“Sun and Shade” (“Sole e ombra”)

Translated by Ellen McRae

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “Sun and Shade” (“Sole e ombra”), tr. Ellen McRae. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2024.

“Sun and Shade” (“Sole e ombra”) was published for the first time in the literary journal Rassegna settimanale universale on November 1, 1896 and later included in A Prancing Horse (La rallegrata), the third Collection of Stories for a Year, in 1922.

This story is built around a tragicomic plot in which the protagonist’s remorse becomes the driving motivation for a meditation on suicide. Ciunna, the old protagonist who cannot overcome his sense of culpability and self-recrimination after stealing money from the factory where he works, is at once marked by shame and also by a tragic sense of irrecoverable destiny. Throughout the story, Ciunna fantasizes about different ways to end his life so as to escape being held accountable for his offense, oscillating between changing his mind and rediscovering his resolve. To Ciunna death is preferable to the humiliation caused by his wrongdoing. Yet when he takes action to finally end his life, a series of unexpected obstacles present themselves, appearing to thwart him by making him reconsider, until a final turn in the plot makes his original decision seem inescapable. This back-and-forth might seem to echo the juxtaposition of the two elements in the story’s title, sun on the one hand and shade or shadow on the other. Ciunna’s suicide note functions in this story as a kind of mark of fate, imposed by his own actions and holding him accountable to a single moment of his decision-making. Thematically, the story’s focus on suicide places it in a large group of Pirandello’s other stories – in fact, Giovanni Bussino collected 20 stories into a volume based on this theme, translated as Tales of Suicide (1988), and he placed “Sun and Shade” at the head of this grouping. Likewise, this element links to a broader theme that can be seen in works like his seminal novel from 1904, The Late Mattia Pascal (Il fu Mattia Pascal), where suicide and self-death function metaphorically. Another essential element of the story is the symbolically charged emphasis on the landscape: again echoing the juxtaposition of sun and shade, the descriptions in the story recreate a metaphysical space where natural elements take part in or reflect Ciunna’s existential dilemma. If the rustling leaves evocatively repeat his name, detaching him from his intentions, the moon is constantly watching over him and providing a distanced perspective of judgment on his actions. The moon in particular takes on the twofold task of illuminating human weakness and framing its moral implications, something that is common throughout a number of Pirandello’s short stories. See for example: “A Horse in the Moon” (“Un cavallo nella luna,” 1907), “Ciàula Discovers the Moon” (“Ciàula scopre la luna,” 1912), and “Moon Fever” (“Male di luna,” 1913).

In 1998, “Sun and Shade” joined a series of other stories (“You Laugh,” “The Imbecile,” and “The Captive”) as part of a collage composed by filmmakers Paolo and Vittorio Taviani in their adaptation You Laugh (Tu ridi), exploring the sadness of the human condition in the clutches of societal control.

The Editors

I

Between the tree branches that formed a delicate green arcade over the long boulevard encircling the walls of the old city, the moon, suddenly appearing, unexpectedly, seemed to be telling a man of very tall stature who had ventured out alone in the treacherous darkness, at such an unusual hour:

“Yes, but I can see you.”

And as if he had been discovered in reality, the man stopped, and spreading his large hands over his chest, exclaimed with intense exasperation, “Yes, right! It’s me! Ciunna!”

Then all the leaves above his head, rustling incessantly, seemed to be confiding his name to one another—Ciunna... Ciunna...—as if they had known him for many years, and therefore knew why he was walking all alone at that hour along the menacing boulevard. And they continued to whisper mysteriously about him and what he had done... ssss... Ciunna! Ciunna!

So he looked behind him, into the darkness stretching along the boulevard, interrupted here and there by so many moon specters. Who knows if someone... ssss... He looked around, and imposing silence on himself and the leaves... ssss... he resumed walking, with his hands clasped behind his back.

Quietly—two thousand and seven hundred liras. Two thousand and seven hundred liras stolen from the cash box of the tobacco warehouse. Therefore, guilty... ssss... of embezzlement.

The inspector would come tomorrow.

“Ciunna, two thousand and seven hundred liras is missing here.”

“Yes, sir. I took it , Inspector.”

“Took it? How?”

“With two fingers, Inspector.”

“Is that so? Well done, Ciunna! Taken like a pinch of snuff?[1] On the one hand, my congratulations, and on the other, if you don’t mind, kindly come to prison.”

“Oh, no. I’m sorry, honorable sir. I am indeed very sorry. So much so that, if you would allow me…look, tomorrow Ciunna will travel down to the port in a carriage. With his two military medals from 1860on his chest and a fine ten-kilo weight tied around his neck like a scapular,[2] he will throw himself into the sea, Inspector. Death is ugly. It has feeble legs. But after sixty-two years of an unerring life, Ciunna is not going to prison.”

For fifteen days these bizarre conversational soliloquies went on, accompanied by lively gestures. And like the moon between the branches, all his acquaintances, who tended to take pleasure in his comical eccentricity and his manner of speaking, showed up for a bit in these soliloquies.

Indeed, mentally addressing his son, Ciunna continued, For you, Niccolino! I stole for you! But don’t think I regret it. Four children, dear God... Four children in the middle of the street! And your wife, Niccolino. What does she do? Nothing, she laughs. And is pregnant again. Four plus one, five. The blessed woman! Keep breeding, my son, keep breeding! Populate the town with little Ciunnas! Seeing as poverty grants you no other pleasure, go on and breed, my son! The fish that will eat your father tomorrow will then be obliged to feed you and your numerous offspring. Trawlers of the port, a haul of fish every day for my little grandchildren!

This demand of the fish occurred to him now because up until a few days before, he had been prodding himself instead like this:

Poison! Poison! The best way to die! One little pill, and good night!

And he had procured for himself, through the janitor of the Chemical Institute, some little crystalline pieces of arsenic anhydride. With those pieces in his pocket, he had instead gone to make his confession.

Dying, that’s fine, but in a state of grace.

“With poison, though, no!” he now added. “Too many convulsions. Humans are cowardly. They call for help! And what if they save me? No, no, it’s better there—in the sea. The medals on my chest, the weight around my neck, and kersplash. Then—a bellyflop into the water. Gentlemen, a floating Garibaldian—a new whale species![3] Do tell, Ciunna, what is in the sea? Little fish, Ciunna, that are hungry, like your little grandchildren on land, like the little birds in the sky.”

He would book the carriage for tomorrow. At seven o’clock, in the crisp morning air, off he’ll go. About an hour to get down to the port. And at eight-thirty, farewell, Ciunna!

Meanwhile, proceeding along the boulevard, he composed the letter he would leave behind. Who should he address it to? To his wife, poor old woman, or to his son, or to some friend? No. Keep his friends out of it! Who had helped him? To tell the truth, he hadn’t requested help from anybody, only because he knew beforehand that no one would have taken pity on him. And here is the proof—for fifteen days, the entire town had seen him walking around the streets like a headless fly, yet not even a dog had stopped to ask him, Ciunna, what’s the matter?

II

On being awakened the next morning by the housemaid at exactly seven o’clock, he was amazed to find he had slept like a log all night.

“Is the carriage here yet?”

“Yes, sir, it is waiting downstairs.”

“Here I am, I’m ready! But, oh, my shoes, Rosa! Wait—I’ll open the door.”

When climbing out of bed to get his shoes, he was amazed once more—the previous evening he had left the shoes as usual outside the door so the housemaid would clean them. As if he cared about going off to the other world with clean shoes.

He was amazed for a third time in front of the wardrobe when he went to retrieve the suit that he usually wore on his outings in order to spare the other one, the “city suit” that was a little newer, or at least less old.

And who am I keeping it new for now?

In short, it was all as if, deep down, he didn’t yet believe that he would soon be killing himself. The sleep... the shoes... the suit... And look at this—now he’s washing his face, and now he’s standing in front of the mirror,[4] as usual, to carefully knot his tie.

Am I just fooling myself?

No. The letter. Where had he put it? Here, in the drawer of the nightstand. Here it is!

He read the heading: “For Niccolino.”

Where should I put it?

He thought of putting it on his pillow, right where he had laid his head for the last time.

Here they will see it better.

He knew that his wife and the housemaid never came in before noon to tidy up the room.

By noon it will have been more than three hours...

He didn’t finish the sentence. He turned to look around, as if to say goodbye to the things he was leaving forever. He caught sight of the old, yellowed ivory crucifix at the head of the bed, removed his hat, and bent down to kneel.

But deep down, he still didn’t feel completely awake.

He still had deep, sound sleep in his nose and in his eyes.

“My God... My God...” he finally said, suddenly confused.

And he clutched his forehead tightly with one hand.

But then the thought came to him that the carriage was waiting for him downstairs, and he rushed out.

“Goodbye, Rosa. Tell them I will be back before nightfall.”

Traveling at a trot across the town in the carriage (that idiot coachman had put harness bells on his horses, as if they were off to a country fair), Ciunna suddenly felt his natural humorous bent reawaken in the fresh air, and he imagined that the municipal band players, with their helmet plumes fluttering in the wind, were running after him, shouting and waving their arms at him to stop or to go more slowly, because they wanted to play him the funeral march. It was impossible to do so while having to hotfoot it behind him like that.

Thank you very much! Goodbye, my friends! I’ll gladly do without it! The rattling of the carriage windows and that happy jingling of the harness bells are enough for me!

After they had passed the last houses, his chest expanded at the sight of the countryside, which seemed to be flooded by a golden sea of wheat with almond and olive trees floating here and there on the surface.[5]

On his right, he saw a peasant woman with three boys emerge from behind a carob tree.[6] He gazed at the large dwarf tree for a moment, and thought, It’s like a mother hen who keeps her chicks underneath her. He waved goodbye to it. He was in the mood to wave a final goodbye to everything, but without despair, as if the joy he was experiencing at that moment compensated for everything.

The carriage was now trudging down the dusty road, which was steeper than ever. Long rows of carts were climbing up and down. He had never noticed the distinctive bridling of the mules that pulled those carts. He noticed it now, as if those mules had adorned themselves with all those tassels and those colorful bows and frills to celebrate him.

To the right and to the left, a few beggars and crippled or blind people were sitting here and there on piles of rubble to rest as they climbed up from the port town to the city on the hill,[7] or descended from the latter to the former for a coin or a chunk of bread promised for that particular day.

The sight of these people distressed him, and all of a sudden it occurred to him to invite them all to ride in the carriage with him. Cheer up! Cheer up! Let’s all go and jump into the sea! A carriage full of sorry wretches! Come on, my sons! Climb aboard! Climb aboard! Life is beautiful and we mustn’t upset it by the sight of us.

He restrained himself, so he wouldn’t reveal the purpose of his outing to the coachman. But he smiled again, however, imagining all those beggars in the carriage with him. And as if he really did have them there with him, upon seeing a few more along the way, he repeated the invitation to himself:

You come too. Climb aboard! I’ll give you a free trip!

III

In the port town, Ciunna was known by everyone.

Indeed, as soon as he stepped down from the coach, he heard his name called: “Ciunna, my good man!” And he found himself in the arms of a certain Tino Imbrò, a young friend of his, who planted two resounding kisses on him while patting him on the back.

“How are you? How are you? What has brought you here to this miserable, godforsaken town?”

“A certain little matter...” replied Ciunna, smiling awkwardly.

“Is this carriage at your disposal?”

“Yes, I’ve hired it!”

“Splendid. So then, coachman, unharness your horses! My dear Ciunna, since you are unwell, with your pallid eyes, pallid nose, and pallid lips, I am holding you captive. If you have a headache, I will make it go away. I will make absolutely anything whatsoever go away!”

“Thank you, my dear Tino,” said Ciunna, touched by the cheerful young man’s joyful welcome. “Look, I really do have a very urgent matter to attend to. Then I need to return home quickly. What’s more—I’m not sure—but the inspector might suddenly turn up unexpectedly today.”

“On a Sunday? And then, why? Without warning?”

“Oh, certainly!” Ciunna replied. “You expect a warning, even? They pounce on you when you least expect it.”

“I won’t listen to excuses,” the other man declared. “Today is a holiday, and we should be laughing. I’m holding you captive. I’m a bachelor again, did you know? My wife, the poor thing, was crying night and day... ‘What’s wrong, my darling, what’s wrong?’ ‘I want Mamma! I want Papa!’ ‘Oh, this is why you’re crying? Silly little girl, go to Mamma, go to Papa, who will give you something nice... some yummy soup… some sweetie treats... ’ [8] As my maestro,[9] do you think I did well?”

Even the coachman laughed from the driver’s seat. So then Imbrò said:

“Idiot, are you still there? Marche![10] I told you— go unharness the horses!”

“Wait,” Ciunna then said, pulling his wallet out of his breast pocket. “I’ll pay in advance.”

But Imbrò held his arm back.

“Certainly not! When it comes to paying or dying, the later the better.”

“No. In advance,” insisted Ciunna. “I need to pay in advance. If I stay, however briefly, in this town filled with men of honor—you’ll understand—there’s always the danger that even the soles of my shoes will be stolen as soon as I lift my foot to take a step.”

“There’s my old maestro! I recognize thee at the last! Go on and pay, then we’ll be on our way.”

Ciunna shook his head slightly, with a bitter smile on his lips. He paid the coachman and then asked Imbrò:

“Where are you taking me? Mind you, only for half an hour.”

“You’re joking. The carriage is paid for—it can wait until evening. No more noes. I’ll organize the day now. See? I have my satchel with me: I was going swimming. Come with me.”

“Not a chance!” Ciunna protested vehemently. “Me, swimming? Anything but swimming, my dear man!”

Tino Imbrò looked at him in bewilderment.

“Afraid of the water?”

“No, listen,” replied Ciunna, digging in his heels like a mule. “When I said no, I meant no. Swimming, for me, if at all, will happen later.”

“But the time is right now!” Timbrò exclaimed. “A nice swim and then, with plenty of appetite, off to the Leon d’Oro for some hearty feasting and Weindrinkin’![11] Let yourself be served!”

“A little party even. Seriously? You make me laugh. Besides, as you see, I’m completely unprepared: I don’t have a swimsuit. I don’t have a robe. I still care about decency, you know.”

“Come on!” the other man exclaimed, dragging Ciunna by the arm. “You’ll find everything you need at the rotunda.”

Ciunna surrendered to the young man’s lively and affectionate tyranny.

A little later, shut up in a changing stall at the baths, he let himself collapse on a bench and leaned his tired head against the planks of the wall, his four limbs hanging loosely and an almost enraged suffering engraved on his face.

“A little foretaste of the element,” he muttered.

He heard a knocking on the planks of the adjoining changing stall, and Imbrò’s voice:

“Are we ready? I’m already in my suit. Tinino with the beautiful legs!”

Ciunna rose to his feet.

“Yes, I’m undressing.”

As he began to undress, he pulled his watch out of his waistcoat pocket in order to hide it prudently inside a shoe and decided to look at the time. It was about half past nine, and he thought, One hour gained! He started to descend the wet ladder, gripped all over by the cold.

“Come on down! Down into the water!” shouted Imbrò, who had already dived in and was threatening to splash him with one hand.

“No, no!” shouted back Ciunna, trembling and frantic, with that anguish that confuses you or holds you back when you’re faced with the moving, glassy density of seawater. “Listen, I’m climbing back up! I’m not joking... I can’t take it... Brrr, it’s so cold!” he added, skimming the water with the point of his tensed foot. Then, as if suddenly struck by an idea, he plunged completely underwater.

“Well done!” shouted the other man as soon as Ciunna was back on his feet, dripping like a fountain.

“Brave, eh?” said Ciunna, passing his hands over his head and face.

“Do you know how to swim?”

“No, I just bash about.”

“I’m going a bit farther out.”

The water in the enclosure was shallow. Ciunna crouched, holding onto a pole with one arm and lightly tapping the water with the other hand, as if to say to it, “Be good! Be good!”

It was truly a dreadful mockery, that swim, with him in his underwear, crouching, braced by the pole, coming to terms with the water.

Shortly afterward, however, Imbrò, on re-entering the enclosure and looking around, could no longer find him. Had he already gotten out? And he headed toward the ladder of the changing stall to check, when lo and behold, he saw him suddenly spring up in front of him out of the water, purple in the face, with a noisy spluttering.

“Hey! Are you crazy? What have you done? Don’t you know that you can burst the veins in your neck by doing that?”

“Let them burst...” said Ciunna, gasping for breath, half drowned, his eyes bulging out of the sockets.

“Did you swallow any?”

“A little.”

“Hey, I say,” said Imbrò, again making a gesture with his hand that hinted at his concern that his old friend had gone crazy. He observed him for a bit; he asked him: “Did you want to test your lungs or did you feel unwell?”

“Test my lungs,” Ciunna replied somberly, running his hands once again through his soaking wet hair.

“Top marks to the little boy!” exclaimed Imbrò. “Let’s go. Come on. Let’s go put our clothes back on! The water is too cold today. Besides, I already have an appetite. But tell the truth—are you actually feeling unwell?”

Ciunna had started belching like a turkey.

“No,” he said, when he had finished. “I feel great! It has passed! Let’s go. We can go put our clothes back on!”

“Spaghetti with clams, and glug glug, glug glug... a little wine! Allow me. I’ll take care of it. A gift from my wife’s family, bless her soul. I still have a nice little barrel left. Wait till you taste it!”

IV

It was around four o’clock when they rose from the table. The coachman appeared at the door of the trattoria.

“Should I harness up the horses?”

“If you don’t leave...!” Imbrò threatened, his face flushed, pulling Ciunna toward his chest with one arm and gripping an empty wine bottle with the other hand.

Ciunna, no less flushed, let himself be pulled in. He smiled, saying nothing, blissful as a baby under that protection.

“I told you we’re not leaving before evening!” Imbrò remonstrated.

A chorus of voices expressed their approval: “Hear hear! Hear hear!”

For the dining room had filled up with about twenty of Ciunna and Imbrò’s friends, and the other patrons of the trattoria had joined them to eat, forming a big, long table that was at first cheerful, then gradually became noisier. Laughing, shouting, joking toasts—an infernal racket.

Tino Imbrò jumped up on a chair. A proposal! Everybody on board the English steamer anchored in the port.

“We’re worse than brothers with the captain! He’s a young man, thirty years old, full of beard and prowess—with some bottles of gin that are indescribable!”

The proposal was embraced with tumultuous applause.

Around six o’clock, when the group had disbanded after the visit to the steamer, Ciunna said to Imbrò:

“Dear Tinino, it’s time I was gone! I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Don’t even mention it,” Imbrò interrupted. “Instead, think about the fact that you still have that little matter to attend to that you spoke of this morning.”

“Ah, yes, you are right,” said Ciunna, knitting his brow and reaching for his friend’s shoulder with one hand, as if he were about to fall. “Yes, yes, you are right. And to think that I came down expressly for that reason... I really must go.”

“But if you don’t need to...” Imbrò remarked to him.

“No,” replied Ciunna, grimly, and he repeated, “I must go. I drank, I ate, and now... Goodbye, Tinino. I have no choice.”

“Do you want me to go with you?” the other man asked.

“No! Ha! You’d like to go with me? That would be interesting. No, no, thank you, my dear Tinino, thank you. I will go alone, by myself. I drank, I ate, and now... Goodbye, eh!”

“Then I’ll wait for you here, with the carriage, and we’ll say goodbye after. Make it quick!”

“I’ll be very quick! Very quick! Goodbye, Tinino!”

And he left.

Imbrò grimaced and thought, And the years! The years! It seems impossible that Ciunna... After all, what could he have drunk?

Ciunna turned around, and raising a finger and shaking it next to his eyes, which were winking slyly, told him:

“You don’t know me.”

Then he headed toward the longest arm of the port—the western one that still had no pier and was just rocks all piled up on top of each other, in between which the sea thrust itself with cavernous thuds followed by deep undercurrents. He was having trouble keeping his balance. And yet he was leaping from rock to rock, perhaps with the vague intention of slipping, breaking a shin, or tumbling almost involuntarily into the sea. He was gasping for breath, panting, shaking his head to remove an annoyance from his nose, not knowing whether it came from sweat, tears, or the spray of the waves thrusting themselves between the rocks. When he reached the tip of the reef, he dropped down to sit, took off his hat, squeezed shut his eyes and mouth, and puffed out his cheeks, as if to prepare himself for jettisoning, with all the breath he had in his body, the anguish, desperation, and bile he had accumulated.

“Ouuff, let’s have a little look,” he finally said, reopening his eyes after exhaling.

The sun was setting. The sea, glassy green near the shore, was turning intensely gold on the flickering expanse of the horizon. The sky was all ablaze and the air crystal clear in the bright light over the shimmering, inflamed waters.

“Me in there?” Ciunna asked not long after, looking at the sea beyond the last rocks. “For two thousand and seven hundred liras?”

It seemed like such a meager amount. Like taking a barrel of water from that sea.

You don’t have the right to steal, I know. But it remains to be seen whether you have a duty to do so, by God, when four babies are crying to you for bread and you have this filthy money in your hands and you’re counting it. Society doesn’t give you the right to do so, but you, father, have a duty to steal in such cases. And I am doubly a father to those four innocent children there! And if I die, how will they manage? Go begging in the street? Oh no, Inspector. I will make you cry along with me. And if you, Inspector, have a heart as hard as this rock here, well then, go ahead and send me before the judges. I want to see if they have the heart to condemn me. Lose my job? I’ll find another one, Inspector! Don’t be mistaken. There, I will not throw myself in! Here are the trawlers! I’ll buy a kilo of mullets this big, and go back home to eat them with my grandchildren![12]

He stood up. The trawlers were coming in full sail, tacking. He moved quickly in order to reach the fish market in time.

Among the crowds and the shouting, he bought some mullets, still alive and darting about. But—where to put them? A cheap little basket with seaweed inside, and: “Don’t worry, Mr. Ciunna. They’ll arrive in town fully alive.”

On the road, in front of the Leon d’Oro, he again found Imbrò, who immediately made an expressive hand gesture.

“Has it worn off?”

“What? Oh, the wine... Is that what you thought? Not at all!” said Ciunna. “Look, I bought some mullets. A kiss, my dear Tinino, and a million thanks.”

“For what?”

“One day maybe I’ll tell you. Oh, coachman, put the hood up. I don’t want to be seen.”

V

Just outside the hamlet, the painful uphill stretch began.

As the two horses pulled the closed carriage, a nod of their bent heads accompanied each long, laborious step, and the dangling harness bells seemed to measure the slowness and the struggle.

From time to time, the coachman urged the poor gaunt animals on with a long, mournful call.

By the halfway point, evening had already closed in.

The darkness that suddenly appeared, the silence, as if waiting for a faint sound in the barren solitude of those ill-guarded places, beckoned the spirit of Ciunna, who was both still hazy from the wine and dazzled by the splendor of the sun setting over the sea.

Little by little, as the shadows grew, he had closed his eyes, as if to delude himself that he could sleep. Now, however, he found himself again with his eyes wide open in the dark of the carriage, staring at the window facing him, which rattled incessantly.

It seemed to him that he had just inadvertently come out of a dream. And meanwhile, he couldn’t find the strength to stir himself, to move a finger. His limbs were like lead and he had a dismal heaviness in his head. He was sitting in a collapsed position, almost on his back, with his chin on his chest, his legs against the seat in front, and his left hand deep in a trouser pocket.

What! Was he actually drunk after all?

“Stop,” he muttered with a thick tongue.

And he imagined, unfazed, that he was descending from the carriage and about to wander aimlessly into the night through the fields. He heard a distant barking and thought that that dog was barking at him as he wandered down there through the valley.

“Stop,” he repeated shortly afterward, almost voiceless, lowering his leaden eyelids once more.

“No!” He needed to very quietly jump from the carriage, without making it stop and without being seen by the coachman. He needed to wait for the carriage to get a bit farther away up the steep road, and then throw himself into the countryside and run, run all the way to the sea down below.

Meanwhile, he didn’t move.

“Plumph!” he tried to say with his sluggish tongue.

All of a sudden, a spark in his brain jolted him, and with his trembling right hand, he started to rub his forehead rapidly:

“The letter... the letter...”

He had left the letter for his son on his pillow. He could see it. By then, at home, they were mourning his death. The entire town, by then, was full of the news of his suicide. And the inspector? The inspector had certainly come. They will have given him the keys. He will have found out about the cash box being empty. Dishonorable suspension, misery, ridicule, prison.

And the carriage, meanwhile, kept going, slowly, laboriously.

No, no. Struck by an anguished trembling, Ciunna would have liked to stop it. And then? No, no. Jump from the carriage? He drew his left hand out of his pocket and with his thumb and index finger grasped his lower lip, as if to think, while clenching, crushing something with his other fingers. He opened that hand, sticking it out the window in the moonlight, and looked at his palm. It was still there. The poison. There, in his pocket, the forgotten poison. He squeezed his eyes shut. He shoved it in his mouth. He swallowed. Quickly thrusting his hand back in his pocket, he pulled out more pieces. He swallowed them. Emptiness. Vertigo. His chest, his belly opened up—split apart. He felt like he couldn’t breathe and stuck his head out the window.

“Now I am dying.”

The wide valley below was bathed in cool, soft moonlight. The tall black hills opposite rose, starkly outlined against the opalescent sky.

At the sight of that exquisite lunar stillness, a great sense of calm took hold of him inside. He rested his hand on the door, propped his chin on his hand, and waited, looking out.

A crystal clear, steadfast chirping of crickets rose up from the bottom of the valley, sounding like the voice of the moon’s flickering reflection on the running waters of a placid invisible river.

He raised his eyes to the sky, without lifting his chin from his hand, then he looked once again at the black hills and the valley, as if to see how much remained now for others, since nothing was for him anymore. Before long, he would no longer see, would no longer hear anything... Had time stopped perhaps? How was it that he still did not feel the slightest hint of pain?

“Am I not dying?”

And suddenly, as if the thought had given him the expected sensation, he recoiled, and clutched his belly with one hand. No—he still felt nothing. Yet... He ran a hand over his forehead. Ah! It was already bathed in an icy sweat! Upon feeling that coldness, the fear of death overcame him. He trembled all over under the enormous, black, horrifying, irreversible imminence, and doubled over in the carriage, biting into a cushion to smother his scream at the first searing spasm in his guts.

Silence. A voice. Who was singing? And that moon...

The coachman was singing tonelessly, while the weary horses laboriously pulled the black carriage along the dusty road whitewashed by the moonlight.