The Oil Jar and Other Stories (10 page)

Then he turned to the coachman, who, infuriated by the bad showing that the funeral establishment was making in front of all those gentlemen, was continuing to tug violently on the reins and threatening to whip the horse, and shouted at him:

“Enough! Stop! I've got him under control here ... He's gentle as a lamb ... Sit back down. I'll guide him the whole way ... We'll go together—right, Blackie?—to leave our kind mistress ... Slowly and quietly, as usual, right? And you'll behave, so you don't hurt her, poor old Blackie, you who still remember ... They've already enclosed her in the box; now they're carrying her down ... ”

At this moment Fofo, who was listening to all this from the other side of the shafts, asked in amazement:

“It's your mistress inside the box?”

Blackie gave him a sidelong kick.

But Fofo was too absorbed by this new revelation to be offended.

“Ah, so we ... ,” he kept on saying to himself, “ah, so we ... what about that! ... it's what
I
meant to say ... This old man is crying; I've seen so many others crying, other times ... and so many awed faces ... and that depressing music ... Now I understand it all, I understand it all ...
That's
why our work is so easy! It's only when humans cry that
we
can be cheerful and relaxed ... ”

And he too felt the temptation to prance.

But after all, can you imagine? Everybody may really go mad because they can't decide which of the two is the crazy one, that Mrs. Frola or that Mr. Ponza, her son-in-law. Things like this only happen in Valdana, an unlucky town that attracts every kind of eccentric outsider!

She
is crazy or
he
is crazy; there's no middle ground: one of the two
must
be crazy. Because what's involved is nothing less than this ... No, it's better to start off explaining things in their proper order.

I assure you, I'm seriously alarmed by the anxiety in which the inhabitants of Valdana have been living for three months, and I'm not much concerned for Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, her son-in-law. Because, even if it's true that a grave misfortune has befallen them, it's no less true that one of them, at least, has had the good luck to be driven crazy by it and the other one has aided and is continuing to aid the victim, in such a way that, I repeat, no one can manage to know for sure which of the two is really crazy; and, certainly, they couldn't have comforted each other in a better way than that. But I ask you, do you think it's nothing to keep the entire citizenry under such a nightmarish burden, knocking out all the props of their reasoning capacity so that they can no longer distinguish between illusion and reality? It's anguish, perpetual dismay. Everyone sees those two daily, looks at their faces, knows that one of the two is crazy, studies them, scrutinizes them, spies on them and—no use! Impossible to discover which of the two it is; where illusion lies, where reality lies. Naturally, there arises in each mind the pernicious suspicion that, in that case, reality counts for no more than illusion does, and that every reality may very well be an illusion, and vice versa. You think it's nothing? If I were in the governor's
¹²
shoes, for the mental well-being of the inhabitants of Valdana I wouldn't hesitate to give Mrs. Frola and Mr. Ponza, her son-in-law, their walking papers.

 

But let's proceed in an orderly fashion.

This Mr. Ponza arrived in Valdana three months ago as a secretary in the governor's office. He took lodgings in the new apartment house at the edge of town, the one called “the Honeycomb.” There. On the top floor, a tiny flat. Three windows looking out at the countryside, high, sad windows (because the housefront on that side, exposed to the north wind, facing all those pallid market gardens, although it's new, has become so deteriorated, who knows why?), and three inner windows, on this side, facing the courtyard, which is encircled by the railing of the top gallery, divided into sections by grated partitions. Hanging from that railing, all the way up, are a large number of little baskets ready to be lowered on ropes as needed.

At the same time, however, to everyone's amazement, Mr. Ponza rented another small furnished flat, three rooms and kitchen, in the center of town, Number 15 Via dei Santi, to be exact. He said it was to be used by his mother-in-law, Mrs. Frola. And she did indeed arrive five or six days later; and Mr. Ponza, all alone, went to meet her at the station, took her to the apartment and left her there by herself.

Now, please! You can understand it if a daughter, on getting married, leaves her mother's house to go and live with her husband, even in another town; but when that mother, not bearing to remain far from her daughter, leaves her hometown, her own house, and follows her, and when, in the town where both she and her daughter are strangers, she goes to live in a separate house,
that
is no longer so easily understood; or else one must assume such a strong incompatibility between mother-in-law and son-in-law that their all living together is impossible, even under these circumstances.

Naturally, that's what people in Valdana thought at first. And certainly the one who came off the worst in everyone's opinion because of this was Mr. Ponza. When it came to Mrs. Frola, if someone granted that she might perhaps be partly to blame in this, either through a lack of indulgence or through some obstinacy or intolerance, everybody was favorably impressed by the maternal love that drew her close to her daughter, even though condemned not to be able to live by her side.

A great part was played in this favoring of Mrs. Frola and in the image of Mr. Ponza that was immediately stamped on everyone's mind—namely, that he was a hard, no! a cruel man—by their physical appearance as well, it must be said. Thickset, neckless, dark as an African, with thick, coarse hair hanging over his low forehead, dense, bristly eyebrows that meet over his nose, a big shiny mustache like a policeman's, and in his eyes—melancholy, staring, almost without any white—a violent, exasperated, barely restrained intensity—whether from sad pain or from irritation at other people's glances, it was hard to say—Mr. Ponza is certainly one whose looks don't make him readily liked or trusted. On the other hand, Mrs. Frola is a frail, pale little old lady, with elegant, very noble features and an air of melancholy, but a weightless, vague and sweet melancholy that doesn't keep her from being affable to everyone.

Now, as soon as she came to town, Mrs. Frola exhibited this affability, so natural in her, and, because of that, the aversion for Mr. Ponza immediately increased in everybody's mind; because everyone clearly perceived her character—as not only gentle, humble, tolerant, but also full of indulgent understanding for the wrong that her son-in-law is doing her; and also because it came to be known that Mr. Ponza is not satisfied to relegate that poor mother to a separate house, but also pushes his cruelty to the point of forbidding her to see her daughter.

Except that, on her visits to the ladies of Valdana, Mrs. Frola immediately protests: “Not cruelty, not cruelty,” thrusting out her little hands, sincerely distressed that people can think such a thing about her son-in-law. And she hurriedly praises all his virtues, saying all the good about him that's possible and imaginable: how much love, how much care, how many attentions he lavishes not only on her daughter but also on her, yes, yes, also on her; solicitous, selfless ... Oh, not cruel, no, for heaven's sake! There's only this: that Mr. Ponza wants to have his wife entirely to himself, to such an extent that he wants even the love she must have for her mother (and he admits it, of course) to reach her not directly but through him, as intermediary, that's it! Yes, this may look like cruelty, but it's not; it's something else, something that she, Mrs. Frola, understands perfectly and is anguished at being unable to express. His nature, that's what ... but no, perhaps a kind of illness ... how to put it? My goodness, you just have to look at his eyes. At first those eyes may make a bad impression; but they say it all to anyone who can read them as she can: they speak of the sealed-up fullness of a whole world of love within him, in which his wife must live without ever leaving it for a moment, and into which no one else, not even her mother, must enter. Jealousy? Yes, perhaps; but only if you want to give a cheap name to this exclusive totality of love. Selfishness? If so, it's a selfishness that makes him give all of himself, like a world, to his own lady! When you get to the bottom of it, you might call it selfishness in
her
that she desires to break open this closed world of love, to make her way into it by force, when she knows that her daughter is happy and so adored ... That should be enough for a mother! Besides, it's not at all true that she doesn't see her daughter. She sees her two or three times a day: she goes into the courtyard of the building; she rings the bell and immediately her daughter comes to the window up there.

“How are you, Tildina?”

“Fine, Mother. And you?”

“As God wishes, daughter. Send down the basket!”

And in the basket there's always a short note with the events of the day. There! that's enough for her. This life has been going on for four years now, and Mrs. Frola has already gotten used to it. Yes, she's resigned to it. And she practically no longer suffers from it.

 

As you can easily understand, this resigned attitude of Mrs. Frola's, her saying that she has gotten used to her torment, redounds all the more to the discredit of Mr. Ponza, her son-in-law, the more that she strains herself to excuse him in that long speech of hers.

Therefore it is with real indignation and, I may add, even with fear, that the ladies of Valdana to whom Mrs. Frola paid her first visit receive the notice on the following day of another unexpected visit, from Mr. Ponza, who begs them to grant him just two minutes of audience, for a “dutiful declaration,” if it's not inconvenient.

Red in the face, almost as if he were having a stroke, with his eyes harder and sadder than ever, in his hand a handkerchief whose whiteness, like that of his cuffs and shirt collar, clashes with the darkness of his skin, body hair and suit, Mr. Ponza, continually wiping away the perspiration dripping from his low forehead and stubbly, purplish cheeks—not from the heat, but from the very evident violence of the control he is exerting over himself, which also causes a trembling in his large hands with their long nails—in this parlor and in that, in front of those ladies staring at him as if in fright, first asks whether Mrs. Frola, his mother-in-law, came to visit them the day before; then, with his sorrow, effort and agitation constantly increasing, asks whether she spoke to them about her daughter and told them that he absolutely forbids her to see her and go up to his apartment.

The ladies, seeing him so upset, as you may easily imagine, quickly reply that it's true, yes, Mrs. Frola did tell them about being forbidden to see her daughter, but also said all the good about him that's possible and imaginable, to the extent of not only excusing him, but also not giving him a shred of blame for that very prohibition.

Except that, instead of calming down at this reply from the ladies, Mr. Ponza gets even more upset; his eyes become harder, more staring, sadder; the big drops of sweat fall more heavily; and finally, making an even more violent effort at self-control, he comes to his “dutiful declaration.”

Which is simply this: that Mrs. Frola, poor woman, doesn't look it, but she's crazy.

Yes, she's been crazy for four years. And her madness takes this very form: her belief that he refuses to allow her to see her daughter. What daughter? She's dead, her daughter died four years ago; and it was precisely from her grief at that death that Mrs. Frola went mad; yes, and it's a good thing she went mad, because for her, madness was the release from her desperate sorrow. Naturally she could only escape it in this manner; namely, by believing that it wasn't true her daughter had died, and that instead it's he, her son-in-law, who won't let her see her any more.

Purely out of a duty of charity toward an unhappy creature, he, Mr. Ponza, has for four years, at the cost of many serious sacrifices, been humoring that pathetic delusion: at an expense beyond his means, he maintains two households, one for him and one for her; and he makes his second wife, who by good luck is charitably willing to go along, humor that delusion, too. But charity, duty—look, they can go only so far: in his capacity as a civil servant as well, Mr. Ponza can't permit the people in town to think such a cruel and improbable thing about him; namely, that out of jealousy or any other reason, he forbids a poor mother to see her own daughter.

After this declaration, Mr. Ponza makes a bow to those bewildered ladies, and leaves. But this bewilderment of the ladies doesn't even have the time to diminish a little, when there appears Mrs. Frola again with her gentle air of vague melancholy, asking forgiveness if, on her account, the kind ladies were somewhat frightened by the visit of Mr. Ponza, her son-in-law.

And Mrs. Frola, with the greatest simplicity and naturalness in the world, declares in her turn, but in strict confidence, for heaven's sake! because Mr. Ponza is a civil servant and for that very reason she refrained from saying this the first time, yes, because this could seriously damage his career; Mr. Ponza, poor man—an excellent, excellent irreproachable secretary at the governor's office, perfect, precise in all his actions, in all his thoughts, full of so many good qualities—Mr. Ponza, poor man, in this matter alone is no longer ... no longer in his right mind; there you have it; the crazy one is he, poor man; and his madness takes this very form: his belief that his wife died four years ago and his going around saying that the crazy one is she, Mrs. Frola, who believes her daughter is still alive. No, he isn't doing this in order somehow to justify to others that almost maniacal jealousy of his and that cruelty of forbidding her to see her daughter; no, the poor man believes, seriously believes that his wife is dead and the one he has with him is a second wife. A most pitiful case! Because, to tell the truth, with his excessive love this man at first ran the risk of destroying, of killing his young, fragile little wife, so much so that it was necessary to get her out of his hands secretly and put her into a nursing home without his knowledge. Well, the poor man, whose mind had already been seriously weakened by this frenzied love, went mad from this; he thought his wife had really died: and this idea became so fixed in his mind that there was no longer any way to remove it, not even when his wife, back home after about a year, and as healthy as before, was brought before him. He thought she was a different woman; so that, with the aid of everybody, relatives and friends, it was necessary to simulate a second wedding, which fully restored the balance of his mental faculties.

Now, Mrs. Frola believes she has some right to suspect that for some time her son-in-law has been completely himself again and that he is pretending, only pretending to believe that his wife is a second wife, in order to keep her entirely to himself, without contact with anyone, because perhaps from time to time he nevertheless is smitten with the fear that she may be secretly taken away from him again.

Yes! Otherwise, how could you explain all the care, all the solicitude, he has for her, his mother-in-law, if he really believes that the woman he has with him is a second wife? He ought not to feel the obligation of so much consideration for a woman who in fact would no longer be his mother-in-law, right? Note that Mrs. Frola says this, not to give an even better proof that he is the crazy one; but to prove even to herself that her suspicion is well founded.