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One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand · Book VII

The revolver and the bishop

Appearance and RealityMadnessIdentityLoneliness and IsolationGod and the Divine

Summary of the book

Vitangelo Moscarda, alone after his wife's departure, is called on by her friend, Anna Rosa, and what seemed like a marital mediation becomes a book full of events: a revolver that fires in an abbey, the discovery that his wife and father-in-law have already gathered proof to have him interdicted, a visit to the bishop to ask for protection, a madman who, on a terrace, wants to fly with his blanket open to the wind, and, in the end, the shot that Anna Rosa herself fires at him, in bed. Among the events, Vitangelo's thesis gains two new faces. One is religious: the vital point that Dida's laugh wounded was God, and God has a house to which one can appeal for help. The other is amorous: for Dida and for Anna Rosa he was already someone who feels sympathy for Anna Rosa, and this reality, which others give him, ends up being lived by him. The book leaves the question of what Vitangelo offers when he offers himself to Anna Rosa, and why that leads her to shoot.

Chapter I: Anna Rosa's Note

Chapter summary

The morning after the father-in-law's visit, Vitangelo receives a note delivered by hand, inviting him to go at once to the house of Anna Rosa, Dida's little friend whom he mentioned once or twice at the beginning, in passing. He expected a go-between for a reconciliation, but a message coming from the father-in-law and the other partners of the bank, not directly from his wife, since the only obstacle was his intention to liquidate the bank; between him and Dida almost nothing had happened, and it would be enough to say sincerely that he regretted having shaken her and thrown her into the armchair for peace to be made. That Anna Rosa should have taken on the task of making him back down, setting this as the condition for his wife's return, does not seem admissible to him. He knows from Dida that her friend refused several marriages called advantageous, out of contempt for money, which earned her the reproach of sensible people and of Dida, who, marrying him, son of a usurer, let it be understood to her friends that the marriage was "advantageous." More plausible would be the reverse: that Dida had sought her out to warn him that her father, in agreement with the partners, was keeping her at home and preventing her from returning. Knowing the woman well, that too seems inadmissible to him. He goes to the invitation with great curiosity, unable to guess the reason.

Analysis

Vitangelo weighs Anna Rosa's possible reasons and sets aside the most obvious one:

Per questo “vantaggio„ da salvare Anna Rosa non poteva esser dunque l’avvocato più adatto., for this "advantage" to be saved, Anna Rosa could not therefore be the most suitable lawyer.

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Chapter II: The Warning from the Abbey

Chapter summary

Vitangelo knew little of Anna Rosa: he had seen her several times at home, always keeping away, more by instinct than on purpose, from his wife's friends, and certain half-smiles caught on her lips seemed to him aimed at the silly image Dida's Gengè had put in his mind, so that he never wanted to talk with her. He had never been to her house. Orphaned of father and mother, she lives with an elderly aunt in a house that seems crushed by the very high walls of the Badia Grande, a former castle, with barred windows where, at sunset, the few old nuns who remain lean out. One of them, the younger, is also Anna Rosa's aunt, her father's sister, and was, they say, half mad; but it takes little to drive a woman mad when she is shut up in a convent. He does not find Anna Rosa at home. The old maid who carried the note, speaking mysteriously through the peephole without opening the door, says that the little mistress is at the Abbey, with her nun aunt, and that he should look for her there, asking the portress nun to be shown into the parlor of Sister Celestina. The mystery startles him and, instead of heightening his curiosity, makes him hesitate. Any link between his trivial marital misfortune and the invitation seems to him broken, and he is left uneasy, as before an unforeseen complication that might bring who knows what consequences to his life. The narrator then interrupts to declare, as he already did before the judges, that the adventure that followed nearly cost him his life, but that Anna Rosa was in no way to blame.

Analysis

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Chapter III: The Revolver Among the Flowers

God and the Divine

Chapter summary

Vitangelo climbs to the Abbey by one of the sloping alleys of old Richieri, foul by day with the stench of rotting garbage. The Badia, a former feudal castle of the Chiaramonte, with its low, corroded gate, the wide courtyard with its cistern, the worn and gloomy staircase and the long corridor of gnawed brick, has seen so many events that now, in the slow agony of the few nuns who wander about lost, it seems no longer to know itself. The portress nun opens the door to a dark parlor, where only the grille at the far end can be made out, and tells him to ring the bell to call Sister Celestina. A weak voice from behind the grille invites him to sit, because Anna Rosa will soon come up from the orchard; and the voice strikes him as if a sun had suddenly lit up in the orchard he cannot see, and in the midst of the green there appears to him the figure of Anna Rosa as he has never seen her, all a tremor of grace and mischief. It is a flash. When the darkness returns, he sees the grille, a little table, two chairs, and no one else; the voice must have been an old woman's. Anna Rosa suddenly opens the door and calls him into the corridor: her face aflame, her hair disordered, her eyes sparkling, her wool blouse unbuttoned at the chest, her arms full of flowers and a sprig of ivy falling from one shoulder. She runs to the far end of the corridor and climbs the step beneath the large window and, as she climbs, drops her little bag: a report followed by a high-pitched cry resounds through the corridor. Vitangelo is still supporting her when she collapses onto him. The old nuns come flapping and piping, with a terror he does not understand: it is not over the wound, it is because the Monsignor is about to arrive. Anna Rosa cries "the revolver, the revolver!", wanting it back, because it is a memento of her father. He understands that there was a revolver in the bag that went off and wounded her foot, but not why she carried it with her that morning, and it does not occur to him that it was because of him. As no one helps, he carries her in his arms out of the Abbey, down the alley, to her house.

Analysis

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Chapter IV: Anna Rosa's Explanation

Appearance and RealityMadnessGod and the Divine

Chapter summary

The news of the shot at the Abbey, and of Vitangelo leaving in a hurry with Anna Rosa wounded in his arms, runs through Richieri and gives rise to gossip that seems absurd to him, until he discovers that it can be taken as true, even by the woman he is carrying. Dida has got it into her head that Gengè harbored a burning sympathy for Anna Rosa; she confided this, smiling, to her friend and gave as the reason for his avoiding her the fear of falling in love. Anna Rosa, for her part, read his passing glances as those of a most unhappy Mr. Gengè, who suffered at being loved like that by his own wife. Vitangelo has no way to deny it: the reality of Gengè belongs to Dida, who gave it. After taking her home, calling the doctor and the nurse, and sitting at the foot of the bed, he feels that the sympathy attributed to him is also true. Anna Rosa explains the revolver: she found it in the waistcoat of her father, dead six years earlier, small, with a mother-of-pearl grip, and in moments of alarm she was tempted to try it against herself; that it bit her foot and not her temple disturbs her strangely, and she scolds the weapon as if it were a naughty child: "Bad!" She also explains the invitation: she knew that Monsignor Partanna would visit the nuns that morning, and she wanted Vitangelo to speak with the bishop in time to prevent the interdiction, for which Firbo, Quantorzo, Dida's father and Dida herself had gathered proofs and witnesses, among them Turolla and Marco di Dio. To the objection that the donation would fall through if he were declared mad, she laughs: they promised Marco di Dio that he would not lose the house. She approves of his madnesses, the greatest of which is leaving the bank and a wife who has always been his enemy, and says that for some time she has been trying to make Dida understand that he is not the fool she imagines. Vitangelo sees a Dida so different from his own and equally true, and feels the horror of the discovery: the intimacy of the two of them exposed to derision, another Dida, a Dida truly an enemy. But he is certain that, with Gengè, she was not pretending. He should not have revealed the secret of the discovery to Anna Rosa, but he was tempted by what she told him, and before describing the madness this caused, he recounts the visit to the bishop, to which she urges him in haste.

Analysis

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Chapter V: The God Within and the God Without

God and the Divine

Chapter summary

In the time when he took Bibi out for walks, the churches of Richieri were Vitangelo's despair: the dog wanted to go in at all costs, and in the face of scolding she sat down, raised one paw, sneezed and stared at him, one ear up and the other down, convinced that such a pretty little dog could not be denied entry to a church where there was no one. He explains to her that inside there is "the most respectable of human feelings," and that men need to build a house for their feelings too. For him it has always been enough to hold the feeling of God within himself, in his own way; out of respect for what others have, he never let Bibi enter a church, and he himself does not enter one. From this he draws a conclusion: the vital point he felt wounded when his wife laughed was God, without doubt: God who had felt wounded in him, who in him could no longer bear being taken for a usurer in Richieri. But to go and say this to Quantorzo, to Firbo and to the bank's partners would give them one more proof of madness. The God within, who would now seem mad to everyone, should then visit, as contritely as possible, and ask help and protection from the most wise God without, the one who has the house, the zealous servants and all the powers constituted in the world. Of that one, there is no danger that Firbo or Quantorzo would dare call him mad.

Analysis

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Chapter VI: The Bishop on Foot

God and the Divine

Chapter summary

Vitangelo goes to the Episcopal Palace to speak with Monsignor Partanna. It was said in Richieri that he had been elected bishop through the entreaties and good offices of powerful prelates in Rome; the fact is that, after several years at the head of the diocese, he had not yet won anyone's sympathy or trust. The city was used to the splendor and generous munificence of his predecessor, the late Monsignor Vivaldi, and everyone's heart sank when they saw the gaunt, cloaked new bishop come down on foot from the palace, between two secretaries. A bishop on foot? Since the palace rose like a gloomy fortress at the top of the city, every bishop had come down in a fine carriage drawn by a pair of horses, with red braid and plumes. Monsignor Partanna, on taking possession, said that a bishopric is a name for work and not for honor; he dismissed the servants, the cook, the coachman and the household, retired the carriage and instituted the strictest economy, although the diocese of Richieri is one of the richest in Italy; he makes his pastoral visits in hired carriages, on donkeys and mules. The nuns of the city's five convents, except the decrepit ones of the Badia Grande, hate him for his cruel orders: no more making or selling sweets and liqueurs, no more embroidery, only stockings, and no more private confessors. Even graver were the orders for canons and beneficed clergy: the strictest observance of all their duties. A bishop like this is inconvenient for those who wanted to put the feeling of God outside themselves by building it a house. For Vitangelo it is the best he could wish for, because the predecessor, well liked and accommodating, would have found a way to arrange everything, saving the bank and the conscience, to satisfy him and also Firbo, Quantorzo and the others.

Analysis

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Chapter VII: The Madman on the Terrace and Sclepis

Money and WealthMadnessGod and the Divine

Chapter summary

Monsignor Partanna receives him in the vast hall of the former chancery, with a frescoed ceiling covered in dust, walls crowded with portraits of prelates grimy with dust and mold, and two great windows shaken by the furious wind of Richieri. During the conversation, Vitangelo sees, on the terrace of an old house opposite, a man who has fled his bed with the mad notion of experiencing the voluptuousness of flight: exposed to the wind, he makes the red woolen blanket fly around his thin body, with his arms outstretched, and laughs, laughs, with a glint of tears in his eyes, while his red hair flies like flames. He interrupts the bishop's discourse on scruples of conscience and points at the man; the Monsignor says, with a smile that serves as a sigh: "Ah, yes, that is a poor madman there." Vitangelo is tempted to reply that the madman who wants to fly is himself; he restrains himself, and asks whether there is no danger that the man will throw himself off. "No, he has been like this for many years. Harmless, harmless." Then, without meaning to, there escapes him: "Like me." The Monsignor starts, and Vitangelo, with a placid face, explains that he means harmless in the opinion of Firbo, Quantorzo, his father-in-law, his wife and all those who want to have him interdicted. The bishop returns to the scruples of conscience, which seem to him the most fitting idea for the case and the only one to oppose, with spiritual authority, to the maneuvers of the enemies. Vitangelo cannot explain that his is not a case of conscience: the God who in him wants to recover the bank's money so that he will no longer be called a usurer is an enemy of all constructions, and the God to whom he came to ask for help is the one who builds, and will help only if the money serves the building of a house for another respectable feeling, charity. At the end, the Monsignor asks with a solemn air whether he does not want this, and he has to answer that he does. The bishop rings an old silver handbell, calls a young cleric and has Canon Dom Antonio Sclepis, director of the Oblates' College, summoned. The latter, tall, thin, almost diaphanous, with trembling hands and a faded voice, enters in haste and with confidence, slaps Vitangelo on the shoulder and addresses him familiarly: suffering will save him; let the thought of his father, who did so much harm, be his hair shirt; leave the struggle with Firbo and Quantorzo to him. Vitangelo leaves certain that he will win the interdiction case, but cast into a sea of uncertainty about what will become of him, stripped of everything.

Analysis

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Chapter VIII: Waiting

Appearance and RealityLoneliness and Isolation

Chapter summary

For now, Vitangelo has only Anna Rosa, and the company she wants him to keep her during her illness. Lying down, with her foot bandaged, she says she will not get up again if she is left lame; her pallor has lent her a new grace, and the smell of her hair suffocates him: she asks him to cut it, laughs at his embarrassment and covers her face with the sheet. He perceives in her an impatience with everything that lasts, and that she takes pleasure only in her body, gazing at herself in the mirror and trying out attitudes like an actress, in a game of coquetry or provocation. One morning, when she studies in the little mirror a pious and tender smile and then reshapes it for him, Vitangelo reacts: he says that it is not her mirror. She shows him a drawer of photographs; he says they are all dead, and explains: to see oneself, life must stop, pose, turn into a statue; a life that moves can never see itself. She can only know herself by posing, and to know oneself is to die; she spends so long before mirrors because she does not live. She thinks for a long time, and for the two of them there opens the vision of irremediable solitude. At her request he goes on talking and describes the girl at a high window, small in the eyes of someone passing below, and she sees herself and laughs. Vitangelo perceives that his uncertainty attracts and amuses her: she is sure he will go to the ultimate consequences like a perfect madman, and proud of having sensed in him a man out of the ordinary, she called him to give Dida that proof. When from amusement she passes to great pity, in response to what she reads in his eyes, he says to her words he no longer remembers, in which she feels the urge to give all the life that is in him, to be one as she would wish and, for herself, in truth no one. She stretches out her arms and draws him to her. Shortly afterward he rolls off the bed, blind, wounded in the chest by the small revolver she kept under her pillow. The reasons she will give in her defense must be true: she was driven to shoot by the instinctive and sudden horror of the act to which she felt herself dragged by the fascination of what he had said to her in those days.

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