“The Fumes” (“Il fumo”)

Translated by Steve Eaton

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “The Fumes” (“Il fumo”), tr. Steve Eaton. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2021.

“The Fumes” first appeared in the volume White and Black (Bianche e nere, Turin: Streglio, 1904) and was then republished in a revised version in Black Shawl (Scialle Nero), the first Collection of Pirandello’s Stories for a Year that came out from Bemporad in Florence in 1922. Pirandello’s changes to the text are traced by Mario Costanzo in the notes of his Mondadori edition of Novelle per un anno published in the series I Meridiani.

Among his earlier works, “The Fumes” reflects Pirandello’s personal experience and upbringing in Agrigento, Sicily, where his father was partner in a sulfur mine and Pirandello was exposed to the harsh realities of that life (he visited the mines in the 1890s). The realism of this story likewise reflects Pirandello’s connection to the Sicilian school of verismo, the style of Italian Naturalism associated with Giovanni Verga and Luigi Capuana. Capuana was a friend of Pirandello’s in his early years in Rome, and the Sicilian verista encouraged the young Pirandello to pursue prose writing. A tragic accident in the mine would radically change Pirandello’s fortune in 1903, after flooding wiped out both his father’s investments and his wife’s dowry – not to mention the human toll. Though the story was published after this accident, its composition can likely be dated to before, ca. 1901.

This English translation of “The Fumes” was previously published in PSA – The Journal of the Pirandello Society of America, 32 (2019): 123-160.

The Editors

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE: Sulfur mining in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Sicily was dirty, dangerous, exhausting, health-ruining work. Miners worked in dark, damp, narrow, sweltering tunnels, typically nude or wearing only loincloths. The ore they dug was carried out of the mine in heavy sacks by young boys (“carusi”), rented out to the mine by poor families or provided by them as a form of loan repayment. In addition, the process of smelting the ore into pure sulfur, done on-site, released caustic fumes into the atmosphere which were devastating to the surrounding environment.

II

Among the most sorely tempted was don Mattia Scala, who owned a small farm with a nice grove of almond and olive trees halfway up the hillside where, to spite him, the richest, most promising mineral vein surfaced. [1]

Several engineers from the Royal Ministry of Mines had come to observe and study those outcroppings and make surveys. Scala would welcome them as a jealous husband might welcome a doctor making a call to treat some mysterious illness of his wife.

He couldn’t shut the door in the face of government engineers who appeared in their official capacity. He made up for it by venting abuse on those others who, whether sent by some wealthy sulfur producer or by some mining company, would offer to buy or lease the subsurface.

“I won’t sell you a damn thing,” he shouted. “Not even if you offered me the treasures of Croesus, not even if you told me, Mattia, scratch here with your foot, like chickens do—you’ll find so much sulfur that you’ll instantly become richer than… what should I say? than King Phalaris. [2] I wouldn’t scratch, word of honor.”

And if they insisted, even a little: “Look, are you going, or do I call the dogs?”

He often had occasion to repeat this threat of the dogs, since the main gate to his farm was on the trazzera, that is, the mule path that crossed over the hill, serving as a shortcut for the mine workers, overseers, and chief engineers passing through the valley from the nearest town or returning to it. Now, those engineers in particular seemed to take pleasure in getting him riled up. At least once a week, seeing don Mattia nearby, they would stop in front of the gate, to ask him, “Still no deal?”

“Get ‘em, Scampirro! Get ‘em, Regina!”

Don Mattia, raising a ruckus, really did call the dogs. He too had sulfur fever once, which had reduced him—yes, him!—to a miserable wretch! Now he couldn’t even see a piece of sulfur from a distance without immediately feeling his guts burst (to put it politely).

“Has the devil gotten into you?” they’d ask him.

And he’d reply, “Worse! Because the devil damns your soul, but makes you rich in return, if he likes! While sulfur makes you poorer than Job, and your soul is damned all the same!”

As he spoke, he looked like a telegraph (the way it used to work, you know, with giant signal arms). He was tall as a tree, gangly, with an old white hat always pushed to the back of his head, like a windsock. He wore a pair of little gold studs on his ears, which made it look as though (and it’s not as if he cared to hide it) he came from a family half working-class and half bourgeois.

On his clean-shaven pale face, with that pallor found in irritable men, his enormous eyebrows stood out strangely, hanging down like a grand mustache that had erupted up there, since lower down on the lip it hadn’t even been permitted to sprout. And underneath, in the shadow of those eyebrows, his clear piercing eyes shone quite vivaciously, while the energetic nostrils of his great aquiline nose continually dilated and trembled.

All the landowners on the hill loved him.

They recalled how he, once very rich, had come there to take possession of those few hectares of land purchased after his ruin, [3] with money earned from the sale of his house in the city, along with all of its furnishings and the jewelry left by his wife, who had died of a broken heart. They remembered how at first he had holed up in the four rooms of the rustic old house that came with the property, along with a girl of sixteen or so, Jana. He hadn’t wanted to see anyone. At first everyone believed that Jana was his daughter. They found out later that she was the younger sister of a certain Dima Chiarenza—the very same villain who had betrayed and ruined him.

It was a long story.

Scala had known this Chiarenza since childhood, and was always helping him, knowing he was an orphan with no father or mother, and with a much younger sister. Scala had even taken him on, giving him work, and later, having satisfied himself that Chiarenza was a real expert who loved the work, even wanted him as a partner in the leasing of a sulfur mine. Scala assumed all of the operational expenses himself—Dima Chiarenza just had to be there at his post, watching over the operation and the workers.

Meanwhile Jana (Januzza, they called her) was growing up at home. But don Mattia also had a son (an only child!) almost the same age, called Neli. Wouldn’t you know, soon father and mother realized that the two youngsters were taking to each other, and not like brother and sister. In order to keep the hay away from the fire and to allow the proper time for things, they judiciously decided to keep Neli, not yet eighteen, at a distance from the house, and they sent him to the sulfur mine to keep Chiarenza company and give him a hand. In two, three years they would get married if everything went well, as it seemed to be doing.

How could don Mattia Scala ever suspect that Dima Chiarenza, whom he had trusted like his own self, Dima Chiarenza, whom he had plucked from the streets, treated like a son and made a business partner, Dima Chiarenza should betray him, like Judas betrayed Christ?

That’s just what happened! He had conspired, the villain, with the chief engineer of the mine, conspired with the overseers, with the weighers, with the haulers, to rob him blind of the operating funds, of the extracted sulfur, of even the coal which was supposed to be used to fuel the machinery for pumping out the underground water. And one night the sulfur mine flooded irreparably, destroying the works on the inclined ground [4], which had cost Scala more than three hundred thousand lire [5].

Neli, who on that hellish night was at his post and had taken part in the desperate, useless effort to prevent the disaster, foresaw the hatred that his father would feel from then on for Chiarenza, a hatred which would include Jana, the innocent sister, his Jana. He feared that he too would be held responsible for the ruin, for not having noticed and not having denounced in time the betrayal of that Judas who was soon supposed to become his brother-in-law. That very night he fled like one gone mad in the middle of the storm and disappeared without a trace.

A few days later his mother, lovingly watched over by Jana, was dead. Scala found himself at home, alone, ruined, without his wife, without his son, alone with that girl who had clung to him as if crazed by shame and heartbreak, who hadn’t wanted to leave him, who had threatened to jump out a window if he made her go back to her brother’s house.

Conquered by her steadfastness and suppressing the revulsion that the sight of her now aroused in him, Scala had consented to bring her along, dressed in black like a daughter twice orphaned, there, to the little farm he acquired around then.

Emerging from his grief little by little over time, he began to exchange some words with the neighbors and to share some news about himself and the girl.

“Ah, she’s not your daughter?”

“No. But she might as well be.”

He was ashamed at first to say who she really was. About his son he said nothing. That thorn went too deep. And for that matter, what news could he give? He had none. The police had taken up the case but hadn’t produced any results.

After some years, however, Jana tired of waiting so hopelessly for the return of her fiancé. She wanted to go back to the city, to the home of her brother who, having married an old woman with a lot of money, a notorious usurer, had taken up usury as well and now was among the richest men in the region.

So, Scala was left alone there on the little farm. Eight years had already passed and, outwardly at least, he had recovered his old spirit. He had become a friend to all the landowners on the hill who often came to visit him around sunset from the neighboring farms.

It seemed as though the farm wished to compensate him for the damage done by the sulfur mine.

And it was a piece of luck that he had been able to acquire those few hectares of land, because one of the owners of the six farms into which the hill was parceled out, Butera, filthy rich, had gotten it into his head to gradually take over all those lands. He loaned out money and went about little by little enlarging his property. He had already annexed almost half the farm of a certain Nino Mo, and he had reduced another landowner, Làbiso, to living on a scrap of land the size of a handkerchief, advancing him the dowries for five daughters. For some time, he’d also had his eye on Lopes’ lands. This Lopes had had to sell off a part of his property after a run of bad years. But in a fit of pique, he contented himself with selling it, even at a low price, to a stranger: Scala.

In a few years, throwing himself completely into his work as a distraction from his misfortunes, don Mattia had improved those few hectares of land so much that now his friends, even Lopes himself, barely recognized them. They were amazed.

Actually, Lopes was eating out his insides with jealousy. Red haired, freckle-faced and utterly disheveled, he usually wore his hat pushed down on his nose, as if he no longer wanted to see anything or anyone. But once in a while a sideways glance darted out from under the brim of that hat, something no one expected from those big greenish eyes that looked half asleep.

Walking about his property, Scala’s friends used to stop by the clearing in front of the farmhouse.

Once there, Scala would invite them to sit on the low wall that enclosed the rim of the escarpment on which the farmhouse was built. Out back at the foot of the escarpment there grew, as if to protect the farmhouse, some quite tall black poplars. Don Mattia was obsessed with the question of why Lopes had planted them there.

“What are they doing there? Can you tell me? They don’t bear fruit and they get in the way.”

“So you cut them down and make charcoal out of them,” Lopes would lazily reply.

But Butera advised, “Take a look, before cutting them down, and see if someone will take them.”

“And who do you think would take them?”

“Come on! The ones who make the wooden saints.”

“Ah, the Saints! Look, look, now I understand.” don Mattia concluded. “The Saints don’t perform miracles anymore because they’re made from this wood!”

In the evening, all the sparrows of the hill would convene on those poplars, and with their driving, deafening chirping they disturbed the friends trying to talk there, usually about the sulfur mines and the damage inflicted by the mining companies.

The discussion was almost always led by Nocio Butera, who as the richest landowner also owned the biggest belly in the land. He was a lawyer, but only once in his life, just after having obtained his degree, had he tried to practice his profession. He had panicked right at the climax of his first speech. At a loss, like a little boy with tearful eyes, there before the jurors and the Court he had raised his arms with fists clenched against Justice, depicted on the chamber vault, scales and all. “Uh…what! Dear God!” the poor young man had groaned, flustered, because he had sweated blood to commit the speech to memory and had believed he could recite it perfectly, start to finish, without notes.

Every so often, still, someone reminded him of that famous fiasco.

“Uh…what, don No’, dear God!”

And Nocio Butera would play along, laughing too, mumbling, “yeah, yeah,” as he scratched the black sideburns on his rosy cheeks with his plump hands or adjusted, on his little dumpling of a nose or on his ears, the bridge or the shafts of his gold-rimmed glasses. He could well afford to laugh heartily. Even though he had made such a poor showing as a lawyer, he was a grand champion as a grower and property manager. But man, you know, man is never contented, and it seemed that Nocio Butera could only find enjoyment in the knowledge that others, like him, had made missteps in some venture. He came to Scala’s place only to announce the imminent ruin or recent fall of this one or that one, and to explain the reasons why, and to show how such a thing would certainly never have happened to him.

Tino Làbiso, tall, skinny, wrinkled as a dried fig, would take a big red and black checked cloth out of his pants pocket, blow his nose into it, sounding like a conch horn, and then carefully refold it, passing it thus folded several times under his nose, and put it back in his pocket. Finally, ever the prudent one who never lets himself issue rash judgements, he would say, “Could be.”

“Could be? Is, is, is!” exclaimed Nino Mo, who couldn’t stand Làbiso’s phlegmatic tone.

Lopes would show signs of shaking off his gloomy boredom. From underneath the hat pushed down on his nose, he suggested in a sleepy voice, “Let don Mattia speak. He knows more about it than you.”

But before speaking, don Mattia always went down to his cellar for a nice jug of wine to offer his friends.

“Vinegar, go poison yourselves!”

He also drank, sitting down with his legs crossed, asking, “What’s it about?”

“What it’s about,” Nino Mo usually broke in, “is that they’re all animals, every single one!”

“Who?”

“Those sons of bitches, of course! The sulfur miners! They dig and dig, and the price of sulfur goes down, down, down! Without understanding that they are bringing themselves and us to ruin, because all the money is going to end up there, in those holes, in those ever-ravenous hellholes, holes that are eating us alive!”

“And the remedy, please?” Scala would ask in turn.

“To limit,” Nocio Butera placidly replied, “to limit the production of sulfur. That would be the only way, in my opinion.”

“Mother of God, what lunacy!” don Mattia Scala immediately exclaimed, rising to his feet in order to gesture more freely. “Excuse me, my dear don Nocio, lunacy, yes, lunacy, and I will prove it to you! Just tell me, how many, among a thousand sulfur mines, do you think are run directly, no middleman, by the owners? Barely two hundred! All the others are leased out. You, Tino Làbiso, do you agree?”

“Could be,” Tino Làbiso repeated, intent and grave.

Nino Mo: “Could be? Is is is!”

Don Mattia would stick out his hands to silence him. “Now my dear Nocio, what do you think is the duration of a sulfur lease, given the greed and heartlessness of fat-cat landholders like you? Speak up, speak up!”

“Ten years?” Butera guessed uncertainly, smiling with an air of condescending superiority.

“Twelve,” conceded Scala, “twenty, even, sometimes. Fine, so what do you do with it? How much profit can you dig out in such a short time? As busy and as lucky as you might be, in twenty years there’s no way you can even recover the outlays needed to develop a sulfur mine as God requires. The point is, that when there’s weak demand, the owner-operator can slow down production in order keep the price of his goods from sinking, but never the short-term leaseholder. If he did, he would be sacrificing his own interests for those of his successor. That’s why the leaseholder is dedicated, tenacious, in producing as much as he possibly can, do you get me? Then, short of funds as he almost always is, he’s forced to unload his product immediately, at whatever price, in order to stay in operation, because if he’s not operating—as you know—the owner will take away his mine. And, as a consequence, as Nino Mo says, sulfur goes down, down, down, as if it were worthless rock. But for that matter, you, don Nocio, who’re educated, and you Tino Làbiso, could you even tell me what the devil sulfur is, and what it’s used for?”

Even Lopes would turn to look with wide open eyes at this trick question. Nino Mo thrust his fidgety hands into his pockets, as if furiously looking there for the answer, while Tino Làbiso pulled out his handkerchief as usual to blow his nose and take his time, prudent man that he was.

“Oh, well!” exclaimed Nocio Butera meanwhile, also embarrassed. “It’s used… used for… for treating grape vines, that’s what.”

“And…and also for…yeah, for making matches, it seems to me,” added Tino Làbiso, refolding his handkerchief with utmost care.

“It seems to me…it seems to me,” Mattia Scala would start to chuckle. “What seems to you? That’s just it! We only know about these two uses. Ask anyone you like. No one will be able to tell you what else sulfur is used for. And yet we work, we kill ourselves to dig it out, then we transport it down to the ships, where so many steamers stand ready, English, American, German, French, even Greek, their holds wide open like so many mouths to devour it. They blow the old whistle, and so long! What do they do with it over there, in their own countries? No one knows, no one cares to know! And meanwhile our riches, what should be our riches, disappear just like that from the veins of our gutted mountains, and we’re left here like so many blind men, like fools, with bones broken from fatigue and empty pockets. The only thing we get out of it? Our land burned from the fumes.”

At this animated, thundering demonstration of the blind foolishness with which industry and commerce handled this treasure, granted by nature to their territory, yet the object of such feverish intrigue, such ruthless and dishonest battles over profits, the four friends were left mute, as if crushed by a condemnation to eternal poverty.

Resuming the earlier discussion, Scala then began to demonstrate all the other burdens which the poor renter of a sulfur mine had to bear. He knew all of them, unfortunately, for having experienced them. First off, beyond the short lease, there’s the “cut.” That’s the share that the renter has to pay in kind from the gross output to the owner of the ground, who’s entirely uninterested in knowing whether the deposit is rich or poor, whether the barren patches are rare or frequent, whether the subsurface is dry or filled with water, whether the price is high or low, whether in short the operation is or isn’t profitable. Then beyond the “cut,” the government taxes of every kind. And furthermore, the need to construct not just the inclined tunnels to access the sulfur and the one for ventilation, and the shafts for the extraction and drainage of water, but also the smelting pits, the ovens, the roads, the housing, and whatever else that might be needed on the surface for the operation of the mine. And when the contract expired, all this construction was supposed to revert to the landowner, who furthermore insisted that everything get handed over in working order and good condition, as if the expenses had been his. And that wasn’t enough! The renter wasn’t even his own boss, doing things his own way down in the tunnels, but instead had to build them with arches or columns or supporting walls or whatever the owner dictated, even when they were wrong for the type of terrain.

You’d have to be crazy or desperate—no?—to accept these conditions, to let someone put his foot on your neck. Who were they actually, the sulfur producers, for the most part? Poor devils without a penny to their name, forced to procure the funds for operating the rented mine from the sulfur ship merchants, who subjected them to further usury, further abuse.

So adding it all up, what was left for the producers? And how could they possibly pay a less pitiful wage to those wretches who struggled down there, continually risking death? War, therefore. Hate, hunger, and poverty for everyone—for the producers, for the pickaxe men, for those poor oppressed boys, crushed by a load that exceeded their strength, up and down the tunnels and ladders of the hole.

When Scala finished speaking and the neighbors got up to return to their rural homes, the moon looked high and rather lost in the sky, after such a tale of misery. It was not quite the moon of that night but the moon of a time far, far away. Lighting up the two slopes of the valley, it made their desolation appear even more bleak and dismal.

And each one, going on his way, was thinking that beneath those slopes so grimly lit up, one hundred, two hundred meters underground, there were people still wearing themselves out by digging, poor pickaxe miners buried down there, for whom it mattered not whether it was day or night, because for them it was always night.

III

Everyone, hearing him speak, believed that Scala had forgotten his past grievances by now and no longer cared about anything except his little piece of land, which he hadn’t torn himself away from for years, not even for a day.

As for his missing son, lost to the world—if he talked about him sometimes because someone steered the conversation that way—he erupted in deprecation for the ingratitude he’d shown, for the hard heart of which he’d given proof.

“If he lives,” he would conclude, “he lives for himself. For me, he’s dead, and I don’t think about him anymore.”

He talked that way, but meanwhile no farmer from anywhere in the region could leave for America without him hurrying over unseen, on the eve of the departure, for the secret consignment of a letter addressed to his son.

“Oh, no special reason! If by chance you happen to see him or hear some news over there.”

Many of these letters got returned to him after four or five years (along with the repatriated emigrant), crumpled, yellowed, by now almost illegible. No one had seen Neli or managed to get news of him, not in Argentina, nor in Brazil, nor in the United States.

He would listen and then shrug his shoulders.

“And what’s it to me? Give it here, give it here. I’d forgotten I even gave you that letter for him.”

He didn’t want to show strangers the misery in his heart, the illusion he needed to persist in believing—that his son was there in America, in some remote spot, and that sooner or later he must return, coming back to find out that Scala had adapted to his new situation and owned a farm where he was living contentedly, waiting for him.

His land was small, actually. But for several years now don Mattia had been hatching a plot, concealed from Butera, to expand it by acquiring the land of a neighbor, with whom he had already set a price and come to an agreement. So many privations, so many sacrifices he had imposed on himself, to put aside what was needed to realize his plan! Yes, his land was small, but for a while now, looking out from the balcony of his farmhouse, he’d gotten into the habit of visually jumping over the wall marking the boundary between his property and the neighbor’s and considering all of that land his. With the money saved up, he was only waiting for the neighbor to make up his mind to sign the contract and move out.

Scala had known him for a thousand years, but unfortunately, he happened to be dealing with a real character! A good man, let’s be clear, don Filippino Lo Cicero, quiet, courteous, submissive, but without doubt a little soft in the head. From morning to night, he would read some old Latin books, and he lived alone in the country with a monkey they’d given him.

The monkey was called Tita, and she was old and consumptive to boot. Don Filippino cared for her like a daughter. He caressed her, he put up with her, never objecting to any of her caprices. He talked to her all day, quite certain of being understood. And when she, unhappy because of her illness, would climb up onto the canopy of the bed, her favorite place, he, sitting in his armchair, began to read to her some bits from the Georgics or the Bucolics.

“Tityre, tu patulae…”

But that reading was interrupted from time to time by certain very odd fits of admiration at some phrase, some expression, sometimes even at one simple word of which don Filippino understood the exquisite aptness or enjoyed the sweetness. He then set the book on his knee, half-closed his eyes and began to say rapidly, “Lovely! lovely! lovely! lovely! lovely,” gradually slumping on the backrest as if swooning from pleasure. Tita would then descend from the canopy and climb onto his chest, concerned, upset. Don Filippino hugged her and said to her, at the height of joy,

“Listen, Tita, listen… Lovely! lovely! lovely! lovely! lovely…”

Now don Mattia Scala wanted that farm. He was impatient, he was starting to get fed up, and for good reason. The agreed-upon sum was ready—and note that the money would have made don Filippino quite comfortable. But, good Lord, how was Filippino supposed to enjoy the pastoral, bucolic poetry of his divine Virgil in the city?

“Have patience, my dear Mattia!”

The first time that Scala heard himself spoken to like this, his eyes bugged out.

“Are you joking with me, or are you serious?”

Joking? He wouldn’t dream of it! He was speaking quite seriously, he was.

There were some things Scala just couldn’t understand. And then there was Tita, Tita who was used to living in the country, and who perhaps would never be able to do otherwise, poor little thing.

On nice days don Filippino took her for a stroll, making her walk upright quite slowly for part of the way, then holding her in his arms as if she were a baby. Then he would sit on some rock at the foot of a tree. Tita climbed up its branches and dangling from it, holding on by the tail, would try to snatch his skullcap by the tassel, or grab a tuft of his wig, or tear Virgil out of his hands.

“Be a good little Tita, be good! Do me this favor, poor Tita!”

Poor, poor, yes, because she was doomed, that dear little creature. So Mattia Scala had to have a little more patience.

“At least wait,” don Filippino would say to him, “until this poor little creature is gone. Then the farm will be yours. All right?”

But the grace period had lasted more than a year now, and the ugly little beast still hadn’t made up her mind to croak.

“Don’t we want to make her get well?” Scala told him one day. “I have a formula that works wonders!”

Don Filippino looked at him, smiling, but also with some anxiety, and asked, “Are you kidding me?”

“No, seriously. It was given to me by a veterinarian who studied in Naples, the best.”

“Then let’s, my dear Mattia!”

“So this is how you do it. Take one liter of pure olive oil. Do you have some, pure oil? But pure, really pure?”

“I’ll buy it, even if I have to pay for it with pope’s blood.”

“Good. One liter. Set it to boil and throw in three cloves of garlic.”

“Garlic?”

“Three cloves. Listen to me. When the oil starts to move, before it reaches a boil, take it off the fire. Then take a good handful of Mallorcan flour and toss it in.”

“Mallorcan flour?”

“From Mallorca, yes sir. Mix. Then, when it’s reduced to a soft, oily paste, apply it still warm to the chest and back of that ugly beast. Cover her thoroughly in bandages, lots of bandages, understand?”

“Absolutely, in bandages. And then?”

“Then open a window and throw her out.”

“Oooh!” mewed don Filippino. “Poor Tita!”

“Poor farm, I say! You don’t take care of it. I have to watch over it from a distance, and meanwhile, just think—the vines are gone, the trees haven’t been pruned for a decade at least, and the bushes are growing without grafts [6], sending out shoots every which way, sucking the life out of each other, like they’re crying for help from all directions. Many of the olive trees aren’t good for anything but firewood. What am I going to be left with? How can this go on?”

Don Filippino, hearing these remonstrances, wore such a pained expression that don Mattia didn’t have the heart to say more.

Who was he talking to, anyway? The poor man was not of this world. Perhaps the sun, the real sun, the sun of day was never meant for him. For him only the suns of Virgil’s time still dawned.

He had always lived there on that farm, at first with his uncle, a priest, who upon dying had left it to him in his will, and thereafter all alone. Orphaned at the age of three, he had been taken in and raised by that uncle, a passionate Latinist and lifelong hunter. But don Filippino had never taken to hunting, perhaps because of the experience of his uncle, who—priest or no priest—was terribly hotheaded. Specifically, the experience, bless his memory, of blowing two fingers off his left hand while loading the rifle. Rather, don Filippino had given himself over completely to Latin with a quiet passion, contenting himself with swooning from pleasure over and over again in his reading. His priest uncle, however, would jump to his feet when overcome with admiration, his face inflamed, the veins on his forehead so swollen that they seemed about to burst, and would read aloud in a thundering voice and hurl the book to the ground or in don Filippino’s stunned face, exploding: “Sublime, holy hell!”

When the priest suddenly died, don Filippino was left master of the farm, but master only in a manner of speaking.

While alive, the uncle priest had also owned a house in the nearby city, and in his will he had left that house to another sister’s son, Saro Trigona. Now perhaps that man, considering his own situation as an unlucky sulfur broker and extremely unlucky father of a family with a horde of children, was expecting the uncle priest to leave everything to him, the house in town and the farm—with the obligation (yes, of course) to take in and provide for his cousin, as long as he lived. Cicero, who’d been coddled since childhood, would have been inept in administering that farm by himself anyway. But since the uncle hadn’t been so considerate, Saro Trigona, without a legitimate claim, tried to squeeze profits in every possible way from his cousin’s inheritance. He milked poor don Filippino mercilessly. Almost all of the products of the farm went to Trigona—wheat, beans, fruit, wine, vegetables. And if don Filippino sold some part of it in secret, as if they weren’t his own goods, his cousin, discovering the sale, descended upon the farm in a fury, almost as if he had discovered a fraud at his expense. In vain would don Filippino humbly show him that he needed the money for the many tasks the farm required. Trigona wanted the money.

“Or I’ll kill myself!” he would say, making as if to pull out the revolver from the holster under his jacket. “I’ll kill myself here in front of you, Filippino, right now! Because I can’t go on, believe me! Nine children, holy Christ, nine children who are crying out to me for bread!”

And thank God if he came to the farm alone to make that scene! Sometimes he brought his wife and the horde of children. Don Filippino, who had always lived alone, felt he was going mad. His cousin’s nine sons (no girls), the oldest not yet fourteen, however much “crying for bread,” laid siege to don Filippino’s tranquil country house like nine demons let loose. They turned everything upside down. They made the rooms shake, really shake, from their shouts, their laughter, their cries, their unrestrained running. Then one heard the unmistakable crash, the shattering sound of some great breakage, of some armoire mirror (at the very least) smashed to bits.

Then Saro Trigona would jump to his feet, shouting, “I’m making the organ! I’m making the organ!”

He would run back and forth, grabbing those vandals, distributing kicks, slaps, punches, spankings. As they began to shriek in every tone, he would arrange them in a line, in order by height, and thus they formed the organ.

“Stop there! Beautiful…really beautiful, look, Filippino! Aren’t they fit for a painting? What a symphony!”

Don Filippino would cover his ears, close his eyes, and start to stamp his feet in desperation.

“Send them away! They break everything. Take away my house, the trees, all of it, but leave me in peace for pity’s sake!”

But was don Filippino really being fair? Because his cousin’s wife, for example, never came out to see him in the country with empty hands. She brought him an embroidered skullcap with a pretty silk ribbon, why not? The one he was wearing on his head. Or she brought him a pair of slippers, which she’d also embroidered, the ones he was wearing on his feet. And the wig? Gift and gesture of kindness from her husband, to protect him from the frequent chills to which he was vulnerable due to his premature baldness. A wig from France! It had cost him, Saro Trigona, an eye out of his head. And the monkey? She too was a gift from Saro’s wife—a surprise gift, to relieve the idleness and solitude of her good cousin exiled to the country. Why not?

“Jackass, excuse me, you’re a jackass!” don Mattia Scala would shout at him. “Why else are you still making me wait to take possession? Sign the contract, free yourself from this servitude! With the money I’m giving you, you without vices, with so few needs, you could quietly live out your remaining years in the city. Are you crazy? If you waste any more time for love of Tita and Virgil, you’ll be reduced to begging. Begging!”

Because don Mattia Scala, not wanting the farm which he already considered his own to go to ruin, had begun to advance Cicero part of the agreed amount.

“So much for the pruning, so much for the grafts, so much for manuring… Don Filippino, let’s subtract that!”

“We’ll subtract that!” don Filippino would sigh. “But let me stay here. In the city, near those demons, I would die in two days. Anyway, I’m not interfering with you. Aren’t you the boss here, my dear Mattia? You can do as you see fit and as you like. I don’t say a thing. Only leave me in peace…”

“Yes. But meanwhile,” Scala would respond, “your cousin is enjoying the benefits!”

“What do you care?” Cicero would point out. “You should be giving me the money all at once, right? Instead, you’re giving it to me like this, in dribs and drabs, and I’m losing out, basically, since by taking out a little today, a little tomorrow, I’ll get less someday. Meanwhile you’ll have spent here and now, to improve the land that’s going to be yours.”

IV

This argument was no doubt convincing, but meanwhile what security did Scala have for the money he had spent on don Filippino’s plot of land, out of his own pocket? And what if don Filippino should suddenly keel over (God forbid!) without having had the time and opportunity to sign the bill of sale, however deeply he was involved by now? Would Saro Trigona, his only heir, recognize those expenses and his cousin’s prior agreement?

This doubt arose from time to time in don Mattia’s heart, but then he would think that in wanting to force don Filippino to grant him possession of the place, to put the squeeze on him over that money already advanced, he risked getting the response: “But in the end, who forced you to make those advance payments? For me the place could have been left the way it was and even gone to ruin—I never cared about that. You can hardly toss me out of my own house now, if I don’t want to go.” Scala further considered that he was dealing with a true gentleman, incapable of harming a fly. As for the danger of his sudden death, danger there was none—without vices and living so modestly, ever healthy and spry, he was likely to last to one hundred. Anyway, the term of the grace period was already fixed: until the death of the monkey, which by now would be a short wait.

All in all, it was such great luck to be able to buy that land at such a modest price, that it suited him to remain quiet and trusting. It even suited him to keep the upper hand that way, with the money he was steadily spending, quietly, as he saw fit and as he liked. He was the real boss there—he was there more, you could say, than on his own farm.

“Do this, now do that.” He was in charge. The farm was improving, and he wasn’t paying taxes. What more did he want?

Poor don Mattia thought of everything, except what that damned monkey, which had caused him so much trouble, would finally do to him!

Scala customarily rose before dawn to watch over preparations for the work laid out the evening before with his hired boy. While the boy was pruning, for example, Scala didn’t want him to return two or three times from the hillside to the farmhouse, whether for the ladder, or the grindstone to sharpen the pruning hook, or the hatchet, or for water or for lunch. He needed to go out supplied and prepared in every way, so as not to waste time needlessly.

“Got the jug? Something to go with your bread? Here’s an onion, take it. Come on now, hurry up.”

Then he would move on to Cicero’s farm before the sun appeared.

That day, because of a stack of wood he’d had to light to make charcoal, Scala was running late. It was already past ten. Meanwhile the door of don Filippino’s farmhouse was oddly still shut. Don Mattia knocked—no one answered. He knocked again, in vain. He looked up at the balconies and the windows. Closed for the night, still.

“Now what?” he thought, heading to the farmhand’s house to get news from his wife [7].

But he found that closed as well. The farm looked abandoned.

Scala then brought his hands to his mouth to make a bullhorn and, turning back towards the farm, loudly called the farmhand. Getting a response from the foot of the slope, he asked him if don Filippino was there. The farmhand answered that he hadn’t been seen. A bit apprehensive by now, Scala went back to knock at the farmhouse. He kept calling: Don Filippino! Don Filippino!—and getting no answer, not knowing what to think, he began to pull on his big trembling nose.

The evening before he had left his friend in good health. So, he couldn’t be ill, at least not so bad that he couldn’t leave his bed for a moment. But maybe—ah, that was it—he’d forgotten to open the windows of the front room and had gone out to the farm with the monkey. Perhaps he had shut the front door, seeing as there was no one at the farmhand’s place to keep an eye out.

Calming himself down with this reflection, he began to look around the farm, though occasionally stopping, here and there, when the expert and judicious eye of the agriculturalist discovered on the fly the need for some repair. From time to time, he called out, “Don Filippino, oh don Filippiii…”

And so, he ended up at the foot of the slope, where the farmhand and three day-laborers were tending to the vineyard with hoes.

“And don Filippino? What’s going on? I can’t find him.”

Overcome with distress before the uncertainty of those men, to whom it seemed strange that he had found the house still shut just as they had left it upon going to work, Scala proposed that they all return together to see what had happened.

“I just know it! Something’s gone wrong this morning!”

“It’s not like him!” ventured the farmhand. “He’s usually such an early riser…”

“But the monkey must’ve gotten sick, you’ll see!” said one of the day-laborers. “He’ll keep it in his arms, and won’t want to move, to keep from disturbing it.”

“Not even when he hears his name called, like I called him, I don’t know how many times?” observed don Mattia. “Get over there! Something must have happened to him!”

Reaching the clearing in front of the farmhouse, all five of them tried to call him in turn, uselessly. They circled the farmhouse. On the north side they found a window with the shutters open, and took heart.

“Aha!” exclaimed the farmhand. “He’s opened it, finally! It’s the kitchen window.”

“Don Filippino!” cried Scala. “Damn you! Don’t give us such a fright!”

They waited a bit with upturned faces, then went back to calling him in every possible way. Finally don Mattia, by now furious and quite distressed, made a decision.

“A ladder!”

The farmhand ran to his house and returned shortly with the ladder.

“I’ll go up!” said don Mattia, pale and shaking as usual, pushing everyone aside.

Reaching the height of the window, he took off his old white hat, thrust his fist into it and broke the glass. Then he opened the window and jumped inside.

The hearth in the kitchen was cold. He didn’t hear any sound in the house. Everything inside was still as if it were night—daylight shone only through the gaps in the shutters.

“Don Filippino!” Scala called once more, but the sound of his own voice in that strange silence made him shudder, from the hairs on his head down the length of his spine.

Feeling his way, he crossed some rooms. He reached the bedroom, still in the dark. Just as he entered, he abruptly halted. In the feeble glow that filtered through the shutters he thought he discerned something like a shadow moving on the bed, crawling along, then vanishing. The hairs stood up on his head. He lacked the voice to cry out. In one leap he was at the balcony window. He opened it, he turned around, opening his eyes and mouth wide in horrified disgust, shaking his hands in the air. Breathless, voiceless, trembling all over and shrinking in terror, he ran to the kitchen window.

“Come on…get up here! Killed! Murdered!”

“Murdered? How? What are you saying?” exclaimed those waiting anxiously, all four rushing together to climb up. The farmhand wanted to go first, shouting, “Easy with the ladder! One at a time!”

Stunned, shocked, don Mattia was keeping both hands on his head, his mouth still open and his eyes filled with that horrendous sight.

Don Filippino lay on the bed with his head flung back, buried in the pillow, stretched out as if by a spasmodic fit, exposing his torn and bloody throat. He still held out his hands, those little hands which didn’t even seem to be his, horrendous to look at now, so grotesquely stiff and livid.

Don Mattia and the four farmworkers looked at him for a bit, terrified. Suddenly all five jumped from a noise that came from under the bed. They looked each other in the eye, then one of them bent down to look.

“The monkey!” he said with a sigh of relief, and almost started to laugh.

Then the other four also bent down to look.

Tita was crouching under the bed, her head lowered, and arms crossed on her chest. Seeing those five examining her from all sides, bent down and contorted liked that, she reached up to the bed boards with her hands and turned several somersaults, then formed an “o” with her mouth and emitted a menacing sound: “Chhhh...”

Then Scala shouted, “Look! Blood. On her hands…her bloody chest… She’s killed him!”

He remembered what he had seemed to discern coming in and reaffirmed it, convinced. “Yes, it was her! I saw her, with my own eyes! She was on the bed…”

And he showed the four horrified farmworkers the slashes on the throat and chin of the poor deceased. “Look!”

But how could it be? The monkey? Was it possible? That animal he’d kept by his side for so many years, night and day?

“Maybe it’s rabid?” wondered one of the laborers, fearfully.

At once, all five moved away from the bed with the same thought.

“Wait! A stick…” said don Mattia. And he glanced around the room for one, or at least some object that could serve.

The farmhand took a chair by its back and bent down, but the others, being unarmed and unprotected, took fright and shouted at him, “Wait! Wait!”

They supplied themselves with chairs as well. The farmhand then shoved his chair several times under the bed. Tita jumped out from the other side, clambered with marvelous agility up the bedpost, and went to squat on top of the canopy. There, peacefully, as if it were nothing, she started to scratch her belly, then played with the corner of the handkerchief that poor don Filippino had tied around her throat.

The five men stood watching that beastly indifference, stunned.

“What do we do now?” asked Scala, lowering his eyes to the cadaver. But he quickly turned his face away from the sight of that torn throat. “Do we cover him with this same sheet here?”

“No sir!” the farmhand said immediately. “Listen to me, sir. We need to leave him just as we found him. I live here, at home, and I don’t want to get mixed up with the law, not me. In fact, you’re all my witnesses.”

“Now what’s that got to do with it!” exclaimed don Mattia, elbowing him aside.

But the farmhand persisted, putting out his hands, “You never know with the justice system, boss! We’re poor folk, the rest of us, and for us…I know what I’m talking about…”

“What I think,” cried don Mattia, exasperated, “is that he, poor lunatic, died like a jackass, because of his stubbornness, while I, crazier and more stubborn than him, am good and ruined! Oh, but I do have eyewitnesses—you all, here—that I spent my money and my blood on this farm, you’ll say so…now go and advise that fine gentleman Saro Trigona and the magistrate and the prefect to come and see the accomplishments of this… damned thing!” he shouted in a sudden outburst, tearing off his hat and hurling it at the monkey.

Tita caught it on the fly, carefully examined it, rubbed it against her face as if to blow her nose, then threw it down and sat on it. The four farmworkers broke out in laughter, without meaning to.

V

Nothing, not one line of a will or a note, be it in some ledger or even on some loose scrap of paper.

And if the damage wasn’t enough, don Mattia had to endure his friends’ mockery as well. Oh yes, since Nocio Butera, for example, would have easily figured out that don Filippino Lo Cicero would die that way, killed by the monkey.

“You, Tino Làbiso, what do you say, eh? Could be, right? What a beast, what a beast, what a beast!”

And don Mattia, his hands clutching the brim of his old white hat, would shove it down over his eyes, stamping his feet in rage.

Saro Trigona didn’t want to listen to him until his cousin was underground, after the findings of the doctor and the magistrate, protesting that the misfortune prevented him from talking business.

“Yes! As if the monkey wasn’t a gift from him, on purpose!” Scala said in outrage to himself, secretly.

Trigona should have awarded a gold medal to that monkey. Instead—the ingrate—he had her shot the next day, just like that, bang bang, despite the fact that the young doctor, arriving at the farm along with the magistrate, had found an elegant explanation for the beast’s unintentional crime. Ill with consumption, Tita was possibly feeling short of breath, probably also due to the handkerchief that poor don Filippino had tied around her neck, maybe a bit too tight, or because she herself tightened it in trying to undo it. All right then: perhaps she had jumped on the bed to show her owner where she felt short of breath, there, at his throat, and had taken hold of it. Then, under duress, unable to draw a breath, exasperated, she had perhaps started to dig with her nails, there, into her owner’s throat. End of story! She was an animal, after all. What did she understand?

And the magistrate, a picture of scowling seriousness, nodded with his big bald head, red and sweaty, in approval of the rare perspicacity of the young doctor—what a darling!

Enough. The cousin underground, the monkey shot, Saro Trigona placed himself at don Mattia Scala’s disposal.

“My dear don Mattia, let’s talk.”

There was little to talk about. In his abrupt way Scala briefly revealed his agreement with Cicero and how, waiting day after day for that damned pest to die before taking possession, he had spent several thousand lire on the property over many seasons, which should as a consequence be deducted from the agreed-upon amount. Clear, no?

“Quite clear!” responded Trigona, who had listened with close attention to Scala’s account, nodding his head, all seriousness, like the magistrate. “Quite clear! And I, for my part, my dear don Mattia, am inclined to respect the agreement. I’m a commodities broker, and as you know, it’s tough going! It takes an act of God to sell a load of sulfur. The commission gets eaten up in postage and telegrams. My point is that, given my profession, I couldn’t tend to the farm, which I wouldn’t know what to do with. And then as you know, my dear Mattia, I have nine boys, each one more beastly than the next, who have to go to school. So I’m forced to stay in the city. Let’s come to us. There’s a problem, there is. Oh, my dear don Mattia, unfortunately! A big problem. Nine boys, we were saying, and you don’t know, you can’t have any idea how much they cost me. Why just in shoes…! They’ll drive you mad. My point is, my dear don Mattia…”

“For pity’s sake, stop calling me my dear don Mattia,” Scala broke in, irritated by that interminable discourse which wasn’t leading up to anything. “My dear don Mattia… my dear don Mattia… enough! Let’s finish up! I’ve already lost too much time with the monkey and with don Filippino!”

“Here it is,” resumed Trigona, without losing his composure. “I’m trying to tell you that I’ve always had to resort to certain gentlemen, God save and protect us, in order to…do I make myself clear? And of course they have their foot on my neck. You know who the top dog is in this town, for these types of operations…”

“Dima Chiarenza?” exclaimed Scala immediately, leaping to his feet, quite pale. He flung his hat to the ground and passed a hand furiously through his hair. Keeping his hand at the back of his neck, his eyes wide open, he pointed the finger of his other hand at Trigona like a weapon.

“You?” he managed. “You, from that criminal? From that murderer, who’s eaten me alive? How much have you taken?”

“Wait, I’ll tell you,” responded Trigona, with a calm sadness, putting out a hand. “Not me! Because that criminal, as you put it so well, didn’t want to have anything to do with my signature…”

“So then… don Filippino?” asked Scala, covering his face with his hands, as if to avoid seeing the words coming out of his mouth.

“The collateral,” whispered Trigona, shaking his head bitterly.

Don Mattia started to circle the room, exclaiming, with his hands in the air, “Ruined! Ruined! Ruined!”

“Wait,” repeated Trigona. “Don’t despair. Let’s try and put things right. How much did you, sir, plan to give Filippino for the land?”

“Me?” shouted Scala, suddenly stopping, his hands on his chest. “Me, eighteen thousand lire, cash! There are about six hectares of land—three good salme, by our measurements, six thousand lire per salma [8], cash! God knows what I suffered to put it together. And now, now I’m seeing it vanish, the deal, the land under my feet, the land I was already considering mine!”

While don Mattia was fuming like this, Saro Trigona was counting with his fingers, frowning as he calculated:

“Eighteen thousand lire… oh, so that means…”

“Hold on,” Scala interrupted him. “Eighteen thousand, if the good man had left me in possession of the plot right away. But I’ve already spent more than six thousand on it. And this can be verified immediately, on the spot. I have witnesses—just this year, I’ve planted two thousand vines of the resistant American variety, terribly expensive! And then…”

Saro Trigona rose to his feet to cut short the discussion. “But twelve thousand isn’t enough, my dear don Mattia. I have to give more than twenty thousand to that criminal, just imagine!”

“Twenty thousand lire?” exclaimed Scala, stunned. “And what have you been eating, you and your sons, money?”

Trigona drew a long sigh and clapped a hand on Scala’s arm. “And my misfortunes, don Mattia? It hasn’t even been a month since I had to pay nine thousand lire to a dealer in Licata, over a disparity in the price of a load of sulfur. Let me be! That was the last loan poor Filippino will ever back for me, God keep him in glory!”

After further useless remonstrances, they decided to reconvene that same day at Chiarenza’s with the twelve thousand lire in hand, to try to reach an agreement.

VI

Dima Chiarenza’s house stood on the town’s main square.

It was an ancient two-story house, blackened by time, before which foreigners would stop, Englishmen and Germans who had come with their photographic apparatuses to see the sulfur mines. They aroused a kind of marvel mixed with mockery or commiseration on the part of the locals. For them the house was nothing but a gloomy, decrepit hovel that spoiled the harmony of the piazza. It faced the town hall, which was plastered and polished, resembling marble, and even majestic with its eight-column portico. The Holy Mother Church stood over here, and the Commercial Bank Building over there, a splendid café on one side of its ground floor and the Social Club on the other.

City Hall, according to the members of this Club, should have seen to that eyesore, at least requiring Chiarenza to put a decent coat of plaster on the house. It would have done him some good too, they said—it might have lightened up that face a bit, that face of his which had turned the same color as the house since he had moved in. However, they would add (wanting to be fair), the house was given to him in dowry by his wife, and perhaps he, uttering the sacred “I do,” was obliged to respect the antiquity of both.

Don Mattia Scala and Saro Trigona found a couple of dozen peasants in the vast, almost pitch-dark antechamber. They were all dressed in the same way from head to toe, in a heavy suit of dark blue cloth, hobnailed boots of unfinished leather on their feet, and a black stocking cap with a tassel at the tip on their heads. Some wore earrings. It being Sunday, all were freshly shaven.

“Announce me,” said Trigona to the servant who was seated there by the door at a little table, the surface of which was completely defaced with numbers and names.

“Just be patient a moment,” responded the servant, looking at Scala stunned, aware of the old enmity he held for his master. “He’s with Tino Làbiso.”

“Him too? Poor wretch!” muttered don Mattia, looking at the waiting peasants, who were as stunned as the servant at his presence in that house.

Before long, Scala could easily distinguish from the expressions on their faces who among them had come to pay off their debt, who was bringing only a part of what had been borrowed and already showed in their eyes the plea they would make to the usurer to have patience for the rest until the end of next month, and who was bringing nothing and looked crushed by the threat of starvation, since Chiarenza would take everything away from them and throw them out in the street, without mercy.

The door to the bank suddenly opened, and Tino Làbiso, red-faced, almost crazed, his eyes shining as if he’d been crying, ran off without seeing anyone, holding his red and black checked cloth, the emblem of his unfortunate prudence.

Scala and Trigona entered the main hall of the bank.

It too was almost pitch dark, with a single barred window that looked out on a narrow alley. On his desk Chiarenza had a lamp with a little green shade, which he had to keep lit in the middle of the day.

Sitting in an old leather armchair at the writing desk, the niches of which were full to overflowing with papers, Chiarenza wore a little shawl on his shoulders, a skullcap on his head, and a pair of open-fingered woolen gloves on his hands, horribly deformed by arthritis. Even though he wasn’t yet forty he appeared over fifty, his face yellow and jaundiced, his hair gray and sparse, dry, hanging down like an invalid’s over his temples. At the moment he had his eyeglasses raised up on his narrow, wrinkled forehead. He was staring ahead with clouded eyes, almost extinguished behind heavy, sagging eyelids. Apparently, he was forcing himself to dominate his internal agitation and appear calm in front of Scala.

The knowledge of his own infamy now inspired in him nothing but hatred, deep and lasting hatred for everyone and especially for his old benefactor, his first victim. He didn’t know yet what Scala wanted from him, but he was resolved not to concede anything, in order to appear unrepentant for a wrong that he had always indignantly denied, portraying Scala as a lunatic.

Scala, who had not seen him for years and years, not even from a distance, was at first stunned by the sight of him. He wouldn’t have recognized him, reduced to such a state, if he had met him on the street.

“God’s punishment,” he thought, scowling, understanding immediately that so reduced, the man must think that he’d already paid for his crime and therefore no longer owes him any sort of compensation.

Dima Chiarenza, with downcast eyes, put a hand behind his back to push himself up inch by inch from his leather chair, his face a show of pain. Saro Trigona compelled him to remain seated and right away, with his usual suffocating tangle of phrases, commenced to disclose the purpose of the visit. He, selling the farm inherited from his cousin to dear don Mattia there present, would immediately pay twelve thousand lire, in reduction of his debt, to his very dear don Dima, who, for his part, must oblige himself not to file any legal action against Cicero’s estate, awaiting…

“Hold on my son, hold on,” Chiarenza interrupted at this point, placing his glasses back on his nose. “I’ve already made a filing just this morning, calling the loans signed by your cousin, in default for some time. Be advised!”

“And my money?” Scala erupted. “Cicero’s place wasn’t worth more than eighteen thousand lire, but I’ve spent more than six thousand on it. Therefore, appraising it honestly, you shouldn’t have it for less than twenty-four thousand.”

“Fine,” answered Chiarenza, quite calmly. “Since Trigona owes me twenty-five thousand, it means that by taking the property, I stand to lose a thousand on it, apart from the interest.”

“So…twenty-five?” don Mattia exclaimed at that, turning to Trigona with wide open eyes.

Trigona squirmed in his chair as if it were an instrument of torture, stammering, “B-but…how?

“Like this, my boy. I’ll show you,” answered Chiarenza without losing his composure, again putting his hand behind his back and pushing himself up with effort. “Here are the records. They speak clearly.”

“Forget the records!” shouted Scala, stepping forward. “This here has to do with my money, my expenses for that property…”

“And what’s it to me?” said Chiarenza, shrugging his shoulders and closing his eyes. “Who made you spend it?”

Don Mattia Scala in his fury related to Chiarenza his agreement with Cicero.

“Awful,” commented Chiarenza, closing his eyes again from the effort it cost him to keep the calm he wished to display, though he was barely able to draw another breath. “Awful. I see that you, as usual, don’t know how to do business.”

“And you’re going throw that in my face?” cried Scala, “You!”

“I’m not throwing anything, but dear Lord, you should have at least found out, before spending that money you speak of, that Cicero could no longer sell the property to anyone, since he had signed so many loans from me worth more than the property itself.”

“And so,” rejoined Scala, “you’re going to profit from my money as well?”

“I’m not profiting from anything, myself” responded Chiarenza quickly. “I believe I’ve shown you that even according to your own appraisal of the land, I am going to lose more than a thousand lire on it.”

Saro Trigona tried to interpose, waving in front of Chiarenza the twelve thousand lire in cash that don Mattia had in his billfold.

“Money is money!”

“And it has wings!” commented Chiarenza immediately. “The best place to put money today is in land, you know that, my dear. Loans are double-edged swords—the yields go up and down, but land stays put.”

Don Mattia agreed, and changing tone and manner, spoke to Chiarenza of his deep love for that adjoining farm, adding that he would never know how to reconcile himself to seeing it taken away after enduring such a struggle for it. So, for the moment Chiarenza should content himself with the money he had on him. He would have the rest, down to the last penny—from him now, not Trigona—even holding to the appraisal of twenty-four thousand lire, as if he had never spent the six thousand, and even including the balance of the twenty-five thousand lire if he wished, in other words Trigona’s entire debt.

“What more can I tell you?”

Dima Chiarenza listened, eyes closed, impassive, to Scala’s passionate discourse. Then he told him, also assuming a different tone, more funereal and graver, “Listen, don Mattia. I see that the land is dear to your heart, and I would gladly leave it to you, to please you, if I didn’t find myself in such poor health. See how I am? The doctors have advised me to get rest and country air…”

“Ah!” exclaimed Scala trembling. “You would move there? Next to me?”

“What’s more,” resumed Chiarenza, “right now you wouldn’t be giving me half of what I should have. Who knows how long I’d have to wait to get paid. But now, by making a small sacrifice in taking over that land, I can immediately have what’s mine and take care of my health. I want to leave everything in order for my heirs.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Scala erupted, indignant and furious. “You’re thinking of your heirs? You, you have no sons! Are you thinking of your nieces and nephews? All of a sudden? You’ve never thought about that. Be honest and say: I want to hurt you, as I’ve always hurt you! Oh, it’s not enough that you destroyed my home, practically killed my wife and sent my only son fleeing in despair, it’s not enough having left me in poverty in return for the profits you made. Now you want to take the land away from me as well, the land where I’ve sweated blood? But why, why so vicious towards me? What have I done to you? I didn’t even breathe a word after you turned Judas. I had to think of my wife who was dying because of you, of my son who vanished because of you. I had no proof, no solid proof of your thievery, to put you in jail, and therefore, silence. I moved up there, on those three handfuls of earth, while here the whole town as one voice was accusing you, shouting at you: Thief! Judas! Not me, not me! But there is a God, you know? And he has punished you. Look at what’s left of your thieving hands! Are you hiding them? You are dead! You are dead, and still, you insist on doing me harm? Oh, but you know what? Not this time. You won’t be able to! I’ve told you the sacrifices I’m ready to make for that land. So, answer me, yes or no: will you let me have it?”

“No!” shouted Chiarenza quickly, enraged, grim, distraught.

“All right, not me, not you!” And Scala turned towards the door.

“What are you going to do?” asked Chiarenza, remaining seated and parting his lips in a miserable grin.

Scala turned, raised his arm in a violent menacing gesture and answered, fiercely looking him in the eye, “I’ll burn you!”

VII

Don Mattia Scala left Chiarenza’s house, furiously shrugging off an utterly mournful Trigona, who wanted to demonstrate his good intentions. First, he made for the house of a lawyer friend to explain the case of which he was a victim, and to ask if he could take legal action in support of his claim. Could he manage to block Chiarenza from taking possession of the property?

The lawyer didn’t understand a thing at first, overwhelmed by the agitation with which Scala had spoken. He tried to calm him down, but in vain.

“Fine, but proof, documents, do you have any?”

“I don’t have a damn thing!”

“Then God help you! What do you want from me?”

“Wait,” said don Mattia, before leaving. “Could you, by chance, point me to the home of that engineer Scelzi, the one from the Comitini Sulfur Mining Association?

The lawyer gave Scala the street address of the house, and with his mind now made up, Scala headed straight for it.

Scelzi was one of those engineers who passed in front of the farmhouse’s front gate every morning, following the mule path in order to get to the sulfur mines in the valley. He’d been urging Scala to sell the subsurface, quite persistently. How many times had Scala, raising a fuss, threatened to call the dogs to run him off!

Though Scelzi didn’t see anyone for business on Sundays, he hastened to let the unexpected visitor into his study.

“You, don Mattia? What good wind?”

Scala, his enormous eyebrows furrowed, planted himself before the smiling young engineer, looked him in the eye, and answered, “I’m ready.”

“Ah! Most excellent! You’re selling?”

“Not selling. I want to lease. Let’s hear the deal.”

“And you don’t know it?” exclaimed Scelzi. “I’ve repeated it so many times…”

“Do you need to do more surveys up there?” asked don Mattia, grim, impetuous.

“Oh no! Look…” answered the engineer, indicating the big geological map hanging on the wall, on which were outlined, care of the Royal Ministry of Mines, all of the mineral fields in the region. He nailed a point on the map with his finger and added, “It’s here—there’s no need for another…”

“So can we sign a contract right now?”

“Right now?... Tomorrow. First thing tomorrow I’ll raise it with the Administrative Council. Meanwhile, if you want, we can draw up the proposal together here and now, which will doubtless be accepted, if you don’t want to set further conditions.”

“I need to commit myself immediately!” Scala blurted. “Everything, everything destroyed, right?...everything will be totally destroyed up there?”

Scelzi looked at him in astonishment. He had been familiar for some time with Scala’s strange, impulsive nature, but he didn’t remember ever seeing him like this.

“But the damage from the fumes,” he said, “will be provided for in the contract and compensated…”

“I know! It doesn’t matter to me!” remarked Scala. “The farms, I’m saying, the farms will be completely destroyed…right?”

“Well…” said Scelzi, shrugging his shoulders.

“That, that’s what I’m looking for! That is what I want!” don Mattia exclaimed, banging a fist on the desk. “Here, engineer: write, write! Not me, not him! I’ll burn him… Write. Don’t worry about what I’m saying.”

Scelzi sat at his desk and began to write the proposal, first explaining one by one the advantageous terms disdainfully rejected so many times by Scala, who now instead nodded, grim and scowling, at each one.

Having finally drawn up the proposal, the engineer couldn’t resist the desire to know the reason for this sudden, unexpected resolution.

“Bad year?”

“What bad year? That’ll happen,” Scala answered, “once you’ve opened the mine!”

Scelzi suspected then that don Mattia Scala had received sad news about the son who had disappeared. He knew that some months ago he had sent an appeal to Rome to have some consulates somewhere make inquiries. But he didn’t want to touch on this sore point.

Before leaving, Scala reminded Scelzi again to hurry up the affair with the greatest diligence. “On the double, and make sure I’m good and tied up!”

But it took two days—for the Council of the Sulfur Mine Association to make a decision, for the notary to write up the announcement, for the recording of said announcement—two days of fearful uncertainty for don Mattia Scala. He didn’t eat, he didn’t sleep, he was in a continual delirium, running all over town at Scelzi’s heels, continually repeating, “All tied up! Make sure I’m all tied up!”

“Don’t worry,” the engineer responded, smiling. “There’s no escape now!”

With the contract granting rights finally signed and registered, don Mattia Scala exited the notary office like a madman. He ran to the depot on the edge of town, where upon arrival three days earlier he had left his mare. He mounted and set off.

The sun was setting. On the dusty highway don Mattia ran into a long line of carts loaded with sulfur from the mines in the distant valley, beyond the hill not yet in view, travelling slow and heavy to the railroad below the town.

From atop the mare, Scala threw a look of hatred at all that sulfur, relentlessly squeaking and creaking along to the bumps and bounces of the unsprung carts.

The highway was flanked by two endless hedges of prickly pear cactus, their pads covered in sulfur dust from the continual passage of those carts.

At the sight of them, don Mattia’s nausea grew. He saw nothing but sulfur, everywhere, in that place! Sulfur was in the very air he breathed. It cut short his breath and burned his eyes.

At a turn in the road the hill finally appeared, all green. The sun was striking it with its last rays.

Scala stared fixedly at it and clenched the bridle in his fist until it hurt. It seemed to him that the sun was saying goodbye to the green of that hill for the last time. Perhaps he would never again see the hill, viewed from that road, as he was seeing it now. Within twenty years, those who came after him would see from that stretch of road a scorched, bruised, bald mound, defoliated by the sulfur mine.

“And where will I be, then?” he thought, feeling an emptiness which immediately brought to mind his distant son, lost, wandering about the world, if he was even still alive. A wave of emotion overcame him, and his eyes brimmed with tears. For him, for him he had found the strength to lift himself out of the poverty into which Chiarenza had flung him, Chiarenza, that infamous thief who was now taking the farm away from him.

“No, no!” he roared through his teeth at the thought of Chiarenza. “Not me, not him!”

And he spurred on the mare, as if to fly there and destroy in a single blow the farm that could no longer be his.

It was already evening when he reached the foot of the hill. He had to skirt it for a bit before turning onto the mule path. But the moon had risen, and little by little it seemed to be turning back into day. All around him the crickets were frenetically greeting that lunar dawn.

Crossing the farms, Scala felt stabbed by acute remorse, thinking of the owners of those lands, all friends of his who at that moment surely didn’t suspect his treachery.

Ah, all those farms would soon disappear. Not even a blade of grass would grow any longer up there, and he, he would be the destroyer of that green hill! He went back in thought to the balcony of his nearby farmhouse, saw again the narrow confines of his land, thought that his eyes now would have to stop there, no longer leaping over that border wall and expanding their gaze to the land alongside his. And he felt as though imprisoned, almost without air, without freedom on that little farm of his with his enemy coming there to live. No! No!

Destruction! Destruction! Not me, not him! Let them burn!

And he looked around at the trees, his throat tightening in distress—those centuries-old olives, with their twisted, dusty-gray trunks, immobile, as though absorbed in a mysterious moonlit dream. He imagined how all those leaves, now alive, would curl up at the first acrid breaths of the sulfur mine, gaping open there like the mouth of hell. Then they would drop, then the denuded trees would turn black, then they would die, poisoned by the fumes of the ovens. Then, the axe. Firewood, all those trees…

A light breeze arose; the moon was rising. And just then the leaves of all of those trees, as if hearing the pronouncement of their death sentence, trembled in a long shudder which reverberated down the back of don Mattia Scala, bent over his white mare.