The Oil Jar and Other Stories by Luigi Pirandello

brother, seemed perfectly suited to see eye to eye with him in every possible way.
    Indeed, from the first day of the engagement, Perazzetti and Lino Lamanna became two inseparable companions. You might say that Perazzetti spent more time with his future brother-in-law than with his fiancée: outings, hunting trips, horseback rides together, together on the Tiber at the boating club.
    He could imagine anything, poor Perazzetti, except that this time the disaster was to strike him because of his excessive closeness to his future brother-in-law, on account of another quirk of his morbid and ludicrous imagination.
    At a certain point, he began to discover in his fiancée a disturbing resemblance to her brother.
    It was at Livorno, at the seaside, where he had naturally gone with the Lamannas.
    Perazzetti had seen Lino in a sporting jersey plenty of times when rowing; now he saw his fiancée in a bathing suit. It should be noted that Lino really did look ever so slightly feminine, in the hips.
    What was the effect on Perazzetti when he discovered that resemblance? He broke out into a cold sweat, he began to feel an unconquerable repulsion at the thought of initiating marital intimacies with Elly Lamanna, who looked so much like her brother. He suddenly pictured those intimacies as something monstrous, almost unnatural, now that he saw the brother when looking at the fiancée; and he writhed at the slightest caress she gave him, seeing himself looked at by eyes now provocative and inciting, now languishing in the promise of a longed-for sensual pleasure.
    But, meanwhile, could Perazzetti shout to her:
    â€œOh, for God’s sake, quit it! Let’s call it off! I can be very good friends with Lino, because I don’t have to marry him; but I can no longer marry you , because it would be like marrying your brother.”
    The torture that Perazzetti suffered this time was far greater than all those he had suffered in the past. It ended up with that sword thrust, which by a miracle failed to send him to the next world.
    And as soon as the wound had healed, he hit upon the heroic cure that was to bar the way to matrimony to him for good.
    â€œBut how,” I hear you ask, “by getting married?”
    Of course! Maddalena: the one with the dog; by marrying Maddalena, of course, that poor nitwit that you could see every night on the street, decked out in certain hideous hats loaded down with fluttering greenery, pulled along by a black poodle that never gave her the time to finish those “killing” little laughs of hers, directed at policemen, young boys still wet behind the ears, and soldiers, because it was in such a hurry—damned dog—to get who knows where, to who knows what faraway dark corner ...
    He married her in church and at the registry office; he took her off the street; he gave her an allowance of two lire a day and shipped her off far away, into the country.
    His friends—as you can imagine—gave him no peace for quite some time. But Perazzetti had now calmly returned to his habit of saying things with the utmost seriousness, so that you wouldn’t even know it was him, while looking at his nails.
    â€œYes,” he would say. “I married her. But it’s nothing serious. As for sleeping, I sleep alone, at home; as for eating, I eat alone, at home; I don’t see her; she doesn’t bother me at all ... You say, what about my name? Yes: I gave her my name. But, gentlemen, what’s a name? It’s not to be taken seriously.”
    Strictly speaking, nothing was serious to Perazzetti. Everything depends on the importance you attach to things. If you attach importance to the most ridiculous thing, it can become deadly serious, and vice versa, the most serious matter can become altogether ridiculous. Is there anything more serious than death? And yet, for those many people who attach no importance to it ...
    All right; but his friends wanted to see him a few days