THE DUCK COUPLE

I saw on the ice of the harbour, very quiet and at ease. After a clouded morning Piet Hein and I began our walk with a heavenly blue sky above our heads.
We gave the horses their carrots and walked a path on the Reinhardswald hill with a great view over the Diemel valley and on a bench we sat in the sun.
I will first write my haiku and choose the proverb and below that I will try to tell what happens in the first act of Pirandello's play (he called them naked masks).

My haiku:

I once met a man
Who said he hated blossoms
I did not ask why

And the proverb:

Every couple is not a pair. (No country mentioned here)

Pirandello's play is called: It is so! (if you think so).
The play starts in the house of commentatore Agazzi, he is the provincial councillor. The behavior of Mr. Ponza, the new secretary of the Prefect and subordinate of Agazzi is the talk of the town. To all it is a surprise that he himself lives with his wife on the 5th floor of a tenement in a poor environment and that he has hired for his mother-in-law an apartment next to the Agazzi's. When Mrs Agazzi and her daughter call upon Mrs Frola, she does not open the door and refuses to receive them. That strange behavior makes that they follow Mrs Frola on her visit to her daughter and they are taken aback discovering that Mrs Frola does not climb the stairs and that her daughter does not come down either. From the balcony they shout to each other and only a basket on a rope goes up and down with a letter in it.
They suspect that Ponza is not allowing his wife to visit her mother. In fact the daughter does not leave the apartment at all. Ponza however visit his mother-in-law everyday once or twice and they are seen in the streets together arm in arm.
The family is new in town and it is known that they come from a village that was destroyed in an earthquake. Ponza for instance has lost all his relatives.
Agazzi went to see the Prefect about what happened and he now orders to discover the truth behind their strange behavior. Then there is Laudisi, the brother of Mrs Agazzi, he is sceptically about their search. His sentence: What can we really know about other people. (Key word).
In this first act Mrs Frola visits the Agazzi's to tell the truth. We refrain from visiting each other on our own accord, out of consideration, she says, and that she feels resigned about it. She tells that Ponza is so in love with her daughter, that he does not want to share her with anybody. She describes it as a kind of disease.
Agazzi thinks it all a mystery.
After Mrs Frola has left Ponza comes and tells the company that his mother-in-law is mad. He explains that her daughter died 4 years ago and that fact has made her mad. Two years later after that Ponza marries a second wife, but when Mrs Frola meets them in the street, she thinks this woman is her daughter, she is overcomed by joy and her madness is cured.
Ponza wants to keep up this beneficial illusion, But there are limits to what he can asks from his wife.
After he has left, Mrs Frola comes in again. She has noticed that Ponza has come to the Agazzi's. Now she wants to tell the real reason and asks the astonished company how they can believe Ponza at all.
After the earthquake, she says, Ponza had a very hard time and asked too much of her daughter, who was frail and was send to a sanatorium to recover. But Ponza thought that she was dead. When her daughter returned in good health he could not believe that she was his wife and with the consent of the doctors they were obliged to pretend having a second wedding.
Mrs Frola tells them too that Ponza not really believe that his wife is dead but that he seems to feel a need for maintaining the pretense. That he has a terrible fear now that his wife will be taken away from him again. So he locks her up at home where he can have her all for himself. Mrs Frola is convinced that Ponza worships his wife and that her daughter is happy.
End of the first act.