Free The Watcher and Other Stories by Italo Calvino

from the polling group to go and quiet one who had become overexcited, but without much success. Each thing that happened in the ward was separate from the other things, as if each bed enclosed a world out of communication with the rest, except for the cries that stimulated one another, in a crescendo, and spread a general agitation, partly like the racket of sparrows, and partly mournful, moaning. Only the man with the enormous head was immobile, as if untouched by any sound.
    Amerigo went on watching the father and son. The son had long limbs and a long face, which was also hairy and numb, perhaps half blocked by paralysis. The father was a peasant, also in his best suit, and in some ways, especially in the length of his face and his hands, he resembled his son. Not in the eyes: the son had the helpless eyes of an animal, while the father’s eyes were half shut, wary, the eyes of an old farmer. They were sitting obliquely on their chairs, at either side of the bed, so they could stare at each other, and they paid no attention to anything around them. Amerigo kept his gaze on them, perhaps to rest from (or to avoid) other sights, or perhaps, even more, because he was somehow fascinated.
    Meanwhile the other officials were taking the vote of someone in bed. They did it like this: they put the screen around him, with the table behind it, and, as he was a paralytic, the nun voted for him. They removed the screen, Amerigo looked at him: a purple face, flung back as if dead, mouth gaping, gums bared, eyes wide. Only that face, sunk in the pillow, could be seen: it was hard as a stick, except for a gasping that seemed to whistle at the base of his throat.
    Where do they get the nerve to have such creatures vote? Amerigo asked himself, and only then did he remember that it was his job to prevent them.
    They were already setting up the screen at another bed. Amerigo followed them. Another hairless, swollen face, stiff, with opened, twisted mouth, the eyeballs sticking out of the lids without lashes. But this inmate was restless, disturbed.
    â€œBut there’s a mistake!” Amerigo said. “How can this man vote?”
    â€œThere’s his name: Morin, Giuseppe,” the chairman said. Then, to the priest: “This is the one?”
    â€œYes, here’s the certificate,” the priest said. “Motor impediment of the limbs. You’re going to assist him, Reverend Mother, aren’t you?”
    â€œOh yes, yes, poor Giuseppe,” the nun said.
    The man in the bed jerked as if he were being given electric shocks, groaning.
    It was up to Amerigo now. He tore himself forcibly from his thoughts, from that barely glimpsed, remote frontier territory—frontier between what and what?—and everything on this or that side of it seemed mist.
    â€œJust a moment,” he said in an expressionless voice, knowing he was repeating a formula, talking in a void. “Is the voter capable of recognizing the person who is voting for him? Is he capable of expressing his wishes? Signor Morin, I’m speaking to you: are you able to do this?”
    â€œHere we go again,” the priest said to the chairman. “Reverend Mother is with them day and night here, and they ask him if he knows her....” He shook his head, with a little laugh.
    Reverend Mother also smiled, but her smile was for all and for no reason. The problem of being recognized, Amerigo thought, didn’t exist for her; and he was impelled to compare the old nun’s gaze with that of the peasant spending Sunday at Cottolengo to stare into the eyes of his idiot son. The nun didn’t need recognition from those she helped, the good she derived from them—in exchange for the good she did them—was a general good, of which nothing was lost. Instead, the old peasant stared into his son’s eyes to be recognized, to keep from losing him, from losing that little, poor thing that was his, his son.
    When no sign of recognition