“Seeing As It Isn’t Raining...” (“Visto che non piove…”)
– Habits of Montelusa (Tonache di Montelusa)

Translated by Andrew M. Hiltzik

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “Seeing As It Isn’t Raining... ” (“Visto che non piove …”), tr. Andrew M. Hiltzik. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2023.

“Seeing As It Isn’t Raining…” (“Visto che non piove…”) was first published in 1915 in Milan by the Studio Editoriale Lombardo as part of the collection Weeds from Our Garden (Erba del nostro orto). The Milanese editor Facchi reprinted the story in the same year without making any changes to the text. Pirandello later included the story in Black Shawl (Scialle nero, 1922), the first Collection of his Stories for a Year (Novelle per un anno).

Together with “In Defense of Mèola” (“Difesa del Mèola,” 1909) and “The Lucky Ones” (“I fortunati,” 1911), “Seeing As It Isn’t Raining…” is the third story in the trilogy Habits of Montelusa (Tonache di Montelusa), a story sequence that reworks Pirandello’s anticlerical stands in humorous terms. All three stories appeared together in Weeds for Our Garden and then again in the first Collection of Stories for a Year.

This story revolves around a statute of the Virgin Mary journeying from its home church to the local cathedral, although the plot is complicated by the timing and inconvenience surrounding the move. In Pirandellian fashion, the humorous dynamics among the characters highlight a collision between the interests of the clergy and those of the townspeople. Ironically, the weather and the threat of imminent rain during the Madonna’s journey is “blamed” for the characters’ differences in their views and expectations. Individual and group alliances are formed and broken according to a logic of personal gain in a way that underlines the opposition between the laity and religious rule. In fact, at the core of the story we find Pirandello’s critique of what he portrays as the priests’ lack of a genuine religious spirit, as shown by their greediness and reluctance to host the statue of the Virgin Mary in their church for too long. In “Seeing As It Isn’t Raining…,” Christian traditions and myths play a pivotal role in the unfolding of the events, an indication of Pirandello’s tendency to let cultural history intermingle with the politics of religion. This theme recurs in other works, including: his collection of poems Easter of Gea (Pasqua di Gea, 1891), which gathers the verses he composed during his German sojourn in Bonn; the other tales included in his Montelusa trilogy; and other short stories, such as “The Little Madonna” (“La madonnina,” 1913) and “The Shrine” (“Il tabernacolo,” 1903), to name just a couple.

The Editors

What an obscene indignity it became year after year, what a gross imposition by the whole peasantry of Montelusa upon the poor clergy of our glorious Cathedral.

The statue of the Santissima Immacolata,[1] being safeguarded all year round in a wall cabinet of the sacristy in the Church of St. Francis of Assisi,[2] was, on the eighth day of December, all adorned in gold and jewels with a mantle of blue silk bedecked with silver stars, raised up on a bier after a morning of solemn church rites, and conducted in procession over the grassy paths of Montelusa,[3] past the rickety, old, run-down hovels, heaped almost one on top of the other; up, up, all the way to the Cathedral atop the crown of the hill, and left to reside there as a guest of the patron St. Gerlando.[4]

The Santissima Immacolata was meant to dwell in the Cathedral from Thursday night to Sunday morning: two and a half days. However, this interval having been deemed far too brief, she would by custom instead remain through the Sunday after the feast and await the following Sunday to return to the Church of St. Francis, led by yet another even more lavish procession.

Were it not for the fact that almost every year it became impossible to hold her procession on that second Sunday on account of inclement weather, and they were forced to postpone it to the following Sunday; and from that Sunday to the Sunday after, sometimes for months on end.

Now, this extension of hospitality would, on its own have been nothing, if only the Santissima Immacolata had not enjoyed, by ancient privilege, a generous prebend for the duration of her stay in the Cathedral.[5] For every day that the Santissima Immacolata dwelt there, it was as if the Chapter had one additional clergyman: indeed, obsequies and all, she drew as much as a clergyman, and the delegates of the Congregation kept a vigilant watch that she would lack nothing from what she was owed, so that the fruits of that prebend would results in a feast in her honor that was all the more splendid. This was in addition to all the other expenses that burdened the Chapter for her stay; that is to say, expenses and labor: daily rites, daily sermons, the celebratory rockets and fireworks, and for the poor sacristan himself, incessantly ringing the bell all morning and all night.

Perhaps, for the love of the Holy Virgin, the clergy of the Cathedral might have borne her absence and the expenses and labor that went with it with patience, if the belief had not taken root in the peasantry of Montelusa that the Santissima Immacolata wished to remain in the Cathedral for one or two months out of sheer spite, and that the priests prayed each year with hands clasped towards the sky that it not rain at least on the Sunday that they were to lead her back.

It is true that in those times the peasants, out of concern for the seeds they had sown, were never satisfied with the waters sent by the heavens; and if indeed it did not rain that year, one can see how the blame would be laid on the clergy of the Cathedral, who could not wait to rid themselves of the Santissima Immacolata.

And yet, in the long run and by dint of prolonged repetition, the clergy of the Cathedral had in truth grown resentful, not of the Virgin per se, but of those boorish peasants, and more so those petty lords of the Congregation. Not content merely to keep that obscene belief in the priests’ scorn for the Virgin alive in the hearts of the peasants, their arrogance reached such heights that after the sun had set each Saturday, they would even send three or four of their most shameless men to the piazza outside the Cathedral with the charge of pacing around, noses in the air and hands clasped behind their backs, with a brazen sneer on their lips, to ask:

“Pardon me, mister Clergyman, what do you foretell? Will it rain tomorrow or will it not?”

It was, as one can see, an intolerable impudence.

Monsignor Partanna was compelled to put an end to it at all costs. On top of everything, it was well-known that the friars of the Congregation, in a frenzy to enrich themselves by any means possible, even went so far as to exploit the Madonna indecently, hawking the gold, jewels, and even the starry mantle, which the Madonna had received as gifts from her faithful devotees, to the pawn shop of the Catholic bank of San Gaetano.[6]

Monsignor Bishop had seen fit to order that the Santissima Immacolata should return to the church of St. Francis no later than the second Sunday after the feast whatever the weather, rain or no rain. In any case, there was no danger of her being soaked beneath her magnificent baldachin,[7] which was supported in turn by seminarians of the most robust constitution.

It was instead the peasants’ wives, the womenfolk––or as the reverend clergy of the Chapter were wont to repeat, the trollops, the trollops––who feared getting drenched; and they blamed the Virgin! They simply wished not to spoil the silk dresses they loved to put on for that occasion, presenting an air of sacrilegious vanity, all done up like the Santissima Immacolata herself, with their arms slightly upraised and spread before their breasts, each finger laden with rings, silk shawls affixed to their shoulders with pins, eyes upturned to the heavens, and all their pendants and earrings and pins and bracelets jangling with every step.

But Monsignor Bishop took no heed of them.

Perhaps, now that he was old and in declining health, he too was afraid of braving the damp and catching a chill, following the bier as he did with his head bare to the deluge; and it mattered little to him that the poor chapter vicar, Monsignor Lentini, owing to the endless sermons that year, every day and always on the same subject, was reduced to such a state that even those seated in the pews were moved to pity.

It had by now been eleven Sundays, eleven, since the eighth of December, when that poor man, raising his head from his pillow with a mournful sound, asked Piconella, his old housemaid, who appeared each morning to bring him his coffee in bed:

“Is it raining?”

And Piconella no longer knew how to reply, for truly it seemed like the weather took its delight in tormenting the good man with extraordinarily elegant cruelty. Some Sundays the sun would rise in a limpid sky, and then Piconella would run all exultant to give Monsignor Vicar the news:

“The sun, the sun! Monsignor Vicar, the sun!”

And the sacristan of the Cathedral would ring the bells, ding dong dang, ding dong dang, for surely the Santissima Immacolata would that morning, before noon, be on her way.

Were it not for the fact that once all the people had already begun to gather in the piazza of the Cathedral for the procession and the iron gate on the stairway by the seminary was swung open, whence the Santissima Immacolata habitually departed every year, and the seminarians garbed in their quilted vestments had arrived from the seminary two by two in a long file, and the fireworks had been arranged all around the piazza, there arose with a great fury from the sea, heralded by lightning bolts and thunder, a sudden gale.

The sacristan again sounded the bells to banish the gale, having witnessed the turbulence of the crowd, who had meanwhile begun to protest, indignant that the clergymen now wished to plunge the Madonna into the incumbent menace of that storm.

It was all whistles and shouts and invectives under the bishop’s window, until Monsignor Bishop, to regain order, called for one of his secretaries to announce that the procession would be postponed until the following Sunday, weather permitting.

For a good five Sundays out of eleven, this very scene played out.

On that eleventh Sunday, as soon as the piazza was clear, all the clergy of the Chapter barged fuming into the home of the vicar capitular, Monsignor Lentini. At all costs, at all costs a remedy must be found for this brutal imposition.

The poor vicar capitular held his head in his hands and gazed at them each in turn as if in a daze.

In his direction more than any other's had the whistles, shouts, and menaces of the mob been aimed. But not for this was the poor vicar capitular stunned. After eleven weeks, here came yet another week of sermons on the Santissima Immacolata. In that moment the poor man could think of nothing else, as he felt his spirit truly take leave of his senses.

It was Monsignor Landolina, the fearsome rector of the oblate school,[8] who proposed the remedy. It took no more than the unexpected mention of one name to calm the agitation of those souls.

“Mèola! This is a job for Mèola! My friends, we must turn to Mèola!” Marco Mèola, the ferocious anticlerical tribune, who four years back had sworn to save Montelusa from a dreaded invasion of Ligurian priests, was by then much diminished in popularity.[9] For although it was true on the one hand that he had kept his oath, it was no less true on the other hand that the means he adopted and the arts he employed to keep it, and then that abduction and the wealth he derived from it, detracted from the point on which he insisted: that his sacrifice was, that is, had been, a heroic one. If indeed Monsignor Partanna's niece, the abducted ward, was ugly and hunched, elegant and beautiful were the coins of the dowry that the Bishop had been compelled to give him. And ultimately, the bigwigs of the Montelusan clergy had never digested their Bishop's promise to restore the Ligurian priests. While not openly friendly, they had secretly maintained a favorable opinion of Marco Mèola after that affair, indeed precisely on account of that affair. In any case, it would undoubtedly suit him that, without risk of falling out with his secret friends, he might be given an opportunity to reconquer the esteem of his old friends, the lost prestige of being an anticlerical tribune.

So now, it was necessary to send two trusted friends covertly to Mèola to propose, in the name of the whole Chapter, that on the following Sunday he deliver a speech against religious festivities in general, and against sacred processions in particular, on the pretext of the deplorable chaos of the previous Sundays––those shouts, whistles, and threats from the people impeding the transportation of the Santissima Immacolata from the Cathedral to the Church of Saint Francis.

The announcement of this speech being loudly spread throughout the town, the Bishop would surely be induced to publish an indignant protestation against the blatant violation of the freedom of the Church that the liberals of Montelusa, enemies of the faith, had in mind to commit, and a sacred calling to all the faithful of the diocese that the following Sunday, whatever the weather, come rain or shine, they should gather in the piazza of the Cathedral to defend the venerable icon of the Santissima Immacolata against any possible injury.

Monsignor Landolina’s proposal was heard and approved unanimously by the clergy of the Chapter.

Only that holy man, the vicar Monsignor Lentini, dared to raise the issue before his colleagues of whether it might be imprudent to provoke disorder on the opposing side as well, to prod that wasp's nest. But, it being suggested to him that Mèola's speech would provide a new topic for his sermons the following week, against the intolerance that sought to impede the faithful from demonstrating their devotion to the Virgin, in the end he relented with only a few mutters of “I understand, but... I understand, but...”

But Monsignor Landolina’s scheme had a much more far-reaching effect than the clergy of the Chapter had themselves anticipated.

After four years of silence, Marco Mèola descended on the piazza with the fury of a starving lion. After two days of vociferations among the circles of civil servants in the Pedoca Café, he succeeded in stirring up such agitation that the Bishop had no choice but to respond with a searing sermon, and in his sacred calling he summoned not only the faithful of Montelusa but also those of the surrounding villages to appear the following Sunday.

“Even should it rain until it floods,” the invitation concluded, “we may be certain that the most furious gale will not dampen one whit your sacred and fervent ardor. Even should it rain until it floods, on the coming Sunday the Santissima Immacolata will depart from our glorious Cathedral and, escorted and safeguarded by all the faithful of the Diocese, our Holy Guest will return to her home.”

But by a staggering coincidence, that twelfth Sunday, after such prolonged and intense inclement weather, brought the smile of spring, the first smile, and so sweet a smile that all turbulence evaporated in a stroke, as if by magic, from their souls.

At the festive sound of the bells, all the Montelusans emerged to a cloudless sky, drunk on the voluptuous warmth of the first sun of the new season; and on everyone’s lips was a liquid smile of beatitude and in everyone's limbs a delectable languor, a wholehearted desire to abandon themselves to cordial, fraternal embraces.

Then the vicar capitular Monsignor Lentini, who from Monday to Saturday of that twelfth week had had to give six more sermons on the Santissima Immacolata, called all the clergy of the chapter around himself with a whisper of a voice and asked if they could not in some way put a halt to the now pointless scandal of Mèola's anticlerical speech, which vexed them like a thorn in their hearts.

They now felt certain that neither that day nor for months to come would it rain again. Could Mèola not claim to be ill and postpone the speech to another time, to the following year perhaps, to the second Sunday of rain after the eighth of December?

“Why, yes! Certainly!” the clergymen immediately agreed. “Thus our remedy will not have gone to waste!”

The two faithful friends from the previous encounter were sent again in great haste to Mèola. A chill, a bout of constipation, an attack of gout, a sudden loss of voice:

“Seeing as it isn’t raining...”

Mèola balked, enraged. Renounce? Postpone? No, by God, they asked too much of him, after he had finally succeeded in regaining the favor of the liberals of Montelusa!

“All well and good,” the two friends told him. “If it were raining... But seeing as it isn't raining...”

“Seeing as it isn’t raining,” Mèola thundered, “what will the Prefect of the province do about it? He alone, he alone by public decree, may prohibit this speech from going forward! Hurry now to the Prefect, seeing as it isn't raining, and what’s more I shall await his declaration of prohibition in my bed within one hour, with a fever that could kill a horse!”

Thus the Santissima Immacolata made her way, with no disturbance, back to the church of St. Francis of Assisi after twelve Sundays of sojourn in the Cathedral, on the day of the 25th of February. And the people’s joy was truly extraordinary that year, thanks to the stunning victory that the fine weather had delivered them over the liberals of Montelusa.