Part 21

ANDRONICO. No doubt you are right. But do not suppose that she will be of the same way of thinking. She has just told me that she will never leave me for any other man in the world. I cannot believe that she could so quickly change her mind. Still I will do as you ask, and thus you shall learn the truth. (_He calls._) Dina, my pretty! listen! come here!

DINA. Did you call me, my master?

ANDRONICO. Listen, my pretty: this good man is seeking you on behalf of your husband, and we have agreed that if you want to leave me I shall let you go, that if you want to remain you shall remain. You know that you are happy with me, and that I shall never let you want for anything. Do as you will and as you please, I say no more.

DINA. To go with my husband? I don’t want to! To be beaten? My faith, no! I would to heaven that I had never known him, that greatest of all the cowards that eat bread! I say it once for all, I don’t wish to return to him.

ANDRONICO. Well, well, well! Are you satisfied? When I told you this you would not believe me.

PITTARO. But listen, girl! She herself told Bilora, not half-an-hour ago, that she wanted to return to him, but that you did not wish it.

DINA. I? I never said anything of the sort. To whom did I say it? As the good wife says, I leave that lie to him who invented it.

ANDRONICO. Go in, my dear, and do not trouble yourself further. (_To PITTARO._) What do you say now? What further can you ask?

PITTARO. I, sir? Nothing further. I want what she wants. But let me tell you that Bilora is a man to be feared; he bears you no good will, and you would do well to return his wife to him.

ANDRONICO. What do you mean by that? Explain at once. Do you threaten me? Do not anger me. I am quite cool, and I tell you frankly that you are a fool. Begone at once. Once for all I will not surrender Dina. Do you understand? I am going home. See to it that I do not find you here when next I go forth. Let that suffice.

Pittaro promises to depart and never to be seen again. After Andronico has gone in, Bilora enters. Probably he has heard everything for he reproaches his gossip with not having succeeded. Thereupon Pittaro, becoming impatient, and angered already by Andronico, tells him that he is tiresome; but he tells him this in the energetic words which in those days were still permitted in the theatre. Whereupon he seeks to lead Bilora away with him, but since Bilora refuses, he bids him go to the devil, and departs.

BILORA (_alone_). No, I shall not go. My affairs are all upside down; it is enough to make a schoolboy die of laughter, and I don’t know what to do. This old man has ruined my life. It would be better that he were dead and buried. Let him but come forth and I shall tell him what I think of him, and so manhandle him as to knock the life out of him. Yes, but he will scream in fear if I do that! Better perhaps to do as the Spanish soldiers do; that will not leave him time to say eight words. Let me draw my knife from its scabbard. Let us see if the blade is bright. By the scorpion, it is none too bright, so perhaps he won’t fear it. Accursed old man, may you but come quickly, I shall flay you alive. I shall take his clothes and I shall sell them, together with my cloak, to buy a horse so as to travel far. I shall turn soldier and live in camps, for henceforth I shall hold my house in horror. Whoever likes can have it. Ah! would he but come forth. Chut! Here he is! May the plague burst the old fool. The moment is choice, provided that no one comes. Here he is! Ah! now he shall not escape me.

ANDRONICO (_in the doorway speaking to the servant_). What animal is that, wandering round the house at this time? Some drunkard? Do not come, Zane, remain indoors. I am going to take the air to calm myself; keep Dina company and then come and seek me in the fourth hour of night with a lantern.

ZANE. I shall come as soon as possible. Do not be uneasy.

ANDRONICO. Zane, shut the door. I shall go this way.

BILORA. May death eat thee, thou worn-out old man! Take that! and that! (_He strikes him._)

ANDRONICO. Oh, my sweet son! Oh, my lad! Mercy, mercy! To me! to me! help! fire! fire! fire! I am being murdered! Treason! Fire! fire! To me! I die! I am dead! (_He falls._)

BILORA. Fire! Ay—into the fire of hell shalt thou go. Return me my wife now. Did I not tell you to let her be? But he is dead, he does not move a limb. Ah! you have laughed your fill, eh? Didn’t I warn you, eh?

This ends the piece. This _dialogue_, whose energy and colour is lost in translation, is, as will be seen, a tragedy, but a real tragedy; just so might it have been in reality upon some Venetian _traghetto_, one of those flights of steps so often drenched with blood, to be washed a moment later by the waters of the canal as they bore away the body. The original is most arresting. It contains no fiction, no ideal. Each character thinks and speaks as in actual life. But how extraordinary the humour and how rude the fibre of a public that could laugh at these scenes of despair and murder that were seasoned by the most frightful jests!

Bilora’s monologue is remarkable for its truth to life in an epoch in which dramatic convention was surcharged with emphasis: we behold an assassin who premeditates and does not premeditate; one who desired and did not desire. He wanted to beat and to insult his man; if the man died, so much the worse. The peasant is neither brave nor evil; he is not proud and he has not the honour of the gentleman; he loves his criminal wife, he regrets her, he desires her, he will have her, he will beat her and he will love her again. That is the child of nature. One can understand how much an actor of intelligence might extract from such a situation, fraught with laughter, tears and terror.

The dialogue we have just indicated seems a sort of revenge taken by the fancy of Ruzzante upon that which follows, in which he plays the part of a poltroon, or rather of the soldier captain.

MONOLOGUE OF RUZZANTE RETURNING FROM THE WARS

Behold me at last arrived in Venice. I was as impatient to get here as the lean mare is impatient to see the grass sprouting in springtime. At last I am going to see my Gnua (_Genoveffa_)! To hell with camps and wars and soldiers! I shall no longer be disturbed by rolling of drums and braying of trumpets which set me trembling. I shall no longer hear the cry “To arms!” I shall no longer be afraid! When the cry “To arms” rang out, it was as if I had a press upon my stomach. And then the musket-shots! I tremble no longer; I am brave now; I shall be able to sleep and dream as much as I like. I shall eat when I like, what I like, and too much if I like. I shall digest. I shall go as I please. Saint Mark! Saint Mark! I am at last in safety. I travelled swiftly; I have done more than sixty miles a day. I came hither in three days from Cremona! It is not as far as people say. They will tell you that from Cremona to Brescia it is forty miles; it is but a stride. From Brescia to Peschiera they say it is thirty. From Peschiera here, what can the distance be? I came in a day although it is true that I walked all night. Faith! my legs are aching, although I am not tired. The fact is that fear drove me and hope sustained me, and my shoes bore the burden. I want to look at them. May the scorpion eat me! Now here is one with no sole left. That must have been in the war. If I had had the enemy behind me I could not have walked faster. I look like a thief in these clothes, which I stole from a peasant. But the clothes do not matter. I am in safety.... Then I took a boat at Fusine. If I had been killed in the war and I were no more than a ghost I should not be here now. Ah, but no! ghosts don’t eat. I am myself. I am alive. I must go and look for Gnua and my gossip Menato, who has also come to live in Venice. But here he comes. Heh! gossip, it is I, Ruzzante!

MENATO. Is it you, gossip? I should never have known you. You are so changed! But be welcome. Do you come from the wars? Have you been sick or in prison? But what an evil countenance, gossip! You have the air of a brigand. Forgive me, but I have seen more than a hundred men who were hanged, and never one with so evil a countenance as yours.

RUZZANTE. That is the effect of misery and war, of bad drinking, bad eating, hunger and thirst. Had you but been where I have been!

MENATO. You talk like a book, my friend. Have you then learnt to speak Florentine?

RUZZANTE. He who travels the world must make haste to learn. I speak French too, but were I to address you in that language of a certainty you would not understand me. I learnt all through fear in a day, and I glory in it.

Hereupon follow several untranslatable pleasantries upon alleged Florentine and French words, with explanations in the Paduan dialect and interpretations by Ruzzante. Menato then turns to the subject of the rags worn by Ruzzante. Ruzzante tells him that he conquered them, sword in hand, from a peasant whom he had wounded. “A plague on these good-for-nothing peasants,” he says.

MENATO. But, gossip, now that you are a soldier, you no longer believe yourself a rustic, eh? Are you become such a roarer that you would eat iron?

RUZZANTE. Had you been where I have been, you would also have learned to eat not only iron, but weapons and baggage as well, for having no money by which to live I sold all that I possessed at an inn.

MENATO. Is that all that you have brought from your assaults upon the enemy?

RUZZANTE. I never sought to do the enemy any ill. Why should I have done so? The enemy never did me any harm. I made war upon cows and mares, and sometimes I took prisoners.

MENATO. You look so much like a bad soldier that no one who sees you will believe that you have ever been to war. I had looked to see you return crippled in a leg or an arm, or with your face scarred or an eye missing.

RUZZANTE. Valour does not lie in wounds and cripplings. Do you imagine that four men could make me afraid? Had you but been where I have been you would take another tone. You would have done things which you have never done. It is not necessary to limp or to be short of an arm to go through one of those battles in which one can do nothing against so many. In those affairs no one knows anybody, gossip. You hear everyone crying: “Kill! kill!”—Harquebus shots here, and partisan strokes there. You see your comrade drop dead, and then it is your turn; and if you attempt to run away the enemy charges you, and a shot out of somewhere breaks your spine. I tell you that courage is necessary to attempt to escape or to go into hiding. And do you suppose that anyone wastes his time trying to hide? Now look at me who am speaking to you. I pretended to be dead and all the cavalry rode over me. If the mountain of Vesuvius had been rolled over my body it could not have been worse. I am telling you the truth. It is necessary to have courage to come back alive. Once as I was running away a cavalier and his horse that were also running away, trod on my heel and stripped my shoe of its sole as you can see.

Menato inquires whether all his campaigns have brought him any money. To this Ruzzante replies with his sacramental phrase: “If you had been where I have been you would not have brought back more than I have.”

But the aim of his journey is his well-beloved Gnua, who, according to Menato, has forgotten him, and is at this moment established in Venice with the familiar of a cardinal. To this Ruzzante announces that it is a little thing for him to kill a man, and that he will kill this one even if he should be four men.

RUZZANTE. But here is Gnua, gossip. Here she comes, faith! Now we shall see whether she will caress me. Hola! tell me, then, pretty one, don’t you see me? It is I.

GNUA. Ruzzante! Is it thou? Alive? But in what rags, and what a piteous countenance! You have profited nothing then?

RUZZANTE. I have profited enough for you since I bring you my carcass safe and sound as you can see.

GNUA. As for your carcass I can do very well without it. I had imagined you would have brought me some fine robe. I must go. I am expected. Let me go.

RUZZANTE. To the devil with the love I bore you! No sooner have you seen me than you want to go again. I, who have returned from the wars on purpose to see you.

GNUA. You have seen me enough. To tell you the truth I don’t want you to be a cause of trouble, for there is someone who is entertaining me very comfortably, and who knows nothing of our past adventure.

Ruzzante informs her that he is as capable of entertaining her as this other one; but Gnua has no wish to die of hunger with him. “After four months of business in the wars,” she says, “you might at least have brought some money back. But I don’t believe you were ever at the war. You have the face of a liar, and you probably spent your time in some apothecary’s shop. I should prefer you if you had returned short of an arm or a leg, and perhaps blind or with your nose slit, anxious to earn money for me as you promised. He swore to me,” she says to Menato, “to die or to return rich, and you see in what condition he returns; that is proof enough of how little he thought about me.”

RUZZANTE. I tell you that I was unfortunate.

GNUA. That is very possible, but I who have not been, and who do not want to be, unfortunate, am not going to be wretched with you. Go! Look after your own affairs, and I’ll look after mine. I am going back to my man.

RUZZANTE. To the devil with your man! I know no man of yours other than myself.

GNUA. Let me go, wretch, rascal, liar, good-for-nothing!

RUZZANTE. Come with me, I tell you. Do not make me angry. I have changed, and you shall no longer lead me by the nose as you used to do.

MENATO. Listen, my good girl, come with me! He is capable of killing you.

GNUA. He? Don’t mind him. He is equal to killing nothing but a flea, the boaster!

The _Bravo_ (it is thus that Gnua’s lover is named) enters, falls upon Ruzzante and beats him until he falls. The Bravo carries off Gnua. When he has gone Ruzzante raises his head and addresses Menato:

RUZZANTE. Have they gone, gossip? Make quite sure!

MENATO. Be at ease, gossip; they have gone, there is none here.

RUZZANTE. But the others, have they gone too?

MENATO. What others? I saw only one.

RUZZANTE. You are blind! There were more than a hundred of them.

MENATO. Oh no, by the scorpion!

RUZZANTE. Oh yes, by the scorpion! Do you pretend to know better than I? They were a hundred against one. If I hadn’t pretended to be dead so quickly they would have made me so in reality!

MENATO. You told me that you were so brave that in battle you knew neither friends nor relatives.

RUZZANTE. Certainly! But what do you expect of one man against all the world. You should have come to my aid. Do you think that I am a Roland?

MENATO. I assure you, gossip, that there was only one man, but I imagined that you allowed yourself to be ill-treated so as to rise up and fall upon him when he should have thought you dead. I expected you to prevent him from carrying off Gnua. Do you understand, gossip?

RUZZANTE. I don’t, gossip; I didn’t even think of it. I flung myself down, I pretended to be dead as I used to do in battle so as to save my life. It is the safest way when so many enemies fall upon you.

MENATO. Gossip, on my faith, I tell you that that man was alone. Why didn’t you defend yourself with your lance?

RUZZANTE. One against a hundred? There is nothing to do but run on those occasions.

MENATO. Gossip, there was only one, I tell you!

RUZZANTE. Very well then, if there was only one it is some treason or some enchantment of Gnua. What do you think? Do you think she is a sorceress? In the old days she led me to suppose that she was the most beautiful girl in the world; yet that is not true. There are many more beautiful than she. Now she contrives that one single man shall seem a hundred to me; therefore—may the scorpion eat her!—I will get her burnt for a witch. You are very sure that there was only one? You see what a valiant man I must be to have been able to bear so many blows!

MENATO. By the scorpion, there were blows enough to kill a donkey! I could not see the sky, they rained so fast. Are you not hurt? I don’t understand how you happen to be still alive!

RUZZANTE. Habit, gossip. I am accustomed to it. I feel nothing. I have but one regret, and that is not to have known that the