Carlo Gadda - That Awful Mess on the via Merulana

"As they—?"

Well, of course, yes, no: she didn't want to insult herself, since she also went with him. It was… it was for his own interest. Because he had been out of a job for two months: and he couldn't find work: another job, a little better, to keep going.

"So what does he do?" asked Doctor Fumi, mildly. "What would his job be, if he wasn't out of work?" The great eyes of the inquisitor widened, a little yellowish at the corners, they rested sadly on that tangle of hair, which streamed, like a fountain, from the girl's elbow. "Electrician!" she sobbed, without raising her head entirely, only extracting it slightly from that defense of arm and elbow, and allowing its voice to escape. Now, with softened tears, she was dampening the sleeve, where there reappeared a hole, at the point of the bone, and the rip of the blouse and jersey and the white of the skin, at the shoulder. "And now he has an English woman," she stated, resuming her sobs, in that bath, with bathed words: "an ugly American, he has, but what do I know about it? She isn't old, though, not this one, but with hair like straw!" She wiped her nose on her cuff. "She has money, that's what she has": and again she burst into sobs.

"And who is she? Do you know who she is? Where does she live? Can you tell us? Speak up. This American, this English woman. ."

"What do you think? Who do you think I am? She's probably there, in one of those swell hotels, where rich people stay. ."

"There? Where?"

"There, in the fancy part of town, Via Boncompagni, Via Veneto. How should I know? I know the name is Burger. . Borges. ."

"I know. The Pensione Bergess," said Pompeo, pronouncing the foreign name after his fashion.

"Pompeo," said Doctor Fumi, turning, "tonight I want to see the hotel lists."

Pompeo looked at his wrist watch. Ingravallo moved from his desk and began to pace slowly up and down the cold tile floor: his head bowed, sulky, he seemed to be meditating on all these complications, as was his wont.

"The Foreigners' Bureau, Pompeo, the file. Pensione Bergesse. And good hunting. Since we've got a clue here, go straight to the night clerk and see what he has to say. Reports! Doormen! Information! What are all those porters for in hotels, anyway?" He hesitated a moment. "And in pensioni, too, Pompeo. Ingravallo, you better have a look, too. . into this mess with the American." Don Ciccio nodded his assent, with two-tenths of a millimeter of movement: of that great head.

"And tomorrow morning, Pompeo, you're going to take a little stroll along Via Veneto. You've got to meet this English girl by accident, you get me? And then — we understand each other, eh?. ." Great eyes on Pompeo. "Follow her, trail her: and catch her with the boy!" index finger towards the abyss, "after the rendez-vous," triumphant tone: "you've got to bring her in with the boy, not before": a singing note. "After they've met! You understand me, Pompeo? Straw hair!" he frowned. "English, English," pensive, thoughtful, or rather. . why not?" thoughtful, "Scotch, or American!" Brief silence: "after the rendezvous!"

"I understand, chief, but. ."

"Straw hair!" eyebrows and lashes turned inexorably up towards the stars: a tone that admitted no appeal: palm extended, repelling, resisting any objection, licit or illicit: fingers splayed like a monstrance.

"And the photograph of the boy photographed here": he slapped one hand on his head, with pathetic emphasis: the good-looker, the picture of… of Diomede Luci-ani…"

"Lanci-ani," corrected Ingravallo.

"All right, all right, Ingravallo! Lanci-ani, Lanchy Annie." Then, turned to the others present, over the circle of whom he moved his eyes, and with the pacified tone of one who is speechifying de moribus, de temporibus: "Those girls land at the Immacolatella, a hundred and fifty at a time, at the Beverello pier! From the Conte Verde!" he stated: and drew his brows back half across his forehead, index and thumb joined authoritatively to form a circle: "the largest ocean liner of the Italian Counts Line!" They come flying out in droves, in fact, from the belly of the Count, like so many hens from a cage: which, after a long trip across the world, is finally set on shore, opened: coming down the gangway in groups, with bags, some with eyeglasses, they scatter over the Beverello: amid trunks, hotel agents and men from Cook's, with words written in gold embroidery on their caps, and porters, and people waiting open-mouthed, and vendors of ices or coral horns, offering services and addresses, and inventors of needs which are not needed, meddlers, curious bystanders of every kind, women.

"But. ." and Doctor Fumi waved the hole of his two fingers, extending his little finger, "hens that lay golden eggs! when they lay them. Their father, the mother, back in Chicago, think the girls are coming to look at the pictures in the museums, to study how the Madonna is dressed up, how pretty she is: how handsome San Gennaro is, too": and he was shaking his head, at the certainty of those fathers and mothers: "The Beato Angelico Chapel! The Raphael rooms! The frescoes of Pinturicchio!" {45}He sighed. "Those little things have other rooms on their minds," he murmured. "The Assumption of the Virgin!" he exclaimed: "by Titian, Tiziano Vecellio!" and the last name, in that dirty room of police headquarters, lent an added propriety to the first name: as if this Titian were a fellow with all his documents in order, a person whom suspicion couldn't even graze. "The portrait of the Madonna — the spit and image — with those seven wax angels over her head!. ."

When he was assistant chief at the Frari station in Venice, the five scarlet Cherubim of one of the six Enthroned Madonnas of Giovan Bellino (Galleria dell'Accademia) had become impressed on his memory, his genteel however bureaucratized memory, like the seven seals of the Apocalypse, in a lead-colored sky. And he had thrown in the Assumption: which has a dance of putti all around the Virgin's head, vice versa, some with doves' wings, others without: one, wingless, with a tambourine: singing ho-sannas.

"That's what their parents think, back in Boston, in Brooklyn." He tapped his index finger against his forehead, hammering. His eyes assumed a knowing look, the sly face, reproducing the slyness of those relatives. "They think these girls travel around Italy in herds, a hundred at a time, like little kids in a boarding school. A hundred at the museum, a hundred at the opera, a hundred at the aquarium, you know, where they keep the fish, under water; a hundred at the Baths of Caracalla, a hundred at San Callisto following that monk with the candle, which then goes out. Those girls — Ingravallo — not in a pig's eye." He turned to his inferiors. "Those girls, as soon as they get off the boat, Ingravallo, you follow me. . bzzz bzz": he fluttered, with his hands, casting them here and there like thunderbolts, with the eyes of the Thunderer.

"One slips away here, another there, you understand me?" and his eyes, luminous in their sadness, gathered assent on all sides. "Each on her own, and God for all! Taormina, Cernobbio, Positano, Baveno," he was becoming stubborn: "Capri, Fiesole, Santa Margherita, Venezia," his tone hardened, with stern emphasis in its crescendo, a vertical wrinkle in the middle of his brow: "Cortina d'Ampiezzo!"

"D'Ampezzo," grumbled Ingravallo.

"D'Ampezzo, d'Ampezzo: all right, Ingravallo, you're our philosophy professor." He frowned: "Cortina, Positano! And — see you later!" he waved his hand in the air, a farewell to somebody who wasn't there: "See you here, six months from now"; the index plunged. "Here, here on the dock, Beverello. In exactly six months." He was silent. He sighed, knowingly. "Raphael my foot!" he exclaimed, in a new jerk, in a return of his contempt: which contempt rolled and died away beneath his preceding statements, like thunder after a storm in flight. "Rooms!" and he became agitated. "Pinturicchio! The room they're after is another kind, Pompeo, and you have to hunt for that room, if it takes all night!" Stilled at last, to himself: "And the Pinturicchio they want… is another man, too. ."