The Partners by Luigi Pirandello

translated from the Italian by Norman Thomas di Giovanni

The case of Giglione and Butticè, who for eleven years had rented between them an old farm called La Gasena, had become a source of wonder and envy for miles around. Never before had a father and son or even two brothers lasted so long as partners in the lease of a farm, let alone two men unrelated by blood. And yet between these two, in eleven whole years, there had never arisen the slightest dispute over money matters or over anything else.

Their families had grown up side by side in a couple of big rooms on the ground floor of the farmhouse, where, in the old days, bumper harvests had been stored. These rooms were windowless at the front, so that their only light came in through the door opening onto the courtyard. This was a vast cobbled area with a cistern in the middle and a high surrounding wall whose top was a bristling crest of broken glass that sparkled in the sun. The blinding white of lime-washed walls made the burning blue rectangle of sky above the yard seem almost black. Here, among the flock of hens that populated it - as well as turkeys, capons, and piglets - one still felt the atmosphere of the once prosperous farmstead, although the sheep pen at the far end had been empty for some time and in the shed beyond the bread oven instead of cows there were only a pair of mules and a donkey foal.

The sun-drenched fields all around gave off a breath of things scattered and dried out in the open for years, and here in the yard these old smells mingled with the rich warmth of manure, the dry musty stench of grain, and the acrid odour of the burnt straw used in the oven. As if drunk in his stagnant wave of intermingled smells, flies buzzed the whole day long; and from far-off threshing floors, amid the silence of the plains, came the crowing of some cock or other, to which the cocks of the courtyard - first one, then the second, or sometimes both together with two different voices - gave answer. But that buzzing and this crowing and the rustling of trees far from disturbing actually underscored the stupor of nature, which was seldom broken by anything more unusual than those steady, plodding, daily events by which men and tasks and oxen regulated their pace.

Year in and year out, the soil had responded to the two partners' back-breaking labour. And their wives too, it seemed, had vied with the land in fecundity. More than anything, the men wanted sons for the work in the fields. The first wife had provided five of them; so had the second. One woman helped the other with each birth, lovingly, so that neither husband - who had no time to lose in these matters - was ever caused the least worry or concern. Returning home for lunch at midday or for supper in the evening, they simply found one more child.

'Boy?'

No further word was spoken; all that confirmed their approval was a nod of the head.

Giglione hardly ever spoke. Whenever he had need to, dealing with the landlord, say, or with the wholesalers from the city, he let his partner do the talking. A mild man, yet tough, with a smooth, round, sun-cooked face that looked like a ham, he would stretch the lobe of his left ear, listen, and then weigh up these men's rejoinders. After that, if it were necessary, he'd say what he had to say - a few words and never more.

Butticè, curly-haired, full of life, and with laughter always twinkling in his mischievous blue eyes, did his best with winks and honeyed words to soften his partner's dourness. One look at the impassive, unyielding Giglione, however, and not only did landlord and merchant not know what to make of Butticè's charming ways but they were somewhat put off by them.

Giglione was the deep-rooted tree; Butticè, the bird that flitted among the branches, bubbling with song. What was not clear was whether or not the tree was happy with all this fluttering and song on the part of the bird. If anyone asked Giglione what were his feelings in the matter, he'd cup a hand behind his ear to signify that his job was to listen, that his partner did the speaking.

Two months before, Giglione's wife had had a daughter, and now Butticè's wife was in her sixth confinement. The birth was expected any day. By lamplight in the courtyard one evening, while the two women gathered up the crude earthernware plates from which the children had just eaten their fill of vegetable broth, Giglione cast a mistrustful glance at the heavy belly of his partner's wife, who might upset their hitherto equal fortunes.

At last, one morning before daybreak, the pregnant woman went into labour. Butticè ran to bang at Giglione's door. Giglione's wife was ready in no time, and, under a still starry sky, the two men - their mattocks slung over their shoulders - set off for the slopes where they were working that day.

Within an hour, Giglione thought he heard his eldest son hailing from the farmyard gate.

'They're calling, aren't they?' asked Butticè, a few yards off.

'Seems so,' answered Giglione, and, holding his hands to his mouth, he shouted back. 'Ah-ooh!'

Dropping his mattock, Butticè set off at a run up the steep hillside. Giglione followed at top speed.

The yard was in pandemonium. The children were thronged outside the half-closed door of the room where the Butticè family slept. They had done their best to drag armloads of coarse linen, bedsheets, towels, petticoats, and shirts to Giglione's wife, who from time to time stuck out her dishevelled head and trembling, bloodstained hands to snatch at some article.

Butticè's wife had given birth to a boy, but she was losing blood, losing a lot of blood, and there was no way to stop it. Someone must go quickly to Favara to fetch a doctor.

Seeing his wife in this state, Butticè fell into a funk, almost more angry than grieved. Giglione had no choice but to drag him out, lift him bodily onto the mule's back, and put the halter rope into his partner's hands.

'Get going!' Giglione shouted.

Butticè was enraged by this bit of manhandling, and he refused to budge. 'And if I don't want to get going?' he answered, his face turning white.

Three hours later, Butticè returned with the doctor. The moment he entered the yard and saw his partner and his partner's wife and all the children waiting for him - speechless and stricken - he knew his wife was dead. It was exactly the scene he had imagined. He felt the violent anger well up inside him, the humiliation and frenzy. His merry eyes glittered with madness.

'Don't you all look fine!' he said, and he slid down off the mule and hesitated in the doorway of his room.

On the bed, as if not a drop of blood remained in her veins, lay his wife, stiff and white as marble. He stared at her a while, almost as if he no longer recognized her. Then, going up to the dead woman, he asked her in a tone that seemed to mock, 'What have you done?'

Having entered the room on tiptoe with his wife and the doctor, Giglione placed a commiserating hand on his partner's shoulder. But Butticè shook him off with an animal-like growl.

'Don't touch me,' he roared, rushing out into the courtyard, where his children flocked to him in tears. He bent down and wrapped his arms around them as if they were a bundle to be taken hold of and tossed aside.

'What are all you doing here, still alive?'

'Don't worry about them,' Giglione said from the doorway. 'From now on my wife will look on it as though she has twelve instead of six. She'll nurse your little one and will look after you as well as me.'

Still crouched over his children, Butticè cast a look at Giglione that flashed like the blade of a knife. It seemed to Butticè that his partner wanted to grind him down with generosity just when fate had dealt him this unjust blow. Without even a last glance at his dead wife - almost as if she too had betrayed him and wanted to bring him down, humiliating and destroying him - he fled. Shoving his children aside, shoving them all off, he ran away into the fields. Under a carob-tree, far down the hill, he went to ground like a mortally wounded animal.

There he remained for two days and two nights. At some point on the second night, he heard his partner calling him, first a long way off from higher up the hill, then from somewhere close by along the paths that ran among the trees. He heard Giglione's footsteps and others' too - maybe those of his elder sons. Butticè held his breath. When the footsteps and voices died away, he felt glad he had not been found. Raising his eyes, he glimpsed the moon through a gap in the foliage. It hung there in the sky, seeming to watch over him. A sensation, part anger and part fear, dimly stirred in him.

He thought about going back. Of course, by that time his wife's body would have been taken away. His partner wanted him there so as to show him his infant son attached to Giglione's wife's breast and to have him see how she was mothering the other orphans. Charity. Butticè pictured the scene that awaited him in the courtyard - the children finishing their vegetable broth by the light of the oil lamp.

'Good night, compare,' Giglione would say. 'We're off to bed.' And he and his wife and his whole family would shut themselves up in their room. Butticè would remain out in the yard, alone, wifeless, with his motherless children. Oh, no, by God! He would not give his old rival that satisfaction.

The next morning at dawn Butticè returned to the farm. Unshaven, his cheeks hollow and with dark rings round his eyes - a madman's eyes - he woke his children. The eldest were ordered to help gather their things and load the mule.

Hearing the noise, Giglione came out of the other room and stood there for a moment or two, watching.

'What are you doing?' he asked his partner.

Butticè was kneeling on the ground, tying up a big bundle of clothes. He sprang to his feet, looked straight into Giglione's face, and said, 'I'm leaving.'

'Where are you going? Are you mad?'

'Butticè did not answer. He knelt again to finish tying his bundle.

'Whatever for?' Giglione said. 'You're distraught, I know, and nobody wants to take that away from you. But what about everything else? You and your children, if you stay here - '

Butticè got to his feet again and put a finger to his lips.

'Quiet. I have to leave.'

'Why?'

'No reason. I have to.'

'Like this - just walking out without settling accounts?'

'We'll do that later. Right now I must leave.'

When his goods were loaded onto the mule and donkey, which belonged to him, Butticè said to his partner, 'Go and get me the baby.'

Giglione waved his hands in exasperation. 'Are you really out of your mind? He's at my wife's breast. Do you want him to die?'

'Then he'll die. I must get away from here.'

Giglione fetched the newborn child and, averting his eyes, held him out to Butticè.

'Here he is. Go now. I never want to set eyes on you again.'

'Don't you?' said Butticè with a sneer. 'How do you think I feel?'

Driving the mule and donkey on ahead, he set off with his five sons. In his arms lay the baby, from whose finicky purple mouth there still hung a drop of milk.