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Celena Holtzberg
"If you would like to have an idea of how it is that others seeyou, so as no longer to have to marvel at the judgments whichothers pass upon your personality, learn to reflect like the heroof this novel."
Not exactly that, I would have you know. Some allowance is to bemade for the state of mind I was in. But beyond that, I don't denythat my life was leisurely to the point of idleness. I waswell-to-do, and a pair of faithful friends, Sebastiano Quantorzoand Stefano Firbo, had looked after my interests since my father'sdeath. My father, by fair means or other, had not succeeded indoing anything with me, beyond seeing that I married at a veryearly age, possibly with the hope that I would at least provide ason who would be not at all like me; but the poor man had not beenable to get even this out of me. It was not, understand, that Iopposed any will of my own to taking the path upon which my fatherwished to embark me. I took them all. But taking them was all Idid; I did not do any walking to speak of, but would come to a haltat every step, at every smallest stone I encountered, to hoverabout it, first at a distance and then closer up; and I wondered nolittle how others could go on past me, without taking any accountwhatever of that stone, which for me meanwhile had come to assumethe proportions of an insurmountable mountain, as well as those ofa world in which, without any further ado, I might have made myselfat home.
And I insisted upon his pausing to observe it attentively, as ifthat defect in my nose were an irreparable hitch that had occurredin the mechanism of the universe. My friend surveyed me at first insome astonishment; he surely suspected that my reason for thus,suddenly and without rhyme or reason, dragging in that remark aboutmy nose, was that I did not deem the business of which he had beenspeaking to me worth my attention or a reply, for he gave a shrugof the shoulders and started to leave me, unceremoniously. I caughthim by the arm.
I stood there gazing at him, as I had gazed at my wife thatmorning, with a mixture, that is to say, of humiliation, of angerand of astonishment. So he, too, had noticed it, had he? And howmany others! How many? Yet I had been unaware of it, and, beingunaware, had gone on believing that I was to everybody a Moscardawith a straight nose, whereas the truth was, every one saw me as aMoscarda with a crooked nose. And how many times, quiteunsuspectingly, had I chanced to speak of Tizio or Cajo's defectivenose, and how many times must I have caused a laugh, as those whoheard me thought: "But just give a look at that poor chap, willyou, talking about other people's faulty noses!"
It is true, I might have consoled myself with the reflectionthat, in the long run, my case was obviously common enough, all ofwhich only goes to prove once again a well-known fact, namely, thatwe are ready enough to note the faults of others, while all thetime unconscious of our own. The first germs of the malady had,however, begun to take root in my mind; and this reflection wasunable to bring me any consolation. The thought, rather, remainedfirmly planted, that I was not for others what up to then I hadinwardly pictured myself as being.
For the moment, I was thinking only of my body; and as my friendstill stood there in front of me, with that derisive andincredulous air, I asked him, by way of retaliation, if he, for hispart, knew that he had a dimple in his chin, which divided it intotwo not wholly equal parts, one of which stood out more than theother.
When my friend, having gone into the barber's, had satisfiedhimself to his own astonishment that what I had told him was true,he did his best not to display any annoyance, but observed that,when all was said, it was a trifling matter.
From that day on, I longed most ardently to be alone, if onlyfor an hour. It was really more than a longing; it was a need, asharp and pressing, a restless need, which was aggravated to thepoint of fury by the presence or proximity of my wife.
The only place where I could shut myself in was my study; andeven here, I did not dare put the bolt on the door, from fear ofarousing unpleasant suspicions in my wife, who was, I shall not sayan unpleasant woman, but a highly suspicious one. And supposingthat, opening the door suddenly, she had discovered me?
No, it would not do. And anyway, it would have been useless.There were no mirrors in my study. I had need of a mirror.Furthermore, the mere thought of my wife's being in the house wassufficient to keep me in the presence of myself, which was exactlywhat I did not want.
Solitude is never where you are; it is always where you are not,and is only possible with a stranger present; whatever the place orwhoever the person, it must be one that is wholly ignorantconcerning you, and concerning which or whom you are equallyignorant, so that will and sensation remain suspended and confusedin an anxious uncertainty, while with the ceasing of allaffirmation on your part, your own inner consciousness ceases atthe same time. True solitude is to be found in a place that lives alife of its own, but which for you holds no familiar footprint,speaks in no known voice, and where accordingly the stranger isyourself.
This was the way in which I wanted to be alone. Without myself.I mean to say, without that self which I already knew, or which Ithought I knew. Alone with a certain stranger, from whom I darklyfelt that I should be able never more to part, and who was myself:the stranger inseparable from me. There was, then, one onlythat interested me! And already, this one, or the need I felt ofbeing alone with him, of confronting him in order to know himbetter and hold a little converse with him, was working me up to apitch of half-shivering alarm.
In the course of living, I had never thought of my nose, of itssize, whether big or small, of the color of my eyes, or thenarrowness or breadth of my forehead, and so forth. This was mynose, those were my eyes, this was my forehead; things inseparablefrom me, of which, immersed in my own affairs, taken up with my ownideas, given over to my own feelings, I had had no time tothink.
"And others? Others are not in me at all. For others, who lookfrom without, my ideas, my feelings have a nose. My nose. And theyhave a pair of eyes, my eyes, which I do not see but which theysee. What relation is there between my ideas and my nose? For me,none whatever. I do not think with my nose, nor am I conscious ofmy nose when I think. But others? Others, who cannot see my ideaswithin me, but who see my nose without? For others, there is sointimate a relation between my ideas and my nose that if theformer, let us say, were very serious while the latter wasmirth-provoking by reason of its shape, they would burst outlaughing."
As I ran on like this, a fresh anxiety laid hold of me: therealization that I should not be able, while living, to depictmyself to myself in the actions of my life, to see myself as otherssaw me, to set my body off in front of me and see it living likethe body of another. When I took up my position in front of amirror, something like a lull occurred inside me; all spontaneityvanished; every gesture impressed me as being fictitious or arepetition.
I was to have a proof of this in the impression with which Iwas, so to speak, assailed a few days afterward, when, walking andtalking with my friend, Stefano Firbo, I happened to catch anunexpected glimpse of myself in a mirror along the street, one thatI had not noticed at first. This impression had not lasted morethan a second, when that lull promptly occurred, spontaneitydisappeared, and self-consciousness set in. I did not recognizemyself at first. The impression was that of a stranger going downthe street and engaged in conversation. I came to a halt. I musthave been very pale.
From that time on, I had one despairing obsession: to go inpursuit of that stranger who was in me and who kept fleeing me;whom I could not halt in front of a mirror, without his at oncebecoming the me that I knew; the one who lived for others and whomI could not know; whom others beheld living and not I. I wanted tosee and know him, too, as others saw and knew him.
I still believed, I may repeat here, that the stranger inquestion was a single individual: one to all, even as I believedthat I was a single individual to myself. But my atrocious dramaspeedily grew more complicated, with the discovery of thehundred-thousand Moscardas that I was, not only to others, but evento myself, all with the single name of Moscarda, a name that wasugly to the point of cruelty, all of them lodged within this poorbody which was likewise one, one and none, alas, if I took up myposition in front of a mirror and, standing motionless, looked itstraight in the eyes, thereby abolishing in it all feeling and allwill of its own.
I shall speak now of those little games in the form of pantomimein which, in the sprightly infancy of my folly, I began to indulgein front of all the mirrors in the house, being careful to look toright and left to make sure that I was not observed by my wife,waiting eagerly until she went out to make a call or for somepurchase or other, leaving me alone at last for some littletime.
The thing that I strove to do was not, like a comedian, to studymy movements, to compose my face for the expression of variousemotions and mental impulses; on the contrary, what I wanted to dowas to take myself by surprise, in my own natural actions, in thosesudden alterations of countenance which accompany the mind's everymovement; by way of capturing, for example, an expression ofunforeseen astonishment (over every trifle, I would fling up myeyebrows to the roots of my hair and would open my eyes and mouthas widely as I could, stretching out my face as if it had beendrawn by an internal wire); or a profound sorrow (and I would screwup my forehead, as I pictured the death of my wife, half-closing myeyelids, sombrely, as if brooding over my grief); or a fierce rage(and I would gnash my teeth, imagining that someone had slapped myface, and would curl up my nose, stick out my lower jaw, and flasha lightning-look).
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