The Oil Jar and Other Stories by Luigi Pirandello Page B

his, which he has always found so burdensome, to the very end! After all, he took a wife for that very reason, just so someone could benefit from what had been a torment to him all his life!
    Marrying with this single purpose, to benefit a poor young woman, he has loved his wife solely with a quasi-paternal affection. And he started loving her more paternally than ever from the time the child was born, the child by whom he would almost prefer to be called grandfather rather than daddy. This unwitting lie on the pure little lips of the ignorant child hurts him; he feels that even his love for him suffers from it. But what’s to be done? He must receive with a kiss that name coming from Ninì’s sweet little mouth,. that “daddy” which gets a laugh from all the spiteful people who are unable to understand his loving feelings for that innocent creature, his happiness over the good that he has done and continues to do for a woman, a worthy young man, the little one, and himself as well—of course!—himself as well—the happiness of living these last years in cheerful, pleasant company, walking on the edge of the grave with a little angel holding his hand.
    Let them laugh, let all the spiteful people laugh at him! What does that matter to him? He is happy.
    But for three days ...
    What can have happened? His wife’s eyes are swollen and red from crying; she says she has a bad headache; she doesn’t want to leave her room.
    â€œAh, youth! ... youth! ... ” Professor Toti sighs, shaking his head with a sad, sly smile in his eyes and on his lips. “Some cloud ... some little thunderstorm ... ”
    And with Ninì he wanders around the house, troubled, nervous, also a little irritated, because ... no, he really doesn’t deserve such treatment from his wife and from Giacomino. Young people don’t count the days: they have so many still ahead of them ... But for a poor old man the loss of a day is serious! And it’s been three now that his wife has been leaving him alone in the house this way, like a fly without a head, and no longer treating him to those little airs and songs sung in her clear, impassioned little voice, and no longer lavishing those cares on him to which he is now accustomed.
    Ninì, too, is as serious as can be, as if he understands that his Mommy’s mind is too occupied to pay attention to him. The Professor takes him along from one room to the other, and has practically no need to stoop down to give him his hand, he’s so small himself; he leads him in front of the piano, presses down a few keys here and there, snorts, yawns, then sits down, gives Ninì a ride on his knees for a while, then stands up again: he’s on pins and needles. Five or six times he has tried to force his little wife to speak.
    â€œBad, eh? You’re really feeling bad?”
    Little Maddalena persists in not wanting to tell him anything; she weeps; she asks him to close the balcony shutters and take Ninì to another room: she wants to be alone in the dark.
    â€œYour head, eh?”
    Poor thing, her head aches so ... Ah, the quarrel must have been really a major one!
    Professor Toti moves on to the kitchen and tries to start a conversation with the young maid, to get some information out of her; but he beats around the bush, because he knows that the maid is hostile to him; she speaks ill of him, outside the house, like all the rest, and criticizes him. He fails to learn anything, even from the maid.
    And then Professor Toti makes a heroic resolution: he takes Ninì to his mother and asks her to dress him up nicely.
    â€œWhy?” she asks.
    â€œI’m taking him for a little walk,” he replies. “Today is a holiday ... He’s bored here, poor kid!”
    His mother is unwilling. She knows that evil-minded people laugh when they see the old Professor walking hand in hand with the little one; she knows that one insolent scoundrel went so