Who He Is
Marco di Dio is a former sculptor's assistant who came from the countryside to Richieri, where he learned to rough-cut marble in the workshop of one of the city's finest artists, and one hot day he was caught in an act that condemned him for good (ch. I of Book IV). He lives with his wife, Diamante, in a small house owned by Vitangelo Moscarda, for which no one collects rent. He wants to become a millionaire overnight, with an invention that never materializes, and he plans with his wife, among other things, odorless toilets for countries without water. He fears that the laughter of others will stop, because mockery is what sustains his dream. He knows the town sees him as a convict and an eccentric, and he hated first Vitangelo's father and then the son. Where he is wrong, and why: he believes Vitangelo is the same usurer his father was, and so he cannot read the gift that falls to him after the eviction as anything but madness (ch. VII of Book IV). He is also the guinea pig of the novel's first experiment, the man who hates the Moscarda family most and who lives in a small house of Vitangelo's, which gives the narrator the means for the experiment (ch. I of Book IV).
Trajectory
In ch. VI of Book III, when Vitangelo realizes he is a usurer to the town and a fool to Dida, the eyes of Marco di Dio and of Diamante, whom he meets every day on his way home, appear to him like four poisoned daggers. In ch. VII of Book III Vitangelo declares them, "if I remember right," the first victims of the experiment, and at once asks himself by what right he speaks of them, giving them a look and a voice outside himself.
Ch. I of Book IV is the introduction. Vitangelo asks the reader whether Marco, for so many other honest deeds, was not also the good lad the master said he was, and to anyone who objects that the temptation already disproves it, he recalls Julius Caesar, with his wife Calpurnia and King Nicomedes, who all fit into a single name:
Il guajo è questo, sempre, signori: che dovevano tutti quanti esser chiamati con quel nome solo di Giulio Cesare, e che in un solo corpo di sesso maschile dovevano coabitare tanti e anche una femmina, the trouble is always this, gentlemen: that they all had to be called by that single name of Julius Caesar, and that in one male body so many had to cohabit, and even a woman.
After leaving prison, Marco plotted bizarre schemes in partnership with a woman who had turned up one day. For ten years he had said he would leave for England the following week, he carried an English grammar always open to the same page, and he asked his wife questions in English, which she answered promptly and seriously. Their seriousness was fierce because everyone laughed:
Perchè la derisione degli altri era ormai l’aria in cui quel loro sogno respirava. Tolta la derisione, rischiavano di soffocare., because the mockery of others was by then the air their dream breathed. Take away the mockery, and they risked suffocating.
Vitangelo's father gave them money up to a point, and then stopped; none of those he helped called him a usurer with more fury than Marco did. After the father's death, that hatred falls on the son, who goes on, almost without knowing it, benefiting him: the little house is the means Vitangelo needs for the first experiment.
In ch. V of Book IV, at the bank, Vitangelo orders Firbo to evict him and to list his houses. In ch. VII of Book IV, in the rain, protected by a constable and two guards, he watches the eviction: the heap of junk in the street, Diamante shouting curses from the window, the street boys dancing. Marco, on leaving, hurls the carver's mallet at him, and only fails to kill him because the constable pulls him back in time. The crowd protects him. When the young clerk from notary Stampa's office climbs onto a table and announces the donation of a house on Via dei Santi, number 15, and ten thousand lire for a laboratory, Vitangelo trembles, waiting for the transfiguration in everyone's eyes:
Ero, non saprei dir come, tutto un fremito, in attesa del miracolo: la mia trasfigurazione, da un istante all’altro, agli occhi di tutti., I was, I could not say how, all a shudder, waiting for the miracle: my transfiguration, from one moment to the next, in everyone's eyes.
The crowd whistles and insults him, because no one understands that the gift is his, after the eviction. Marco arrives at the new house followed by people, opens the door with the notary's key, and sees Vitangelo leaning against the wall. He leaps at him with a death rattle made of sobs and laughter, and shouts the same thing the crowd shouted at the door:
Perchè avevo voluto dimostrare, che potevo, anche per gli altri, non essere quello che mi si credeva., because I had wanted to show that I could, for others too, not be what I was believed to be.
In ch. IV of Book VII Anna Rosa tells Vitangelo that Marco is among the witnesses gathered for his interdiction, along with Turolla, and when Vitangelo objects that the gift would fall through if he were declared mad, she laughs: they have promised Marco that he will not lose the house.
Themes Embodied
Marco di Dio is the living proof of the thesis of Book III, that an act is a prison. The act of a single moment condemned him forever, and the town does not allow him to be, at the same time, the good lad the master knew: he has been fixed in the Identity of a convict. That is why he also embodies Money and wealth as a dream: instant riches, spelled out syllable by syllable with wide-open eyes, which hold only as long as others laugh. And Madness as a label, for in ch. VII of Book IV Marco and the crowd shout the same word at the man they had just called a usurer: the label changes hands, and Vitangelo still has no third option available.
Marco and Vitangelo are, with the signs reversed, the same case. One was fixed by an act that condemns him, the other wants to prove he can escape the act the town attributes to him (inherited usury), and both fail for opposite reasons: Marco because the town will not forgive him, Vitangelo because the town will not let him go. The gift in ch. VII of Book IV is the point where they touch, and that is why Marco's shout has the tone of a sob and a laugh: as if he recognized in Vitangelo the other convict condemned to be seen.
Divergent Readings
Marco's final shout can be read in two ways. In one, it is the reaction of a man who, after the eviction, receives what he did not expect and does not understand, and concludes as the town does: whoever does a thing like this is mad. This is the reading the text gives when it has the crowd shout the same word at the door. In the other, the gift takes from Marco what sustained him, his hatred of the usurer, just as the absence of laughter would take the air from his dream (ch. I of Book IV): without the enemy that Vitangelo's father and later Vitangelo himself supplied, there is no one left to hate. The sobs mixed with laughter in the death rattle support both.
The second reading explains why Marco reappears in ch. IV of Book VII, among the witnesses to the interdiction, even with the house promised: whoever has lost an enemy may want to prove he was always mad. The text does not say this, and Anna Rosa only reports that the house is guaranteed and that Marco will testify. What the book leaves unanswered is whether Marco's shout is a sentence or a thanks he does not know how to utter.
Relationships
- Vitangelo Moscarda: the landlord who collects no rent, the guinea pig of the first experiment (ch. I of Book IV), the evicted man who is later favored (ch. VII of Book IV), and the man he attacks with the mallet before shouting "mad" (ch. VII of Book IV).
- Moscarda's father: the banker who gave him money up to a point and then stopped, and whom he called a usurer with more fury than anyone (ch. I of Book IV).
- Firbo and Quantorzo: the two who never collected the rent on the little house (ch. I of Book IV) and before whom the eviction is ordered (ch. V of Book IV).
- Dida: Vitangelo's wife, who reproaches her husband for having watched the eviction (ch. II of Book V).
- Anna Rosa: the friend who tells Vitangelo that Marco will be a witness at the interdiction and will not lose the house (ch. IV of Book VII).