“The Crow of Mìzzaro” (“Il corvo di Mìzarro”)

Translated by Patricia Stumpp

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “The Crow of Mìzzaro” (“Il corvo di Mìzzaro”), tr. Patricia Stumpp. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2022.

“The Crow of Mìzzaro” was first published in the literary journal Il Marzocco on October 26, 1902, where it appeared with the title “Crow, 77 – Donkey, 23 – Fall, 80” (“Corvo, 77 – Asino, 23 – Caduta, 80”). Heavily revised, it was republished with the new title, “The Crow of Mìzzaro,” in Pirandello’s collection Carnival of the Dead (Il Carnevale dei morti; Florence: Battistelli, 1919). It was then added to Stories for a Year in 1923 as part of the sixth Collection, In Silence (In silenzio).

The story is relatively short, compacting the humorous or ironic denouncement in a way that could make it feel pointed. It is also one of the many stories in Pirandello’s corpus that reveals both his affinity for animals and also his tendency to use animals as foils that highlight the bestial or inhuman aspects of human behavior. The cruelty of the farmer, Cichè, and his joy at capturing and harming the bird, is quickly “repaid” in the story’s narrative economy in a way that suggests ironic justice and simultaneously allows the bird to become a symbol; likewise, the bird also functions as a kind of jester figure insofar as it is encumbered by the jingling bell that the shepherds tie to its neck, adding a humorous twist to the ill-omen of the bird’s (deathly) appearance. Ultimately, it seems plausible that the real victim of Cichè’s actions is the poor donkey, Ciccio, who does not escape the fall signaled in Pirandello’s earlier title for the piece.

“The Crow of Mìzzaro” provided the framing device for the Taviani brothers’ adaptation of Pirandello’s short stories, their beautiful film Kaos (1984). The flight of the crow stitches together the scenes, and the story also provides a panoramic image of the Sicily they envision.

The Editors

One day some idle shepherds, climbing up the heights of Mìzzaro, surprised a big crow sitting peacefully on a nest, as if hatching eggs.[1]

“Oh, you stupid bird,[2] what are you doing? Would you look at that! He’s trying to hatch eggs! That’s a job for your wife, you stupid thing!”

Of course the crow had to have his say, so he yelled back, but in crow language, so naturally he wasn’t understood. The shepherds spent the whole day tormenting him for their own amusement. Then one of them brought him back to his village. But the next day, not knowing what to do with him, he tied a little bronze bell around his neck as a souvenir and set him free.

“Have fun!”

Only the crow knew the impression made on him by that jingling pendant, worn around his neck up in the sky. Judging from the sweeping flights he abandoned himself to, it seemed to please him, having by now forgotten about the nest and his wife.

“Jingle jangle, jingle jangle…”

The farmers, bent over working the land, on hearing that little ringing sound, would stand straight up and look here and there all around the broad plains under the intense heat of the sun.

“Where’s that coming from?”

There wasn’t a breath of wind blowing; from what possible faraway church could the sound of church bells be coming?

They could have imagined every kind of thing except that a crow was ringing a bell from up in the air.

Spirits! thought Cichè, who was working all alone in the field, digging troughs for fertilizer around some almond tree plants. And he made the sign of the cross because he certainly believed in Spirits, that one, and how! He had even heard them calling to him at night, when coming home late from the fields, along the wide road near the abandoned kilns where everyone said they made their home. Calling to him? How, exactly? Calling: “Cichè, Cichè,” like that. And his hair had stood on end under his cap.[3]

And now he heard that tinkling sound, first from far away, and then from nearby, and then again from far away. There wasn’t a living soul around, just farmland, trees, and plants that didn’t talk and didn’t hear, their very impassiveness increasing his uneasiness. Then having gone to eat the lunch that he had brought from home that morning, half a loaf and an onion in the knapsack left with his jacket a little way off, hanging on the branch of an olive tree: yes sir, the onion was there, yes, inside the knapsack, but the half loaf was nowhere to be found. Three times this happened, in the space of a few days.

He didn’t say anything to anyone, because he knew that when the Spirits have you in their sights, woe to him who complains about them. They get back at you when it suits them and do even worse to you.

“I don’t feel good,” Cichè responded to his wife that night on returning home from work, when she asked him why he looked so befuddled.

“But you’re sure eating a lot!” his wife observed a little later, watching him down two or three bowls of soup, one after the other.

“Yeah, I’m eating,” Cichè mumbled, having starved since morning and angry because he couldn’t confide in anyone.

Until the news spread through the countryside about the thieving crow who flew around ringing his little bell from up in the sky.

Cichè made the mistake of not being able to laugh about it the way all the other farmers who had learned about it had done.

“I promise and I swear,” he said, “I’ll make him pay!”

And what did he do? In the knapsack, together with the half loaf and the onion, he brought with him four dried fava beans and four lengths of twine. As soon as he got to the farm, he took the saddle off the donkey and led him to the ridge to graze on the remaining brush. Cichè talked to the donkey the way farmers tend to do, and the donkey, raising first one ear and then the other, snorted every once in awhile, as if to answer him somehow.

“Go, Ciccio, go,” Cichè said to him that day. “Wait and see, we’ll have some fun!”

He pierced holes in the beans and tied them to the four pieces of twine which were attached to the saddle and placed them on the knapsack on the ground. Then he left to start hoeing.

One hour passed, two hours passed. Every once in awhile, Cichè would stop working, thinking he would hear the sound of the little bell in the air. Standing straight up, he listened. Nothing. And he started hoeing again.

Lunchtime came. Unsure if he should go for the bread or wait a little longer, Cichè finally started toward it, but then seeing how well the trick was laid out on top of the knapsack, he didn’t want to ruin it. At that moment, he clearly heard a faraway jingling sound. He looked up.

“There he is!”

And quietly, bent over, with his heart in his mouth, he left his place and hid far away.

The crow, however, as if he were enjoying the sound of his little bell, kept circling high, high above, and didn’t come down.

Maybe he sees me, thought Cichè, and he got up to hide himself farther away.

But the crow continued to fly high above, with nary a sign that he wanted to come down. Cichè was hungry, but he didn’t want to give up. He started hoeing again. He waited and waited, the crow still up there, as if he were doing it on purpose. Famished, with the bread there just two steps away, yes, my friends, without being able to touch it! Hunger was gnawing at his insides, but Cichè resisted, aggravated, obstinate.

“You’ll have to come down! You’ll have to come down! You must be hungry too!”

Meanwhile the crow, from up in the sky, seemed to respond to him with the sound of the little bell, in a disrespectful way:

“Neither you nor I! Neither you nor I!”

And so the day went by. Cichè, exasperated, let off steam with the donkey, putting the saddle back on him, from which the four beans were hanging, like some new kind of festival decoration. And making his way home, he angrily tore at the bread that he had been agonizing over the whole day. He cursed the crow with every mouthful—“miscreant, thief, traitor”—because he hadn’t let himself be caught.

But the next day things worked out.

Having prepared the bean trick with the same care, a short time after starting work he heard a chaotic little ringing sound nearby and a desperate cawing, together with a furious flapping of wings. He ran toward the sound. The crow was there, held down by the string that was coming out of his beak and strangling him.

“Ah, so you fell for it?” he yelled at him, grabbing him by his big wings. “So the bean was good, was it? Now it’s my turn, you ugly beast! You’ll see.”

He cut the string and just for starters punched the crow in the head twice.

“This is for scaring me, and that’s for making me starve!”

Meanwhile, the donkey, who had been nearby chewing the brush on the ridge, on hearing the crow cawing, had taken flight, frightened. Cichè called out to stop him, and from a distance showed him the ugly black creature.

“Here he is, Ciccio! We have him! We have him!”

He tied the bird up by the feet, hung him on the tree and went back to work. As he hoed, he started thinking about how to take his revenge. He would pull out his wings so he couldn’t fly anymore and then he would hand him over to his kids and the other children of the village for slaughter. And he laughed to himself.

Come evening, he adjusted the saddle on the donkey’s back, took the crow and hung him by his feet from the saddle strap, got on the donkey and that was it. The little bell, tied to the crow’s neck, started jingling. The donkey raised his ears and stopped.

“Giddyap!” Cichè yelled at him, giving a jerk to the halter.

The donkey started up again, not really sure however about the unusual sound that accompanied the slow clip clop of his hooves on the dusty road.

Cichè, on the way home, was thinking that from that day on nobody in the fields would ever hear the crow of Mìzzaro jingle jangling in the sky again. He had him right there, and he gave no sign of life now, the ugly beast.

“What are you doing?” he asked him, turning and hitting him in the head with the halter. “Did you fall asleep?”

The crow, on feeling the blow:

“Caw!”

Hearing that unexpected harsh voice, the donkey stopped suddenly, his neck erect, ears tense. Cichè burst out laughing.

“Giddyap, Ciccio! Are you scared?”

And he hit the donkey on the ears with the rope. Soon after, he asked the crow again:

“Did you fall asleep?”

Another blow, harder. And the crow answered back, louder:

“Caww!”

But this time the donkey leaped up like a sheep and took flight. Cichè tried in vain to stop him with all the force of his arms and legs. The crow, knocked around during that wild run, started cawing desperately, but the more he cawed, the faster the frightened donkey ran.

“Cawww! Cawww! Cawww!”

Cichè was yelling too, pulling, pulling at the halter. But by then the two animals seemed to have gone crazy from the fright that they had instilled in each other, the one screeching and the other running away. For a short time the frenzy of that desperate run resounded in the night. Then a loud thud was heard, and after that, nothing more.

The next day, Cichè was found at the bottom of a ravine, smashed to pieces, under the donkey which was also crushed to bits: carrion smoking under the sun, covered by a horde of flies.

The crow of Mìzzaro, black in the azure blue of the beautiful morning, was still ringing his little bell from up in the sky, happy and free.