That Awful Mess on the via Merulana (8 page)

That name and those jewels, real or imagined, that pile of gold of the "countess" on the third floor of number two hundred and nineteen (stairway A don't forget, because B is a different thing entirely) all along Via Merulana and Via Labicana as far as Sant'Antonio di Padova and San Clemente and the Santi Quattro, had become an epos, now ennobled, which flashed and gleamed, like the flames from greasy paper. For ages. Months, or years. On one occasion, the misplacement of a ring with a topaz or towpats (somebody, out of spite, pronounced it top-ass), which la Menegazzi, or more properly, Menecacci had forgotten in the toilet, solely because she was vain as a goose and equally brainless: she left it, the ring, at Cobianchi's public baths at San Lorenzo in Lucina—you know the place, there around the corner from Palazzo Ruspoli, but sort of underground—and then miraculously she found it again, on the little glass shelf under the mirror of the basin, having previously lighted a candle to Sant'Antonio, having gone over to the church at San Silvestro for that very purpose, and only after lighting it, had she gone back to hunt: on that occasion, and on that same day, when the news became known, various women at numbers 217 and 221 had played the lottery, the Naples series, which specialized in miraculous matters, as everybody knows. In fact, a double combination came out, the very numbers, but at Bari. This can give you an idea of the reputation the countess' treasure enjoyed.
"Fama volat,"
sighed Doctor Fumi, his hand on a stack of red dossiers,
"fama volat."
It must have flown, on rapid wings, to the ears of that no-good thieving bum.

Of course, the police's first care, especially Officer Ingravallo's, to whom the papers were not ungenerous with the adjective "alert," had been to try to identify and possibly lay hands on the murderer, that is to say "the young man in a gray overall, wearing a cap, and a greenish-brown scarf." The most trusted informers in the light-fingered branch, suitably encouraged, had each made his ritual little trip: they had drained a glass here and there, had then expressed an opinion, one each, of course. They gave precise answers, as precise as the Sybils. In the vagabond branch . . . well, more than a branch, it's an ocean: "Turn loose the informers!" In the street-walking branch, and respective protectors ... no: it was no use even of thinking of them.

The character, as la Menegazzi had described him, must have been a little crook from out of the city, a hick. Only that on Wednesday at nine, Doctor Fumi, glancing a little reluctantly and with a belated yawn over the list (of the lovely ladies pinched the preceding evening), let his eye pause on the information regarding a woman picked up on the Celian Hill, and identified as a . . . seamstress, no fixed address, from . . . from Torraccio. It was the list of the women picked up, after dark, by the various patrols of the "vice squad," which was also sent to him, by routine, for his information. The name of the place, Torraccio, glimpsed out of the corner of his eye, immediately caused him to reflect. He had the woman's card brought him. And the card repeated: Cionini Ines, aged 20, from Torraccio, unmarried: at the "without fixed address" there was a little "x" which meant, yes, really without one: "profession" seamstress (trous.), unemployed domestic: "identification papers" a horizontal stroke of the pen, which meant: no. She had insulted the arresting policemen with the epithet "lousy." "Patrol: Celian-Santo Stefano, San Giovanni Station."

"What's this 'trous.' here?"

"Trousers, Chief. She must sew men's trousers, piecework."

The policemen had caught her in the act. And the act could be classified as begging, four lire (the hard lire of those old days, however) which she had sought and obtained from a passer-by: with whom she had conferred then, standing, for a minute and a half, under cover of the darkness and of Santo Stefano Rotondo, from whom she had detached herself for a moment, at the approach of the fuzz: but the charitable gentleman had vanished just in time (from his point of view).

Doctor Fumi shook his head: a final yawn: he handed the card back to the policeman, the list was returned to its proper pile on the desk. Slim results, to tell the truth. Two or three random arrests, "in the usual places": which were, on this occasion, a dim cafe, a fifth-class brothel in Via Frangipane, and a park bench at Santa Croce. Three characters wearing caps: when your number's up, it's up. The third, in addition to the cap, also had ringworm.

      
II

THAT
morning—Thursday at last!—Ingravallo could permit himself a little jaunt to Marino. He had taken Gaudenzio along with him: then, however, he changed his mind and, at the Viminale, dismissed him, urging him to tend to some other minor matters.

It was a marvelous day: one of those Roman days so splendid that even a Grade Eight government employee— about to hump his way into Grade Seven, however—well, even such a one feels something funny grab at his heart, something pretty much like happiness. He really seemed to be inhaling ambrosia through the old nose, drinking it down into the lungs: a golden sun on the travertine or on the peperino of every church's facade, on the top of every column, where flies were already buzzing around. And for himself, he had planned a whole program. At Marino, there's something better than ambrosia. There's the cellar of Sor Pippo, with a wicked white wine, a four-year-old rascal, in certain bottles that five years earlier could have electrified Prime Minister Facta
^{5}
and his government if the Facta factorum had been in a position to suspect its existence. Its effect was like coffee's, on Don Ciccio's Molisan nerves: and it offered him, moreover, all the verve, with all the nuances, of a first-class wine: the modulated controls— lingual, palatal, pharyngeal, esophageal, of a dionysiac introduction. With a couple or three of those glasses down his gullet, who knows . . . ?

In the two preceding days, on top of everything else— Via Merulana isn't the only street in this world—he had twice gone to the main office of the Tranvie dei Castelli: he liked to stretch his legs a little, around eleven, rather than tangle up his soul and his ears with the confused and groping reports of some subordinate. Gaudenzio and Pompeo were occupied elsewhere. "Those who want to go, go; those who don't want to, send . . ." The number and the series of the ticket, the hole on the date, the 13th, and the tear at the stop, Torraccio, had happily allowed him to establish the day, hour, car where the ticket was sold; he had also been able to interrogate the conductor who had sold it, summoned to the manager's office with the driver, the morning of Ingravallo's second visit. At Due Santi, Torraccio, Le Frattocchie, last Sunday, in the early afternoon, a number of people had got on: a crowd. It was impossible for the two men to remember everybody: some of them, yes, and they indicated the more easily recognized customers: not without some bickering between driver and conductor, confusing Sunday with the day before or the day after. The conductor, Merlani Alfredo, denied having seen a young man in an overall, blue or gray. "With a cap pulled over his eyes?" No. "With a scarf around his neck? A scarf?" Yes . . . that he had ... "A kind of scarf or a big muffler of green wool? . . ." Yes, yes. "Green like dark grass." He warmed to the question. He had been struck by the fact, as he gave him the ticket, that the scarf was all wrapped around half his face, his customer's: "he had his chin inside," as if it were God knows how cold, the 13th of March, at Torraccio. No, he didn't have a cap. Bareheaded, yes, but with his head bent over, not looking you in the face: a great clump of hair, all rumpled up, and nothing else. He didn't know who he might be. No, maybe he wouldn't even recognize him again. That was all he could say.

It was eleven now. Officer Ingravallo was about to get on the tram, at the corner of Via d'Azeglio. The few cars at the disposal of the police were wandering over the seven hills, or busy in the forums and squares, or on the Pincio or the Gianicolo, idly, or perhaps to amuse those gentlemen of the era of the hejira, the big shots with the fezzes: or they stole a nap at the Collegio Romano, like so many hacks, but always ready to take the brass for a ride: you never know. There were great visits in those very days from the plenipotentiaries of Iraq and chiefs of the General Staff of Venezuela, a coming and going of people plastered with medals: poured out in shoals at Naples, down the gangways of every hoarse-voiced ocean liner.

These were the first explosions, the first tremors in Palazzo Venezia, after a year and a half of novitiate, of the Death's Head in frock coat or in morning clothes: the grim looks were already there, the vomiting stream of words: the period of the black derbies and the dove-colored spats was, you might say, about to come to an end: with those short little toad-arms, and those ten fat fingers that hung at his sides like two clumps of bananas, like a black minstrel's gloves. The glorious national destiny hadn't yet had room to show itself, as it would later, in all its splendor. Margherita,
^{6}
the nymph Egeria now reduced to playing Dido Abandoned, was still launching the
Novecento,
the
neuf-cent,
modern art, the nightmare of the Milanese of the time. She attended the
vernissages,
the launchings, the oils, the watercolors, the sketches, insofar as a gentle Margherita can attend. He had tried on the
feluca,
five
felucas.
They fit him to a T. The glinting eyes of the hereditary syphilitic (also syphilitic in his own right), the illiterate day-laborer's jaws, the rachitic acromegalic face already filled the pages of
Italia Illustrata:
already, once they were confirmed, all the Maria Barbisas of Italy were beginning to fall in love with him, already they began to invulvulate him, Italy's Magdas, Milenas, Filomenas, as soon as they stepped down from the altar: in white veils, crowned with orange blossoms, photographed coming out of the narthex, dreaming of the orgies and the educatory exploits of the swinging cudgel. The ladies, at Maiano or at Cernobbio, were already choking in venereal sobs addressed to the strengthener of Italy. Journalists from Itecaquan went to interview him at Palazzo Chigi,
^{7}
noted his rare opinions, greedily, down in a notebook, in all haste, so as not to miss a single crumb. The opinions of Lantern Jaw crossed the ocean, and at eight in the morning they were already a cabled article,
desde Italia,
in the
prensa
of the pioneers, of the far-flung merchants of vermouth. "The fleet has occupied Corfu! That man is the salvation of Italy." The next morning the contradiction:
desde la misma Italia.
"Tail between legs." And the Magdalenes were at it: producing Sons of the Wolf for the Fatherland. The cars of the police remained "stationed": at the Collegio Romano.

It was eleven o'clock on March 17th, and Officer Ingravallo, in Via d'Azeglio, already had one foot on the tram step and with his right hand he grasped the brass handle, to hoist himself aboard. When Porchettini, all out of breath, overtook him: "Doctor Ingravallo! Doctor Ingravallo!"

"What do you want? What's wrong with you?"

"Listen, Doctor Ingravallo. The Chief sent me," he lowered his voice still further. "In Via Merulana . . . something horrible's happened . . . early this morning. They called the station, it was ten-thirty. You had just left. Doctor Fumi was looking all over for you. Meanwhile he sent me straight over there, with two men, to have a look. I kinda thought I'd find you there . . . Then they sent me to your house to look for you."

"Well, what was it?"

"You mean you don't know already?"

"How should I know? I was just going to take a little ride . . ."

"They cut her throat, they . . . sorry ... I know she's kind of a relative."

"Whose relative? . . ." Ingravallo said, frowning, as if to reject any kinship with whomsoever.

"Well, a friend, I guess . . ."

"Friend? What friend? Friend of who?" Pressing together, tulip-shape, the five fingers of his right hand, he seesawed that flower in the digito-interrogative hypotyposis customary among the Apulians.

"They found the signora ... Signora Balducci. . ."

"Signora Balducci?" Ingravallo blanched, gripped Pompeo by the arm. "You're crazy!" and he clutched it tight, until Grabber felt that a vise was crushing him, a machine.

"Sir, it was her cousin found her, Doctor Vallarena . . . Valdassena. They called the station right away. He's there too, now, in Via Merulana. I left instructions. He told me he knows you. He says," Pompeo shrugged, "he says he had gone to pay her a visit. To say good-bye to her, because he's leaving for Genoa. Say good-bye, at this time of the morning? I said. And he says he found her lying on the floor, in a pool of blood. Madonna! that's how we found her, too, on the parquet floor in the dining room, lying there, with her skirt all pulled up, in her underwear, you might say. Her head turned away, sorta . . . With the throat all sawed up, all cut up one side. You should see that cut, sir!" He clenched his hands, as if imploring, then passed his right hand over his brow. "And the face! I almost fainted! But you'll have to see it for yourself in a little while. What a slice! Not even a butcher could have . . . Just horrible: and those eyes! they were staring, wide open, staring at the sideboard. The face all drawn, drawn, and white as a clean sheet . . . did she have t.b.? . . . she looked like it had been terrible hard work, dying . . ."

Ingravallo, pallid, emitted a strange whine, a sigh, or the moan of a wounded man. As if he too felt faint. A wild boar with a bullet in his body.

"Signora Balducci, Liliana . . ." he stammered, looking Grabber in the eyes. He took off his hat. On his forehead, at the rim of the crisp black of his hair, a little line of drops: sudden sweat. Like a diadem of terror, of suffering. His face, usually an olive-white, was now floured with anguish. "Come on. Let's go!" He was damp; he looked exhausted.

When they reached Via Merulana: the crowd. Outside the entrance, the black of the crowd, with its wreath of bicycle wheels. "Make way there. Police." Everybody stood aside. The door was closed. A policeman was on guard: with two traffic cops and two carabinieri. The women were questioning them: the cops were saying to the women: "Stand aside." The women wanted to know. Three or four, already, could be heard talking of the lottery numbers: they agreed on 17, all right, but they were having a spat over 13.

The two men went up to the Balducci home, the hospitable home that Ingravallo knew, you might say, in his heart. On the stairway, a parleying of shadows, the whispers of the women of the building. A baby cried. In the entrance hall . . . nothing especially noticeable (the usual odor of wax, the usual neatness) except for two policemen, silent, awaiting instructions. On a chair, a young man with his head in his hands. He stood up. It was Doctor Valdarena. Then the concierge appeared, emerging, grim and pudgy, from the shadow of the hall. Nothing remarkable, you would have said: but as soon as they had entered the dining room, on the parquet floor, between the table and the little sideboard, on the floor . . . that horrible thing.

The body of the poor signora was lying in an infamous position, supine, the gray wool skirt and a white petticoat thrown back, almost to her breast: as if someone had wanted to uncover the fascinating whiteness of that
dessous,
or inquire into its state of cleanliness. She was wearing white underpants, of elegant jersey, very fine, which ended halfway down the thighs with a delicate edging. Between the edging and the stockings, which were a light-shaded silk, the extreme whiteness of the flesh lay naked, of a chlorotic pallor: those two thighs, slightly parted, on which the garters—a lilac hue—seemed to confer a distinction of rank, had lost their tepid sense, were already becoming used to the chill: to the chill of the sarcophagus and of man's taciturn, final abode. The precise work of the knitting, to the eyes of those men used to frequenting maidservants, shaped uselessly the weary proposals of a voluptuousness whose ardor, whose shudder, seemed to have barely been exhaled from the gentle softness of that hill, from that central line, the carnal mark of the mystery ... the one that Michelangelo (Don Ciccio mentally saw again his great work, at San Lorenzo) had thought it wisest to omit. Details! Skip it!

The tight garters, curled slightly at the edges, with a clear, lettuce-like curl: the elastic of lilac silk, in that hue that seemed in itself to give off a perfume, to signify at the same time the frail gentleness both of the woman and of her station, the spent elegance of her clothing, of her gestures, the secret manner of her submission, transmuted now into the immobility of an object, or as if of a disfigured dummy. Taut, the stockings, in a blond elegance like a new skin, given to her (above the created warmth) by the fable of our years, the blasphemy of the knitting machines: the stockings sheathed the shape of the legs with their light veil, the modeling of the marvelous knees: those legs slightly spread, as if in horrible invitation. Oh! the eyes! where, at whom were they looking? The face! . . . Oh, it was scratched, poor object! Under one eye, on the nose! Oh that face! How weary it was, weary, poor Liliana, that head in the cloud of hair that enfolded it, those strands performing a final work of mercy. Sharpened in its pallor, the face: worn, emaciated by the atrocious suction of Death.

A deep, a terrible red cut opened her throat, fiercely. It had taken half the neck, from the front towards the right, that is, towards her left, the right for those who were looking down: jagged at its two edges, as if by a series of blows, of the blade or point: a horror! You couldn't stand to look at it. From it hung red strands, like thongs, from the black foam of the blood, almost clotted already; a mess! with some little bubbles still in the midst. Curious forms, to the policemen: they seemed holes, to the novice, like red-colored little maccheroni, or pink. "The trachea," murmured Ingravallo, bending down, "the carotid, the jugular! . .. God!"