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L U I G I P I R A N D E L L O

ONE, NO ONE, AND ONE

HUNDRED THOUSAND

T R A N S L AT E D A N D W I T H A N I N T R O D U C T I O N BY W I L L I A M W E AV E R S P U R L E D I T I O N S

L U I G I P I R A N D E L L O Perhaps my wife saw much deeper into that annoyance of mine and she added at once that, if I had the reassuring notion that I was without defects, I could dispel the thought because, not only did my nose tilt to the right, but also – “What else?” Oh, lots of other things! My eyebrows stood over my eyes

like two circumflex accents, ˆˆ, my ears were badly placed, one

protruded more; and there were other shortcomings... “Other – ?” Yes, other ones; my hands, the little finger; and my legs (no, not actually crooked, the right one a bit more curved than the left: just a little, at the knee). After a careful examination, I had to acknowledge the existence of all these defects. And finally my wife, surely mistaking for grief and dejection the wonder I felt, immediately after my irritation, sought to console me, telling me not to take it to heart since, even with these flaws, all things considered, I was still a good-looking man. Who wouldn’t be irritated, on receiving as a generous conces- sion what had previously been denied him as a right? I blurted out a venomous “thanks” and, sure of having no cause for grief or for dejection, I attached no importance to those slight defects, but a great, exceptional importance to the fact that I had lived all these years, without ever changing noses, always with that one, and those eyebrows, and those ears, those hands, and those legs; it wasn’t till I had taken a wife that I found out that these were all defective. “Why so surprised?! We know all about wives! They were born to discover their husband’s defects.”

O N E , N O O N E , A N D O N E H U N D R E D T H O U S A N D Mm, yes, wives: I agree. But I, too, if I may say so, was made to plunge, at every word addressed to me, at every gnat I saw fly- ing, into abysses of reflection and consideration that burrowed deep inside me and hollowed my spirit up, down, and across, like the lair of a mole, with nothing evident on the surface. “Obviously,” you say, “you had a great deal of spare time.” Well, no. It was my nature. But for that matter, true, it was also my idleness, I admit. Rich, I had two faithful friends, Sebastiano Quantorzo and Stefano Firbo, to handle my affairs after the death of my father, who, though he tried in every way, had never succeeded in making me accomplish anything; except taking a wife, of course, when I was very young; perhaps in the hope that I might soon have a son who wouldn’t resemble me in the least; but, poor man, he wasn’t able to obtain even this from me. Not, mind you, that I had any objection to following the path on which my father set my feet. I followed all paths. But when it came to advancing, I wouldn’t advance. I would pause at ev- ery step; I took care to circle every pebble I encountered, first distantly, then more closely; and I was quite amazed that others could pass ahead of me paying no heed to that pebble, which for me, meanwhile, had assumed the proportions of an insuperable mountain, or rather, a world where I could easily have settled. I had remained arrested like that at the first steps of so many paths, my spirit filled with worlds – or pebbles: it’s the same thing. But I never felt that those who had gone past me and had covered the whole length of the path actually knew any more than I did. They had passed ahead of me, no doubt about that, and they were all foaming at the mouth like so many horses; but

O N E , N O O N E , A N D O N E H U N D R E D T H O U S A N D that defect of my nose were an irreparable disaster befallen the mechanism of the universe. My friend looked at me, a bit dazed at first; then, surely sus- pecting I had brought up my nose so suddenly and irrelevantly because I didn’t consider his concern worthy of attention or of a reply, he shrugged and started to leave me on the spot. I grasped his arm. “No, really,” I said to him, “I’m quite willing to discuss this question with you. But at this moment, you must excuse me.” “You’re thinking about your nose?” “I had never noticed it tilted to the right. This was pointed out to me, this morning, by my wife.” “Ah, really?” the friend asked; and his eyes laughed with a disbelief that was also mockery. I stood and looked at him, as I had looked at my wife that morning: with a mixture of dejection, irritation, and wonder. Had he then also been aware of it for some time? God knows how many others had been as well! And I didn’t know, and, not knowing, I believed everyone saw me as a Moscarda with a straight nose, whereas everyone saw a Moscarda with a bent nose; and there was no telling how many times, unsuspecting, I had happened to talk about the flawed nose of X, Y, and Z, and how many times I had made others laugh at me, as they thought: Look at this poor man who talks about the defects of other people’s noses! True, I could have consoled myself with the reflection that, in the final analysis, my nose was obvious and common, proving once again a well-known fact, namely, that we easily notice the

L U I G I P I R A N D E L L O defects of others and are unaware of our own. But the first germ of the sickness had begun to take root in my spirit and I couldn’t console myself with this reflection. On the contrary, I was obsessed by the thought that for others I was not what till now, privately, I had imagined myself to be. For the moment I thought only of my body and, since my friend was still standing in front of me with that expression of mocking disbelief, to avenge myself I asked him if he knew that his chin had a dimple dividing it into halves that were not com- pletely identical: more prominent on one side, more receding on the other. “Me? What do you mean?” my friend cried. “I have a dimple; I know that; but it’s not the way you say.” “Let’s go into that barber’s shop, and you’ll see,” I immediate- ly suggested. When my friend had gone into the barber’s, to his wonder, he became aware of his defect and admitted it was true; he dis- played no irritation, and merely said that, after all, it was a trifle. Ah, yes, no doubt, a trifle; however, following him at a dis- tance, I saw him stop, first at one shop window, and then a sec- ond time, farther on, at another; and, still farther on, and for a longer period, a third time, at the mirror of a stall, to observe his chin; and I’m sure that, the moment he was home, he ran to the wardrobe to renew, with greater leisure, at that other mirror, his acquaintance with himself, with that defect. And I haven’t the slightest doubt that, to wreak his own revenge, or to continue a joke he felt deserved wider circulation in the town, after having asked some friend (as I had asked him) if he had ever noticed