“This Makes Two!” (“E due!”)

Translated by Emanuela Pecchioli and Alexander Bertland

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “This Makes Two!” (“E due!”), tr. Emanuela Pecchioli and Alexander Bertland.. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2025.

First published in the literary magazine Il Marzocco in the issue from September 29, 1901, “This Makes Two!” (“E due!”) was originally titled “Strigi.” Nearly two decades later, the story was republished in a revised form and with a new, and final, title, “This Makes Two!”, in the magazine Novella printed in Milan, August 25, 1919. Pirandello then added the revised story into the very first Collection of his Stories for a Year, Black Shawl (Scialle nero) in 1922 (Florence: Bemporad).

“This Makes Two!” examines the theme of suicide together with other motifs that recur in Pirandello’s work, such as the turn-of-the-century fascination with America as a promised land of escape, as well as the generational shift in life taking place in Italy’s modernizing urban centers like the capital of Rome. The plot is incredibly simple: the protagonist, Diego Bronner, accidentally witnesses a man commit suicide in Rome’s Tiber river late one night as the city sleeps; rather than intervening, he goes home, where he locks himself up in his room to read through old newspapers; then, after a brief conversation with his mother, he sneaks out later that night, returning to the same spot on the river where he mimics the suicide he had witnessed, joining in and “making two” of them, as the title suggests. What makes the story interesting is Pirandello’s use of the internal perspective of Diego’s mother to reveal his backstory, adding psychological depth and complexity to his character while explaining his motivations. Her perspective is communicated through a mix of inner monologue and occasional lapses into free indirect discourse that add texture to the narrative, as well, moving away from realist narration and capturing the inner tumult of the psyche in ways that reflect Pirandello’s developing modernist approach to writing. Similarly, the story uses a doubled or looping structure to create a sense of unreal strangeness or eerie repetition to the whole narrative. Here we are firmly in the realm of what Sigmund Freud would later theorize as the literary uncanny, where disturbing repetitions in the plot and structure echo and refract the disturbed psyche of the protagonist himself. Pirandello would further develop both these narrative structures and the themes of the story (especially the theme of suicide) in his modernist novel published three years later, The Late Mattia Pascal (Il fu Mattia Pascal).

The Editors

After having wandered for a long time in the sleeping neighborhood of Prati di Castello, skirting the walls of the barracks, and instinctively keeping out of the light from the streetlamps by staying under the trees of the very long avenues, Diego Bronner finally arrived at Lungotevere dei Mellini.[1] Tired, he climbed up onto the parapet of the deserted bank and sat facing the river with his legs dangling in the void.

There were no lights shining in the houses across the way on the Passeggiata di Ripetta.[2] They were wrapped in shadow, and their black forms stood out against the faint, vast, dim light beyond them that the city radiated into the night. Still were the leaves of the trees on the avenue running along the riverbank. In the total silence, you could only hear a cricket’s chirping off in the far distance, and, from below, the dark gurgling of the river’s black water, which reflected the lights of the opposite bank with a constant, serpentine shaking.[3]

A dense weave of infinite little clouds, low, ashy, and delicate, ran across the sky, as if they were called hastily that way, that way, toward the east, for a mysterious meeting. It looked like the moon was reviewing them from above.

Bronner stayed for a while with his face turned upward to contemplate that flight of clouds, which animated with such mysterious vivacity the luminous silence of that moonlit night. Suddenly, he heard the sound of footsteps on the nearby Margherita bridge,[4] and he turned to look.

The sound of the footsteps ceased.

Maybe someone, like him, had started contemplating those little clouds and the moon reviewing them, or the river with those flickering reflections of the lights on the flowing black water.

He let out a long sigh and went back to looking at the sky, a bit annoyed by the presence of that unknown person who was disturbing his sad pleasure of feeling alone. However, here, he was in the shadow of the trees, and so he thought that the man could not see him and, almost to make sure of it, he turned around again to look.

Next to a streetlamp mounted on the parapet of the bridge, he glimpsed a man in the shadows. At first, he did not understand what the man was doing there, silently. He saw the man putting a sort of bundle on the curved molding at the base of the light. — A bundle?[5] No; it was the man’s hat. And now? What? Was that possible? Now the man was climbing over the parapet. Was that possible?

Instinctively, Bronner pulled back, tensing his arms his hands and squinting his eyes. He shrank into himself. He heard the terrible plunk in the river.

A suicide? – Just like that?[6]

He reopened his eyes and his gaze sank bank into the dark. Nothing. Black water. Not a shout. Nobody. He looked around. Silence, stillness. Had no one seen? Had no one heard? And meanwhile that man was drowning… And, he, Bronner, would not move, shocked as he was. Cry out? Already too late. Curled up in the shadows and trembling all over, he let that man’s horrible fate be fulfilled, even if he felt crushed by his complicity for remaining silent along with the night, and he kept wondering: Is it over for him? Is it over? It was as if with his eyes closed he could see that poor man struggling in a desperate fight with the river.

Reopening his eyes and standing up after that terrible moment of anguish, the deep calm of the sleeping city watched over by the streetlights looked to him like a dream. How the reflections of those lamps darted now on the black water! Fearfully, he turned his gaze toward the parapet of the bridge. He saw the hat left there by that stranger.[7] The streetlight illuminated it ominously. As if that hat there could accuse him, he was shaken by a long shiver in his gut, and, with his blood still tingling in his veins, he was held in the throes of strong convulsions in all of his muscles. He climbed down, and, trying to stay in the shadows, he started quickly toward home.

“Diego, what’s with you?”

“Nothing, mum. Why?”

“No, it’s just that… It’s already late…”

“I don’t want you to wait for me, you know that. I’ve told you so many times. Let me come home when I please.”

“Yes, of course. It’s just that I was sewing… Do you want me to turn on your nightlight for you?”

“My God, you ask me the same thing every night!”

The old mother, as if she had been whipped by that answer to her superfluous question, ran, stooped, dragging her right leg a little, to turn on the nightlight and prepare his bed.

He followed her with his eyes, almost with resentment; but, as she disappeared behind the door, he heaved a sigh of pity for her. Immediately, though, his frustration came back.

He remained there, waiting, without knowing why or what for, in that small, gloomy entrance hall that had a very low ceiling of sooty canvas that was ripped here and there, with a shred hanging down where flies gathered and slept in clusters.

Crowded into that small hall were old, deteriorated furnishings, mixed with some crude cabinetry and new items from a tailor’s shop: a sewing machine, two stiff wicker mannequins, a smooth, solid table for cutting fabric, along with a big pair of scissors, chalk, measuring tape, and some saccharine fashion magazines.

But, now, Bronner hardly noticed all this.

He had kept in his mind, like a stage set, the spectacle of that sky traversed by those low and delicate little clouds, and of the river with those reflections of the streetlights, the spectacle of those tall buildings in the shadows that stood out against the city’s dim light there, on the opposite side of the river, and of that bridge with that hat… He had the terrifying impression, as in a dream, of the impassivity of all those things that were with him there, present, more present than he was, because he, on the other hand, was hidden in the shadows of the trees, truly as if he were not there. But his horror, his turmoil, now, was in fact because of this—because he had stayed there in that moment like all those other things, present and absent, night, silence, riverbank, trees, lights, without crying for help, as if he were not there. He now felt dazed and upset, as if he had dreamed what he had seen and heard.[8]

Suddenly, he saw their big, gray house cat land on the solid table with a precise and agile leap Its two green eyes were motionless and empty.

He felt a momentary fright from those eyes and, irritated, wrinkled his eyebrows.

A few days earlier that same cat had succeeded in making a cage with a goldfinch fall from the wall of that small hall. His mother cared lovingly for that bird. The cat, with industrious and patient brutality, by inserting his claws between the bars, had taken out the goldfinch and eaten it. His mother could not get over the incident and he, also, was still thinking about the massacre of that bird. But the cat—there he was—totally unaware of the evil he had done. If Bronner were to rudely push him off the table, the cat would have no idea why.[9]

And this indeed was the second piece of evidence against him that night. Two additional pieces. This second piece suddenly jumped in front of him along with that cat, just as suddenly as the other piece had come to him with that suicide from the bridge. One piece of evidence: that he could not be like that cat there, who had committed a massacre and an instant later didn’t give it a second thought. The other piece of evidence: that people who are present at an event cannot remain indifferent to it as objects are, even if they force themselves, like him, not only to not participate in it, but also to behave almost as if they were not there.[10]

The damnation of the memory itself, and the inability to hope that others would forget. That was it. These were the two pieces of evidence: one of damnation and one of desperation.

What was this new way of seeing that his eyes had developed a while ago? He looked at his mother, who had just come back from his bedroom where she had prepared his bed and switched on the nightlight. He no longer saw her as his mother but as a poor, ordinary old woman, which she actually was, with that big wart next to the right wing of her slightly flattened nose, with pale, floppy cheeks covered by violet capillaries, and those tired eyes that immediately, under his  so strangely cruel gaze, lowered themselves behind her glasses as if she felt ashamed, of what? Ah, he knew well of what. He laughed with an ugly smile; he said:

“Good night, mum.”

And he went to lock himself in his bedroom. 

The old mother, moving softly so that she could not be heard, sat down again in the small hall and went back to sewing: to thinking.

My God, why was he so pale and shook up that night? It could not be alcohol because he did not drink, or at least you could not smell it on his breath. But could he have fallen back into the hands of those nasty mates who had ruined him, or maybe others who were even worse?

This was her biggest fear.

From time to time, she kept an ear out to hear what he was doing in there, if he had gone to bed, if he was already asleep; and in the meantime, she kept cleaning her glasses that fogged up from every sigh. She wanted to finish her work before going to bed. The small pension that her husband had left her was no longer enough now that Diego had lost his job. In addition, she was harboring a dream that would probably be the death of her: to put enough money aside, working and saving up, to send her son far away, to America.[11] Because here, she knew that her Diego would not find a job now, and that in the sad idleness that had been devouring him for seven months, he would lose himself forever.

In America… there—oh, her son was so good! He knew so many things! He used to write, before, even for the newspapers… In America, there—it would probably be the death of her—but her son would start his life again, would forget, would erase the errors of his youth that had been caused by his nasty mates like that Russian or Polish guy, whatever he was, who was insane, a glutton, and who had turned up in Rome to the misfortune of so many honest families. Reckless young men, you know! They had been invited home by this very rich and immoral foreigner, and they had gone crazy: wine, loose women… they got drunk. Once drunk, that man wanted to play cards and he kept losing… He brought that disaster on himself by his own hand. What was this about accusing his companions in debauchery of ripping him off? Why did he start that scandalous trial that got so much attention and dishonored so many youngsters who did not care about anything, sure, but still came from respected and honorable families.[12]

She thought she heard a sob coming from her son’s room and she called:

“Diego!”

Silence. She stayed for a long time with her ears pricked and her eyes wide open.

Yes, he was still awake. What was he doing?

She stood up, and on tiptoe she approached the door to eavesdrop. Then, she bent down to look through the keyhole: he was reading… Ah, Look! those vile newspapers again! The story of the trial… —Why, why had she forgotten to destroy those newspapers that she had bought during the terrible days of the trial? – And why that night, at that moment, having just returned home, had he taken them out again and started to reread them?

“Diego!” she called again with a soft voice, and she opened the door timidly.

He turned suddenly as if frightened.

“What do you want? Are you still up?”

“And you?...” the mother said. “You see, you make me regret my stupidity again…”

“No, I am having fun,” he answered while stretching his arms.

He stood up and started to walk around the room.

“Tear them up, throw them away, I beg you!” the mother implored with her hands clasped. “Why do you want to keep suffering? Don’t think about it anymore!”

He stopped in the middle of the room, smiled, and said:

“Sure. As if my not thinking about it anymore will then cause others to not think about it anymore. We all ought to try to distract ourselves, everyone… for letting me live. I should distract myself, the others should distract themselves… After all, what happened? Nothing. I spent three years on vacation. Let’s change the subject… By the way, don’t you see, don’t you see how you look at me, even you?”

“Me?” the mother exclaimed. “How do I look at you?”

“The way everybody else looks at me!”

“No, Diego! I swear to you! I was looking… I was looking at you because… you should go to the tailor, that’s why…”

Diego Bronner looked at the clothes he was wearing and smiled again.   

“Right, they are old. That’s why everybody looks at me… Yet I brush them well before going out and I straighten myself up… I don’t know, it seems to me that I could look like any ordinary man, someone who could still participate in life unconcerned… The problem is there, is there…” he added while pointing at the newspapers on the desk. “We put on such a show that, let’s face it, it would be too modest on our part to assume that people could have forgotten it… It was a show of naked, frail, and dirty souls who were ashamed to appear publicly, like consumptive people at the military draft. And all of us were trying to cover our private parts and our shame with the hem of the defense lawyer’s gown. And how the audience laughed! Do you think people could forget, for example, that we used to call the Russian Luculloff,[13] that swindler,[14] and that we dressed him as an ancient Roman in glasses with golden arms on his pug nose? When everybody saw him there with his big, red, lumpy face, and they learned how we were treating him: that we took his sandals off his feet and punched him hard on his bald head, and that he laughed and sneered contentedly under those blows…”

“Diego! Diego, for God’s sake!” the mother begged.

“… Drunk. We got him drunk…”

“Not you!”

“Me as well, come on, with the others. It was fun! And then the playing cards showed up. Playing cards with a drunk, as you can imagine, makes it very easy to cheat…”

“For God’s sake, Diego!”

“Really… joking around… Oh, but this, I can swear to you. At the trial, everybody laughed: the judges, the president even the carabinieri, but it’s the truth. We stole without knowing it, or rather, we knew it, but we thought it was a joke. It did not appear to us to be a swindle. It was the money of a disgusting madman who was just throwing it away… And after all, in the end, not a penny of it remained in our pockets: we just threw it away, like him, with him, crazily…”

He stopped himself from talking, went over to the bookshelf, and took out a book.

“Look. This is my only regret. With that money one morning I bought this book here from a junk dealer.”

He threw it on the desk. It was The Crown of Wild Olive by Ruskin, translated into French.[15]

“I haven’t even opened it.”

He stared at the book while furrowing his eyebrows. How could the idea to buy that book have possibly occurred to him in those days? He had made the decision not to read any more, not to write another line. He went to that house, with those mates, to debase himself, to kill within himself, to drown in that orgy, a dream, the dream of his youth, since the sad necessities of life prevented him from devoting himself to it as he would have liked.

The mother also stayed for a while to look at that mysterious book. Then, she asked lovingly:

“Why don’t you work? Why don’t you write any more as you used to do before?”

He shot a hateful look at her, with his entire face screwed up, almost out of disgust.

His mother insisted humbly:

“If you would think about yourself a little… Why are you so hopeless? Do you think that all is finished? You are twenty-six years old… Who knows how many opportunities you will have in life to redeem yourself…”

“Ah, yes, there was one just tonight!” he sneered. “But I remained still, like a sack. I saw a man throw himself into the river…”

“You?”

“Yes, me. I saw him putting his hat on the parapet of the bridge; then I saw him climbing over the parapet, calmly; finally, I heard the plunk in the river. And I didn’t yell; I didn’t move. I was in the shadow of the trees, and I remained there while spying to make sure that no one had seen. And I let him drown. I did. But then, I spotted his hat, on the parapet of the bridge, under the streetlamp, and I ran away, scared…”

“For this…” the mother whispered.

“What? I cannot swim. Throw myself in? Try anyway? The stepladder to the river was there, so close. I looked at it, you know? And I pretended not to see it. I could have… but it was already useless… too late… He had disappeared!...”

“Was no one there?”

“No one. Just me.”

“And what could you have done by yourself, my son? The fear that overwhelmed you was enough, and all this anxiety… Do you see? You are still trembling… Go, go to bed, go to bed… It is very late… Don’t think about it!...”

The old mother took his hand and caressed it. He nodded yes with his head and smiled at her.

“Good night, mum.”

“Sleep tight, ok?” the mother urged him, feeling moved by the caress of that hand that he had accepted. Then, while drying her eyes, so as not to ruin that painful tenderness, she left.

After about an hour, Diego Bronner was once again seated on the riverbank, in the same place as before, with his legs dangling.

In the sky, the flight of the delicate, low, ashy little clouds continued. The stranger’s hat was no longer on the parapet of the bridge. Maybe the night guards had passed by and taken it.

Suddenly, he turned toward the avenue and pulled back his legs. He got down from the shoulder of the embankment and proceeded onto the bridge. He took off his hat and put it in the same place the other was before.

“This makes two!” he said.

But it was as if he did it as a game, out of spite for the guards who had taken away the first hat from there.

He went to the other side of the streetlamp, to look at the effect of his hat, sitting there alone, on the molding, lit up like the other one. He remained there for a while, bent over on the parapet, with his neck outstretched, to contemplate his hat, as if he were no longer there. Suddenly, he laughed horribly. He saw himself there, lying in wait like a cat behind the streetlamp; and his hat was the mouse… “Come on, come on, it is such a circus!”

He climbed over the parapet. He felt his hair stand up on his head. He felt his hands trembling as they clung rigidly to the wall. He opened them and fell into the emptiness.