That Awful Mess on the via Merulana (35 page)

      
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IN
the same hours of the morning of that same day, Wednesday, March 23rd, when the search for Enea Retalli alias Iginio had proved vain at Torraccio, where he lived when he lived there, Sergeant Santarella cavaliere Fabrizio was riding on his motorcycle over the provincial highway from Marino to Albano, so stupendously shaded, or flanked by trees, in the gardens and the parks which cover the slope. March finds a part of them bare or tattered, the elms, the plane-trees, the oaks: others have green fronds by the Feast of San Biagio or San Lucio: the Italian pines, the ilexes, the serene and almost domestic friendliness, in the villas, of the laurel, where, in other sites, the academician is crowned and, in some cases, the poet. From more than one indication, or clue, there was reason to believe, or at least not to reject the idea that the young man had headed (approximately) towards Pavona and Palazzo, moving down along sideroads and paths, when the roads proper seemed, in their way, unsafe. He also had a soldier on the rear seat, the good sergeant did, and armed, not to say embarrassed, with a musket. Having turned into a no-more-than-vaguely-indicative tune the seven syllables of the Touring's anthemer, his thoughts pursued the fugitive, who, with some advantage over him, had used the romantic "go!" proceeding by now at great strides beyond the confines of the "condition of unrecoverability." That phrase, that incitement, the sergeant-devil went singing to himself, between nose and mouth, yoking its bold (and equally imagined) rhythm to the explosions of his motor. Of the two soldiers stationed at the fort he had asked for reinforcements, by hand-cranked telephone, and knowing them to be equipped with a machine, that is to say a bicycle, he had ordered them to Pavona.

Quite different, on the other hand, and of a different life, crowded with a different and more densely settled people and populace, inscribed with other toponymies, ennobled with other names, amid the august ruins and the Umbertine grayness of the six-story houses, and the hindered and therefore bell-ringing rolling of the tram, was the working atmosphere of Blondie: his field of work and of leisure, of after-work and work-after, where he carried out his dandling and absent-minded (to hear him) technique, loafing, peering at random, sniffing, at a whim, a caprice, and the lucky wisdom of the urban idler who allows himself to be guided by the silence of every hypothesis and of every disjunction, like the sleep-walker on the rainpipe; he, instead, in the full agitation and the constant bumping into one another of people, as they go their way: after the bars, the shoe shops, the stores of soap and washing soda, along the fences of gardens with oblique palms beyond, yellow, whipped in the winter, tormented under arid skies, in changeable weather, by the very certain tridua of the north wind. The fountains, the basilica of Santa Maria della Neve, and the arches and the fornixes in the surviving walls, the cubes of peperino and of sandstone: recalling Tullius and Gallienus and of Saint Liberius Pope, among the invitations of the chestnut vendors, black-fingered over their braziers, their face serious, smoked, all wrinkled towards commerce, and the non-invitation of the waiting taxi-driver, huddled in his glass confessional: the charioteer of whom it might also be said that he is waiting (a call, an order) if his genteel snoring had not by now cut him adrift, far far from every less aware expectancy.

After the broad cantata, and especially, after the closing aria and coda of Ines, about the benediction that the bell of Santa Maria Maggiore had imparted to Ascanio's little theft, "I'll see that kid tomorrow morning," Blondie had said to himself: and he had liberated, at the exit, that huge yawn which had been wandering in his throat for two hours, like a caged lion, and right away he had sheltered it with his hand, as Doctor Fumi turned to him: "you take care of the boy. Have yourself a stroll on the Esquiline, and then in Via Carlo Alberto, go yourself. You're sure to pinch him in Piazza Vittorio, after those Faraglioni
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there." Ingra-vallo had assented, grim: he would have gone himself, if he hadn't had better to do: and better he had: "You're sure to catch him. The girl was clear enough."

The following morning precisely at ten Blondie was on the spot (after having taken a little turn among the palms): that is the hour when the housewives are used to doing their marketing, with a view not only to supper, but more especially to the midday dinner which is their imminent care: the hour of the mozzarellas, the cheeses, the vermi-fugue onions, and the cardoon greens, patiently hibernating beneath the snows, the spices, the first salad, baby lamb. Of people selling roast pork there was a tribe at the stands in the square that morning. Starting with the Feast of San Giuseppe is its season, you might say. With thyme and the bows of rosemary, not to mention garlic, and the side dish or stuffing of potatoes with crushed parsley. But Blondie, his head hanging, allowed himself to be led among the cries and the red oranges by his loose-limbed optimism, whistling softly, or merely pursuing his lips, suddenly silent, casting an eye here or there, as if by chance. Or else he stood still, inconspicuous, his Homburg halfway down his forehead, hands in his pockets, his chilled back under a light-colored and rather lightweight coat, open, and with its two sides drooping in the back till it looked like the tail of a full-dress coat. It was a phony, between-season topcoat, which inclined towards the hairy, and to the soft, and proved worn in many places: it helped create the image of a drowsy wastrel, looking for a butt to smoke. Wrapped in the vortex of invitations and incitements to buy and in all the conclamations of that cheesy festival, he moved slowly in front of the lambish stands, passed carrots and chestnuts and adjacent mounds of bluish-white fennel, mustached, rotund heralds of Aries: then in short the whole herbarian republic, where in the contest of prices and offers the new celery already led the field: and the smell of the burnt chestnuts, at the end, seemed, from the few remaining braziers, the very odor of winter in flight. On many stands yellowed, now without time and without season, the pyramids of oranges, walnuts, in baskets the black Provence plums, polished with tar, plums from California: at the very sight of which water rose in the back of his mouth. Overwhelmed by the voices and the cries, by the shrill com-minations of all the lady vendors together, he reached at last the ancient, eternal realm of Tullus and of Ancus
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where, stretched on carving boards, prone or, more rarely, supine, or dozing on one flank at times, the suckling pigs with golden skin displayed their viscera of rosemary and thyme, or a knot here and there, green-black, within the pale and tender skin, a leaf of bitter mint, set there as if to lard, with a grain of pepper which the cry praised in the hubbub: "a new little gland lent them in the kitchen, to other markets and to other fairs unknown." It wasn't hard for him there, given the stern wind of optimism which was driving him amid the whirl of women burdened with brimming shopping nets or bags, fringed with broccoli, it wasn't hard for him to recognize, from Ines' description, even at several paces' distance, the character, the trumpeting little kid that he wanted. He looked like a smart one, behind the stand, with a pair of eyes on him! the contrary, at that moment, of the fear and timidity that Ines had exalted, and with a thick mop of hair, supergreased, all to one side: he was standing with his grandmother. At the peak, falling a bit over his forehead, the strands of his hair had become curled like fresh salad after the capricious retouching of his comb, or like the roll of a choppy sea's wave, when it bubbles up for a moment before tangling and receding, and finally abandons the sand. A white apron bundled him up slightly and while he yelled he was sharpening the knives, one long and one short, and at the same time looking at him, Blondie, but without any sign of seeing him: that big, dark blond head, with that Homburg like a dental specialist's which came down over his mug, who had taken his stand at proper distance, hands in his pockets: he was probably somebody who wanted to eat some pork, but if he didn't have any dough, poor bastard, he could die of hunger on the spot. "Get your roast pork here! Pork straight from Ariccia with a whole tree of rosemary in its belly! With fresh new potatoes, too, right in season!" (the season he had dreamed up himself, they were old potatoes cut into pieces, all dotted with parsley and stuck into the fat of the pig). "Potatoes of the season, ladies and gentlemen! better than hard-boiled eggs for salad! Better than capon's eggs, these potatoes, I'm here to tell you. Taste them for yourselves!" He rested for a moment to catch his breath. And then, exploding: "One-ninety the slice, roast pork! We're giving it away, ladies! It's a crying shame, that's what it is, ladies! You ought to be ashamed to buy it so cheap. One-ninety, easier done than said! Step right up, cash in hand, ladies! If you don't eat you can't work. One-ninety the slice! Nice, tender meat, meat for ladies and gentlemen all right. Taste it and you'll see what I mean: tender and tasty meat! If you try it once you'll come back for more, I promise you. You're the ones who make off of this deal. The lovely pork from the Castelli! We sent the pigs out there to wet-nurse, raised in the country, on the acorns of Emperor Caligula himself! the acorns of Prince Colonna! The big prince of Marino and Albano! who killed the worst Turks on the land and sea in the big battle of whatever it was. They still have the flags in the cathedral in Marino! with the Turk's crescent on them. Get your nice pig, ladies, roast pig with rosemary! and with potatoes of the season!": and allowing himself some peace after the spiel, as even the tragedian-actor rests after his role is played, he resumed, serious and composed, his sharpening of the knives. But after a couple of blows of the knives, he had a renewal of inspiration: a kind of jolt ran through him. It was the outburst of another variation, or so it seemed to the policeman: "Try it, gentlemen, taste it! One-ninety: you can eat pig like a pig, and your wives will thank you for it!" Then, to a local beauty, lowering his tone: "What about you, pretty girl?" the girl, at that tone of authority, couldn't restrain her laughter, "a half-pound of pork?" And,
sotto voce,
to her, but with a glance at the penniless tooth-puller: "I'll give you the best part, that's a promise. You're my type, all right. You're too pretty! A nice little slice specially roasted for you, with a couple of potatoes!" Then again, eternally shouting and with eyes upraised this time and with cheeks of a senseless trumpeter: "Come on an buy this pork, everybody. Let's see your money; this is the time to buy it. It's a crime to leave the pig here on the stand, when it can rain again any minute, and I know you've got the cash on you. Don't be stingy now! The pork is yours, if you'll just dig out the old ready."

The grandmother, if grandmother she was, swindling merrily with the scales and with her chatter, now gave full satisfaction to the rubicund maidservant. And he: "One-ninety! This pig's pure gold!" But meanwhile that tooth puller of a Blondie kept on looking at him, after having pushed back his hat and bared his forehead, which appeared all aflame with a thick, unruly straw, somewhere between real blond and brown. At his sides two characters had turned up, two cops a lot darker than himself, one on his left and one on his right, like the silent gendarmes that Pulcinella notices after a while, in an alarm that is sudden, but belated in action. So that he, the kid, little by little, "ladies and gentlemen, one-ninety, get your roast pork, your pork, I get it!" he seemed to say to himself, his voice sinking lower and lower, "get your . . ." he muttered, cadaverous, "your . . ." and that little breath died in his throat: like a torch's light, more and more querulous and tawny, when it drips wax and dies, in a pool of stink, with the fried wick in the middle. With those headlights on him, all of a sudden multiplied by three. So, you can figure it out for yourself: when he realized who they were, it was too late to skip. He set the knives on the counter, muttered to his grandmother "they want me": and was already untying his apron. His legs trembled. He had to put a good face on it for Blondie, who, without letting the others see, had taken out a paper, a badge and said to him in a low voice, as he flashed it before his eyes, that fine talisman:

"You've got to come to headquarters for a minute; if you keep your mouth shut, nobody'll notice! These are two plainclothesmen, but if you'd rather, I'll take you in myself, without disturbing them to come along as escort. You're Lanciani, Ascanio Lanciani, if I'm not mistaken." So, to avoid any fuss, he had to abandon pork and knives, and leave everything to his aunt . . . his grandmother: she was there, hard, erect, with one eye, filled with uneasiness, on the crowd, which went by, ignoring it all. He had an order to take the boy to headquarters, Blondie notified her briefly, and he displayed his document a second time: "Lanciani Ascanio" he added. The grandmother, the owner of the business, a middle-aged peasant woman, her hair still black, much thinner, in her wooden and wrinkled face, than her trade should have warranted, seemed uncertain what attitude to adopt: consternated no, but cross: "this boy hasn't done anything wrong, not a thing," she said, "why do you want to take him away?" Requested by Blondie in a low voice, she uttered her own name and surname, address, and showed him her license for the stand. She added, though without any enthusiasm, that she was a young aunt of Ascanio's Mamma. Blondie wrote this data on a piece of paper with a stub of pencil, then pocketed it. They looked like three cousins conversing: nobody paid any attention to them. They were from Grottaferrata, the grandmother admitted, reluctantly: the neighborhood of Grottaferrata, a little settlement known as Torraccio, after le Frattochie: but they had come to Rome eight years ago, yes, near Porta Latina, in the midst of the vegetables, you might say, a country road where there was barely a sign with Via Popolonia written on it, "it's where the truck farmers live, in the sheds. We live there, before the railroad tracks: this way," she gestured, "you can go down through the reeds to the Caffarella swamp."