Journal of Italian Translation - Brooklyn College - Academic Home ...

Ellen McRae / Luigi Pirandello
dangling, was chanting woefully:
“Oh, my daughter! Oh, my daughter! Oh, my poor ruined
child!”
At sunset, pulling the two harnessed mules behind him by
their halters, Batà appeared in the alley, still swollen and livid,
dejected, downcast, in a daze.
At the clattering of the mules’ hooves on the cobblestones of
the alley, which the August sun was burning like an oven, and that
was blinding from the glare of the limestone walls, all the women,
with gestures and cries stifled by their fear, hurriedly retreated
into their huts with their chairs, and stuck their heads out of their
doorways to keep watch and give each other knowing looks.
Sidora’s mother appeared on the threshold, proud and trembling
all over with rage, and she began to shout:
“Go away, wretched man! Have you really got the nerve to
show yourself again? Away from here! Away from here! Treacherous
murderer, away from here! You’ve ruined my daughter! Away
from here!”
And she carried on ranting like that for a bit, while Sidora,
hiding inside, kept on weeping, begging her mother to protect her,
not to let him in.
Batà listened to the threats and castigations with his head
bowed. They affected him: he felt guilty; he had hidden his sickness.
He had hidden it, because no woman would have taken him,
if he had revealed it beforehand. It was right that he now pay the
penalty for his wrongdoing.
He kept his eyes closed and bitterly shook his head, without
moving a step. Then his mother-in-law slammed the door in his
face and bolted it. Batà remained a bit longer, head bowed, before
that closed door, then he turned and noticed, at the doorways of
the other huts, the many bewildered and shocked eyes that were
watching him.
Those eyes saw the tears on the dejected man’s face, and then
their fear turned to compassion.
A first more courageous neighbor woman offered him a chair;
the others, in twos and threes, came outside and gathered around
him. And Batà, after thanking them with silent nods of his head,
began very slowly to tell them about his misfortune: that when she
was young his mother, gone to the wheat harvest, while sleeping
in the open in a threshing yard, had kept him as a baby exposed
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