In the past, I was sure of very few things. But I was sure of one thing at least: my name was Mattia Pascal.
When a friend came to ask me for advice, I shrugged my shoulders, half closed my eyes and answered:
— My name is Mattia Pascal.
— Thank you, my friend, I know that.
— And you think that's nothing?
It was not much, that's true. But I did not yet know what it is like to be unable to say even that any more.
Today, in Miragno, my little town by the sea, some people laugh and call me "the late Mattia Pascal". Careful: this "late" has nothing to do with arriving late. Before a name, "the late" means "dead". We say "my late grandfather" when the grandfather has died. So I am a dead man, and yet I breathe, I eat, I go for walks and I am writing to you.
The strangest thing is that I have already died twice. The first time, it was a mistake. The second time... you will see.
I am writing to you from the library of Miragno. In 1803, a certain Monsignor Boccamazza left all his books to our town, which has never read them. For years, these books stayed in a damp storeroom. Then they were put in a small abandoned church, Santa Maria Liberale, where nobody comes to pray any more. For almost two years, I was the one who looked after these books. In truth, I was less a keeper of books than a rat catcher.
Today, my friend Don Eligio Pellegrinotto, a priest, looks after the books. All day long, he climbs a tall ladder and throws dusty books onto the table in the middle of the church. Each time, a grey cloud rises, and two or three spiders run away. He is the one who advised me to write my story.
I am writing it here, in the little corner kept for the librarian, under the light that falls from a window high up in the church. When I have finished, I will leave this manuscript to the library. It may only be opened fifty years after my third death, the last one, the real one.
Some of the things I am going to tell you will not do me credit. But I am already a little outside life, so I can tell you everything.
So I will begin with my family.
My father was a merchant. He sailed a small boat, and he bought and sold all kinds of goods. The old people of Miragno still say that he won his fortune at cards, in Marseille, against an English captain. I don't know if it's true. I only know that with his money he had bought land: olive groves, vineyards, a fine villa, and the Stia, a farm with a spring and a mill. In town, he also had several houses.
I was four and a half when he died. He had gone to Corsica on business, and a fever killed him in three days, at the age of thirty-eight.
My mother was a gentle, shy woman who talked like a little girl. After my father's death, she was often ill. As she knew nothing about business, she handed the whole inheritance over to a manager, Batta Malagna. My father had helped this man a great deal, and she thought he would be grateful.
My father's sister, Aunt Scolastica, did not think so at all. She was a terrible old maid, dark-haired, with eyes like a ferret's. She would come to see my mother, get angry within five minutes, then stamp her foot on the floor and shout:
— Can't you hear how hollow it is? The mole! The mole!
The mole is that small animal that digs under our feet without anyone seeing it. For my aunt, the mole was Malagna.
She wanted my mother to marry again, this time to the father of my friend Pomino, a widower. When he was young, this man had asked my aunt herself to marry him. She had said no, but he had stayed her friend. My mother laughed at the idea and would not hear of it.
I had a brother, Roberto, whom we called Berto. He was two years older than me. He was handsome and elegant, and he spent hours in front of his mirror. I was not handsome, and above all I had an eye that looked elsewhere, as if it had a mind of its own. They had given me big round glasses to straighten it, but one day I threw them away. At eighteen, a big red curly beard took over my face, and my small nose got lost between that beard and my high forehead. I did not care: I was healthy, and that was enough for me.
Meanwhile, Malagna came to see my mother with a sorry look on his face.
— Another bad year! he sighed as he came in.
One year, the fog had destroyed the olives. Another year, a disease had killed the vines. We had to borrow money, then sell a piece of land to pay the debts. So we lost the vineyards, then the olive groves, then the villa. We still had the houses and the Stia, with its mill.
Yet for years we lacked nothing, and we did not worry. Berto and I were two lazy young men. Berto was lucky enough to marry a rich girl in time, and he went to live in Oneglia. I got married too. But my marriage...
Remember this name: the Stia. It was there, in the mill stream, that I died for the first time.