Carlo Gadda - That Awful Mess on the via Merulana

Countess Menegazzi had gone one floor heavenward, guest of the Bottafavis, who had a "made in England" lock on their door, which could be turned eight times, good enough for the front door of Buckingham Palace. Signor Bottafavi, indeed, when he had wolfed down certain favorite dishes, dreamed of it at night; he dreamed he had that chain on his stomach. It was on such occasions that he was heard to cry "help! help!" in his sleep. From which he was awakened by his own cries. He had cleaned the revolver: he had greased it with vaseline, taken off the safety: the chamber now spun like a reel: the barrel was ready to fire, at the slightest hint of an excuse.

Ingravallo was surprised not to hear Lulu bark and he asked for news of her. Liliana Balducci's face became gently sad. Vanished! Over two weeks ago now. On a Saturday. How? Who knows? Somebody probably put her in his pocket. In the little gardens in front of San Giovanni where Assuntina took the dog for a walk, that scatterbrained girl: and instead of paying attention to the animal, there were all sorts of idlers who paid attentions to her, to Assunta. "Such a showy sort of girl. . And the way things are nowadays!" An inquiry among the garbage collectors, two ads in the Messaggero, questions and reproaches to Assuntina, implorations to more or less everybody, but of no avail as far as bringing her back was concerned, alas, poor Lulu!

Don Ciccio, the next morning, was in a terrible humor. It was raining and windy: a harsh, angry northeasterly wind that spun everything crooked, beginning with the priests' cassocks, and the soaked dogs. Umbrellas were powerless. So were the rainspouts of the buildings. From what Pompeo reported to him, it seemed clear that the jewels of Countess Menegazzi were proverbial in the whole neighborhood. Epicized, desired, summoned up at every moment by the envy and the imagination of the women, the kids. They had been fabulizing about them for years. Brides used to say, "Oh, I'd like to have this," and "I'd love to have that," and they touched their throats, or their breasts, or the lobes of their ears as if to toy with a jewel in their fingers, to caress the little seed of a pearl, and they added: "like Signora Menicacci,"[ sic ] "like the Countess Menecacci." Because she was a genuine countess, she was.

On their stupendous lips that Venetian name swam against the etymological current, that is against the linguistic erosion that had been at work for years. The anaphonesis pierced the undertow with the perforating vigor of an eel, or of certain anadromous fish which can cover miles upstream, up, up, until they drink in again their natal lymph, at the mountain sources of the Yukon, or the Adda, or the Andean Rio Negro. From the latest transliterations of the parish ledgers they returned to the faint guttural of the origins, from Menegaccio to Menego, to Menico, to Domenico, Diminicus, and the "possessive which was of all." Certain maidens little instructed in the deciphering of parish registers stumbled over the name with their Sabellian or Tiberine awkwardness, after two or three heaves, they paused at Menecacci, {4}the kids yelled it, as they rolled about in their games, and the two policemen of the squad, in the presence of Doctor Fumi, had frequent opportunity of pronouncing it, even they, with the most admirable nonchalance.

That name and those jewels, real or imagined, that pile of gold of the "countess" on the third floor of number two hundred and nineteen (stairway A don't forget, because B is a different thing entirely) all along Via Merulana and Via Labicana as far as Sant'Antonio di Padova and San Clemente and the Santi Quattro, had become an epos, now ennobled, which flashed and gleamed, like the flames from greasy paper. For ages. Months, or years. On one occasion, the misplacement of a ring with a topaz or towpats (somebody, out of spite, pronounced it top-ass), which la Menegazzi, or more properly, Menecacci had forgotten in the toilet, solely because she was vain as a goose and equally brainless: she left it, the ring, at Cobianchi's public baths at San Lorenzo in Lucina — you know the place, there around the corner from Palazzo Ruspoli, but sort of underground — and then miraculously she found it again, on the little glass shelf under the mirror of the basin, having previously lighted a candle to Sant'Antonio, having gone over to the church at San Silvestro for that very purpose, and only after lighting it, had she gone back to hunt: on that occasion, and on that same day, when the news became known, various women at numbers 217 and 221 had played the lottery, the Naples series, which specialized in miraculous matters, as everybody knows. In fact, a double combination came out, the very numbers, but at Bari. This can give you an idea of the reputation the countess' treasure enjoyed. "Fama volat," sighed Doctor Fumi, his hand on a stack of red dossiers, "fama volat." It must have flown, on rapid wings, to the ears of that no-good thieving bum.

Of course, the police's first care, especially Officer Ingravallo's, to whom the papers were not ungenerous with the adjective "alert," had been to try to identify and possibly lay hands on the murderer, that is to say "the young man in a gray overall, wearing a cap, and a greenish-brown scarf." The most trusted informers in the light-fingered branch, suitably encouraged, had each made his ritual little trip: they had drained a glass here and there, had then expressed an opinion, one each, of course. They gave precise answers, as precise as the Sybils. In the vagabond branch. . well, more than a branch, it's an ocean: "Turn loose the informers!" In the street-walking branch, and respective protectors… no: it was no use even of thinking of them.

The character, as la Menegazzi had described him, must have been a little crook from out of the city, a hick. Only that on Wednesday at nine, Doctor Fumi, glancing a little reluctantly and with a belated yawn over the list (of the lovely ladies pinched the preceding evening), let his eye pause on the information regarding a woman picked up on the Celian Hill, and identified as a. . seamstress, no fixed address, from. . from Torraccio. It was the list of the women picked up, after dark, by the various patrols of the "vice squad," which was also sent to him, by routine, for his information. The name of the place, Torraccio, glimpsed out of the corner of his eye, immediately caused him to reflect. He had the woman's card brought him. And the card repeated: Cionini Ines, aged 20, from Torraccio, unmarried: at the "without fixed address" there was a little "x" which meant, yes, really without one: "profession" seamstress (trous.), unemployed domestic: "identification papers" a horizontal stroke of the pen, which meant: no. She had insulted the arresting policemen with the epithet "lousy." "Patrol: Celian-Santo Stefano, San Giovanni Station."

"What's this 'trous.' here?"

"Trousers, Chief. She must sew men's trousers, piecework."

The policemen had caught her in the act. And the act could be classified as begging, four lire (the hard lire of those old days, however) which she had sought and obtained from a passer-by: with whom she had conferred then, standing, for a minute and a half, under cover of the darkness and of Santo Stefano Rotondo, from whom she had detached herself for a moment, at the approach of the fuzz: but the charitable gentleman had vanished just in time (from his point of view).

Doctor Fumi shook his head: a final yawn: he handed the card back to the policeman, the list was returned to its proper pile on the desk. Slim results, to tell the truth. Two or three random arrests, "in the usual places": which were, on this occasion, a dim cafe, a fifth-class brothel in Via Frangipane, and a park bench at Santa Croce. Three characters wearing caps: when your number's up, it's up. The third, in addition to the cap, also had ringworm.