Luigi Pirandello: Shoot! (13)

Luigi Pirandello: Shoot! (13)

Shoot! (Si Gira, 1926). The Notebooks of Serafino Gubbio, Cinematograph Operator by Luigi Pirandello. Translated from the Italian by C. K. Scott Moncrieff.

BOOK III

2

Freshly dug, dusty, barely traced in outline, it has the air and the ungraciousness of a person who, expecting to be left in peace, finds that, on the contrary, he is continually being disturbed.

But if the right to a few fresh tufts of grass, to all those fine, wandering threads of sound, with which the silence weaves a cloak of peace in solitary places, to the croak of an occasional frog when it rains and the pools of rain-water mirror back the stars when the sky is clear again; in short, to all the delights of nature in the open and unpeopled country: if this right be not enjoyed by a country road some miles outside the gate of the city, then indeed I do not know who does enjoy it.

Instead of this: motor-cars, carriages, carts, bicycles, and all day long an uninterrupted coming and going of actors, operators, mechanics, labourers, messengers, and a din of hammers, saws, planes, and clouds of dust and the stench of petrol.

The buildings, high and low, of the great cinematograph company rise at the far end of the road, on either side; a few more stand up farther off, scattered in confusion, within the vast enclosure, which extends far over the Campagna: one of them, higher than all the rest, is capped with a sort of glazed tower, with opaque windows, which glitter in the sunlight; and on the wall that is visible from both avenue and side road, on the dazzling whitewashed surface, in black letters a foot high, is painted:

THE KOSMOGRAPH

The entrance is to the left, through a little door by the side of the gate, which is rarely opened. Opposite is a wayside tavern, pompously surnamed ‘Trattoria della Kosmograph’, with a fine trellised pergola which encloses the whole of the so-called garden and creates a patch of green within. Five or six rustic tables, inside, none too steady on their legs, and chairs and benches. A number of actors, made up and dressed in strange costumes, are seated there and engaged in an animated discussion; one of them shouts louder than the rest, bringing his hand down furiously upon his thigh:

“I tell you, you’ve got to hit her here, here, here!”

And the bang of his hand on his leather breeches sounds like so many rifle shots.

They are speaking, of course, of the tigress, bought a short time ago by the Kosmograph; of the way in which she is to be killed; of the exact spot in which the bullet must hit her. It has become an obsession with them. To hear them talk, you would think that they were all professional hunters of wild beasts.

Crowding round the entrance, stand listening to them with grinning faces the chauffeurs of the dusty, dilapidated motor-cars; the drivers of the carriages that stand waiting, there in the background, where the side road is barred by a fence of stakes and iron spikes; and ever so many other people, the most wretched that I know, albeit they are dressed with a certain gentility. They are (I apologise, but everything here has a French or an English name) the casual ‘cachets’,

that is to say the people who come to offer their services, should the need arise, as ‘supers’. Their petulance is insufferable, worse than that of beggars, because they come here to display a penury which asks not for the charity of a copper, but for five lire, in reward for dressing themselves up, often grotesquely. You ought to see the rush, on some days, to the dressing-room to snatch and put on at once a heap of gaudy rags, and the airs with which they strut up and down on the stage and in the open, knowing full well that, if they succeed in ‘dressing’, even if they do not ‘come on’, they draw half-salary.

Two or three actors come out of the tavern, making their way through the crowd. They are dressed in saffron-coloured vests, their faces and arms plastered a dirty yellow, and with a sort of crest of coloured feathers on their heads. Indians. They greet me:

“Hallo, Gubbio.”

“Hallo, ‘Shoot’!…”

‘Shoot’, you understand, is my nickname.

The difficulties of life!

You have lost an eye in it, and your case has been serious. But we are all of us more or less marked, and we never notice it. Life marks us; and fastens a beauty-spot on one, a grimace on another.

No? But excuse me, you, yes, you who said no just now… there now, ‘absolutely’… do you not continually load all your conversation with that adverb in ‘-ly’?

“I went absolutely to the place they told me: I saw him, and said to him absolutely: What, you, absolutely…”

Have patience! Nobody yet calls you ‘Mr. Absolutely’… Serafino Gubbio (‘Shoot’!) has been less fortunate. Without my noticing it, I may have happened once or twice, or several times in succession, to repeat, after the producer, the sacramental word: “‘Shoot’!” I must have repeated it with my face composed in that expression which is proper to me, of professional impassivity, and this was enough to make everyone here, at Fantappiè’s suggestion, address me now as ‘Shoot’.

Every town in Italy knows Fantappiè, the comedian of the Kosmograph, who has specialised in travesties of military life: ‘Fantappiè, C. B’. and ‘Fantappiè on the range; Fantappiè on manoeuvres’ and ‘Fantappiè steers the airship’; ‘Fantappiè on guard’ and ‘Fantappiè in the Colonies’.

[Footnote: Fantappiè, or fante a piede, is equivalent to the English footslogger. C. K. S. M.]

He stuck it on himself, this nickname; a nickname that goes well with his special form of art. In private life he is called Roberto Chismicò.

“You aren’t angry with me, laddie, for calling you ‘Shoot’?” he asked me, some time ago.

“No, my dear fellow,” I answered him with a smile. “You have stamped me.”

“I’ve stamped myself too, if it comes to that!”

All of us stamped, yes. And most, of all, those of us who are least aware of it, my dear Fantappiè.

 

Luigi Pirandello: Shoot! (13)

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