“Let’s Get It Over With” (“Leviamoci questo pensiero”)

Translated by Marella Feltrin-Morris

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “Let’s Get It Over With” (“Leviamoci questo pensiero”), tr. Marella Feltrin-Morris. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2021.

Originally published in the Milanese newspaper, the Corriere della Sera (July 19, 1910), the story was then included in the volume of selected stories Tercets (Terzetti; Milan: Treves, 1912). Pirandello added it to the twelfth Collection of Stories for a Year, The Trip (Il viaggio), published in Florence by Bemporad in 1928.

Published two years after Pirandello’s famous modernist essay On Humor (L’umorismo; Lanciano: Carabba, 1908), “Let’s Get It Over With” is a “philosophical” story that reiterates many ideas from his essay as it explores the psychology of the story’s protagonist, Bernardo Sopo, who has recently lost his wife Ersilia. The story’s existential themes and reflections emphasize both the arbitrary conventions of polite society (a typical Pirandellian obsession) as well as the illusory nature of our beliefs, whether those be rooted in religious faith or science (another common theme across his works). At the same time, the protagonist’s worldview might be seen as aligning in some ways with the philosophical outlook of thinkers like Arthur Schopenhauer, Henri Bergson, and Adriano Tilgher, particularly in his pessimistic articulation of life’s dismal duties and in the view that human life and duties are all an outgrowth of nature, which is even the source of humans’ thoughts and ideas. Finally, in the short story’s reflections on the multiplicity of nature and the impossibility of it reaching a conclusion, it aligns as a precursor to Pirandello’s existential novel, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand (Uno, nessuno e centomila; published in the Fiera Letteraria, 1925-26).

This story was previously printed in Pirandello Studies, Vol. 40 (2020) and is republished here with their kind permission. https://www.ucd.ie/pirsoc/journal/

The Editors

All the relatives were gathered in the parlor for the wake: the ancient father, the sisters with their husbands, the brothers with their wives and their eldest children. Some were weeping quietly, dabbing their eyes with handkerchiefs. Others were shaking their heads slowly, sorrowfully, their mouths curled downward, as they gazed at the poor deceased woman lying on the bed scattered with flowers and surrounded by four tall candles. Her stiff, bluish hands, which had been folded over her chest, held a small silver crucifix and a rosary with red beads.

Bernardo Sopo, her husband, was pacing up and down the adjacent room.

Broad-shouldered, though slow and feeble-legged, bald and with a full beard like a Capuchin friar, his eyes half-closed and his spectacles forgotten on the tip of his nose, he kept pacing, clasping his hands behind his back. Every now and then he would stop and say:

“Ersilia… poor thing…”[1]

He would resume his walking and, a short while later, would stop again and repeat:

“Poor thing…”

The sound of his footsteps, the tone of his voice resembling more of a rational conclusion than a lament, were hurtful to her relatives gathered quietly in mourning. Even more hurtful was his presence every time he stopped by the door and, with his head tilted back and his eyes two slivers between the eyelashes, he would look around at everyone as if he took pity on the performance they felt compelled to act out in earnest—a very sad, but utterly pointless death performance.

As soon as he turned his back and started walking again in the next room, everybody felt as if his pacing up and down were his way of waiting, with forced patience, for them all to be done with their crying.

At a certain point they saw him enter the room with a look they knew very well: a look of resignation, of stubborn resignation that defied everyone’s protests and insults like a donkey that takes its blows without budging from the edge of a precipice.

They almost feared that he would go and blow out the four candles as if to say that the show had gone on long enough and that it was time to put an end to it.

None of those relatives would put it past Bernardo Sopo to do something like that. And indeed, if it had been up to him—no, he wouldn’t, he would never have blown out those candles, but he would certainly not have lit them in the first place, or scattered those flowers, or placed that crucifix and those rosary beads in the deceased’s hands. Yet, his reasons were not what her relatives maliciously suspected.

Bernardo Sopo walked over to his father-in-law and politely asked him to follow him into his office for a moment.

Once there, Sopo snorted with frustration at the sight of the furniture, especially all those shelves stacked with heavy philosophical tomes, sitting there quietly in the half-darkness, clueless as to what had happened in the other room. He opened a drawer of his desk, pulled out a bond in his late wife’s name, and handed it to his father-in-law.

“Ersilia’s dowry,” said Sopo.

The old man, who could hardly stand, so much so that, as soon as he had walked in, he had collapsed into the first chair he found, sprang up as if stung by a bee and threw the bond indignantly on the desk, intending to return immediately to the parlor. But Bernardo Sopo, squinting painfully, stretched out his arms to try and stop him.

“Please, please!” he begged. “There are so many things that still need to be done…”

“Crying!” shouted the old man. “Crying! For now, all that needs to be done is crying, nothing else!”

Bernardo Sopo squinted painfully again, overwhelmed with pity for that poor old man, that poor father. But then he lifted up his head, pushed out his chest, inhaled deeply, exhaled, and, with a gesture of desolate weariness, asked:

“What for?”

Since his wife had borne him no children, it was his duty to return her dowry to her father.

He had to get it over with.

Another thought that he couldn’t wait to get over with was that of the house. Now that his wife was dead and he had to return her dowry, he could no longer pay the rent with just his income, considering all the other expenses he had to take care of. Besides, that house would be too big for him alone. Luckily, the lease was in his wife’s name, and so with her death it was automatically annulled.

But there was still the furniture, all the furniture with which the deceased, who loved comfort, had crammed every nook and cranny. Bernardo Sopo felt each of those pieces of furniture like a boulder weighing down on his chest.

There were still six days left to the end of the month. The rent was already paid, but he would rather not have to pay another month’s rent just on account of all that furniture, which he had no use for. He had already resolved to move into a furnished one-bedroom apartment. How to speed things up? Before he could get the issue of the furniture over with, his wife had to be taken away to the cemetery. But since she had died suddenly of a heart attack, her relatives had requested that it not be done for at least forty-eight hours.

“Forty-eight hours,” mumbled Bernardo Sopo to himself as he paced up and down, his eyes half-closed, scratching his thick, Capuchin-friar beard with his restless hand. “Forty-eight hours! As if poor Ersilia might not actually be dead! Unfortunately, she is dead. Unfortunately for me, not for her. Poor Ersilia got this whole business of dying over with. Instead we, here… All this nonsense to go through, and all the nonsense that is still left to do! The wake, of course, and then the candles, the flowers, the funeral in church, the transportation to the cemetery, the burial. Forty-eight hours!”

Paying no attention to the angry looks that everyone was darting his way now that his father-in-law had gone back to tell them about the business with the dowry, Bernardo Sopo kept showing, in every possible way, the agitation and stress that this forced delay was causing him.

Tormented by his own solicitude, he could find no peace. He would approach one or another of his late wife’s closest relatives, spurred irresistibly by the urge to involve them in some of the many things that needed to be done. But he immediately sensed their distaste, their resentment. He didn’t take it personally. He was used to it. After all, he acknowledged that such distaste and resentment were natural reactions against people like him, who represented life’s tough obligations. He understood and empathized with them. With his eyes half-closed, he would stand for a while next to one of them, watching him motionlessly, cumbersomely, stiflingly, until the relative blurted out in frustration:

“D’you need to talk to me?”

He nodded his head sadly and, looking tired and dejected, led him towards the dining room. Once there, after pacing up and down two or three times and exclaiming every so often, “Life is so sad, my friend! Life is… such misery!” or “Ersilia… poor thing…,” he stopped and, looking humble and compassionate, or pretending to be suddenly distracted, he sighed:

“If you want, you know, you’re welcome to take these two cabinets—the one with the good china and the glass display cabinet. The cupboard, too, if you want.”

To the relatives, such an offer while the corpse was still in the house came across like an insult—worse even, like being punched in the stomach. And so they just walked out on him, with no answer other than a disgusted, outraged glance.

This still did not dissuade him from approaching, a short while later, another close relative and taking him for a stroll into the living room. There, at a certain point, as he had done with the other one, he suggested:

“You know, if you like this settee and those armchairs, you can have them!”

Until, seeing that all of the closest kin reacted with shock and indignation at his proposals, he started pitching the furniture to the more distant relatives and even to a few family friends who, having fewer scruples, would thank him, albeit hesitantly and somewhat perplexedly. Bernardo Sopo cut them off with a wave of his hand, then he shrugged to dismiss the gift as something unimportant, and added:

“Actually, you should try and arrange for someone to pick it up right away: I’d like to get the house cleared out as soon as possible.”

At that, the closer relatives started darting frenzied, incensed looks at him from the parlor, and venting their anger, resentment, and contempt.

They were well aware they had no rights over the furniture that belonged to him alone, to Bernardo Sopo. But still, Jesus Christ, that was a disgrace!

Unable to restrain themselves, one by one they sprang up and rushed over to confront him, hissing that he ought to be ashamed of what he was doing, yes, ashamed just like the ones who, caught between a rock and a hard place, had not been able to refuse his offers and now felt ashamed for him. The relatives would call on them to confirm it:

“Right? Isn’t that right?”

The others would shrug their shoulders, smiling painfully.

“But of course! Every single one of them!” exclaimed the relatives then. “It’s humiliating!”

Bernardo Sopo, still with his eyes closed, would open his arms helplessly and ask:

“Excuse me, my friends, but why? I’m just divesting myself… There’s nothing left for me! I need to get it over with! I know the burden I’m carrying. Let me get it done. These things need to be done.”

The others would scream:

“Fine, yes, they need to get done. But in due time and in their due place, by God!”

And so, just to cut things short, he would concede:

“I understand… I understand…”

But he didn’t understand at all. Or rather, he understood only this: that all the delay they insisted on putting up was a form of weakness. Weakness, like all that crying.

They thought he was heartless just because he didn’t cry. But did crying prove one’s sorrow? All it proved was the weakness of the sufferer. People who cry want others to know they’re suffering, or they want them to be moved by their tears, to commiserate with them and comfort them. Instead, he wasn’t crying because he knew that no one could comfort him, and that commiseration would do him no good, either. As for those who had passed away, they were not to be pitied. If anything, they were lucky, and to be envied!

To Bernardo Sopo, life was a dark pit; death, just a darker shade of darkness. He couldn’t bring himself to give credit either to science for throwing light on life, or to faith for throwing light on death.[2] And in all of this darkness all he could glimpse, at every step, were the unpleasant, hard, thorny obligations of existence, obligations which it was useless to try and dodge, and therefore one might as well face them, bear them, and get them over with as soon as possible.

That’s it, get them over with! All of life came down to this: one concern after another to get over with. Every hesitation was a sign of weakness.

All those relatives who acted indignantly knew very well that he had always been like that. Their Ersilia had made them laugh so many times by telling them, with comical exaggeration, about the frantic pace he imposed on their marital routine. Poor man, there was nothing he could do about it: he was possessed by restlessness, by the frenzy to get every single thing over with, as soon as it popped into his mind as an inescapable obligation. Even in bed, that’s right, even in bed! And she, poor thing, would portray herself like an exhausted little puppy, perpetually running after him with her tongue hanging out, panting.

Were they supposed to go to the theater? He would find no peace, not so much because he cared particularly about theatre—on the contrary! Just the thought that they had to go became such a nightmare to him that he couldn’t wait to get it over with. And so they would get there an hour early and sit waiting in their box for an hour—every single time.

Were they supposed to take a trip? Mother of God! It was an avalanche. Trunks, suitcases, bags. Hurry, coachman! Hurry, porter! So much sweating in panic, so many things lost or left behind just to get to the station two hours before the train was scheduled to depart! And it wasn’t because he feared they would miss it, but because he could no longer wait at home, not even for a single minute, obsessed as he was by the thought of leaving.

And how many times did he show up at home with a bundle of five or six new pairs of shoes just so that, for a while at least, he wouldn’t have to worry about having to buy any? He was perhaps the only taxpayer to stand right at the window of the revenue office on the first day taxes were due, and to pay them in full. It was only by a miracle that, at the crack of dawn on the day in which the first installment was due, he didn’t go directly to the tax collector’s house and wake him up!

Poor Ersilia had always tried to hold him back when she saw him get so frantic about everything. Then, when he looked tired or restless because he had so much time left on his hands and nothing to do, she would say:

“See, Bebi my dear? You got it over with. And now? What now?”

At that, Bernardo Sopo would shake his head, always with his eyes closed.

In the depths of that darkness he felt inside, which neither science nor faith ever managed to dispel even with the faintest light of dawn, there was something he refused to acknowledge to himself, let alone to others. It throbbed inside of him like some obscure angst, the distress of waiting for something unknown: a vague premonition that in life there was one thing to be done, and that it was never one of the many things he was always chasing after in order to get them over with. Unfortunately, once he had got them over with, he was always left as if suspended and gasping in agitated emptiness. He kept feeling that anxiety, but alas, all his waiting was always, always in vain.

The years had gone by, they were still going by, and Bernardo Sopo was even more tired and exasperated than before, but no less dutiful towards all the hard obligations of existence. In fact, the more tired and exasperated he felt, the more dutiful he was, though he could not accept the idea that life was all about fulfilling those obligations.

Could there really be nothing else? Could that be the whole reason why everyone was born and lived on this earth?

Oh, of course, there were poets’ dreams, philosophers’ mental constructions, scientists’ discoveries. But to Bernardo Sopo, they all looked like jokes, cute or clever jokes, illusions. What conclusion did they ever reach?

Increasingly, he had become convinced that humans could not achieve anything on this earth, and that all the conclusions they thought they reached were illusory or arbitrary.

Humans are parts of nature, and it’s nature that thinks and produces the fruits of their thoughts—fruits that follow the seasons just like the ones on the trees; they might be less ephemeral than the ones on the trees, but they’re ephemeral nonetheless. Nature can never reach a conclusion, precisely because it’s eternal. Therefore, neither can humans.[3]

Bernardo Sopo realized this very well when, during the spare time he always ended up having, he cut himself off from all mundane contingencies, from all everyday hassle, from the duties he had imposed on himself and from the habits he had formed. That’s when he managed to broaden the horizons of his customary worldview and soar to dramatic and solemn heights from which he could contemplate nature, unfettered by bias. He realized that in order to reach a conclusion, humans put on blinkers that let them see only one thing at a time. But when they think they have arrived at it, they can no longer find it because, once they take off their blinkers and discover all those other things around them—bye-bye conclusion!

What is left then, unless someone insists on deluding themselves consciously, almost as a joke? Alas, nothing more than the tough obligations of existence, to be suffered or faced right away, just to get them over with as soon as possible. But then one might as well kill oneself and really get it all over with. Sure, great! Kill oneself… If only one could! Bernardo Sopo couldn’t. Unfortunately, his life was an obligation he couldn’t get over with. He had many indigent relatives for whom he had to keep living.

After his wife was carried to the cemetery and buried, he managed to divest himself of everything during the few days there were left in that month, and ended up living alone, like a pauper, in a small rented one-bedroom apartment.

None of his wife’s relatives would ever have anything more to do with him. Nor did he resent it.

He immediately got rid of a great many necessities that, even while his wife was alive, he had always considered superfluous, though he had put up with them, suffered them or faced them for her sake, with his usual stoicism and resignation. He limited all the grocery, clothing, and household expenses which his wife had imposed upon him, so that, now that his wife was gone, he wouldn’t have to reduce by much the allowance he gave to his indigent relatives—who, for their part, showed no gratitude towards him. He didn’t resent this either. He regarded his sacrifice as yet another duty, another unpleasant obligation, and made it quite clear in his letters to those relatives, who for this very reason did not appreciate it. Essentially, to him they represented, just like everything else, a headache to get over with as soon as possible, every month. Even if it meant eating one meal a day, and a skimpy one at that, consumed quickly so he wouldn’t have to think about it again until the next day.

Once he had taken care of the few chores he now had left to attend to, he found himself with even more spare time, with a frantic void that he didn’t know how to fill.

He started spending it by dedicating himself to others, people he hardly knew and whose predicaments he just happened to hear about. But as usual, even these beneficiaries rewarded him with nothing but rudeness and ingratitude. He completely lacked any sense of propriety because he couldn’t understand how one would want to linger around in illusions, convinced as he was that lingering when life was full of so many pressing, inescapable obligations, was a form of weakness. And towards those weak, lingering people, he showed neither compassion nor consideration. He would show up when he wasn’t supposed to and remind them of those obligations. Every day he looked more and more tired and overburdened, as if to say: “See, in spite of all this, in spite of how much it costs me, here I am. Come on, my friends, let’s get it over with.”

By this point, as soon as they saw him from a distance, everybody would get terribly agitated. He had become their nightmare. They all thought he took a cruel pleasure in tormenting and oppressing them.

As the years went by, his legs became even weaker and slower. Nothing was more pitiful than watching him struggle to keep up with all those obligations, his own and other people’s, and to find a way to walk briskly on those poor legs that, try as they might, never seemed to take him one step forward.

Wrapped in the dreadful shadow of time creeping up, with the gnawing anxiety of so many concerns that were not just his own, he often happened to stop suddenly in the middle of the street, having forgotten where he was headed and what he was supposed to do.

His walking cane under his arm, his hat in one hand as he restlessly scratched his thick beard with the other, he would stand there for a while with his eyes closed, mumbling to himself:

“There was something I was supposed to do…”

And that was how, one afternoon, right in the middle of a deserted piazza, he was hit by a speeding car.

Run over in an instant and tossed under the wheels, Bernardo Sopo was taken unconscious to the hospital by some coachmen. His ribs were crushed, and his arms and legs broken; he was half dead.

He came to a few moments before he died. He opened his clouded eyes and stared for a while, frowning at the doctor and at the nurses around his bed. Then he sank back into the pillows and said again, with one final sigh:

“There was something I was supposed to do…”