The Oil Jar and Other Stories by Luigi Pirandello Read Free Book Online Page B

would it be too much to ask you to announce my call to the Marchese?”
    Lydia stood up.
    â€œWait,” Falci then said, getting up also and resuming his customary manner. “I want you to know that I will not say a word to the Marchese about having come that time. In fact, if you like, I’ll say that, out of thoughtfulness, you sent for me, before the wedding.”
    Lydia looked him in the eye undauntedly.
    â€œYou shall tell him the truth. No, I’ll tell him.”
    â€œThat you didn’t believe me.”
    â€œExactly.”
    Falci shrugged his shoulders, smiled.
    â€œIt might do you harm. And I wouldn’t want that. But if you wanted to postpone my call until after the wedding—look, I would be equally willing to come back.”
    â€œNo,” said Lydia, speaking more with her gesture than with her voice. Stifled by her agitation, her face flushed with shame caused by that apparent generosity of the doctor, she signaled with her hand for him to come with her.
    Silvio Borghi was waiting impatiently in his room.
    â€œHere is Dr. Falci, Silvio,” said Lydia, entering, trembling all over. “Downstairs we cleared up a misunderstanding. You remember, don’t you, that on his first call the Doctor said he wanted to come back?”
    â€œYes,” answered Borghi. “I remember very well, Doctor.”
    â€œWhat you don’t know yet,” continued Lydia, “is that he did in fact come back, on the very morning when your mother’s sad death occurred. And he spoke with me and told me that he believed your ailment was not really what so many other doctors had declared it to be, and that, in his opinion, therefore, it was not at all unlikely that you could be cured. I told you nothing about it.”
    â€œBecause, you see, your fiancée,” Dr. Falci hastened to add, “seeing that it was a doubt that I expressed in very vague terms at that moment, considered it, more than anything else, as a consolation I wished to offer, and didn’t attach much importance to it.”
    â€œThat is what I said, not what you think,” Lydia replied intrepidly. “Dr. Falci, Silvio, suspected what is actually the truth, that I told you nothing about his second call; and he was kind enough to come entirely on his own, before the wedding, to offer you his treatment without any remuneration. Now, Silvio, you are free to think, as he does, that I wanted you to stay blind to get you to marry me.”
    â€œWhat are you saying, Lydia?” the blind man exclaimed with a start.
    â€œOh, yes,” she continued at once, with a strange laugh. “And even that may be true, because, in fact, that’s the only way I could become your ... ”
    â€œWhat are you saying?” Borghi repeated, interrupting her.
    â€œYou’ll see for yourself, Silvio, if Dr. Falci succeeds in restoring your sight. I’ll leave you now.”
    â€œLydia! Lydia!” Borghi called.
    But she had already gone out, slamming the door behind her violently. She went and threw herself on her bed, bit the pillow in her rage and at first broke out into uncontrollable sobbing. When the first fury of her tears had abated, she remained dumbfounded and as if horrified in the face of her own conscience. It seemed to her that everything the doctor had said to her, in that cold and biting way of his, she had already said to herself for some time; or, rather, someone inside her had said it; and she had pretended not to hear. Yes, all along, all along she had remembered Dr. Falci, and every time his image had surfaced in her mind, like the ghost of a remorse, she had suppressed it with an insult: “Charlatan!” Because—how could she go on denying it now?–she wished, truly wished her Silvio to remain blind. His blindness was the indispensable condition for his love. For, if he should regain his sight tomorrow, handsome as he was, young, rich, a nobleman, why would he