Domenico drowns Filippa

Domenico drowns Filippa in a deliberately planned killing that turns a household nuisance into a violent, irreversible act. After Filippa bites him, he recruits a boy, prepares a weighted sack, and carries the struggling monkey to a footbridge over the Sachem River. The scene is narrated by Domenico himself: his matter-of-fact preparations and his declaration of closure are followed by a sudden reversal, leaving the apparent finality unsettled.

Background and Decision

Before the killing, Filippa is kept in a filthy cage at a boardinghouse. The surrounding account describes trouble and bugs coming up through the heating grates, and conveys alarm that the boarders might soon be scratching themselves, packing their bags, or meeting a tragedy like the narrator’s poor brother. The woman responsible insists that she runs a boardinghouse, not a zoo, and warns that something must be done. The account does not fully establish who owns Filippa or explain the monkey’s earlier history; it does show an environment where her presence has become an escalating practical problem.

The immediate turning point comes one evening when Domenico reaches into Filippa’s cage to empty her nightly swill. She bares her teeth and bites him savagely on the wrist. He curses, sucks at the wound, and makes a plan. The sequence is blunt: the bite is followed by a bodily response and then by a decision, with no intervening attempt at a less violent solution described. His account presents the plan as settled before the killing itself begins, making the next Sunday’s preparations the execution of an intention already formed.

Preparation and Killing

On Sunday morning, Domenico pays young Cavoli a nickel to go to Hollyhock Avenue with a burlap sack. He has the boy line its bottom with broken, discarded bricks and carry it to the Sachem River Bridge, where Cavoli is told to wait. The small payment and the specific instructions give the plan a practical, organized character: the sack is not merely available, but deliberately weighted so that it will sink. Domenico, meanwhile, cautiously opens Filippa’s cage and leashes her.

The journey to the river is physically contested. Domenico and Filippa walk together, but at several points he has to drag her; his account says she seems somehow to understand what is about to happen. At the bridge, she grips the bars of the footbridge railing and screams. The narration pauses on this resistance before describing the killing, making clear that Filippa is not carried passively to the water but struggles against the people leading her there.

Domenico grabs Filippa by the scruff of her neck while Cavoli holds the sack open. Between them they force her inside and cinch it shut. Filippa scratches and bites both of them, then continues to push and fight with what the narrator calls unnatural strength. They lift the screaming monkey over the railing and let go. The bag sinks efficiently. The account gives no rescue attempt or further action at the river; the weighted sack accomplishes the purpose for which it was prepared.

Aftermath and Narrative Significance

Immediately after the sack sinks, Domenico declares, “What had to be done had been done and now it was over.” The phrasing turns the killing into a completed necessity: the action is finished, and its justification is treated as settled. Yet that assurance lasts only a moment. He follows it with “Ha! That’s what I thought!” The abrupt correction makes his earlier confidence look provisional, without specifying in this passage what consequence or memory will return to trouble it.

The scene’s progression—from the bite, to the paid errand, to Filippa’s resistance, to the sinking bag—also sets practical control against living resistance. Domenico and Cavoli can plan the route, supply the weight, and overpower Filippa together, but the narration still records her grip on the railing, cries, and struggle. Its attention to those details complicates the language of necessity: the act may be presented as a solution to a household problem, but it remains a killing performed against a resisting creature.

Narrative Frame

The episode belongs to the account of Domenico’s earlier life and is narrated retrospectively in his voice. Its first-person perspective places responsibility close to the action: the planning, the physical handling, and the claim that the matter is over all come through the person who carried out the deed. Rather than supplying an outside judgment, the passage lets the gap between his self-justifying declaration and his immediate retraction create its unease. Filippa’s drowning is thus both a concrete act of violence and a moment in which the narrator’s attempted closure visibly fails.