Summary of the book
The last book is the shortest in the work, and in it Vitangelo Moscarda hardly acts and becomes acted upon: questioned by a judge, protected by a canon, exhibited in a courtroom, sheltered in an almshouse. The first three chapters show how society absorbs the experiment: the judge treats him as an incurable patient, Sclepis turns him into an exemplary penitent, the city reads the surrender of everything as repentance. The fourth chapter, in which Vitangelo speaks without an interlocutor in sight, dismantles these readings: he does not repent, he no longer has a name, and he lets the tree, the cloud and the wind speak for him. The book pushes to the limit the question of the title: to be "one" for everyone requires a form, and Vitangelo chooses none. The reader must decide whether this is liberation or disappearance.
Chapter I: The Judge and the Version of the Accident
Chapter summary
The judge in charge of the case against Anna Rosa, honest by nature and by principle, wanted to be most scrupulous and lost months upon months before reaching the so-called clarification of the facts. Vitangelo could not answer the first interrogation, shortly after being taken from Anna Rosa's little room to the hospital; when the doctors allowed him to open his mouth, the first answer he gave, instead of embarrassing the one questioning him, embarrassed him. The passage from that pity, with which she had held out her arms from the bed, to the instinctive impulse of the violent act had been so instantaneous for Anna Rosa that he, already blinded by feeling the warmth of her near him, did not even have time to notice how she drew the revolver from under the pillow. As it did not seem admissible to him that she, after drawing him in, would want to kill him, he gave, with the most sincere frankness, the explanation that seemed most probable to him: that his wound, like her foot, had been accidental, caused by the revolver under the pillow, which he must have hit and set off while trying to lift the patient, whom she had asked him to sit up in bed. The lie, which was obligatory for him, lay only in the last part of the answer; to the one questioning him, the whole of it sounded so brazen that he was harshly reprimanded. He was told that justice already had the explicit confession of the woman who had shot him, and he, bewildered, showed the liveliest curiosity to know what reason she had given: the answer was a thunderous snort that nearly splattered his face, "Ah, so you only wanted to sit her up in bed?" Justice must also already have, he supposes, a first deposition from the wife, who, with that proof, could have testified in perfect conscience to the old date of his love for Anna Rosa. Justice would have established that Anna Rosa tried to kill him to defend herself from a brutal assault, if Anna Rosa herself had not sworn to the judge that there had been no assault at all, and that what had led her to that madness was the fascination he had spoken of. The judge, dissatisfied with the summary she could give him of Vitangelo's considerations on life, decided to come and speak with him himself.
Analysis
Vitangelo defends the version of the accident out of sincerity, not cleverness:
Per me la bugia (bugia doverosa) era soltanto in quest’ultima parte della risposta; a chi m’interrogava apparve invece tutta quanta così sfacciata, che ne fui aspramente rimbrottato.
, for me the lie (a dutiful lie) lay only in this last part of the answer; to the one who questioned me, on the other hand, the whole of it appeared so brazen that I was harshly reprimanded.
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Chapter II: The Green Blanket and the Judge
Chapter summary
Vitangelo, brought home from the hospital on a stretcher, has now left his bed, convalescent, and spends his days in an armchair by the window, with a green wool blanket over his legs. He feels intoxicated, drifting in a calm and gentle emptiness like a dream; spring has returned, the first warmth of the sun gives him a languor of ineffable delight, and he strokes the green down of the blanket with the tips of his fingers. He sees in it the countryside, as if it were an immense expanse of wheat, and loses himself there, stretching out and letting himself go, with a distance so forgotten that he almost feels anguish, a sweet anguish. He wonders whether any visit could be more inopportune than the judge's. The judge has something of the mole about him, with his two little hands always raised to his mouth, his small leaden eyes almost without sight, his thin, badly dressed little body, one shoulder higher than the other; he walks sideways, like dogs, although everyone says that, morally, no one walks more upright. Asked about his "considerations on life," Vitangelo says they cannot be repeated and shows the blanket, passing his hand over it: if he repeated them, the judge would not kill him, he would kill himself, out of remorse for having practiced this office for so many years. He speaks to him of the great river that the judge has channeled well in his affections, his duties and his habits, but which at times of flood comes, overflows and sweeps everything away, and of which he himself is already submerged and far away. The judge is left stunned, looking at him as one looks at an incurable patient. To get him out of that painful attitude, Vitangelo smiles, lifts the blanket with both hands and shows it once more, asking graciously whether it does not seem beautiful to him, so green, that wool blanket.
Analysis
Chapter III: The Surrender of Everything
Chapter summary
Vitangelo consoles himself with the idea that all this will ease Anna Rosa's acquittal. But Canon Sclepis appears several times, with a great trembling of all his cartilage, to tell him that he has made, and continues to make, the task of saving him harder. How could he not realize the enormous scandal he caused with that adventure, just when he should be proving that he has his head on straight? Had he not shown that the wife was right to flee to her father's house, because of the indignity of his behavior? He was betraying her, and only to make himself fine in the eyes of that overwrought girl did he protest that he no longer wanted to be called a usurer; and, for that guilty passion, which nearly cost him his life, he wanted and insists on ruining both himself and others. Faced with the uproar of everyone, Sclepis can only recognize his faults and see salvation in their open confession; but, for that to be secure, Vitangelo must show such a vivid need for heroic amendment that it gives the canon the strength to ask others for the sacrifice of their interests. Vitangelo only nods his head, without forcing himself to see how far that dialectical argument turns into sincere conviction in Sclepis. They arrive at the decision that he will give a solemn example of repentance and self-denial, donating everything, even the house and every other possession, to found with what falls to him from the bank's liquidation an almshouse with an economical kitchen, and that he himself will live there like any beggar. What troubles him most is that this total surrender should be read as repentance. He remains silent, admiring the old diaphanous prelate, who knows how to want so much and exercises the will with such fine art, not for his own gain, nor so much to do good for others, but for the merit that would accrue to that house of God, of which he is a most faithful servant. But there is too much pride in him, in his power and his knowledge; to want to be one for oneself, distinct from others, is still to want to be someone. Vitangelo admires him and feels pity.
Analysis
Chapter IV: Nameless, Inconclusive
Chapter summary
Anna Rosa was to be acquitted, and Vitangelo believes the acquittal owed something to the laughter that spread through the courtroom when, called to testify, he appeared in the cap, clogs and blue smock of the asylum. He never looked in a mirror again, and it does not even occur to him to want to know what became of his face: what he had been for others must have looked very changed, and in a rather comical way, judging by the astonishment and laughter with which he was greeted. Still, everyone wanted to call him Moscarda, though the name now meant something so different to each that they could have spared that poor forgetful man, bearded and smiling, the pain of returning to the name as if it belonged to him. He then declares that there is no name, that there is no memory today of yesterday's name; that each person should engrave the name he carried among men as an epitaph on the forehead of the image in which he appeared to them, and leave it in peace. The name suits the dead, those who have concluded; he is alive and does not conclude. He says that he is this tree, the cloud, tomorrow a book or the wind. The asylum stands in the countryside, in a most pleasant spot, and he goes out every day at daybreak to keep his spirit fresh with the freshness of dawn, with things as they reveal themselves, before the sun dries up their moist breath. He describes the water clouds over the livid hills, the grass, the donkey that spent the night out in the open air, the cart ruts between dark hedges. He quickly averts his eyes so as not to see anything come to rest in its appearance and die, and only so can he live now: being reborn instant by instant, preventing thought from once again rebuilding in him the emptiness of vain constructions. The city is far away; from time to time the sound of bells arrives, which he now hears not within himself but outside, ringing on their own account. To think about death, to pray: some still feel that need, and the bells speak for them. He does not, because he dies at every instant and is reborn new and without memories.
Analysis
Reading of the book
Analysis