“Like Twin Sisters” (“Come gemelle”)

Translated by Shirley Vinall

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “Like Twin Sisters” (“Come gemelle”), tr. Shirley Vinall. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2025.

“Like Twin Sisters” (“Come gemelle”) had a particularly long and fruitful publication history compared to many of Pirandello’s stories, coming out in no fewer than six publications overseen by Pirandello. It was first published in the literary journal Il Marzocco on January 11, 1903. The following year, Pirandello included it in his miscellany collection Whites and Blacks (Bianche e nere), printed by Streglio in Turin. It was reprinted again in 1917 in Il Tirso – Giornale dei teatri, one of the best-known theatrical publications in early twentieth-century Italy. Then, in 1919, Pirandello collected it once again, including it in his miscellany volume The Carnival of the Dead (Il Carnevale dei morti), published in Florence by Battistelli. He then added it to Stories for a Year (Novelle per un anno) as part of the seventh Collection, All Three (Tutt’e tre), published in 1924 by Bemporad in Florence. Very unusually, this is not the end of the story’s publication history, as Pirandello himself had it republished again the year after it came out in his Stories for a Year: on February 16, 1925, the story was reprinted in the literary magazine Le grandi firme, which had been founded in 1924 and was devoted to publishing short stories by the most well-known and important writers of the period.

The story offers surprising twists that ultimately provide humorous insight into the complexities of human relationships as well as the limitations of hollow social conventions. On the night his wife struggles in childbirth, the young Marquis Don Camillo Righi is torn between guilt, fear, and a scandalous secret: his lover Carla is also in labor in another part of Rome. Racing from the harsh and unfriendly cries of his wife, from whom he has been alienated by her overbearing and unkind temperament, to the much warmer embrace of his lover, he becomes ensnared in a double drama of birth and death. When his wife dies, leaving behind a frail daughter, it is Carla who offers not only passion but maternal strength, binding the two infants together like twin sisters but scandalizing Roman society and the Marquis’ family in the process. The ironic humor of the story thus emerges on two separate levels: first, the Marquis feels guilt at his abandonment of his wife, while his lover Carla in fact thinks of her with kindness and treats her (legitimate) child as if it were her own; at the same time, the conventions of society would condemn the now-motherless daughter to a life without maternal warmth in the name of propriety, whereas the Marquis sees an alternative in having his lover raise both children, as if they were twin girls. As is often the case in Pirandellian humor, here we find a combination of both laughter and critique: the conventions and structures of polite society proclaim to uphold the family and protect the child, but they in fact damage both with a kind of uncaring cruelty. In this story, however, unlike in many other works by Pirandello that reject the artificial and harmful strictures of social more, the favorable position of the protagonist enables him to exit his social dilemma without paying too high a price. This makes “Like Twin Sisters” one of the more cheerful and even in some sense playful of Pirandello’s treatments of social standards and their impact on the real human beings who are forced to endure and respond to them. In this sense, we might actually group the story, based on its tone and outcome, as closer to a play like Pirandello’s Liolà (1916) than to many of his other works that depict the destructive capacities of social conventions and the stark battle between a person’s vitality and the way in which external forces and views seek to contain and constrain it.

The Editors

A little votive lamp burning beneath a portrait of Pius X was struggling to cast its light over the small room to which the marquis Don Camillo Righi had retreated, in order to avoid hearing the screams of his wife in the throes of labor.[1]

But they reached him even there, those harrowing screams, and Don Camillo was forced to block his ears firmly with both hands, and, hunched up and contracted, as though those pangs were howling from his own belly as well, he raised his pain-filled, desperate eyes towards the portrait of His Holiness, who with a kindly, charitable smile on his broad, tranquil face, seemed to advise calm and resignation, calm and resignation to the young Marquis, the son of one of his old Noble Guards,[2]  who was now also himself a Noble Guard to his holy successor.[3]

Perhaps Don Camillo would have followed that mute, magisterial, fatherly advice, if he had had a clear conscience, that is to say if a certain sense of remorse had not increased his anguish at the pains being suffered at that moment by his wife. Neither did he succeed, then, in countering this remorse with all the considerations which, on another occasion—when his mind was untroubled and he did not feel divine wrath and the fear of punishment hanging over him, as he did now—would not only suffice in his eyes to excuse his own guilt but would almost erase it completely.

At that moment, his wife was no longer the frigid, severe, bad-tempered woman who, in order to be left in peace, had accustomed him to look elsewhere for the warmth of affection that he had vainly sought in her; instead she was a poor creature in danger who was suffering atrociously because of him, and who could not find any compensation or comfort for these sufferings in his love and faithfulness.

Pity, for her, could not suffice; and in fact, a short while before, she had angrily banished him from the bedroom, no longer being able to bear seeing him so contrite and grief-stricken before her; instead she had clung, very fiercely, to her mother, wailing:

“Oh mother, I am dying! The pain, my God, how much pain I am in!”

And not to be able to do anything about it! She had even seemed beautiful to him in that moment, transformed as she was by the horrendous ordeal.

The screams had stopped for a few minutes. In that silence of agonized waiting, the hope suddenly flashed into the Marquis’s mind that the labor was over—at last!—and he rushed out of the room. At once, however, he bumped into two maids who were hurrying towards the laboring woman’s room.

“Still?”

They nodded to him, without turning around, and disappeared.

In the vast, high-ceilinged hall with its gloomy antique furniture, he found the obstetrician at the entrance to that bedroom, surrounded by other relatives of his wife’s who had recently arrived.

“Weak contractions,” murmured the doctor. “It will take a long time. But do not worry, my Lord: there is no danger.”

Don Camillo was going back to shut himself up in the little room, when a servant approached to tell him quietly that someone was asking for him.

“I can’t deal with anyone,” replied the Marquis, exasperatedly. “Who is it?”

“A little old man, I don’t know. He says he needs to talk to Your Excellency about a serious and pressing matter.”

Don Camillo made a gesture of annoyance, realizing who the message had come from.

“Let him come through,” he said then.

The little old man came in hesitatingly, rather like a lost chicken. Oppressed by the solemn and austere opulence of the house, and almost no longer able to feel his own feet on the thick carpets, he bowed clumsily at each step.

“I know who has sent you,” the Marquis said to him quietly. “Go on, what have you got to tell me?”

“My Lord, Your Excellency… Miss Carla…”

“Shh… quietly!”

“Yes, sir, she says… if you could come for a moment…”

“Now? I can’t, I can’t! Tell her I cannot,” the Marquis replied impatiently. “Why, anyway? What does she want?”

“Labor pains, Your Excellency,” the old man said timidly. “Her labor pains have started.”

“Hers too? Now? Her labor pains have started too?”

“Yes, Your Excellency. I ran to fetch the midwife myself. But you mustn’t worry, Your Excellency: everything will be fine, with God’s help.”

“God’s help. Indeed!” Don Camillo exploded. “This is the devil’s work! The Marchioness, in there…”

He broke off, waved his hands around, and screwed up his eyes. Ah, both of them, a punishment from God! My wife and my lover, at the same time, a punishment from God!

“But how can this be?” he tried to ask, opening his eyes once more.

In front of him he saw the little old man, embarrassed and more lost than ever, and instinctively felt the need to get rid of him.

“Off you go, off you go,” he ordered him. “Tell her like this that… if I can… shortly… Now go, go!”

And he hurried to hole himself up again in the dim little room, with his head in his hands, as though he was afraid of losing it, that poor head of his. His legs failed him right there; he collapsed into an armchair and huddled into it, curling up completely almost as if to hide from himself: anger, shame, anguish, remorse all surged up so strongly within him that he bit into his arm and jolted his head so fiercely that he tore his sleeve. He leapt to his feet:

But how can this be? he asked himself again. Carla, labor pains? So, she must have made a mistake? God, what a disaster, what a disaster, what a disaster!

All of a sudden he remembered that the doctor in the other room had told him that there was still time for his wife: he went into the nearby dressing-room, took his fur coat and his hat out of the wardrobe, and rushed out, saying to the servant:

“I’ll be back soon!”

Once outside, he hurried into a coach, shouting the address to the coachman:

“Number 13, San Salvatore in Lauro.”[4]

A quarter of an hour later he was in the old, deserted little square. He leapt up the stairs. The door, on the top floor, was unlatched.

Having taken a few steps into the dark hallway, Don Camillo stumbled into a dressmaker’s dummy; the clash caused another dummy behind it to fall over; the young Marquis, already stepping forward, found it between his legs; he too fell down. In response to the commotion, an old lady in a bonnet rushed in, a lamp in her hand. But Don Camillo had already stood up and was kicking the wicker contraption.

“Damned things in the way!”

“Have you fallen, my Lord? Have you hurt yourself?”

“No, it’s nothing. Carla?”

“We’re there now… Come, come along.”

Carla’s voice thundered out imperiously from the next room:

“Let me do it! I want to walk around, and I will!”

In fact, Don Camillo found her on her feet, half-dressed and majestic, with her magnificent tawny hair hanging loose around her beautiful pale face.

“Carla!”

“Oh you rogue, my Lord! Oh, but what’s the matter, my dear? Your wife as well? I knew it! Come on, come on, cheer up, my dear: it’s nothing! Like this it will seem as if you have given birth yourself, twice. Ow, ow… ow ow…”

She put her hands on his shoulders, leaned her damp forehead against his: she paused like that for a moment.

“It’s nothing: it’s gone now! Wipe your brow; I’m sorry; and clear something up for me, my Lord: did you tell your wife a son?”

“I don’t understand…”

“That she should have a son for you?”

“No, I didn’t tell her anything.”

“She will have a little girl for you, you can be certain! Go, go outside for a moment, now, and don’t be afraid. You’ll have one from me immediately, a little boy: you can count on it! Right away, right away, yes. I can see you are in a hurry.”

Don Camillo smiled, without wanting to, and withdrew into the next room.

How strange in her ways and her words, even at that moment, what a difference!

His wife irritated, suffocated, and thwarted him in everything; yet, there it was, at the mere sight of this woman, he immediately felt completely revived: he was a different person. What a woman! Daring and forthright, overflowing with high-spirited vitality, at times even indiscreet in her haste to do good, sincere, impetuous, affectionate, she had filled him with a passion, a fervor of which he would never have thought himself capable. And what pride! She had never wanted to accept anything from him, except some small gift of little value, as a token of affection.[5]

“I am richer than you,” she would say to him. “I sew and I live off that!”

In fact, she worked for the most prominent aristocratic and bourgeois families, and had even been the Marchioness’s dressmaker; but she had been so badly treated by her, so thwarted, too, by her tastes and her suggestions, that she had sworn to take her revenge, not so much for the annoyance that she had felt, as out of pity for the poor young Marquis, whose expression had always shown that he agreed with her, and that he too was a victim of that thin, ungracious, unbearable woman. And for a year and a half, the young Marquis, as the object of Carla’s love, had really felt like a different man.

A long howl, almost like that of an animal, shook Don Camillo out of these thoughts. He leapt to his feet. He heard the midwife’s voice, from the other room:

“There you are! Hush. Well done.”

A father then! That’s it, a father already! He was seized by a strange longing to see the little being who was entering life at that moment, for him. But two, two, that same night, God! Perhaps at that very moment, in his palace, another little being was being born, who was also his. And he was still here! With this thought, the longing became desperation. Still? Still?

“My lord!”

Don Camillo rushed in. Carla, pale and exhausted, smiled at him from the bed.

“It’s a girl, you know? You’ll find the little boy over there. Go on, give me a kiss, and hurry, my dear!”

Righi bent to kiss her passionately; but before rushing home, he wanted to see the little girl. He soon regretted it. What he saw was a tiny monster, still completely purple, which inspired revulsion.

“You’ll see, eh, you’ll see in a few hours…” the midwife said to him, however. “More beautiful than her mother!”

Shortly afterwards, back in his palace, the young Marquis could no longer remember what he had left in the deserted little square of San Salvatore in Lauro.

His wife had died in childbirth, half an hour previously, leaving behind, scarcely alive, a poor little girl.

More than three months passed before Don Camillo Righi returned to see his lover and his other little girl.

He found Carla waiting for him, certain that he would return; dressed in black. He did not even notice at first, when he saw her; it seemed so natural to him.

Carla did not try to comfort him at all; she just asked about the little baby, whom Don Camillo had entrusted to a wet nurse.

“Three wet nurses in just a few days! If you could see her: a little skeleton! I don’t know what to do any more. They have all proved so harsh and stony-hearted…”

“What about her relatives?”

“You can forget about them! They have left me on my own! Meanwhile I’m afraid that even this wet nurse won’t have enough milk.”

He said he would like to see the little girl again.

“Have you had her baptized?”

“Not yet. I wanted to wait for you to decide.”

The elderly aunt fetched her. How beautiful she was, oh how beautiful, this one! Instead of feeling happy about it, Don Camillo began to cry, thinking about the other little one over there, wretched, motherless, and unfortunate.

Carla put her arm round his neck gently.

“Listen, Millo,” she said: “that poor little girl of yours without a mother… If you would like… You know? I would have enough milk for two…”

And her eyes immediately filled with tears.

Don Camillo felt a thrill of tenderness throughout his body; he hid his face in his hands, and, breaking out into sobs, buried his head in her lap.

Oh, no, no: amidst the disaster that had overwhelmed him and put him at odds with everyone, including himself, he could not do without that strong and passionate woman.

He resolved to leave Rome forever. He would retire to his Fabriano estate.[6] He begged Carla to accept this shelter for love of him; he came to an agreement with her and sent her on ahead, along with the baby and the old aunt.

After about twenty days, having sorted out everything, he too left for the countryside, with the poor little motherless girl.

From the first moment on, Carla showed her more than a mother’s love and care. To the extent that Don Camillo himself almost felt sorry for the other little girl, who was also his, fearing that she was being neglected.

“No, what are you saying? Little Milly, for the moment, doesn’t need me so much. But little Tina, on the other hand, does.[7] But can’t you see, can’t you see how beautiful she has become already?”

The poor little girl had indeed blossomed, in those few days, as spring smiled and shone from the countryside through all the windows of the sun-filled villa. And yet, side by side with the other infant in the bed that they shared, she seemed smaller.

“But in a few months you’ll see. They will look just like twin sisters, and we won’t be able to tell them apart anymore.”

Don Camillo Righi knew that the scandalous news that he had given his daughter to be nursed by his lover had caused outrage in Rome among his relatives and friends. But he wished that they would come here, all of them, to see the two little girls, side by side, and the love and care shown them by that mother.[8]

“What fools!”