One, None and a Hundred Thousand by Luigi Pirandello

Author:Luigi Pirandello [Pirandello, Luigi]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: General Press
Published: 2019-08-06T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter 6

The Theft

That filing-cabinet, the moment I was alone, at once laid hold of me like an incubus. I was aware, as if it had been a living thing, of the incumbering presence of the ancient and inviolate custodian, cumbersome, worm-eaten and groaning under the weight of all those documents. I looked at it, then quickly dropped my eyes and glanced around me. The window; an old straw-bottomed chair; a small table, older still, bare, black and dust-covered; there was nothing else in the room. A depressing light filtered in through the windows, which were literally plastered with dust and mildew, the bars of the iron grating outside being barely visible, along with a glimpse of the blood-colored tiles of a roof over which the window looked. The tiles of that roof, the varnished wood of those window-jambs, those panes, filthy as they were, all represented the immobile calm of inanimate objects.

I thought suddenly how my father’s ring-laden hands had been raised here in this very room to take down documents from the shelves of that cabinet; I could see those fleshy hands, waxen-white and with all those rings, and with the red hairs on the back of the fingers; and I could see those blue, malicious, glasslike eyes intent upon looking for something in those bundles of papers. And then, a fresh horror, blotting out the spectre of those hands, the whole volume of my black-clad body emerged and stood there before me, forcing itself upon my gaze; I could hear the quickened breathing of that body, which had come there to rob; and the sight of those hands, opening the doors of that cabinet, sent a shudder down my spine. I gritted my teeth and shrugged my shoulders.

“Now where,” I thought angrily, “among all these documents is the one I want?”

In the meanwhile, in order that I might at once be doing something, I began taking out those bundles of papers by the armful and casting them upon the little table. At a certain point, I felt my arms growing numb, and I did not know whether to laugh or to cry. What sort of jest was this, robbing myself? I turned to look about me; for of a sudden, I was no longer sure of myself here. I was about to go through with an act. But was I—I? The idea assailed me that all those strangers who were inseparable from myself had entered with me, and that they were about to commit this theft with my hands.

I looked at my hands. Yes, they were the same ones that I knew. But did they by any chance belong to me alone? I quickly hid them behind my back; and then, as if that were not enough, I shut my eyes. In the darkness that ensued, I was conscious of a wandering impulse of will, without any definite consistency, and I was so horrified by it that I came near to fainting physically; instinctively, I put out a hand to the table for support; I opened my eyes.

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