The Dial (Third Series)/Volume 75/The Man with the Flower in His Mouth

by Luigi Pirandello

THE MAN WITH THE FLOWER
IN HIS MOUTH

A Dialogue

BY LUIGI PIRANDELLO

Translated From the Italian by Arthur Livingston

CHARACTERS

The Man With the Flower in His Mouth
A Customer (With Time on His Hands)

Twice, during the Dialogue, a melancholy woman, in a black dress, and an old hat with drooping feathers, will appear round the corner.

An avenue, lined with trees; electric lights gleaming through the foliage. On either side, the last houses of a street crossing the avenue. Among the houses to the left, a miserable all-night café, with tables and chairs on the sidewalk. In front of the houses on the right a street-lamp lighted. Astride the angle made by the two walls of the house to the left, which has a front both on the street and on the avenue, a street-lamp, also lighted. It is shortly after midnight. Faintly, from a distance, comes at intervals the thrumming of a mandolin. As the curtain rises, The Man With the Flower in His Mouth is seated at one of the tables, silently observing the Customer, who, at a neighbouring table, is sipping a mint frappée through a straw.

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: Ah!—I was just going to say! . . . So you are a good-natured sort of a fellow. . . . You lost your train?

THE CUSTOMER: By less than a minute. I get to the station—and there it is—just pulling out!

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: You might have caught it by running!

THE cUSTOMER: I suppose I might. It's absurd, I know. If I hadn't been all cluttered up with a dozen packages, more or less—huh! worse than a pack-horse! . . . Oh, these women! . . . One errand after another—world without end! Why, it took me three minutes, after I got out of my taxi, to get my fingers through the strings of all those packages! Two on every finger!

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: I'd like to have seen you! . . . You know what I would have done? I would have left the blamed things in the carriage!

THE CUSTOMER: And when you got home—eh? . . . How about the old woman—and my girls—not to mention those from the neighbourhood!

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: Let 'em shriek! . . . I'd have en- joyed it—I would!

THE CUSTOMER: Guess you don't know what it's like to have a brood of women with you on a vacation in the country!

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: Oh, I guess I do—in fact, I say so because I do. . . . (A pause.) They all say they won't need to take a blessed thing!

THE CUSTOMER: And you think they stop there? According to them, they go to the country to save money. . . . Well, the moment they get to some place out there, in the backwoods—the uglier it is, the dirtier it is, the more they insist on dressing up in all their Sunday togs. Oh—women, my dear sir! . . . But, after all, dressing is their profession! . . . "The next time you run into town, dear, I wish you'd stop in at So-and-So's. And then, if you don't mind, dear, on the way back—no trouble, is it, really—will you stop at my dress-makers and—" . . . and they're off! . . . "But how am I going to get all that done in three hours?" you say. . . . "Oh, that's easy, take a taxi!" . . . And the worst of it is, that in my hurry to get away, I forgot to take the keys of my house, here in town.

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: Ah—that's a good one! . . . And so—

THE CUSTOMER: I left that pile of bundles in the parcel room at the station. Then I went to dinner in a restaurant. Then, to get my temper back, to the theatre. . . . Hot? . . . Hot was no name for it! On coming out, I say to myself: What next? . . . Midnight. . . . And the next train leaves at 4 a. m.—three hours left for a bit of a nap. . . . Not worth the money. . . . So here I am! . . . This place doesn't shut up, I hope—

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: Never shuts up, this place. (A pause.) So you left your bundles in the parcel room—eh?

THE CUSTOMER: Why not? Safe, aren't they? All pretty well tied up!

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: No—no—I didn't mean that. . . . (A pause.) Well tied up, eh? Oh, I imagine so. Boys in the shops these days can wrap a bundle up quick as scat. (A pause.) What hands they have! . . . Here's a long strip of doubled paper—pink—with wavy lines—Ah! a sight for sore eyes! . . . How smooth it is! You'd almost like to put your face on it to feel the cool! And they roll it out, there on the counter, as nice as you please! And they put your cloth in the middle of it, all neatly folded up. First, they take the back of the hand, and they raise one edge of the paper. Then they bring the other hand down from above, and—how clever and graceful they are! They fold down one strip—a strip they don’t really need—just for the art of the thing! Then, first on one side, then on the other, they fold the corners down, to make two triangles. Then they turn the points under. . . . Then they reach for the twine with one hand. . . . They pull out just what they need—to an inch—and they have it tied up for you before you've really had time to admire their skill! . . . And there you have your bundle, with a ring to put your finger through!

THE CUSTOMER: Aha! . . . You seem to have watched clerks in the stores pretty closely!

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: I? . . . Huh! . . . I've watched them whole days at a time. Why, I can spend an hour in front of a store, looking through the show window! Helps me to forget myself. . . . Why—I feel as though . . . oh—I'd like to be that piece of silk in there—that strip of braid—that red or that blue ribbon, which the girls in the dry goods stores, after they've measured it with their tape-measure . . . did you ever notice what they do? . . . They make an "8" of it around the thumb and finger of their left hand before they wrap it up. . . . (4 pause.) And I watch the man or the woman, when they come out of the shop with the bundle either hanging to one of their fingers, or held under one of their arms. And I watch them till they are out of sight . . . imagining—uh-h! . . . all that I imagine! . . . You couldn't guess half of it! (A pause—Then gloomily, reflectively, as though speaking to himself.) But it does me good—some good at least.

THE CUSTOMER: Good? That's interesting. What good does it do you?

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: Oh—it helps to attach me—in my imagination, I mean—attach me to life—much as a vine clings to the bars of an iron gate. (A pause.) Oh . . . I never let it rest a moment—my imagination! I cling with it, persistently, to life—to the lives of other people! Not of people I know. No—no. I couldn't—with people I know. That disgusts me, somehow. Sort of sick to your stomach, eh?—No, I cling to the life of other people—of strangers, with whom my imagination can wander freely—But not capriciously, you understand—oh, no! . . . On the contrary—taking careful account of the least things I notice in them! And you have no idea how it works! I get right in on the inside track with some of them. . . . I can see this man's house, for instance. I live in it. I come to feel quite at home there—down to the point of noticing—say, you know, every house has a certain faint odour peculiar to it? There's one in your house—there's one in mine. But in our houses, of course, we don't notice it—because it's the very breath of our lives—understand! Oh—I can see that you agree!

THE CUSTOMER: Yes. Because—well—you must have a good time—just imagining all those things!

MAN WITH THE FLOWER (wearily, after some reflection): A good time? I?

THE CUSTOMER: Yes. . . . I suppose—

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: A good time! . . . I should say! . . . Tell me—have you ever been to see a good doctor?

THE cUSTOMER: I? . . . No. Why? . . . I've never been sick.

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: No—no. . . . I meant, have you ever noticed, in a doctor's office, the waiting-room where the patients sit until their turn comes?

THE CUSTOMER: Ah, yes. . . . I once took my daughter to see a doctor. . . . Something wrong with her nerves—

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: Well—I wasn't prying, you know. I meant that those waiting-rooms. . . . (A pause.) Did you ever notice?—a black horse-hair sofa in some old-fashioned style . . . upholstered chairs, that hardly ever match . . . an arm-chair or two—huh—second-hand stuff—picked up where they can find it. Put there for the patients. . . . Nothing to do with the house, you see. . . . The doctor—huh! . . . for himself, his wife, and his wife's friends, he has a fine parlour, comfortable, done up in style. . . . And what a noise one of those chairs in the parlour would make if you stuck it in there in the waiting-room! . . . Why—you need things about as they are—good, decent stuff, of course—not too showy—stuff that will wear. Because it'll be used by all sorts of people who come to see the doctor. I wonder. . . . When you went to the doctor's with your daughter that time—did you notice the chairs you sat on while you were waiting?

THE CUSTOMER: To tell the truth, I . . . I didn't!

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: Oh, of course you didn't—because you weren't sick. . . . (A pause.) But even sick people don't always notice—all taken up as they are with what's wrong with them. (A pause.) And yet, oftentimes some of them sit there, looking so carefully at one of their fingers, which is going round and round, making letters and numbers that have no meaning, on the varnished arm of the chair where they are sitting. They're thinking. They don't really see. (A pause.) But what a strange impression it makes on you, when, as you go through the waiting-room again, after you are through with the doctor, you catch a glimpse of that chair where you were sitting just a few moments before—anxious to have some opinion on your mysterious disease. There it is—empty, indifferent, waiting for somebody—anybody at all—to come and sit down in it. (A pause.) What were we saying?—Oh, yes. I remember. The pleasures we take in imagination—how do you suppose I came to think of a chair in one of those waiting-rooms in a doctor's office, where the patients sit waiting for their turn?

THE CUSTOMER: Yes—in fact—

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: You don't understand?—Neither do I. (A pause.) But the fact is that certain mental associations—oh! between things worlds apart—are so peculiar to each of us, and they are determined by considerations, experiences, habits of mind, so individual that people would never understand one another unless they avoided them when they talked. Nothing more illogical, sometimes, than these associations. (A pause.) But the relation, perhaps, may be this—funny, eh? Do you suppose those chairs get any pleasure out of imagining who the patient is to be who will next sit down in them, waiting for his turn to see the doctor?—what disease he will have?—where he will go?—what he will do after he has been examined? . . . No pleasure at all! And so it is with me. . . . No pleasure at all! So many patients come, and they are there, poor chairs, to be sat on! . . . Well—my job in life is something like theirs. Now this thing, and now that, occupies me. This moment it happens to be you, and . . . pleasure?—Believe me, I find no pleasure at all in thinking of the train you lost—of the family you have in the country—all the annoyances I can imagine you have.

THE CUSTOMER: There are a lot of them, I can tell you!

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: Well, you ought to thank God that you've nothing worse than annoyances!—(A pause.) Some of us, you know, are worse off than that! (A pause.) I'm telling you that I need to attach myself in my imagination to the lives other people lead. But—in my peculiar way—without pleasure—without any real interest, even—in such a way, in fact—yes, just so—in such a way, precisely, as to sense the annoyances they encounter. . . . In such a way as to be able to understand how stupid and silly life is, so that no one, really, ought to care a snap about being rid of the thing! (With sullen rage.) And that’s a good deal to prove, you know. It takes arguing and proof—continual examples, which we have to keep impressing upon ourselves—mercilessly—because, my dear sir—we don't know what it is, exactly—but it's there, just the same—it's there—and we all feel it, every one of us, catching us—here—by our throats—a sort of anguish—a thirst for living that is never satisfied, that is never quenched—that can never be quenched. Because life, as we live it from moment to moment, is always such a hurrying—such a stuffy thing—that it never lets us get the full taste of it. The flavour of life is in the past, which remains always as something living within us. Our enjoyment of it comes from back there—from the memories which hold us bound—but bound to what? Bound to these stupidities, precisely—to these annoyances—to all these silly illusions, all these insipid occupations of ours. Yes—yes—this little bit of foolishness here—this little annoyance . . . little??—why little? Even this great misfortune—a real misfortune—yes, sir—four, five, ten years hence will have, who knows, what flavour for us? Who knows what keen enjoyment, mingled with its tears! And life—God! Life—the moment we think of losing it—especially when it is only a matter of days—(At this point, a woman, dressed in black, appears around the corner on the right.) . . . Say—do you see that—I mean, over there—at the corner? You see that woman Ah! She's gone again.

THE CUSTOMER: A woman?—Where? . . . Who was it?

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: You didn't see her? . . . She has gone now.

THE CUSTOMER: A woman? . . .

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: My wife. . . . Yes. . . .

THE cusToMER: Ah! . . . Your wife!

MAN WITH THE FLOWER (after a pause): She keeps her eye on me. . . . Sometimes, you know, I feel almost like getting up and giving her a kick! But what good would that do—after all? . . . She's like one of those stray dogs you take into the house. . . . Obstinate! . . . The more you kick them and beat them, the closer they stick to your heels. (A pause.) What that woman is going through on my account, you can't imagine, sir! . . . Goes without her meals—rarely ever goes to bed—just follows me around, day and night—that way—at a distance! . . . I wish she would be a little more attentive to her appearance! She might brush her clothes once in a while, at least . . . and that old hat she wears! She looks more like a rag doll than like a woman! . . . Ah!—and the dust—the white dust has settled on her hair, too, here, around her forehead . . . and barely thirty-four at that! . . . (A pause.) I get so mad at her sometimes—you've no idea! . . . And I lose my temper—and I go up to her, and I almost scream in her face—"Idiot!—Idiot!" . . . and I give her a shaking! . . . Nothing!—She swallows it all, and just stands there looking at me, with eyes . . . with eyes . . . Well—I could choke the life out of her, then! . . . But no—she waits till I am some distance off—and then she takes up the trail again! . . . (At this point the woman's head again appears around the corner.) Look!—Look! . . . There she is again! . . . See her?—Did you see her?

THE CUSTOMER: Poor thing!

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: Poor thing! . . . Huh! . . . Do you know what that woman wants of me? She wants me to stay quiet—peaceful-like—at home where she can cuddle me and humour me with her tenderest and most affectionate attentions! . . . every room in perfect order . . . every piece of furniture in its place—and the varnish clean and polished. . . . Silence . . . deadly silence . . . broken only by the tick-tock, tick-tock of the grandfather's clock in our dining-room. . . . Huh! . . . That's her notion of life! . . . Well—I'll leave it to you. Isn't that about the limit of absurdity! . . . Absurdity?—Ferocity, I would say rather. . . . A kind of ghoulish cruelty! Do you suppose, sir, that the houses of Avezzano, or the houses of Messina, knowing that the earthquake was going to topple them over within a very few days, could have been persuaded to sit still there, under the moonlight—all in nice straight lines, radiating from the squares—eh?—the way the Town Planning Committee decided they ought to be? . . . No, sir!—Brick and stone though they were, they would have found legs, somehow, to run away! And the people who lived in them—do you think that if they had known what was going to happen to them, they would have gone to their bedrooms every night as usual—folded their clothes up nicely, set their shoes outside their doors, and then crawled comfortably into bed between their nice white sheets—knowing for certain that in a few hours they would be dead? . . . Do you think they would?

THE CUSTOMER: But, perhaps your Signora. . . .

MAN WITH THE FLOWER: Just a moment. . . . If death, my dear sir, were like one of those strange, loathsome insects you sometimes find walking up your coat sleeve. . . . Here you are, going along the side-walk. . . . A man comes up to you, all of a sudden—stops you, and then, cautiously, holding out two fingers of his hand, says to you—"Beg pardon—may I?" . . . And with those two fingers he skips the insect off! . . . Ah! . . . That would be fine! . . . But death isn't like one of those loathsome insects. Many people walk by you, but no one notices anything. They are all absorbed in what they are going to do to-morrow or the next day. . . . Now, I, my dear sir—look! (He gets up.) Just step this way—(He draws the man aside till they are standing in the full light of the street-lamp.) Look! . . . I want to show you something. . . . See this spot, under my moustache?—Pretty violet colour, isn't it! . . . Do you know what they call that?—A pretty name!—like a verse from a poem—E-pi-the- li-o-ma! . . . Epithelioma! . . . Say it yourself, and you'll notice how nice it sounds!—Epithelioma! . . . But death—you understand—death! . . . Death has passed my way, and put this flower in my mouth—"A souvenir, my dear sir! Keep it—no charge! . . . I'll be back this way a few months hence!" (A pause.) Now, you tell me, sir—whether, with a flower like this in my mouth, I can sit quietly at home, there, as that poor woman would like to have me do! . . . (A pause.) I scream at her—"Yes—Yes! . . . Don't you want me to kiss you?" . . . "Yes—kiss me!" she says. . . . And you know what she did, the other day? She took a pin and scratched her lip, and then seized me by the head and tried to kiss me—kiss me—here—on my lips—because she wants to die with me, she says! . . . (A pause.) Crazy woman! (Then, angrily.) But I refuse to stay at home! I've simply got to stand around, looking into the shop windows, admiring the deftness of the clerks at the counters! . . . Because, you understand, if I should permit myself one single idle moment—why, I might go mad! . . . I might pull out a revolver and shoot someone who never did me the least harm in the world! . . . Why, I might shoot you, for instance—though all you've done, so far as I can see, is to have lost your train! . . . (He laughs.) Oh,no!—no! . . . Don't be afraid. . . . I'm only joking! . . . (A pause.) Well—I must be going. . . . (A pause.) At the very worst, I might kill myself some day—(A pause.) But, you see, this is the fruit season, and I like apricots. . . . How do you eat them?—Skin and all, I suppose. Ah!—that's the way! . . . You cut them in halves, and you bring your two fingers together, and you suck in the juice, eh?—Ah! that's the way! . . . How good they are! . . . (He laughs. A pause.) Well—give my regards to your wife and daughters, when you get back to the country. (A pause.) I imagine them dressed in white and blue, sitting on the green grass in the shade of some tree. . . . (A pause.) Do something for me to-morrow morning, when you get home—will you? . . . I suppose your villa will be some little distance from the station. Well—you'll get there about sunrise, won't you? And you'd enjoy making the trip on foot. Well—the first tuft of grass you notice on the roadside—just count the blades for me! The number of those blades of grass will be the number of the days I still have to live! . . . (A pause.) . . . Choose a good-sized clump, if you please—eh? . . . (He laughs.) Well—good-night! . . . good-night! . . . (He walks away, humming through his closed lips the movement played by the distant mandolin. He heads at first toward the corner on the right, but then, reflecting that his wife is probably there waiting for him, he turns around and walks off in the other direction. The Customer sits there, looking after him in amazement.)

Curtain