From The Bewitched Bourgeois, which will be published next month by New York Review Books. Translated from the Italian by Lawrence Venuti.

One morning, the noted painter Lucio Predonzani, forty-six, who had long ago retired to his country house in Vimercate, was stunned. He had opened the daily newspaper and, on the four-column page of the Arts section, in the lower right-hand corner, came across the headline:

italian art world in mourning

painter predonzani is dead

Underneath it read:

Vimercate, February 21, night. Following a brief illness, against which medical treatment proved ineffective, the painter Lucio Predonzani passed away two days ago. At the behest of the deceased, the funeral service preceded this announcement.

A commemorative article followed, about a column in length, full of tributes, signed by the art critic Giovanni Steffani. There was even a photograph, taken some twenty years before.

Flabbergasted, unable to believe his eyes, Predonzani feverishly glanced over the obituary, rapidly noticing, despite his haste, several phrases of poisonous reserve, positioned here and there with undeniable tact amid broadsides of encomiastic adjectives.

“Matilde! Matilde!” Predonzani called as soon as he had caught his breath.

“What is it?” replied his wife from the next room.

“Come, come, Matilde!” he implored.

“Wait a moment. I’m in the back, ironing.”

“Come here, I tell you!”

Matilde ran to him.

“Look, look,” the painter groaned, handing her the newspaper.

She looked, blanched, and with the marvelous absurdity that is often attributed to women, she burst into desperate tears. “Oh my Lucio, poor Lucio, my treasure,” she stammered between one sob and the next.

The scene wound up exasperating the man. “Have you gone crazy, Matilde? Don’t you see me? Don’t you understand it’s a mistake, a ghastly mistake?”

Matilde, in fact, stopped weeping immediately. She looked at her husband. Thenceforth her face brightened up, unexpectedly, with the same lightness that had made her feel like a widow a moment before. Struck by the comical side of the situation, she was overwhelmed with mirth.

“Oh my God, what buffoonery! It’s hilarious,” she moaned amid tremors of laughter, actually doubling over. “Forgive me, Lucio. The art world in mourning, and you healthy as a horse!”

“Enough, enough.” He swore, beside himself. “Don’t you realize? It’s terrible, terrible. The executive editor of the newspaper is going to hear from me. This prank will cost him dearly!”

After hurrying to the city, Predonzani raced to the newspaper. The executive editor welcomed him affably.

“Please, maestro, take a seat. No, not there. That armchair is more comfortable. A cigarette? . . . These lighters never work, truly hopeless . . . Here’s an ashtray. Now tell me: To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

Was he acting or was he really in the dark about what the newspaper had published? Predonzani was shocked.

“But, but in today’s newspaper, in the arts section, there’s my death.”

“Your death?” The executive editor grabbed a copy of the newspaper, which was folded on his desk, opened it, saw, understood (or pretended to understand), felt the briefest moment of embarrassment—a matter of a split second—wonderfully regained his self-possession, and coughed.

“That doesn’t work, does it? We have a strange discrepancy here.” He seemed like a father who was giving his child a perfunctory scolding in the presence of an offended passerby.

Predonzani lost his patience.

“Discrepancy?” he shouted. “You’ve killed me off. You have! It’s monstrous.”

“Yes, yes,” said the executive editor calmly. “Perhaps. Let’s put it this way: the context of the news exceeded the intentions. On the other hand, I hope you appreciated the homage my newspaper rendered your art—with due merit.”

“A fine homage! You have ruined me.”

“Well, I don’t deny an inaccuracy may have been committed.”

“You make me out to be dead, and I’m alive. You call that an inaccuracy! It’s enough to drive someone crazy. I formally demand a full correction in the same exact place. And I, of course, reserve the right to sue for damages!”

“Damages? But my dear sir”—he had shifted from “maestro” to the simple “sir,” a bad sign—“you don’t realize what extraordinary luck has befallen you. Any other painter would be kicking up his heels.”

“Luck?”

“Luck, of course. When an artist dies, the value of his work immediately increases. With no wish to do so, absolutely none, we have rendered you a formidable service.”

“And what about me? Am I expected to play dead? Disappear into thin air?”

“Certainly, if you’d like to take advantage of the stupendous opportunity. You wouldn’t want to let it slip away—good heavens! Just think: a splendid posthumous exhibition, some well-organized publicity. We ourselves would do everything we can to launch it. It would bring in millions, maestro, even several.”

“But me? Would I have to drop out of circulation?”

“Say, do you have a brother by any chance?”

“Yes. Why? He lives in South Africa.”

“Magnificent. Does he look like you?”

“Pretty much. But he wears a beard.”

“Perfect! Let yours grow, too. Then you can pass for your brother! Everything will proceed like clockwork. Listen to me: it’s better to let things go their own way. Just so you understand: the kind of correction you want, I really don’t know who would benefit in the end. You personally—forgive my frankness—would cut a rather sorry figure. It’s pointless: people who come back to life never manage to be likable. In the art world, too, you know how these things go. Your resurrection, after so much adulation, would make a very bad impression.”

He couldn’t say no. He returned to his country house. He hid himself in a room, letting his beard grow. His wife went into mourning. Friends came to see her, especially Oscar Pradelli, another painter who had always been in Predonzani’s shadow. Then the buyers began to arrive: dealers, collectors, people who had a nose for business. Paintings that before would barely fetch forty or fifty thousand lire were now selling for two hundred thousand in a snap. And so, in his clandestine retreat, Predonzani worked, turning out one canvas after another. Backdating them, of course.

After a month—his beard had grown sufficiently—Predonzani took the risk of going out, introducing himself as his brother who had just returned from South Africa. He wore glasses and imitated an exotic accent. Still, people remarked on how much his brother resembled him.

Out of curiosity, he ventured as far as the cemetery on one of his first walks after his seclusion. On the large marble slab in the family chapel, a stonemason was carving his name with his birth and death dates.

He said he was his brother. He opened the little bronze door with the key. He descended into the crypt where his relatives’ coffins were stacked, one on top of another. How many there were! There was a new one, very beautiful. lucio predonzani was written on the brass plate. The lid was fastened with bolts. With enigmatic fear, he rapped his knuckles on the side of the box. The coffin sounded empty. Thank goodness.

Peculiar. As Oscar Pradelli’s visits gradually became more frequent, Matilde seemed to blossom. Mourning, among other things, became her. Predonzani followed her transformation with a mixture of satisfaction and apprehension. One evening he noticed he desired her in a way he hadn’t for years. He desired his widow.

As for Pradelli, wasn’t his diligence inopportune? Yet when Predonzani drew Matilde’s attention to him, she reacted almost with resentment. “What’s gotten into your head? Poor Oscar. Your only true friend. The only person who mourns you. He takes the trouble to comfort me in my loneliness, and you suspect him. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Meanwhile, the posthumous exhibition mounted in the city was a magnificent success. After expenses were deducted, it yielded 5.5 million lire. Whereafter, with jaw-dropping rapidity, Predonzani and his work sank into oblivion. Citations of his name in newspaper columns and art magazines became increasingly rare. And very soon they ceased altogether.

With pained disbelief, he observed that even without Lucio Predonzani, the world managed fairly well. The sun rose and set as before. As before, housekeepers beat rugs in the morning, trains ran, people ate and amused themselves, and at night young guys and girls would kiss, standing against the black railings in the park.

Until one day, when he returned home from a stroll in the countryside and recognized the raincoat of his dear friend Oscar Pradelli in the foyer. The house was quiet, unusually intimate and welcoming. And from there he could make out subdued voices, whispers, soft sighs.

He tiptoed back to the door. He left without making a sound, heading for the cemetery. It was a mild rainy evening.

When he reached the family chapel, he looked around. There wasn’t a living soul. Then he opened the bronze door.

Without rushing, as night slowly fell, he used a penknife to remove the bolts that sealed the newest box, his coffin, Lucio Predonzani’s.

He opened it and quite calmly lay down inside, supine, assuming the pose that he imagined might serve the deceased in their eternal slumber. He found it more comfortable than he had anticipated.

Without losing his composure, he slowly pulled the lid over himself. When a final narrow crack remained, he listened for a few moments, in case someone might have called out to him. But no one did.

Then he let the lid close completely.