To my surprise he made no difficulties. On the contrary he seemed anxious for my business. I explained how I had got his address. I praised his cut and asked him to make me a suit. We chose a smooth-textured gray, then he took my measurements and offered to come to my house for the fitting.
I asked him what it would cost. He replied that there was no hurry, we could always come to some arrangement. “What a nice man,” I thought at first. However, later on when I was at home I became aware that the little old man had left me with an uneasy feeling (perhaps on account of his too frequent and honeyed smiles). In short, I had no desire to see him again. But now the suit was ordered and after about twenty days it was ready.
When it was brought to me I tried it on for a few seconds in front of the mirror. It was a masterpiece. But, I don’t quite know why, perhaps it was the memory of something unpleasant about the little old man, but I had no desire to wear it and several weeks passed before I decided to do so.
I shall remember that day for the rest of my life. It was a Wednesday in April and it was raining. When I had slipped on the suit—jacket, trousers and waistcoat—I noticed with pleasure that it didn’t pull or pinch anywhere, as nearly always happens with new clothes. In fact it fitted me to perfection.
Usually I never put anything in the right-hand pocket of my coat, I keep my papers in the left-hand one. This explains why it was only after a couple of hours in the office that I casually put my hand in my right-hand pocket and noticed there was a piece of paper there. Perhaps the tailor’s bill?
No. It was a ten-thousand-lira note.
I was completely nonplussed. I had certainly not put it there myself—on the other hand it was absurd to believe it was a joke of the tailor Corticella. Still less a present from my daily woman, the only person who, other than the tailor, had had occasion to touch my suit. Oh, perhaps it was a forged note? I held it up to the light, I compared it with others. It couldn’t be more genuine.
There was only one possible explanation, a piece of absentmindedness on Corticella’s part. Perhaps a customer had come in to pay his account at a time when the tailor hadn’t had his wallet on him and rather than leave the note lying about had tucked it into the pocket of my coat which was hanging on a dummy. Such things have been known to happen.
I rang the bell for my secretary. I would have written to Corticella and returned the money that was not mine had I not (I don’t know why) put my hand once more into my pocket.
“What is the matter, doctor? Do you feel ill?” asked my secretary, who had just come in. I must have turned as pale as death. In that pocket my fingers encountered the edge of another piece of paper which a few moments before was not there.
“No, no, it’s nothing,” I said, “a slight dizziness. I get it now and again. Perhaps I am a little tired. Never mind, signorina, I was going to dictate a letter, but I’ll put it off till later.”
Only after my secretary had gone did I dare to take the paper from my pocket. It was a ten-thousand-lira note. Then I tried a third time, and a third banknote came out.
My heart began to gallop. I felt myself involved, for some mysterious reason, in the middle of a fairy story which one tells to children and which nobody believes to be true.
On the pretext of feeling unwell I left the office and went home. I had to be alone. By good luck my daily woman had already gone. I shut the door and pulled down the blinds. I began to pull out banknotes one after the other as quickly as possible from a pocket that seemed inexhaustible.
I worked in a high state of nervous tension, fearing that at any moment the miracle would cease. I would have liked to continue all through the evening and night so as to accumulate a billion. But at a certain point I had no more strength.
In front of me lay an impressive pile of banknotes. The important thing now was to hide them so that no one would suspect their existence. I emptied an old trunk full of pieces of carpet and at the bottom, stacked in so many heaps, I placed the money which I began to count. It came to over fifty-eight million.
I was wakened the next morning by the daily woman, who was astonished to find me on my bed still fully dressed. I tried to laugh it off, explaining that I had drunk a little too much the evening before and had been unexpectedly overtaken by sleep.
Another anxiety. The daily offered to take my coat and at least give it a good brush.
I replied that I had to go out at once and hadn’t time to change. Then I hurried off to a ready-made-clothes shop and bought another suit of similar material. I would give that to the maid, “my own,” the one that would make me in the course of a few days the most powerful man in the world, I would hide in a safe place.
I wasn’t sure whether I was living in a dream, whether I was happy or whether on the other hand I was suffocating under the weight of a destiny that was too much for me. Walking along the street I continually felt for the magic pocket through my raincoat. Each time I sighed with relief. Beneath the material I heard the comforting crackle of paper money.
But a curious coincidence chilled my joyful delirium. The
