Free The Oil Jar and Other Stories by Luigi Pirandello Page A

searching out for himself the legal basis for the lawsuits he wished to institute.
    Before that, all those he had quarrels with, to make fun of him, used to shout at him: “Saddle the mule!” Now, instead, they said to him: “Consult the handbook!”
    And Don Lollò would answer:
    â€œI sure will, and I’ll annihilate you, sons of bitches!”
    That new jar—for which he had paid four good onze 4 in hard cash—while awaiting the right spot to be found for it in the cellar, was temporarily stored in the grape-pressing shed. A jar like that had never been seen: it could hold at least two hundred liters. Stored in that dark cave, reeking of must and that acrid, raw smell that lurks in places without air or light, it was pitiful to behold. Some serious misfortune had to be suffered on its account, everyone told him. But Don Lollò, at that warning, would shrug his shoulders.
    Two days earlier they had begun to knock down the olives, and he was in a vile temper, because he didn’t know where to turn first, since the people with the fertilizer to be deposited in heaps here and there for the new season’s bean crop had also arrived with their laden mules. On the one hand, he would have liked to be present while that steady parade of animals was being unloaded; on the other hand, he didn’t want to leave the men who were knocking down the olives; and he went around cursing like a Turk and threatening to annihilate this man and that, if a single well-grown olive should be missing, just as if he had already counted them all, one by one, on the trees; or if each pile of manure wasn’t as high as all the rest. With his homely white hat, in his shirt sleeves, his chest bare, his face all red, dripping all over with sweat, he kept running back and forth, rolling his wolflike eyes and furiously rubbing his shaven cheeks, on which the heavy beard grew back again almost at the very moment it was shaved off.
    Now, at the end of the third day, three of the farmhands who had been knocking down the olives, coming into the wine-press shed to put away the ladders and the poles, stood stock still at the sight of the beautiful new jar, split almost in two. A large strip in front had been detached, all in one piece, as if someone —“whack!”—had cut it clean through with his hatchet, across the widest part of its belly, all the way down.
    â€œI’m dying! I’m dying! I’m dying!” exclaimed one of the three, almost tonelessly, beating his chest with one hand.
    â€œWho did it?” asked the second.
    And the third:
    â€œOh, mother! Who is going to face Don Lollò now? Who’s going to tell him? Honestly, the new jar! Oh, what a shame!”
    The first man, the most frightened of them all, suggested that they immediately close the shutters of the door again and go away as quietly as possible, leaving the ladders and poles outside leaning up against the wall. But the second man vigorously objected:
    â€œAre you crazy? With Don Lollò? He’s liable to believe that we broke it. We stay right here!”
    He went out in front of the shed and, using his hands to amplify his voice, called:
    â€œDon Lollò! Oh, Don Lollòoo!”
    The Don was down the hillside over there with the men who were unloading the fertilizer, and was gesticulating furiously in his accustomed manner, from time to time pulling his ugly white hat down over his eyes with both hands. Every once in a while, he pulled it down so hard that he could no longer wrench it off his neck and forehead. In the sky the last flames of the sunset were already going out, and amid the peace that descended onto the countryside with the shades of evening and the pleasant coolness, the gestures of that permanently enraged man stood out conspicuously.
    â€œDon Lollò! Oh, Don Lollòoo!”
    When he arrived and saw the havoc, it seemed he would go mad; first he hurled himself at those three men: