Carlo Gadda - That Awful Mess on the via Merulana

"Then say who she is. You know her," Zamira prompted, pale.

"It's Camilla," she answered Zamira.

"Ah! Camilla Mattonari then? All this fuss to give us the name of Mattonari Camilla, your cousin, whose lover is a thief, or even a murderer, maybe. Come on: take me to her."

"What about the motorcycle?" Zamira stammered; to her the very thought of that machine in the shop without its master annoyed her unspeakably. She had got up from the chair. She wrung her hands before her belly, a little ball that made her look three months pregnant, considerably stained below her belt, where there were certain rivulets of dishwater or coffee; she had no apron. Her lips pursed, forgetting now every invitation and all her winks, with the foresighted and deducing gaze of one who guesses from a single movement the motives and intentions of the mover, with intent and glistening eyes, she followed the motions of the two men in their somewhat embarrassed footsteps between sideboard and bike, machine and table, counter and chair, between the heap of sweaters and the door: the door to the road. The light in her eyes changed, became evil, malevolent and almost sinister, at times. She seemed to see oscillating, like the oscillation of a charge, a tension in the spirit, as if it meant to break the sequence of acts and inacceptable deeds, the procedural validity of that carabi-nieresque miracle. Which she saw, at a given point, in its true light: in its certain meaning, compelling recognition: a gray and scarlet devilment of the Prince of Demons: he of the sergeant's stripes: he, in any case, whom she had been able to recognize on many occasions as the sworn enemy of I Due Santi: who took shelter in the fortress, at night, in Marino, when the mountain wind howled, to meditate before the bluish circle of the lampwick his malefactions for the day, ubiquitious then in the great hours of the sun like the view of the falcon, who peers and sees over all the land, in farmyard and meadow, on mountain or plain. A red-and-black, chevroned malefaction, filled like the September night with a thousand sophists' persistences, which from day to day press ever closer around the person of one who, perhaps, works honestly, who tries to get along as best he (or she) can, with the first expedient that comes to mind, to fight off the many tribulations of life. A duty though vain and maleficent, suited to justify, as well as to determine, one's corpulence, one's rubicund health, one's pension: an arbitrary and therefore illicit intervention into the private operations of magic, or of simple palm-reading, such as to spoil the outcome of everything: disputable then, on good grounds, with augural looks on the order of her own, zamirian gaze, as well as by a summons for help to the great king with the straight horns, Astaroth: the very one that she, Zamira, had to call. So that she busied herself now, with her fingers, making on the sack of her paunch like the pharmacist on his marble counter, certain movements, certain twirls, certain jokes not comprehended by common ratiocination, as if she were shelling invisible peas or crumbling or snapping some invisible pill in the direction of the unaware Pestalozzi who had his back to her, still unsure what was to be done. Her lips began, little by little, to bubble up again, to twitch, and her cheeks to vibrate, to boil motu proprio in a grim contempt, which was being sharpened into the fideistic peroration of certain witch doctor-priests of Tanganyika or African Kafirs or snub-nosed, kinky Niam-niams, their heads all curly, dusted with coal, gold rings hanging from their noses, their behinds like terraces, when they implore or imprecate from or to their animal gods in their monosyllabic-agglutinate language and in homologous and rather nasal chanting: "Nyam, nyam chep, chep, i-ti, i-ti, give that lousy missionary a humpback and get him off our balls." Mennonite missionary, of course. And meanwhile they give him a drink, their spit whipped up with coconut milk in a coconut shell, a sign of subtropical honor, or Tanganyika reverence.

"You, Signora, keep still with those fingers!" the Filiorum commanded her indignantly. His cheeks had become red, the red of tomato sauce, whitened to cheese color in the lower portion of his jaws. The objective clarity of ratiocination, in him, got the upper hand of the unreason of the powers of darkness: as if his elementary diploma had been countersigned by Filangieri himself with his own hand, Don Gaetano Filangieri, Prince of Arianello, Minister of the Realm. {63}He wouldn't admit, couldn't tolerate that the "superstition" of past centuries should rise again in magic, in the art of fashioning hunchbacks for one's neighbor, carabiniere as in this case, by that fingering of the witch. There is a uterus in us, always, a reasonable one, which is disturbed by a wink, a hint, a kneading of fingertips with which, despite every new enlightening of the Realm and every diploma on outsized paper, the most enlightened certainties are poisoned.

"Let's go," repeated Corporal Pestalozzi, making up his mind. "I'll leave the machine here," and he turned, "watch out for it: put a chair in front of it, and don't let anybody touch it."

Signora Pacori smiled at him, a little automatic smile, though black in the center: a dry little smile, silly, the kind she was used to dispensing from the counter in gray moments, a habit of her art, of a saleswoman who knows how to look at smokers: she revealed, as usual, the hole: she could do nothing else. Her eyelids closed a moment, as if in foretasted voluptuousness: foretasted out of duty, out of professional obligation. Her little eyes signified, with a moment's flashing, the usual permission: to whom? to what? The malevolence meanwhile, on her forehead, had waxed and polished the two bumps, two strongholds still held by the devil.

"Where is Retalli?" the corporal was saying to the girl. "Corporal, I don't know," she said: her face distraught.

"And your cousin? Where is your cousin? Take me to her. Come on." He seemed seized, really, by the mania to catch somebody, not to go back, empty-handed, to the barracks. A ring — and what a ring! — he had. All right. But now a suspect was needed, an accomplice, male or female, if not the guilty party in person.

"But I. ." the girl whimpered again, forgetting the umbrella where she had placed it.

"Come on, that's enough. Show me where she is": and he opened the door, inviting her, with the other hand, to make use of both the step and the exit. Lavinia went outside first.

"At the railroad crossing," Zamira then hissed into his ear. But the private also heard her. Still, under her malevolent forehead, the pernicious light of her gaze was not spent. "She's the niece of the signal-keeper: at the crossing. That's where she lives."

"Which crossing?"

"The road to Castel de Leva, to the bridge; then to the left, the crossing at Casal Bruciato": she seemed a deaf-mute, explaining herself with her fingers, with the aphonous movement of her lips. She didn't want Lavinia to hear her, from the road. Farafilio stumbled over the step: "Careful!" she said, maternally: and repeated: "On the road to Divino Amore. Almost to the bridge. Then to the left."

And with that little thrust, with that viaticum, she succeeded in getting off the two comrades, with their four great boots. They would have plenty of dust to swallow! Old Nick had heard the boiling of her prayers, had graciously listened to her reiterated invocations and her pleas.

"Take care of the machine!" the corporal shouted to her again, from outside: as her gaze sharpened in meanness: "at the bridge of Divino Amore!" she shouted, as if to strike again at the rear guard of the vanquished. What fireworks exploded in their wake, what ejaculations, while the glass door was still open behind the departing men, history, past-mistress of life, has not troubled to record.