Carlo Gadda - That Awful Mess on the via Merulana

"Why, Corporal, what's all this about? Yes, my name's Mattonari, all right: but I'm not Camilla. My name is. ." she hesitated, "Mattonari Lavinia."

"Then where is Camilla? And who is she? Your sister?"

"Sister?" she pursed her lips in disgust, "I don't have any sisters," disdaining the hypothesis of such a kinship.

"But you know her. She works here: you said her name, Camilla's. So you're friends." And in the meanwhile he was still holding her hand. She had set down, at last, the umbrella: she frowned: "Did I say that? Camilla? I just repeated the name you said, corporal." Pestalozzi thought he had caught a use of the article, in Tuscan or Lombard fashion, {62}which hadn't been spoken at all.

"Friends? I don't have any friends." The violence of this denial, a second time: no more than the corporal was expecting: "Well, if you don't have any friends, so much the better: you can speak out then: and no foolishness, because I don't have time to waste. Who's Camilla?" he continued to hold her hand, by the fingertips.

"She's. . yes, a girl who. . she's learning to be a seamstress, too. . she works. ."

"She works here?"

"Well yes," she admitted, hanging her head.

"She's her cousin: a distant cousin. ." Zamira said calmly, in the tone with which the Almanack de Gotha asseverates, and all believe, that Charlotte Elisabeth of Coburg is the fourth cousin of Amalia of Mecklenburg.

"And where is she? Why isn't she here? Isn't she coming to work today?"

"How should I know?" the girl shrugged. "She'll be coming."

"You can see for yourself, Sergeant," Zamira insisted, haughtily. "We're out in the country. We work when there's something to do… to make or to mend: when there's need, I mean. Every other day, more or less. But in the winter, with the weather like this," and she took advantage of a fading of the sun, through the panes, and nodded towards the outside, "with these storms, you can't tell from one day to the next. . whether it's spring or whether it's still January, with this weather maybe we work one day out of five. You know better than me, Sergeant, since you must have studied all about the weather and the signs of the moon, the way I did, when I got my fortunetelling diploma," she recited in a sententious tone:

"Candlemas, Candlemas! Winter's end has come at last. But should rain fall or north wind blow Winter then has weeks to go.

and three weeks ago, if you remember, just like today, the weather was something terrible; the water came right down into the shop, and that lousy hen," she sought the hen with her eyes behind the machine, "even stopped laying. Today maybe we have nothing to do, and tomorrow there may be a whole heap of stuff."

"It looks to me like you have a fine heap of lies, enough to last a month," and he indicated with his chin the little mound of things, piled as if in two peaks, like the back of a camel. Still holding the young girl by the hand, he abandoned the clucking hen to her doubts and the double train of yarn and string and the relative knots.

"Now. . tell me something: who gave you this?" he raised his hand of the palpitating Lavinia, now clasping her by the wrist, and looking at the topaz which, from the inner part of the hand, she had turned again on her finger.

"Who gave it to me?" she made an effort to blush, as if at a tender secret.

"Signorina, hurry up. Take off the ring. I have to confiscate it. And tell me who gave it to you. If you tell me, all right. And if you don't tell me. ." and he took from his pocket the familiar plaything: presenting it to her.

Lavinia blanched: "Corporal. ."

"Skip the corporal. Take that ring off right now, and hand it over, make it snappy, because if you don't know, I'll tell you: it's stolen goods. It's in the list of jewels and gold objects stolen from the countess in Via Merulana, from Countess Menegazzi: it's here, in the list of jewels." And, to motivate his demand which, in spite of everything, he knew smacked a bit of bullying, he replaced the handcuffs and removed, from another pocket, Ingravallo's paper. The procedural timidity of that which in the Barber is marked in F sharp, the "force," had not yet sunk then, in 1927, into the present Oceanic depths: but it already knew certain aspects of today's taste. Even the most harsh official, alone in the countryside in the midst of the populace, deferred to it, as they defer to it today. Having therefore extracted the list, squaring off the two sheets as if he were reading a warrant, Pestalozzi pretended also to look there… for the legitimate authorization to proceed. "Mmm…" he went down the first lines, muttering, and stumbled at once at what he was seeking: "gold ring with topaz!" and his was the voice of victory. He waved the letterheaded paper, put it under her eyes, the girl's. She, Lavinia, didn't even know how to read it.

"Police Headquarters, Rome!" he chanted in her face, in a tone of importance, and of ironic detachment towards the rival organization, which, just because they could type a couple of sheets of paper, gave themselves such airs: "Police Headquarters, Rome!" He took the ring held out to him by the girl, her face pale with spite, livid, with the air of submitting, helpless, she, poor country girl, to this abuse of power. Zamira, silent, looked on: and listened. "Aha! this is the very one!" Pestalozzi ventured, examining the ring with a connoisseur's eye, turning it over and looking at it closely, as a fence would have done in Via del Gobbo, tending to sequester it at once: meanwhile he clasped the two sheets of paper in the other hand, between little finger and palm: "this is the topaz I've been hunting for for two days: this is it!" as if his professional wisdom, operating in his cranium ab aeterno, had allowed him to recognize it instantly. In reality he was seeing it then for the first time, and he had been hunting for it for two hours, if, after all, it really was a topaz, and not a piece of bottle, perhaps: "Who gave it to you? Tell the truth. He did, Retalli. You don't have the money to buy it: a ring like this! Enea Retalli gave it to you: he already confessed it yesterday to the sergeant." (Retalli was still a fugitive from justice.) "He's your lover, we know that: and he gave you this topaz"; which was rather a naive remark. "Nobody's my lover: and Enea Retalli is out working somewhere: I don't know where; and it's not true that you caught him last night, or that he confessed anything."

"So much the worse for you then. Come on. Let's go," and he motioned to Farafiliopetri: and grabbed her by the arm.

"Corporal, you've got to believe me," the girl protested, freeing herself, "a girl friend of mine gave it to me; she's promised to buy it off a woman; she lent it to me for a couple of days, because today. . today's my birthday. She gave it to me just for two days."

"Ah, and how old are you?"

"Well… I'm nineteen."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I was nineteen last night."

"So you were born at night then. And who lent you the ring, for your birthday? Speak up."

"Corporal, how could I know. . that it belonged to the contessa that they murdered in Rome, or whose it was? The peddlers that go along the road on horseback, from town to town, you know? You think they know who owns or who made the stuff they sell?"

"That's enough fibs!" and he squeezed her arm, which he had taken again and was holding.

"Ouch!" she said: "You're bullying me."

"Who gave it to you? Come on. You can tell it to sergeant. He'll make you spill it, all right." He drew her towards the door. Fara also started to move, in compliance, he uprooted himself from where he was, left his corner. The hen had settled down, God knows where.

"I got it, Corporal, from a girl… A girl who works here gave it to me. We've been talking for ages about corals to wear around the neck, or earrings… And I was always saying that I didn't have anything to put on for my birthday."