Free The Oil Jar and Other Stories by Luigi Pirandello

if dazed by the doctor’s words, failed to shoo away. He, Zarù, was paying no attention to the doctor’s speech, but was pleased that, with his talking, he was engrossing his cousin’s attention to such an extent that Neli remained as motionless as a statue and paid no heed to the annoyance that fly was causing him. Oh, if it were only the same one! Yes, then they really would get married at the same time! He had been seized by a sullen envy, an unspoken ferocious jealousy of that young cousin, so strong and healthy, for whom life remained full of promise—life, which suddenly was running out for him ...
    All at once Neli, as if he had felt himself bitten, raised one hand, drove away the fly and with his fingers began to pinch his chin, where the little cut was, turning toward Zarù, who was looking at him and had opened his horrendous lips, as if in a monstrous smile. They looked at each other in that way for a while. Then Zarù said, as if not meaning to:
    â€œThe fly ... ”
    Neli didn’t understand and bent down his head to listen.
    â€œWhat are you saying?”
    â€œThe fly ... ,” he repeated.
    â€œWhich one? Where?” asked Neli, in alarm, looking at the doctor.
    â€œThere, where you’re scratching. I’m sure of it!” said Zarù.
    Neli showed the doctor the tiny wound in his chin.
    â€œWhat’s wrong with me? It itches ... ”
    The doctor looked at him, frowning; then, as if he wanted to examine him more closely, he led him out of the stables. Saro followed them.
    What happened next? Giurlannu Zarù waited, waited a long time, with an anxiety that irritated all his insides. He heard a confused sound of talking outside. All of a sudden, Saro came back into the stable furiously, took the mule and, without even turning around to look at him, went out, moaning:
    â€œAh, my Neluccio! Ah, my Neluccio!”
    Was it true, then? And look, were they abandoning him there, like a dog? ... He tried to raise himself on one elbow and called out twice:
    â€œSaro ... Saro ... ”
    Silence. Nobody. He couldn’t support himself any longer on his elbow, he fell back into a recumbent position and for a while he seemed to be rooting and grubbing around, in order not to hear the silence of the countryside, which terrified him. Suddenly he began to wonder whether he had dreamed the whole thing, whether he had had that bad dream in his feverish state; but, when he turned to the wall, he saw the fly there again. Now it was projecting its little mouth-tube and pumping, now it was rapidly cleaning its two thin front feet, rubbing them together, as if in contentment.

THE OIL JAR
    A bumper crop of olives, too, that year. Productive trees, laden down the year before, had all borne firm fruit, in spite of the fog that had stifled them when in blossom.
    Zirafa, who had a fair number of them on his farm Le Quote at Primosole, foreseeing that the five old glazed ceramic oil jars he had in his cellar wouldn’t be enough to hold all the oil from the new harvest, had ordered a sixth, larger one in advance from Santo Stefano di Camastra, where they were made: as tall as a man’s chest, beautiful, big-bellied and majestic, it would be the “abbess” of the five others.
    Needless to say, he had litigated even with the kiln operator there over this jar. And with whom did Don 3 Lollò Zirafa fail to litigate? Over any trifle, even over a crumb of stone that had fallen from the perimeter wall, even over a wisp of straw, he would go to court. And by dint of all those legal documents and lawyers’ fees, summonsing this man and that and always paying the costs for everyone, he had half ruined himself.
    They said that his legal adviser, tired of seeing him showing up on his mule two or three times a week, in order to get rid of him had made him a present of a tiny, tiny little gem of a book, like a missal—the law code—so that he could rack his brains