Luigi Pirandello: Shoot! (15)

Luigi Pirandello: Shoot! (15)

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

4

Excuse me for a moment. I am going to pay a visit to the tiger. I shall talk, I shall go on talking, I shall pick up the thread of my discourse later on, never fear. At present, I must go and see the tiger.

Ever since they bought her, I have gone every day to pay her a visit, before starting my work. On two days only have I not been able to go, because they did not give me time.

We have had other animals here that were wild, although greatly subdued by melancholy: a couple of polar bears which used to spend the whole day standing on their hind legs beating their breasts, like Trinitarians doing penance: three shivering lion cubs, always huddled in a corner of the cage, one on top of another; other animals as well, that were not exactly wild: a poor ostrich, terrified at every sound, like a chicken, and always uncertain where to set its feet: a number of mischievous monkeys. The Kosmograph is provided with everything, including a menagerie, albeit its inmates remain there but a short time.

No animal has ever ‘talked to me’, like this tiger.

When we first secured her, she had but recently arrived, a gift from some illustrious foreign personage, at the Zoological Gardens in Rome. At the Zoological Gardens they were unable to keep her, because she was absolutely incapable of learning, I do not say to blow her nose with a handkerchief, but even to respect the most elementary rules of social intercourse. Three or four times she threatened to jump the ditch, or rather attempted to jump it, to hurl herself upon the visitors to the gardens who stood quietly gazing at her from a distance.

But what other thought could arise more spontaneously in the mind of a tiger (if you object to the word ‘mind’, let us say the paws) than that the ditch in question was put there on purpose so that she might try to jump it, and that those ladies and gentlemen stopped there in front of her in order that she might devour them if she succeeded in jumping it?

It is certainly an advantage to be able to stand a joke; but we know that not everyone possesses this advantage. Many people cannot even endure the thought that some one else thinks he is at liberty to joke at their expense. I speak of men, who, nevertheless, in the abstract, are all capable of realising that at times a joke is permissible.

The tiger, you say, is not placed on show in a zoological garden for a joke. I agree. But does it not seem a joke to you to think that she can suppose that you keep her there on show to give the public a “living idea” of natural history!

Here we are back at our starting-point. This, inasmuch as we are not tigers, but men, is rhetoric.

We may feel compassion for a man who is unable to stand a joke; we ought not to feel any for a beast; especially if the joke for which we have placed it on show, I mean the “living idea,” may have fatal consequences: that is to say, for the visitors to the Zoological Gardens, a too practical illustration of its ferocity.

This tiger was, therefore, wisely condemned to death. The Kosmograph Company managed to hear of it in time, and bought her. Now she is here, in a cage in our menagerie. Since she has been here, her behaviour has been exemplary. How are we to explain this? Our treatment, no doubt, seems to her far more logical. Here she is not at liberty to attempt to jump any ditch, has no illusion of ‘local colour’, as in the Zoological Gardens. Here she has in front of her the bars of her cage, which say to her continually: “You cannot escape; you are a prisoner”; and she lies on the ground there almost all day long, resigned to her fate, gazing out through the bars, quietly, wonderingly waiting.

Alas, poor beast, she does not know that here there is something far more serious in store for her, than that joke of the “living idea”!

The scenario is already completed, an Indian subject, in which she is destined to represent one of the principal parts. A spectacular scenario, upon which several hundred thousand lire will be spent; but the stupidest and most vulgar that could be imagined. I need only give the title: ‘The Lady and the Tiger’. The usual lady, more tigerish than the tiger. I seem to have heard that she is to be an English ‘Miss’ travelling in the Indies with a train of admirers.

India will be a sham, the jungle will be a sham, the travels will be a sham, with a sham ‘Miss’ and sham admirers: only the death of this poor beast will not be a sham. Do you follow me? And does it not make you writhe in anger?

To kill her in self-defence, or to save the life of another person, well and good. Albeit not of her own accord, for her own pleasure, has the beast come here to place herself on show among a lot of men, but men themselves, for their pleasure, have gone out to hunt her, to drag her from her savage lair. But to kill her like this, in a sham forest, in a sham hunt, for a stupid make-believe, is a real iniquity and is going too far. One of the admirers, at a certain stage, will fire point-blank at a rival. You will see this rival fall to the ground, dead. Yes, my friends. But when the scene is finished, there he is getting up again, brushing the dust of the stage off his clothes. But this poor beast will never get up again, after they have shot her. The scene shifters will carry off the sham forest, and at the same time clear the stage of her carcase. In the midst of a universal sham, her death alone will be genuine.

And if it were only a sham that could by its beauty and nobility compensate in a measure for the sacrifice of this beast. But no. It is utterly stupid. The actor who is to kill her will not even know, perhaps, why he has killed her. The scene will last for a minute or two at most, when projected upon the screen, and will pass without leaving any permanent impression in the minds of the spectators, who will come away from the theatre yawning:

“Oh Lord, what rubbish!”

This, you beautiful wild creature, is what awaits you. You do not know it, and gaze through the bars of your cage with those terror-stricken eyes in which the slit pupils contract and dilate by turns. I see your wild nature as it were steaming from your whole body, like the vapour of a blazing coal; I see marked on the black stripes of your coat the elastic force of your irrepressible spring. Whoever studies you closely is glad of the cage that imprisons you and checks in him also the savage instinct which the sight of you stirs irresistibly in his blood.

You cannot remain here on any other terms. Either you must be imprisoned like this, or you must be killed; because your ferocity–we quite understand–is innocent; nature has implanted it in you, and you, in employing it, are obeying nature and cannot feel any remorse. We cannot endure that you, after a gory feast, should be able to sleep calmly. Your very innocence makes us innocent of your death, when we inflict it in self-defence. We can kill you, and then, like you, sleep calmly. But out there, in the savage lands, where you do not allow any stranger to pass; not here, not here, where you have not come of your own accord, for your own pleasure. The beautiful, ingenuous innocence of your ferocity makes the iniquity of ours seem disgusting here. We seek to defend ourselves against you, after bringing you here, for our pleasure, and we keep you in prison: this is no longer your kind of ferocity; it is a treacherous ferocity! But we know, you may be sure, we know how to go even farther, to do better still: we shall kill you for amusement, stupidly. A sham hunter, in a sham forest, among sham trees…. We shall be worthy in every respect, truly, of the concocted plot. Tigers, more tigerish than a tiger. And to think that the sentiment which this film, now in preparation, is intended to arouse in the spectators is contempt for human ferocity! It will be part of o’ur day’s work, this ferocity practised for amusement, and we count moreover upon making a handsome profit out of it, should the film prove successful.

You stare. At what do you stare, you beautiful, innocent creature! That is just how things stand. You are here for no other purpose. And I who love and admire you, when they kill you, shall be ‘impassively’ turning the handle of this pretty machine here, do you see? They have invented it. It has to act; it has to eat. It eats everything, whatever stupidity they may set before it. It will eat you too; it eats everything, I tell you! And I am its servant. I shall come and plant it closer to you, when you, mortally wounded, are writhing in your last agony. Ah, do not fear, it will extract the utmost penny of profit from your death! It does not have the luck to taste such a dinner every day. You can have that consolation. And, if you like, another as well.

There comes every day, like myself, in front of your cage here, a lady intent on studying how you move, how you turn your head, how you look out of your eyes. The Nestoroff. Is that nothing to you? She has chosen you to be her teacher. Luck such as this does not come the way of every tiger.

As usual, she is taking her part seriously. But I have heard it said that the part of the ‘Miss’, “more tigerish than the tiger,” will not be assigned to her. Perhaps she does not yet know this; she thinks that the part is hers; and she comes here to study.

People have told me this, and laughed at it. But I myself, the other day, took her by surprise, on one of her visits here, and remained talking to her for some time. (to be continued)

Luigi Pirandello: Shoot! (15)

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