“The Nail” (“Il chiodo”)

Translated by Scott Belluz

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “The Nail” (“Il chiodo”), tr. Scott Belluz. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2022.

Originally published in the major Milanese newspaper Corriere della Sera on January 21, 1936, about a month after Pirandello died of pneumonia, “The Nail” (“Il Chiodo”) was included in A Single Day (Una giornata), the fifteenth and last Collection of Stories for a Year, in 1937.

Set in Harlem in Upper Manhattan, the story was written right after Pirandello’s last trip to the United States in 1935 and was inspired by a real murder, which occurred in that neighborhood in the same period and was widely covered by the local press. Interestingly, however, any reference to Harlem as a major center of African American culture is omitted from the story, with the neighborhood becoming a mere backdrop for the plot, which exhibits typical traits of Pirandello’s humor (umorismo). In the story, Pirandello draws inspiration from the real-life crime to explore the tragic impact of foolish impulse and its consequences. An Italian boy finds a nail in the street by chance, and this becomes the weapon used in a sudden, irrational act as he commits murder seemingly without any motive at all. Pirandello uses his humorous lens to delve into the protagonist’s inner self, allowing his conflicting feelings to emerge as the story unfolds. Themes of the unpredictability of chance, emotional pain, and the difficulty of dominating irrational impulses intertwine with Pirandello’s ongoing preoccupation with death and its meaning; the story thus dramatizes the apparent senselessness of human existence. Other stories of the same period, such as “The Challenge” (“La sfida,” 1937), also set in New York, or “A Single Day” (“Una giornata,” 1935), also revolve around similar themes focusing on the ambiguous or subjective meaning of human existence and the arbitrary forces at work in life and death. The short story “Cinci” (1932) also focused on a callous murder, depicted as a teenager’s irrational response to his own unresolved emotional issues.

“The Nail” was one of the stories that inspired Paolo Taviani’s latest movie Leonora addio (2022), which depicts the controversial journey made to take Pirandello’s ashes to his native Agrigento after his passing in Rome on December 10, 1936. As Taviani has noted, “The Nail” provided the perfect background for his movie thanks to the plot’s surreal tones and the idea that one’s life is often in someone else’s hands.

The Editors

The boy confessed that he’d found that nail while crossing a street in the negro neighborhood of Harlem. It was a large, rusty nail and had perhaps fallen from a cart that had recently come down the road.

It had fallen on purpose.

“What do you mean, on purpose?”

There’s no need to raise an eyebrow or leap onto the chair. If one is willing to take note of this statement and the way the young man said it – calm, convinced, yet with glassy eyes frozen in terror at the incomprehensible and inexplicable thing that had happened to him – then it is useless to question him further.

Lying there in the middle of the deserted street, the nail stood out in such a way that it irresistibly drew both the eye and hand of those passing by who, despite not knowing what to with it, were compelled to bend down and pick it up, if only to throw it back onto the street shortly after.

The boy himself claims that he never thought he’d use it; not even during the act itself did he think of using it. It was in his hand only because he couldn’t help but pick it up; but then he forgot about it. The nail was “quiet” in his hand now (that’s how he put it, and everyone shivered when they heard him), the nail was “quiet” in his hand now because, as intended, it had been picked up.

And so, once again according to him, it was equally intentional that just as he was about to turn from where he’d picked up the nail, two street urchins, one around fourteen and the other barely eight, were fighting each other. Ablaze within the fiery nimbus of the summer sunset, they were a tangle of arms and legs, shreds of hair; and right there and then he had impetuously raised his fist and drove the nail into the head of the smaller one; then immediately after (actually it was a very long time), seeing the girl dead as if she had always been that way, he fell at her bloody feet, speechless as people gathered in horror.

He couldn’t say why he’d struck the little one and not the big one. He didn’t know either of them. He didn’t even have time to see their faces. He’d only seen that the big one was holding the little one by the hair at her temple, and that the little’s one’s hair was copper red and one of her hands clawed at the bigger one’s face, gruesomely exposing the white of her eye and almost squeezing it out.

It might have been her hair color or the gaping eye that made him realize the bigger one was at fault. She wanted to abuse the sickly little one, to take advantage of her frailty, made obvious by her emaciated, wan face which, there on the ground amid the blood, seemed wax-like and pitiful: that nose, that little mouth, all those freckles. There was no doubt that she’d have the worst of it in the end.

And with that nail, he had killed her.

And now, the interrogation over, he sits hunched over in his chair and listens with a sullen astonishment in his eyes. His delicate hands rest on his knees, marked by scratches he perhaps gave himself without knowing. He listens as the others come up with reasons to explain his actions.

He is astonished they can find so many reasons when he can’t find even one; so many, and they all seem probable and true whether devised in his favor or against him.

And yes, they seem probable and true even to him when he views them as a construct of clever and inventive conjecture that is not entirely related to him or his actions;[1] otherwise no, some of them might be enough to make him laugh were it not for his bewilderment and what he can see lying on the evidence table: the nail, its rust turned a darker red; and by yet another thing, the most terrible of all, that he keeps hidden deep inside his heart, almost as if ashamed. But it is not shame. It is fear. And he trembles at the mere thought that it might be discovered. A desperate pity, a disconsolate love was born within him and has gradually grown for HER (he has only just now learned that her name was Betty, just Betty); and because she was known just by her first name; and in fact no one had turned up on her behalf.

With this secret feeling burning inside of him, he doesn’t care if these people are abusing the truth or saying things against him; on the contrary, he is pleased because every unjust thing they say only makes it clearer to him that the truth lies in the other thing that nobody wants to believe: that the nail had fallen on purpose, and that Betty and the other girl, just as he was turning around on the street, had also begun quarreling on purpose so that he, without realizing he was armed with the nail, would be dragged into their brawl and commit the fierce injustice of killing an innocent girl.

And it’s not true about your hair, Betty; that your red hair wasn’t beautiful. It was beautiful, it was beautiful and it suited you. And what does it matter that your thin face was covered with freckles? What if you had opened your eyes which I never got to see! Ah, if only there had been a miracle where you, there on the ground amidst all that blood, in order to make everyone’s fear subside, had suddenly shown the cunning of your two lively eyes. But there was no miracle. Your eyes remained closed to me forever. Perhaps, being sickly, your eyes were no longer lively. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter: open them, open them, Betty, and smile. Maybe you’re missing some teeth; you haven’t had them all replaced yet; it doesn’t matter – smile. And your white lips, those white lips; all the blood must be washed off immediately.

Epileptic fit? Did someone say epileptic fit?

They diagnose him and explain the symptoms of the disorder. But he’s certain he’s never experienced anything like it. Could he be affected by this disorder without knowing it? Had it remained hidden until the moment of the crime then suddenly exploded within him?

If they keep saying these things, they’ll make his heart explode or they’ll drive him crazy.

But now they’re saying it was his evil nature.

He prefers they say this because it’s not true. Evil-natured, him? He would always protest whenever his playmates behaved cruelly towards some little beast or insect. His evil nature had never revealed itself. And if they think the nail he picked up off the ground is evidence of this, they’re ridiculous. They don’t know him. They are talking about someone else. The act of picking up the nail had not reawakened some evil instinct; he’d picked it up without even thinking about what he was doing; it seemed so foreign there on that stretch of road that, before turning around, he'd thought only of the cart the nail might have fallen from; a cart that was perhaps heading towards the distant countryside. He himself was just returning from the countryside where he’d been on holiday with his family for the summer and where he’d seen so many carts along the pathways amid the tall grass.

But after all, they can say whatever they want; they can invent; they can make the most absurd assumptions. He no longer cares about anything: he is already far away in the countryside of Old Lime where he spent the summer;[2] he sees the villa again and all the delightful surroundings in the serene air, his father’s sailboat moored on the bank of the river, the Connecticut, which, amid the surrounding greenery, is bluer than the sea; he went to the edge of the ocean with his father on that boat; his mother wouldn’t let him go further: the boat and its sails were so small but the villa was large with many fake columns on the façade and was completely surrounded by a great number of big, beautiful trees that his grandfather was sure were eucalyptuses but his father called sycamores and beeches; eucalyptuses, eucalyptuses; sycamores, beeches; but the fact was they provided so much shade one could barely see when inside the villa and it was preferable to spend the day outside; after all that’s why one goes to the country; but be careful, his mother would cry after him, don’t go too far off; and they stayed sitting out front to explain to some visiting friends that the villa was the oldest in Old Lime, and one of the oldest in all of America, while he either ran like a happy lunatic along the riverbanks or got lost in the countryside among the grass that was so tall and thick, and smelled so strongly of the earth’s secretions that he became inebriated and nearly choked. But now he can no longer be there alone. Now he’s with Betty among all that grass; he wants to play with her; at first Betty doesn’t want to; but then she gives him her little hand, a hand that is still cold, so cold to the touch that he shivers; you don’t need to worry about it anymore; he bends down to look at her, then she follows him with her head down, her little finger at the corner of her mouth. On and on they go. But it’s pointless if they aren’t supposed to play. She doesn’t want to play? She can’t? What then? She wants to throw herself on the ground again? No! No! Betty has now recovered and should be lively again and laughing, laughing, yes. But Betty stops and, with her little hand, signals that he should wait. What is it? She must withdraw a moment, just a moment. A necessity. He’s somewhat mortified. He doesn’t like it when girls make certain things known. But then another girl comes out from where she went to hide; no, it’s not the one from the brawl; it’s one of her cousins, fat and ugly, almost his age, who’s come from Harlem with her mother to spend the day in the country; he cannot tolerate her. Where did Betty go? There she is, running far away; she used the pretext to flee; she’s afraid of him. No, no, Betty; he will not hurt you anymore; he will give his life to revive you and let you take his place in the villa. You are here now; mother will wash you properly, and off with all these rags; she’ll put you in a new dress, in a color that suits you, that agrees with your red hair, a periwinkle dress; oh how pretty you look now; a pity he should not be around to see you since he gave his life for you; and you will remain little like this forever here in the country, never making yourself big for anyone; in the country, as if in paradise, Betty.

They didn’t charge him.

Declared free, the boy showed no sign of anything. He drew a sigh. He will surely die from sadness for Betty.

But perhaps he will not die. The years will pass. And perhaps when he grows up, he’ll think about Betty sometimes.

And he will see her, still so small, waiting for him in the country at Old Lime, in the ever-new periwinkle dress that goes so well with her red hair.