Black Shawl
Scialle nero – From the collection “Black Shawl” of 1922 – in Short Stories for a Year by Luigi Pirandello
Translated into English by Enzo Martinelli
©️ 2023 – Enzo Martinelli
Gerlando did not leave the bedside, day or night, for as long as Eleonora lay there between life and death.
When she finally got out of bed and was placed on the high chair, she looked like another woman: diaphanous, almost bloodless. She saw Gerlando in front of her, who also seemed to have come out of a mortal illness, and his relatives around her. She looked at them with her beautiful black eyes, enlarged and sorrowful in their pale thinness, and it seemed to her that there was no longer any relationship between them and her, as if she had now returned, new and different, from a remote place, where every bond had been broken, not only with them, but with her whole former life.
She breathed with pain; at every slightest sound her heart leapt in her breast and beat with tumultuous suddenness; a heavy fatigue oppressed her.
Then, with her head abandoned on the back of the highchair, her eyes closed, she regretted within herself that she was not dead. What was she doing there? Why was she still condemning her eyes to see those faces around her and those things from which she already felt so, so far away? Why that rapprochement with the oppressive and nauseating appearances of her past life, a rapprochement that sometimes seemed to become more abrupt, as if someone were pushing her from behind, to force her to see, to feel the presence, the living and breathing reality of the hateful life that no longer belonged to her?
She firmly believed that she would never get up from that high chair again; she believed that at any moment she would die of a broken heart. But no, instead; after a few days, she was able to stand up, to move, supported, a few steps around the room; then, in time, even to descend the stairs and go outdoors, on the arm of Gerlando and the servant. Finally, she got into the habit of going at sunset to the edge of the ledge that bordered the farm at noon.
From there, a magnificent view opened up of the plain below the plateau, as far as the sea over there. She went there the first few days accompanied, as usual, by Gerlando and Gesa; then, without Gerlando; finally, alone.
Sitting on a rock, in the shade of a hundred-year-old olive tree, she looked at the whole distant riviera, which curved slightly, in slight moons, in slight breasts, jaggedly jutting out over the sea, which changed according to the winds; she saw the sun, now like a disc of fire, slowly drowning in the musty mists sitting on the grey sea to the west, now descending in triumph over the burning waves, amidst a marvellous pumping of burning clouds; She saw in the humid twilight sky the liquid and calm light of Jupiter, the diaphanous and light moon barely coming to life; she drank with her eyes the sad sweetness of the imminent evening, and breathed, blissful, feeling the coolness, the stillness, penetrate deep into her soul like a superhuman comfort.
Meanwhile, over there, in the farmhouse, the old sharecropper and his wife resumed their conspiracy against her, instigating their son to provide for her.
– Why do you leave her alone? – his father would say to him. – Don’t you realise that now, after her illness, she is grateful for the affection you have shown her? Don’t leave her for a moment, try to enter more and more into her heart; and then… and then get the servant girl not to sleep in the same room with her any more. Now she is well and no longer needs it at night.
Gerlando, irritated, shrugged all over at these suggestions.
– No way! But if it doesn’t even cross your mind that I can… What the hell! She treats me like a son… You should hear the things she says! She already feels old, past and finished in this world. What! –
Old? – her mother interjected. – Of course, she is no longer a child, but neither is she old; and you… –
They’ll take the land from you! – urged her father. – I’ve already told you: you’re ruined, out on the street. Childless, wife dead, dowry goes back to her relatives. And you’ll have made this nice profit; you’ll have lost the school and all this time, like this, without any satisfaction… Not even a fistful of flies! Think about it, think about it in time: you have already lost too much… What do you hope? –
The easy way,’ her mother resumed, with a mannerly manner. – You must go to him gently, and perhaps tell him: ‘You see, what have I had to do with you? I have respected you, as you wished; but now think a little of me, you: how will I be left? What will I do, if you leave me like this? In the end, holy God, he must not go to war!
– And you can add,’ her father went on, ‘You want to make your brother happy, who treated you like that? You want to make him chase me out of here like a dog? This is the holy truth, mind you! Like a dog you’ll be kicked out, and me and your mother, poor old people, with you.
Gerlando answered nothing. To his mother’s advice he felt almost a relief, but irritating, like velvet; his father’s predictions stirred his bile, inflamed him with anger. What to do? He saw the difficulty of the task and also saw the pressing need. One had to try anyway.
Eleonora now sat at the table with him. One evening at dinner, seeing him staring pensively at the tablecloth, she asked him:
– Aren’t you eating? What’s wrong?
Although for some days he had been expecting this question, provoked by his own demeanour, he was unable to answer as he had intended, and made a vague gesture with his hand.
– What’s wrong? – insisted Eleonora.
– Nothing,’ answered Gerlando, awkwardly. – My father, as usual…
– Back to school? – she asked, smiling, to urge him to speak.
– No: worse,’ he said. – It puts me…it puts me in front of so many shadows, it afflicts me with…. with the thought of my future, because he is old, he says, and I am like this, without art or part: as long as you are here, fine; but then… then, nothing, he says…
– Tell your father,‘ replied Eleonora, with gravity, half-closing her eyes, as if not to see his blush, ‘tell your father not to worry about it. I have taken care of everything, tell him, and let him therefore rest assured. In fact, while we’re on the subject, listen: if I suddenly pass away – this is life and death – in the second drawer of the bureau, in my room, you’ll find a yellow envelope with a card for you.
– A card? – repeated Gerlando, not knowing what to say, confused with shame.
Eleonora nodded her head in agreement and added: – Don’t worry about it. Relieved and happy, Gerlando told his parents the next morning what Eleonora had told him, but they, especially his father, were not at all satisfied.
– A paper? Cheating!
What could that paper have been? The will: that is, the donation of the estate to her husband. And if it was not made in order and with all the forms? Suspicion was easy, given that it was a woman’s private writing, without the assistance of a notary. Besides, wasn’t it to do with her brother-in-law, tomorrow, a man of law, a swindler?
– Trials, my son? God forbid! Justice is not for the poor. And that one there, out of rage, will be able to make you white the black and black the white.
And besides, that paper, was it really there, there, in the drawer of the canter? Or had she told him so as not to be molested?
– Did you see it? No. So? But, supposing I show it to you, what do you understand of it? What do we understand of it? While with a son… there! Don’t let yourself be fooled: listen to us! Meat! Meat! What paper!
So, one day, while Eleonora was standing under that olive tree on the verge, she suddenly saw Gerlando, who had come stealthily to her side.
She was all wrapped up in a large black shawl. She felt cold, although the February was so mild that it already seemed like spring. The vast plain below was all green with strawberries; the sea, at the bottom, very calm, held together with the sky a slightly faded, but very soft pink hue, and the shady countryside seemed enamelled.
Tired of admiring that wonderful harmony of colours in the silence, Eleanor leaned her head against the trunk of the olive tree. The black shawl pulled over her head only revealed her face, which seemed even paler.
– What are you doing? – Gerlando asked her. – You look like a Madonna of Sorrows.
– I was looking, she answered with a sigh, half-closing her eyes.
But he resumed:
‘If you could see how… how well you look in that black shawl…
– Well? – said Eleonora, smiling sadly. – I feel cold!
– No, I mean, good to… of… of figure,’ he explained, stammering, and sat down on the ground beside the boulder.
Eleonora, her head resting on the trunk, closed her eyes, smiled to keep from crying, assailed by the regret of her youth lost so miserably. At eighteen, yes, she had been beautiful, so beautiful!
Suddenly, as she stood so absorbed, she felt herself shaking slightly.
– Give me a hand,’ he asked her from the floor, looking at her with shining eyes.
She understood but pretended not to.
– The hand? Why? – she asked him. – I can’t pull you up: I have no strength left, not even for myself…. It’s evening already, let’s go.
And he got up.
– I didn’t mean to pull myself up,’ Gerlando explained again, from the ground. – Let’s stay here, in the dark; it’s so beautiful….
So saying, he was quick to hug her knees, smiling nervously, his lips parched.
– No! – she cried. – Are you crazy? Let go of me!
So as not to fall, she leaned her arms against his humerus and pushed him back. But the shawl, at that act, unfolded, and as she bent over him on her knees, she wrapped him up, hid him inside.
– No: I want you! – he said, then, as if inebriated, clasping her more and more tightly with one arm, while with the other he sought her waist, wrapped in her body odour.
But with a supreme effort, she managed to free herself; she ran to the edge of the ledge; she turned around; she cried out:
– I’ll jump!
In that, she saw him coming at her, violent; she bent back, tumbled down the ledge.
He struggled back, stunned, screaming, his arms raised. He heard a terrible thud, down. He turned his head. A pile of black robes, among the green of the plain below. And the shawl, which had opened in the wind, fell limply, so open, further away.
With his hands in his hair, he turned to look towards the country house; but he was suddenly struck in the eyes by the broad pale face of the moon that had just risen from the thicket of olive trees up there; and he was terrified to look at it, as if it had seen from heaven and was accusing him.
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