Carlo Gadda - That Awful Mess on the via Merulana

After hours of silence, her bizarre insolence, her cruel laugh: with those white, triangular teeth, like a shark's, as if she were going to tear somebody's heart to shreds. Those eyes! from below the black fringe of her lashes: they flamed up suddenly in a black lucidity, narrowed, apparently cruel: a thin flash, which escaped, pointed, oblique, like a lie revealing a truth, which still unspoken, preferred to fade already on the lips. "She was a spoiled girl, but all heart," the chicken-seller opined, after an hour, when he had been summoned in his turn. "A fine figure of a girl, believe me; she liked to act saucy," the grocer's wife from Via Villari confirmed: "Ah! Virginia, from the third floor? She was a bag of tricks!" "That girl? She had the devil on her side," her girl friends said. "She had a devil inside her." But one girl, who was from the Patrica hills, let out a different expression: "She had a poker up her ass": and blushed at once. Commendatore Angeloni, extracted from Regina Coeli for an hour, to let him get a breath of fresh air, too, poor man, when titillated at Santo Stefano del Cacco, promptly drew his head down between his shoulders like a frightened snail: "Well," he merely grumbled, showing a pair of melancholy eyes, till he looked like an ox in a bad humor: yellow, they had become, after only a few days on the Lungara {31}: "I remember bumping into her a couple of times on the stairs, but I don't know her at all; I can't tell you anything," he affirmed sententiously, "about a person I don't know. She was the Balduccis' niece, or so I was told."

Once, several times (Don Lorenzo went on to say), without being much aware at that point of the "figure" or "position" of mother that Liliana Balducci intended to assume, she — that is to say, this Virginia — in the house there in Via Merulana, when the husband had escaped to his trains, and when the maid was out, she had embraced and kissed the signora. "When she got certain whims in her. . her head." Don Lorenzo managed to recover himself: with the steady voice of charity he reported: she, at those moments, well, it had to be one of two things: either she was out of her mind, or else she felt she had to play-act like that. What was certain was that she used to embrace and kiss the mistress of the house.

"Mistress?" interrupted Doctor Fumi, narrowing his brows.

"Mistress, stepmother — it's all the same." She kissed her, the way a panther might give a kiss: "Oh Signora Liliana, darling, you're like the Madonna for me!" then, in a low low voice, in an even more stifled tone of ardor: "I love you, love you, love you; one of these days I'm going to just eat you up": and she grasped her wrist, and twisted it, staring at her: she twisted it like a vise, mouth to mouth, till each could breathe the other's breath, tit to tit. Don Corpi rectified, naturally enough: "I mean, moving close to her with her face and bosom." But both Ingravallo and Doctor Fumi had understood the first time.

One day, in an access of filial love, she really did bite her ear: and that time Liliana took fright. Madonna! How it hurt! She ran all the way to the Quattro Santi, at full tilt. Pale, breathless, she had displayed the part known as the lobule, still dotted by the little circle… of those teeth! My God! All in fun. . but nasty fun, just the same. If fun is the word for it.

Then they had tried to drag her into the church, "to make her say some prayers, as many prayers as she could. Prayer, you might say, is the ticket to Paradise: or to Purgatory, at least. If you're carrying a heavy suitcase, you don't get past the Customs in Paradise. . not the first time. But her pray? Not on your life! She hummed them under your nose, till you wanted to slap her, like a song, those Roman songs they sing with the guitar. . sad ones, between nose and throat: or else shaking her head all the time, with her eyes on the tips of her shoes, avemaria avemaria, la-la-la-la gratiaplena gratiaplena, as if to mock the whole lot of us, the Madonna included. The Madonna! Now really! A singsong that would have put a baby to sleep. Shameless! Because if there's somebody who can help us out in this world, it's the Madonna, and her alone: because the good Lord. . it looks to me like we do our best to give him a pain in the. . the heart. ." Don Corpi recovered himself: a second time.

Or maybe she wore her veil, but with her head in the air, at the high mass, in a kind of happy asthenia or bored echolalia: she became distracted, with the mother-of-pearl rosary that Liliana had given her: she held the book upside down, so she couldn't read it, even if she had been able to understand any of it. The feast of Corpus Domini.. would you believe it?. . she had the nerve to ape the canons of San Giovanni, as they chanted their office? with a man's voice? which only the devil could have lent her, at that moment. Even the saints from their thrones seemed to protest, all of them, painted though they were, because she had really made them lose all patience. He had looked her in the face, stopping his chant. . sitting at the right of Monsignor Velani. Then, after Mass, he had told her a thing or two, on the spot, under the portico, when they came to say hello to him, her and Liliana! But her only act of contrition was to shrug her shoulders, that animal: "till you wanted to give her a slap." And he raised and opened his hand over the table; it was so big that both Fumi and Ingravallo were wide-eyed, at last.

ON that same afternoon of Tuesday the 22nd, while in room number 4 the above-mentioned conference of the three men was still in progress, later filed among the official records as "fifth questioning of Balducci," there arrived at Santo Stefano (Collegio Romano) a telephonic communication from carabinieri headquarters in Marino regarding the investigations on the "Menegatti case." The message was received by Sergeant Di Pietrantonio. The communicating office confirmed, off the record and simply as a warning, that the owner of the green scarf (no longer so radically green by now) had been identified as a certain Retalli Enea alias Luiginio, aged nineteen, son of Anchise Retalli and Venere nee Procacci, born and residing in the locality known as "II Torraccio" not far from Le Frattocchie: Luiginio. That's right, yes, Lui-gin-io. . present whereabouts unknown. Yes. . no. . fine. . perfectly. . No, no. . they hadn't found him at II Torraccio. In short a fugitive from justice. From what Di Pietrantonio's auricular diligence managed at last to salvage from the shipwrecked text (the receiver's crackling and the line's inductance sonorized the message: various interferences, an urban crossed line, laced it with chatter, tormenting reception), it seemed more or less that the uncautious Enea Retalli or Ritalli, site Luiginio (but obviously Luigino) had taken the scarf to be dyed. . thirty-six quintals of Parmesan! Heddo, who's sbeaking? shipped yesterday from Reggio Emilia. . Lieutenant-commander Racace here. Heddo? Heddo?. . Abmiradal Mondeguggoli's house! The Bavatelli Shipping Company from Parma, yes, by truck. . carabinieri headquarters, Marino, we have precedence. Thirty-six quintals, yes, three trucks, left at ten o'clock yesterday. No, the condessa's in the hospiddle… in the hord-piddle, visidding the admiradal. . via Orazio! Yes, sir. No, sir. I'll ask. Police here, we have precedence, Rome Police Headquarters. Get off the line. Thirty-six quintals from Reggio Emilia, Parma-type cheese, absolutely first class! The admirabdal was obberadated on Monday: gallbladder: bladder. Yes, yes, sir. . no, sir, no. .

What could be extracted from such a muddle was, in short, that Retalli had taken the scarf to be dyed, to a woman at I Due Santi on the Via Appia, a certain Pacori, Pacori Zamira. Z like in Zara, A like in Ancona! Zamira! that's right. Za-Mir-a! known to many, if not all, in the area of Marino and Albano for many of her merits: if not for all of them. Then the connection broke off, in honor and for the benefit of higher authorities: or so it seemed. When night had almost descended, there arrived at Santo Stefano on his motorcycle Corporal Pestalozzi, or Pestalossi it may have been, bearer of a written report and more than one verbal message from the carabinieri station, that is to say from Sergeant Santarella, who in the absence of the commanding officer in those days, or in other situations of the titular lieutenant, was his representative. It was eight o'clock, hour of the stomach and the spoon, almost. Balducci had already been sent away, Commendatore Angeloni with the fondest good-byes sent off, liquidated. By this hour he must surely have been in bed, and with his nose more drippy than ever, his stocking cap pulled down over his eyes and down his nape: stuffed into his grandmother's bed, under a fat eiderdown and under stuffy, but deserted cover, the most suited and the most desired by a stuffed-shirt like him. Fumi's voice: "Have Pestalozzi come in." Nausea at the Cacco's piles of papers was about to overcome even the hardiest. . But that northern and carabinieresque name electrified them. Pestalozzi, who had taken special pains to track down the scarf, was immediately received and heard in number 4 by Fumi: Ingravallo present with Di Pietrantonio, Paolillo, and Grabber. The last-named, protected by the shadows from a kind of huge, extinguished stove, put into his mouth and hastily chewed the last remains of roast-beef sandwich, which to a great extent he had already managed to lacerate outside, in the corridor. Er Maccheronaro, in Via del Gesù, just a stone's-throw away, never overlooked a chance to demonstrate his friendliness: and he had paved it inside, with three such slices of prime beef that, on first seeing them, he had taken them for three terra cotta roof tiles on a roof in Sampierdarena: nestling one against the other, all three supported by that big beam of double roll, the size of a carpet slipper, Madonna! the kind you can't even remember nowadays, now that the Empire has put its oar in. The panacea of panaceas for his empty stomach, lacking its soup, but already dewy in the gastric juices of an anticipated gratitude and no less predisposed peristalsis. The customers at the counter, seeing that miracle, had been bug-eyed: natural enough: who can say what they were thinking; "Hey, Pompeo, what are you doing over there in that stove?. . Come here," Doctor Fumi ordered, "you've got to hear this, too." He began and continued in a loud voice, with musical vigor, reading the report of carabinieri headquarters, Marino. When he had terminated, he began to titillate Pestalozzi with questions and, alternately, Di Pietrantonio, with the aid of his great shining eyes, which in the not-bright light of the room, a little each time, he turned, on every face: he mitigated with parallel statements, more and more vivid, more and more narrated (like neighboring little streams) the carabinieresque, buttoned-up discipline of the former and the smart, police alertness of the latter. That discipline is well evidenced, generally, and is operative in a tacit, a hard and cautious resistance in the face of the rival organization of the police. {32}The fact is that, at Doctor Fumi's gently inviting glances, so black, so limpid and melancholy in his pallid countenance — even at night, and in the weak candle-power of Madam Mazda — even at night, and barely descended from the motorcycle, at the marvelous timbre of that voice, the most buttoned-up of carabinieri couldn't resist. Pestalozzi, moreover, having still to catch Retalli, whose scarf alone had remained in his hand, was, in turn, interested in eliciting as much as possible from the five experts of the Collegio Romano: in pumping out the best from Santo Stefano del Cacco's urban cistern: data, various illations, motives for suspicion, well-founded hypotheses, doubts, counsel, the latest news: the final dotting of i's and crossing of z's the final disjunctions of the great deductive wisdom. And then the bloodhound's amour-propre, his pride in taking part in the investigation of the great crime which was on every tongue, from Frascati to Velletri, whose numbers all Italy was playing in the lottery, in all the best and luckiest cities: the Royal Lottery, as it was then, nowadays Lottery of the Republic. So that a kind of police-carabinieri osmosis began and continued to be celebrated in that room number 4, and at that late hour, through the ass's skin membrane of reciprocal distrust, professional jealousy and esprit de corps: a two-way flow of information, a game of do ut des, with amiable phrases, or even lapses into gossip.