“Old Music” (“Musica vecchia”)

Translated by Patricia Stumpp

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “Old Music” (“Musica vecchia”), tr. Patricia Stumpp. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2024.

“Old Music” (“Musica vecchia”) first appeared in the literary journal Natura ed Arte (Nature and Art) on February 1, 1910 and was later included in the collection Le due maschere (The Two Masks), published by Quattrini in Florence in 1914. The story was then reprinted in the miscellany collection Tu ridi (You Laugh) in 1920 (Milan: Treves). In 1925 the short story became part of the Bemporad edition of Dal naso al cielo (From Nose to Sky), the eighth Collection of Stories for a Year.

At the heart of “Old Music” (“Musica vecchia”) we find Pirandello’s view of how progress and modernity have marginalized the past, erasing memories that hold profound personal significance for certain individuals as well as social and political importance for Italy as a nation. Pirandello uses his characters and their experiences to emphasize the divide between generations who value tradition and those focused solely on innovation. This clash is epitomized by Maestro Icilio Saporini's unexpected visit to Milla, whose mother he loved in their youth. Now a retired patriot and composer, Saporini has returned from America after sixty years to revisit his deeply cherished past in Rome, particularly the sentimental music of earlier times. But while Saporini feels utterly out of place in the present, Milla is increasingly absorbed in contemporary life and captivated by modernity. Pirandello's exploration of emotional displacement and the broader transformation of music across space and time pervades the entire narrative, setting the stage for Saporini's tragic demise. This theme of emotional disconnection is accentuated by the tragic scene when Milla and Begler, an arrogant German violinist associated with the modernizing musicality of Richard Wagner, visit Saporini and derisively interpret a romantic aria he composed for his beloved Margherita, triggering an overly emotional response that will ultimately lead to his death. If on one side Saporini embodies a love for patriotic, nostalgic, and emotional music akin to that advocated by the famous composer Giuseppe Verdi, on the other Begler symbolizes the imposition of modernity and Wagnerian style over the past. Despite the prominent role of music and its focus on a musician as the central character, the narrative discourse powerfully underscores themes of history and memory. The weight of youthful disillusionment, the struggles of the Risorgimento, and a yearning for lyrical music serve as a metaphor for a disappearing world rapidly giving way to a fast-paced present dominated by Wagner's dramatic opera, leaving old idealists bereft of dreams tied to their own history and roots.

Beyond this short story, music consistently played a crucial role in both Pirandello's fictional narratives and theoretical explorations. Tales like "Leonora, Addio!" (“Farewell, Leonora!,” 1910) and "Zuccariello distinto melodista" (“Zuccariello the Distinguished Melodist,” 1914) exemplify Pirandello's interest in examining the misrepresentation of music and interpreting the present through a humorous lens that reflects a disempowered past. Beginning in the 1920s, Pirandello's critical analysis also encompassed the interplay between music and modernity, particularly in relation to emerging art forms resulting from collaborative efforts across different artistic domains. His own conceptualization of cinemelography (cinemelografia), conceived as a pure form of visual expression arising from the fusion of images and music, represents Pirandello’s unique endeavor to establish an aesthetic of visuality and cinematic language. This innovative approach reflects Pirandello's ambition to create a distinct mode of artistic expression that integrates music and visual elements into a cohesive and dynamic cinematic experience.

The Editors

In front of the mirror, hurriedly fumbling among all the many little bottles, vials, creams, and curling irons, Signorina Milla was finishing up her coiffure when she heard the doorbell ring.

“Ugh, what a rush!”

And she ran to close the door of the room that opened onto the entrance hall. As soon as it was closed, she opened it again and, sticking her head out, called softly to the little maid who was running to answer the insistent ringing of the doorbell.

“Let him in, Tilde. And tell him to wait a moment.”

In front of her mirror once again, she smiled to herself.

A little blood had flowed into her cheeks, nothing like the hot flashes of the past, but even that little bit, see, had reinvigorated her gaunt little face that was like an old doll’s, with eyes that were too big and a nose that was too small.

And in her reanimated face, wasn’t there now, almost by luck, that little lock of white hair above her forehead, right there in the middle? Signorina Milla raised her hand to stroke it gently with the comb. However, the gesture came to a halt in mid-stream.

Who was talking in the entrance hall?

It couldn’t be him, certainly. Whenever he entered, the floor shook.

Shortly after, Tilde, with her little cap on her head and her little white apron over her black dress, came to give her a calling card. Signorina Milla read a name that was unfamiliar to her: Maestro Icilio Saporini. She frowned at the little maid.

“So who is he?”

“A little old man, very very small, neat as a pin.”

“A little old man? And what does he want?” Signorina Milla asked again, annoyed. “Don’t you know I have to go out with Signor Begler? I thought it was him. Now what do I do?”

“I can tell him...”

“What more do you want to tell him now? Who is he? What does he want from me?”

“Who knows!” said Tilde, shrugging her shoulders. “He talks so strange... with a little voice like a mosquito... He asked me if Signora Margherita was here.”

“Mamma?” asked Signorina Milla with a start.

“Right, if she was still alive,” responded Tilde. “I told him that...”

Another ring of the doorbell, louder this time, cut off her response.

“That’s him!” Signorina Milla blurted out; then, correcting herself: “Signor Begler.”

The little maid smiled to herself. Signorina Milla closed the door again. Soon after, a thunderous storm of notes arose from the piano in the drawing room: the restless theme of Isolde from the second act of Tristan.[1] It was Signor Begler’s way of calling her every time.

She ran into the room. “Oh my God... no, softly, softly!”

“What do you mean, softly!” Jumping up from the piano stool, Signor Begler hurried toward her with his arms raised; a heavy man with big hands, his battered old hat still on his head, pulled all the way down to the nape of his neck. From under the spherical brim, his big pitted purplish face stuck out, round and bristling with red hairs, eyes sneering.

“And the hat? No hat? The hat, immediately!”

Signorina Milla blocked his hands, defending herself, smiling; and in the dim light of the drawing room, where in addition to the piano there were other string instruments and a few music stands, she gestured toward to the other guest, whom Signor Begler had not yet noticed.

Maestro Icilio Saporini was stood, utterly self-effacing and diminutive, stroking his sparse almost non-existent silvery head of hair with a gloved hand.

“Maestro... Maestro,” said Signorina Milla, wanting to make the introduction but not remembering the name anymore.

“Saporini… Icilio...” The little old man supplied the name, twice, in a thin voice. He made a humble bow.

“Saporini, of course! Maestro Icilio Saporini,” repeated Signorina Milla. “The cellist Hans Begler. Make yourselves at home.”

But Begler:

“Nein, nein!”[2] he whined, making a feeble show of taking off his old hat. “Nein, nein! Sank you, my luffly lady. Me, I don’t make myzelf at home, I go avay, I go avay! I don’t vant to lose konzert for this gentleman’s visit. Sank you, my luffly lady! My compliments, my compliments, dear sir.”

And bowing awkwardly twice, he stormed out, just as he had come in.

Signorina Milla, understanding his haste, didn’t even try to detain him. Mortified, annoyed, distressed, she looked at the little old man who, having come to know by accident that she was going to a concert with that gentleman, began to wriggle all over like a puppy dog, imploring her to go: please, otherwise he would give himself no peace, having shown up at such an inopportune moment.

“Come, come, your hat, your hat. We’ll catch up with the gentleman in a carriage. I’ll accompany you as far as the concert hall. Do me this kindness, please!”

“But first I’d like to know...”

“Later, later...”

“You asked after my mother,” said Signorina Milla. “But Mamma is no longer with us!”

“Eh, I... so I had imagined,” stammered the little old man. “To tell the truth, I shouldn’t be around anymore either... eighty-one years old!”

“Eighty-one?” exclaimed Signorina Milla. “Mamma died six years ago.”

And lifting her hand to point to the photograph hanging on the wall:

“There she is, there.”

Maestro Icilio Saporini raised his little eyes, which almost disappeared into the folds of his eyelids, and took a moment to contemplate the portrait of an old lady in a cap which evidently didn’t speak to him in any way. He shook his head and with a sorrowful smile started to stammer:

“No... it doesn’t... it doesn’t... that lady, no... eh!... I, you know? I... no, no!”

Stammering like this, he pulled at his collar with two fingers, as if all of a sudden he felt his throat closing up. He gave a little swallow and began again:

“You, you rather... that is, yes, you... remind me... you remind me of her when she was alive.”

“Me? Really?” asked Signorina Milla, amazed. “But no, it can’t be! I don’t resemble Mamma at all... I’m astonished that you would say that!”

The old man shook a finger at her.

“You couldn’t know,” he murmured. “You just look at her features... but the light in her eyes?... her movements?... her smile?... her voice?... I knew your mother a very, very long time before you did, Miss, in very different times. And you can’t... you can’t understand what I’m feeling when...”

He couldn’t continue; he pulled out a handkerchief and raised it to his eyes. A moment’s pause. He quickly recovered himself and again urged Signorina Milla to go and put on her hat in order to get to the concert on time. He would tell her about himself in the carriage.

What about himself? Signorina Milla was able to understand very little of what was said that day. She blamed it on her anxiety to get to the concert, on the very faint voice of the little old man, on the noise of the carriage. But afterwards? From other information she put together at her leisure, in the silence of the little drawing room, try as she might, she never succeeded in clearly piecing together the little old man’s story (which appeared very adventurous and full of strange events). Every time he started talking about himself, it seemed as if he didn’t know where to begin, as if he still felt himself to be very far away, and in order to describe who he was he would have to travel down an endless road, through very remote winding streets fraught with obstacles, with hedgerows, among a multitudinous throng that pulled him this way and that, and blocked him from moving forward.

“Eh, but then...” he sighed, “then there was... of course... and when I... yes, because that one there, what was his name?... that one there... no, truly it was someone else... that other one, before, who...”

He was confused, he got lost amid so many minute details, mentioning unfamiliar names, places that had disappeared or changed, statements about dead things, which he embellished with exclamations and smiles and gestures, as if little by little he could see and touch what he was talking about, or rather was whispering about.

One thing was certain, that he was eighty-one; that when he was little more than twenty, that is to say in 1849, when the republic fell,[3] he had abandoned Rome and Italy, and that now he had returned, after spending almost sixty years in America, in New York.

It was very important to him to make people understand that he had been more than a little compromised by his involvement in revolutionary movements back then... Eh, yes, after the famous about-face!

“Whose about-face?”

“What do you mean, whose? Good Lord, Pius IX’s of course!”[4]

Signorina Milla was looking at him with her doll-like eyes wide open. Hearing him remember so many events and personalities, each one more “famous” than the last, she realized that her ignorance about the history of the time was truly deplorable. And perhaps for this reason she couldn’t manage to understand how and why Maestro Icilio Saporini had been compromised.

Music was involved, without a doubt: a certain patriotic hymn. And a certain Uncle Nando was involved too. Most definitely. A certain Uncle Nando who had come back to Rome in 1846, after the famous edict...

Signorina Milla’s eyes went blank again. What edict? Why, the one about the pardon for heaven’s sake! The famous edict with which Pius IX, to delirious acclaim, had begun his reign, granting full amnesty to everyone who had been condemned and exiled by the Papal State for political reasons.

“Uncle Nando too?”

“Of course, Uncle Nando too!”

Now it seemed that the most fervent patriots of the time would gather in this Uncle Nando’s house. The problem was that Maestro Icilio Saporini called them all by their first names, these fervent patriots. He would say:

“Pietro... eh, Pietro... brilliant doctor, brilliant poet...”

Signorina Milla had to wait awhile to learn who this Pietro, brilliant doctor, brilliant poet was. Well, God knows it was Pietro Sterbini![5] Doctor Pietro Sterbini, the one from the famous plot against Pellegrino Rossi![6]

“That’s it, yes... it was Pescetto who gave him a big shove first, a simple shove, here, in the vestibule of the Chancellor’s office, Pescetto, that is to say... what was his name? Filippo... no, Pippo was another one of the conspirators... Eh yes, Pippo!... Pippo Trentanove... Pescetto’s name was Antonio Ranucci. Yes, that’s it: Antonio, a big shove; and Giggi, Luigi Brunetti, Ciceruacchio’s son,[7] first a punch in the face and then, there, a knife to the throat... But who had organized them, the evening of the fourteenth, at the Fornaio tavern, in Ripetta?[8] Him, Pietro, Pietro Sterbini, while the police were expecting a strike from the ones on the Marforio hill,[9] pretend conspirators, the Facciotti brothers, Gennaro Bomba, Salvati, and Toncher,[10] who was a spy. But they were all... you know? Like so many fireworks set to go off, they were; and he, Pietro... Pietro was the little dove who lit the fuse.”[11]

That’s how Maestro Icilio Saporini told the story in his little mosquito voice. And this Pietro entered into all his stories. It already seemed to Signorina Milla that she could practically shake hands with him, with Pietro, and offer him a seat, there, on one of the little easy chairs in the drawing room.

Without question, Maestro Icilio Saporini’s single and not very clear involvement in the political affairs of 1846 to 1849 was also due to Pietro. Yes, because for the famous anniversary of April 21 1846, the date of the founding of Rome,[12] there having been organized a big festival at the Baths of Tito up on the Esquilino[13] in honor of the divine Pius IX, exalted then as the second founder of the eternal city, Pietro, brilliant doctor, brilliant poet, had composed a brief but very beautiful hymn of two short stanzas, with a refrain:

You fell; rise up,

Mother of so many heroes...

Maestro Icilio Saporini still remembered it word for word! And the refrain:

You live in Campidoglio,

You are still queen.

Enough: he had come to read it (Pietro) in Uncle Nando’s house, this hymn of his, a few days before.

He says (always him, Pietro):

“You, Icilio!” he says, “would you like to set it to music?” he says. “The students will sing it,” he says.

Maestro Icilio Saporini was about eighteen then; he hadn’t yet gotten his diploma from the Accademia; but the emotion alone... eh, his entire soul sang to him, in those days! He started working on it, and in one night had set it to music.

Except that Pietro... a real betrayal! He says:

“My son, Magazzari, Maestro Magazzari,[14] has offered,” he says, “to set it to music himself!”

And on April 21st at the Baths of Tito on the Esquilino, in the presence of eight hundred guests, the hymn set to music by Magazzari had been sung.

But what then? Even if one admits that setting a hymn to music could be considered seriously compromising from a political point of view, when Pius IX still basked in the hosannas of the liberals, Magazzari himself, couldn’t he have been compromised... Who knows! Signorina Milla couldn’t understand much of this.

She had heard Maestro Magazzari spoken of many times by her mother who, up until her last few years, had retained her memories of all the events and all the men, especially those of the Roman musical world of that era. The name Maestro Icilio Saporini had never passed her mother’s lips. And so in Signorina Milla’s eyes, Maestro Icilio Saporini lived not only in the present, a lost soul who couldn’t find a place in the Rome of today, but also in the past, in the world of times gone by, as she had imagined it from her mother’s stories and memories. Not even in that world could she manage to find a place for him, undoubtedly because he hadn’t known how to make a place for himself either in the heart or in the memory of her mother. Just as there was nothing now, there had certainly been nothing then, either.

To tell the truth, Mr. Saporini didn’t brag about himself at all. He still showed a touch of envy and resentment toward Magazzari. At Signorina Milla’s insistence, he played, or rather briefly demonstrated a phrase on the piano... not all of the famous hymn... just the phrase that accompanied the two verses of Pietro’s second stanza:

To you the scepter, the throne,

To you the eternal the...

but only to show how much more solemn, more majestic, and more inspired it was than Magazzari’s. And that was it.

So what had he done there in America for sixty years straight? Well, judging from that silvery little head of hair, it was easy to guess! He had been a teacher of Italian music, as all the foreign gentlemen understand the phrase when it refers to Italians! That is to say, someone with an untidy mop of hair and glassy eyes who picks out on the guitar the old and by us forgotten little song Santa Lucia:

Sul mare luccica

L’astro d’argento... [15]

And judging from his appearance, the profession of Italian music teacher had born fruit. Maestro Icilio Saporini must have amassed a tidy little sum, with which he was able to realize the dream he’d so yearned for down there, for who knows how long, to come back and close his eyes in his native land. But perhaps, poor little old man, he had imagined finding Rome the same as he had left it in 1849.

Instead Rome, his Rome, the one that still lived for him in his distant memories, had disappeared: all the acquaintances of his generation were gone, dead.

Arriving from far away, from so far away, he certainly had not imagined having to find himself face to face with another insurmountable distance: that of time.

What was this place?

From the Rome of today to the one of his youth, what a long road!

And as soon as he arrived, he had started down this road in reverse, his soul filled with anguish, looking for traces of the old life in the Rome of today.

Now, walking along Via del Governo Vecchio,[16] he remembered that Maestro Rigucci had lived there at number 47, Maestro Rigucci of the Accademia, who had such a beautiful daughter, Margherita, a gifted harpist... who knows! Maybe she was still alive! But was it possible that she still lived there? He was already very lucky to have found the house still standing in the old street. Not just the houses but also so very many streets had disappeared! He had climbed the stairs, just for the pleasure of setting foot on the old, damp, half-dark steps again. He had stopped on the second-floor landing and, looking at the middle door... ah how his heart had jumped in his chest! The old oval nameplate of copper that bore the name Rigucci was still there, below another one, not as old, with the name Donnetti. And so she was still there? Ah, him, the maestro, certainly not; but her, Margherita? And he pulled the little ball of the doorbell.

And there she was, Margherita, the oh so beautiful young girl, the gifted harpist: that little withered old lady with the bonnet in the portrait...

But what had that little old lady meant to him once upon a time?

Signorina Milla had seen Maestro Icilio Saporini moved to tears looking at that portrait, but she maintained her belief that her mother, as a young girl, had never been more to him than the daughter of Professor Rigucci of the Accademia. Perhaps, yes, he may have been to her grandfather’s house a few times, since he knew about so many of the people who had gathered there, about the famous musical evenings that were held there in honor of the most celebrated musicians of the time; of the fervent admiration that the then very young and beautiful Margherita Rigucci enjoyed. Perhaps, as a young student, who knows! he too had fallen in love with the daughter of the Professor; but it was an unrequited love, having left no memory of himself in her, not even his name.

Perhaps his emotion could be explained like this: in that house, after so many days of fruitless and bitter searching, the poor, lost, little old man had finally managed to track down a vestige of the old life, a little place to sit, after such a long road, without feeling himself cut off from everything.

But the pleasure of having rediscovered this little place, this corner of memories, soon turned bitter for him because of that piano there, because of those other musical instruments that dazed him, that actually deafened him with certain clanging sounds, like the wrath of God, that sent into ecstasies all those gentlemen, foreigners for the most part, who gathered in Maestro Rigucci’s old drawing room, Maestro Rigucci who had so adored Rossini![17] And more than any of them, they sent into ecstasies Signorina Milla Donetti, the granddaughter of Maestro Rigucci, the daughter of Margherita Donnetti-Rigucci!

He said nothing, but that music, there in that drawing room that had known the divine melodies of the purest Italian music, seemed to him to be a true sacrilege. He said nothing, rather he made himself as small as he could in his chair, and every once in a while, he would lift his little gloved hand to stroke his mop of hair from behind, and he would raise his eyes to the portrait of his old Margherita.

Signorina Milla would look at him out of the corner of her eye and tried hard to stifle a little laugh. One evening she sat next to him and asked him:

“Don’t you like it? Aren’t you having a good time?”

“To tell the truth,” he responded softly, with a little smile, “I... I’m looking over there... at that little old lady of mine there...”

“I noticed!”

“Oh yes? I look at her and... I hear Rosina from the Barbiere singing,[18] I hear Amina singing.”[19]

“And yet, you know?” Signorina Milla said to him then. “Over the years, Mamma... had evolved, had converted, uh, yes! converted to the new music.”

“To this?” the little old man asked, so shocked that this time Signorina Milla couldn’t contain her laughter.

“High treason?”

“But... I mean... excuse me...” he replied, thoroughly embarrassed. “I understand, I understand very well that it might please these foreign gentlemen. It’s their music, they hear it that way, amen! But us? We have our own music, our own glories: Paisiello, Pergolesi, Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi...”[20]

The next morning, Signorina Milla recounted the bitter remonstrances of the little old man to the storm that was Signor Begler. That evening, Begler, together with his friends from the quartet, in order to play his own particular kind of joke on him, at a certain point interrupted I don’t know what languid deviltry of Tchaikovsky’s[21] that sounded like the nightmare of a sick person in the throes of a bad dream, put down the cello, jumped over to the piano and furiously attacked the aria from Rigoletto: “Questa o quella per me pari sono.”[22]

Everyone burst out laughing. Maestro Icilio Saporini looked around at first, stunned, then grew pale. He might have managed to get control of himself if Begler, furiously spinning around on the piano stool, hadn’t shouted at everyone who was laughing:

“But vhy? But this is loffley soldier-boy musik! Loffley! Loffley!”

“Verdi’s music, soldier-boy music?” the little old man said then, standing up, his whole slender little body trembling with indignation. “But I then have the honor of telling you, dear sir, that you understand nothing! That you don’t have... you don’t have...”

And with his hand, because his voice failed him, he started to pound his chest over his heart.

“I wish I were twenty years younger,” he said then, displaying the fingers of his little hands that were trembling slightly, “so I could let you hear real music...”

“With pirolì?”[23] asked Signor Begler. “Here, here, come here... you, my luffly lady.”

And he went and pulled Signorina Milla out of her chair; he forced her to sit down at the piano and commanded her:

“Play your musik!... Just your musik! I’ll show you how I always add a pirolì to all your musik.”

And with three fingers he gave an unceremonious yank on the strings of the piano.

“Like this!”

Everyone laughed again. Maestro Icilio Saporini hoped for an instant that Signorina Milla, the granddaughter of Maestro Rigucci, wouldn’t lend herself to that cheap joke. Instead, Signorina Milla very happily started playing this or that piece from the most famous Italian operas. And it seemed that she chose on purpose those to which the ugly German could most easily throw in his Pings. And every time, an outburst of laughter. Mira, o Norma, pirolì... ai tuoi ginocchi, pirolì.[24]

The little old man had to make a violent effort not to flee the scene. He pretended to laugh with them, to keep them from seeing that he had taken the joke badly. He went a number of other times, punctually, to the gatherings at Signorina Donnetti’s. Then he started to space his visits out, with the excuse of the cold weather and his advanced age. Finally, he didn’t go anymore.

Now one day Signorina Milla, searching through her mother’s old papers, discovered a yellowed and crumpled sheet of music, written by hand. She thought at first that it was some first draft of her grandfather’s and threw it aside. After finishing her search, she put the collection of papers back on the shelf. But that sheet of paper... how in the world? There it was again. As if it hadn’t wanted to be put away. She looked at it more closely, and imagine her surprise when she found on it a little aria by Maestro Icilio Saporini, perhaps at that time not yet a teacher. It was a little aria dedicated to her mother, to the divine Margherita Rigucci, based on the delicate lines of Metastasio:[25]

In your

Divine eyes

The heart at last

Finds peace...

She ran to the piano and played it. Oh, it wasn’t anything really: a bit labored, a little pretentious, and yet with a certain charming naïveté that made you laugh and that moved you at the same time. Perhaps her mother, as a young girl, had sung that little aria. She tried humming it herself:

In your eyes... in your eyes...

In your divine eyes

Peace at last

Peace at last

The heart finds peace at last...

That same day she sent Tilde to ask after the little old man. He had told her that after a long search, he had finally found a room in an old house in Via Cestari,[26] and had described the room to her minutely: the landlady who was almost as old as he was, the antique furniture, a little piano in the next room, still good enough to play on... the old music, at least.

Tilde announced on her return that the little old man was ill and hadn’t left the house for several weeks. Signorina Milla promised herself that she would go and visit him; she promised herself eight days in a row, but unfortunately never found a moment to do it. After the eight days, she sent Tilde again and this time Tilde came back to tell her that the poor little old man was not long for this world.

Signor Begler was visiting that day, but Signorina Milla was moved by the news all the same. In the midst of her emotion, she had a kind thought and communicated it to Signor Begler. Signor Begler, his ugly mouth pursed in its usual mute sneer, approved. They went together to the little old man’s house, but neither one nor the other entered his room, where he was lying almost inert on his pillows, as if made of wax. They stopped in the room where the little piano was. Signorina Milla placed the yellowed sheet of music that she had come across among her mother’s papers on the piano stand and started to softly sing that quaint little aria, with a voice that almost seemed to come from afar:

In your

Divine eyes

The heart at last

Finds peace...

Maestro Icilio Saporini, at the sound of the first chords, opened his eyes a little and looked at the old landlady who was keeping watch over him from the foot of the bed. Did he recognize his little song from long ago? Perhaps not. But the voice... that voice...

He whispered something, his eyes veiled with tears. Perhaps a name:

“Margherita.”

Suddenly, while the voice from the other room continued to vocalize sweetly: In your eyes... in your divine eyes... peace at last... peace at last... the heart finds peace at last... there erupted from the piano strings a piercing, mocking PIROLÌ.

The little old man gave a start. As if struck, he let his head, which he had raised very slightly, as if mesmerized by the song, drop back down onto the pillows. And he never raised it again.