That Awful Mess On The Via Merulana

by Carlo Emilio Gadda

  And yet Signora Manuela had seen him, clear as day, running out of the entrance, after the thief. "No, no!" Signora Bottafavi said, supporting her husband. "No?! No, my foot, Signora Teresa dearie, you think I don't have eyes in my head? . . . Fine thing that would be . . . with all the comings and goings in this building . . ." Professoressa Bertola contradicted the Bottafavis' denial and, at the same time, corrected the affirmation of the concierge. She was just coming home. On Wednesdays she taught only one class, from eight to nine. She was just turning into the entrance when she saw coming out—and was almost run into by—that frightened seraph with an unbelievable shock of hair: his face distraught, his lips white ... his lips were trembling, she was sure of that. She had lost sight of him because, immediately thereafter, she saw "that wicked young man" come out, the mechanic in the gray overall, but it was a rather special overall, quite swollen, and with a package: "in other words, the murderer in person . . ." "And what sort of cap was he wearing?" Ingravallo asked. "His cap . . . why, to tell you the truth ... the cap . . ." "What was it like? Tell us." "I really wouldn't know, officer." A moment before, yes, oh yes, she had heard the two shots: two thuds, which came out of the main door.

  Now it was the concierge's turn to speak up again. The two shots, yes, first of all the two shots .. . everybody agreed on them. Then she had seen a kind of gray streak in the hall, a mouse scurrying off . . . "He looked like a mouse when they run off, when I chase them with my broom . . ." And then, after him, the grocer's boy. She could swear to it. When the boy went past, all in white, except for his pants, of course, well, the murderer had already gone by. The shots? Yes, of course ... A moment before that son of a . . . had fired two shots. Still on the stairs, where they had resounded like two bombs. "Boom! Boom!" I tell you, doctor dear, I started having palpitations . . ."

  The Professoressa chose to answer back. A row flared up between the two women. Signora Liliana, in the meanwhile, hadn't appeared: and Don Ciccio was happy about it: she! mixed up in a business of this sort!

  He felt it was pointless to waste time trying to look for the projectiles, or the mark of the projectiles. Whether it was a Beretta 6.5 or an ordnance Glisenti 7.65 mattered little to him: it's quick work getting a pistol out of sight for a while. He knew this from past experience: all you have to do is entrust it to a partner, a friend.

  He dismissed the tenants, male and female, maids and shopping bags; without noticing, he stepped on the poodle's paw, and the beast unleashed a yelping that the Pope must have heard over in the Vatican. He ordered the main door closed, leaving a guard at the smaller door, the policeman who had taken over from the corporal. He went up, for another brief inspection, to the Menegazzi apartment; Pompeo, who was with him, followed; Gaudenzio hadn't even come down. He asked and looked to see if there were traces or, better, fingerprints of the murderer. The handles, the dresser's marble top, the waxed floor.

  Signora Liliana finally appeared, very beautiful; she said she could make no guesses; she found kindly words for Signora Menegazzi and offered her hospitality. She confirmed, on being asked, that a short time before the two pistol shots, he had also rung her doorbell—quite timidly, for that matter. She was in the bath, and hadn't been able to open the door; perhaps she wouldn't have opened it in any case. In those days the newspapers had been talking a great deal about the "murky" crime in Via Valadier, then of that other one, even more "heinous," in Via Montebello. She couldn't dispel from her mind what she had read. And then ... a woman alone ... is always a little afraid of opening the door. She took her leave. Only then did Ingravallo think of his pea-green tie (the one with little black clovers and a quincunx pattern), and his Molisan beard, thirty-six or thirty-eight hours old. But the vision had filled him with bliss.

  He asked again widow Menegazzi if, after sober reflection, she had an idea, a suspicion about anyone at all. Couldn't she furnish some clue? People who knew the house? Acquainted with her habits and with the layout— they had to be that, certainly, when you think of their self-confidence. He asked again if there were any traces . . . prints or whatever ... of the murderer. (This term invented by the myth-making crowd had by now settled also in his ears, and forced his tongue to repeat the same error.) No, not a trace.

  Pompeo and Gaudenzio were made to move the dresser. Dust. A yellow straw from a broom. A bluish ticket, slightly crumpled, from a tram. He bent over, picked it up, and unfolded it very carefully, his moonface bent over this nullity: it seemed worn, almost. Tramways of the Castelli, the suburban lines. Punched on the date of the preceding day. Punched apparently (it was torn) at the station of . . . of . . . "Tor . . . Tor . . . Goddamnit! The stop before . . . Due Santi." "It must be Torraccio," Gaudenzio then said, stretching his neck behind Don Ciccio's shoulder. "Is it yours?" Don Ciccio asked the terrified Menegazzi. "No, sir, it's not mine." No, she had had no visitors, the day before. The maid, Cencia, a slightly hunchbacked little old woman, came only part time, at two in the afternoon: to her great disappointment: (her, that is, la Menegazzi's). And therefore she herself straightened up her bedroom, since . . . her poor nerves, ah! doctor! It was already in order, in fact, when, suddenly breaking the silence "that terrible bell" had unexpectedly made itself heard. And besides, in her bedroom, Maria Vergine! how could they possibly think—? In that sanctum of memories, no, no, she never received anyone, never, absolutely no one.

  Don Ciccio could believe this easily, but she had a tone and a "Maria Vergine," as if admitting that she could be suspected of the opposite. No, the maid wasn't from Marino, wasn't from any of the Castelli Romani . . . She lived, since time immemorial, in one of the most mangy hovels in Via de' Querceti, halfway along the street, under the behind of the Santi Quattro, with a sister, a twin, a little smaller than she, just a tiny tiny bit. For the rest, he must believe her, they were very pious women. Cencia had a weakness for sugar, true enough, and coffee, too, very sweet. But touch anything . . . no, no, she would never touch a thing without asking. She suffered from chilblains, on her feet and hands, oh yes; there were times when she couldn't wash the dishes, because they burned her so, her hands; she suffered very much, yes, that she did. But not this winter, no, bad as it had been, no sir; the winter before. Very, very pious; kept her rosary in her hand all day long: with a special devotion to San Giuseppe. Don Corpi, too, could furnish information, Don Lorenzo—you don't know him? . . . Ah, a sainted man, that he was: from Santi Quattro Incoronati; yes, because Cencia went to confession to him: at times she did some cleaning for him, lending a hand to Rosa, the titular handmaiden of the rectory.

  Ingravallo had listened to all this with his mouth open. "Well? What about this ticket then? This ticket? Who can have left it here? Tell me. The murderer? . . ." La Menegazzi seemed to repel the diligence and the pertinacity of the questioning, unwilling to assume the burden of reflecting: all timid, all dewy with belated hope, in the dream and in the charism of the, alas, barely grazed, not experienced torturings. A polychromatic giddiness wafted from her lilac-colored foulards, her azure mustache, the kimono which was a warbling of little birds (they weren't petals after all, but strange winged creatures somewhere between birds and butterflies), from her hair which was yellowish with a tendency towards a disheveled Titian, from the violet ribbon that gathered it into a kind of bouquet of glory: above the vagotonic sagging of the epigastrium and of the faded face, and the sighs of the alas, avoided, brutalization of her body but not avoided robberization of her gold. She didn't want to reflect, she didn't want to remember: or rather she would have preferred to remember what had carefully not taken place. Her fear, her "disaster" had unhinged her brain, that modicum of her person that could be called brain. She was forty-nine years old, though she looked fifty. The misfortune had come in double form: for her gold, that exceptional appraisal . . . unequivocal in its judgment; for her, that title of old witch, and the barrel ... of the pistol. "There was a time when you weren't such a scoundrel," she was inclined to think: of her guardian angel. No, she didn't know,
she didn't want to: she was beside herself; she couldn't concentrate. But the one who still obliged her to speak was Ingravallo, as you might take some good tongs to pick up an ember which sizzles and pops and smokes and makes you cry. Until she ended, exhausted, by confirming that the boy, yes, that criminal, had taken the pistol from his pocket or wherever he had it, yes, right there, in front of the dresser, then that dirty handkerchief, or a mechanic's rag, perhaps, to wrap up the leather case . . . the jewel box, when he had taken it out of the drawer. With the pistol something else had come out, like a handkerchief, something crumpled, paper, probably. Oh no, she couldn't remember; the fright had been too much for her, Maria Verginel; remember? . .. Papers? That boy, yes, it was likely enough, had bent over to pick them up. She could see the scene again confusedly: to pick up what? The handkerchief? ... if it was a handkerchief. How can a person remember ... so many details . . . when a person is so frightened?

  Doctor Ingravallo settled the ticket in a wallet, went downstairs again, after barely fifteen minutes had elapsed. The stairs were dark. From below, the hall was light: even with the main door closed as it was, the hall received light from a window on the courtyard. Gaudenzio and Pompeo followed him. He looked for the concierge again; she was there, squabbling with somebody.

  Since ninety per cent of the tenants, male and female, had withdrawn at his invitation, but only a few steps away, and with their ears pricked up, it wasn't difficult for him to extend his inquiry with a supplementary investigation concerning the mysterious grocer's boy, tacitly reassembling there in the hall the previously dismissed group or clump of humans and vegetables from which he was to press information about the events and, possibly, clarification of the person involved. It turned out that no tenant of the building, whether from stairway A or B, had received anything or was to receive anything, that morning, from any grocer of the capital. Nobody had opened a door to a boy with a white apron, at that hour. "It was all staged," a lady, friend of Signora Bottafavi, then suggested, though she was no friend of la Menegazzi and lived on the fifth floor. "You know, when one of them goes to rob a place, there's always another one outside to keep watch . . . The two of them . . . now you take it from me, doctor . . . the two were in cahoots . . ."

  "Don't you ever see delivery boys in this building?" Ingravallo asked, in a tone of conscious authority and, also, annoyance. He drew back his eyelids, breaking his habitual tedium and heaviness: his eyes then received a light, a penetrating certainty. "Of course," la Pettacchioni then said, "why this building is like the Central Station ... The highest type of people live here, people in trade, sir." The others all smiled: "the kind who don't like to eat just any old greens." "Then who did they deliver to? Don't you remember? .. . Who brought the fresh mozzarella to their doors?" "Oh well, sir, they came more or less for everybody . . ." she bowed her head and put her left index finger to the corner of her mouth: "just let me have a think." Now all of them were mentally groping for boys bringing mozzarella: a sudden fervor of hypotheses, arguments, memories: wicker baskets and white aprons. "Yes . . . Signor Filippo here," she sought him, with a glance: and as if she were introducing him: "Commendatore Angeloni, of the Ministry of National Economy," and she pointed him out, in the group. The others then moved aside and the designated man bowed slightly: "Commendatore Angeloni," he then ventured, on his own. "Ingravallo," Ingravallo said, who so far hadn't even been made a cavaliere, touching the brim of his hat with two fingers. The homage due the National Economy.

  Signor Filippo, tall, dark of overcoat, with his belly somewhat pear-shaped, and his shoulders hunched and sloping slightly, his face between frightened and ... and melancholy, and in its midst a big, rudder-like priest's or fish's nose, which could sound the great trump of the Last Judgment, if you blew on it—that was how it looked—though commendatorial and ministerial, yes; but in particular there was a something ... a sadness, an insecurity, and with it also a kind of reticence in his eyes, as he looked at the officer, Officer Ingravallo, almost as if afraid of losing his berth . . . the next time the Ministry fell: which was not to fall, on the other hand, until Forty-three, the 25th of July. A strange old crow, my God, all bundled up, inside those lapels and that elegiac scarf: a Ministering cleric from that group of very black ones that nest, by preference, between San Luigi de' Francesi and the Minerva. Unnoticed by the absent-minded or hurrying passer-by, one foot after the other in the easy hour of the day they are used to stroll over their beloved little side streets, from the arch of Sant'Agostino and Via della Scrofa, along Via delle Coppelle or the Pozzo delle Cornacchie, up to Santa Maria in Aquiro. On rare occasions they venture, very slowly, along Via Colonna and enter, agoraphobes all, the cobbled Piazza di Pietra, disdaining the half-liter and the snobbish pizzeria of the Neapolitan : and then from that alleyway of Via di Pietra they may even reach the Corso, but it has to be Holy Saturday, at the very least, opposite the Enciclopedia Treccani, to the most inviting clocks and watches of Catellani, the jeweler. In Lent or low Sundays, mourning and flabby, they are content to flank Santa Chiara, under the globes of the two hotels, up to the elephant and his graceful obelisk, past the shopwindows of rosaries and Madonnas: very slowly, or else: equally slowly, they go back: a bicycle grazing them, they turn into the Palombella and hug the back of the Pantheon, by now, however, retracing their steps as if a bit disappointed by the dusk.

  Commendatore Angeloni had moved to Via Merulana some years ago, after the demolitions in Via del Parlamento and Campo Marzio, where he had lived since time immemorial. He must have been a gourmet, judging at least by the little packages, the truffles . . . Packages which, as a rule, he delivered to himself, with great concern and all due respect, holding them horizontally and on his chest, as if he were nursing them: the kind of package from de luxe grocers, filled with galatine or pate and tied with a little blue cord. And sometimes, for that matter, they also delivered them to his house, at two hundred and nineteen, at the very top; they "handed" them to him, as the Florentines would say. (Little artichokes in oil. Tunnied veal.)

  "Signor Filippo here," Signora Manuela repeated. "Well, sometimes you've had one come, a boy with packages, and a white apron. I've never looked him in the face, so I couldn't come right out and describe him. But now that I think of it, the one this morning could have been yours, more or less. One evening, when I ran after him, he yelled down the stairs that he was going to your house, said he had to deliver some ham."

  All eyes were trained on Commendatore Angeloni. The object of this attention became confused.

  "Me? Grocery boys? . . . What ham?"

  "Why, commendatore dear," Signora Manuela implored, "you wouldn't make me look like a liar, would you, telling me it isn't true in front of the officer here? . . . After all, you live alone . . ."

  "Alone?" Signor Filippo rebutted, as if living alone were a sin.

  "Well, is there anybody up there with you? Not even a cat...

  "What do you mean by saying I'm alone?"

  "I mean that if somebody delivers food to your house, when it rains, or in the evening . . . well, it can happen, can't it? Can't it? . . . Am I right?" Her tone was conciliating, as if she had winked at him to say: what kind of mess are you getting me into, you fathead?

  And apparently, it was a mess. Signor Filippo's embarrassment was obvious: that stammering, that sudden pallor: those glances so filled with uncertainty, even with anguish. Interest and suspense gripped them all: all the tenants looked at him agape: at him, at the concierge, at the officer.

  The only sure thing, Ingravallo said to himself, was that the concierge hadn't seen the delivery boy's face this time, either: if he had been a delivery boy. She had seen his heels and also his . . . shall we say his back? That much, yes . . . Professoressa Bertola, now, she had seen his face: it was white, with white lips: but she hadn't seen him the other times. So she had nothing to say either.

  The murderer, too . . . Signora Manuela had to admit finally that she wouldn't be able to recognize him again. No. She
had never seen him before. Never. Like a thunderbolt it was!

  And the two revolver shots, in that darkness of the stairs, hah, God only knows where they ended up.

  Officer Ingravallo cut it short. He invited to the police station Signora Manuela Pettacchioni, concierge, and the Signora Teresina Menegazzi nee Zabala, where clerks could type up and the ladies could sign further, if there were further, statements: the second of the above-named, in particular, had to make an official charge. The damages were rather great: the case was serious enough. It was a question of aggravated burglary, and for a value, if not a sum, fairly impressive in its total: about thirty thousand lire, more or less, between the gold things and the jewels (a strand of pearls, a large topaz, among others); and roughly four thousand seven hundred in cash, in the old wallet. "The wallet of my poor Egidio," la Menegazzi sobbed, on hearing herself summoned.

  Commendatore Angeloni was asked, with all proper respect, to remain at the police's disposal, for further clarifications. Another nice euphemism. "Remain at disposal," meant, in effect, accompanying Don Ciccio on the various seesaw of trams and buses as far as the Santo Stefano del Cacco Station. In addition Signor Filippo had to skip his lunch.

  "I'm afraid I couldn't, thank you," he said sadly to Pompeo, who suggested he break his nervous waiting with a healthy pair of sandwiches. "I haven't any appetite; this is the wrong moment." "Whatever you say, Commendatore. In any case, when you feel like it, Peppino Er Maccheronaro has a place here in Via del Gesù that really fills the bill. He knows all of us; we're good customers. Rare roast beef; that's Peppino's speciality." Signora Manuela, once she had completed, on Don Ciccio's desk, that horrible and interminable tangle that was her respected signature, Manuela Pettacchioni crossed the dim antechamber and decided to take her leave also of the bundled-up dignitary. She gave him a jovial greeting, loud and woman-of-the-people as ever: "Ta-ta for now, Commendatore . . ." And everyone stared at him. "Stiff upper lip, eh? There's nothing to it... and it's over before you know it." And she went out to catch the PV-1, all in a rush, wiggling her ass like a quail and clicking in perilous equilibrium on the heels of her good shoes which were like trampolenes, like an old sow on her trotters. "With all the mess he's in today, he won't feel much like eating artichokes ... He won't even eat a crust, poor Signor Filippo . . . Santo Stefano del Cacco, of all places to end up. That's a place to keep away from!"