Luigi Pirandello: Shoot! (07)

Luigi Pirandello: Shoot! (7)

Shoot! (Si Gira, 1926)

The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio,

Cinematograph Operator

by Luigi Pirandello

Translated from the Italian by C. K. Scott Moncrieff

BOOK II

1

Dear house in the country, the ‘Grandparents’, full of the

indescribable fragrance of the oldest family memories, where all the

old-fashioned chairs and tables, vitalised by these memories, were no

longer inanimate objects but, so to speak, intimate parts of the

people who lived in the house, since in them they came in contact

with, became aware of the precious, tranquil, safe reality of their

existence.

 

There really did linger in those rooms a peculiar aroma, which I seem

to smell now as I write: an aroma of the life of long ago which seemed

to have given a fragrance to all the things that were preserved there.

 

I see again the drawing-room, a trifle gloomy, it must be admitted,

with its walls stuccoed in rectangular panels which strove to imitate

ancient marbles: red and green alternately; and each panel was set in

a handsome border of its own, of stucco likewise, in a pattern of

foliage; except that in the course of time these imitation marbles had

grown weary of their innocent make-believe, had bulged out a little

here and there, and one saw a few tiny cracks on the surface. All of

which said to me kindly:

 

“You are poor; the seams of your jacket are rent; but you see that

even in a gentleman’s house…”

 

Ah, yes! I had only to turn and look at those curious brackets which

seemed to shrink from touching the floor with their gilded spidery

legs. The marble top of each was a trifle yellow, and in the sloping

mirror above were reflected exactly in their immobility the pair of

baskets that stood upon the marble: baskets of fruit, also of marble,

coloured: figs, peaches, limes, corresponding exactly, on either side,

with their reflexions, as though there were four baskets instead of

two.

 

In that motionless, clear reflexion was embodied all the limpid calm

which reigned in that house. It seemed as though nothing could ever

happen there. This was the message, also, of the little bronze

timepiece between the baskets, only the back of which was to be seen

in the mirror. It represented a fountain, and had a spiral rod of

rock-crystal, which spun round and round with the movement of the

clockwork. How much water had that fountain poured forth? And yet the

little basin beneath it was never full.

 

Next I see the room from which one goes down to the garden. (From one

room to the other one passes between a pair of low doors, which seem

full of their own importance, and perfectly aware of the treasures

committed to their charge.) This room, leading down to the garden, is

the favourite sitting-room at all times of the year. It has a floor of

large, square tiles of terra-cotta, a trifle worn with use. The

wallpaper, patterned with damask roses, is a trifle faded, as are the

gauze curtains, also patterned with damask roses, screening the

windows and the glass door beyond which one sees the landing of the

little wooden outside stair, and the green railing and the pergola of

the garden bathed in an enchantment of sunshine and stillness.

 

The light filters green and fervid between the slats of the little

sun-blind outside the window, and does not pour into the room, which

remains in a cool delicious shadow, embalmed with the scents from the

garden.

 

What bliss, what a bath of purity for the soul, to sit at rest for a

little upon that old sofa with its high back, its cylindrical cushions

of green rep, likewise a trifle discoloured.

“Giorgio! Giorgio!”

Who is calling from the garden? It is Granny Rosa, who cannot succeed

in reaching, even with the end of her cane, the flowers of the

jasmine, now that the plant has grown so big and has climbed right up

high upon the wall.

 

Granny Rosa does so love those jasmines! She has upstairs, in the

cupboard in the wall of her room, a box full of umbrella-shaped heads

of cummin, dried; she takes one out every morning, before she goes

down to the garden; and, when she has gathered the blossoms with her

cane, she sits down in the shade of the pergola, puts on her

spectacles, and slips the jasmines one by one into the spidery stems

of that umbrella-shaped head, until she has turned it into a lovely

round white rose, with an intense, delicious perfume, which she goes

and places religiously in a little vase on the top of the chest of

drawers in her room, in front of the portrait of her only son, who

died long ago.

 

It is so intimate and sheltered, this little house, so contented with

the life that it encloses within its walls, without any desire for the

other life that goes noisily on outside, far away. It remains there,

as though perched in a niche behind the green hill, and has not wished

for so much as a glimpse of the sea and the marvellous Bay. It has

chosen to remain apart, unknown to all the world, almost hidden away

in that green, deserted corner, outside and far away from all the

vicissitudes of life.

 

There was at one time on the gatepost a marble tablet, which bore the

name of the owner: Carlo Mirelli. Grandfather Carlo decided to

remove it, when Death found his way, for the first time, into that

modest little house buried in the country, and carried off with him

the son of the house, barely thirty years old, already the father

himself of two little children.

 

Did Grandfather Carlo think, perhaps, that when the tablet was removed

from the gatepost, Death would not find his way back to the house

again?

 

Grandfather Carlo was one of those old men who wore a velvet cap with

a silken tassel, but could read Horace. He knew, therefore, that

death, ‘aequo pede’, knocks at all doors alike, whether or not they

have a name engraved on a tablet.

 

Were it not that each of us, blinded by what he considers the

injustice of his own lot, feels an unreasoning need to vent the fury

of his own grief upon somebody or something. Grandfather Carlo’s fury,

on that occasion, fell upon the innocent tablet on the gatepost.

 

If Death allowed us to catch hold of him, I would catch him by the arm

and lead him in front of that mirror where with such limpid precision

are reflected in their immobility the two baskets of fruit and the

back of the bronze timepiece, and would say to him:

 

“You see? Now be off with you! Everything here must be allowed to

remain as it is!”

 

But Death does not allow us to catch hold of him.

 

By taking down that tablet, perhaps Grandfather Carlo meant to imply

that–once his son was dead–there was nobody left alive in the house.

 

A little later, Death came again.

 

There was one person left alive who called upon him desperately every

night: the widowed daughter-in-law who, after her husband’s death,

felt as though she were divided from the family, a stranger in the

house.

 

And so, the two little orphans: Lidia, the elder, who was nearly five,

and Giorgetto who was three, remained in the sole charge of their

grandparents, who were still not so very old.

 

To start life afresh when one is already beginning to grow feeble, and

to rediscover in oneself all the first amazements of childhood; to

create once again round a pair of rosy children the most innocent

affection, the most pleasant dreams, and to drive away, as being

importunate and tiresome, Experience, who from time to time thrusts in

her head, the face of a withered old woman, to say, blinking behind

her spectacles: “This will happen, that will happen,” when as yet

nothing has ever happened, and it is so delightful that nothing should

have happened; and to act and think and speak as though really one

knew nothing more than is already known to two little children who

know nothing at all: to act as though things were seen not in

retrospect but through the eyes of a person going forwards for the

first time, and for the first time seeing and hearing: this miracle

was performed by Grandfather Carlo and Granny Rosa; they did, that is

to say, for the two little ones, far more than would have been done by

the father and mother, who, if they had lived, young as they both

were, might have wished to enjoy life a little longer themselves. Nor

did their not having anything left to enjoy render the task more easy

for the two old people, for we know that to the old everything is a

heavy burden, when it no longer has any meaning or value for them.

 

The two grandparents accepted the meaning and value which their two

grandchildren gradually, as they grew older, began to give to things,

and all the world took on the bright colours of youth for them, and

life recaptured the candour and freshness of innocence. But what could

they know of a world so wide, of a life so different from their own,

which was going on outside, far away, those two young creatures born

and brought up in the house in the country? The old people had

forgotten that life and that world, everything had become new again

for them, the sky, the scenery, the song of the birds, the taste of

food. Outside the gate, life existed no longer. Life began there, at

the gate, and gilded afresh everything round about; nor did the old

people imagine that anything could come to them from outside; and even

Death, even Death they had almost forgotten, albeit he had already

come there twice.

 

Have patience a little while, Death, to whom no house, however remote

and hidden, can remain unknown! But how in the world, starting from

thousands and thousands of miles away, thrust aside, or dragged,

tossed hither and thither by the turmoil of ever so many mysterious

changes of fortune, could there have found her way to that modest

little house, perched in its niche there behind the green hill, a

woman, to whom the peace and the affection that reigned there not only

must have been incomprehensible, must have been not even conceivable?

 

I have no record, nor perhaps has anyone, of the path followed by this

woman to bring her to the dear house in the country, near Sorrento.

 

There, at that very spot, before the gatepost, from which Grandfather

Carlo, long ago, had had the tablet removed, she did not arrive of her

own accord; that is certain; she did not raise her hand, uninvited, to

ring the bell, to make them open the gate to her. But not far from

there she stopped to wait for a young man, guarded until then with the

life and soul of two old grandparents, handsome, innocent, ardent, his

soul borne on the wings of dreams, to come out of that gate and

advance confidently towards life.

 

Oh, Granny Rosa, do you still call to him from the garden, for him to

pull down with your cane your jasmine blossoms?

“Giorgio! Giorgio!”

There still rings in my ears, Granny Rosa, the sound of your voice.

And I feel a bitter delight, which I cannot express in words, in

imagining you as still there, in your little house, which I see again

as though I were there at this moment, and were at this moment

breathing the atmosphere that lingers there of an old-fashioned

existence; in imagining you as knowing nothing of all that has

happened, as you were at first, when I, in the summer holidays, came

out from Sorrento every morning to prepare for the October

examinations your grandson Giorgio, who refused to learn a word of

Latin or Greek, and instead covered every scrap of paper that came

into his hands, the margins of his books, the top of the schoolroom

table, with sketches in pen and pencil, with caricatures. There must

even be one of me, still, on the top of that table, covered all over

with scribblings.

 

“Ah, Signor Serafino,” you sigh, Granny Rosa, as you hand me in an old

cup the familiar coffee with essence of cinnamon, like the coffee that

our aunts in religion offer us in their convents, “ah, Signor

Serafino, Giorgio has bought a box of paints; he wants to leave us; he

wants to become a painter…”

 

And over your shoulder opens her sweet, clear, sky-blue eyes and

blushes a deep red Lidiuccia, your granddaughter; Duccella, as you

call her. Why?

 

Ah, because…. There has come now three times from Naples a young

gentleman, a fine young gentleman all covered with scent, in a velvet

coat, with yellow chamois-leather gloves, an eyeglass in his right eye

and a baron’s coronet on his handkerchief and portfolio. He was sent

by his grandfather, Barone Nuti, a friend of Grandfather Carlo, who

was like a brother to him before Grandfather Carlo, growing weary of

the world, retired from Naples, here, to the Sorrentine villa. You

know this, Granny Rosa. But you do not know that the young gentleman

from Naples is fervently encouraging Giorgio to devote himself to art

and to go off to Naples with him. Duccella knows, because young Aldo

Nuti (how very strange!), when speaking with such fervour of art,

never looks at Giorgio, but looks at her, into her eyes, as though it

were her that he had to encourage, and not Giorgio; yes, yes, her, to

come to Naples to stay there for ever with himself.

 

So that is why Duccella blushes a deep red, over your shoulder, Granny

Rosa, whenever she hears you say that Giorgio wishes to become a

painter.

 

He too, the young gentleman from Naples, if his grandfather would

allow him… Not a painter, no… He would like to go upon the stage,

to become an actor. How he would love that! But his grandfather does

not wish it…. Dare we wager, Granny Rosa, that Duccella does not

wish it either?

 

Luigi Pirandello: Shoot! (7)

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