Luigi Pirandello: Shoot! (9)

Luigi Pirandello: Shoot! (9)

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

3

I know this woman well now, as well, that is to say, as it is possible to know her, and I can now explain many things that long remained incomprehensible to me. Though there is still the risk that the explanation I now offer myself of them may perhaps appear incomprehensible to others. But I offer it to myself and not to others; and I have not the slightest intention of offering it as an excuse for the Nestoroff.

To whom should I excuse her?

I keep away from people who are respectable by profession, as from the plague.

It seems impossible that a person should not enjoy his own wickedness when he practises it with a cold-blooded calculation. But if such unhappiness (and it must be tremendous) exists, I mean that of not being able to enjoy one’s own wickedness, our contempt for such wicked persons, as for all sorts of other unhappiness, may perhaps be conquered, or at least modified, by a certain pity. I speak, so as not to give offence, as a moderately respectable person. But we must,

surely to goodness, admit this fact: that we are all, more or less, wicked; but that we do not enjoy our wickedness, and are unhappy.

Is it possible?

We all of us readily admit our own unhappiness; no one admits his own wickedness; and the former we insist upon regarding as due to no reason or fault of our own; whereas we labour to find a hundred reasons, a hundred excuses and justifications for every trifling act of wickedness that we have committed, whether against other people or against our own conscience.

Would you like me to shew you how we at once rebel, and indignantly deny a wicked action, even when it is undeniable, and when we have undeniably enjoyed it?

The following two incidents have occurred. (This is not a digression, for the Nestoroff has been compared by someone to the beautiful tiger purchased, a few days ago, by the Kosmograph.) The following two incidents, I say, have occurred.

A flock of birds of passage–woodcock and snipe–have alighted to rest for a little after their long flight and to recuperate their strength in the Roman Campagna. They have chosen a bad spot. A snipe, more daring than the rest, says to his comrades:

“You remain here, hidden in this brake. I shall go and explore the country round, and, if I find a better place, I shall call you.”

An engineer friend of yours, of an adventurous spirit, a Fellow of the Geographical Society, has undertaken the mission of going to Africa, I do not exactly know (because you yourself do not know exactly) upon what scientific exploration. He is still a long way from his goal; you have had some news of him; his last letter has left you somewhat alarmed, because in it your friend explained to you the dangers which he was going to face, when he prepared to cross certain distant tracts, savage and deserted.

To-day is Sunday. You rise betimes to go out shooting. You have made all your preparations overnight, promising yourself a great enjoyment. You alight from the train, blithe and happy; off you go over the fresh, green Campagna, a trifle misty still, in search of a good place for the birds of passage. You wait there for half an hour, for an hour; you begin to feel bored and take from your pocket the newspaper you bought when you started, at the station. After a time, you hear what sounds like a flutter of wings in the dense foliage of the wood; you lay down the paper; you go creeping quietly up; you take aim; you fire. Oh, joy! A snipe!

Yes, indeed, a snipe. The very snipe, the explorer, that had left its comrades in the brake.

I know that you do not eat the birds you have shot; you make presents of them to your friends: for you everything consists in this, in the pleasure of killing what you call game.

The day does not promise well. But you, like all sportsmen, are inclined to be superstitious: you believe that reading the newspaper has brought you luck, and you go back to read the newspaper in the place where you left it. On the second page you find the news that your friend the engineer, who went to Africa on behalf of the Geographical Society, while crossing those savage and deserted tracts, has met a tragic end: attacked, torn in pieces and devoured by a wild beast.

As you read with a shudder the account in the newspaper, it never enters your head even remotely to draw any comparison between the wild beast that has killed your friend and yourself, who have killed the snipe, an explorer like him.

And yet such a comparison would be perfectly logical, and, I fear, would give a certain advantage to the beast, since you have killed for pleasure, and without any risk of your being killed yourself; whereas the beast has killed from hunger, that is to say from necessity, and with the risk of being killed by your friend, who must certainly have been armed.

Rhetoric, you say? Ah, yes, my friend; do not be too contemptuous; I admit as much, myself; rhetoric, because we, by the grace of God, are men and not snipe.

The snipe, for his part, without any fear of being rhetorical, might draw the comparison and demand that at least men, who go out shooting for pleasure, should not call the beasts savage.

We, no. We cannot allow the comparison, because on one side we have a man who has killed a beast, and on the other a beast that has killed a man.

At the very utmost, my dear snipe, to make some concession to you, we can say that you were a poor innocent little creature. There! Does that satisfy you? But you are not to infer from this, that our wickedness is therefore the greater; and, above all, you are not to say that, by calling you an innocent little creature and killing you, we have forfeited the right to call the beast savage which, from hunger and not for pleasure, has killed a man.

But when a man, you say, makes himself lower than a beast?

Ah, yes; we must be prepared, certainly, for the consequences of our logic. Often we make a slip, and then heaven only knows where we shall land.

 

Luigi Pirandello: Shoot! (9)

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