“The Other Son” (“L’altro figlio”)

Translated by Patricia Stumpp

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “The Other Son” (“L’altro figlio”), tr. Patricia Stumpp. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2022.

“The Other Son” (“L’altro figlio”) first appeared in the literary journal La lettura (1905) and was then included, the following year, in the miscellany Two-Faced Erma (Erma bifronte, 1906). In 1923, the short story was published as part of In Silence (In silenzio), the sixth Collection of Stories for a Year (Novelle per un anno). Also in 1923, on November 23rd, a one-act play with the same title and based on this story’s plot was staged at the Teatro Nazionale in Rome by the company of Raffaello and Garibalda Niccòli. However, the date of this play’s composition is uncertain.

A story of memory, loss, and emotional trauma, “The Other Son” intertwines the personal life of its illiterate protagonist, the poor Maragrazia, with the vicissitudes of her country in the complex period of upheaval and economic struggle that marked the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. On the one hand, the story focuses on the experience of the poor rural population at the time and the trauma of losing family when they leave Italy to find a better life elsewhere: this was a period of massive emigration from Italy, with major shifts in the population especially from the poor, rural south of the country. At the same time, though, this story is also connected to the history and enduring legacy of Italy’s own national trauma in the period of struggle leading to the country’s unification in 1861, the Risorgimento. Maragrazia’s two sons emigrated to America fourteen years ago and now seem to have forgotten about her; but she is dominated by her nostalgia and memory of them, tied to the illusion that they may one day return home. This part of the story focuses on Maragrazia’s plan to have an intermediary, Ninfarosa, write a letter on her behalf to send to her sons in America; it highlights typical Pirandellian themes including the power of illusion as well as the unfair difficulties confronted by the poor and the downtrodden, as well as themes of social exile in small-town society. At the same time, another part of the story focuses on Maragrazia’s own traumatic past, when she opens up to the local doctor about the emotional wounds that she still bears from years ago during the Risorgimento battles. The scars of sexual violence, the loss of children, and the fracturing of both family and community thus extend from generation to generation in this story of suffering in the rural south. Garibaldi’s landing in Sicily and the politics behind his expedition during the war for Italian unification thus set the historical scene and add another dimension to the story’s exploration of the limits of human communication and the alienating otherness that affects individuals even despite personal rapport or familial ties. Through the horror Maragrazia had to suffer, Pirandello examines the resilience of rural people and how obstinacy (and illusion) can be a response to trauma and pain.

In 1915, Pirandello signed a contract to provide film scenarios in collaboration with the director Carmine Gallone, and “The Other Son” was envisioned as the first of eight short films in this endeavor – never, however, brought to fruition. The true cinematic success and legacy of this tale is rather to be found in its adaptation by the Taviani brothers as one of the episodes in their film Kaos (1984). They rework Maragrazia’s emotional struggles cinematically through powerful flashbacks, interjecting narration with events from the 1860s, after the arrival of Garibaldi in Sicily.

The Editors

“Is Ninfarosa home?”[1]

“Yes. Knock.”

Old Maragrazia knocked and then lowered herself very slowly onto the worn step in front of the door.

That was her usual seat, a step like so many others in front of the doors of the little houses of Farnia.[2] Seated there, she would either sleep or cry silently. Someone passing by would throw a coin or a piece of bread into her lap. She would gently shake herself awake or stop crying, kiss the coin or the bread, make the sign of the cross, and start crying or sleeping again.

She looked like a heap of rags, heavy greasy rags, always the same ones, in summer and in winter, torn, in shreds, colorless, and saturated with stinking sweat and all the dirt of the street. Her sallow face was a dense network of wrinkles in which her eyelids were bleeding, overflowing, burning from her continuous crying. But amidst those wrinkles and that blood and those tears, her clear eyes had the faraway look of a childhood without memories. Often a voracious fly would attach itself to those eyes; but she was so sunk into her suffering, so absorbed by it, that she didn’t even notice; she didn’t brush it away. The little hair she had, dry and parted on her head, terminated in two little knots hanging over her ears, the lobes of which were torn from the weight of the massive dangling earrings worn in her youth. From her chin to deep, deep under her throat, her sagging skin was creased by a black furrow that ran down into her hollow chest.

The neighbor ladies sitting in the doorway no longer paid any attention to her. They were there almost all day, some mending clothes, some sorting vegetables, some knitting socks, in other words all of them busy with something. They conversed in front of their low cottages where the light came in through the doorways. House and stable all in one, their floors of cobblestones like the street. Here the trough, where a few little donkeys and mules pawed the ground, tormented by the flies; there the tall imposing bed; and then a long black chest of spruce or beech that looked like a coffin; two or three chairs with straw seats; the cupboard; and then the farm tools. On the rough walls covered with soot, the only ornaments were a few crude penny prints apparently representing the village saints. In the street smelling of smoke and stables, children were romping, baked by the sun, some stark naked and others with just a little undershirt, tattered and dirty. Chickens scratched, and the chalky little pigs grunted as they sniffed through the garbage with their snouts.

That day the talk was about the new group of emigrants who were leaving for America the next morning.

“Saro Scoma’s going,”[3] one of the women said. “He’s leaving his wife and three kids.”

“Vito Scordia is leaving five and a pregnant wife,”[4] added another.

“Is it true that Carmine Ronca is taking his twelve-year-old boy with him, the one that was already working in the sulfur mine?” asked a third. “Oh, Holy Mary, he could have at least left the boy with his wife. How will that poor girl support herself now?”

“Such crying, such crying, all night long, at Nunzia Ligreci’s house,” wailed a fourth woman later on. “Her son Nico, just back from the army, wants to go too!”

Hearing this, old Maragrazia smothered her mouth with her shawl so as not to burst out crying. Nevertheless, the intensity of her pain broke through from her bloodshot eyes in the form of endless tears.

Fourteen years before, two of her sons had also left for America, promising to return four or five years later. But they had made their fortunes down there, especially one of them, the eldest, and they had forgotten all about their old mother. Whenever a new group of emigrants left Farnia, she would go to Ninfarosa’s so that the girl could write a letter for her that one of the departing men could, out of kindness, put into the hands of one or the other of her sons. Then she would follow the group for a long stretch of the dusty road as they traveled to the railway station in the next city, laden down with sacks and bundles, together with the mothers, wives, and sisters who were crying despairingly. And as she walked, she stared ever so fixedly into the eyes of this or that young emigrant, who was putting on a noisy show of happiness to suppress his emotion and impress the relatives who accompanied him.

“You crazy old woman,” one of them would yell at her. “So why are you looking at me like that? You want to gouge my eyes out?”

“No, handsome, I’m jealous of you!” the old woman responded. “Because you will see my sons. Tell them how you left me, that if they wait too much longer they’ll never see me again.”

Meanwhile the neighbor women continued counting how many men were leaving the next day. All of a sudden, an old man with a beard and wooly hair, who up until then had been quietly listening, idly smoking a pipe at the end of the narrow road, lifted his head from the mule saddle that it was resting on and placed his big strong hands on his chest:

“If I were king,” he said, and spat, “if I were king, I wouldn’t let even one letter reach Farnia from down there.”

“Hurray for you, Jaco Spina!” then exclaimed one of the women. “And how would the poor wives and mothers here manage without any news or any help?”

“Yes! They send a lot of letters!” scolded the old man, and he spat again. “The mothers become servants, and the wives go bad. Why don’t they talk about the troubles they find down there in their letters? They only talk about the good things, and for these big dumb kids every letter is like a mother hen clucking ‘here chick, here chick, here chick,’ calling to them and taking them all away! Where are the men to work the land? We’re the only ones left in Farnia now: old men, women, and children. I have land and I see how it’s suffering. What can I do with one pair of hands? And they keep on leaving, leaving! Good riddance, I say. They should break their necks, the bastards!”

At this point, Ninfarosa opened the door, and it was as if the sun had come out in the little street.

Dark hair and skin, black sparkling eyes and red lips, her whole firm and agile body exuded a cheerful boldness. She had a big red cotton kerchief with yellow dots tied over her full breasts and big gold rings in her ears. Her jet-black hair, shiny and wavy, pulled back unparted, was gathered into a voluminous knot on her neck around a little silver dagger. A deep dimple in the middle of her round chin gave her a sly and alluring grace.

Having lost her first husband after only two years of marriage, she had been abandoned by her second, who had left for America five years before. At night—so that no one would know about it—someone (one of the town bigwigs) would come to visit her through the little door leading to the orchard at the back of the house. So the women of the town, honest and God-fearing, looked askance at her, although some of them even secretly envied her. They also had it in for her because in town it was said that to avenge herself for her second husband’s abandonment, she wrote a lot of anonymous letters to the emigrants in America, slandering and defaming some poor women.

“Who’s preaching like that?” she said, stepping down into the street. “Ah, Jaco Spina! It’s better, Uncle Jaco, if we stay here in Farnia by ourselves! We’ll do the hoeing, us women.”

“You women,” scolded the old man again in his phlegmy voice, “you’re good for only one thing.”

And he spat.

“What thing is that, Uncle Jaco? Speak up.”

“For crying, and for something else.”

“So for two things then, that’s great! But I don’t cry, you see?”

“Eh, I know, daughter. You didn’t cry even when your first husband died!”

“But if I had died first, Uncle Jaco,” Ninfarosa answered back quickly, “wouldn’t he perhaps have taken a second wife? So anyway! You see who cries here for everyone? Maragrazia.”[5]

“That’s because the old lady has a lot of water to throw away, and she gets rid of it even through her eyes,” asserted Jaco Spina, lying down again, belly up.

The neighbors laughed. Maragrazia shook herself and exclaimed:

“I lost two sons, beautiful as the sun, and you want me not to cry?”

“Really beautiful, oh! Really worth crying about,” said Ninfarosa. “They’re swimming in wealth down there, and they leave you dying here, a beggar.”

“They are the children, and I am the mother,” responded the old woman. “How can they understand my pain?”

“Ah! I don’t understand all these tears and so much pain,” replied Ninfarosa, “when they say that you yourself drove them away in desperation.”

“Me?” exclaimed Maragrazia, hitting her chest with her fist and standing up, astonished. “Me? Who said so?”

“Never mind who said it, they said it.”

“Disgraceful! Me? To my sons? Me, who...”

“Don’t pay her any mind!” One of the neighbors interrupted her. “Don’t you see she’s kidding?”

Ninfarosa kept on laughing, wiggling her hips disrespectfully. Then, to make up for the cruel joke, she asked the old woman in an affectionate way:

“Come on, come on, little grandma, what do you want?”

Maragrazia stuck her trembling hand into her blouse and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and an envelope. She showed first one and then the other to Ninfarosa, with a supplicating air, and said:

“If you could do me the usual kindness...”

“Another letter?”

“If you could...”

Ninfarosa snorted, but knowing that there was no way of getting rid of her, she invited her in.

Her house wasn’t like the others in the neighborhood. The vast room, a little dark when the door was closed since then light came in only through a barred window over the door, was whitewashed, with brick walls, clean and neat. The room was furnished with an iron bedstead, a wardrobe, a marble-topped chest of drawers, and a walnut veneered table, all modest furnishings which, however, Ninfarosa couldn’t have paid for herself from her very uncertain earnings as a country seamstress.

She took the pen and inkwell, put the crumpled piece of paper on top of the chest, and prepared to write, standing there.

“Come on, hurry up!”

“Dear sons,” the old woman started dictating.

“I have no more eyes left for tears,” continued Ninfarosa, with a tired sigh.

And the old woman:

“Because my eyes are burning with the desire to see you at least for the last time...”

“Go on, go on!” Ninfarosa prodded her. “You’ve already written this I would say at least thirty times.”

“So write it. It’s the truth, my love, don’t you see? So, write: Dear sons...”

“From the beginning?”

“No. Now something else. I thought it all out this evening. Listen: Dear Sons, your poor old mother promises you and swears... like that, promises you and swears before God that if you come back to Farnia she will give you her little house while she still lives.”

Ninfarosa burst out laughing.

“Even the little house? But if they’re already rich, what do you want them to do with those four walls of clay and sticks that collapse if you breathe on them?”

“Just write,” repeated the obstinate old woman. “Better four pebbles in your hometown than a whole kingdom somewhere else. Write, write.”

“I wrote it. What else do you want to add?”

“Here it is, this: your poor mother, dear sons, now that winter is at our door, shivers with the cold; she would like to make a little dress for herself, but she can’t; can you be so kind as to send her at least five lire for…”

“Enough, enough, enough!” said Ninfarosa, folding up the paper and stuffing it into the envelope. “It’s all done. Enough.”

“About the five lire too?” said the old lady, cowed by her unexpected anger.

“Everything, even the five lire, yes ma’am.”

“You got it down... everything?”

“Auff! I’m telling you, yes!”

“Patience... have a little patience with this poor old woman, my child,” said Maragrazia. “What am I supposed to do? I’m half-crazy by now. May God reward you for your kindness, and the beautiful Blessed Mother too.”

She took the letter and put it in her blouse. She intended to entrust it to Nunzia Ligreci’s son who was going to Rosario di Santa Fè,[6] where her children were; and she left to bring it to him.

Now that it was evening, the women had already gone inside and almost all the doors were closed. Not a soul was passing through the narrow street. The lamplighter was on his rounds, ladder in tow, lighting the few oil lamps whose querulous, meager light made the dimness and the silence of those abandoned alleys seem even sadder.

Old Maragrazia was walking along, hunched over, pressing to her breast with one hand the letter to be sent to her sons, as if to communicate her maternal warmth to that piece of paper. With the other hand she scratched her shoulder or scratched her head. With every new letter there was reborn within her the overwhelming hope that with this one she would finally succeed in touching her sons’ hearts and calling them back to her. Certainly, on reading those words of hers, soaked with all the tears shed for them over the past fourteen years, her beautiful sons, her sweet sons, would no longer know how to resist.

But this time, to tell the truth, she wasn’t very satisfied with the letter that she carried next to her breast. It seemed to her that Ninfarosa had scribbled it down too fast, and she wasn’t even sure that the girl had put in the last part, the part about the five lire for the little dress. Five lire! What damage could five lire do to her sons, who were already rich, five lire to cover the flesh of their shivering old mother?

Meanwhile, through the closed doors of the poor little houses, she could hear the screams of the mothers lamenting the imminent departure of their sons.

“Oh, my sons, my sons!” moaned Maragrazia to herself, pressing the letter more tightly to her breast. “What was in your hearts when you left? You promised to return; then you never returned again... Ah, you poor old ladies, don’t believe their promises! Your sons, like mine, will never return... will never return...”

Suddenly she stopped under a street lamp, hearing the sound of footsteps in the alley. Who was it?

Ah, it was the new town doctor, the young man who had just arrived but who soon—everyone said—would be leaving, not because he had done anything wrong but because he wasn’t popular with the few rich people of the town. All the poor people, on the other hand, had quickly come to love him. He looked like a kid when you saw him; but he was old in wisdom, and smart: they were left open-mouthed when he spoke. They said that he wanted to go to America too. But he, at least, he didn’t have a mother anymore; he was alone!

“Signor dottore,[7] begged Mariagrazia, “would you do me a kindness?”

The young doctor stopped under the street lamp, confused. He had been thinking as he walked and hadn’t noticed the old lady.

“Who is it? Ah, it’s you...”

He remembered having seen that heap of rags many times in front of the doors of the little houses.

“Would you do me the kindness,” repeated Mariagrazia, “of reading me this little letter that I have to send to my sons?”

“If I can see it...” said the doctor, who was near-sighted, straightening his glasses on his nose.

Maragrazia took out the letter from her blouse, handed it to him, and waited for him to begin reading to her the words she had dictated to Ninfarosa: “Dear Sons...” But what was this!... The doctor either couldn’t see it or couldn’t decipher the writing. He drew the slip of paper close to his eyes, moved it farther away to see it better under the light of the street lamp, turned it over, this way, that way... Finally, he said:

“But what is this?”

“Can’t you read it?” Maragrazia asked timidly.

The doctor started laughing.

“But there’s nothing written here,” he said. “Four scribbles in ink, like zig zags. Look.”

“What!” exclaimed the old woman, shocked.

“But yes, look. Nothing. There’s nothing written here.”

“Is it possible?” said the old woman. “But how? If I dictated it myself to Ninfarosa, word by word! And I saw that she was writing...”

“She must have been pretending,” said the doctor, shrugging his shoulders.

Maragrazia was struck dumb. Then she punched her chest hard with her fist.

“Ah, that hateful girl!” she burst out. “Why did she trick me like that? Ah, so that’s why my sons don’t respond to me! So, nothing! She never wrote anything to them of everything that I dictated to her... That’s why! So my sons don’t know anything about how I am? That I’m dying for them? And I was blaming them, signor dottore, while it was she, that hateful girl over there, who always made fun of me... Oh God, oh God, how can anyone betray a poor mother like that, a poor old mother like me? Oh, oh, what a thing to do, oh...”

The young doctor, moved and indignant, first tried to calm her down a little. He made her explain who this Ninfarosa was, where she lived, so he could give her the tongue lashing she deserved the next day. But the old lady went on excusing her distant sons for their long silence, eaten up by remorse for having blamed them for so many years for having abandoned her now very sure that they would have returned, would have flown to her, if just one of those many letters that she thought she had sent them had actually been written and had reached them.

To cut the scene short, the doctor had to promise her that the next morning he would write a long letter to her children.

“Come, come, don’t despair like this. You will come to me tomorrow. Now, to sleep! Go to sleep!”

But how could she sleep! About two hours later, the doctor, passing through the narrow street again, found her there still, crying inconsolably, squatting under the street lamp. He scolded her and made her get up, urging her to go home immediately, immediately, because it was nighttime.

“Where do you live?”

“Oh, signor dottore... I have a little house, down there, at the edge of town. I told that wicked girl to write to my sons that I would give it to them while I was alive, if they wanted to come back. She started laughing, the shameless hussy! Because it’s four little walls of clay and sticks. But I...”

“It’s ok, it’s ok,” the doctor cut her off again. “Go home to bed! Tomorrow we’ll write about the little house too. Come on, up, I’ll accompany you.”

“May God bless you, signor dottore! But what are you saying? Accompany me yourself, your excellency![8] Go on ahead, go ahead of me; I’m old and I’m slow.”

The doctor wished her goodnight and went on his way. Maragrazia followed him at a distance. Then, arriving at his door, and seeing that he had gone in, she stopped, pulled her shawl over her head, wrapped it tightly around herself, and sat down on the step in front of the door, to spend the night there, waiting.

At dawn she was sleeping when the doctor, who was an early riser, left his house for the first calls of the day. It was a swinging door and upon opening it, the sleeping old lady fell down at his feet, since she had been leaning against it.

“Oh! It’s you! Did you hurt yourself?”

“You... your excellency, forgive me,” stammered Maragrazia, using both her hands enveloped in the shawl to help herself up.

“You spent the night here?”

“Yes, sir... it’s nothing, I’m used to it,” the old lady excused herself. “What do you want, my dear young man? I can’t find any peace... I can’t get over that evil girl’s betrayal! I feel like killing her, signor dottore! She could have told me that it annoyed her to write, I would have gone to someone else. I would have come to you, sir, who are so good...”

“Yes, wait here a little while,” said the doctor “I’m going to go see this fine woman now. Then we’ll write the letter. Wait here.”

And he hurried away to where the old lady had directed him the evening before. He happened by chance to ask Ninfarosa herself, who was already out in the street, for the address of the woman he wanted to speak to.

“Here I am, it’s me, signor dottore,” Ninfarosa responded to him, laughing and blushing; and she invited him to come in.

She had seen the young doctor with the almost childish face passing by many times in the little street, and since she was always healthy and wouldn’t have known how to pretend to be sick in order to call him, she seemed happy now, even in her surprise, that he had come to speak with her on his own. As soon as she learned what it was about, and saw him so upset and severe, she bent toward him provocatively, with a sad face, because of the unreasonableness of his displeasure, and that was it! As soon as she could, without committing the impropriety of interrupting him:

“But with all due respect, signor dottore,” she said, half closing her beautiful black eyes, “are you seriously worrying yourself about that crazy old woman? Everybody here in the village knows her, signor dottore, and nobody pays any attention to her anymore. Ask anyone and they’ll all tell you that she’s crazy, has been for the last fourteen years, you know, from when those two sons left for America. She doesn’t want to admit that they’ve forgotten about her, which is the truth, and she keeps on writing, writing... Now, just to keep her happy you understand, I pretend... like this, to write the letter for her. Then the men who leave pretend to take it to deliver it. And she, the poor old thing, lets herself believe it. But if everyone acted like her, my signor dottore, by now that would be the end of us all. Look, even me who’s talking to you, I was abandoned by my husband... yes, sir! And do you know the nerve that fine gentleman had? He sent me a photo of him and his sweetheart from down there! I can let you see it... The two of them, leaning their heads on each other, holding hands, like this, do you mind? Give me your hand... like this! And they’re laughing in the face of the person looking at them, which means in my face. Ah, signor dottore, all the pity goes to the ones that leave and nothing for the ones that stay! I cried too, you know, at first. But then I accepted it and now... now I take one day at a time and even have some fun, if I have the chance, seeing how that’s the way the world is!”

Unsettled by the provocative affability and friendliness that this beautiful woman was showing him, the young doctor lowered his eyes and said:

“But because you, perhaps, have enough to live on. That poor woman, however ...”

“What’s that you say! That woman?” replied Ninfarosa, vivaciously. “She could live very well too, and how! Sitting around and being waited on hand and foot. If she wanted to. But she doesn’t want to.”

“What?” asked the doctor, raising his eyes, amazed.

Ninfarosa, seeing that handsome face so shocked, burst out laughing, showing the strong white teeth that gave her smile the splendid beauty of health.

“Of course!” she said. “She doesn’t want to, signor dottore! She has another son here, the youngest, who would like to have her with him, where she’d lack for nothing.”

“Another son? Her?”

“Yes, sir. His name is Rocco Trupìa. She doesn’t want to have anything to do with him.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s really crazy, didn’t I tell you? She cries night and day for those two that abandoned her, and she doesn’t want to accept even a piece of bread from this other one who begs her on bended knee. From strangers, yes.”

Not wanting to show himself any more amazed and to hide his growing concern, the doctor frowned and said:

“Perhaps he treated her badly, this son.”

“I don’t think so,” said Ninfarosa. “He’s ugly, yes; always scowling, but not bad. And a very hard worker besides! Work, wife, and kids: that’s all he knows. If your excellency is curious, you don’t have to walk very far. Look, you follow this road just about a quarter of a mile, and once outside the town you’ll find on the right the place they call ‘the House with the Column.’ He’s there. He’s renting a nice piece of land that gives him a good return. Go there and you’ll see that it’s just like I’m telling you.”

The doctor got up. Encouraged by the conversation, enticed by the sweet September morning, and more than curious about the case of the old woman, he said:

“I’ll definitely go there.”

Ninfarosa put her hands behind her neck to wind her hair around the little silver dagger, and furtively gazing up at the doctor with laughing flirtatious eyes:

“Have a nice walk then,” she said. “Your servant, sir!”

Having climbed the steep slope, the doctor stopped to catch his breath. A few other poor houses here and there, and the town came to an end. The lane merged into the provincial road that went on for more than a mile, straight and dusty, on top of the vast plateau through the fields; wheat fields mostly, now yellow with brush. A magnificent maritime pine rose up on the left, like a giant umbrella, the destination for the ladies and gentlemen of Farnia on their accustomed evening strolls. The plateau was bordered by a long chain of blueish mountains, far away in the distance. Behind the mountains were thick clouds, sparkling and wooly, that looked as if they were lying in ambush. One of them dislodged itself and wandered slowly through the sky, passing over Monte Mirotta[9] which rose up behind Farnia. As it passed, the mountain faded away in a dark purple shadow, and then quickly reappeared. The extreme silence of the morning was broken every once in a while by the gunshots of the hunters at the passing of some doves or the first sighting of skylarks. The shots were followed by the long, mournful barking of the guard dogs.

The doctor kept up a good pace along the road, looking here and there at the dry fields that were waiting for the first rains in order to be worked. But the men to work them were lacking, and from all the fields there emanated a deep sense of sadness and abandonment.

There it was, over there, the House with the Column, so named because it was supported on one corner by a column from an ancient Greek temple, corroded and chipped. It was really just a hovel: a shack,[10] as the Sicilian peasants call their rural habitations. Protected from behind by a thick hedge of prickly pears, in front there were two big cone-shaped haystacks.

“Oh, hello the house!”[11] called the doctor, who was afraid of dogs, stopping in front of a rusty little gate that was falling apart.

A big boy of about ten came out, barefoot, with a mop of reddish hair, bleached by the sun, and a pair of greenish eyes like those of a wild creature.

“Is there a dog here?” the doctor asked him.

“Yes, but he’s harmless, you know,” responded the boy.

“Are you Rocco Trupìa’s son?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where’s your father?”

“He’s unloading the fertilizer, over there, with the mules.”

Seated on the little wall in front of the shack was his mother, combing the hair of her oldest daughter, who looked about twelve. She was sitting on a tin pail with a baby only a few months old on her knees. Another little boy was romping in the dirt among the chickens, who weren’t afraid of him, much to the chagrin of a handsome uppity rooster who stretched out his neck and shook his cockscomb.

“I’d like to speak with Rocco Trupìa,” said the young doctor to the woman. “I’m the new town doctor.”

The woman took a moment to look at him, disconcerted, not understanding what the doctor could want with her husband. She tucked into her bodice the coarse shirt that had remained open as she was suckling the baby, buttoned it, and stood up to offer the doctor a seat. The doctor declined and leaned down to caress the sweet little boy on the ground, while the other boy ran to call his father.

Shortly after, footsteps from heavy hobnailed shoes were heard, and from amidst the prickly pears Rocco Trupìa appeared, walking hunched over with long bowed legs and one hand on his back, like most of the peasants.

His long, flat nose and noticeably too long, clean-shaven upper lip gave him an ape-like appearance; his hair was red, and his pale skin was scattered with freckles; surly evasive looks darted forth occasionally from his sunken greenish eyes.

He raised a hand to push his black stocking cap back a little from his forehead as a sign of greeting.

“My respects, your excellency. What can I do for you?”

“Well, I have come,” began the doctor, “to talk to you about your mother.”

Rocco Trupìa looked worried.

“Is she sick?”

“No,” the doctor hastened to add. “She’s the same; but so old, you understand, in tatters, no one looking after her...”

As the doctor spoke, Rocco Trupìa’s agitation increased. Finally he couldn’t hold it in anymore, and said:

“Signor dottore, is there anything else I can do for you? I’m at your service. But if your excellency has come here to speak to me about my mother, with your permission, I will go back to work.”

“Wait... I know it’s not your fault she’s neglected,” said the doctor, to detain him. “They’ve told me that you, to the contrary...”

“Come here, signor dottore,” said Rocco Trupìa, jumping up unexpectedly and pointing to the door of the shack. “It’s a poor house, but if your excellency is a doctor, who knows how many others like it you must have seen. I want to show you the bed that is always ready and made up for that... good old woman; she is my mother, I can’t call her anything else. Here is my wife, here are my kids; they can swear that I have ordered them to serve, to respect that old woman as if she were the Holy Virgin. Because all mothers are holy, signor dottore! What have I done to this mother? Why must she shame me like this in front of the whole village and let them think who knows what about me? I grew up, signor dottore, with my father’s relatives, it’s true, from when I was a child; I shouldn’t have to respect her like a mother because she has always been hard with me. Nonetheless, I have respected her and loved her. When those bad sons left for America, I ran to her right away to take her with me, to bring her here, like the queen of my house. No, sir! She has to play the beggarwoman in the village, she has to make a spectacle of herself and bring shame to me! Signor dottore, I swear to you that if one of those bad sons of hers comes back to Farnia, I’ll kill him for the shame and for all the bitterness that I’ve been suffering for fourteen years because of them. I’ll kill him, as sure as I am talking with you, in the presence of my wife and these four innocent children!”

Trembling, his face even more than usually pale, Rocco Trupìa rubbed his foaming mouth with his arm. His eyes were bloodshot.

The young doctor kept looking at him, indignant.

“So that’s why,” he said, “your mother doesn’t want to accept the hospitality that you offer her: because of the hatred that you nurture against your brothers! It’s obvious.”

“Hatred?” said Rocco Trupìa, clenching his fist behind him and standing up straight. “Now, yes, signor dottore, hatred because of how they have made my mother and me suffer! But before that, when they were here, I loved them and respected them as my older brothers. But now, instead, they are like two Cains for me! But listen, they didn’t work, and I worked for everyone; they would come here and tell me that they had nothing to cook for supper, that Mamma would have to go to bed hungry; and I would give; they would get drunk, they frittered away their money on bad women. And I gave. When they left for America, I wept for them. My wife here can tell you so.”

“So then why?” the doctor said again, almost to himself.

Rocco Trupìa broke out with a snigger.

“Why? Because my mother says I’m not her son!”

“What?”

“Signor dottore, ask her to explain it to you. I don’t have time to waste: the men over there are waiting for me with the mules loaded with fertilizer. I have to work and... look, I got all mixed up. Ask her to explain it to you. My respects.”

And Rocco Trupìa walked away, bent over the same way he had come, with his long bowed legs and his hand on his back. The doctor followed him with his eyes for a while, then turned to look at the children, who had been left speechless, and the wife. She clasped her hands and shaking them a little, half closing her eyes, let out a sigh of resignation:

“God’s will be done!”

After returning to the village, the doctor wanted to resolve this case quickly, a case so strange as to seem incredible; and finding the old woman still sitting on the step in front of the door to his house, just as he had left her, he invited her to come in, with a certain harshness in his voice.

“I’ve been to talk with your son at the House with the Column,” he then said. “Why did you hide from me the fact that you had this other son here?”

Maragrazia looked at him, confused at first, then almost terrified; she passed her trembling hands over her forehead and her hair and said:

“Ah, young man: I’ll break into a cold sweat if your excellency talks to me about that son. Don’t talk to me about him, I beg you!”

“But why?” the doctor asked her, getting angry. “What did he do to you? Come on, tell me!”

“Nothing, he’s done nothing to me,” the old woman hastened to respond. “I have to acknowledge that, in good conscience! To the contrary, he has always approached me respectfully... But I... you see how I’m shaking, my dear young man, as soon as I speak of him? I can’t speak about him! Because that one there, signor dottore, is not my son!”

The young doctor lost patience and burst out with:

“What do you mean he’s not your son? What are you saying? Are you dimwitted or really crazy? Didn’t you give birth to him?”

The old woman bowed her head at this outburst, half closed her bloody eyes, and responded:

“Yes, sir. And I’m dimwitted, maybe. Crazy, no. If only I were! I wouldn’t suffer so much.[12] But there are certain things your excellency can’t know, because you’re still a boy. I’m old, I’ve suffered for so long, and I’ve seen things! I’ve seen things! I’ve seen things, my dear young man, that your excellency couldn’t even imagine.”

“So what have you seen then? Tell me!” the doctor spurred her on.

“Dark things! Dark things!” sighed the old woman, shaking her head. “Your excellency wasn’t even a gleam in the eye of God, and I’ve seen things with these eyes that ever since have cried tears of blood. Has your excellency heard tell of a certain Canebardo?”[13]

“Garibaldi?” asked the doctor, taken aback.

“Yes, sir, the one who came into our parts and rebelled against every law of God and man from the country to the city. You’ve heard tell of him?”

“Yes, yes, go on! But how does Garibaldi come into it?”

“He comes into it because your excellency must know that this Canebardo gave the order, when he came, to open up all the jails in all the towns. Now imagine, your excellency, the wrath of God that was unleashed across our land then! The worst thieves, the worst killers, savage beasts, bloodthirsty, angry from so many years in chains... Among them there was one, the most ferocious one, a certain Cola Camizzi, the chief of the brigands, who slaughtered God’s poor creatures like this, for pleasure, as if they were flies, to test his gunpowder, he said, to see if his rifle worked right. He burst into the countryside, into our neighborhood. He passed through Farnia with a gang of peasants that he had put together; but he wasn’t satisfied, he wanted others, and he killed all those who didn’t want to follow him. I had been married just a few years and already had those two sons who are down there now in America, my blood! We were in Pozzetto where my husband, God rest his soul, was sharecropping.[14] Cola Camizzi passed by there and dragged him off too, my husband, by brute force. Two days later I saw him come back like a dead man; he didn’t look like himself anymore; he couldn’t speak, his eyes full of what he had seen, and he hid his hands, the poor thing, because of his disgust at what he had been forced to do... Ah, my dear young man, my heart turned over in my chest when I saw him in front of me like that: ‘My Nino!’ I screamed at him (God rest his soul!). ‘My Nino! what have you done?’ He couldn’t speak. ‘You escaped? And what if they recapture you? They’ll kill you!’ My heart, my heart was speaking to me. But he sat near the fire, silent, with his hands always hidden, like this, under his jacket, his eyes glazed over. He looked down at the ground for a while and then said: ‘Better off dead!’ He didn’t say anything else. He hid for three days; on the fourth day he went out: we were poor, he had to work. He went out to work. Evening came; he didn’t return... I waited, waited, oh God! But I already knew, I had already imagined what had happened. Yet I thought: ‘who knows! Maybe they haven’t killed him; maybe they just recaptured him!’ Six days later I learned that Cola Camizzi and his band were on the estate in Montelusa[15] that belonged to the Liguorini Fathers,[16] who had escaped. Like a crazy woman, I went there. It was more than a six-mile journey from Pozzetto. It was a windy day, my dear young man, like no other I have ever seen again. Do you think you can see the wind? You saw it that day! It seemed that all the souls of those murdered were screaming to man and God for vengeance. I stepped into that wind, all torn to shreds, and the wind carried me. I was screaming louder than it was. I flew: it must have taken me barely an hour to get to the convent, which was up there, up there, among a lot of black poplars. There was a big courtyard, walled. You entered through a little door, very, very small, on one side, half hidden, I still remember, by a big caper bush that had taken root on top of the wall. I picked up a stone, to knock harder; I knocked, I knocked; they didn’t want to let me in; but I knocked so much that they finally opened the door for me. Ah, what did I see!”

At that point, Maragrazia stood up, contorted with horror, her bloody eyes glazed over, and stretched out a hand, her fingers clawing from revulsion. At first she lacked the voice to go on.

“In their hands,” she then said, “in their hands... those murderers...”

She stopped again, as if suffocating, and shook her hand, as if she wanted to throw something.

“And then?” asked the doctor, ashen-faced.

“They were playing... there, in that courtyard... playing bocce...[17] but with the heads of men... black heads, full of dirt... they held them by the tufts of their hair... and one, my husband’s... he was holding it, Cola Camizzi... and he showed it to me. I let out a scream that ripped my throat and my chest, a scream so loud that those murderers trembled; but as Cola Camizzi grabbed me by the throat to silence me, one of them jumped on him, furious; then, four, five, ten, fired up by the first one, went after him, they surrounded him. They had had enough, they too were revolted by the ferocious tyranny of that monster, signor dottore, and I had the satisfaction of seeing his throat cut there, before my very eyes, by his own men, the dirty murderer!”

The old woman sank down into her chair, exhausted, panting, her whole body shaken by a convulsive trembling.

The young doctor kept looking at her, aghast, his face registering pity, disgust, and horror. But once the first shock passed, as he gathered his thoughts, he couldn’t see what connection that atrocious story could have to the case of that other son; and he asked her about it.

“Wait,” responded the old woman, as soon as she could catch her breath. “The one who rebelled first, the one who came to my defense, was named Marco Trupìa.”

“Ah!” exclaimed the doctor. “So, this Rocco...”

“His son,” responded Maragrazia. “But do you think, signor dottore, that I could be the wife of that man after everything I had seen! He forced himself on me; he kept me with him for three months, bound and gagged, because I would scream, I would bite him... After three months, the law caught up with him and put him in jail, where he died shortly after. But I was pregnant. Ah, my dear young man, I swear to you I would have ripped my insides out; it seemed to me I was carrying a monster! I felt that I couldn’t see myself holding it in my arms. At the very thought of having to attach it to my breast, I would scream like a crazy woman. I was close to death when he came into the world. My mother helped me, God rest her soul, she didn’t even let me see him: she brought him right away to his father’s relatives, who raised him... Now doesn’t it seem to you, signor dottore, that I can truthfully say that he is not my son?”

The young doctor took a while to respond, lost in thought; then he said:

“But he, your son, at the end of the day, is it his fault?”

“Not at all!” the old woman quickly replied. “And in fact, when have my lips ever uttered a word against him? Never, signor dottore! To the contrary... But what can I do if I can’t stand to look at him even from a distance! He looks just like his father, my dear young man, his features, his build, even his voice... I start shaking as soon as I see him and break out into a cold sweat! It’s not me; my blood rebels, there it is! What can I do about it?”

She stopped for a moment, drying her eyes with the back of her hands; then, fearful that the group of emigrants would leave Farnia without the letter for her true sons, for her adored sons, she found the courage to say to the doctor, who was still lost in thought:

“If your excellency could do me the kindness that you promised me...”

And as the doctor, recovering himself, told her that he was ready, she moved closer to the desk with her chair and, once again, in the same tearful voice, started to dictate:

“Dear sons...”