“The Dearly Departed” (“La buon’anima”)

Translated by Caterina Agostini

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “The Dearly Departed” (“La buon’anima”), tr. Caterina Agostini. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2022.

“The Dearly Departed” (“La buon’anima”) was originally published in La Riviera ligure in July 1904 and then included in the collection Naked Life (La vita nuda) the Milanese editor Treves printed in 1910. In 1922, the short story became part of the second Collection of Stories for a Year (Novelle per un anno), also titled Naked Life.

Written in the same year of one of Pirandello’s seminal novels, The Late Mattia Pascal (Il fu Mattia Pascal), “The Dearly Departed” builds on similar themes, such as the burdens of married life, a man’s struggle to deal with having a dominant wife, and the blunders of adultery. In this short story, the protagonist is haunted by the insolent grin of his wife’s late husband, Cosimo, who is still controlling and dictating their lives as if he were still alive. The wife’s inability to sever the bond with her deceased husband, as she obstinately retraces the steps of their former life together, leads to a rupture in their new marriage. Building on the new husband’s progressive frustration with this unbearable situation, Pirandello explores the humoristic implications of adultery as a possible solution for overcoming unhappiness in a doomed marriage—a recurring theme that appears in other short stories, as well, including “Bitter Waters” (“Acqua amara,” 1905), “All for the Best” (“Tutto per bene,” 1906), and “The Doctor’s Duty” (“Il dovere del medico,” 1911). The absurd finale in “The Dearly Departed” attests to the comic pattern of life repeating itself and the ironic way Pirandello forces his characters to confront the unexpected. It also speaks to the typically Pirandellian theme of how an image hides multifaceted layers of artifice.

On a stylistic level, “The Dearly Departed” explores the intrusive and disturbing presence of the deceased husband in a very visual way, with his image in a painting serving as a source of distress for the characters. Pirandello employs similar devices in other creative works from various periods of his productive career. In “A Portrait” (“Il ritratto,” 1914), the image of a figure takes on a life of its own, spying on the actions of “real” people; in “As Twins” (“Come gemelli,” 1903), a picture even holds the power to dictate the character’s behavior. But it is perhaps in his famous play, Henry IV (Enrico IV, 1921), where Pirandello developed this theme most forcefully, using an image of the play’s protagonist as a central visual device to orient the stage and serve as a major element in the plot, as well as a symbol of the contradictory identities an image can hold.

The Editors

Ever since the first day, Bartolino Fiorenzo had heard his betrothed say to him:

“Lina, really, here’s the thing… Lina, no, it’s not my name. My name is Carolina. The dearly departed liked calling me Lina, and so it has been ever since.”

The dearly departed was Cosimo Taddei, her first husband.

“There he is!”

The betrothed had also pointed Cosimo to him because he was still there, laughing making a gesture of greeting with his hat (a very lively, zoomed-in detail, from a snapshot), on the wall opposite the couch where Bartolino Fiorenzo was sitting. And, instinctively, Bartolino felt inclined to bow in answer to that greeting.

It had not even crossed the mind of Lina Sarulli, Taddei’s widow, to remove that portrait from the living room––the homeowner’s portrait. Indeed, the house where she lived belonged to Cosimo Taddei; an engineer, he had it built, then he had it so elegantly furnished, to bequeath it to her with all of his assets.

Signora Sarulli continued, without noticing her betrothed’s embarrassment at all:

“I did not like changing my name. But the dearly departed then told me: ‘And how about I call you, cara Lina instead of Carolina.[1] Wouldn’t that be better? Almost the same, but so much more!’ Is that fine?”

“Very fine! Yes, yes, very fine!” Bartolino Fiorenzo answered, as if the dearly departed had asked for his opinion.

“Thus, cara Lina, are we understood?” Signora Sarulli concluded, smiling.

And Bartolino Fiorenzo:

“Understood... Yes, yes... understood...” he stuttered, lost in confusion and shame, thinking that her husband, in the meantime, was looking with a laugh––from the wall and greeting him.

When––three months later––the Fiorenzos, husband and wife, accompanied to the train station by family and friends, left with the destination of Rome for their honeymoon, Ortensia Motta, a close friend of the Fiorenzo household and a dear friend of Signora Sarulli’s, told her husband, alluding to Bartolino:

“Poor guy, has he taken a wife? I would say that rather they gave him a husband!”

But, with that, let it be clear, Mrs. Motta did not mean that Lina née Sarulli, then Lina Taddei, now Lina Fiorenzo, looked more like a man than a woman. No. Too womanly, indeed, was that dear Lina! Between the two of them, though, come on! One could not doubt that she had much more life experience and more common sense than he did. Ha! He––rotund, blond, rubicund––looked like a big baby; a funny big baby, though: bald, but a baldness that looked feigned, as if he had shaved the top of his head to take that childish look off his face. And without succeeding either, poor Bartolino!

“Poor, what are you talking about? But why poor, then?” meowed Mr. Motta in a nasal voice, moodily. Young Ortensia’s old husband, he had been the matchmaker and did not want anything bad said about it. “Bartolino is not a fool at all. A very capable chemist...”

“Yes, right! Of the first order!” his wife sneered.

“Of the very first order!” he argued back.

A very capable chemist, if he had wanted to publish the thorough, new studies of indisputable originality that he had carried out in that science ever since he was a young boy––the one, exclusive passion in his life up to then––but no doubt, who knows... At the first public search,[2] who knows of what leading University in the Kingdom,[3] he would become a professor. Erudite, erudite. And now, as a husband, he would be extraordinary. He entered conjugal life pure, a virgin in his heart.

“Ah, as for that...” his wife acknowledged, as if, as far as that virginity was concerned, she was willing to admit even more than that.

The fact is that, before that marriage with Signora Sarulli was agreed upon, every single time, in the Fiorenzo household, she heard her husband advise Bartolino’s uncle that they had to “make a match” for that young man, she would burst into laughter. Oh, how she would laugh…

“Match, yes, Madam, make him a match!” her husband would turn to tell her, angrily.

And then, she, suddenly refraining:

“Well then go ahead and make a match for him, my dear fellows! I’m laughing on my own account; I’m laughing at what I’m reading.”

Indeed, she would read, while Mr. Motta would play chess, as usual, with Mr. Anselmo, Bartolino’s uncle; she would read some French novel out loud to the elderly Mrs. Fiorenzo, who had been relegated to an armchair for the last six months due to a paralysis.

Oh, those evenings were cheerful, really! Bartolino, hermetically shut up in his chemistry laboratory; the elderly aunt, who pretended to be listening to the reading but couldn’t understand a thing anymore; the other two of them busy with their game… It was necessary to “make a match” for Bartolino so as to have a bit of cheer in that house. And here, poor fellow, they truly had matched him!

Meanwhile, Ortensia thought about the newlyweds traveling and laughed imagining Lina face to face with that big, bald young man, lacking experience, a virgin in his heart, as her husband would say: Lina Sarulli, who had been for four years in the company of that dear Taddei, very expert, lively, cheerful, and full of initiative... Even too much!

Perhaps by at that moment, the newlywed widow had already noticed the difference between the two of them.

Before the train roused itself for departure, uncle Anselmo had told his new niece:

“Lina, I’ll leave Bartolino to your care... Guide him!”

He meant to say, guide him throughout Rome, where Bartolino had never been.

She had indeed been there, on her first honeymoon with the dearly departed; and she could recall memories even of the tiniest things, of the slightest events that had occurred to her; very precise and bright memories, as if not six years but six months had passed by since then.

The journey with Bartolino lasted an eternity: it was not possible to lower the curtains. As soon as the train stopped at the station in Rome, Lina said to her husband:

“Now let me take care of it, I beg you. Suitcases down!” And, to the porter who came to open the door:

“Here: three suitcases, two hatboxes, no, three hatboxes, garment bag, another garment bag, this small bag, another bag here… What else is there? Nothing, that is all. To the Hôtel Vittoria!”[4]

Exiting the train station, after picking up the trunk, she immediately recognized the bus driver, and waved at him. As soon as they got on, she said to her husband:

“You will see: a modest hotel, but very comfortable; good service, clean, modest prices, and a central position as well!”

The dearly departed––without wanting to, she would remember him––had been very happy with it. Now, Bartolino, too, no doubt, would have been mighty pleased with it. Oh, what an excellent good fellow! He barely even said a word.

“Stunned, are you?” she said to him. “It had the same effect on me, too, the first time... But you will see, you’ll like Rome. Look, look... Piazza delle Terme… Terme di Diocleziano... Santa Maria degli Angeli... [5] And that one, look over there! Up at the end, Via Nazionale...[6] Magnificent, isn’t it? We’ll go up it, later...”

Once they arrived at the hotel, Lina felt like she was at home. She would have wanted someone to recognize her, as she recognized almost everyone: there, that old waiter, for example... Pippo, yes; the same one from six years earlier.

“What room?”

They had assigned them to room no. 12, on the first floor: a beautiful room, big, with an alcove, well arranged. But Lina said to the old waiter:

“Pippo, and what about room no. 19, on the second floor? Would you please be so kind as to check if it is free?”

“Right away,” the waiter answered, bowing.

“Much more comfortable,” Lina explained to her husband. “There should be a small compartment next to the alcove… Also, more air and less noise. We would be much better off...”

She remembered that the same situation had occurred with the dearly departed: they had assigned him a room on the first floor, and he had it changed.

A little later, the waiter came to say that no. 19 was free and available for them, if they preferred it.

“But of course! But of course!” Lina rushed to say, very happy, clapping her hands.

And, as soon as she entered, she had the joy of again seeing that bedroom just the same, with the same upholstery, the same furniture in the same arrangement... Bartolino was an outsider to that joy.

“Don’t you like it?” Lina asked him, taking off her small hat in front of the familiar mirror on the chest of drawers.

“Yes... It’s good... ” he answered.

“Oh, look! I noticed in the mirror... That small painting was not there, then… There was a Japanese plate... It must have been broken. But, say, don’t you like it? No no no no no! No kisses, for now... With your muzzle dirty... You will wash up here; I’ll go over there, in my small area... Farewell!”

And she ran away, happy, exulting.

Bartolino Fiorenzo looked around, a little mortified; then, he drew closer to the alcove, lifted the bed curtains, and saw the bed. It had to be the same one in which his wife had slept with engineer Taddei for the first time.

And from far away, from a portrait hanging on the living room wall in his wife’s house, Bartolino saw himself being greeted.

For as long as the honeymoon lasted, then, not only did he lay in that same bed, but he also had lunch and dinner in the same restaurants where the dearly departed had taken his wife to eat; he walked around Rome following like a little dog the steps of the dearly departed, who was guiding in the wife’s memory; he visited ruins and museums and galleries and gardens, seeing and observing all that the dearly departed had taken his wife to see and observe.

He was shy, and he did not dare showing, in those first days, the humiliation, the mortification, that he started feeling from having to follow in every respect the experience, advice, taste, and inclinations of that first husband in that way.

But his wife was not doing it to cause harm. She did not notice, nor could she notice.

At eighteen years old, undiscerning, unprepared, she had been totally taken with that man, and she had been taught and shaped and made into a woman by him; she was, indeed, a creature of Cosimo Taddei, she owed him everything, everything, and she did not think and feel and speak and move except in his way.

And so why had she remarried? Well that was because Cosimo Taddei had taught her that tears are no remedy to tragedies. “Let those who remain live, and those who have gone die.” [7] If she had died, he would definitely have remarried; and thus...

Thus, now, Bartolino had to do things her way, that is, the way of Cosimo Taddei who was their teacher and guide: think about nothing, worry about nothing, laugh, and have a good time, because that was the time for those things. She was not doing it to cause harm.

Yes, but at least, I’d say... a kiss, a caress, something at last that was not exactly done in the way of that other... Was there nothing, nothing, nothing of his own for him to let that woman experience? Nothing of his that would remove her, even for just a little, from that dead man’s power?

Bartolino Fiorenzo searched and searched... But his shyness hindered him from fantasizing new caresses.

Or better, he fantasized about them, on his own, even very sensual caresses, but then it was enough for his wife, seeing him blush, to ask him:

“What’s the matter with you?”

Off you go, they all vanished away! He made an idiotic face and answered:

“What’s the matter with me?”

Upon their return from their honeymoon, they were shaken by sad, unexpected news: Mr. Motta, their matchmaker, had suddenly died.

Lina Fiorenzo, who, when Taddei died, had found Ortensia by her side giving her a sister’s comfort and care, ran to her immediately to care for her in turn.

She did not believe this task would be difficult for her: Ortensia, come on, oughtn’t be too distressed by that tragedy after all; poor Motta was a good man, yes, but very annoying and much older than her.

However, she was appalled to find her friend altogether inconsolable ten days after the tragedy. Lina supposed her husband must have left her in a bad financial situation. And she ventured to ask about it, with tact.

“No, no!” Ortensia rushed to answer to her, in tears. “But... you of course understand...”

What? All that sorrow, seriously? Lina Fiorenzo could not understand her. And she felt the need to say as much to her husband.

“Ha!” Bartolino said with a shrug, turning red as a crab on account of his wife’s sort of thoughtlessness, when she was nonetheless so wise. “After all... I mean... Her husband died...”

“Ha, come on, now! Husband…” Lina exclaimed. “He could have been her father, really!”

“And you think that’s not enough?”
“But he was not even a father, really!”
Lina was right. Ortensia was crying too much.
In Bartolino’s three-month engagement, Mrs. Motta had noticed that the poor lad had been very shaken by the promptness with which his betrothed spoke in his presence about her first husband; shaken, because he could not square the living, constant, persistent memory that she kept of him with the fact that she was now about to marry again. He had talked about it, at home, with his uncle, who had tried to reassure him saying that it was in fact proof of frankness––that’s what it was––on the part of the betrothed; so he should not feel offended by it, because indeed the fact that she was remarrying must provide him with the certainty that the man’s memory had no roots in her heart, but only in her mind, so that she thus could talk about it without hindrance, even in front of him. Bartolino had not been convinced by this interpretation at all. Ortensia knew it well. And now, after the honeymoon, she had reason to believe the young man’s confusion over that so-called frankness of his wife must have grown much bigger. When receiving the sympathy visit from the two newlyweds, she thus sought to demonstrate how inconsolable she was, not so much to Lina as to Bartolino.

And Bartolino Fiorenzo was struck so empathically by that widow’s sorrow that for the first time he dared contradict his wife, who did not want to believe in her sorrow. And he said to her, with his face burning:

“But you too, forgive me, didn’t you perhaps cry when you lost...”

“What does that have to do with it?” Lina interrupted him. “First of all, the dearly departed was...”

“Still young, yes,” Bartolino anticipated, so that she would not say it.

“And, then, I,” she resumed, “cried, cried, cried, it is true...”

“Not a lot?” Bartolino ventured to ask.

“A lot, a lot... But, eventually, I accepted it, that’s the thing! Believe me, Bartolino; all of Ortensia’s crying is too much.”

Bartolino could not believe that. After that conversation, Bartolino indeed felt annoyed even more, though he was annoyed not at his wife so much as the late Taddei. This was because, by then, he understood perfectly well that this way of reasoning, this way of feeling was not her own, not his wife’s. No, that was because of what that man taught – and he must have been a real cynic. Didn’t Bartolino perhaps see himself smiled at and greeted by him every day as he entered the living room?

Ah, he could no longer stand that portrait over there! It was a persecution! It was always before his eyes. When he entered the study? There it was: Taddei’s likeness laughed at him and greeted him, as if to say: “Come in! Be my guest! My engineering office was also here, you know? Are you now housing your chemistry lab there? Good luck with your work! “Let those who remain live, and those who have gone die!”

When he entered the bedroom? There, Taddei’s likeness tormented him there as well. He laughed and greeted him:

“Go ahead! Go ahead! Good night! Are you satisfied with my wife? Ha, I taught her well… “Let those who remain live, and those who have gone die!”

He could not take it anymore! That whole house was filled with that man, as was his wife. And he, so peaceful before, was now in a constant state of agitation, which, however, he tried to hide.

Eventually, he started acting weird, to shake his wife’s habits.

Except that, those habits, Lina had taken them up as a widow. Cosimo Taddei with his most lively personality did not have habits, had never wanted to have any. And so, therefore, at the first weird actions, Bartolino found himself rebuked by his wife:

“Oh God, Bartolino, like the dearly departed?”

But he was unwilling to give up. He forced his own inclinations violently so that he would develop new habits. Whatever he did, though, it seemed to Lina that it was the other who had done it to her, and he seemed to have been up to all sorts of things.

Bartolino felt discouraged; much more so because Lina seemed to be enjoying those extravagances once again. Going on like that, to her it certainly must have seemed like living again with the dearly departed.

And then... then to vent the agitation growing day after day, Bartolino came up with a malicious plan.

Truly, he did not mean to cheat on his wife so much as to punish that man who had taken all of her and was holding onto her still. He believed that malicious idea had formed in him instinctively; but really, it must be said in his defense that it was practically suggested, insinuated, infiltrated by the woman who, when he was still a bachelor, had more than once tried in vain to take him away from his extreme commitment to chemistry with her seductions.

For Ortensia Motta, it was a rematch. She was visibly sorry to deceive her friend; but she made it known to Bartolino that even before he got married, she... come on! It was almost meant to be!

That it was meant to be did not seem very clear to Bartolino; however, as the good man he was, he was disappointed, almost tricked, by the easiness with which he had achieved what he wanted. Staying for a moment alone, there in good old Motta’s bedroom, he regretted his bad deed. At one point, his eyes were directed to something shiny on the bedside rug, on Ortensia’s side of the bed. It was a gold pendant with a chain that must have slipped away from her neck. He picked it up, to return it to her; but, waiting, with his nervous fingers, without meaning to he instinctively opened it.

He was startled.

It was a teeny tiny little portrait of Cosimo Taddei, even there.

He was laughing and greeting him.