“Pellet and Mimì” (“Pallino e Mimì”)

Translated by Steve Eaton and Vanessa Fanelli

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “Pellet and Mimì“ (“Pallino e Mimì”), tr. Steve Eaton and Vanessa Fanelli. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2023.

“Pellet and Mimì” was first published in the literary journal La Riviera Ligure in November of 1905 and later added to the volume of miscellaneous short stories, Naked Life (La vita nuda, Milan: Treves, 1911), before being reprinted in the second Collection of Stories for a Year, which had the same title and contained most of the same stories – Naked Life, published in 1922 by Bemporad in Florence.

This story is representative of a tendency in Pirandello’s writing to use the life and experience of animals as a lens for considering human emotion and the moral conundrums of human society. The story of the two title protagonists, the dogs Pellet (Pallino, literally meaning ‘little ball’ and always italicized by Pirandello in the original text) and Mimì (likewise always italicized), mirrors and reflects back the story of Mimì’s owner, the young American tourist who has become an object of fascination for the Italians of Chianciano Terme, where she is staying. At once the story of Pellet and Mimì’s failed “romance,” it is also the story of Miss Galley’s failed romance, and the discarded state of the female dog speaks metaphorically to the way in which her owner, too, has been cast off once her suitor, Commendator Gori, has had his way. The lives and suffering of these animals thus become an apt metaphor for the way in which human society limits and mistreats women, speaking to another common theme in Pirandello’s work. Beyond this, the tale is also one of two that are set in the thermal baths of Chianciano, near Siena in Tuscany. Pirandello took his family to these baths in 1905, and they stayed there for an extended period in the hopes that the healing waters would help his wife, Antonietta, who was already suffering from deteriorating mental health. That trip has become something of a local legend, with a street in town named after the famous writer, Via Luigi Pirandello, and cultural events commemorating his legacy, such as a recent site-specific theatrical “passeggiata” (a walk or stroll, held July 31, 2022, culminating in a concert following the on-site performance) that highlighted locations in town that inspired both this story and another, “Bitter Waters” (“Acqua amara,” 1905), also set in Chianciano and also published the same year as the family’s stay.

As the translators note in a tantalizing hypothesis here, it is also possible that “Pellet and Mimì” had an unexpected literary afterlife; certainly, despite their evident differences, there is also more than a passing similarity between this short story and the famous Disney film Lady and the Tramp (1955), and a line of transmission and reception is not implausible.[1]

The Editors

At first he was called Pellet because, when he was born, he looked like a ball.[2]

Of the entire litter of six, only he was saved, thanks to the insistent pleas and tender protection of the children.

Since Papa Colombo could no longer pursue his passion for hunting, he didn’t want dogs anymore, not even around the house, and he wished all of them, all of those puppies there, dead. And just as well their mother too, Hornet, who reminded him of the splendid hunts of bygone years, before he’d started suffering from that damned rheumatism, from arthritis, which—just look at him!—had bent him like a hook!

At Chianciano,[3] the wind would already start to kick up in the warm months, southwesterly gales that slam and shake the houses as if to smash them and blow them away. Just imagine the winters! So everyone’s in the kitchen, tightly curled up from morn to night over by the hearth, under the mantel, not poking their noses out, not even to go to Mass on Sunday. True, the Collegiata was right there, a few steps away.[4] You could almost see the Mass through the windowpanes in the kitchen. One didn’t go into the other rooms in the house except to go straight to bed in the evening. But once in a while during the day papa Colombo would also make a little side trip, bent over, his bundled-up legs in agony with each step, to the dining room, to look out over the balcony. You could make out the whole Val di Chiana from there, and his handsome property at Caggiolo.[5] And Hornet, just to spite him, so pregnant that she could barely lift her paws off the ground, followed him patiently in order to deepen his longing for those distant fields, his indignity in seeing himself reduced to that state. Damn her! And now she was giving him children, too! But he would take care of them! Oh, without making them suffer, of course. He would take them by the tail and bam! bash their heads against a rock.

The children, Delmina, Ezio, Iginio, Norina, seeing what he was going to do, kept crying out:

“No, Papa! Not the little ones!”

So when the litter was born they wanted to save at least one, the one who looked the most adorable, stealing him and hiding him away. Having obtained a reprieve, they went to see Pellet, and yes sir, his tail was missing! It felt like a betrayal, and the four of them looked each other in the eye:

“Holy Mother! No tail! Now what do we do?”

You couldn’t stick a fake one on him, nor keep papa from realizing it. But by now the reprieve was granted, and Pellet was kept at home, even if the tenderness of his little masters had already evaporated because of that ridiculous defect.

What’s more, he got uglier by the day. But he had no idea, the little beast! He was born without a tail, and he seemed happy without it; in fact, he didn’t seem to have the slightest suspicion that something was missing. And he wanted to play.

Now it’s painful to see a deformed baby, a dwarf or a hunchback, laugh and joke around, ignorant of its misfortune. But not an ugly little animal. If its frolicking bothers you, you don’t tolerate it. You give it a kick, and good riddance.

Pellet’s furious contest with a ball or slipper would be interrupted by a kick that sent him from one end of the kitchen to another. He would quickly raise his two front paws, his ears erect, his head to one side, and stand for a bit to look around.

He neither yelped nor complained.

It seemed that little by little he came to understand that dogs must be treated this way, that this was a condition inherent to his canine existence and there was no reason therefore to take offense.

It took about three months however for him to really understand that his master didn’t like having his slippers gnawed on. And he also learned to dodge the kicks. Just as papa Colombo raised a foot, he would drop his prey and scurry under the bed. Sheltered there, he learned something else: that is, how cruel people can be. He heard himself being called affectionately, being invited to come out with a beckoning finger.

“Here, Pellet! You cutie! Here, boy!”

He expected caresses, he expected to be forgiven, but as soon as he was grabbed by the collar, he got a beating that sent his fur flying. Oh yeah? Well then, he could be bad too. He stole, he tore, he soiled, he finally began to bite. But that earned him a trip to the front door; and since no one interceded on his behalf, he went rambling and begging around town.

Until he was taken into the shop of Fanfulla Mochi the butcher, whose dog had recently died.[6]

Fanfulla Mochi was quite a character.

He loved animals, and he had to slaughter them. He couldn’t stand men, and he had to serve and respect them. In his heart he would have taken the side of the poor; but as a butcher he couldn’t, since the poor, as everyone knows, can’t digest meat. He had to serve the ladies and gentlemen who hadn’t wanted him as one of their own. Sure! Because he had been born a gentleman, he had, at least by half! He deduced this from the fact that, released at sixteen from the charity home which had welcomed him since birth, he had come into a residual payment of six thousand lire worth of remorse, converted into cash. They had made him a butcher’s boy in a slaughterhouse, and with that little amount he had gone on to be a butcher himself. But he sensed the blood of grand nobility in his sluggish veins, in his gouty feet, and a kind of fluid craziness circulated through his body, now sinking him into a gloomy boredom, now pushing him to do certain things... For example, three years ago, shaving his beard and seeing himself in the mirror uglier than usual, already turning old and infirm, he had let slip a good slice across his throat, drawn with the craftsmanship of his trade.[7] Taken half dead to the hospital, he had reassured the people who were running after him, terrified:

“It’s nothing, it’s nothing. A little scratch!”

The first thing Fanfulla Mochi did was to rebaptize Pellet: he bestowed upon him the name of Beefsteak; then he brought him to the window.

“Look there, Beefsteak, my beloved Monte Amiata!”[8] he told him. “You know the saying: they got heavy boots but sharp brains up there. Bastards, but sharp! If you want to stay with me, it’s got to be on condition that you become a wise and good little dog. I’m adopting you, don’t worry. Now sit! If you were a pig, Beefsteak, would you eat? Not me. The pig thinks he’s eating for himself and grows fat for others. Not a pretty thing, the pig’s fate. Oh—I would say—that’s what you’re raising me for? I thank you, gentlemen. You can eat me skinny.”

At this point Pellet sneezed two or three times as if signaling his approval. That made Fanfulla quite happy, and he continued to converse with him every day at length. And the dog would listen quite seriously, until beginning, first, to wave one paw about, and then to raise his head to fling open his mouth in a yawn followed by a wavering howl, to let the master know he’d had enough.

Whether because of his sad experience in Papa Colombo’s house due to his missing tail, or because of Fanfulla’s teachings, the fact remains that Pellet became a dog of character, a dog who got himself noticed, not only for his missing tail, but also because of his particular way of conducting himself among the animals—his equals and his superiors.

He was a serious and self-reliant dog.

If one of his peers came up behind him or before him, he would face him, collecting himself, standing still on all four paws as if to say:

Who asked for you? Leave me alone!

And this he did certainly not from fear, but rather out of a deep disdain for the dogs of his hometown, males as well as females.

At least that’s how it looked, because in the summer, when vacationers came to Chianciano in great numbers with their little lapdogs to take the healing waters, Pellet changed completely. He became sociable, boisterous, really someone else. All day long he rambled from this pension to that one, raising an ankle and leaving the guests with his own kind of calling card, his welcome for the foreign dogs, his guests, whom he then accompanied everywhere and, when necessary, defended from the aggression of the locals with ferocious zeal.

He couldn’t wag his tail in greeting, so he wagged everything, he contorted himself, he would finally throw himself on the ground to invite them to play. And the little foreign dogs felt grateful. They went out leashed and muzzled in the city but were free and loose out here, since their owners were sure not to lose them nor incur fines. In short, those little dogs were on vacation too, and Pellet was their pastime. If he was late one day, three or four of them would present themselves in front of Fanfulla’s shop to reclaim him.

“Beefsteak, use your head!” Fanfulla would say to him, wagging a finger. “These little society dogs aren’t for you. You’re a street dog, a dispossessed proletariat! I don’t like you acting the clown this way with the dogs of gentlemen.”

But Pellet didn’t listen to him. He couldn’t, especially that year, because among those upper-class dogs who came to the shop to tease him there was a little object of canine affection, small as a fist, a white shaggy little puffball. You couldn’t tell where the paws were, or the ears; a first-rate barker who could still inflict a real bite. A few nips that burned and left a mark for more than a day!

But Pellet took them quite willingly.

That little white thing darted between his feet, barking, to attack him from every direction. Standing still to please her, he followed those comely little movements; then, as if afraid that she would wear herself out and lose her voice from too much barking (where did that voice come from, bigger than she was?) he would lie down on the ground, belly up. He would wait until, after pretending to be exhausted, she returned with the same fury and jumped on top of him. He cuddled her and blissfully let her nip his snout and ears.

In short, he was really in love; and so coarse and without a tail, poor Pellet, with his simpering behavior towards that little nothing of a furball, was the object of compassionate ridicule.

The little dog was named Mimì, and she lived with her owner at the Pensione Ronchi.[9]

Her owner was an American lady, getting on in years, having stayed in Italy for some time—in search of a husband, said the idle tongues.

Why hadn’t she found one?

It’s not as though she were ugly. Tall, slender and even shapely; pretty eyes, pretty hair, lips rather full, lively, and overall in body and face an air of nobility and a certain melancholy grace. And Miss Galley also dressed with classy and tasteful simplicity, and wore enormous swaying hats with long delicate veils that made people stop and marvel.

She didn’t lack for suitors; in fact two or three of them were always hanging around, every one of them at first enthused with the most serious proposals after finding out that she was American; but then... well, then, making conversation, surveying the territory... Here’s the thing: not poor, you saw that by the way she lived; but neither was Miss Galley rich. And so... so just because she was American?

Without a nice dowry, you might as well marry a local girl. And all the suitors would politely retreat in good order. This gnawed at Miss Galley, and she eased this secret gnawing with furious caresses for her dear, little, faithful Mimì.

But if it were only the caresses! Miss Galley wanted her dear, little, faithful Mimì to stay an old maid, an old maid like her. Oh, she knew how to guard her from the designs of those male brutes! Trouble, trouble if a little mutt accosted her. Immediately Miss Galley took her in her arms. Mimì was already five and couldn’t understand why, if her owner had to remain an old maid, so did she. But she got beatings if she rebelled; beatings if she struggled with her little paws to spring to the ground, beatings if she stretched her neck or stuck her muzzle out from the under her tyrant’s arm to see if the smitten little dog was still following.

Fortunately this cruel vigilance grew less rigorous whenever a new suitor came to rekindle Miss Galley’s hopes. If Mimì had been able to reason and reflect, then by the greater or lesser freedom which she enjoyed, she would have been able to calculate the amount of hope that the latest affair nourished in the insatiable heart of her mistress, a baby bird with its mouth always open.

Now, that summer at Chianciano, Mimì was free as the wind.

There was in fact a gentleman at the Pensione Ronchi, a handsome man over forty, very dark, prematurely bald but whose moustache was still black (perhaps a bit too black), in all quite elegant. Having come to Chianciano to take the cure for fifteen days, he had been under treatment for more than a month and showed no sign of leaving, for all his declarations of having most urgent business in Rome, which he had torn himself away from with difficulty and not without grave risk. What sort of business, he didn’t say; he had traveled a lot and demonstrated a great familiarity with London and Paris and had many followers in the journalistic circles of Rome. In the register of the pension he had signed himself Comm. Basilio Gori.[10] Right from the first day he began to speak in English, at length, with Miss Galley. Now the both of them went out bright and early every morning from the pension and proceeded on foot along the shady boulevard to the Sacred Springs.[11]

Miss Galley did not drink the water; she spoke of having come to Chianciano just for a change of scenery.

He drank.

They walked side by side, just the two of them along the paths of the sloping park under the tall plane trees, targets of the malign curiosity of all the other bathers. This malign curiosity didn’t seem to displease him exactly; and if two or three of them stopped just to enjoy up close and with a certain impertinence that spectacle of love walking the street, he would give them a cold look, disdainful but with an air of vain satisfaction. She, on the other hand, would lower her eyes, soon raising them to his face, to receive the compensation of that tender instinctive gratitude that every man feels for the woman who sacrifices a bit of her modesty, showing that she likes only one, defying the ill-will of the rest.

Mimì would follow them, often provoking the laughter of whoever was hanging around to observe the smitten couple, sometimes grabbing her owner’s dress from behind in her teeth, and pulling it, shaking it, rabidly jerking her little head as if wanting to bring her to her senses, to stop her. Miss Galley, overcome with anger, would tear her dress out of the little dog’s teeth and send her tumbling far away onto the grass of the park. But before long Mimì would resume the attack, not only because she feared for her owner’s good reputation, but because she found touring those steep lawns damnably dull and wanted to return to town, where she knew her Pellet awaited her.

Through canine tenacity she finally got what she wanted. Miss Galley left her, with many warnings, at the pension, on the pretext that she feared the poor little beast would wear herself out.

In fact, Miss Galley and Commendator Gori, after touring the paths of the Sacred Springs for more than an hour, would always return to town on foot, but would soon resume wandering up the Montepulciano road or down the one leading to the station or up to the Capuchin hill, not returning to the pension until lunchtime. Along the way, she would shade him from the sun’s rays with her red parasol, and the two of them would walk slowly as though wrapped in a delicious tenderness, savoring the exquisite intoxication of restrained caresses, of a furtive touching of hands, of long impassioned looks in which souls are intertwined and cling to each other to the point of melting with pleasure.

Meanwhile the hack drivers, who couldn’t stand them since they always went around on foot, would start coughing every time they passed them on the street, a cough that got a laugh from the ladies and gentlemen swaying in the flimsy carriages.

At Chianciano it was all anyone talked about anymore; in all the pensions, at the Social Club, at the Café, the drugstore, Piazza Giuoco del Pallone,[12] the stadium, Miss Galley and Commendator Gori furnished food for conversation from morning to night. Who had run into them here and who there; and he was dressed this way and she like that... Those who had completed their cure and were leaving would bring the newcomers up to date, and after four or five days they would still be asking from afar, by postcard, for news of the happy couple.

All of a sudden (it was early September by now) the news spread in Chianciano that Commendator Gori was unexpectedly leaving for Rome, alone. The comments were endless, the astonishment enormous.

What had happened?

Some were saying that Miss Galley had found out that he was married and separated from his wife; others that Gori, having soared to seventh heaven in the very beginning, had needed all that time to descend in good form and seize his prey who, upon close examination, was exposed as a chicken, scrawny and already plucked; still others wanted to claim that there was no rupture, that Miss Galley would rejoin her fiancé in Rome; and finally some thought that Gori would return to Chianciano in a few days to depart once more with his bride for Florence. But those in the Pensione Ronchi made assurances that the affair was truly finished, so much so that Miss Galley didn’t come down that day to dine and that Gori had appeared at table very upset.

All these discussions mingled together in Piazza Giuoco del Pallone, where the entire colony of bathers and many of the locals were gathering to witness Gori’s departure.

When the carriage exited the town gate, everyone ran to the valley side of the square.

Gori was in the carriage, tranquilly reading the paper. Passing below the square he raised his eyes as if to enjoy, as an actor, that spectacle of so many spectators.

But suddenly, from behind the little arena that stood in the middle of the piazza, there arose the furious barking of a pack of dogs fighting, tangled up in a ferocious melee. Everyone turned around to look, some shrinking back from fear, others running with raised canes.

In the middle of that tangle was Pellet with his Mimì, Pellet and Mimì who, despite the envy and fierce jealousy of their companions, had finally managed to celebrate their wedding.

The ladies screwed up their faces, the men chuckled when, preceded by a knot of urchins, Miss Galley descended upon the piazza like a Fury, disheveled by the wind and from running, hat in hand and her eyes swollen and red from crying.

“Mimì! Mimì! Mimì!”

She raised her arms at the sight of that horrible atrocity, in shock, then covered her face with her hands, turned her back, and went back up to the town with the same fury with which she had come. Returning to the pension like a tempest, she threw herself against Ronchi, against the waiters, with clawing fingers, as if wanting to rip them to shreds; she struggled to contain herself, choked with rage, unable to articulate a single word. Even before this she had lost her voice, shrieking, upon realizing (after so many days!) that Mimì wasn’t being watched, that Mimì wasn’t at home, and no one knew where she was. She went up to her room and grabbed her things, piling everything into her trunk, into her suitcases, ordering a two-horse carriage to take her (quickly, quickly!) to the station at Chiusi,[13] because she wanted nothing more to do with Chianciano, not even for an hour, not even for a minute.

As she was leaving, those same urchins who had run beside her in search of the little dog, panting, exultant in the hope of a nice tip, presented her with poor Mimì, more dead than alive. But Miss Galley, disfigured with rage, rejected her with a violent outburst, contorting her face.

At the violent shouting Mimì fell to the ground, striking her muzzle, and yelping sharply, ran limping to hide herself under a sofa barely three inches off the ground, while her enraged owner stepped on the running board and shouted at the driver:

“Go!”

Ronchi, the waiters, the bathers who’d come running back to the pension, stood around a moment looking at each other, astonished. Then they took pity on the poor little abandoned dog. But as much as they called and invited her in the most affectionate way, there was no way to make her emerge from her hiding place. It was necessary for Ronchi, helped by a waiter, to lift and push aside the sofa. But then Mimì shot to the door like an arrow and took flight. The urchins ran after her, running all over town in every direction, finally arriving at the station. They weren’t able to track her down.

Ronchi, for whom she had been such a bother, shrugged his shoulders, exclaiming:

“Go on then, and to hell with you!”

Towards evening five or six days later, Mimì, dirty, disheveled, famished, was spotted on the streets of Chianciano, under a light rain which signaled the end of the season. The last bathers were leaving. In the course of a week the village, nestled on the high windy hill, would resume its gloomy winter appearance.

“Hey, the young lady’s little dog!” someone said, seeing her go by.

But no one went to take her, no one called her. And Mimì continued wandering in the rain. She had already been to the Pensione Ronchi, but found it closed, since the owner had hurried to the countryside for the grape harvest.

Sometimes she stopped to look through her fur with crusted eyes, as if she still couldn’t comprehend why no one ever took pity on her, so small, so caressed and fussed over before. Why had no one ever picked her up to take her back to her owner who had lost her, to her owner whom she had looked for in vain for so long and was still looking for. She was hungry, she was tired, she was trembling from the cold, and she didn’t know where else to go, where to take shelter.

For the first few days someone, seeing her following behind, would bend down to pet her, to commiserate with her; but then, annoyed to find her still at their heels, would rudely kick her away. She was pregnant. It seemed almost impossible: a tiny little thing, a nothing almost, pregnant! And they shoved her away with their feet.

Fanfulla Mochi, from the doorway of the butcher shop, seeing her trot by, lost, called to her one day and gave her something to eat. Since the poor little beast, by now used to being driven off, kept its back arched in fear, as though expecting a kick, he petted her, he caressed her, to reassure her. Poor Mimì, famished as she was, stopped eating to lick her benefactor’s hand. Then Fanfulla called Pellet, who was sleeping on a cushion beneath the counter:

“Cur, son of a bitch, ugly tailless libertine, look at your bride here!”

But by now Mimì was no longer a little lady dog, she had become a little dog of the streets, one of so many in the town. And Pellet didn’t even bother to look at her.