That Awful Mess on the via Merulana (7 page)

At a quarter to six, a second round of questioning. Signora Manuela reappeared, with la Menegazzi, summoned urgently, as well as Professoressa Bertola, pale, shivering slightly. The youth that Gaudenzio managed to collect at Via dei Serpenti was introduced, at the right moment. Fairly straightforward, and yet with an appearance not altogether limpid, black hair thoroughly greased and shiny, he questioned the officer with his eyes, then rapidly glanced at the others present.

"Is this your boy?" Don Ciccio asked the Professoressa.

"What!" she said, with a start, indignant over that "your." Don Ciccio turned to the concierge: "You recognize him? Is he the one this morning?"

"No, it's not him. The one this morning ... I didn't see his face—how many times do I have to tell you? But he was just a kid, compared to this one."

Don Ciccio then addressed Commendatore Angeloni: "Is he the one who brought you the ham?"

"Yes, sir."

"What about you?" he said to the boy. "What have you got to say?"

"Me?" the youth shrugged, looking at the others, face by face. "What should I know? What do you want with me, anyway?" Don Ciccio frowned hard. "Mind your manners, young fellow. You have been invited to appear, in accordance with the law . . ." he was almost chanting: "Article 229 of the Procedural Code. Do you admit knowing the Commendatore, here present?" and, with his chin, he indicated Angeloni.

"He came to the store last year a few times: after that, he never turned up any more. Once I delivered a ham to his house, all the way up to his door, on Via Merulana. It was raining hard. I got soaked."

"Were you there only once, or several times? Do you know the house?"

"Me? ... the house? I went there maybe two or three times, when there was something to deliver." The answer was prompt, and at the same time, embarrassed. A certain anxiety to get it over with.

"And you, Commendatore?"

"I can confirm this young man's statement. He came two or three times, in fact." He was making an effort, that was clear; he wanted to seem more tranquil. "I even gave him a tip . . ."

"Aha! You gave him a tip," Don Ciccio smoothed his forehead: he seemed to congratulate himself on this fact, and yet with an inexplicable irony. He concentrated again. He bent his head over the signed statements. He shuffled them a little. Again he questioned Signora Pettacchioni, nodding towards the boy: "Is this the boy that you told me shouted at you once . . . from the top of the stairs?"

"No, he's not that one, either. I'm sure.
That
boy could be the same as the one this morning . . . they were both smaller than this one. That one, Officer, had a politer voice, and he was wearing short pants, too, if it wasn't the same one . . .

"This one has short pants, too."

"Officer!... but these are sport pants. That one was more of a kid, I tell you. This one looks ready to go off to the army. And besides, besides, when was it that this one came to Via Merulana? A year ago? The one I mean, it was maybe two or three months, at the most. It was just after All Souls' Day."

Ingravallo drew in his breath, as if he wished to arrive at some conclusion.

"For the moment, you can go." His eyes stopped on the young man. "But don't forget . . . this is no place ... to start acting up . . ." The boy went out, followed by a slow, persistent, official gaze. Collecting his papers and, with them, the threads of the results, Ingravallo began:

"The Signora Pettacchioni, here present, if I've got it right, testifies that she has seen another delivery boy come to your house with hams . . . several times, a younger looking boy, it seems, I mean more resembling the one seen this morning, whom the Professoressa . . ." he pointed . . . "was able to see in the face, and is therefore in a position to identify. Am I right, Signora Bertola?" The latter nodded.

Angeloni breathed again. For a brief moment he assumed a moralist's tone: "Well, Signora Manuela is the concierge, after all. She . . ."

"She what?" said the occupant of the conciergerie, menacingly. Angeloni withdrew into his shell again, like a snail, leaving only his nose exposed, outside the husk of his soul. He meant perhaps that, being the concierge, her mission was in fact that of keeping an eye on the people who passed by.

"What I mean is ..." he became mixed up: he spoke with the slightly nasal tone of a paper trumpet. "Well, I've told you before, Officer. I just buy things where I happen to find them. What she says may be perfectly true. The day before yesterday they delivered some things to the house. A colleague of mine sent his maid, a friend from the Ministry of Economy."

"Maid? A nice-looking girl, at last!" Ingravallo grumbled. He set the statements in order, grumbled for another minute. The three ladies were dismissed.

"You mean, we can go?" la Bertola asked then, still pale.

"Yes, Signora. Please . . ."

Donna Manuela, with a trembling of breasts that filled her blouse completely, unleashed merulanian smiles: "Well, good-bye for now, Officer. And I leave our Signor Filippo in your hands. Take good care of him for me."

Don Ciccio, mute, remained standing, the statements on the table, face to face with the subject: like a dark shrike its wings half-opened, its prey not yet in its talons.

But he insisted still, under that black poodle-coat that he had on his head, stubborn as he was.

The Commendatore took refuge behind the barricade of "experience of this world."

"Ah, women," he whimpered, "if you expect
them
to put in a good word . . ." He was short of breath, gasping at times; his eye sockets were like two caverns: exhausted.

"What do you mean? What would this good word be, that upsets you so much? Let's hear. What's troubling you? Tell me. You can confide . . ."

"In my position, Doctor, what could I do? Go around Rome with a ham on my shoulder? If you ask me, it's just downright nastiness, trying to argue whether the one who fired the shots was a delivery boy or wasn't a delivery boy, or whether he was the lookout for that other one, or whether he wasn't. What do I know about it? You see? Just put yourself in my shoes for a minute. Could I let people say: we saw Commendatore Angeloni climbing up Via Panisperna with a cheese around his neck, and with two flasks of wine, one tucked under each arm, like a pair of twins, carried by their wet-nurse . . . ?"

Ingravallo swung his head up and down, his gaze rooted on the typed statements. He seemed to lose his patience. He raised his voice, separating his words and their syllables: "The con-ci-erge has stated: that the other delivery boy has also come to your house a number of times. The one that was more of a kid. Is that clear? Two or three months ago, which is hardly an eternity, whatever you say. And since I am interested in this kid, since they swear that he looks very much like the other one, the one this morning— am I clear? So, if you don't mind . . ."

"I understand. I understand," the Commendatore whimpered.

"Well, then, why don't you do me a favor? . . . I'm anxious to make his acquaintance, this kid's."

It was written that number two hundred and nineteen of Via Merulana, the palace of gold, or of the profiteers, or of the sharks, as the case might be—it was written that from it, too, a lovely flower was to blossom, as from so many other buildings in this world, for that matter. The great, scarlet carnation of "well, did you ever?" With great murmurings of the tenants and of his colleagues in the Economy, not to mention the whispers of Signora Manuela, Commendatore Angeloni was kept at the police station until nine o'clock in the evening.

                                  *** *** ***

From some faint hint, that is to say a word or two, from the two policemen, and from Blondie in particular, via Manuela—Menegazzi—Bottafavi—Alda Pernetti and brother (Stairway A), or else via Manuela—Orestino Bozzi —Signora Elodia—Elia Gabbi (Stairway B), it seemed, or rather one guessed, that the police suspected in this business an indirect though, of course, involuntary (and moreover, hardly demonstrable) responsibility on the part of Commendatore Angeloni: the prime mover of that coming and going of ham-bearers to the house. "He doesn't want to talk; and they're giving him the full treatment." The police had got it into their heads that Commendatore Angeloni must perforce know the grocer's boy who hadn't rung anyone's bell but had simply "flung himself down the steps the minute we heard the shots": but for some special, incomprehensible reason of his own, the Commendatore was pretending to be completely taken by surprise. His whole attitude, his obstinate melancholy reticence, with those turns of phrase which came to nothing, tapering off, vague and dilatory, his timidity more or less feigned, calculated, those sudden flushes of the dripping nose, those imploring and shifting eyes, at first, then those two poor eyelets lost in two caverns of fear, a confusion at times real and at times strangely ambiguous had finally enraged the two officials: Ingravallo and Doctor Fumi, the head of the Investigation Squad. Naturally, they measured all the seriousness, and the slight grounds for their . . . distrust, based on such elusive indications, of that excellent Grade Six of the National Economy. A Grade Six of unquestioned morality, of unbesmirched reputation. "Hmph!" Don Ciccio thought, to console himself, "every mother's son is pure as the driven snow ... till he has his first fling .. . with the police."

And besides, it wasn't a question of suspicion, not at all. He only had to explain himself, say what he thought, to talk, sing out, loud and clear. If he thought something, why didn't he spill it? It was obvious enough: the burglar had rung the Balduccis' bell by mistake: perhaps, in his nervousness, or because he had misunderstood the directions of a third party, insufficient directions. This idea of the mistaken door . . . Ingravallo couldn't get it out of his head: the two doors were exactly alike, a twohundrednineteenish brown color, both of them, the number high up, invisible, in view of the darkness (of the landings). Receiving no answer and recovering himself, he had then rung the door opposite, the correct one. Doctor Fumi took a different view: the character had rung the Balducci bell to make sure nobody was at home: Signora Liliana usually went out at that hour, around ten: Assunta, Assuntina, was away, at home, with her "poor old father" who was about to pass on: the nondiminutive Assunta with those tits and that monument of an ass! Gina was with the sisters, at school: Signor Balducci at the office, or rather, off on a business trip, as he often was, in Vicenza, or in Milan. When Signora Liliana was also questioned—and it was Don Ciccio who questioned her, with great respect, that evening, at her home—nothing emerged. She shuddered at the thought of their being alone, she and little Gina, so she had asked Cristoforo, her husband's clerk, to come to supper and spend the night, and she had settled him in the room of the absent maid. She couldn't stop offering him blankets or comforters: ". . . if you feel cold . . ." He was a huge man who could scare off a thief with a puff of his breath: a good man with dogs, rabbits, shotguns.

Countess Menegazzi had gone one floor heavenward, guest of the Bottafavis, who had a "made in England" lock on their door, which could be turned eight times, good enough for the front door of Buckingham Palace. Signor Bottafavi, indeed, when he had wolfed down certain favorite dishes, dreamed of it at night; he dreamed he had that chain on his stomach. It was on such occasions that he was heard to cry "help! help!" in his sleep. From which he was awakened by his own cries. He had cleaned the revolver: he had greased it with vaseline, taken off the safety: the chamber now spun like a reel: the barrel was ready to fire, at the slightest hint of an excuse.

Ingravallo was surprised not to hear Lulu bark and he asked for news of her. Liliana Balducci's face became gently sad. Vanished! Over two weeks ago now. On a Saturday. How? Who knows? Somebody probably put her
in his pocket. In the little gardens in front of San Giovanni where Assuntina took the dog for a walk, that scatterbrained girl: and instead of paying attention to the animal, there were all sorts of idlers who paid attentions to
her,
to Assunta. "Such a showy sort of girl . . . And the way things are nowadays!" An inquiry among the garbage collectors, two ads in the
Messaggero,
questions and reproaches to Assuntina, implorations to more or less everybody, but of no avail as far as bringing her back was concerned, alas, poor Lulu!

Don Ciccio, the next morning, was in a terrible humor. It was raining and windy: a harsh, angry northeasterly wind that spun everything crooked, beginning with the priests' cassocks, and the soaked dogs. Umbrellas were powerless. So were the rainspouts of the buildings. From what Pompeo reported to him, it seemed clear that the jewels of Countess Menegazzi were proverbial in the whole neighborhood. Epicized, desired, summoned up at every moment by the envy and the imagination of the women, the kids. They had been fabulizing about them for years. Brides used to say, "Oh, I'd like to have this," and "I'd love to have that," and they touched their throats, or their breasts, or the lobes of their ears as if to toy with a jewel in their fingers, to caress the little seed of a pearl, and they added: "like Signora Menicacci,"[
sic
] "like the Countess Menecacci." Because she was a genuine countess, she was.

On their stupendous lips that Venetian name swam against the etymological current, that is against the linguistic erosion that had been at work for years. The anaphonesis pierced the undertow with the perforating vigor of an eel, or of certain anadromous fish which can cover miles upstream, up, up, until they drink in again their natal lymph, at the mountain sources of the Yukon, or the Adda, or the Andean Rio Negro. From the latest transliterations of the parish ledgers they returned to the faint guttural of the origins, from Menegaccio to Menego, to Menico, to Domenico, Diminicus, and the "possessive which was of all." Certain maidens little instructed in the deciphering of parish registers stumbled over the name with their Sabellian or Tiberine awkwardness, after two or three heaves, they paused at Menecacci,
^{4}
the kids yelled it, as they rolled about in their games, and the two policemen of the squad, in the presence of Doctor Fumi, had frequent opportunity of pronouncing it, even they, with the most admirable nonchalance.