Who He Is
Stefano Firbo is, with Quantorzo, one of the two trusted friends to whom Vitangelo Moscarda handed over the business after his father's death (ch. I of Book I), and he appears at the bank as legal adviser (ch. VIII of Book III). In the middle of the crisis, Vitangelo sees him as a false hunchback: elegant, well-groomed, with thin, long legs like a bird's, and a hump that does not show but is present in his whole body (ch. V of Book IV). What Firbo wants is to protect the bank's credit and to impose his reading of events on those around him. What he fears is losing that credit to the senseless act of an absent owner, and so he wants to have him declared incompetent or locked up (ch. I of Book V). What he knows is that the bank's credit, compromised by the owner's act, depends on what the town thinks of him (ch. I of Book V). Where he is wrong: he takes the word "mad" for a solution, when what Vitangelo has done is expose the way each person, Firbo included, imposes on others the world they carry inside them. The book calls this mechanism subjugation, and Firbo is the first to practice it before Vitangelo's eyes (ch. V of Book IV).
Trajectory
In ch. III of Book I, Dida announces among the household news that Firbo has been by and will come back later, and in ch. IV of Book I he strolls with Vitangelo, chatting, at the moment the friend catches sight of himself in a street mirror and says it is nothing. Firbo is at his side when the friend sees a stranger walk by, talking.
In ch. VIII of Book III, Vitangelo imagines five people standing in front of the house where he was born, and one of them thinks him an imbecile for having left Quantorzo as bank director and Firbo as legal adviser. In ch. I of Book IV he tells how, after his father's death, Marco di Dio went on living in a little house of his, whose rent neither Firbo nor Quantorzo ever collected.
In ch. V of Book IV, on entering the bank, Vitangelo finds the employees laughing at the quarrel between Firbo and a certain Turolla, who vouched for a loan request that Firbo refuses. Firbo grabs Turolla by the arm and humiliates him in front of everyone. Vitangelo feels a surge of rebellion and asks Firbo by what right he wants to impose himself on another. Firbo, aghast, asks whether he has lost his mind, and Vitangelo replies with an insult about his wife, whom it would suit him to keep locked up in the madhouse. Firbo turns pale and everyone freezes. In the director's office, after thinking of Firbo as a false hunchback, Vitangelo understands what he has just seen:
è qui tutto, - pensavo, - in questa sopraffazione. Ciascuno vuole imporre agli altri quel mondo che ha dentro, come se fosse fuori, e che tutti debbano vederlo a suo modo, e che gli altri non possano esservi se non come li vede lui., it is all here, I thought, in this subjugation. Each one wants to impose on others the world he carries inside, as if it were outside, and wants everyone to see it his own way, and that others cannot be in it except as he sees them.
When Firbo comes back, an enemy, to demand an account, Vitangelo kneels, knocks his forehead three times on the floor, and says that it is he who ought to be like this, before his wife:
Tu, non io, capisci? davanti a tua moglie, capisci? dovresti star così! E io, e lui, e tutti quanti, davanti ai così detti pazzi, così!, you, not I, do you understand? In front of your wife, do you understand? You ought to be like that! And I, and he, and all of us, before the so-called madmen, like that!
Seized by the lapel and forced to look Vitangelo in the eye, Firbo confesses his fright: he thinks Vitangelo is mad.
In ch. I of Book V Firbo maintains that he must be shut up in a madhouse or, at the very least, declared incompetent, if the bank's credit, compromised by the eviction of Marco di Dio, is to be saved. Vitangelo weighs the logic of both sides with the same coolness:
Ah, non c’è che dire, stava tutta dalla parte di Firbo la logica. Ma non stava meno, se vogliamo, dalla parte di Quantorzo, ah, there is no denying it, the logic was all on Firbo's side. But it was no less, if you like, on Quantorzo's side.
In ch. II of Book V, Dida, who laughs at her husband's brutal pastime, agrees with Firbo that the prank deserves a madhouse. In ch. IV of Book VII, Anna Rosa tells Vitangelo that Firbo, Quantorzo, Dida's father, and Dida herself gathered proof and witnesses to have him declared incompetent, among them Turolla and Marco di Dio.
Themes Embodied
Firbo is Madness as an instrument. It is his word, not a doctor's, that defines Vitangelo for the bank: in ch. V of Book IV he uses it as a question, and in ch. I of Book V as a proposal for interdiction, and the town repeats it in chorus in ch. VII of Book IV. The book shows that the word serves whoever says it, and that the madman, for Firbo, is whoever threatens the credit. He is also Money and wealth as a name: the bank he protects is his father's name, and what moves him is not the sum but what the town will say.
Firbo is the man before whom Vitangelo kneels, in ch. V of Book IV, and one of those he describes by a bodily defect. The elegant false hunchback is a figure of Appearance and reality: what is seen, the elegance, and what is not seen, the hump that runs through the whole body, coexist in one person, and the text says so from the point of view of someone who sees Firbo from outside, without Firbo saying it of himself.
Divergent Readings
The text supports two readings of Firbo. In one, he is the prudent guardian of the bank: Vitangelo acknowledges, in ch. I of Book V, that the logic was all on his side, because an owner who declares himself ignorant and disinterested in everything does seem like a madman capable of destroying what his father built with caution. In the other, he is a man wounded in his vanity and waiting for revenge: Vitangelo hesitates between Quantorzo's self-interested indulgence and Firbo's desire to avenge the affront he suffered before the employees, and the scene with Turolla, in ch. V of Book IV, shows him imposing on an employee his word about a third party.
The two readings are valid together, and what unites them is that Firbo makes no distinction between defending the bank and defending himself. If the first is right, the interdiction is a management measure; if the second is, it is a payback. What the book does not allow is any doubt that the interdiction, whatever the reason, reaches Vitangelo as proof that others see him as mad, the image he set off in ch. VII of Book IV and did not choose.
Relationships
- Vitangelo Moscarda: the trusted friend who accompanies him on the mirror walk (ch. IV of Book I), whom he insults and before whom he kneels (ch. V of Book IV), and whom he wants to have declared incompetent (ch. I of Book V).
- Quantorzo: the other trusted friend, with whom Firbo disagrees about interdicting the owner (ch. I of Book V) and with whom he gathers proof (ch. IV of Book VII).
- Dida: agrees with him that the eviction deserves a madhouse (ch. II of Book V) and is among those who gather proof (ch. IV of Book VII).
- Marco di Dio: the tenant whose rent Firbo does not collect (ch. I of Book IV) and who appears as a witness at the interdiction (ch. IV of Book VII).
- Anna Rosa: the friend who tells Vitangelo what Firbo is preparing (ch. IV of Book VII).