“Granella’s House” (“La casa del Granella”) [1]

Translated by Julie Dashwood

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “Granella’s House” (“La Casa del Granella”), tr. Julie Dashwood. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2025.

“Granella’s House” (“La casa del Granella”) was first published in the literary magazine Il Marzocco on August 27, 1905. Pirandello then republished it in an expanded version that he included as part of his miscellany collection Naked Life (La vita nuda), printed by Treves in Milan in 1910. In 1922 he then added it as part of the second Collection of his Stories for a Year, which still had the title Naked Life (Florence: Bemporad).

This short story is longer than average for Pirandello, but more than that it stands out as one of the most direct treatments of a major topic of interest in his time, the question of spirits, mediums, and paranormal phenomena. Taking on aspects of the genre of the ghost story, while simultaneously engaging with it in an erudite fashion that reflects his familiarity with the theoretical and critical writings of a host of spiritualist thinkers working from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, “Granella’s House” also exhibits the typical facets of Pirandello’s prose, particularly the distinctive form of humor (umorismo) that he was developing in precisely those years. The story revolves around a legal case, another common motif for Pirandello: here, the main character is a lawyer, Zummo, who is approached by the Piccirilli family when they seek his services to represent them in a legal matter against the titular Granella, their former landlord. What makes their case unique, however, is the reason that they were forced out of the house: they fled in fear after coming into contact with spirits inhabiting the space. Granella is now seeking compensation from them for having ruined his property by bringing it into ill repute, by telling everyone that it is haunted. This unexpected turn of events leads the skeptical lawyer down a rabbit hole, and as he begins to research the scientific literature around spiritual phenomena, he discovers that there may in fact be more to them than popular belief might suggest. As he becomes a convinced spiritualist, his quest to vindicate the Piccirillis becomes more complicated. Ultimately, it is through a humorous turn of events that what appears to be their failure turns into a success: while Granella wins an initial judgement in the case, when he then goes to stay at the house to prove to everyone that it is not haunted, he himself ends up fleeing in terror – and this disproves his own case against the poor Piccirillis. Here we see Pirandello’s typical poetics of humor at work. The story thus exemplifies how Pirandello’s own poetics develops in conversation with debates around positivist science, parapsychological and spiritual phenomena, and the philosophical questions that these raise.

In a way, “Granella’s House” can be seen as an extension of how Pirandello developed his fascination with the paranormal in his earlier seminal novel The Late Mattia Pascal (Il fu Mattia Pascal, 1904), particularly in the evocative séance scene at the house of Anselmo Paleari, who is identified as a Theosophist.  Besides representing the author’s interest in the mysteries of existence and the limits of human understanding, the séance dramatizes the protagonist Mattia Pascal's own existential dilemma as he questions selfhood after faking his death and assuming a new identity. Interestingly, the paranormal themes in “Granella’s House” also reaffirm the significant influence of Luigi Capuana on Pirandello’s work. Capuana’s reflections on spiritualism laid the groundwork for his theory of artistic hallucination, which frames the idea of an art form that creates living characters, that is figures so vividly realized that they can function as autonomous beings within reality. Indeed, between 1904 and 1915, Pirandello, still a young writer, absorbed and adapted some of these ideas. Their influence is evident not just in The Late Mattia Pascal and “Granella’s House,” but also in the the story “Characters” (“Personaggi,” 1906) and the iconic play Six Characters in Search of an Author (Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore, 1921).

The Editors

I

Mice don’t suspect that traps are dangerous. Would they get caught if they did? But they don’t understand what’s happening even when they have been caught. They climb squeaking up the bars of the trap, poke their sharp little snouts between one bar and the next, and turn endlessly round and round, looking for the way out.

But a man who has recourse to the law knows when he is heading straight into a trap. Mice struggle. A man who knows what is happening stays still. Still with his body, of course. Inwardly, that is deep in his soul, he does as mice do, and worse.

And on that August morning, in the waiting room of their lawyer, Signor Zummo, his numerous clients were doing just that while sweating and being eaten up by flies and boredom.[2]

In the stifling heat their wordless impatience, aggravated by secret thoughts, grew beyond measure as the minutes passed. Sitting there, however, unmoving, they cast looks of ferocious hatred at one another.

Each would have liked to have the lawyer all to themselves for their litigation, but foresaw that since he had so many to interview that morning he would grant them only a very short time and that, tired and worn out by the sheer volume of work, in that temperature of forty degrees, and confused and overwhelmed at having to consider so many issues, he would no longer be able to tackle their case with his usual lucidity, his usual acumen.

And every time the clerk, who was copying a memorandum in great haste with his collar unbuttoned and a neckerchief under his chin, raised his eyes to the pendulum clock, two or three of them sighed heavily and more than one chair creaked. Others, already overcome by the heat and the long wait, looked despairingly at the tall dusty bookcases stuffed with papers: old disputes, procedures, scourge or ruin of so many poor families! Yet others, hoping for a distraction, looked at the windows with their green blinds drawn. From there came the noises of the street, of people who were going about their business heedless and happy, while those in here…  Oof! And with a furious gesture they swatted away the flies which, poor things, in accordance with their nature tried to cause them further distress, so as to profit from the copious sweat that August weather and the frenzied torment of legal disputes wring from the foreheads and hands of human beings.

And yet there was someone more tiresome than the flies in the waiting room that morning: the lawyer’s son, a sturdy little brat of about ten, who had no doubt sneaked out of the house adjoining the office barefoot, dishevelled and his face dirty to cheer up his papa’s clients.

“What’s your name? Vincenzo? Oh, what a horrible name! Is this locket made of gold? Can you open it? How do you open it? What’s inside? Oh, look… some hair. Whose hair is it? Why do you keep it there?”

Then, hearing his father’s footsteps behind the office door as he accompanied an important client out, he hid under the little table between the clerk’s legs. All of them in the waiting room rose to their feet and looked at the lawyer beseechingly but heraised his hands and said, before returning to his office:

“Be patient, please. One at a time.”

The lucky client whose turn it was followed him respectfully and closed the door. For the others the wait began again, more irksome and oppressive than ever. 

II

Only three of them, who seemed to be husband, wife, and daughter, showed no sign at all of impatience.

The man, of about sixty, had a funereal appearance. He had refused to take off his old, flat-brimmed top hat, which was shabby and green with age, perhaps so as not to detract from the gravity of his black garb, and the loose, heavy, ancient frock coat which gave off a sharp smell of mothballs.

He had evidently dressed like this because he had thought it fitting to do so when coming to speak to his lawyer.

But he wasn’t sweating.

He was so pale that he seemed to have no blood in his veins, and as though his cheeks and chin were covered in mold because of the sparse grey fuzz there which passed for a beard. His pale eyes had a squint and were set close to his big slanting nose, and he sat bent over, his head down, as though crushed by an unbearable weight. His thin, transparent hands rested on his little walking stick.

Next to him, however, his wife, while manifestly slow-witted, seemed proud in the extreme. She was fat, buxom and in rude health, and had a large, fiery-red face with a bit of a moustache, and a pair of wide-open black eyes pointed at the ceiling.

The daughter, to his other side, was a repeat of the same dignified squalor as her father. Very thin, pale, and squinty-eyed like him, she sat like a little hunchback. Both the daughter and the father, or so it seemed, would fall to the ground without that big stout woman between them to somehow hold them up.

All three were watched by the other clients with an intense curiosity mixed with a certain hostile unease, even though they, poor things, had already given up their turn three times, letting it be understood that they had a great deal to discuss with the lawyer.

What disaster had struck them? Who was persecuting them? Was it the shadow of a violent death which cried out to them for revenge? Or the threat of poverty?

Certainly not poverty. The wife was weighed down with gold; huge earrings hung down from her ears, a double-stranded necklace was clasped round her neck, a large teardrop brooch went up and down with her chest which seemed like a bellows, a long chain secured her fan, and masses and masses of rings almost prevented the use of her stubby, blood-red fingers.

By this time no one asked them for permission to go in front. It was already understood that they would go in after everyone else. And they waited, very patiently, lost in thought, indeed absorbed in their dark, secret troubles. Only from time to time the woman fanned herself a little and then let her fan fall, and the man stretched forward to repeat to his daughter:

“Tinina, don’t forget the thimble.”

More than one client had tried to push the lawyer’s extremely tiresome brat towards those three, but the boy, repelled by that funereal gloom, had pulled back, wrinkling his nose.

It was almost twelve noon by the pendulum clock, after all the other clients had left more or less satisfied, when the clerk, seeing them continuing to wait there as still as statues, asked them:

“What’s stopping you from going in?”

“Ah,” said the man, standing up with the two women, “may we?”

“But of course you can!” said the clerk with a deep sigh. “You could have done so long ago! Hurry up because the lawyer eats at midday. What’s your name, please?”

The man finally took off his top hat and all of a sudden, baring his bald head, he also laid bare the great torment which that dreadful frock coat had made him suffer. Endless rivulets of sweat poured down from his sweltering pink cranium and flooded onto his bloodless, frantic face. He made a bow and, sighing, gave his name:

“Serafino Piccirilli.”[3]

III

Zummo thought he had finished for the day and was tidying up the papers on his desk before leaving, when he saw before him those three additional unknown clients.

“Your names, please?” he asked with a bad grace.

“Serafino Piccirilli,” the funereal man repeated bowing even lower and looking at his wife and daughter to see that they curtsied properly.

They did it well, like trained monkeys, and he instinctively matched his own movements to theirs.

“Take a seat, take a seat,” Signor Zummo said, his eyes widening at the sight of that mimicry. “It’s late. I have to go.”

The three of them sat down at once facing the desk, greatly embarrassed. The timid smile which creased the corners of Piccirilli’s waxen face was horrible: enough to tug at your heart-strings. Who knows how long it had been since that poor man laughed. 

“It’s like this…

“We’ve come,” the daughter began at the same time.

And the mother, with her eyes on the ceiling, said with a snort:

“You’d never believe it!”

“Speak one at a time,” said Zummo, with a frown. “Clearly and concisely. What’s the problem?”

“Well, Signor Zummo,” Piccirilli began again, with a little swallow. “We’ve received a summons.”

“It’s just scare tactics!” the wife broke in again.

‘”Mum,” her daughter said timidly, to urge her to be silent or to speak more calmly.

Piccirilli looked at his wife, and with all the authority that his wretched little physique would allow, he added:

“Mararò, please, I’m speaking! A summons, Signor Zummo. We had to leave the house where we lived because...”

“I see. A notice to quit?” Zummo asked, to cut him short.

“No, sir,” Piccirilli replied humbly. “Quite the opposite. We’ve always paid the rent punctually or in advance. It was in fact we who left, against the owner’s wishes. And the owner is now calling on us to respect the terms of the lease and what’s more to accept responsibility for damages and reparation because, he says, we’ve given the house a bad name.” “What’s all this?’’ said Zummo, his face darkening and looking this time at the wife. “You left of your own accord, you’ve defamed the house, and the owner… I don’t understand. Let’s be clear, please. A lawyer is like a confessor. Illicit commerce?”

“No, sir!” Piccirilli was quick to reply, placing his hands on his chest. “What commerce? None! We’re not in business. My wife does give out small sums… as a loan… but at a rate…”

“Which is fair, I understand!”

“Yes, sir, believe me, as permitted even by the Holy Church… But that’s got nothing to do with it. Granella, the owner, says we have defamed it because in three months, in that accursed house, we’ve seen the most terrible things, Signor Zummo! I get… I get shivers down my spine just thinking of it!”

“Oh dear Lord, save and deliver all the creatures of this earth from such things!” the wife exclaimed with a huge sigh, standing up and raising her arms and then making the sign of the cross with her heavily beringed hands.

The daughter with her head down and through tight lips added:

“A real persecution… (Sit down, Mum.)”

“Persecuted, that’s what,” the father agreed. “(Sit down, Mararò!) Persecuted is the word. For three months we’ve been persecuted to death in that house.”

“Who’s been persecuting you?” Zummo shouted, finally losing patience.

“Signor Zummo,” Piccirilli replied softly, leaning forward towards the desk and placing one hand by his mouth while with the other he signalled to the two women to be silent. “(Ssssh…) The spirits, Signor Zummo!”[4]

“Who?” said Zummo, not believing his ears.

“The spirits, sir!” the wife confirmed loudly and boldly, waving her hands in the air.

Zummo jumped to his feet, in a rage:

“Get out of here! Don’t make me laugh! Persecuted by the spirits? My lunch is waiting, my good people!”

They then stood up as well and surrounded him to detain him, and all three began talking at once, imploringly:

“It’s true, it’s true. Don’t you believe us? Just listen to us… Spirits, infernal spirits! We’ve seen them with our own eyes. Seen and heard… We’ve been tormented, for three whole months!”

And Zummo, shaking himself angrily:

“Get out of here, I tell you! This is madness! Why have you come to me? It’s the madhouse you want, all of you!”

“But as they’ve sent us a summons…” Piccirilli whined with his hands clasped.

“They were absolutely right!” Zummo shouted in his face.

“What are you saying, Signor Zummo,” the wife intervened, pushing everyone aside. “Is this the help that a great man like you gives to poor, persecuted people? Oh, dear Lord! You are talking like this because you haven’t seen what we have. Please believe me, they exist, the spirits exist! And no one can know that better than us!”

“You’ve seen them?” Zummo asked her with a mocking smile.

“Yes, sir, with my very own eyes,” Piccirilli replied at once, without being asked.

“And I have with mine,” the daughter added, also unasked.

“But yours, perhaps, aren’t exactly…” the lawyer could not stop himself from saying with a jeer, pointing his index fingers at their squinty eyes.

“And what about mine?” the wife broke in, striking herself hard on the chest and opening her accusing eyes wide. “Mine are alright thanks be to God, and good and big, Signor Zummo. And I’ve seen them as well, just as I’m seeing you now.”

“Oh, yes?” said Zummo, “They look like a bunch of lawyers?”

“Oh well!” the woman sighed. “You, sir, don’t believe us. But we have a whole lot of witnesses, you know. The whole neighborhood could come to testify...”

Zummo knitted his brows.

“Witnesses who’ve seen things?”

“Seen and heard, yes, sir.”

“But seen… what, for example?” asked Zummo, growing irritated.

“For example, chairs moving without anyone touching them...”

“Chairs?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That chair there, for example?”

“Yes, sir, that chair there, turning somersaults around the room like naughty little boys do in the street. And then, for example, what else is there? A velvet pincushion, for example, in the shape of an orange, made by my daughter, Tinina, which flew from the chest of drawers into my poor husband’s face, as if it were thrown… thrown by an invisible hand. And the wardrobe creaked and shook as though it had convulsions, and inside… inside the wardrobe, Signor Zummo… just thinking about it makes my flesh creep—shrieks of laughter!”

“Laughter!” the daughter added.

“Laughter!” said the father.

And the wife, without pausing for breath, carried on:

“All these things, my good Signor Zummo, our neighbors have seen and heard, and these women, as I have told you, are ready to come and testify. We ourselves have seen and heard a great deal more!”

“Tinina, the thimble,” the father suggested at this point.

“Oh, yes sir,” said the daughter, rousing herself with a sigh. “I had a little silver thimble, a keepsake from my grandmother, God rest her soul! It was as precious to me as the light of day. One day I look for it in my pocket and can’t find it! I look everywhere in the house and can’t find it. I spent three days looking for it, and at times I was even going out of my mind. Nothing! Then one night while I was in bed, under the mosquito net…”

“Because there are mosquitoes as well in that house, Signor Zummo!” the mother broke in.

“And you wouldn’t believe those mosquitoes,” the father confirmed, half-closing his eyes and nodding his head.

“And I hear,” the daughter began again, “I hear something land on top of the mosquito net...”

At this point the father silenced her with a motion of his hand. It was his turn to speak. This bit was prearranged.

“You know, Signor Zummo, how it is with rubber balls? You give them a little bounce and they come back to your hand.”

“Then,” the daughter went on, “as though it had been thrown harder my little thimble goes from the top of the mosquito net to hurl itself against the ceiling and falls back to the ground, dented.”

“Dented,” the mother repeated.

And the father:

“Dented!”

“I get out of bed, trembling all over, to pick it up, and as soon as I bend down, as usual, from the roof...”

“Shrieks and shrieks of laughter,” said the mother, in conclusion.

The lawyer remained deep in thought with his head bowed and his hands behind his back, then he gave himself a shake, looked his three clients in the eye, scratched his head and said, with a nervous little laugh:

“Spirits who like a joke, then! Carry on, do, I’m enjoying myself.”

“Like a joke? What do you mean, Signor Zummo! ‘Infernal spirits,’ is what you should say. Pulling the covers off our beds, sitting on our stomachs at night, thumping us on the back, grabbing us by the arm, moving all the furniture, ringing the bells, as though, God preserve us, there was an earthquake. And poisoning our food by putting ashes in the pots and pans. And you would call them jokers? The priest and his holy water could do nothing! So we spoke to Granella, begging him to end the contract because we didn’t want to die there, from fear, from terror… Do you know what that scoundrel said to us? Rubbish, he said. Spirits? Get some good steaks down you, he said, and calm your nerves. We invited him to see with his own eyes, to hear with his own ears. Nothing. He didn’t want to know, in fact he threatened us. Take good care, he said, not to kick up a fuss, or I’ll ruin you. Just like that!”

“And he has ruined us!” the husband concluded shaking his head bitterly. “Now, Signor Zummo, we’re putting ourselves in your hands. You, sir, can trust us. We’re decent people. We’ll pay our dues.”

Zummo pretended, as usual, not to hear these last words. He smoothed his moustache first on one side then on the other, then he looked at the clock. It was almost one o’clock. His family back at home had been waiting for him for an hour to go and eat.

“My dear people,” he said, “you must understand quite clearly than I cannot believe in your spirits. They’re hallucinations—mere tales that simple women tell. Now I’m looking at your case from the legal point of view. You say that you’ve seen… don’t let’s call them spirits, for goodness’ sake! You say that you even have witnesses, and that’s fine. You say that living in that house was made intolerable by this kind of persecution… let’s call it, strange… that’s it! The case is a new one and very odd indeed, and I confess that I’m tempted. But we have to find some support in the law, do you see? A legal basis for action. Let me look into it before taking the matter on. Now it’s late. Come back tomorrow and I shall be able to give you an answer. Is that alright?”[5]

IV

At once the thought of that strange case began to turn round like a millwheel in Zummo’s mind. At lunch he couldn’t eat, and after lunch he couldn’t rest as he usually did every day in summer, lying on his bed.

The spirits!, he repeated to himself from time to time, and his lips opened in a mocking smile while he again saw before him the comical figures of his three new clients, clients who swore over and over again to have seen them.

He had heard tell of spirits so many times, and because of some of the stories told by the maidservants he had also been very afraid of them when he was a boy. He still remembered the terror which had seized his poor little heart during those dreadful sleepless nights of long ago.

“The soul!” he sighed at a certain point, stretching out his arms towards the top of the mosquito net, and then letting them fall back heavily onto the bed. “The immortal soul… Ah, yes! In order to accept that spirits exist you have to accept the immortality of the soul, there’s no other way. The immortality of the soul… Do I believe in it or not? I’ve always said no, and still do. Should I now allow for some doubt, contrary to everything I’ve said in the past? And how will that make me look? Let’s see. We often pretend to ourselves as we do to other people. I know that very well. I’m very nervous, and sometimes, indeed, when I’m alone, I’ve been afraid. Afraid of what? I don’t know. I’ve been afraid! We… that’s it, we are afraid of examining our intimate being because such an examination could show us to be different from what we like to think we are or how we want to be seen. I’ve never thought seriously about these things. Life distracts us. Business matters, needs, habits, petty everyday squabbles don’t leave us time to think about these things, yet they should concern us more than anything else. Say a friend dies. We come to a halt, in the face of his death, just like a reluctant animal, and we prefer to think about the past, about his life, reviving a few memories to prevent ourselves from thinking beyond that, that is beyond the point which for us has marked the end of our friend! It’s over! We light a cigar to dispel the upset and the melancholy with the smoke. Science stops there as well, at the limits of life, as if there were no death and no need to think about it. It says: You are still here; you people should just concentrate on living, the lawyer should think about being a lawyer, the engineer about being an engineer… And that’s fine! I’m here being a lawyer. But see here: what do the immortal soul, the esteemed spirits themselves, do?  They come and knock on the door of my office: Hey, Mr. Lawyer, we’re here as well, don’t you know? We also want to stick our noses into your Civil Code! You positivists don’t want to bother about us? You don’t want to worry about death any longer? And we from the kingdom of the dead come merrily to knock at the door of the living, to laugh derisively inside wardrobes, to make chairs roll around before your very eyes as if they were so many urchins, to terrify poor people, and from one day to the next to embarrass a lawyer who is held to be learned, and then  a tribunal which is required to give a final judgement on us…”[6]

Zummo got up from his bed in a state of great agitation and went back to his office to consult the Civil Code.

Only two articles could offer some basis for litigation: articles 1575 and 1577.

According to the first:

The lessor is obliged by the contract and without need for special proviso:

1. to hand over the property rented to the lessee;

2. to keep it in a proper state for the use for which it is rented;

3. to guarantee peaceful enjoyment of the property to the lessee for the whole period of the rental.

The other article said:

The lessee must be recompensed for all such nuisance and defects as prevent enjoyment of the property, even if not known to the lessor at the time of the contract. If such nuisance and defects cause harm to the lessee, the lessor is obliged to indemnify him unless he can prove that he was unaware of them.

Except that the problem with these two articles, there was no way around it, was that you had to prove that the spirits really exist.

There were the facts and there were the witness statements, indeed. But how far could they be trusted? And what explanation could science provide for those facts?

Zummo questioned the Piccirillis again in minute detail, he collected the statements he had been told about and, after accepting the case, he began to study it with great fervour.

First of all he read a short history of spiritualism, from its origins in ancient myth to our own times, and Iacolliot’s book on the wonders of Fakirism,[7] and then everything published by the most renowned and trusted experimenters, from Crookes[8] to Wagner[9] to Aksakov;[10] from Gibier[11] to Zoellner[12] to Janet[13] to de Rochas,[14] to Richet[15] and to Morselli,[16] and to his great astonishment he discovered that so-called spiritual phenomena were by now undeniable, as stated explicitly by the most skeptical and positivist of scientists.

“Well, for God’s sake!” Zummo exclaimed, already quivering with excitement. “This sheds new light on the matter!”

For as long as these phenomena had been related by ordinary little people like the Piccirillis and their neighbors, he, as a serious, cultivated man educated in the tenets of positivism, had mocked and immediately rejected them. How could he have accepted them? Even if he had seen the spirits with his own eyes and touched them with his own hands, he would rather have confessed that he too was hallucinating. But now, now that he knew they were acknowledged by the authority of men of science like Lombroso, like Richet, by God, that shed new light on the matter![17]

For the time being Zummo stopped thinking about the Piccirillis’ litigation and completely immersed himself in his new studies, with ever-growing conviction and increasing fervor. 

For some time now he had no longer found any intellectual stimulation either in the exercise of his profession as a lawyer, even though it had brought him some satisfaction and very considerable gains, or in the narrow life of that small provincial town. Nor was there an outlet for all that surplus energy he felt simmering inside him and whose vigour he overestimated to himself, extolling it as evidence of his own merit which, come on!, was practically wasted in the narrow-minded atmosphere of that small place. For some time now he had been restless, unhappy with himself, with everything and with everyone. He was searching for something to cling on to, a moral and intellectual support, a faith of some kind, that was it, for stimulation for the soul, an outlet for all that energy. And now, reading all those books… my God! So was the problem of death, Hamlet’s terrible to be or not to be, the terrible question, therefore resolved? Could the soul of a dead person come back to materialize for one moment and come to shake his hand? Yes, to shake his hand, him, Zummo, incredulous and blind up to now, to say to him: Zummo, stop worrying, don’t be concerned any longer about this thoroughly wretched earthly existence of yours! There are other things, d’you see? And you will live a quite different life one day! Take heart! Onwards and upwards!

But almost every day Stefano Piccirilli came round as well, sometimes with his wife, sometimes with his daughter, to urge him on, to implore him.

“I’m working on it right now!” Zummo replied, in a rage. “Leave me in peace, for heaven’s sake! Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten you!”

But instead he had forgotten everyone. He put off his cases and turned away all his other clients as well.

Out of gratitude, however, to the poor Piccirillis who, all unknowing, had opened the way of light to his spirit, he decided in the end to make a careful examination of their case.

To begin with, one grave difficulty loomed before him and left him bewildered to no small degree. In all the experiments, the manifestation of the phenomena invariably occurred through the mysterious powers of a medium.[18] One of the Piccirillis must certainly be a medium without knowing it. But in this case the defect would no longer lie with Granella’s house but with the tenants, and the whole action would collapse. Then again, if one of the Piccirillis was a medium without knowing it, wouldn’t the spirits have manifested themselves in the new house they had rented as well? But they hadn’t! And the Piccirillis assured him that they had never had any bother even in the houses they’d lived in before. So why had those terrifying manifestations only occurred in Granella’s house? There obviously had to be some truth in the popular belief in haunted houses. And then there was the actual evidence. By showing once and for all that the Piccirilli family did not have powers as mediums, he would demonstrate that the biological explanation of spiritual phenomena, which some cavilling scientists had tried to offer, was false. Biology my foot![19] You would certainly have to accept the metaphysical hypothesis. Or that perhaps he, Zummo, was a medium? And yet he talked to his little table. He had never composed a line of verse in his life, and yet his table talked to him in verse, with its feet. Biology my foot!

Besides which, since he was now more interested in establishing the truth than in the Piccirillis’ case, he would carry out some experiments in his clients’ house.

He talked to the Piccirillis about this, but they were afraid and refused point blank. He then grew impatient and let them know that the experiments were necessary, indeed indispensable, for the litigation. Right from the very first séances, Tinina Piccirilli proved to be a prodigious medium. Zummo, shaken to the core, with his hair standing on end, both terrified and blissfully happy, was able to witness all or almost all of the most amazing manifestations recorded and described in the books he had read with such ardour. It was true that the case collapsed, but he, beside himself, shouted to his clients at the end of every séance:

“What does it matter, good people? Go on, pay up… That’s nothing by comparison. Here, by God, we have the revelation of the immortal soul.”

But how could those poor Piccirillis share in their lawyer’s boundless enthusiasm? They thought him mad. As true believers they had never had the slightest doubt about the immortality of their poor, afflicted little souls. Those experiments to which they consented as victims, out of obedience, seemed to them like the work of the devil. And Zummo tried in vain to reassure them. By abandoning Granella’s house they thought they had freed themselves from that terrible persecution. And now, in the new house, through the actions of their lawyer, they were once again involved with demons and were beset by their earlier terrors! Tearfully they implored the lawyer to let no details of those séances leak out, not to give them away for goodness’ sake!

“Oh very well, very well!” Zummo said to them disdainfully. “Who do you take me for? A mere child? Don’t worry! I’m carrying out these experiments here for myself. As a lawyer, though, I will know what to do in court, for God’s sake! We will defend the case for the hidden defect of the house, have no fear!”

V

And he did, indeed, defend the case for the hidden defect of the house, but with no real conviction, certain as he now was that Tinina Piccirilli was a medium.

Instead, he astounded the judges, his colleagues and the public who crowded into the courtroom with an unexpected, fantastical, fervid profession of faith. He spoke of Allan Kardech as a new messiah.[20] He declared that spiritualism was humanity’s new religion. He said that science, with its solid but dispassionate tools, with its over-rigorous formalism, had conquered nature; that the tree of life, reared artificially by science, had lost its green, had become sterile or produced fruits that grew poorly and tasted of ashes or poison, because they were no longer ripened by the warmth of faith. But now, behold, the mystery was beginning to open its gloomy doors and tomorrow would fling them wide! Meanwhile shadows, still uncertain and fearful, were coming through this first chink to reveal the world beyond to a frightened humanity in mortal anguish: showing strange lights, strange signs…

And here Zummo, with great dramatic eloquence, began to speak of the most wonderful spiritual manifestations which had been witnessed, verified, and accepted by the most important scientific luminaries: physicists, chemists, psychologists, physiologists, anthropologists, psychiatrists. And he dominated and often even terrified the public who listened open-mouthed and wide-eyed.

But, alas, the judges wanted to keep their feet firmly on the ground, perhaps as a reaction to the overly sublime rhetorical flights of the lawyer for the defence. With irritating presumption they pronounced that the theories, as yet unclear, to be deduced from so-called spiritual phenomena were still not recognised and accepted by modern science, which was eminently positive. And moreover that, moving on to consider the trial itself more closely, if, under article 1575, the lessor is required to guarantee peaceful enjoyment of the property let to the lessee, in the case in question, how could the lessor himself guarantee the house against the spirits, which are wandering and incorporeal? How can you chase shadows away? And what’s more, with regard to article 1577, how could the spirits constitute one of those hidden defects which prevent enjoyment of the property? Were they perhaps intrusive? And what remedies could the lessor have used against them? So the pleadings of the defendants had to be dismissed forthwith.

The public, still moved and profoundly impressed by Zummo’s revelations, disapproved unanimously of this judgement which, being both narrow-minded and presumptuous, sounded like mockery. Zummo railed against the court with such an outburst of indignation that he was almost arrested. Furiously he extracted the Piccirillis from the general expressions of sympathy, declaring them to the applause of the crowd to be martyrs of the new religion.

In the meantime, Granella, the owner of the house, was gloating with malign joy.

He was a big man of about fifty, fat and red-faced. With his hands in his pockets he shouted out to anyone willing to listen to him that that very evening he would go and sleep in the haunted house— alone! Yes, all alone because the old servant who had been with him for years, thanks to the Piccirillis’ infamous behavior, had deserted him declaring that she was willing to work for him anywhere, even in a cave, except in that wretched house made infamous by those people. And he hadn’t managed to find another servant, woman or man, in the whole place who was brave enough to stay with him. Such was the great service those swindlers had rendered him! And a house worth nothing, as if gone to ruin!

But now he would show the whole place that the court, by condemning those imbeciles to pay the costs and damages, had done him justice. In there, all by himself! He’d like to look those spirits in the face!

And he roared with laughter.

VI

The house was situated at the very top of the town, on the crest of the hill.[21]

There was a town gate up there whose name in Arabic, greatly distorted by local pronunciation, Bibirrìa, meant Gate of the Winds.[22]

Outside this gate was a large clearing of beaten earth on which Granella’s house stood alone. Opposite it there was only an abandoned storehouse whose rotting and ramshackle door could no longer be properly closed, and where a lone wagoner would venture from time to time to spend the night, guarding his cart and mule.

A single oil lamp barely lit that dirt clearing on moonless nights. But close by, on the other side of the gate, the neighborhood was densely populated, indeed there were too many houses.

So Granella’s house was not so very isolated, and seemed gloomy (more frightening than gloomy now) only by night. During the day it could be envied by everyone who lived in those houses which were all crammed together. Envied for its isolation, and also for the house itself, not only for its open views and fresh air but also for the way it was built, for the comfort and amenities it offered, at a much lower price than those others which had nothing of the kind.

After the Piccirillis had fled, Granella had completely renovated it: new wallpaper; new floors of Valenza brick; the ceilings repainted and also the doors, windows, balconies, and shutters. To no avail! Very many had come to look at it out of curiosity, but no one had wanted to rent it. Admiring it, so clean and full of fresh air and light, and thinking of all the expenses incurred, Granella was on  the verge of weeping with rage and despair.

Now he had a bed, a chest of drawers, a washstand, and a few chairs brought in, which he placed in one of the empty bedrooms and, when the evening came, after walking around the neighborhood to show everyone that he was keeping his word, he went to sleep, alone, in that poor, ill-famed house of his.

The local inhabitants noted that he had armed himself with not one but two pistols. And why?

If the house were threatened by thieves those weapons might indeed be useful to him, and he could say that he took them as a precaution. But against the spirits what use, if any, would they be. Hmm!

He had laughed so much back there, in the courtroom, that his big red face still bore the signs of that laughter.

Deep down, however… He felt a kind of irritating fluttering in his stomach because of all those speeches that had been made, all that rubbish that Zummo had uttered.

Bah, how many people, even respectable, impartial people, had in his presence declared more than once that they didn’t believe in such a pack of lies, and now, emboldened by Zummo’s impassioned declaration of faith and by the authority of the names cited and the documented evidence, had begun to recognize all of a sudden that… yes, in the end there could and should be some truth in those experiences… (ah yes, experiences now, and no longer a pack of lies).

But was there more? One of the very same judges, after the judgment, on leaving the court had gone up to Zummo, who was still furiously angry, and—yes, he did—had even confessed that not a few of the facts reported in certain newspapers as upheld by the completely trustworthy testimony of famous scientists had certainly shaken him. And what’s more he had related that a sister of his, now married in Rome, had since she was a girl, once or twice a year and in broad daylight and findimg herself alone, been visited, she maintained, by a certain mysterious little red man who had confided many things in her and even brought her strange presents…

Just imagine how Zummo reacted to such a declaration, after the judgment against him! And then that imbecile of a judge had shrugged his shoulders and said to him:

“But you see, my dear Zummo, as things stand…”

In short, the whole town had been profoundly shaken by Zummo’s affirmations and revelations. And Granella now felt alone and enraged, as though everyone had basely deserted him.

The sight of the deserted patch of ground, beyond which the high hill on which the city is built falls precipitously into a wide valley, with that single little lamp whose flame flickered as though frightened by the dense shadow rising from the valley, was certainly not what was needed to reassure a man whose imagination was somewhat overwrought. Nor could he find further reassurance in the light of his single tallow candle which – who knows why – sputtered as it burned as though someone were breathing on it to blow it out. (Granella didn’t notice that he was breathing very heavily, and that he was the one blowing on the candle through his nostrils).

Passing through the many empty, silent, echoing rooms to go into the one where he had placed the few pieces of furniture, he kept his eyes fixed on the flickering flame that he guarded with one hand so as not to see the shadow of his own body, monstrously enlarged, fleeing along the walls and on the floor.

The bed, the chairs, the chest of drawers and the washstand all seemed as if lost in that renovated bedroom. He put the candle on the chest of drawers stopping himself from glancing at the doorway beyond which the other empty bedrooms remained in darkness. His heart was beating fast. He was bathed in sweat.

What should he do now? First of all, close that door and fasten the bolt. Yes, because he always locked himself in his bedroom like that before going to bed, out of habit. It was true that now there was no one out there, but… it was a question of habit, yes! And meanwhile why had he picked up the candle to go and close that door in that same room? Ah… yes, he wasn’t thinking!

So wouldn’t it be a good idea, now, to open the balcony door a little? Phew! He was dying of heat in there… and then it still smelt of paint… That’s it, the balcony door, just a little, and in the meantime while the bedroom was airing a little he would make up the bed with the sheets he’d brought.

That’s what he did. But hardly had he spread the first sheet on the bed when he seemed to hear something like a knock on the door. The hair stood up on his head and a shiver ran down his spine like the slash of a treacherous razor. Perhaps the knob of the iron bedstead had banged against the wall? He waited a little with his heart racing. Silence! But that silence seemed mysteriously alive to him…

Granella pulled himself together, knitted his brows, drew one of his pistols from his belt, took up the candle, and reopened the door. With his hair standing on end he shouted:

“Who’s there?”

The shout echoed hollowly through the empty bedrooms. And that echo made Granella fall back. But he recovered at once, stamped his foot, and stretched out his arm with the pistol in his hand. He waited a moment, then began to scrutinize the adjoining room from the doorway.

There was only a ladder in that room, leaning on the opposite wall. It was the ladder that the workmen had used to hang the wallpaper in the rooms. Nothing more. So yes, come on, there could be no doubt that that knob of the bedstead had banged against the wall.

And Granella went back into the bedroom with his limbs so relaxed and heavy that just then he could no longer start to make the bed again. He took a chair and went to sit on the balcony in the cool.

“Squeak!”

Damn that bat! But he recognized at once, eh, that that was the call of a bat attracted by the light of the candle which was burning in the room. And Granella scoffed at the fear that, this time, he had not felt, and he looked up to make out the bat flitting about in the dark. At that moment a creaking sound from the bedroom reached his ear. But he recognized that it was the wallpaper newly hung on the walls which was creaking, and he had a really good laugh. Oh the spirits, seen like this, were fun… Except that, on turning around, smiling as he was, to look into the bedroom he saw… he didn’t understand at first what it was. He jumped to his feet in terror and backed away, clutching the balcony rail. A huge, white tongue was silently stretching out over the floor from the door of the other bedroom which had stayed open!

Damn and blast it! A roll of wallpaper, a roll of wallpaper that the workmen had perhaps left there at the top of that ladder… But who had made it drop down from there and then slide over the floor in two rooms as it unrolled, steering it perfectly through the open doorway?

Granella could bear it no longer. He went back in with the chair, closed the balcony door in great haste, picked up his hat and the candle and rushed away down the stairs. He opened the main door very gently and looked out at the stretch of earth. No one there! He pulled the door shut and, sticking close to the wall of the house, slipped away in the dark through the lane outside the city walls.

Was he to go out of his mind for the sake of his house? It was simply his overwrought imagination… after all that talk… It would do him good to spend the night in the open in such heat. What’s more, the night was very short. At dawn he would go back to the house. During the day, with all the windows open, he would surely no longer be so foolishly afraid, and by the next evening he would have got to know the house, and he would no doubt, damn it all, feel quite calm. He had been wrong, he now saw, to go and sleep there in the first place just to show off. Tomorrow evening…

Granella believed that no one had witnessed his flight. But that evening a wagoner had taken shelter in the storehouse opposite the house, and saw him leave so fearfully and warily and then go back at first light. Struck by what he had seen and by that behavior he spoke to some of those in the neighborhood who, the day before, had gone to testify in favor of the Piccirillis. And those witnesses then went in all secrecy to tell Zummo that Granella, in great fear, had fled.

Zummo was exultant at the news.

“I knew it!” he shouted at them with his eyes blazing. “I swear to you all that I knew it! And I was counting on it. I’ll get the Piccirillis to appeal and I’ll use Granella’s own testimony! It’s our turn now! We’re all agreed, my friends!”

He organized t the trap right away for that very night. Five or six with him, five or six, no more! The important thing was to hide in that storehouse without Granella noticing. And to keep quiet about it, for goodness’ sake! Not a word to anyone for the whole day.

“Swear!”

“We swear!”

The exercise of his profession as a lawyer could offer Zummo no livelier satisfaction than that! That same night, shortly after eleven o’clock, he caught Granella in the act as he left barefoot, yes, barefoot, by the main door of his house, in his shirt sleeves and with his shoes and jacket in one hand, while with the other he held up his trousers, which in his terror he had not managed to button up over his stomach.

He pounced on him from the shadows like a tiger, shouting:

“Have a nice walk, Granella!”

At the roars of laughter from the others lying in wait the poor man dropped his shoes from his hand, first one and then the other, and stood with his back to the wall, humiliated and speechless.

“And now, imbecile, do you believe in the immortality of the soul?” Zummo shrieked at him, shaking him by the chest. “Blind justice said you were right. But now you have opened your eyes. What have you seen? Speak up!”

But poor Granella, trembling all over was crying and couldn’t speak.