Short Stories for a Year – The Wheelbarrow – Luigi Pirandello
When there’s someone around, I never look at her, but I feel that she’s looking at me, she’s looking at me without taking her eyes off me for a moment.
I’d like to make her understand in private that it’s nothing, that she should relax, that I couldn’t allow myself to perform this brief act in front of others, that for her it’s of no importance, but for me it’s everything. I perform it every day at the right moment in utmost secrecy and with frightful joy because, trembling, I experience the delight of a divine, conscious madness that for an instant frees me and allows me to get even with everything.
I had to be certain (and it seemed I could have this certainty only with her) that this act of mine wouldn’t be discovered. Because if it were, the damage that would result, and not only to me, would be incalculable. I would be a ruined man. Perhaps, stricken with terror, they would seize me, tie me up, and drag me off to an insane asylum.
The terror that would take hold of everybody if this act of mine were discovered, yes, there it is, I can read it now in my victim’s eyes.
I have been entrusted with the life, honor, freedom, and possessions of countless people who besiege me from morning to night for my work, advice, and help. I’m burdened with other extremely great responsibilities, both public as well as private. I’ve got a wife and children, who often don’t behave as they should, and who, therefore, continually need to be kept in check by my strict authority and by the constant example of my inflexible and faultless fidelity towards all my obligations, one more serious than the other: that of husband, father, citizen, law professor, attorney. So heaven help us if my secret were discovered!
It’s true, my victim can’t speak. Nonetheless, for some days now, I’ve no longer felt sure of it. I’m upset and restless because, though it’s true she can’t speak, she does look at me, she looks at me with such strange eyes, and the terror in those eyes is so obvious that I fear someone might become aware of it from one moment to the next and be led to seek an explanation.
I would be, I repeat, a ruined man. The value of the act I perform can be appraised and appreciated only by those very few individuals whose lives have revealed themselves to them as mine all of a sudden did to me.
It’s not easy to put it into words and make it comprehensible, but I’ll try.
A couple of weeks ago I was returning from Perugia, where I had gone to take care of some business relating to my profession.
One of my most onerous duties is that of ignoring the fatigue that assails me as a result of all the enormous responsiblilities I have taken upon myself and that have been placed on me, and of resisting the need for a bit of distraction that my tired mind occasionally demands. The only distraction I can permit myself, when fatigue gets the better of me after I’ve been attending too long to a particular case, is that of directing my attention to a new one.
For this reason I had brought along my leather folder with some new papers to study on the train. At the first problem I encountered in my reading, I raised my eyes and looked towards the window of the coach. I looked outside but saw nothing, so engrossed was I in that problem.
Actually I shouldn’t say I saw nothing. My eyes did see. They saw and perhaps enjoyed the grace and beauty of the Umbrian countryside on their own. But I certainly paid no attention to what my eyes were seeing.
Nevertheless, the attention I was paying to the problem occupying my mind gradually began to wane, without meanwhile increasing my awareness of the countryside that continued to pass before my eyes, limpid, light, and relaxing.
I wasn’t thinking about what I was seeing, and finally I ceased thinking about anything. I remained for an incalculable spell as if in an indefinite, eery state of suspension, and yet one that was clear and peaceful. Ethereal. My spirit had almost become estranged from my senses and had taken refuge in an indefinitely distant place where, inexplicably and with a sense of joy that didn’t seem its own, it caught a glimpse of the seething of a different life. Not its own, but one that could have been its own. Not here, not now, but there in that infinitely distant place. It was the seething of a remote life which perhaps had been its own, it knew not how or when, and of which it had a vague recollection, not of acts, not of images but, as it were, of desires that vanished even before they were formed. And there was the feeling of not existing, which, though empty, was sad and painful. It was perhaps the same sorrow felt by flowers that were unable to bloom. In short, it was the seething of a life that had not come into being, but that was to be lived, there, far, far away, where it was beckoning with throbs and flickers of light. There, ah yes, certainly there, my spirit would find itself quite complete and full, ready not only to enjoy itself but also to endure sufferings – sufferings, however, that would be truly its own.
Gradually my eyes closed shut without my being aware of it, and as I slept, I perhaps continued living in my dream the life that had not come into being. I say perhaps, because when I awoke, stiff, aching, and with a bitter taste in my parched mouth, and already close to my destination, I suddenly found myself in a completely different mood. What I felt was a sense of dreadful boredom towards life. I was in a state of gloomy, leaden stupefaction, a state in which the appearances of the most common things appeared devoid of any meaning whatsoever. Yet, to my eyes, they appeared cruel and intolerably heavy.
While in this mood, I got off at the station, got into my car, which awaited me at the exit, and set off for home.
Well, it happened on the stairway of my home; it happened on the landing in front of my door.
Suddenly I saw in front of that dark, bronze-colored door with the oval brass plate bearing my name inscribed with all my titles preceding it, and all my scientific and professional qualifications behind it, suddenly I saw, as if from outside my body, myself and my life, but so that I couldn’t recognize myself or recognize my life as being my own.
I suddenly felt frightfully certain that the man standing in front of that door with the leather case under his arm, the man who lived in that house, was not me, had never been me. I suddenly realized that I had always been, as it were, absent from that house and from the life of that man. What is more, I felt really and truly absent from any life. I had never lived. I had never been in life; in a life, I mean to say, that I could recognize as my own, a life desired and felt as my own. Even my own body, my own shape as it now suddenly appeared to me, dressed and set up in that particular way, seemed alien to me. It was as if someone else had fashioned and forced that shape on me, in order to make me move in a life that wasn’t mine, to make me perform acts of presence in that life from which I had always been absent. But now my spirit suddenly realized it had never been in it. Never, never! Who had made the man whom I was supposed to be that way? Who had wanted him that way? Who had dressed him that way and given him those shoes? Who made him move and speak that way? Who had imposed all those duties upon him, one more weighty and hateful than the other? Distinguished citizen, professor, attorney, the man whom everyone sought, whom everyone respected and admired, the man whose work, advice, assistance everyone wanted, the man whom everyone fought over without ever giving him a moment of peace, a moment of rest – was that me? Me? Really? But since when? And what did I care about all those cases with which that man was swamped from morning to night? And about all the respect, all the esteem he enjoyed as a distinguished citizen, professor, and attorney? And about the wealth and honors that had come to him from the assiduous fulfillment of all those duties, from the practice of his profession?
And they were there, behind that door bearing a large brass plate with my name on it. They were there – a lady and four children who saw that insufferable man who I was supposed to be, and whom I now considered a stranger, an enemy. Every day they viewed him with the same feeling of annoyance that was mine, but that I couldn’t tolerate in them. Was she my wife? Were they my children? But if I had never been myself, really myself, if that insufferable man who was in front of that door wasn’t really me (and I felt this with frightful certainty), that woman, whose wife was she? Those little ones, whose children were they? Not mine! They belonged to that man, that man whom my spirit, if it had had a body at that moment – its real body, its real shape – would have kicked or seized and then torn to pieces and destroyed together with all those cases, all those duties and honors, all that respect and wealth, and together even with my wife, yes, perhaps even with my wife.
But what about the children?
I brought my hands to my temples and pressed tightly against them. No, I didn’t feel they were mine. But I had a strange, painful, agonizing feeling for them, as they were outside me, as I saw them daily before me, needing me, my attention, my advice, my work. With this feeling and the same sensation of frightfully hot, dense, and suffocating air which had awakened me on the train, I felt myself reenter that insufferable man who was standing in front of the door.
I took my little key out of my pocket, opened the door, and reentered that house, as well as my former life.
Now my tragedy is this. I say my tragedy, but who knows how many others share it!
He who lives, doesn’t see himself while he’s living: he simply lives… If one can see his own life, that only means that one no longer lives it, but undergoes it, drags it along. Like a dead thing, one drags it along, because every form is a death.
Very few know that. The majority of people (almost all) struggle and strive, as they say, to make something of themselves, that is, to attain a form. But once they have attained it, they think they’ve mastered their lives. Instead, however, they begin to die. They don’t know it, because they don’t see themselves, that is, they can no longer detach themselves from the dying form they have attained. They don’t realize they’re dead and they believe they’re still alive. Only he who manages to see the form he has given himself or the one given him by others, by luck, by circumstances, or by the conditions in which he was born, knows himself. But if we can see this form, that’s an indication that our life is no longer in it, because if it were, we wouldn’t see it; we would live this form without seeing it, and every day we would die a little bit more in it without ever coming to know it, which in itself is already a death. Therefore we can see and know only what has died in us. To know oneself is to die.
My case is even worse. I don’t see the part of me that is dead; I see that I’ve never been alive, I see the form that others, not I myself, have given me, and I feel that in this form my life, a true individual life, has never existed. They took me as one would take nondescript matter. They took a brain, a soul, muscles, nerves, flesh, and they kneaded and shaped them at will, so that they would accomplish a job, perform acts, meet obligations; and though I look for myself in that form, I do not find myself. And I cry out, my soul cries out within this dead form that has never been mine: “How is this possible! I’m this individual? I’m like this? But how in the world?” And I have feelings of disgust, horror, and hatred towards this individual who is not me, who I’ve never been, and towards this dead form in which I’m imprisoned, and from which I can’t free myself. A form weighed down by duties that I don’t feel are mine, encumbered by cases I couldn’t care less about, made the object of respect I have no use for. My form is these duties, these cases, this respect – things outside of me, above me, empty things; dead thing that weigh me down, suffocate me, crush me, and stop me from breathing.
Free myself? But no one can turn a fact into a non-fact and make death nonexistent when it has taken hold of us and keeps us.
The facts are there. When you’ve acted, no matter how, even if afterwards you don’t feel or find yourself in the acts you’ve performed, what you’ve done remains like a prison for you, and like coils and tentacles, the consequences of your actions entangle you. The responsibility you have taken upon yourself for those actions and their consequences that you neither wanted nor foresaw weighs down upon you like dense, unbreathable air. How can you then free yourself from it? How can I embrace and initiate a different life, a life truly mine, when I am imprisoned in this form which is not mine, but which represents me as I am for everybody, as everybody knows, wants, and respects me? How, when this life is a form I feel is dead, but that must subsist for others, for all those who have created it and want it this way and no other way? It must necessarily be this life because it is useful as it is to my wife, to my children, to society, that is, to the respectable university students of the school of law, to the respectable clients that have entrusted me with their lives, honor, freedom, and possessions. It is useful as it is, and I can’t change it, I can’t kick it and get rid of it. I can’t rebel or vindicate myself, save for a moment every day, with the act I perform in the utmost secrecy, choosing the opportune moment with trepidation and infinite circumspection so that no one will see me.
You see, I have an old female German shepherd, who has been living in my house for the past eleven years. She’s black and white, fat, short, and shaggy, and her eyes are already dimming from old age.
We’ve never been on good terms. Perhaps at first she didn’t approve of my profession, which didn’t allow noises to be made about the house. But gradually she began to approve of it as old age came upon her, and to such an extent, that to escape the capricious tyranny of the children, who still want to scramble with her in the garden, she chose, some time ago, to take refuge here in my studio from morning to night in order to sleep on the carpet with her pointed little snout between her paws. Here among so many papers and books she felt protected and safe. From time to time she would open and eye to look at me, as if to say: “Yes, my dear man, that’s a good fellow. Continue working. Don’t move an inch from there, because as long as you’re working, no one will come in here and disturb my sleep, that’s for sure.”
That’s what the poor animal was certainly thinking. The temptation to take my revenge on her suddenly came to me fifteen days ago when I noticed her looking at me that way.
I don’t hurt her. I don’t do a thing to her. As soon as I can, as soon as a client leaves me for a moment, I get up from my huge armchair cautiously and very very slowly, so that no one will notice that my feared and coveted wisdom – the formidable wisdom that comes to me from being a professor of law and an attorney – and my austere dignity as a husband, as a father, have been temporarily separated from this throne-like chair. And I tiptoe to the door to check the hallway to see if someone is coming. I lock the door, for just a moment. My eyes glisten with joy. My hands tremble from the pleasure I am about to concede myself, the pleasure of being mad, of being mad for just a moment, of leaving the prison of this dead form for just a moment, of destroying, of annihilating with derision, and for just a moment, this wisdom and this dignity that suffocates and crushes me. I run to her, to the little dog sleeping on the carpet, and slowly, gently I take hold of the small paws of her hind legs and make her do the wheelbarrow, that is, holding her by the paws of her hind legs, I make her travel on her forelegs alone, eight or ten paces, no more.
That’s all. I don’t do anything else. I quickly run to reopen the door, very, very slowly, without making the slightest creaking sound, and I place myself again on the throne, on the huge armchair, ready to receive a new client, with my former austere dignity, and charged like a cannon with all my formidable wisdom.
But, mind you, for a couple of weeks now, the animal has been staring at me as if she were in a trance. She stares at me with those dimmed eyes of hers dilated with terror. I would like to make her understand – I repeat – that it’s nothing, that she should be calm, that she shouldn’t look at me that way.
The animal understands how dreadful the act I perform is. It wouldn’t mean anything if one of my children were to do it to her as a joke, but she knows that I can’t joke. It’s impossible for her to accept the fact that I’m joking, even for a moment, and so, terrified, she continues to look at me reproachingly.