That Awful Mess On The Via Merulana

by Carlo Emilio Gadda

  Di Pietrantonio was personally acquainted with Sergeant Santarella: not to mention Ingravallo, who was even a distant cousin via various old women, aunts, a chain of godmothers: the chain of relations, repeated in time along the chain of mountains, the harsh Apennine, had traveled up the bitter spine of the boot, up, up, from Vinchiaturo to Ovindoli. And, besides Santarella was the shining eponym of discipline: and of Latial duty. Di Pietrantonio, for his part, knew la Pacori, and Grabber knew her, too: because they had stopped for a drink, in September, at her counter: Zamira! of whose name and whose actions, open or veiled, not to say secret or splendid, legend had become first discoverer or trouvere, then divulgator and trumpeter: from Marino to Albano, from Castel Gandolfo to Ariccia.

  Meanwhile Retalli Enea, aged nineteen, son of Anchise and Venere nee Procacci, it turned out, had as his nom de guerre Iginio, not Luiginio: "which doesn't make sense anyway," they dismissed it, in one accord. "Bah! of course not!" they agreed. Tricks of inductance, overloaded wires. Inadequate service. Work on the line. The change of management!

  La Pacori, oppressed then by an accumulation of rags, garments, heavy sweaters, and ragged jerseys to dye, which would need the caldron of Beelzebub, her patron, with some suspicion of animal life inside the stuff, at the height of anguish, had sub-contracted the dyeing work, including the green sash to the Ciurlani firm in Marino: which, two days earlier, in the fury of a stupid equinoxial wind with slanting rain, had sent a carriage to collect that rubbish: and the horse had arrived soaked, and so worn out, poor animal, that they had to unhitch him, then dry him off in a broken-down stall, where it rained in, patting his ass and giving him some hot wine to drink. It was there, in Marino, that is, that Pestalozzi had directed himself. There was some stuff already dyed, in a heap, on a table: and other stuff to disinfect or to dye again, in two sacks against the wall, on the ground: but when it came to them, Sora Mara warned the corporal to watch his step, you can't be too careful: "Those little beasts, once they get on to you . . ."

  Pestalozzi, a man with guts, sharpened his eyes, but with his legs, he drew back at once: "two steps to the rear," snip, snap, with military vivacity: like at close-order drill. After some pecking around by the titular Ciurlani (that is to say Sora Mara herself) in that pile on the table, which was already cooked almost white, purified in the autoclave of any possible quadruped, from it, in fact, the scarf had emerged, tugged by one end, the sash: unfinished: like a serpent drawn from its hole by the tail, green, yes, once, black-green with dots: now green no longer, but not yet its new color which, ideally, was to be a pale brown, because to perfect the pale brown a second immersion was required. Thus spake la Ciurlani.

  But how was it, asked the experts, that Zamira, the trouser-maker of I Due Santi, had dared offer the information?

  Pestalozzi led them to believe that the idea of questioning her had occurred to him: and "only later on" to Sergeant Santarella. They were the station's two motorcyclists. And at his disposal, in the course of certain private exchanges of ideas with some stubborn types, he had arguments which were not wholly ineffectual, indeed rather convincing, against the great plague of reticence: (Di Pietrantonio, in his mind's eye, was already examining the leather belt): arguments which, in some cases, could succeed in counterbalancing and even overcoming, in doubting hearts, in hardheaded bumpkins, the opposing fear, the terror of vendetta. But with the good Zamira . . . there had been no need to go so far. Eh! A woman! And a woman of such stuff, of such form! Not even calling her to the barracks ad audiendum verbum, not even that had been considered necessary: a thing which, for that matter, "you might say," would have caused her more pleasure than fear. Oh! Sergeant Santarella, that is, in other words . . . the station, yes, the station had its trump cards, some here, some there: "all through the deck": and Di Pietrantonio, taking the words from his colleague-adversary's mouth, assumed the wisest face in the Cacco office. "In the midst of the theater of operations," Fumi added, serious, turning over a paper, with gentle gravity. A niece ... a girl who worked for la Pacori. A little bunch of primroses for the sergeant. Two knitted stockings for his little girl, the baby, Luciana, and a few words to go with them. Few, but well-chosen.

  Fumi then recalled that a girl, that Ines, Ines . . .—and he started to search, with one hand, in the file of fine ladies, which he kept on his desk as a kind of mindful aroma, like lovely flowers in a vase—Ines . . . Ciampini, yes, from Torraccio, or Torracchio, on via Appia, the stop after Le Frattocchie, had been picked up a few evenings earlier by a patrol from the San Giovanni police station: the evening before the crime: picked up for loitering, no identification papers: and on well-grounded suspicion of prostitutional activity in a public place (Santo Stefano Rotondo!), activity for which she was not licensed (a mere amateur, in short). She had insulted the arresting officers, calling one of them "Sergeant Fathead." She had offended, "admittedly probably with only sporadic activity and, on that evening, in an entirely occasional form," she had been caught in flagrant contravention of the Federzoni orders for the reformation of the urban sidewalks under booted regime, "in accordance with that special regulation from the Minister of the Interior on February fourteenth, you know the one, Ingravallo, regulation number seven hundred eighteen—help me out on this—Ingravallo, with that memory of yours!—concerning the moralization of the Capital." Ingravallo didn't open his mouth. "And held for suspicion of complicity in a theft," Di Pietrantonio reminded his chief. "What theft?" "A chicken." "Where'd she steal it?" "Piazza Vittorio." The morning of Wednesday the sixteenth, after the round-up of the nymphs, Corporal Juppariello of the San Giovanni station had shown her to the two women who had suffered the robbery three days before: a chicken-seller and another woman who sold slippers. A theft of an old pair of shoes from this latter, and a chicken, too, nearby, from the next stand: plucked and neckless, as it turned out, but in compensation with three feathers in its ass. And the ones who snatched them, both shoes and chicken, were two characters, a boy and a blond girl, "who had wandered around for some time along the street, in that very crowded hour, then they had separated, and had mysteriously disappeared with the merchandise." The chicken-seller's wife, who was the one who yelled loudest of all, "at first" had thought she recognized in Ines, Cionini Ines of Torraccio, the very blonde who she believed had snitched the feathered creature, or rather, de-feathered. "On second thoughts," however, she seemed to hesitate. A sample chicken, to enlighten the police, had been taken to San Giovanni, in every way similar to its colleague which had vanished from sight three days before—it was now Sunday the 13th—and the same with the two shoes: accused and accuser were then coached together to Santo Stefano, the shoe lady with them. Questioned at headquarters, Ines had sustained and sworn, with many a "I hope to die if it's not true," that she knew nothing of the fowl, in the first place: that she was an apprentice seamstress, though without employment at present: and that she had worked, as a trouser-maker at I Due Santi, just beyond le Frattocchie. "And then what?" Then she had been reduced to coming to Rome, to look for work. "It's no shame to have to look for a job." The chicken let off a terrible stink: it, too, had been taken to the station, along with the two shoes, both lefts; once at Santo Stefano del Cacco, the bird had apparently taken fright and, though dead, it had shat, there on Paolillo's little table: not much, though, to tell the truth. "Let's hear this Ines!"

  Fumi swung around in his chair, pressed the button, and asked for Piscitiello, he charged Paolillo to have Piscitiello hand the girl over to him, if she hadn't already been shipped off to Regina Coeli. Paolillo, after a short while, brought in a rather well-supplied girl, with two marvelous eyes in her face, very luminous, shiny; but she was incredibly dirty and disheveled, and her stockings! her cloth shoes, half in tatters, with one toe sticking out. A gust of the wild, not to say worse, breathed into the room; a smell: "Mmm! get a load of that!" all of them said to themselves, mentally.

  After a certain amount of preamble concerning her vital statistics, Ines .. . Ines Cio
nini, questioned a while by Doctor Fumi and some by Don Ciccio, examined from head to foot by Corporal Pestalozzi, Sergeant Di Pietrantonio, and Paolillo and, behind them, a little by Grabber, Ines understood at once what they wanted from her. They wanted to hear her voice. So she sang out, she spilled the beans. Without having to be coaxed. Had she perchance worked for la Pacori? Yes, that was where she worked, for Zamira. Zamira? Yes, that was her name. And . . . how? And . . . when? And . . . for how long? Ah, for over a year! And ... what did she do, at Zamira's? What sort of customers did she have? Oh, all kinds. Just about everybody came to her, men and women: because of her cards. And . . . also, what did she have in her cellar? Cellar? Well, the floor below? Oh, she kept a demijohn of oil! And pecorino cheese, too! Oh, sure, of course. Un huh. And how many girls did she have working for her? How old were they? From sixteen up? There were some that were only fifteen. And the carters? And the horses? Oh, the stables . .. sure!

  And what other animals did she have around? And who took care of them? Aha! Is that so? And they played cards, too, did they? Oh, but only on Saturdays. Naturally, of course. That's obvious enough. Saturday evening. Just about everybody came. The wine was good. Yes, she had a license: yes, for alcoholic beverages. Et cetera et cetera. It came out that on Fridays and Tuesdays she was also visited by the force, the Royal Carabinieri. Pestalozzi would have liked and, above all, should have tried, to protest. He thought, on the other hand, that it was preferable for him to let a little fresh water run on, from such a generous faucet: and he contented himself, at critical moments, with a shrug and a shake of his head: "nonsense! all lies!" But they all believed it, nevertheless. The police dote on nonsense: in their rivalry with the carabinieri. Each of the two organizations would like to have a monopoly on such stories, on History indeed. But History is one alone! Well, they're capable of hacking it in two: a piece for each: in a process of de-twinning, of amoebic splitting: half for me, half for you. The singleness of History is derogated into a double historiography, it is devolved into psalm and antiphony, it is potted in two contradictory certainties: the police report, the carabiniere report. The one says yes: the other says no. The one says white: the other says black. Dogs and cats get along better.

  Ines Cionini had had her fancy-man, she admitted, a good-looking boy: a real and proper lover. Who, they all thought, must have met her and perhaps even . . . why not? . . . treated her with some tenderness ... in a period far closer to her latest bath. She was very beautiful, to gaze upon, despite the squalor of the room, the moldy light on the brick floor: white of face and throat amid the pools and fringes of dirt: with swollen, red lips: like a baby sylph, precociously troubled with puberty: and rather undulant in her turning, in her leaning forward, pained by certain weights (a little in the manner of some saints, some nuns, believed to be Spanish) as if by an incontrovertible charge, a heavy burden, eternal: laid upon her by the ancient caprice of nature. Surfaces imitating the true, nucleal volume seemed to enfold her repeatedly, like circles surround the stone cast in the water, amplifying "in the minds of the witnesses," that is in male delirium that stupendous suggestion: from her there emanated, along with the above-mentioned aroma, the true and basic sense of the life of the viscera, of hunger: and of animal warmth. The idea proper to stables, to haystacks: and far from all lowly pragmatic sanctions. Her gem-eyes, a child's, enunciated to all those men, still without their supper, the name of a happiness that was yet possible; a joy, a hope, a truth superior to their papers, to the squalid walls, the dried flies on the ceiling, the portrait of the Shit. The syphilitic Swaggerer. Perhaps, poor creature, the adjective that so suited to the beshat Maltonian{33} was to modify her as well? No, she didn't look ill: if not with hunger, with beauty, with puberty, with filth, with impudence, with abandon. And perhaps with sleep, with weariness. Her fancy-man had led her into theft, after having had his will of her: because the soft whisperings at nightfall had concluded with "shift for yourself." Her erstwhile employer and mentor had clarified her thinking, or had enabled her to clarify it for herself. Love, after besmirching her, had handed her over to the whim of hunger. All, now, hoped to find in her the longed-for spy of whom they had need. She understood this; she knew it: and for that matter, hell, who gave a damn? the evil that the blue days had poured over her was such that she had to give it back, to her protectors. So she sang. About her mistress-teacher. "Teacher of sewing? Mistress-seamstress?" Teacher of sewing and not of sewing. La Pacori: yes, Zamira. In parallel fashion Pestalozzi and Di Pietrantonio reported. Ingravallo shook his huge head also: three or four times.

  La Zamira, yes: known to all, between Marino and Ariccia, by the lack of her eight teeth in front (her teeth began with the canines: Ines pointed to her own, as paradigms, opening and twisting with one finger her lovely lips), four above and four below: whereby the mouth, viscid and salivary, red as if burning with fever, opened badly, like a hole, to speak: worse, it stretched at the corners into a dark and lascivious smile, not handsome, and, no doubt involuntarily, coarse. Despite the face, there were murmurs, that rictus, that vacuum held for some of the Royal force and for some non-royalty a perverse allure. Sometimes on certain afternoons, her eyes were flashing, yet soft, swollen underneath, like two serous blisters, filled with a dazed and slightly baby-faced malice: she was a bit drunk: you could see it: you could smell it on her breath: then her wrinkles smoothed out as if by a breath of Favonius. At other times she seemed more herself: her, Zamira: the light must have struck then on something hard, like the flame of a witch's curse on the face. The harsh roughness and tempestuous dishevelment of her hair, and the parallel, profound wrinkles all over her face, which was brown and dark, wooden, and the greedy ambages of her gaze in those moments delineated better her aspect: like an ancient sorceress, priestess of abominable spells and roots, the stewed roots, in which the soul of a Lucan, of an Ovid is entangled.

  Her official activity was that of a mender and re-weaver, trouser-maker, dyeress, and in some cases, notions-merchant empirical in curing sciatica through secret herbs, seer, clairvoyante, card-reader, licensed to sell wines and liquors at I Due Santi, and Oriental Wizardess with a diploma in the first degree: in her workshop-tavern where the carters of the Appia stopped for a half-liter of wine, precisely at I Due Santi. She was consulted in the exorcism line, for casting or removing spells, exorcizing the evil eye from infants in their bonnets, simple-minded babies, and preventive spells in general; gifted also in the branch of washing heads to drive away lice, and when some girl's monthly was overdue, whether through nerves or other troubles, of which there are many, as all know. An immunologist of great experience and rare knowledge, after the liberation of Italy from the menace of the bolshevik hydra thanks to the Great Balcony of the Holy Sepulchre (October 28, 1922) the cracking of the malocchio sive evil eye, whose infinite case-history was at her fingertips, more and more constituted the chief subject of the appeals to her art. But not all. She was also skilled, sic et simpliciter, another gift of nature, as authoress of propitiatory or even repellent potions, according to the requirements of the case, and of almost all the love philters and powders for both signs, that is positive and negative. She could make pedigreed dogs have a miscarriage, when impregnated by some mongrel stray. She knew how to inculcate, at a reasonable fee, a certain quantum—that is to say the necessary amount—of kinetic energy to the dubious, to the insecure: comfort them in the pragma, corroborate them in the act itself. With ten lire one purchased, through her medicine, the faculty of willing. With another ten, that of being able. She un-kierkegaarded little crooks of the province, channeling them "to work" in the city, known as the Urbs, after having purged their souls of any remaining perplexity, or of their last scruples. She set the bold on their path, showing them that the poor creatures of the weaker sex asked for nothing better, in those years, than to lean on someone, to attach themselves to something, that would be able to share with them a mindless emotion, the sweet pain of living: she catechized them in the Protection of the H
omeless Girl, in competition with the better-known organization of the same name. And her catechumens looked upon her as a mistress, though dubbing her, from one drink to the next, filthy, when they thought she couldn't hear them, of course, and bag and witch: such is the foolhardiness of our time, and their personal coarseness: and even perhaps titling her the old sow, her, Zamira Pacori! and old procuress, hah! a seamstress of her position! and Oriental wizardess with a diploma of the first degree! Some gratitude. And they even had the nerve to say that the Due Santi, the two saints of the locality . . . were ... a pair of "if you follow my meaning," accompanying this assertion with an immodest manucaption— prolation of the pair in question, wrapped though they were in the crotch: immodest, oh yes, but not infrequent then, in popular usage. Slander. Foulmouths. Hick scum, that go out at night to steal chickens.