“The Lucky Ones” (“I fortunati”)

Translated by Steve Eaton

How to cite this work:

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

Originally published in a periodical, the Rassegna contemporanea, in August of 1911, this story was then included in the collection Weeds from Our Garden (Erba del nostro orto; Milan: Studio Editoriale Lombardo, 1915), where it appeared along with two others as part of a trilogy called Habits of Montelusa (Tonache di Montelusa). The other two stories in the series are “In Defense of Mèola” (“Difesa del Mèola”) and “Since It’s Not Raining…” (“Visto che non piove…”). All three were published together in the first Collection of Stories for a Year, Black Shawl (Scialle nero; Florence: Bemporad, 1922).

The second of the three stories in this trilogy, it narrates an independent story that is nevertheless tied to the others both by the shared setting and also by Pirandello’s overarching aim of combining history and fiction in a realistic but humoristic mode that emphasizes his anticlerical and liberal facets. “The Lucky Ones” examines the corruption or indifference of the Church in relation to its faithful, but at the same time it also exhibits Pirandello’s interest in occultism, as well as the esoteric in its references to the Freemasons, the organization to which the protagonist belongs. While there is no evidence linking Pirandello himself to the Masons, it is clear that he had an interest in the organization and its impact on Italian society. Likewise, he would have been exposed to it directly by both his father Stefano and his uncle, Rocco Ricci. This constitutes another way in which the short story can be seen in reference to both historical and biographical realism. Thus, while the setting of Montelusa is a fictional Sicilian town – which recurs as the setting for the other two stories in the trilogy – it has a metaphorical function and can be seen as connected to Pirandello’s hometown of Girgenti, Agrigento.

The Editors

An emotional procession through the home of the young priest Don Arturo Filomarino.

Paying condolences.

All the neighbors were standing around behind their windows or in their doorways, spying on the faded, rotting door bedecked for mourning. Half open and half closed, it looked like the wrinkled face of an old man squinting an eye in discreet acknowledgement of all who entered, after the final exit—feet first and head last—of the master of the house.

The curiosity of all those spying neighbors really stemmed from the suspicion that those visits had some significance or, rather, a purpose quite different from what they pretended.

For each visitor who went in the door, exclamations of wonder erupted here and there.

“Him too?”

“Who, who?”

“Franci, the engineer!”

“Him too?”

There he was, going in. But why? A Mason? A 33rd Degree?[1] Yes sir, him too. And before and after him, that hunchbacked doctor Niscemi—the atheist, my friends, the atheist; and the republican and free-thinking lawyer Rocco Turrisi, and Scimè the notary, and the knighted Preato and the bemedaled Tino Laspada, counsellor of the prefecture, and even the Morlesi brothers who fell asleep, poor things, as soon as they sat down, as if all four of them had been drugged with drowsiness, and baron Cerrella, even the baron Cerella: the cream, in short, the biggest fish in Montelusa:[2] professionals, clerks, businessmen…

Don Arturo Filomarino had arrived the evening before from Rome where, having just fallen into disfavor with Monsignor Partanna over the strawberry plants promised to the nuns of Sant’Anna, he had retreated to earn a doctorate in letters and philosophy.[3] An urgent telegram had recalled him to Montelusa—his father had been struck by a sudden illness. He’d arrived too late, missing even the bitter consolation of seeing him for the last time!

His four married sisters and their husbands had left after fully informing him, with sound and fury, of the calamitous misfortune, but not before tossing some recriminations in his direction. They were indignant. Disgusted, even. Appalled. The priests, they said, his colleagues in Montelusa, had demanded twenty thousand lire from the dead man—twenty! twenty thousand lire!—to administer the holy sacraments, as if the dear departed had not already donated plenty for pious works, for charitable organizations, or lined two churches in marble, built altars, donated statues and portraits of saints, and been open-handed with money for the religious festivals. They had left, snorting, indignant, declaring themselves dead tired from all they had done in those two terrible days. And they had left him alone there, alone, good God, or rather with the nurse… yes, rather young, whom the father, God rest his soul, out of weakness, had recently sent for from Naples. She was already calling him “Don Arturí” with cloying affection.

Because of everything he’d been through, Don Arturo had acquired the tic of pursing his lips and puffing twice, three times, quite softly, as he ran the tips of his fingers through his eyebrows. And now, poor thing, with every “Don Arturí”…

Ah, those four sisters… those four sisters! They had always disparaged him, even as a child. They really never could stand him, maybe because he was the only male and the last born, maybe because the poor things were ugly, all four of them, each one uglier than the next, while he was handsome, slender, with blond curls. His beauty must have seemed doubly superfluous to them, because he was a man and also because he had been destined for the priesthood right from infancy, by his own volition. He predicted there would be unpleasant scenes, scandals, and fights at the moment of dividing up the inheritance. Already his brothers-in-law had seals placed on the safe and desk in the bank belonging to their father-in-law, who had died without a will.

And what business did they have recriminating him over what the ministers of God deemed just and appropriate to demand of the father, in order that he might die a good Christian? Ah! As cruel as it might be for the son’s heart, he had to acknowledge that the dear departed had committed usury for many years, and without a bit of the moderation that might at least have lightened the sin. True enough that the same hand that had taken had also given, and not a little. However it was not, properly speaking, his money. And perhaps it was precisely for this reason that the priests of Montelusa had deemed it necessary to demand a further, final sacrifice. For his part, he had dedicated himself to God and renounced earthly goods, in order to expiate the sins by which his father had lived and died. And now, regarding whatever of the paternal inheritance might fall to him, he was full of scruples. He silently proposed to seek light and counsel from one of his superiors, such as Monsignor Landolina, director of the Order of the Oblati, a holy man—his confessor, in fact—whom he well knew to be the exemplar, the fervent zealot, of charity.

Meanwhile all those visits were embarrassing him.

By all appearances, given the quality of the visitors, those visits represented an undeserved honor. Given the mysterious motives behind them, they were a cruel humiliation.

He was almost afraid of giving offense by acting grateful for that pretense of honor. By showing no gratitude at all he was afraid of exposing too fully the real humiliation and appearing doubly rude.

On the other hand, he didn’t really know what all those gentlemen were trying to tell him, nor how to respond, nor how to comport himself. What if he was making a mistake? What if he was failing somehow, without meaning to, without knowing it?

He wished to obey his superiors, always and in everything. Thus, still without counsel, he felt truly lost in the midst of that crowd.

So he adopted the tactic of lying down on a flimsy old sofa in the back of the dusty, gloomy bare room, and pretending at least in the beginning to be so distraught by grief and by the duress of the voyage that he could greet all those visitors only in silence.

For their part, the visitors, after having extended a hand, with sighs and closed eyes, sat down in the chairs lining the walls all around the room. No one breathed. They all seemed absorbed in the son’s terrible grief. Meanwhile they avoided meeting each other’s eyes, as if each one was angered by seeing the others come to express their own condolences.

They couldn’t wait to leave, all of them, but each one was hoping the others would leave first so they could have a quick word, sottovoce and one-on-one, with Don Arturo.

And so, no one was leaving.

The big room was already full, and the new arrivals couldn’t find a place to sit. Everyone was becoming silently irritated and envious of the Morlesi brothers. At least they weren’t aware of the time passing, since all four of them had fallen into a deep sleep as soon as they had sat down, as usual.

Finally, huffing and puffing, baron Cerrella was the first to get up, or rather to get down off his chair. Small and round as a ball, squeak squeak squeak he went, in his irritatingly creaky patent leather shoes, to the sofa. And bowing before Don Arturo, he softly told him:

“With permission, father Filomarino, a humble request.”

Distraught as he was, Don Arturo leapt to his feet:

“At your service, signor Barone.”

And he accompanied him all the way across the room, as far as the foyer. He returned immediately, puffing, to lie down on the sofa. But two minutes didn’t go by before another rose and approached to repeat:

“With permission, father Filomarino, a humble request.”

Given this example, the line formed. One by one, every two minutes, one would get up and… but after five or six, Don Arturo no longer waited for them to come all the way to the couch in the back of the room to make a humble request. As soon as he saw one get up, he ran over, quickly and obligingly, and accompanied them to the foyer.

But for each one who left, their place was taken by two or three more, and the supplications threatened to last the entire day.

Fortunately, by three in the afternoon no one else came. Only the Morlesi brothers remained in the room, sitting next to each other, all four in the same posture, heads hanging on their chest.

They’d been sleeping there for about five hours.

Don Arturo could no longer stay on his feet. He made a desperate sign to the young Neapolitan governess, pointing to the four sleepers.

“You go and eat, Don Arturí,” she said. “I’ll handle them.”

But on awakening, after stretching open and rolling around their sleep-reddened eyes a good deal to regain their senses, the Morlesi brothers also wanted to have a brief word in confidence with Don Arturo. He tried in vain to make them understand it was unnecessary, that he already understood and that he would do everything to satisfy them, as with the others, as much as he possibly could. But the Morlesi brothers not only wanted to beg him like all the others to make sure that their loan got inherited by him when the outstanding credits were divided up, so they wouldn’t fall into the clutches of the other heirs. They also wanted to make him see that their loan was not for a thousand lire, as registered, but only five hundred.

“But how? Why?” asked Don Arturo innocently.

All four started to answer at once, correcting and assisting each other in guiding the discussion to its conclusion.

“Because your papa, bless his soul, unfortunately…”

“No, not unfortunately… out of… out of an excess of…”

“Of caution, that’s what!”

“Yeah, that’s it… he told us, sign for a thousand…”

“That’s why the interest…”

“As the record will show…”

“Twenty-four percent interest, Don Arturí, twenty-four, twenty-four!”

“We were only paying interest on five hundred, punctually, right up to the fifteenth of last month.”

“As the record will show…”

Don Arturo, as if he felt these words fanning the flames of hell, pursed his lips and puffed, running the fingertips of his immaculate hands through his eyebrows.

He appeared grateful for the trust that they, like all the rest, had placed in him. And he left them with a glimmer of hope that he, as a good priest, would not accept the repayment of that money.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t satisfy everyone. There were five heirs altogether, and therefore he could do as he pleased with only one fifth of the inheritance.

Don Arturo Filomarino visited the home of a lawyer appointed to distribute the inheritance, discussing those countless debts with the other heirs. The news got around town that he wasn’t satisfied with the proposal from his brothers-in-law: that they would pick a mutually trusted liquidator who, one by one, humanely granting extensions and renewals, would liquidate them at the more than honest rate of five percent, even though the lowest that the father-in-law had ever demanded was twenty-four. This bolstered more than ever the hope among the debtors that Don Arturo, performing the act of a true Christian, worthy of a minister of God, would subtract not only the interest for those lucky enough to fall into his hands, but might even forgive and forget the debts.

And once again there was a parade to his house. They all begged him, they all beseeched him to be included among the lucky ones. They never stopped making him see with his eyes and touch with his hands their miserable existence.

Don Arturo couldn’t figure out how to shield himself any longer. His lips were sore from puffing. He couldn’t find one single minute, besieged as he was, to run to Monsignor Landolina for advice. It felt like it would be a thousand years before he could get back to Rome and his studies. He had always lived for his studies; he was really ignorant of all the things of this world.

When (with extreme difficulty) the apportionment of all the outstanding loans was completed, and he had in hand the packet of loans which were his, he didn’t even look to see whose they were, so he wouldn’t feel sorry for those excluded. He didn’t even add up the total amount. He headed for the Order of the Oblati, to place himself once and for all under the judgement of Monsignor Landolina.

That man’s advice would be his law.

The Order of the Oblati stood on the town’s highest point and was a vast, ancient edifice, square and gloomy on the outside, pitted all over by time and weather. The interior, by contrast, was all white, airy and luminous.

It welcomed poor little orphans and bastards from all over the region, from six to nineteen years old, and taught them various crafts and trades. Discipline was harsh, especially under Monsignor Landolina, and when those poor Oblati, in the morning and at vespers, sang to the strains of the organ in the order’s chapel, their prayers were salted with tears. If you heard them from below, coming from that gloomy workhouse on high, they would tug at your heart like the lamentations of prisoners.

Monsignor Landolina didn’t seem like the sort who would have such forceful self-possession, such an iron will.

He was a tall, slender priest, almost diaphanous, as if the strong light of the white, airy little room in which he lived had not only washed the color out of him but had thinned him out, leaving him with frail, trembling, almost transparent hands. The lids over his pale oval eyes were thinner than the skin of an onion.

Even his voice was faded and tremulous, and empty were the smiles on his wide, pale lips, between which a string of white spittle often formed.

“Oh, Arturo,” he said, seeing the young man enter and throw his arms around him, crying.

“Ah yes, a terrible pain… There, there, my son! A terrible pain, I’m glad of it. Thank God for it. You know how I feel about all the fools who don’t want to suffer. Pain is your salvation, son! And it’s your fate to have much, much to suffer for, thinking of your father, who, poor man, er… did much, much evil! May it be your scourge, son, the thought of your father. And tell me, that woman, that woman? Have you still got her at home?”

“She’s going away tomorrow, Monsignor,” Don Arturo responded quickly, as he finished drying his tears. “She had to arrange her things.”

“Good, good, quickly gone, quickly gone. What have you to tell me, my son?”

Don Arturo pulled out the packet of loans, and immediately commenced to reveal the dispute over them with his relatives, and the visits and lamentations of the victims.

But Monsignor Landolina jerked his head back, as if those loans were diabolical weapons or obscene images, as soon as his eyes fell on them. All the fingers of his frail diaphanous hands twitched convulsively, almost out of fear of scorching them, not even from touching the papers, but just from seeing them. He said to Filomarino, who was holding them on his knees:

“Not there on your habit, my dear, not there on your habit…”

Don Arturo was going to put them on the chair next to him.

“Oh no, oh no, for goodness sake, where are you putting them? Don’t hold them in your hands, my dear, don’t hold them in your hands.”

“What then?” asked Don Arturo, frozen, perplexed, humiliated, with a disgusted expression as well, holding them with two fingers and spreading out the others, as if he truly had some rotten object in his hand.

“On the ground, on the ground,” suggested Monsignor Landolina. “My dear, a priest, you understand…”

Don Arturo, his face turned crimson, set them on the ground and said, “I had thought, Monsignor, to hand them back to those poor unfortunate…”

“Unfortunate? No, why?” Monsignor Landolina immediately interrupted him. “Who’s telling you they’re unfortunate?”

“Mah…” said Don Arturo. “Just the fact that they had to resort to borrowing…”

“Vices, my dear, vices!” exclaimed Monsignor Landolina. “Women, gluttony, wicked ambitions, intemperance… Who’s unfortunate? Depraved people, my dear, depraved people. You’re telling me about them? You’re an inexperienced kid. Don’t be fooled. They cry, of course! It’s so easy to cry. What’s hard is not to sin! They sin happily, and after sinning, they cry. Oh, come on! I’ll tell you who the real unfortunate ones are, my dear, since God inspired you to come to me. They are all these boys under my care here, fruit of the guilt and infamy of these unfortunate gentlemen of yours. Give it here, give it here!”

And leaning over, he signaled to Filomarino to gather up the bundle of loan papers from the floor.

Don Arturo looked at him hesitantly. Was it all right, now? Was he supposed to pick them up with his bare hands?

“You want to rid yourself of them? Pick them up, pick them up!” Monsignor Landolina quickly reassured him. “Yes, sure, pick them up with your hands. We’ll get the seal of the devil off of them right away, and we’ll make them an instrument of charity. You can touch them now just fine, since they’ll be serving my poor little ones! You’re giving them to me, eh? Give them to me, and we’ll make them pay, we’ll make them pay, my dear, just see if we don’t make them pay, these unfortunate gentlemen of yours!”

He laughed as he spoke, noiselessly, with pursed white lips and a tight little shake of his head.

With that smile Don Filomarino felt a shudder run all through his body. But in the face of the confident alacrity with which his superior took those loan papers in the name of charity, he dared not object. He thought of all those unhappy folk who considered themselves lucky to have fallen into his hands, who had begged so ardently and moved him with their tales of poverty. He tried to spare them at least the payment of interest.

“Why, no! No, why?” the voice of Monsignor Landolina assaulted him. “God makes use of everyone, my dear, for His works of mercy! Tell me now, tell me now, what interest did your father charge? Oh, high, I know! At least twenty-four, I seem to’ve heard. Fine, we’ll treat them all equally. They’ll all pay twenty-four percent.”

“But… you know, Monsignor… really, now look…” stammered Don Arturo, quite agitated. “The other heirs, Monsignor, have agreed to liquidate their loans at five percent, and…”

“Good for them! Hah! Good for them!” Monsignor exclaimed readily, and persuasively. “Good for them, wonderful, because that money is going to them! Not ours, though. Ours will go to the poor, my son! Quite a different case, you see! Our money is going to the poor, not to you, not to me! Do you think we would be doing right, if we defrauded the poor by claiming anything less than the minimum established by your father? No, no! They’ll pay, they’ll pay the interest, at twenty-four percent, count on it. It’s not coming to you, and not to me! Money for the poor, it’s sacred! Go on now, without compunction, my son, go right on back to Rome and to your beloved studies, and leave this here, to me. I’ll deal with these gentlemen. Money for the poor, money for the poor… God bless you, my son! God bless you!”

And in the end Monsignor Landolina, possessed by that exemplary, feverish zealousness for charity, for which he was justly famous, wasn’t even willing to acknowledge that the loan of the four poor Morlesi brothers (always asleep), signed for a thousand lire, was in reality for five hundred. And he demanded from them, like all the others, interest of twenty-four percent even on the five hundred lire they never received.

And what’s more, he wanted to convince them, as a white string of spittle formed between his lips, that they were truly lucky, lucky to make (even if unwillingly) an act of charity, which the Lord would certainly take into account one day, in the next world…

Did they cry?

“Oh, pain is your salvation, my children!”