“The Disbanded League” (“La Lega disciolta”)

Translated by Fabio Battista

How to cite this work:

Pirandello, Luigi. “The Disbanded League” (“La Lega disciolta”), tr. Fabio Battista. In Stories for a Year, eds. Lisa Sarti and Michael Subialka, Digital Edition, www.pirandellointranslation.org, 2026.

This story was first published in the Corriere della Sera on June 6, 1910, under a slightly different title, “La lega disciolta”, in which the word “lega” was not capitalized. The same title was retained when the story was later included in the miscellany collection Tercets (Terzetti), published by the Milanese editor Treves in 1912. Only in 1928, when the story became part of The Jar (La giara), the eleventh collection of his Stories for a Year (Novelle per un anno), was the title changed to its current form, “La Lega disciolta,” with a capitalized ‘L’. This change is significant, as it highlights the central role that the “Lega” plays in the story’s thematic scope as a proper, named entity.

“The Disbanded League” presents Pirandello’s sharp and ironic portrait of Bómbolo, a sort of self-made social judge who organizes a secret League of peasants in order to force landowners to pay fair wages. Through the kidnapping of livestock and the redistribution of ransom money, Bómbolo tries to correct an unjust economic system without openly challenging its foundations. Yet his project collapses when the same mechanism he created escapes his control, revealing one of Pirandello’s central themes: the gap between intention and outcome, between the role a person believes he is playing and the absurd reality that finally exposes him. The story is thus ultimately connected to Pirandello’s poetic vision of humor, what he calls umorismo. The character of Bómbolo is in fact both comic and tragic: ridiculous in his theatrical sense of authority, but also sincere in his desire for justice. Pirandello’s humor emerges from this contradiction, showing how ideals often become masks and how identity is trapped in social performance. The “justice” Bómbolo administers is morally ambiguous and always appears to be suspended between opposites: solidarity and crime, reform and violence.

The historical background to this story is also of interest, as the plot recalls aspects of the Fasci Siciliani, the peasant and workers’ movement that spread through Sicily in the 1890s demanding better wages and social rights. Although the story treats this world through irony and paradox, it reflects the same tensions among landowners, laborers, poverty, repression, and collective organization. Pirandello would later return more directly to the Fasci Siciliani in his fifth novel The Old and the Young (I vecchi e i giovani, 1913), where that movement plays a role as part of his broader meditation on political disillusionment and the failure of historical ideals. This historical reality is also linked to Pirandello’s own biography and upbringing. The tensions and conflicts surrounding the Fasci indirectly involved his family and the Sicilian social environment in which he grew up, which was marked by the economic and political transformations following the Risorgimento. For this reason, the story’s representation of rural life and its fragile social balances adds an extra layer of authenticity, reflecting the author’s lived experiences rather than abstract ideas. Likewise, Pirandello blends standard Italian with expressions drawn from his own Sicilian dialect, creating a realistic narrative voice that mirrors the social world he depicts. This linguistic texture is closely tied to the setting, as the story is deeply rooted in the landscape of Agrigento and its surroundings, with references to the countryside, coastal areas, and local places that were familiar to the author who grew up there.

The Editors

One after another, the landowners of Montelusa[1] and the neighboring villages would all go to the café where Bómbolo spent the entire day – a red Turkish cap[2] on his big curly head, his fist clenched on the coffee table’s marble top in a commanding pose and the other hand on his hip, one leg on this side, one on the other, watching all the passers-by not with disdain, but with frowning seriousness, as if to say: “Over here, my good gentlemen, all business has to go through me: you know that.” Even the old Marquis Don Nicolino Nigrelli (the one who would always walk around with the ivory knob of his ebony cane pressed against his pursed lips, as if he were playing the flute), even Baron Don Mauro Ragona, even Tavella: all of them, in essence, would go to him with their hats in hand.

“Don Zulì, a favor…”

And at such acts of reverence, Bómbolo, it must be said, would spring up, take his cap off, stand at attention and, with his head held high and his eyes looking down, he would reply:

“At your command, Your Excellency.”

The usual complaints and pleas. Nigrelli had four heads of cattle stolen from his land on the coast; eight from Ragona’s open pasture; five from Tavella’s stable. Someone came saying that the farmhand watching over them had been tied to a tree; and another one that they’d stolen a cow that had just calved, certainly leaving the little thing to cry and starve to death.

At first, in a show of due indignation for the offense endured, Bómbolo would invariably exclaim:

“Ah, those scoundrels!”

Then, joining his hands and shaking them in the air:

“But, my dear masters, my dear masters… We call them scoundrels, but, if we’re being truthful, all things considered, how much are these scoundrels making in a day? Three tarì[3]! And what’s three tarì? Nowadays, a man, a working son of God – real, baptized flesh like Your Lordship, not like me, who am a Turk – yessir, a Turk… here it is (and he would show his fez) – as we were saying, a man who sweats blood, hoe in hand from the break of dawn till the sun goes down, never sitting, except to swallow a hunk of bread with a side of saliva at midday; a man who goes back to work still chewing his last bite, I say, my dear master, isn’t it a sin, in good conscience, to pay him three tarì?  Look at Don Cosimo Lopes![4] Ever Since he started paying his men three lire per day, has he had anything to complain about? No one dares to steal from him anymore… what am I saying? – (he would stretch out two fingers, pluck a hair from his head with a sharp motion, and show it) – is this much okay? Not even this much! Three lire, my good sir, three lire is a fair amount! Do as I say, and if tomorrow anyone disrespects you – either you or your livestock – come and spit in my face: I’ll be here.”

At last, changing his expression and tone, he would conclude:

“How many heads did you say? Four? Leave it to me. I’ll go saddle up.”

And he would pretend to look for those heads of cattle across the countryside for two or three days, riding even at night under rain or stars. No one believed it, nor did he believe that others believed it. So much so that when, after three days had gone by, he would show up at Marquis Nigrelli’s house, or Ragona’s, or any of the others’, and they would welcome him with the usual exclamation: “Poor Don Zulì, God knows what pains you’ve taken!” – he would quiet the exclamation with a sharp movement of the hand, and close his eyes with gravity:

“Don’t mind it!” – he would say – “I’ve taken pains, but I did find them. And, first, let me reassure you that the beasts were given care and a stable. Wherever they are, they’re fine. The picciotti [5] are not evil people. What’s evil is their need to do it. And believe me that if they didn’t need to do it, because of how little they’re paid… Enough. They’re ready to return the livestock. But, as usual, Your Lordship understands me… Oh, negotiating with Your Lordship, and with me as go-between, no deals, no conditions: whatever your heart dictates, your good grace. And rest assured that tonight, right on time, they will bring back your livestock to the coast, better than they were before.”

It would have seemed disrespectful to him, both towards himself and the gentleman, to even remotely hint at the chance that those good picciotti might be ambushed by the police and the carabinieri[6] during the night. He knew full well that, if the gentleman had turned to him, it was a sign that he deemed it pointless to resort to the authorities to get his livestock back. He wouldn’t have gotten them back, to be sure. Getting them back like this – by means of a small financial leeching, with Bómbolo as go-between – would rule out any suspicion of betrayal.

And Bómbolo would take the money: five hundred lire, one thousand, two thousand, based on the number of stolen livestock, and every week on Saturday nights he would give this money to the peasants of the League, who would gather at a storehouse in the hills of San Gerlando.[7]

Here was the place where the so-called giusta was done.[8]  Every peasant who had worked during the week for three tarì per day (1.25 lire) would have their day’s work rightfully credited as worth three lire, so they were handed the rest. Those who, through no fault of their own, had “stayed seated,” that is they hadn’t found a job, would receive seven lire, one per day. Before this, though, weekly pensions were subtracted for the noble cause of aiding the families of three League members – Todisco, Principe, and Barrerà – who, after getting arrested on a chance night by patrolling police and sentenced to three years in prison, had known enough to keep quiet. Another part of the sum was to be used to tip the complicit field workers and cattlemen who agreed to get tied up and gagged. The remainder, if there was any, would be stored as petty cash.

Bómbolo wouldn’t take a single cent, not even what is referred to as a single cent. It was all slander, everything people said about him in Montelusa was all a smear. He didn’t even need that money to begin with. He’d lived in the Levant for several years and made his fortune there.[9] Nobody knew where exactly, or how, but he’d made a fortune in the Levant, to be sure, so he wouldn’t go chasing whatever little cash was made that way. This was underlined by his red cap and expression and by the flavor of his stories and that special scent he emitted, almost an exotic scent, of Levantine spices, perhaps coming from certain leather sachets and small wooden vials he sported around. Or perhaps it was the smoke of his contraband Turkish tobacco, which came from the ships that would dock in the neighboring harbor and with which he did covert business – at least according to the many who, on certain mornings, would spot him and his flaming red cap looking, seemingly sighing, at the indigo blue of the open sea for hours on end, watching for a sail to shine from Punta Bianca… [10] Then, he had married a woman from the Dimìno family, who were among the wealthiest farmers in the area – good farmers, old-school, who owned so much land you could walk for days before seeing the end of it. And, despite their daughter’s death only four years after the wedding, Zio Lisciànnaru Dimìno and his wife cared for him so deeply that they would have taken the shirts off their backs for him.[11]

All slander, all of it. He was an apostle. He worked for justice. The moral satisfaction he derived from the respect, the love, the gratitude of the peasants who considered him their king: for him that was enough. And he held everyone in his fist. Experience had taught him that if they were to openly assemble into a union to rightfully resist the landowners’ greedy oppression, the union would be disbanded on one pretext or another, and the leaders put under house arrest. Such was the grand justice administered in Sicily! Not even the landowners trusted it! Over there, there in that storehouse in San Gerlando, it was he who served justice, real justice, in that way, the only possible way. The landowners were hell bent on paying three tarì for a man’s day? Well, what they wouldn’t give freely, they would give by force. Peacefully, eh. No blood, no violence. And with all due respect to the livestock.

Bómbolo had a ledger, like a municipal tithe register, where next to each name were listed properties, locations, and the number of livestock, large and small. He would open it, summon his most trusted men for advice, and together decide which of the landlords should “pay the tax” that week, which of the peasants were better suited for seizing the livestock, on account of their steady nerves or their familiarity with the area or their chumminess with the cattlemen. And he would advise prudence and discretion.

“A little bit doesn’t hurt!”

This was one of his favorite maxims. He would turn into a terrifying man, with bloodshot eyes and foaming at the mouth, whenever he’d notice or was told that someone in the League “wanted to be a lowlife,” that is, wanted not to work. He would lunge at him, grab him by the chest, claw at his face, shake him so furiously that his cap would fall off his head and his shirt would come untucked from his pants.

“You first-class rascal!” he’d scream in his face. “Who am I? What do you want people to know me as? Who do you think I am? A protector of thieves and vagabonds? Down here, you’ve got to sweat blood, lowlife! Blood, sweat blood! Over here, each one of you must show up every Saturday night with your backs broken from the strain. If not, this place will turn into a den of criminals and bandits. I’ll chew your face, if you don’t work; I’ll stomp you! Work is law! Through work alone you will earn the right to seize a beast from someone else’s stable by the horns and scream in the owner’s face: “This one I’ll keep, unless you pay me for my blood and sweat, as good conscience dictates!”[12]

He was scary, in those moments. Everyone, mute like shadows, would listen to him inside the black storehouse, gazing at the stringy flame of the candle stub that stood upright amid its drippings on the grimy table like a mound of cheese. After his fiery invectives one could hear the heaving of his mighty chest, and from the frigid, darkness of a cave that gaped uncertainly in its depths, there seemed to come a response in the rhythmic thuds of the drips of bitter, silty water falling into a slimy basin where a frog would croak from time to time. 

If anyone dared to raise their eyes, they would see, in those moments after his outbursts, shiny tears – real tears – welling up in Bómbolo’s eyes. His greatest source of pride was the landowners’ unanimous testimony that the peasants had never shown such obedience and submission to work as much as they had of late. The work he did for them could be purified, sanctified by this recognition alone. In truth, in those moments, he saw the justice that he believed to be administering with sanctity to be shamefully compromised; his apostolate, his very honor compromised by the possibility that one man could disgrace them all. At that point, he perceived the weight of his responsibility to be enormous, and felt repulsion, contempt, and sorrow for his work, because he thought the peasants were not grateful enough to him for all he had earned them: for that three-lire salary which, little by little, day by day, he had managed to wrest away from the landowners’ greed.

He held in sacred respect those landowners who had yielded to his relentless preaching by agreeing to a fair salary – and demanded every member of the League show them the same respect. When money was running low and a painstaking search through his ledger would fail to produce someone who, per usual, was due to “pay the tax” for that week, if one advisor or another would cautiously suggest one of those men, Bómbolo would stare him down, white in the face with wrath, seething. Those ones were not to be touched! But, what now?

“What now!” Bómbolo snapped, tossing the ledger into the air. “Now, I would rather we bleed my father-in-law dry!”

And two or three peasants were tasked with going to the Luna lands at night, near the marina, and seizing six or seven large beasts from Zio Lisciànnaru Dimìno, although he had been among the first to pay his men three lire per day.

This should have been enough to shut the slanderers’ mouths. In bleeding his father-in-law dry, Bómbolo was stealing from himself, because the last heir of the Dimìnos would one day be his son. But he’d sooner steal from himself, from his son, than dishonor justice. And how anguishing it was every time his old father-in-law – who still dressed in the old-fashioned way, with knee-length pants, a black knitted cap with a tassel, and chain earrings – would come to see him from the Luna lands, leaning on his long cane, and ask him: 

“Why, Zulì? Is this how your men show you respect? What are you, then? A clown?”

“You should spit in my face,” Bómbolo would reply, sucking on the venom of that deserved reproach. “Spit in my face, what more can I say?”

He felt like a thousand years had gone by until the three League members – Todisco, Principe, and Barrerà – got out of prison: the League, which had become his nightmare, would finally be disbanded.

The day of their release was one of great celebration in the San Gerlando storehouse. People drank and danced, then a beaming Bómbolo delivered the closing speech, reminisced their adventures, and sang to their victory, which was the prize for the three men who had endured prison: the worthiest prize, a change in work conditions and an honest compensation. At the end, he added that, having completed his task, he would retire peacefully and happily. And he made everyone laugh when he announced he would send his red Turkish cap to his father-in-law that very day, since he’d never liked seeing him in it. By laying down his cap, he renounced sovereignty and declared the League disbanded.  

Barely a fortnight had gone by when old Marquis Don Nicolino Nigrelli showed up at the café, jerking around as usual, the ivory knob of his ebony cane pressed against his pursed lips:

“Don Zulì, a favor…”

Bómbolo quickly grew whiter than the coffee table’s marble top, then stared at the poor marquis with eyes so wide open that the latter shook in fear, backed out, and slumped on a chair while the other man raged above him, roaring through clenched teeth:

“Again?”

Almost dumbfounded, yet attempting a smirk, the marquis showed him four fingers on his little, trembling hand and said:

“Yessir. Four. As usual. What else is new?”

In response, Bómbolo ripped his new sugarloaf hat off his head, brought it to his mouth and gnashed it. He moved amid the tables, completely overtaken by a convulsive tremor, knocking chairs over. Then, he turned to the marquis, who was still sitting among the stunned patrons, and yelled:

“I swear to God,[13] don’t give them one cent! Don’t you dare give them one cent! I’ll deal with it!”

But could those three men – Todisco, Principe, and Barrerà – seriously be content with that “worthy prize” praised by Bómbolo at the last League meeting? When Bómbolo himself had lately allowed his father-in-law to be bled dry – although he had been among the first to agree to a three-lire salary for the peasants – could they not, for the sake of justice, continue bleeding the other landowners dry?

When, having spent the whole day looking for the men in vain, Bómbolo found them at night on the hills of San Gerlando and jumped on them like a tiger, they let themselves be beaten, wrenched, bitten, thrashed. They even said that if he wanted to kill them, he was free to do so, as they wouldn’t lift a finger to defend themselves, such was the extent of their gratitude, of their respect for him. He would kill them unfairly, however. They didn’t know anything about anything. Innocent like water. League? What League? The League was no more! Hadn’t he disbanded it? Oh, he threatened to report them? For what, the past? Well, then, everyone’s involved, starting with him, their boss! For that new theft endured by Marquis Nigrelli? But they didn’t know anything about it! At most, they could ask the picciotti to go looking in the countryside. Yes, just like he used to, for two or three days, riding even at night under rain or stars.

Hearing them talk like that, Bómbolo could have gnashed his own hands in anger. He told them they had three days’ time. If within three days the four heads of cattle were not returned to Marquis Nigrelli, and without a single cent taken… What would he do? He didn’t know yet!

But what could Bómbolo do? The very landowners – Marquis Nigrelli, Ragona, Tavella, all the others – persuaded him that there was nothing he could do anymore. What did he have to do with it? When did he ever? Hadn’t his work always been selfless? Turning to the authorities? But that would be pointless! Didn’t everyone know? They wouldn’t get their livestock back, nor would the culprits be arrested. As far as hoping that they would bring back the livestock to the stables just like that, out of sheer affection and with nothing in return, well, that was naïve to think. The landowners themselves told him. A little something had to be given. Yes, as per usual… no deals, no conditions when he, Bómbolo, was there as the go-between!

And by their tone in saying these things, Bómbolo realized that now they believed his outrage to be for show, just like they had believed his compassion for the peasants to also be for show.

He vented his frustration for a few days, preaching that the men should go back to being paid three tarì per day – three tarì, three tarì – just so he could get some satisfaction. They didn’t deserve it, my word! They didn’t even deserve three tarì, shameless thieves! Sons of bitches! Jail birds! No? Oh, so they really wanted his gallbladder to burst in his liver?

“Out! Ugh! Country of lowlifes!”

And he sent his son to his grandparents in the Luna lands, letting his father-in-law know he wanted his red cap back. A Turk, he wanted to become a Turk again!

And two days later, having gathered his belongings, he went down to the harbor and boarded a Greek brig bound for the Levant.