Lucky’s Reviews > The Late Mattia Pascal > Status Update

My leap from the train saved me, as if it had shaken that stupid idea from my head. In a flash I glimpsed... of course! my liberation, the freedom of a new life! I had eighty-two thousand lire with me, and now I wouldn't have to give the money to anyone! I was dead, dead! I had no debts now, no wife, no mother-in-law. Nobody! Free! Free! Free! What more could I ask for?

All the disgust and frictions that come when Need, like a scrawny black cat, nests in the ashes of a spent hearth, had made living together odious to us both. Could I, with eleven thousand lire, restore peace in our home and resuscitate that love wickedly killed at birth by the widow Pescatore? What folly!

From Marseilles I would embark at random, with a third-class ticket, perhaps for America. After all, could anything worse befall me than what I had suffered and was still suffering at home? No doubt, I was only heading for new chains, but they surely wouldn't seem heavier than the ones I had just ripped from my ankles.

In order to carry early fruit to the market and sell it at high prices, they gather apples or peaches or pears before they have reached the stage which makes them sound and flavorsome, and the vendors ripen them by the simple expedient of bruising them.

And this was how my spirit, still green, ripened to its maturity.

From time to time, a book or two would crash from the shelves, followed by rats as fat as rabbits.
To me they wére like Newton's apple.
"Eureka!" I shouted happily. "There's something for me to do while Romitelli is reading his Birnbaum."

I may say that, from that day on, I have made a habit of laughing at all my misfortunes and torments. At that moment I saw myself as an actor in a tragedy that could hardly have looked more comical: my mother had run out with that mad-woman; my wife was in the other room busy... we'll skip that! Marianna Pescatore there on the ground; and I myself... not knowing where to turn for my daily bread.

Beyond his respectable appear-ance, his fine manners, his elegant-gentleman façade, Berto had nothing to give his wife, not even a crumb of affection, which would probably have compensated her for any trouble that my poor mother's presence would have caused. Well, that's how God made him; God gave him only a tiny scrap of a heart. What could poor Berto do about it?

I was truly horrified at the sight of my mother in contact with the widow Pescatore. The sainted old lady was no longer unaware of her wrongs, but in my eyes she was in no way responsible for them. She just couldn't grasp the full extent of human wickedness.

(Madonna complex?)

Now what was to be done? Almost without hope, I began looking for some kind of occupation, to provide for the family's most pressing needs. I was no good at anything, and the reputation I had won by my youthful exploits and my idleness certainly didn't inspire anyone to give me a job.

The conclusion was self-evident: in the midst of all these fine people, I was the one who had caused the damage. And therefore I was the one who had to pay.

At first I refused, indignantly. Then, exhorted by my mother, who already foresaw our family's ruin and hoped that by marrying her enemy's niece, I might somehow be saved, I gave in and married Romilda.

(This man sees none of his faults…)