“Wedding Night” (“Prima notte”)

Translated by Steve Eaton

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “Wedding Night” (“Prima notte”), tr. Steve Eaton. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2021.

One of Pirandello’s early stories, “Wedding Night” was first published in the journal Il Marzocco on November 18, 1900 and then collected into his volume of short stories printed four years later, White and Black (Bianche e nere, Turin: Streglio, 1904). It was subsequently included in the first Collection of his Stories for a Year, Black Shawl (Scialle Nero), published by Bemporad in Florence in 1922. The full text of the original short story as it was printed in Il Marzocco is included in the notes of Mario Costanzo’s Mondadori edition of Novelle per un anno published in the series I Meridiani (Volume 1, Book 2, pp. 1118-1124).

Il Marzocco was a frequent venue for many of Pirandello’s early stories, including three published earlier in the same year: “Sicilian Limes” (“Lumíe di Sicilia”), which came out a few months prior (May 20 and 27, 1900); “Urban Trees” (“Alberi cittadini”), just two months before that (March 4, 1900); and “Ms. Boccarmè, the Schoolmistress” (“La maestrina Boccarmè”), which was first printed at the beginning of the year (running from December 31, 1899 through January 28, 1900, originally published with the title “Salvation” (“Salvazione”) in those pages). It is thus interesting that they were not grouped into the same Collections of Stories for a Year. These early stories tend to be more closely aligned with narrative realism (connected to Sicilian verismo) and often include insights into the life of turn-of-the-century Sicilians, sometimes contrasting Sicily and the mainland in ways that can emphasize the different experiences of modernity in each. In “Wedding Night,” the depiction of a small-town wedding ritual embeds ample realistic detail, but in the service of a psychological examination of suffering – a theme typical of Pirandello’s work across years and genres. What seems to start as a tale of village gossip, love lost, and matches well or ill made, develops into something more. Likewise, Pirandello’s interest in the pacifying force of nature and the endurance of dead in the memories – and imaginations – of the living signals themes that would remerge in later stories, novels, and plays.

This English translation of “Wedding Night” was previously published in PSA – The Journal of the Pirandello Society of America, 31 (2018): 89-97.

The Editors

four shirts,

four sheets,

four dresses,

four, in other words, of everything. And she never tired of showing her daughter’s trousseau, assembled with the patience of a spider, a thread today and a thread tomorrow, to the women of the neighborhood.

“Poor folks’ things, but clean.”

With those poor bleached and rough hands that knew every kind of toil, she would lift the pretty linens out of the old pine chest, so long and narrow that it resembled a casket, slowly, as though she were handling the consecrated host, piece by piece, and then also the dresses and the thick woolen shawls; the one for the wedding, with the embroidered corners and floor-length silk fringe; the other three, also woolen but more modest. She would put it all on display on the bed, repeating, smiling humbly, “Poor folks’ things…”, and her hands and voice would tremble with joy.

“I found myself all alone,” she would say. “I did it all with these hands that I can’t even feel anymore. Me, in the water, me, under the sun; doing laundry in the river and in the fountain; shelling almonds, harvesting olives; running all over the countryside; as a housemaid or water bearer… No matter. God, who has counted my tears and knows my life, has given me strength and health. I’ve worked so hard to have my way, and now I can die. To that saintly man who waits for me beyond, if he asks me about our daughter, I’ll be able to tell him, ‘Rest in peace, poor thing, don’t give it a thought: I’ve left your daughter well set; she’ll never endure troubles. I have endured so many for her.’ I’m crying for joy, don’t mind me.”

And she would dry her tears, Mamm’Anto’,[1] with a corner of the black scarf she wore on her head, knotted under her chin. She didn’t look herself that day, all dressed up in new clothes, and it seemed odd to hear her speak like always.

The women praised her, they competed in their commiseration. But, already dressed as a bride in the gray satin dress (so elegant!) and the blue silk cloth around her throat, in a corner of the little room all decked out in honor of the day’s event, her daughter Marastella broke out in sobs as well when she saw her mother cry.

“Mara, Mara, what are you doing?”

The neighbors closed in around her, concerned, each with her own bit of advice:

“Be happy! Oh! What are you doing? Today’s not for crying… You know what they say? A hundred lire of moping won’t pay a penny of debt.”

“I’m thinking of my father!” Marastella said to that, with her face hidden in her hands.

Dying a horrible death, seven years ago! Customs officer for the port, he would go out in one of those narrow fishing luntri at night, on patrol. One stormy night, tacking along the straits, the luntro overturned and then disappeared, along with its three-man crew.[2]

The memory of the shipwreck was still alive among all the seafaring people. And they recalled Marastella running with her mother, both of them screaming, arms lifted in the wind and the sea spray, to the edge of the rocks of the new harbor, upon which the three drowned men had been laid out after two days of desperate searching. Instead of kneeling down next to the corpse of her father, she had remained petrified before another corpse, murmuring, with her hands crossed on her chest:

“Ah! My darling love! My darling love! Ah, you’ve come to this…”

Mamm’Anto’, the relatives of the drowned youth, the people who came running, all were stunned by the unexpected revelation. And the mother of the drowned man (a real golden boy, poor thing!), whose name was Tino Sparti, hearing Marastella cry like that, she had immediately thrown her arms around the other’s neck and pressed her to her heart with all her strength, in front of everyone, as though to make the girl hers, hers and his, her dead son’s, calling her with a loud cry:

“Daughter! Daughter!”

So now the neighbors, hearing Marastella say “I’m thinking of my father,” exchanged knowing looks, commiserating with her in silence. No, she wasn’t crying for her father, poor girl. Or maybe so, crying because she thought that her father, were he alive, would not have accepted that match, which now seemed like a stroke of luck to her mother, reduced to poverty.

Mamm’Anto’ had had to fight so hard to overcome her daughter’s stubbornness!

“Look at me, I’m old now: more dead than alive. What are you hoping for? What will you do on your own tomorrow, with no help, out on the street?”

Yes, her mother was right. But the considerations on Marastella’s side were so different. A good man, yes, that Lisi Chìrico whom they wanted for her husband—she didn’t deny it—but kind of old, and a widower to boot. He was remarrying, poor soul, more out of necessity than for love. After barely a year as a widower he needed a woman up there, to take care of the house and to cook for him in the evening. That’s why he was remarrying.

“So what do you care?” her mother had answered her. “It just goes to show you: he thinks like a sensible man. Old? He’s not even forty. You’ll never lack for anything: he’s got a steady income, a good job. Five lire a day: a fortune!”

“Oh yes, a good job! A good job!”

Here was the problem. Mamm’Anto’ had understood it right from the start: the kind of job Chìrico had.

And one fine day in May she had invited some women from the neighborhood—she, poor thing!—on an outing up there, on the high ground overlooking the town.

From the gate of the little white cemetery that rose up there, above the town, with the sea before it and the countryside behind, Don Lisi Chìrico, discovering the clutch of women, had invited them in.

“You see how it is? It’s like a garden, with so many flowers,” Mamm’Anto’ had said to Marastella, after the visit to the graveyard. “Flowers that never fade. And the countryside all around here. If you stick your head out a little from the gate, you see the whole town at your feet; you hear the sounds, the voices… And have you ever seen such a nice white cottage, clean, airy? You close the door and window at night, light the lamp, and you’re at home: a home like any other. What were you thinking?”

And the neighbors, for their part:

“But of course! And then it’s all in what you’re used to. You’ll see: after a couple of days, you won’t notice it. For that matter, girl, the dead don’t cause harm. It’s the living you have to watch out for. And you who are younger than us, you’ll have all of us here, one by one. This is the great house, and you will be the mistress and the kindly guardian.”

That visit up there, on a pretty day in May, had remained in Marastella’s soul as a consoling vision during the eleven months of their engagement: her thoughts returned to it in times of discouragement, especially as night fell, when her soul darkened and trembled with fear.

She was still drying her tears when Don Lisi Chìrico presented himself in the doorway with two big packages under his arms, almost unrecognizable.

“Madonna!”[3] cried Mamm’Anto’. “And what have you done, good Lord?”

“Me? Oh yes, the beard…” answered Don Lisi with a weak smile that trembled, disoriented, on his naked lips, wide and pale.

But Don Lisi hadn’t just shaved: he had actually hacked away at himself. His beard had been so thick and bristly on those hollow cheeks that now he looked like an old goat just skinned.

“It was me, me, I made him shave,” Donna Nela, the fat, impulsive sister of the groom, hastened to interject, anxiously butting in.

She was carrying some bottles under her shawl, and upon entering she seemed to take up all the space in the little room, in that pea-green silk dress which rustled like a fountain.

She was followed by her husband, as skinny as Don Lisi, taciturn and moody.

“Did I do wrong?” continued his wife, freeing herself from the shawl. “The bride should say. Where is she? Look Lisi, what was I telling you? She’s crying… you’re right, my girl. We took too long. It’s his fault, Lisi’s. ‘Do I shave? Do I not shave?’ Two hours to decide. Tell me, doesn’t he look younger this way? With those white hairs, on his wedding day…”

“I’ll let it grow back,” said Chìrico, interrupting his sister and looking sadly at his young bride. “I still look old, and even uglier.”

“A man is a man, jackass, and is neither pretty nor ugly!” declared his sister in response, irritated. “But now look: your new suit! The first time you wear it, what a shame!”

And she began to slap him on the sleeves to shake off the flour from the pastries that he was still holding in the two packages.

It was already getting late; first they had to go to City Hall, and not keep the clerk waiting, then to the church. Quite zealous in his duties, Don Lisi was just hoping for the best. He was kept particularly on edge by his sister, more pushy and noisy than ever after the banquet and the abundant libations.

“We need music! Who ever heard of a wedding without music? We have to dance! Send for that blind Sidoro… guitars and mandolins!”

She was shrieking so much that her brother had to pull her aside.

“Stop it, Nela, stop it! You should have known that I don’t want such a fuss.”

What a look his sister gave him.

“What? I beg your pardon! Why?”

Don Lisi knitted his brows and sighed deeply:

“Just think, it’s hardly a year since that poor little…”

“Are you really still thinking of that?” Donna Nela interrupted him with a snort. “Just as you’re taking a new wife? Oh poor Nunziata!”

“I’m taking a new wife,” said Don Lisi, narrowing his eyes and turning pale, “but I don’t want either music or dancing. That’s not at all how I feel at heart.”

And when it seemed to him that the day was yielding to dusk, he asked his mother-in-law to make ready for the departure.

“I have to ring the ave maria up there, you know.”

Before leaving home, Marastella, hanging onto her mother by the neck, again burst out crying, crying, as if she never wanted to stop. She didn’t feel ready, not ready to go up there, alone with him…

“We’ll all go with you, don’t cry,” her mother comforted her. “Don’t cry, foolish girl!”

But she was also crying, as were so many of the neighbor women:

“What a sad parting!”

Only Donna Nela,[4] Chìrico’s sister, more flushed than ever, wasn’t moved. She spoke of having attended a dozen weddings, and by the end tears, like confetti, were never lacking.

“The daughter cries because she’s leaving her mother; the mother cries because she’s leaving her daughter. Everyone knows that! One more little glass to settle the nerves, and we’re off, since Lisi’s in a hurry.”

They started off. It seemed more like a wake than a wedding procession. And in seeing them pass, the people, looking out of their doorways, their windows, or stopping on the street, sighed: “Poor bride!”

Up there, in the clearing in front of the gate, the guests held back a bit, before saying goodbye, exhorting Marastella to take heart. The sun was setting, and the sky was all red, in flames, and the sea below looked molten. An incessant, indistinct clamor was rising from the town below, like a distant tumult, and those waves of quarrelsome voices dissipated against the white, rough wall that ringed the cemetery, lost up there in the silence.

The airy, silvery ring of the bell sounded by Don Lisi to announce the ave was like a signal for the guests to depart. That cemetery wall seemed whiter to everyone as they heard the bell. Maybe because the evening air was getting darker. They needed to go before it got too late. And everyone took their leave, with many best wishes for the bride.

The mother and two of her closest friends remained with the dazed and petrified Marastella. High above, the clouds, previously aflame, had turned dark and gloomy, like smoke.

“Do you want to come in?” said Don Lisi, from the entrance gate.

But Mamm’Anto’ immediately signaled him with a hand to stay quiet and wait. Marastella was crying, begging her between tears to take her back down with her, to town.

“Have mercy! Have mercy!”

She wasn’t shouting. She was speaking so softly and with such trembling in her voice that her poor mama felt her heart being torn. Her daughter’s trembling—she understood it—was because she had glimpsed, from the gate, the interior of the graveyard, all those crosses there, on which the shadow of evening was falling.

Don Lisi went to light the lamp by the bed, to the left of the doorway. He looked around to see if everything was in order, and remained a bit uncertain as to whether to go in or wait for the bride to be persuaded by her mother to enter.

He understood and he sympathized. He was aware that his sad, aged, homely figure could inspire neither affection nor intimacy. He too had a heart full of tears.

Up until the previous evening he had been throwing himself down on his knees to cry like a child before one of the little crosses in that cemetery, saying goodbye to his first wife. Now he mustn’t think of that any longer. Now he would be everything for this other one, father and husband both. But these new concerns for the bride would not dim those which for so many years he had lovingly shown for everyone, friend or stranger, who was sleeping up there in his custody.

He had promised this to each and every cross on that nightly round, the evening before.

Finally Marastella let herself be persuaded to enter. Her mother immediately closed the door as if to isolate her daughter in the intimacy of the cottage, leaving her fear of the place outside. And indeed the sight of familiar objects seemed to comfort Marastella somewhat.

“Come, take off the shawl,” said Mamm’Anto’. “Wait, I’ll do it. Now you’re in your own home…”

“Mistress of it,” added Don Lisi, timidly, with a sad, affectionate smile.

“You hear that?” rejoined Mamm’Anto’, to incite her son-in-law to keep talking.

“Mistress of me and of everything,” continued Don Lisi. “She must know that by now. Here she’ll have someone who respects her and loves her like her own mama. And she has nothing to be afraid of.”

“Nothing, nothing, of course!” the mother persisted. “Are you still a little girl? Afraid of what? She’ll have so much to do now… Isn’t that so? Isn’t that so?”

Marastella nodded her head many times in agreement; but as soon as Mamm’Anto’ and the two neighbors got ready to leave, she broke out again in tears, throwing herself once more on her mother’s neck, hanging on to her. The mother, with tender forcefulness, tore herself away from her daughter’s embrace, giving the final command to have faith in the bridegroom and in God. And, crying herself, she left with the neighbors.

Marastella remained by the door, which the mother had shut again on the way out. With her hands on her face she was forcing herself to choke back the sobs that were erupting when, silently, a soft breeze opened that door a little.

Her hands still on her face, she didn’t notice it; rather it seemed to her that all of a sudden—who knows why—it opened up inside of her like a delicious emptiness, dreamlike; she heard a distant, tremulous chirping of crickets, she sensed a cool inebriating fragrance of flowers. She took her hands from her eyes: she saw a glow in the cemetery, brighter than dawn, that seemed to cast a spell over everything there, motionless, and sharply defined.

Don Lisi rushed to close the door. But then Marastella, trembling and huddled in the corner between the door and wall, immediately cried,

“For pity’s sake, don’t touch me!”

Don Lisi, wounded by that instinctive reaction of disgust, stopped.

“I wasn’t touching you,” he said. “I wanted to shut the door.”

“No, no,” replied Marastella quickly, to keep him away. “Just leave it open. I’m not afraid!”

“So now what? ...” blurted Don Lisi, feeling disheartened.

In the silence, through the half-closed door, the far-off song of a carefree farmer returning to the countryside reached them, from up there under the moon, in the coolness all impregnated with the odor of green hay freshly mown.

“If you’ll let me pass,” continued Don Lisi, dispirited, deeply embittered, “I’m going to shut the gate, which was left open.”

Marastella didn’t move from the corner into which she had shrunk. Lisi Chìrico slowly went off to shut the gate. He was about to reenter, when he saw her coming up to him, as if suddenly gone mad.

“Where is he, where is my father? Tell me! I want to go to my father.”

“At your service, why not? It’s fair. I’ll take you there,” he answered her glumly. “Every evening I make a round before going to bed. My duty. I wasn’t going to do it tonight, for you. Let’s go. There’s no need for a lantern. There’s a lantern in the sky.”

And they went along the gravel paths, between hedges of flowering lavender.

All around, the tombs of well-born families shone white under the moon, while the iron crosses of the poor stood out black against the ground, their shadows to one side, as if laying themselves down.

More distinct, more clear, the tremulous song of the crickets came from the nearby countryside and, from a distance, the ceaseless murmur of the sea.

“Here,” said Chìrico, indicating a low, simple tomb, on which was embedded a stone tablet that recorded the shipwreck and the three victims killed in the line of duty. “Sparti’s there too,” he added, seeing Marastella fall to her knees before the tomb, sobbing. “You cry here. I’ll go further on; it’s not far…”

From the sky the moon watched over the little graveyard on the high plain. It was only she who saw those two black shadows on the yellow gravel of a little path next to two tombs, on that sweet April night.

Don Lisi, bent over the grave of his first wife, was sobbing:

“Nunzia’, Nunzia’, do you hear me?”