“The Warmer” (“Lo scaldino”)

Translated by Jonathan Hiller

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “The Warmer” (“Lo scaldino”), tr. Jonathan Hiller. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2023.

“The Warmer” was first published in Avanti della Domenica on March 12, 1905 and was then collected in the volume of short stories titled Two-Faced Herm (Erma bifronte) published by Treves (Milan: 1906). Having undergone significant revisions from its initial version and some slighter additional changes after its publication in Two-Faced Herm (Erma bifronte), the short story was later added to the fifth Collection of Stories for a Year (Novelle per un anno): The Fly (La mosca), published by Bemporad in 1923.

The story operates within the parameters of Pirandello’s tragicomic notion of humor (umorismo), which leads the reader to feel both compassion for shared human suffering but also the distance of an ironic humor at the reversal of events and the ridiculous aspect of how they unfold. A story of Roman poverty, it reveals the unforgiving world of its marginalized protagonist, a newspaper salesman whose proper name we never learn as he is known on the streets simply with the ironic nickname Pontiff-and-King. The man suffers through the cold of the Roman nights thanks to warmer that he uses to produce heat, primarily for the benefit of his young granddaughter who he cares for and who constitutes his reason to go on despite his miserable conditions. Likewise, the other characters in the story depict a wretched, downtrodden, proletarian or sub-proletarian world of café singers, drinking, poverty, and crime. Set on the eve of upheaval in Russia, the First Russian Revolution (of 1905), themes of worker strikes and anger against the ruling classes hover in the background of this depiction. Yet, at the same time, the story becomes a typically humorist tale in the Pirandellian sense, as the events turn toward an unexpected tragedy that results in the protagonist’s precious warmer being replaced by the warmth created by the body of a baby who is thrust into his care by a mother who abandons it to seek revenge against her cheating ex. The absurdity of this substitution, coupled with previous episodes in the story, provoke an ironic laugh, while the overall tenor remains one of suffering, tragedy, and loss. Significantly, in this story Pirandello also addresses the dynamics of his contemporary media publication economy, examining hos difficult it is to make ends meet as a small agent of that industry - the economic reality behind the protagonist’s personal struggles. Similar themes can also be found in theatrical works, such as in the first act of The Reason of Others (La ragione degli altri, 1915) and in the one-act play The Imbecile (L’imbecille, 1922), which took inspiration from the eponymous short story of 1912 and whose action is set in the newspaper office of a provincial town.

This story was adapted into a film in 1920, Lo scaldino directed by Augusto Genina and produced by Itala Film and Tespi Film.

The Editors

[1] If the purpose of those black holm oaks, planted in rows of two around the large rectangular piazza, was to provide shade in summer, what were they good for in winter? Perhaps to drench passersby at every gust of wind with the water pooled on their leaves following a rainstorm. Also, to rot away a bit more of the shabby newspaper stand of poor Pontiff-and-King.[2]

But without posing this nuisance in winter (which incidentally could be avoided), could the trees transform into a boon in summer, a welcome respite from the heat? No. What then? Then man? If something suits him, he takes it without a word of thanks to anyone, as if he had a right to it. But if instead it doesn’t, slowly his agitation builds and he begins to grouse. An ill-tempered, unappreciative creature is man. Good Lord, all he would need to do is avoid walking under the oaks in the piazza shortly after a rainstorm!

But truth be told, in summer, Pontiff-and-King couldn’t enjoy the shade of the holmoaks there, inside his stand. He couldn’t enjoy them because he was never there by day, either in summer or winter. What he would do during the day and where he would go, these were mysteries to all. He would return every time from Via San Lorenzo,[3] coming from afar with a darkened face. The stand was always closed, and Pontiff-and-King, without getting any use from it, paid the tax due on all immovable property.[4]

Calling Pontiff-and-King’s stand “immovable” was something of a cruel joke, as it almost walked on its own two feet, pushed about by the great many woodworms residing therein in the absence of the proprietor.[5] But the taxman pays no heed to woodworms. Even if the stand had begun to stroll about through the piazza and the streets, its owner would still have to pay the tax, as with any other truly “immovable” property.

Behind the stand a bit further down stood a ramshackle wooden café, or, in truth, begging the proprietor’s indulgence, a shack, painted with some delusional aspiration to Art Nouveau style.[6] Here, certain so-called “songstresses” would wail till the wee hours, accompanied by an out-of-tune piano, with yellowed keys resembling the teeth of some unfortunate ascetic who makes his living fasting … but no, how could they wail, poor creatures, if they didn’t even have the wind to say “I’m hungry”?

And yet, every night that café chantant was jam-packed with customers. Suffocating on smoke and the stench of tobacco, they amused themselves as if at a carnival at the women’s vulgar, pathetic smiles, at their consumptive, ape-like fawning. As these wretched girls’ voices could not rise to the seven heavens,[7] thither they pointed their arms, and more often their legs, instead (“Well done! Bravaaaaa! Agaaaain!”). The men would take the part of one singer or the other, so ardent and tenacious in their applause and jeers that the police frequently had to intervene to break up the brawling.

It was for this illustrious clientele that in winter, Pontiff-and-King would be out every night past midnight,[8] nodding off with his wares on display: cigars, stearic candles, boxes of matches, taper candles for the stairs, and the few evening editions left over from his walk around his usual route.

At dusk, he came to the stand and waited for a little girl, his granddaughter, to bring him a large terra cotta warmer. He would take it by the handle and, his arm tensed, rock it back and forth to revive the flame. Then he would cover it with a bit of ash he kept in the stall, leaving it there to smolder, without even bothering to lock up the kiosk.

He could not have borne the cold night air for so many hours without that warmer, Pontiff-and-King, old and run-down as he now was.

Oh, without a pair of sturdy legs, without a piercing voice, how could he keep on as a newspaper-seller? But the years alone were not what had so beaten him down, nor was it his limbs, worn down by age. It was his soul, beaten down by his many misfortunes, poor Pontiff-and-King. The first misfortune, of course, was the dethroning of the Holy Father. Then, the death of his wife. Then, that of his only daughter, a horrible death, after being dishonored and shamed, in a miserable hospital, where her little girl had come into the world. It was for the latter that he went on living and suffering. If not for that poor, innocent girl to look after…

The nature of the oppressive, suffocating destiny that had fallen upon Pontiff-and-King in his dotage could be discerned from in his large, clunky, ridiculous hat. Its brim too wide, it came down over his eyes and to the back of his neck. Who had given it to him? Where had he found it? While he had it on, Pontiff-and-King narrowed his eyes when out in the piazza, seeming to say, “Here I am. Do you see? If I want to go on living, this hat must be on my head, weighing me down and crushing the breath out of me!”

If I want to go on living! But on no account whatever would he have wished to go on living. He was frightfully withered and earned next to nothing. Before, they would give him newspapers by the dozen. Now, the distributor entrusted him with only a few copies off and on, out of charity, the ones left over after he supplied all the other sellers, who pounced to get their stacks first and begin their rounds sooner. Pontiff-and-King, to avoid being trampled under this mob, would hang back and wait, so that even the women got their supply before him. Often, some miscreant would thwack him upside the head, and he bore it with angelic calm and moved to the side before being run over by the crush of the men who sped off with blind vengeance, their heads down, in every direction. He saw them race off like a shot, and would sigh, tottering on his poor bent legs.

“For you, Pontiff-and-King, go big, two dozen tonight! There’s a revolution on in Russia.” [9]

Pontiff-and-King shrugged, half-closed his eyes, folded his stack, and, setting off after everyone else, he too strove to run on those legs. Straining his raspy voice, he would shout:

“The Tribuuuuune!”

Then, in altered tone:

“Revolution in Russiaaaaaa!”

Then finally, almost to himself:

“Important news tonight in the Tribune.”

Luckily for him, two doorkeepers in Via Volturno, one in Via Gaeta, and another in Via Palestro had remained loyal, and would wait to buy from him. He had to sell other copies wherever he could, walking around the entire Macao quarter.[10] Around ten o’clock, weary and worn out, he would go to hole up in the stand, where he would doze, waiting for the patrons to come out of the café. He’d had as much of this miserable business as he could stand! But, when we’re old, what choice do we have? Rack your brains, but there is none. Only a leap off the wall of the Pincian Hill.[11]

Every time his granddaughter would appear at dusk, practically barefoot, her patched dress in tatters, the poor creature all bundled up in an old woolen shawl donated by a neighbor, Pontiff-and-King would rue the small expense of his fire, indispensable though it might be. The only good things left in his life were the child and the warmer. Seeing both arriving, he would smile at them from afar, rubbing his hands together. He would kiss his granddaughter’s forehead and shake the warmer to reignite the embers.

But a few nights ago, either because he was more befuddled than usual, or because his weariness made it harder to move the warmer back and forth, of a sudden, off it goes, slipping from his hands and shattering into pieces in the middle of the piazza. Crash! The people walking by met its flight and its destruction with a hearty laugh, on account of the face Pontiff-and-King made upon witnessing this faithful companion of many a cold night sail from his hands, and at the naiveté of the girl who ran after it, instinctually, as if she could catch it in midair.

Grandfather and granddaughter looked into each other’s eyes, dumbstruck. Pontiff-and-King’s arm was still moving back and forth in the act of stoking the warmer. Well, he had stoked it too far! And there was the lit coal, sizzling among the shards, in a pool of rainwater.

“Well, I hope you enjoyed that!” he finally said, shaking and nodding his head. “That’s right, laugh it up! I’ll be enjoying myself tonight too. Run along, dear Nena, run along. In the end it’s probably better this way.”

And he set off to get the newspapers.

That evening, instead of coming back to hole up in the stand, he took a longer route through the streets of the Macao quarter. His nighttime den would have been cold, and he would have been even colder sitting motionless inside. But he finally grew weary. Before entering the stand, he took a look at the spot in the piazza where the warmer shattered, as if some warmth could reach him from there. Coming from the ramshackle café were the strident notes of the piano, with the occasional roar of applause and the whistling of the patrons. Pontiff-and-King, the collar of his threadbare greatcoat pulled up to his ears, his hands frozen stiff from the cold, pressed against his chest with the few remaining copies of the newspaper, looked in through the cloudy glass of the café door. It must have been nice in there, with a drop of warm punch in your body. Brrr! The North Wind had begun to blow, cutting your face and even frosting over the pavement in the piazza. In a cloudless sky, even the stars up there seemed to shiver from the cold. With a sigh, Pontiff-and-King looked at the dark stand under the dark holm-oaks, tucked the newspapers under his armpit, and drew near to remove the bar on the news stand door.

Just then someone called in a hoarse voice from inside the stand, “Pontiff-and-King?”

“Who’s there?”

“Me, Rosalba. Where’s the warmer?”

“Rosalba?”

“Vignas. Don’t you remember? Rosalba Vignas.”[12]

“Oh,” replied Pontiff-and-King, in whose mind the outlandish names of all past and present café songstresses were a jumble. “Why don’t you go off to somewhere warm? What are you doing in there?”

“I was waiting for you. Aren’t you coming in?”

“What do you want from me? Come out where I can see you!”

“I don’t want to come out. I’m nestled under the counter. Come in, it’ll be nice in here together.”

Pontiff-and-King went around the stand, with the bar in his hand, and ducked in through the door.

“Where are you?”

“Here,” said the woman.

He couldn’t see her, hidden as she was under the counter on which Pontiff-and-King laid out his newspapers, cigars, matchboxes, and candles. She was sitting where the old man would put his feet when he sat on his tall chair.

“Where’s the warmer?” once again asked Rosalba from below. “Have you stopped using it?”

“Oh shut up, it got broken today. It slipped out of my hands as I was stoking it.”

“Oh, you don’t say! And now you’re catching your death of cold, are you? Me, I was counting on that warmer. Alright, have a seat. I’ll warm you up, Pontiff-and-King.”

“You? What is there left of me for you to warm up? I’m old, child. Get out of here, what do you want from me?”

The woman burst into a strident laugh and grabbed hold of his leg.

“No, stop that!” said Pontiff-and-King, brushing her off. “What a stench of filth! Have you been drinking?”

“A bit. Go up there and sit. You’ll see that we’ll find a way. Come on, like this… come on. I’ll warm up your legs. Do you want another warmer? Here one is.”

And she put a bundle, something very warm, onto his lap.

“What’s this?” asked the old man.

“My daughter.”

“Your daughter? You brought in your kid too?”

“They threw me out, Pontiff-and-King. He abandoned me.”

“Who?”

“Him, Cesare. Out in the street. Babe in arms.”

Pontiff-and-King came down from the chair, leaned toward the nestled woman, and proffered the child.

“Take her, my child, take her and go away. I’ve got my own troubles; leave me be!”

“But it’s cold,” said the woman, her voice even more hoarse. “Are you going to throw me out too?”

“Are you thinking of moving in?” asked Pontiff-and-King harshly. “Are you crazy, or just drunk?”

The woman neither replied nor moved. She might have been crying. Like an enticing gradient of sound, tones from a mandolin that stood out in the silence could be heard coming from the end of Via Volturno. The sound grew steadily nearer until, suddenly, it faded away, dying out in the distance.

“Please, let me wait for him here,” went on the girl despondently.

“What do you mean, wait for whom?” asked Pontiff-and-King again.

“Him, I told you: Cesare. He’s over there in the café. I saw him through the window.”

“Then you go and join him, if you know he’s there! What do you want from me?”

“I can’t, with the baby. Cesare abandoned me! He’s there with another woman! And you know who it is? Mignon, that’s right! With the famous Mign…[13] of course, who is going to start singing tomorrow night. He’s going to introduce her, just imagine! He had the maestro teach her songs for an hourly fee. I’ve come to tell him a thing or two as soon as he goes out. Him and her both. Let me be here. What harm am I doing you? Really, I’m keeping you warm, Pontiff-and-King. Outside, in this cold, my poor little girl. Anyway, it won’t be long, a half hour give or take. Come on, be kind, Pontiff-and-King! You go and sit up there again and put the baby back on your knees. I can’t hold her down here. You’ll both be warmer. She’s asleep, the poor thing, and won’t give you any trouble.

Pontiff-and-King sat down again and took the baby on his knees, murmuring, “Well would you look at this new warmer I found here tonight. What are you going to tell him?”

“Nothing. Just a thing or two,” she repeated.

They were silent for a good while. From the nearby station came the mournful whistle of some train, arriving or departing. A few stray dogs passed through the deserted piazza. Bundled up over there were two night watchmen. In the silence, one could even hear the hum of the electric lamps.

“You have a granddaughter, don’t you, Pontiff-and-King?” asked the woman, stirring with a sigh.

“Nena, yes.”

“With no mother?”

“None.”

“Look at my daughter. Isn’t she beautiful?”

Pontiff-and-King made no reply.

“Isn’t she beautiful?” insisted the woman. “But what will become of my poor little girl? I can’t, I can’t go on like this. Someone has to take pity on us. You can understand that I can’t find work with her in my arms. Where can I leave her? And even then, who will take me? I’m not wanted even as a servant.”

“Shut up!” interrupted the old man, nervous and shaking all over, starting to cough.

He remembered his daughter, who had also left a little baby on his knees, just like this one. He slowly drew her near to him, tenderly. But the caress was not for her, rather for his granddaughter, whom he remembered when she was so little, as quiet and good as this little one.

A louder burst of applause and unruly shouting came from the café.

“The villain!” cried Rosabla through clenched teeth. “He’s living it up over there, with that ugly monkey, dry as death. Tell me, he comes here every night at the same time, doesn’t he? To get a cigar as soon as he comes out.”

“I don’t know,” said Pontiff-and-King with a shrug.

“Cesare, the Milanese one, what do you mean you don’t know? The blond, heavyset one, with his beard cleft at the chin, hot-tempered. Oh, he’s a looker! And he knows it, the cad, and takes advantage. Don’t you remember that he took me with him last year?”

“No,” replied the old man, annoyed. “How should I remember, if you won’t show your face?”

The girl gave a bitter laugh, like a sob, and said darkly, “You wouldn’t recognize me anymore. I’m the one who used to sing the duets with that dolt Peppot. Peppot, you know? “Monte Bisbin”? Yes, that one. But it doesn’t matter if you don’t remember. I’m not that person anymore. He used me up, destroyed me, in a year. And do you know what? At the beginning, he even said he wanted to marry me. What a joke, just imagine!”

“Just imagine!” echoed Pontiff-and-King, already half-asleep.

“I never believed him,” went on the woman. “I’d say to myself, ‘As long as he holds onto me for now.’ And I’d say it for the sake of this little baby who, perhaps because I grew too close to him, I conceived. God saw fit to punish me this way. But what did I know? Then it was worse. Having a daughter? No big deal! Gilda Boa… do you remember Gilda Boa? She told me, ‘Get rid of it!’ But how can you get rid of a baby? Oh yes, and he wanted to do it for real. He had the nerve to tell me that she didn’t look like him. But look at her, Pontiff-and-King, and tell me she’s not all him! Oh, the villain! He knows well that she’s his, that I couldn’t have had her with someone else, because for him, I… I shad eyes for no one but him, that’s how much I liked him! And he treated me worse than a slave, you know? He beat me with a cane, not a word from me. He gave me nothing to eat, and not a word from me. I suffered, I swear it, not for myself, but for this little baby, who I couldn’t give milk to when I had nothing to eat myself. Now, well…”

She went on for a while, but Pontiff-and-King was no longer listening. Weary, comforted by the heat of that baby who had taken over where his warmer left off, as was his wont he had dozed off. He woke up with a start when the café door was opened and the patrons began to burst out, the last applause echoing through the hall. But where had the woman gone?

“Hey! What are you doing?” asked Pontiff-and-King groggily.

Panting, she had crawled under the legs of the tall chair that Pontiff-and-King was sitting on, opening the kiosk door with a hand. There she remained, like a predator lying in ambush.

“What are you doing?” Pontiff-and-King asked again.

A pistol-shot rang out in that spot outside the stand.

“Quiet, or they’ll arrest you too!” the woman shouted at the old man, racing outside and closing the kiosk door in a flash.

Pontiff-and-King, terrified by the shouts, by the swearing, by the awful tumult behind the stand, hunched over the baby, who was startled by the gunshot, and, trembling, held her close to him. He caught a glimpse of a coach, which raced off at a gallop toward the Hospital of Sant’Antonio. And a rabid mob went past the stand and headed for Piazza delle Terme.[14] Other people lingered at the scene, animatedly discussing what had taken place. Pontiff-and-King, straining to hear, did not move, fearing that the baby would cry. Shortly thereafter, one of the waiters from the café came to the stand to buy a cigar.

“Hey, Pontiff-and-King, did you see what a wretched tragedy?”

“I…heard…” Pontiff-and-King stammered.

“And you didn’t go out and see?” cried the waiter with a laugh. “Always in there with your warmer, eh?”

“With my warmer, that's right…” said Pontiff-and-King, hunched over, opening his toothless mouth in a hideous grin.