by Rita Monaldi
These words were greeted with a round of applause and a toast to wish Maria Pulcheria Rocci every good fortune: as a bride and not a mother, she was in fact less important than the new mother; besides which, the poor thing, with her seaweed- coloured turbot's countenance, was certainly not one to inspire high-flown epithalamia.
"And what should be said of Aspasia, who taught Pericles and Socrates?" the speech continued, "or of the most learned Areta, remembered by Boccaccio? Was she not simultaneously both mother and philosopher? So well did she raise her offspring that she wrote a most useful book on how to instil manners in children, and another, for the use of the children themselves, on the vanity of youth; at the same time, for thirty-five years she taught natural philosophy, having a hundred philosophers for disciples, as well as composing the most erudite works: on the wars of Athens, on the power of tyrants, on Socrates' Republic, on the un- happiness of women, on the vanity of funerary rites, on bees and on the prudence of ants."
Meanwhile, the fifth course was served, usually consisting entirely of fruit. Although I had already eaten, I could not remain indifferent to the dishes of tartufali tartufolati — truffles in a truffle sauce served on crusts of toasted bread with half-lemons, or to the dishes making up an imperial feast of ravioli with butter, cauliflowers, tartuffolo sea urchins, egg yolks, with juice of lemon and cinnamon. Nor were the other poor torchbearers unmoved by such delicacies, yet they must like Tantalus stand by and listen powerlessly to the motions of the great lords and ladies'jaws and palates. Then came the fried Ascoli olives, the Florentine marzolino cheeses and the Spanish olives.
"But was this not to be the fruit course?" Baron Scarlatti discreetly asked the Prince Borghese.
"The fruit is there," replied the other. "Namely, the truffles on toast and in the imperial feast, the citrus cubes inside the fried olives and the orange flowers garnishing the fresh olives."
"Ah, I see," replied Scarlatti laconically, yet remaining unconvinced that subterranean truffles could be described as fresh fruit.
Then, to refresh the palate, bowls of iced pistachios were brought to the table, together with ground pistachios, pistachios in their shells, pistachio cakes, peach pies alla Senese, candied lettuce stalks and, in honour of Cardinal Durazzo, who came of a noble Genoese family, bowls of candied Genoese pears, together with prunes and candied Adam's apples, citrons and medlars, all from Genoa.
At that moment the Princess of Forano's newborn babe arrived, well swaddled in his father's arms.
"Minor mundus," said Cardinal Spada, greeting him with the name "world in miniature" accorded to man by the ancients for the perfection of his composition. Spada blessed the child and prayed that this might be a sign most auspicious.
"May you augur a prolific future for our beloved bride and groom today!" he concluded.
There was yet another toast; the various members of the couple's families then stood up one after another and, turning to the happy pair, they eulogised, magnified, augured, remembered and exhorted as is the custom at such banquets.
The ever-generous mantle of darkness had already fallen some two hours earlier when Sfasciamonti arrived with three saddled horses. All the guests, having been regaled with the utmost sumptuousness, had by now all retired to their beds.
As agreed, Atto and I waited in a sheltered corner not far from the Villa Spada. Buvat, who had tippled somewhat too freely at the nuptial banquet, had likewise abandoned himself to the arms of Morpheus and was snoring in his little room.
"Where are we going?" I asked, while the catchpoll helped, first Atto, then me, to mount.
"Near to the Rotonda," he replied.
Sfasciamonti, as he himself had explained that morning, had received information that should enable us to find two cerretani. These were small fry, but it was already a great deal to lay hands on a sure pair like these. As for their names, they were known as II Roscio and II Marcio: Red and Rotten. Such were the colourful nicknames by which the pair whom we were stalking were known in the Roman underworld.
We moved swiftly and silently towards the Tiber and thence to the city centre. As on the night before, we crossed the river by passing through the island of San Bartolomeo.
As intended, we dismounted a short distance from the Piazza della Rotonda. We found waiting for us there a little man who was kind enough to hold the reins of our horses as we clambered down from them. He was a friend of Sfasciamonti's and would look after our mounts for as long as was necessary.
We moved to a dark corner of the piazza where a number of carts for the transport of goods were stationed, secured to one another with a heavy iron chain. These probably belonged to the poor pedlars working at the market held by day at the Rotonda. It was a cul de sac in which darkness, the fetid odour of rats and damp mildew were omnipresent. Atto and I exchanged a worried look: this looked like the ideal place for an ambush. Sfasciamonti, however, surprised us, moving directly into action.
He handed me the lamp which we had been carrying with us, which somewhat faintly lit the scene. He looked under the carts and shook his head in disappointment. Then he stopped next to one of the carts and leaned on it with both hands. Swinging one leg back, he then launched a great kick into the darkness beneath the cart.
We heard a raucous howl in which anger and surprise were mixed in equal measure.
"Ah, here we are," said the catchpoll with the absent-minded ease of someone looking for a pen in a drawer.
"In the name of the Governor of Rome, Monsignor Ranuzio Pallavicini, come out from there, you miserable dog," he enjoined.
As nothing was happening, he leaned under the cart, reached out with one hand and tugged hard. A hoarse growl of protest was heard, which ended when Sfasciamonti hauled out a human figure without so much as a by-your-leave. It was an emaciated old man dressed in rags with a long yellowish beard under his chin and hair as thin and stubbly as a bunch of spinach. Other details I was for the time being unable to descry owing to the semi-dark- ness, which could not however conceal one detail: the stench of putrefying filth that arose from the poor old man after years of living in extreme want.
"I have done nothing, nothing!" he protested, struggling not to let go of an old blanket which he had dragged with him and under which he had probably been sleeping until our arrival.
"What a stink," was Sfasciamonti's only comment as he stood the wretch on his feet like an unfortunate marionette, trembling with somnolence and fear.
The catchpoll grasped the old man's right arm and brought his hand up to his chest. He opened it and passed his fingers over it a few times as though to feel the skin. After this bizarre examination, he announced: "All right, you're clean."
Then, without even giving him the time to complain, he seated him on the cart, this time less roughly, but holding tightly onto his arm.
"Do you see these gentlemen?" said he, pointing to us. "They are persons who have no time to waste. Sometimes, two cerretani sleep here — here, just next to you. I am sure that you know something about them."
The old man said nothing.
"The gentlemen would like to speak with someone from among the cerretani.'"
The old man lowered his eyes and remained silent.
"I am a sergeant. If I want, I can break your arm, lock you in a cell and throw away the key," warned Sfasciamonti.
The old man still kept silent. Then he scratched his head, as though he had just been thinking.
"Il Roscio and Il Marcio?" he asked at last.
"And who else?"
"They come here only from time to time, when they have business to see to. But I don't know what they get up to, no, I know nothing of what they do."
"But you have only to tell me where they are tonight," insisted Sfasciamonti, gripping the other's arm more tightly.
"I do not know. They keep changing."
"I'll break your arm."
"Try at Termine."
Sfasciamonti let go at last of the poor man's arm and the fellow hastened to l
ay his foul blanket under the cart and return to his wretched sleeping place.
As we moved on horseback to our new goal, the catchpoll explained a few details.
"In summer, many sleep out in that place which we have just left. If their hands are calloused, they are mendicants: people who have worked and fallen on hard times. If there are no calluses, then they're cerretani and have never earned a penny from work."
"So that's why you felt the old man's palm," I deduced.
"Of course, the cerretani like to live a life of ease, by cheating and robbing. Now let us go to Termine and see whether we have better luck there. I have known the names of the pair we seek for quite a while now and I simply cannot wait to get my hands on them."
As he said these words, I saw him try to contain his excitement by rolling up his sleeves. He was preparing for the challenge of encountering the two scoundrels and, even more, that of facing up to his secret fear of the cerretani which was, with every passing day, growing more corrosive and insistent.
Finding Il Marcio and Il Roscio called for an improbable degree of luck. The indication provided by the old man could not have been vaguer: Termine, the enormous space where the agricultural produce from the Agro Romano — the plain surrounding the city-was delivered and stored, and which lay just behind the Baths of Diocletian, was by night as deserted as it was vast. We left the Piazza della Rotonda behind us, moving towards Piazza Colonna, whence we proceeded to the Trevi Fountain and Monte Cavallo. From there, we came to the Four Fountains and crossed the Via Felice, entering Via di Porta Pia which brought us right next to Termine.
Our ride was uneventful, apart from a couple of encounters with the night watch in the vicinity of the papal palace of Monte Cavallo. Sfasciamonti presented his credentials and we were duly permitted to go on our way.
The silence was broken only once, when we drew level with the church of San Carlino, by a question from Atto:
"'Teeyooteelai': was that not what the cerretano said to you?"
"Yes, Signor Atto, why?"
"Oh, nothing, nothing."
On reaching our destination, as expected, the panorama of Termine gave no cause for optimism.
When we turned to the right from Via di Porta Pia, there before us loomed the enormous pile of the Apostolic Chamber's granaries, the great building in which the grain destined for bread production was stored. The warehouses on which the survival of the Roman population depended were in the form of a great S which, for almost half its length, adjoined the colossal bulk of the Baths of Diocletian. The ruins of the baths, eroded both by the elements and by human greed, dominated all of the second half of the Piazza di Termine. Within the ancient thermal complex, removing from their pagan origins what had once been refreshing pools and steam baths, there now stood the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. Behind this church, whose rustic and irregular facade had, in the most unusual manner, been built from the outer wall of the baths, stretched the bulky mass of the Roman ruins. To the right, one could just descry in the dark the outer wall of the Villa Peretti Montalto, the immense estate, consisting of vineyards, gardens and manors built with such splendour by the late Pope Sixtus V and, a few years ago, on the passing away of his family, bequeathed to the Princes Savelli. Finally, behind those looking towards the granaries, stood a wall behind which was situated the vegetable garden of the monks of Saint Bernard.
No presence, whether human or otherwise, accompanied our arrival. Apart from the colossal shadows of the baths and granaries and the chirping of the cicadas: nothing. The summer night's air was enlivened by the sweet, pungent odour of wheat.
"What now?" I asked, marvelling at the desolation stretching before my eyes.
Atto said nothing. He seemed to be thinking of something else.
"I have a place in mind," said Sfasciamonti, "and I think it is the right one."
We advanced towards the granaries, the walls returning the rhythmic echo of our horses' hooves. Passing close to a great block of ruins, we found ourselves facing a high, irregularly shaped wall, with a tall unguarded doorway set into it.
"When it is not raining, many come here," said Sfasciamonti in a low voice.
We found a hidden tree to which to which we tethered our horses and at last prepared to enter the ruins.
"I warn you," insisted Sfasciamonti as we dismounted, "the people we are about to meet must not be rubbed up the wrong way. If we encounter anyone, let me do all the talking."
Thick though the silence was, with my senses no doubt deceived by the sinister nature of the place, I was, however, practically certain that I had seen an ironic little smile cross Abbot Melani's face, barely illumined by the crescent moon.
We drew near then to the doorway (now, in truth, nothing but a great gaping gap without any doors) leading inside the ruins. As we entered, in a flash of the imagination, I pictured the grandiose gatherings that must have taken place centuries ago in that place: swarms of sweating patricians, but also plebeians, enjoying the steam baths, the inhalations and ablutions, all under the protective wing of those lofty vapour-filled vaults…
Of vaults: there were none; the roof had collapsed. Hardly had I crossed the threshold of the great portal leading to the ruins than my eyes were drawn upwards by the moonlight, and were amazed to find themselves still under the just, indifferent gaze of the stars.
We were in a sort of great arena open to the sky, bounded on four sides by the massive walls of the ancient baths. Time and neglect had robbed them forever of the covering placed sixteen centuries ago by the zealous efforts of architects and masons.
Thanks to the moonlight, we could make our way cautiously through that alien space without constantly tripping over. Here and there, pearly white in the white sidereal glow, lay huge, indolent blocks of stone, columns painfully cast to the ground, voluble capitals and vainglorious pilasters.
In the gaps between one piece of wreckage and the next, and between these and the undulations in the terrain, sprawling on heaps of rags and quilts, one could make out the silhouettes of sleeping bodies.
"Cerretani and vagrants: they are scattered all over the place," murmured Sfasciamonti.
"How are we to find those two," I replied in a similarly light whisper, "what were their names… Il Roscio and Il Marcio?"
Instead of answering, the catchpoll broke away from Atto and me and moved towards a mound, behind which one could see a sort of architrave, so gently sunken into the ground that it seemed to have gone to sleep there after centuries of vainly awaiting the return of imperial glories.
For a while, he looked around, searching for some objective, until he found his next victim: a wretched vagabond who lay sleeping at his feet. The latter, however, inured to scenting danger, was not unaware of the catchpoll's threatening presence. He turned once or twice in his sleep and then gave a violent start.
Just before the vagabond could change position, I almost stopped breathing for surprise. Sfasciamonti had sat on the unfortunate fellow. We drew near, looking over our shoulders in fear of some reprisal on the part of the vagabond's companions. Nothing happened; Sfasciamonti had conducted his assault so discreetly that no one, among all those sleeping in the great arena, seemed to have realised a thing.
With one knee, the catchpoll had immobilised his victim's arm. Then he had sat down, planting his massive posterior on the adversary's belly, while with both hands he kept his mouth and eyes closed, thus preventing him from uttering the faintest whimper and from seeing who it was that had overwhelmed him. From the ease with which he had accomplished all this, it was plain that he must have made use of the same technique on previous occasions.
"Il Roscio and Il Marcio — two cerretani — do you know where they are?" he ordered, whispering in the man's ear.
Slowly he raised his hand from a corner of the poor wretch's mouth, allowing him to whisper something.
"Ask that one, under the striped blanket," said he, pointing to someone sleeping not far off.
Sfasciamonti p
assed rapidly to the other, on whom he practised the same interrogation technique.
"I've not seen them for days," rasped this man, of whose youthful face I caught a glimpse when the catchpoll raised his huge hands. "I don't know whether they're sleeping here tonight. Look over there, beyond the ditch."
He had pointed at a sort of ditch from which a strong stench of urine arose. That was probably where the vagabonds relieved themselves by night. Sfasciamonti loosened his grip, not without warning the young man with a last threatening look. He then moved off towards the ditch. He took one step, two, three. He was already some way off when we heard the scream.
"Roscio, the saffrons! Buy the violets!"
It was the young man whom Sfasciamonti had just interrogated. After crying out, he fled in the direction we had come from, towards the great expanse of Termine.
"Get him!" Sfasciamonti yelled at me, who, having remained a little behind, was closer to the young man.
Meanwhile, other bodies all around me, wrapped in rags and wretched greatcoats, awoke and returned to life. I felt the blood pumping hard in my veins while the air thickened in my throat. That barren space barely lit by the moon teemed with poor beggars, but also with cutthroats. Hunter and prey could exchange their roles at any moment; I began to follow the young man more from the desire to get away than that of catching him.
Sfasciamonti and I had just launched ourselves on the heels of the fugitive, and Atto in turn had got moving, when another shadow rushed forth from the darkness. He was running with some difficulty across the rough terrain towards the main door.
Thanks to the advantage gained by surprise, the pair had soon put no mean distance between us and themselves; once out in the vast space of Termine, I was already making my way towards our horses when I heard Sfasciamonti's voice.
"No, not the horses — on foot!"
He was right. The young man had run immediately to the left, towards the wall behind which, to the east, stretched the immense and grandiose Villa Peretti Montalto.
