 8, 1909); it was then included in the collection Weeds from Our Garden (Erba del nostro orto), which was printed first in 1915 by the Milanese publisher Studio Editoriale Lombardo and then re-issued in 1919 by the publisher Facchi. There, the story was collected together with two others as part of a trilogy of novelle titled Habits of Montelusa (Tonache di Montelusa): “The Lucky Ones” (“I fortunati”) and “Since It’s Not Raining…” (“Visto che non piove…”). All three stories were then grouped together and published in the first Collection of Stories for a Year, Black Shawl (Scialle nero), printed in Florence by Bemporad in 1922.

The story’s satirical plot underlines Pirandello’s anticlerical stance as well as his support for liberal thinking in a tale that combines fictional and historical events. The inhabitants of the fictional town, Montelusa, are worried about the return of a religious sect of those who follow Alfonso Maria de’ Liguori, the Liguorines. Mèola undertakes to ensure they are cast out of the city for good in a complex arrangement that requires him to marry the hunchback niece of the bishop seeking to finance their return. Mèola’s sacrifice, however, looks like an attempt at self-enrichment, and hence the titular accusation and defense of his actions. As such, the story engages typical elements of Pirandellian humor together with his interest in historical and political events. In the later two additions to this trilogy of stories, Pirandello continues to address the same historical situation. Likewise, the opposition of the liberals against the Liguorines is also a topic in his substantial historical novel, The Old and the Young (I vecchi e i giovani, 1909), which was published the same year as “In Defense of Mèola.” The combination of this story with the other two in a series allows Pirandello to depict the fictional world of Montelusa in greater detail, focusing on both the greed of the clergy as well as the anticlerical stance of the liberals. Montelusa thus serves as a metaphorical version of Pirandello’s Sicilian hometown, Girgenti (Agrigento).

The Editors

I have many times urged my fellow citizens of Montelusa not to blindly condemn Mèola,[1] if for no other reason than to avoid being stained with the accusation of complete ingratitude.

Mèola stole.

Mèola got rich.

Mèola tomorrow will probably become a loan shark.

All right. But folks, let’s consider from whom and why Mèola stole. Let’s consider what benefit – if any – Mèola derived from stealing when we compare it to the benefit our beloved Montelusa derived from his theft.

Personally I can’t stand it that my fellow citizens, while acknowledging this benefit, persist in condemning Mèola and making his life in our town very difficult, if not down right impossible.

For this reason I am making this appeal to the judgment of all those in Italy who are equanimous and right thinking liberals.

A horrendous nightmare had been weighing on everyone in Montelusa – ever since the fateful day eleven years ago when Monsignor Vitangelo Partanna, thanks to the undertakings and evil doings of powerful ecclesiastics in Rome, became our bishop.

We had become accustomed to the pomp, the jocund and cordial manner and abundant munificence of our bishop his Excellency Monsignor Vivaldi (may God welcome him in his glory!). So all of us in Montelusa felt our hearts tighten when for the first time we saw descend from the lofty and ancient bishop’s palace, walking towards our perennially smiling springtime accompanied by his two secretaries, the wrapped up skeletal frame of this new bishop. He was tall, bent over and abjectly thin. His neck was stretched forward and he had protruding, tumid, livid lips – all seemingly in an effort to hold up his withered face with its black foreboding eyes over a hooked nose.

The two secretaries, old Don Antonio Sclepis, Mèola’s uncle, and young Don Arturo Filomarino (who didn’t last long in this job), were walking a step behind, stiffly as if puppets, well aware of the horrible impression that His Excellency was making on the citizens.

And it seemed to everyone that the sky and the joyful appearance of our fair town turned dark at that ragged, lugubrious apparition. A subdued seething, almost of horrified panic, spread with his passing through all the trees lining the long and laughing Paradise Avenue,[2] the pride of our Montelusa, that ended in two blues: the harsh, dense one of the sea and the tenuous, ephemeral one of the sky.

A chief fault in Montelusa is without doubt our impressionability. The impressions that so easily affect us lastingly influence our opinions and our emotions and induce very sensitive and enduring changes in our souls.

A bishop on foot? Since the palace was placed like a fortress overlooking the town, everyone in Montelusa had always seen bishops descend Paradise Avenue riding in a carriage. But the office of bishop, said Monsignor Partanna from his very first day in charge, is a matter of deeds not honor. And so he stopped using the carriage, fired the coachmen and lackeys, sold the horses and vestments, and inaugurated the meanest possible stinginess.

At first we thought:

“He must want to save money. He has lots of poor relatives in his hometown of Pisanello.” [3]

However one day one of these poor Pisanello relatives came to Montelusa. He was one of his brothers, a father of nine, and he came on his knees to beg him, as one does of a saint, for help – at least enough to pay for doctors to operate on his dying wife. He wouldn’t even give him enough to return to Pisanello. We all saw him. We heard what that poor man, his eyes swollen with tears and his voice sobbing, said while at the Pedoca Café upon coming down from the bishop’s palace.[4]

Bear in mind, the diocese of Montelusa is one of the richest in Italy.

What did Monsignor Partanna plan to do with its income if he could so harshly refuse such an urgent appeal for assistance from his relatives in Pisanello?

Marco Mèola revealed the secret.

I can see it now (so clearly I could paint it). That morning he called for all of us, Montelusa’s liberals, to meet in the square in front of the Pedoca Café. His hands were trembling. The curly locks on his leonine head were in such disarray that, even more than usual, he had to keep furiously shoving his floppy hat back on his head. He was both pale and proud. His nose quivered with disdain.

The souls of the old folks in Montelusa still have vivid horrendous memories of the corruption sowed throughout the countryside and the town by the sermons and doctrines of the Liguorine Fathers – as well as of their spying and betrayals during the nefarious years of tyranny under the Bourbons, for whom they operated secretly.[5]

Well, the Liguorine Fathers, yes Monsignor Partanna wanted the Liguorines to return to Montelusa. Those Liguorines the people had furiously driven out when the revolution exploded.

This is why he was accumulating the diocese’s income.

It was a direct challenge against all of us in Montelusa who had expelled the friars. We had been driven by a fervid love of freedom that could only be acted upon once Garibaldi had entered Palermo, and the cops had fled and with them also the paltry Bourbon troops stationed in Montelusa.[6]

So Monsignor Partanna wanted to extinguish our only claim to fame.

Overcome with ire and contempt we looked at each other. We had at all costs to stop this from coming to pass. But how could we stop it?

On that day it seemed as if the heavens had given way over Montelusa. The town went into mourning. The yonder bishopric, where he who harbored the evil plot was day by day planning its implementation, weighed on all of us like a boulder on our breasts.

At the time no one, while knowing that Marco Mèola was Sclepis’s nephew, had any doubts about his liberal beliefs. In fact everyone admired his almost heroic fortitude and understood how his beliefs must cause him so much bitterness, given that he had been brought up and cared for as son by his uncle priest.

My fellow Montelusa citizens now ask mockingly of me:

“But if his uncle priest’s bread came at too high a price, why didn’t he free himself by going to work?”

And they forget that after he escaped from the seminary as a youth, Sclepis, who at all costs wanted him to follow him into the priesthood, had stopped allowing him to study. They forget that everyone had bitterly mourned the loss of such a brain all because of a cleric’s angry tantrum.

I remember very well the choruses of approval and the applause and the admiration when, defying the Bishop’s fulminations and the indignation and vengefulness of his uncle, Marco Mèola set up shop at the Pedoca Café and for one hour a day started delivering to Montelusa his commentary on the writings in Latin and Italian of Alfonso Maria de’ Liguori, in particular on the Sacred and Moral Sermons for Every Sunday of the Year and the Book on the Glories of Mary.[7]

But we want to make Meola pay for the fraudulence of our illusions, the aberrations of our very deplorable impressionability.

When one day Mèola truculently placed his hand on his breast and said: “Gentlemen, I promise and swear that the Liguorines will not return to Montelusa!” – you people of Montelusa insisted on imagining all kinds of devilry: mines, bombs, ambushes, nocturnal raids on the Bishop’s palace – with Marco Mèola acting like Pietro Micca,[8] holding on to a fuse and ready to blow up the Bishop and the Liguorines.

So this, please bear with me, would mean having a rather grotesque concept of what a hero is. How on earth could Mèola liberate Montelusa from an invasion of Liguorines? True heroism consists in knowing how to use the right tools for the job.

And Marco Mèola knew what to do.

The air was inebriating, saturated with the fragrances of the blossoming of spring. Amidst the cries of the droves of darting swallows in the luminous ardor of that unforgettable late afternoon came the sound of church bells.

Mèola and I were strolling in silence and lost in our thoughts along our Paradise Avenue.

Suddenly Mèola stopped and smiled.

“Listen,” he said, “do you hear the closest bells? They belong to the Abbey of Sant’Anna.[9] If you only knew who rings them!”

“Who rings them?”

“Three bells, three little doves!”

I turned and stared at him, astonished by his tone and the way in which he had spoken.

“Three nuns?”

He shook his head in denial and indicated I should wait.

“Listen,” he added softly. “Now, as soon as the three stop ringing, the last one, the smallest bell and most silvery one, will tinkle three times, timidly. Here it comes… listen carefully!”

And in fact, far away, in the silence of the sky, that little silvery bell rang three times – din din din – and it seemed as if the sound of those three chimes was spreading blissfully in the golden luminosity of the twilight.

“Do you get it?” asked Mèola. “Those three chimes are telling a happy mortal: ‘I am thinking of you!’”

I stared at him again. He squinted, sighed, and raised his chin. Under his thick frizzy beard you could glimpse his ivory white, bull-like neck.

“Marco!” I yelled, grabbing his arm.

He burst out laughing. Then frowned and whispered: “I am sacrificing myself, dear friend, I am sacrificing myself! But rest assured that the Liguorines will not return to Montelusa.”

I couldn’t get any more from him for a long time.

What link could there be between those three bell chimes that said I am thinking of you and the Liguorines who must not return to Montelusa? And what kind of sacrifice had Mèola committed himself to in order to stop their return?

I knew that he had an aunt at the Abbey of Sant’Anna, the sister of his uncle Sclepis and of his mother,. I knew that all the nuns in the five abbeys in Montelusa joined him in cordially hating Monsignor Partanna because as soon as he had become bishop, he had handed down three orders, each one crueler than the others:

1st that they could no longer prepare or sell sweets or liqueurs (those delicious bow-shaped sweets made out of honey and almond pastry and wrapped with silver thread! Those delicious liqueurs that tasted of anise and cinnamon!);

2nd that they could no longer embroider (not even sacred furnishings and vestments), but only knit;

3rd and finally, that they could no longer have a chosen father confessor, but all of them– without exception – had to use the community one.

So much crying, so much desperate despair in all five of the Montelusa abbeys, especially over the last rule! So much effort to undo it!

But Monsignor Partanna was adamant. Maybe he had sworn to himself that he would do the complete opposite of his most Excellent Predecessor. Monsignor Vivaldi (God bless him!) was generous and cordial with the nuns; he visited them at least once a week, and warmly accepted their offerings, and praised their delicacy, and indulged with them in happy and honest conversation.

Monsignor Partanna, instead, had never visited any abbey more than once a month, always accompanied by two secretaries. He was always surly and harsh. He never accepted anything, not even a cup of coffee or a glass of water. The mother superiors had to scold the nuns and the novices and the vicars to force them to obey and go down to the parlor when the doorkeeper announced a visit by the Monsignor by pulling at length on the chain of the doorbell until it sounded as if a little dog that had been stepped on! But he frightened them all with all those signs of the cross! And his muttering voice: “Holy, daughter,” in reply to each one’s greeting when they appeared through the double-grilled opening to the cloister,[10] all blushing red and with lowered gaze:

“Blessed be Your Excellency!”

No talking unless it had to do with church matters. The young secretary, Don Arturo Filomarino, had been sacked for having promised one day – while in the parlor of Sant’Anna – a strawberry plant for the abbey garden to the younger nuns and novices, who ate him up with their eyes through the grille.

Monsignor Partanna had a ferocious hatred of women. When it came to women, the most dangerous of all of them was the humble, kind, and faithful one, the one he found under the mantle and headdress of a nun.[11] And so his interactions with them were like a cane striking a hand. Through his secretary uncle, Marco Mèola was well aware of Monsignor Partanna’s hatred of women. And it seemed excessive to him and therefore must have been caused by a secret and special reason in the Monsignor’s soul and in his past. Mèola started searching. But he soon stopped upon the arrival of a new novice at the abbey of Sant’Anna. She was a sad little hunchback who couldn’t even hold up her large head with ovoid eyes in an emaciated squalid face. This little hunchback was Monsignor Partanna’s niece – a niece who was completely unknown to the Pisanello relatives. And in fact she had not come from Pisanello, but from another village in the interior where Partanna had been a parish priest in years past.

On the very same day as the arrival of this novice at the abbey of Sant’Anna, Marco Mèola solemnly and publicly proclaimed his liberal faith to all of his fellow believers:

“Gentlemen, I promise and swear that the Liguorines will not return to Montelusa.”

And we watched, astonished, as right after having made the solemn oath Marco Mèola completely changed. We saw him go to church and attend mass every Sunday and every religious holiday. We saw him go on walks with priests and old bigots. We saw him running all kinds of errands every time there were pastoral visits to the dioceses – something that Monsignor Partanna was a stickler for in accordance with Canon timetables – despite the conditions of the roads and the lack of communication and vehicles. And we saw him accompany his uncle in the visit retinues.

However, I refused – and I was the only one – to believe that this was a betrayal on Mèola’s part. For how did he reply to our initial reproaches, our initial complaints? He forcefully answered:

“Gentlemen, let me be!”

You all shrugged your shoulders with indignation. You did not trust him. You believed and proclaimed that he was a turncoat. I continued to be his friend. And I spent with him that unforgettable twilight when the timid silvery bell chimed three times in the luminous sky with its mysterious half confession.

Marco Mèola, who had never gone more than once a year to visit his nun aunt at the abbey of Sant’Anna, started to visit her every week accompanied by his mother. His nun aunt, at the Sant’ Anna abbey, was in charge of watching over the three novices. The novices, the three little doves, truly loved their teacher. They followed her everywhere like chicks following mother hen. They even followed her when she was called to the parlor for her visits with her sister and nephew.

And one day the miracle happened. Monsignor Partanna, who had denied the abbey’s nuns permission, which they had always had before, to enter the church twice a year in the morning, doors closed, to prepare it for the celebrations of the Corpus Domini and of the Madonna of Light, removed his veto and restored permission all because of the insistent beseeching of the three novices and in particular of his niece, the sad newly arrived hunchback.

But the real miracle took place later, during the celebrations for the Madonna of Light.

On the eve of the celebrations, Marco Mèola hid in the church, treacherously, and slept in the parish priest’s confessional. At dawn a carriage awaited in the square in front of the abbey. And when the three novices, two lovely and vivacious like little swallows in love and one hunchbacked and asthmatic, got out with their teacher to decorate the altar for the Madonna of the Light…

Now you may say, Mèola stole. Mèola got rich. Mèola tomorrow will probably become a loan shark. All right. But stop and think, dear sirs, think that of those three novices not one of the pretty ones, but the third, the third one, that sad little bleary eyed asthmatic hunchback was the one Marco Mèola kidnapped – even though the other two fervidly loved him! He took that one, the little hunchback, to stop the Liguorine Fathers from returning to Montelusa.

In fact, to force Mèola to marry his kidnapped niece, Monsignor Partanna had to convert the funds saved for the return of the Liguorine Fathers into a dowry for his niece. Monsignor Partanna is old, and he won’t have enough time to replenish the funds.

What had Marco Mèola promised to us liberals of Montelusa? That the Liguorines would never return.

Well, folks, by now isn’t it a certainty that the Liguorines will not return to Montelusa?