Above and Below

They came up the dark, steep wooden staircase; up, in silence, almost stealing, slowly. Professor Carmelo Sabato – stocky bald man – carrying, like a baby in swaddling clothes, a large flask of wine. Professor Lamella, an old student of Sabato’s, with two bottles of beer, one in each hand.

And for more than an hour, on the high roof terrace, bristling with chimney pots, stoves’ smokestacks, water pipes, under the thick, continuous twinkling of the stars that stung the sky without widening the darkness of the deep night, they conversed.

And they drank.

Wine, Professor Sabato: wine until he drank himself to death. Professor Lamella, beer: he did not want to die.

From the houses, from the streets of the city, not a sound came up for a while. Only, from time to time, the distant roll of a car.

The night was sultry, and Professor Carmelo Sabato had first unbuttoned his tie and unbuttoned his front collar, then also unbuttoned his waistcoat and opened his shirt over his velvety chest: in the end, despite Lamella’s admonition: “Finally, in spite of Lamella’s admonition: ‘Professor, you’ll catch a cold’, he took off his jacket and, with many sighs, folded it up and put it on underneath to be more comfortable on the low wooden bench, sitting with his legs stretched out and open, one here, one there, under the rustic table, impaired by the rain and the sun.

He was dangling his bald, shaven head, half-closed his cloudy, bloodshot bovine eyes, under his thick, drooping eyebrows, and spoke in a languid, veiled, strained voice, as if lamenting in a dream:

‘Enrichetto, Enrichetto mio,’ he said, ‘you are hurting me…. I assure you that you hurt me… very badly…

Lamella, blond-haired, thin, jaundiced, very nervous, was lying in a sort of hammock suspended on one side from a ring in the wall of the terrace, on the other side from two iron rods on the pillars of the parapet. Stretching out an arm, he could pick up the bottle from the ground: he almost always picked up the empty one, and became so annoyed that, in the end, with one hand he sent it tumbling to the sloping floor, to the great anguish, indeed terror of old Professor Sabato, who immediately threw himself to the ground, crawling, and ran after it to parry it, stop it, groaning, crying:

– For pity’s sake… for pity’s sake… are you mad? down it will sound like thunder.

As he spoke, Lamella got all twisted up, he couldn’t stand still for a moment, he curled up, stretched, kicked and punched the air.

– I’ll hurt you; I’m convinced of that, dear professor, but I’m doing it on purpose: you must get well! I want you to get well! And I repeat, your ideas are old-fashioned, outdated, outdated…. Think about it well, and you will prove me right!

– Enrichetto, my Enrichetto, they are not ideas, – begged the one, in a strained, whining voice. – Perhaps they were ideas before. Now they are my feelings, almost a need, my son: like this wine: a need.

– And I prove to you that it is stupid! – urged the other. – And I’ll take away your wine and make you change your feeling…

– You hurt me…

– I do you good! Listen to this. You say: I gaze at the stars, is it true? No, you say I gaze… it’s more beautiful, yes, I gaze at the stars, and at once I feel our infinite, infirm littleness sink in! But do you hear how well you still speak, professor? And I remember that you always spoke so well, even when you were lecturing us. Down the abyss is well said! – What becomes the earth, you ask, man, all our glories, all our greatness? Is it true? Do you say so?

Professor Sabato nodded his shaven head several times. He had one hand abandoned, as if dead, on the bench, and with the other, under his shirt, he was clutching bear hair on his chest.

Lamella resumed with fury:

– And does this seem serious to you, honourable professor? But excuse me! If man can understand and conceive his infinite smallness in this way, what does it mean? It means that he understands and conceives the infinite greatness of the universe! And how, then, can man be called small?

– Small… small,’ said Professor Sabato, as if from an infinite distance.

And Lamella, more and more enraged:

– You must be joking! Small? But inside me there must be, you know, something of this infinity, otherwise I wouldn’t understand it, just as you don’t understand it… I don’t know, this shoe of mine, just in case, or my hat. Something that, if I cut… like this… my eyes to the stars, it opens up, esteemed professor, it opens up and becomes, like nothing, a plague of space, in which worlds, I mean worlds, revolve, of which I feel and understand the formidable greatness. But whose greatness is it? It is mine, dear professor! Because it is my feeling! And how then can you say that man is small, if he has so much greatness in him?

A sudden, curious screech – zrí – wound the silence that had followed Lamella’s last question. Lamella turned suddenly:

– What are you saying?

But he saw Professor Sabato motionless, as if dead, his forehead resting on the edge of the small table.

It was perhaps the screech of a bat.

In that position, several times, Professor Carmelo Sabato, listening to Lamella’s words, had moaned:

‘You ruin me… you ruin me…’.

But suddenly, an idea dawned on him, and he raised his head wrathfully and shouted at his former pupil:

– Ah, is that how you think? This, first of all, Pascal said it. But go on! Go on, by God! Tell me now what it means. It means that man’s greatness, if ever, is only when he feels his infinite smallness! It means that man is only great when in the presence of the infinite he feels and sees himself as very small; and that he is never so small as when he feels great! This means! And what comfort, what consolation can come from this? That man is damned here to this atrocious despair: to see the small things big – all our things, here, of the earth – and small the big things there, the stars?

He furiously seized the flask and swallowed two glasses of wine, one on top of the other, as if he had earned them and acquired an indisputable right to them after what he had said.

– What’s that got to do with anything? – shouted Lamella meanwhile, pulling his legs out of the hammock and waving them together with his arms, as if he wanted to throw himself at the professor. – Comfort? Consolation? You seek this, I know! You need to see yourself, to know yourself small…

– Small, yes… small, small…

– Small, among small and petty things…

– Yes… like this…

– On an infinitesimal corpuscle of space, is it true?

– Yes, yes… infinitesimal…

– But why? To continue to brutalise and shame you!

Professor Sabato did not answer: he had the glass in his mouth again, which was already dancing in his hand: he nodded his big head and continued drinking.

– Shame on you! Shame on you! – raged Lamella. – If life has in it, if man has in it that misfortune that you say, it is up to us to bear it nobly! The stars are big, I am small, and therefore I get drunk, is that true? That is your logic! But the stars are small, small, if you do not conceive them great: greatness therefore is in you! And if you are so great as to conceive great things that seem small, why do you then want to see small and petty things that seem great and glorious to everyone? They do and they are, Professor! Because he is not small, as you believe, the man who made them, the man who has here, here in his breast, in himself the greatness of the stars, this infinity, this eternity of the heavens, the soul of the immortal universe. What are you doing? Ah, you are crying? I understand! You are already drunk, professor!

Lamella jumped out of the hammock and leaned over Professor Sabato who, leaning against the wall, was shaking all over, wincing, almost belching the sobs, which one by one were breaking from the bottom of his bowels, fetid with wine.

– Up, up, stop it, by God! – cried out to him. – You anger me, for you pity me! A man of your genius, of your studies, to be reduced like that! shame on you! You have a soul, a soul. I remember it, your noble soul, inflamed with goodness; I remember it!

– For pity’s sake… for pity’s sake… – Professor Carmelo Sabato groaned and implored, through his tears, wincing. – Enrichetto… My Enrichetto… no, for pity’s sake… don’t tell me I have an immortal soul… Out! Out! That’s it, yes, that’s what I say: get out; the immortal soul will be out… and you breathe it, you do, because you haven’t deteriorated yet… you breathe it like air, and you feel it inside… some days more, some days less… That’s what I say! Out…out…for God’s sake, leave it out, the immortal soul… I, no… I, no… I’ve spoilt myself on purpose so as not to breathe it in any more… I’m impious with wine on purpose, because I don’t want it anymore, I don’t want it inside me any more… I leave it to you… you feel it inside you… I can’t take it any more… I can’t take it any more…

At this point, a sweet voice called from the bottom of the terrace:

– Sir…

Lamella turned around. There, in the black recess of the usherette, lay the broad wings of a charity nun’s cornet.

The young professor rushed over, confabulated softly with the nun, then both of them came thoughtfully towards the drunkard and pulled him up by the arms.

Professor Carmelo Sabato, in his knickerbockers, his head drooping, his face wet with tears, peered at one and the other, surprised, stunned by such silent solicitude; he said nothing; he let himself be led, hesitantly.

The descent down the dark, narrow, steep wooden staircase was difficult: Lamella, in front, with almost all the weight of that sagging body on him; the nun, behind, bent over to hold that weight with both arms, as much as she could.

Finally, holding him up by the armpits, they led him through two dark little rooms into the room at the back, lit by two candles now lit on the two bedside tables on either side of the double bed.

Rigid, impaled on the bed, his arms crossed, stood his wife’s corpse, his face hard, sullen, enlightened by the glare of the candles on the low, oppressive ceiling of the room.

Another nun was praying, kneeling with joined hands at the foot of the bed.

Professor Carmelo Sabato, still held up by his armpits, panting, looked at the dead woman for a while, almost terrified, in silence. Then he turned to Lamella, as if to ask him a question:

– Ah?

The nun, without disdain, with sorrowful and patient humility beckoned him to get down on his knees, just as she did.

– The soul, eh? – said the Sabbath at last, with a gasp. – The immortal soul, eh?

– Lord! – pleaded the other, older nun.

– Ah? yes… yes… immediately… – Professor Carmelo Sabato got back on his feet, as if bewildered, and lowered himself laboriously onto his knees.

He fell on all fours, with his face to the ground, and stayed like that for a while, beating his chest with his fist. But all of a sudden, from his mouth, there against the ground, came out, with a shrill and cheated sound, the refrain of a French ditty: “Mets-la en trou, mets-la en trou…” followed by a grin: ih ih ih ih ih ih…

The two nuns turned around, horrified; Lamella immediately bent down to snatch him from the floor and drag him away to the next room; he sat him down on a chair and shook him, hard, for a long time, ordering him:

– Shut up! hush!

– Yes, the soul… – the drunkard said softly, panting, – she too… the soul… the plaga… the plaga of space… where… where worlds, worlds… spin…

– Shut up! – Lamella continued to shout in his face, in a muffled voice, shaking him off.

 – Shut up!

Sabato, then, against the oppression, tried to stand up proudly; he could not; he raised his arm; he shouted:

– Two daughters… she… two daughters threw me to perdition… two daughters!

The two nuns rushed in to beg him to calm down, to keep quiet, to forgive; he started to say yes, yes with his head, waiting for the cry, which finally burst out, first with a whimper from his tight throat, then in terrible sobs. Little by little he calmed down, urged on by the two nuns; then, not thinking that he had left his jacket on the terrace, he began to rummage in his chest with one hand.

– What are you looking for? – Lamella asked him.

Looking bewilderedly at the two nuns and the old pupil, now one and now the other, he answered:

– They wrote to me. Both of them. They wanted to see their mother. They wrote to me.

He squinted his eyes and inhaled with his nose, at length, deliciously, accompanying the inhalation with an expressive gesture of his hand:

– What perfume… what perfume… Lauretta, from Turin… the other one, from Genoa…

He stretched out a hand and grabbed one of Lamella’s arms.

– The one you wanted…

Lamella, mortified in front of the two nuns, his face went dark.

– Giovannina… Vanninella, yes… Célie… ah ah ah ah… Célie Bouton… You wanted her…

– Shut up, professor! – bellowed Lamella, in a fit of rage and indignation.

Sabato buried his head between his shoulders in fear, but looked down on his former pupil with malice:

– You’re right… Enrichetto, don’t hurt me… you’re right… Did you hear her at the Olympia? Mets-la en trou, mets-la en trou….

The two nuns lifted their hands as if to muffle their ears, their faces bent with pity, and returned to the deceased’s room, closing the door.

Kneeling again at the foot of the funeral bed, they listened for a long time to the contention of those two who had remained in the dark.

– I forbid you to remember! – cried the young man, muffled.

– Go look at the stars…go look at the stars…. – said the other.

 – You are a fool!

– Yes… and you know what? Vanninella has… sent me some money… and I didn’t send it back, you know? I went to the post office to get the money order, and…

– And …?

– And I bought the beer for you, idealist.

 

 

Short Stories for a Year, by Luigi Pirandello 🖋️ 🇮🇹 🇺🇸

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