“The Paper Fan” (Il ventaglino)

Translated by Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “The Paper Fan” (Il ventaglino), tr. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2024.

“The Paper Fan” was first published in the monthly literary magazine La Riviera Ligure in July, 1903. Pirandello then added it to the first Collection of his Stories for a Year (Novelle per un anno), Black Shawl (Scialle nero), which came out in 1922 from the Florentine publisher Bemporad.

This story engages a number of typical Pirandellian themes, including his humoristic view of human nature and suffering as well as his treatment of the exploitation of lower-class people on the margins of society, especially women. At the same time, the style is characterized by a blunt realism marked particularly by the pervasive use of dialect and improper grammar to mimic the speech of the uneducated lower classes of modern Rome. This kind of realism is often associated with Pirandello’s short stories set in Sicily, many of which examine the exploitation of the poor in agricultural communities or in the sulfur mines; several of these stories were published alongside “The Paper Fan” in the volume Black Shawl, including the title story “Black Shawl” (“Scialle nero,” 1904) and “The Fumes” (“Il fumo,” 1904). However, there are also several stories set in Rome that trace these questions of exploitation in the modern urban environment. See, for instance, “The Warmer” (“Lo scaldino,” 1905) and “Escape” (“Fuga,” 1923). In “The Paper Fan,” there is also an undercurrent exploring the motivations driving a woman into sex work, which becomes apparent by the end of the story. Despite her seeming good fortune, after choosing to buy the titular paper fan Tuta is again penniless, her eyes roving the crowd in a suggestive way, highlighting a less discussed but important theme in Pirandello’s corpus. In fact, many of his works approach the topic of prostitution as a corollary of his interest in the destitute in modern Rome, most famously of course his theatrical masterpiece Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore, 1921/1925), where the Stepdaughter is driven into prostitution after their family is abandoned by her stepfather and she has to help her mother make enough for them to survive. In “The Paper Fan,” the intimation of Tuta’s possible option for making ends meet is less direct, and what we have here is something of the backstory behind how an abandoned woman could be left with few other options for making it on her own.

This translation was undertaken as part of a new research project led by Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka to study the capabilities and limits of contemporary large language model (LLM) machine translation tools. An initial draft of the translation was prepared using ChatGPT 4.o in July of 2024. This was then modified extensively through prompt engineering by the translators to produce a working draft that accounted for elements of dialect and register that the initial draft did not capture. The translators then revised and edited the translation line-by-line to resolve remaining issues that were misinterpreted or overlooked by the machine translation. An article articulating the methods and conclusions of this research project is forthcoming.

The Editors

The little public garden, shabby and dusty, was almost deserted on that scorching August afternoon. It lay in the middle of a vast square, surrounded by tall, yellowish houses, drowsing in the heat.[1]

Tuta entered, carrying the baby in her arms.

On a shady bench, an old man, thin and lost in a gray alpaca suit, had a handkerchief on his head. On top of the handkerchief, a skimpy straw hat, yellowed by time. He had carefully rolled up his sleeves and was reading a newspaper.

Next to him, on the same bench, an unemployed worker was sleeping, stretched out awkwardly with his head resting on his arms. From time to time, the old man interrupted his reading and turned with a certain distress to observe his neighbor, whose greasy, stiff dirty hat was about to fall off his head. Evidently, that dirty hat, which had been precariously balanced (shall I fall, or not?) for who knows how long, was starting to exasperate him.[2] He wanted to straighten it or knock it off with a flick. He sighed, then looked around at the benches nearby, hoping to find another one in the shade. There was only one, a short distance away, but it was occupied by a fat, ragged old woman, who opened her toothless mouth in a formidable yawn every time he looked her way.

Tuta approached little by little, smiling and on tiptoe. She put a finger to her lips, signaling for silence; then, very gently, she took the sleeping man’s dirty hat with two fingers and put it back in place on his head.

The old man watched her movements, first surprised, then frowning.

"'Scuse me, sir," Tuta said, still smiling and bowing, as if the favor had been done to him and not to the sleeping worker. "Gimme a penny fer this poor creature."[3]

"No!" snapped the old man immediately with annoyance (who knows why), and he lowered his eyes back to the newspaper.

"Jest tryin' t' git by!" sighed Tuta. "God'll pruhvide."

And she went to sit on the other bench, next to the ragged old woman, with whom she immediately struck up a conversation. She was barely twenty years old; kind of short, curvy, very fair-skinned, with shiny black hair parted on top, smoothed over her forehead, and tied in tight braids behind her neck. Her sly eyes sparkled, almost aggressive. She bit her lips from time to time. Her little upturned nose, slightly crooked, quivered.

She was telling the old woman her misfortune. Her husband…

From the beginning, the old woman gave her a look that set the terms of the conversation: that is, yes, she was willing to offer her a chance to vent, but she didn’t want to be deceived.

"A real husband?"

"We’d got married ‘n church."

"Ah, yah, ‘n church."

"And what’s that? Ain't he a husband?"

"No, child: it don’t count."

"How don’t it count?"

"Ya know it don’t count."

Oh yes, indeed, the old woman was right. It didn’t count. For a long time, that man had wanted to get rid of her, and he had sent her to Rome to find work as a wet nurse. She didn’t want to go; she knew it was too late, as the baby was already about seven months old. She had stayed fifteen days in the house of a broker, whose wife, to make up for the expenses and for having paid the lodging, had finally dared to propose...

"Ya get it? To me!"

From the “anger,” her milk had dried up. And now she had none left, not even for her own child. The broker’s wife had taken her earrings and kept the bundle she had come from the village with. Since that morning, she had been on the street.

"Really, ya know!"

Going back to the village was out of the question: her husband wouldn’t take her back. What to do, meanwhile, with that baby who was tying her hands? Certainly, she wouldn’t even find work as a servant.

The old woman listened with distrust, because she said these things as if she weren’t desperate at all; on the contrary, she often repeated her “Really, ya know” with a smile.

"Where ya from?" the old woman asked.

"From Core."[4]

And she stayed a while as if seeing her distant village in her mind. Then she shook herself, looked at the little one, and said:

"W’ere should I leave ‘em? Here’n the ground? Poor sweet darlin'!" She lifted him in her arms and kissed him hard, several times. The old woman said:

"Ya made him? Ya pay fer it."

"Me that made ‘em?" the young woman retorted. "Well, I made ‘em, and God punished me. But he suffers too, poor innocent! What’d he do? See, God don’t do just things. And if he don’t, imagine us. We just tryin’ t' git by!"

"World, world!" sighed the old woman, struggling to stand up.

"It’s a real pain!" added another asthmatic, corpulent old woman who passed by, leaning on a stick.

The other one pulled out a dirty bag hanging from her waist, hidden under her dress, and took out a piece of bread.

"‘Ere, ya wannit?"

"Yes. God bless ya," Tuta hurried to reply. "I’ll eat it. Would ya believe I ‘asn’t ate since this mornin'?"

She broke it into two pieces: one, larger, for herself; she thrust the other between the thin, rosy fingers of the baby, which didn’t want to open.

“Have at it, Nino. It’s good, ya know! A treat! Munch away, eat up.” The old woman left, dragging her feet, along with the other, that of the slim stick. The little garden had already livened up a bit. The caretaker was watering the plants. But not even the sprays of water could wake from the dream they seemed immersed in – a dream of infinite sadness – those poor trees rising from the sparse flowerbeds, littered with peels, eggshells, pieces of paper, and fenced off with sticks and spikes here and there or by a ring of artificial rock, in which the benches were embedded.[5]

Tuta began to look at the low, round basin in the middle, whose greenish water stagnated under a veil of dust, which broke occasionally with the splash of some peel thrown by the people sitting around.

The sun was already setting, and almost all the benches were now in the shade.

On one nearby, a lady in her thirties, dressed in white, sat down. She had red, coppery hair, tousled, and a freckled face. As if she couldn’t stand the heat anymore, she tried to push away a sullen boy, yellow as wax and dressed as a sailor. Meanwhile, she looked here and there, impatiently, squinting her nearsighted eyes as if waiting for someone. And from time to time she pushed the boy again, hoping he would find a playmate further away. But the boy didn’t move: he kept his eyes fixed on Tuta eating the bread. Tuta also watched and observed the lady and the boy. Suddenly, she said:

"Ma’am, with all due respect, if ya e’er need a woman ta do the laundry or fer part-time work... No? Well then!"

Then, seeing that the sickly boy wouldn’t take his eyes off her and didn’t want to heed his mother’s repeated invitations, she called him over:

"Ya wanna see the baby? C’mon and see, sweetie, c’mon."

The boy, pushed violently by his mother, approached. He stared at the baby for a while with glassy eyes like those of a beaten cat, then he snatched the piece of bread from the baby’s hand. The baby started to cry.

“No! Poor lil thing!” exclaimed Tuta. “Ya took ‘is bread? Now ‘es cryin’, see? ‘Es hungry… least ya could give ‘em a piece back.” She raised her eyes to call the boy’s mother but didn’t see her on the bench: she was talking excitedly down there with a bearded man who listened distractedly, with a curious smile on his lips, hands behind his back, and a white hat tilted on his nape. Meanwhile, the baby kept crying.

"Well," said Tuta, "I’ll take a piece off fer ya..."

Then the boy started to cry too. The mother rushed over, to whom Tuta, with all due respect, explained what had happened. The boy clutched the piece of bread to his chest with both hands, unwilling to give it up, not even to his mother’s exhortations.

"Do you really want it? And you’ll eat it, Ninni?" said the red-haired lady. "He doesn’t eat anything, you know, nothing: I’m desperate! Maybe he really wants it... It must be a whim... Please, let him have it."

"‘K, yes, gladly," said Tuta. "Keep it, darlin’, ‘ave at it fer yourself..." But the boy ran to the basin and threw the piece of bread into it.

"To the fish, eh Ninni?" Tuta exclaimed, laughing. "And this ‘ere poor little thing of mine who ‘asn’t ate... I got no milk, no home, nothin'... Really, ya know, ma’am... Nothin'!"

The lady was in a hurry to return to the man who was waiting for her there: she took two coins from her purse and gave them to Tuta.[6]

"God bless ya," she said behind her. "Come on, come on, be good, my darlin’: I’ll buy ya a candy, ya know! We made a cupple ah pennies with the old lady’s bread. Quiet, my Nino! Now we’re rich..."

The baby quieted down. She stayed, holding the two coins tightly in one hand, watching the people who now filled the little garden: boys, nannies, children, soldiers...

It was a continuous noise.

Among the girls skipping rope, the boys chasing each other, and the screaming children in the arms of nannies who chatted placidly among themselves, and the nannies flirting with soldiers, wandered the sellers of lupines, doughnuts, or other treats.

Tuta’s eyes sometimes lit up, and her lips opened to a strange smile.

Did really no one believe she no longer knew what to do, where to go? She struggled to believe it herself. But it was true. She had entered there, in that little garden, to find some shade; she had been there for about an hour; she could stay until evening; and then? where to spend the night, with that baby in her arms? and the next day? and the day after that? She had no one, not even back in the village, except that man who no longer wanted anything to do with her; and, after all, how to return there? – But then? No way out? She thought of that old witch who had taken her earrings and bundle. Go back to her? Blood rushed to her head. She looked at her little one, who had fallen asleep.

"Eh, Nino, both of us t’ the river? Like this..."

She lifted her arms, as if to throw him. And herself, after. “But no!” She raised her head and smiled, looking at the people passing in front of her.

The sun had set, but the heat persisted, suffocating. Tuta unbuttoned her bodice at the neck and rolled in the two points, revealing a bit of her very white chest.

"Hot?"

"It’s killin' me!"

In front of her was an old man with two paper fans stuck in his hat, two more in his hands, open, bright-colored, and a basket on his arm, full of many other fans in disarray, red, blue, yellow.

"Two pennies!"

"Go away!" said Tuta, giving him a shoulder. "What are they? Paper?"

"And what do ya want ‘em to be? Silk?"

"Well, why not?" said Tuta, looking at him with a challenging smile; then she opened the hand holding the two coins and added: "I only got these two pennies. Will ya give it t’ me fer a penny?"

The old man shook his head, with a dignified air.

"Two pennies? Not even fer a joke!"

"Well, damn ya! Give it t’ me. I’m dyin' of heat. The lil thing is sleepin’... We just tryin' t' git by. God'll pruhvide."

She gave him the two coins, took the fan, and, pulling down the turned-in part on her chest, began to fan herself there on her almost bare bosom, laughing and looking boldly, with shining, inviting, provocative eyes, at the soldiers passing by.