That Awful Mess on the via Merulana (21 page)

There was everything you could want. A place, in short, this workshop of Zamira's whose like you would never find, still less its better, for distilling a drop, a single and splendid drop of the eternally prohibited or eternally unlikely Probability. Jerseys to be dyed, trousers to be mended: the moths devour the owl: but some of it was always left, the eyes of the owl live, knowing topazes motionless in the night, in time, surviving the ruins of time. A point of contact of the vital compossibilities: magic, knitting, tailoring, trousering, wine from the Castelli and even from Bitonto (a keg, with a tap: two demijohns, rubber siphons), cheese and beans in April, the grandson of the mustachioed chief rat, rummaging inside the skull, in the cellar, that is to say in the "dyeing room"! in the cranium, where he had entered and where he would come out by an eye, an empty socket, naturally. Packs of cards on the table, the astrologicheral tarot cards: hourglass, cabala of lottery and pentacle: a stuffed owl, with a pair of eyes on him! And pecorino, in a big cupboard, and flasks of oil: ah . . . locked and barred so that not even a rat. .. no, not even with Zamira! they had had it. They could die of frustration, poor darlings! Abracadabra puffety-poo.

The Elysian gathering of the gentle shades, the summons, the evocation of the compossibilities! Poor, and dear, Zamira! She used to pour out wine for the carters on the Appia, for the carabinieri on their rounds. Standing, these last, having come in from the summer, guns on their shoulders: dusty, overheated, blinded by the immensity: stunned by infinite cicadas: with head and cap amid the cloud of flies, up, up, which gave out a humming at times as of an unseen guitar plucked by the phalanges of a ghost. She, after having brought the drink, took her chair again, wielding her needles, toothless (the front ones) in the circle of her tender novices likewise seated at their work: working with the needle, or knitting. Heads bowed, but raised, however, promptly, from time to time, one after the other, each after her neighbor: to thrust back with one hand, as if bored, the tangle of falling hair. But at that moment! they emitted a flash, those eyes: black, shining, emergent from boredom; then they lingered, bored, on the indifference of an object, a button, the butt of a rifle, the corporal's service revolver, or a little lower down, or a little higher, a little more to the right, a little more to the left. A scent of country women, in short skirts. What promises, what demographic hopes, poor darlings, for the eternal spring of the Fatherland, of our beloved Italy! What knees, Madonna! what big knees . . . Stockings—never even dreamed of. Underwear? Hm. The mountain women wore more, to hear the Bull roar in the stands.
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Their plump legs held tight together, like they were hatching an egg, or brooding over a treasure. Or else, the complete opposite: feet on the crossbar of the chair, so that, if one assumed a position of vantage, there were panoramas —you can imagine. What thighs!

A man's gaze plunged the penumbra, then in the shadows: it wound, it climbed among the passes of hope, as an explorer of caves dives and climbs, or a chimney sweep. Not to mention carabinieri! Grumpy, as their duty bound them to be, their eyes never stopped searching. And the eyes that came back to them! Eyes? Furtive arrows! Shots, that make the heart die in the chest, of those standing carabinieri: while at the same time the seamstress spoke to them about Libya: the fourth shore
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: the dates that were ripening, exquisite, and the officers that she had known there and who had "courted" her with success. This remembering courting captains and colonels for the benefit of plain privates was a stratagem of seduction. Her eyes began to sparkle again then, tiny, pointed, black, darting: under the multiple furrowing of her forehead, under the rumpled pergola of her hair, which was gray and hard, like the fur of a mandrill. Considerable saliva lubricated the outburst of her speech, evocative or oracular as it happened to be: the lips, thirsting, fevered like her gums, dry or viscid, which, deprived of the cutting edge of the former ivory, seemed today the entrance, the free antechamber of every amorous magic. Of which, to be sure, the tongue was the chief instrument:

Énkete, pénkete, pùfete iné,

Àbele, fàbele, dommi-né . . .

The devil couldn't resist this summons.

Yes, yes, Zamira had at her disposal a fine supply of niece-apprentices: and reserves, then, scattered along the Via Appia, the Ardeatina, or the Anziate, at this or that milestone, supplementary seamstresses: who, in any unusual situation, clickety-clack, were there to lend a hand: and they lent it: as for example, during the summer maneuvers of the Fourth Bersaglieri Regiment. For the patrols, for the carabinieri, patient upholders of law and order in the infinite summer, such organization was not required: the roster of the immediate employees and nieces was enough. All of them such, more or less, the nieces, to render those vinous visits sweet, and of the most joyous, the most disturbing, sheltered from the dog-day sun after miles, white miles, for the dusted and sweating bearers of guns. On patrol, after having walked their musket along highway and trails, or the heavy revolver, with all its bullets in it, and a couple of magazines in their cartridge box, the unconquerable servants of duty loved to cool off a moment in that harem of Zamira's, so warmly shadowed and silent: which was for all adepts the vestibule of the happy hypothesis, the sanctum of consultations, of Alban consolations. The moment of gentle anguish was fleeting, ah, what else can a moment be? but the following moment followed it: the integral of the fleeting moments is the hour: the unmatch-able hour, where a precise thought was deviated towards hope and towards anguish, like a flashing shuttle, in the warp of furtive glances, mute dissent or mute consent.

The fact is that the carabinieri used to stop off at her place, la Pacori's, the seamstress's: neither headquarters nor discipline opposed this: and at times, they had recourse to her. Little jobs of mending: when perhaps a button is about to come loose, and its stem must be reinforced. One morning, one of those overgrown boys had taken off his tunic, blushing, to have a tear mended: which he had picked up he couldn't remember from what berry bush or hawthorn. Another time, another youth, his pants: so people said: for a motive not entirely analogous, they went on to add. Zamira sent him down to the cellar to take them off: and after him she sent Clelia, or—according to other reports—Camilla, to take the trousers and bring them up to be mended, in the workshop. The divestment of the royal servant required some time: such a long, sweet time! Whereupon the girls, above, at a certain point began to cough, to snicker, to say ahem, especially Emma, that bold-face: until Zamira lost her patience, became angry and scolded them all, calling them a word that wasn't clearly understood, hissing drool from the hole.

Also the sergeant, Sergeant Fabrizio Santarella, hum, one of the two centaurs of the Alban headquarters, the higher in rank of the two motorcyclists, he, too, had taken the seer-dyer some jerseys to be dyed: big packages. He was heralded from afar, from Torraccio, from the last houses of le Frattocchie, from the Robine Vecchie at other times or from Cassera to Sant'Ignazio, or from the Sanctuary of Divine Love: he approached, scattering shots, he arrived, re-echoing, boom boom boom boom: the motorcycle was stilled at the door. They were women's jerseys, those packages: because Sergeant Santarella, who one day had been dragged to the altar by one woman (and not even a very swollen one), lived with nine: his wife, her old blind mother and her slightly feeble-minded sister, a sister of his own, unmarried and chaste, with all the psychic ornaments which from chastity descend upon sisters: three daughters, not yet of an age where chastity is a problem, and two tenants, twin sisters, once about to lose their chastity, but by now (after congruent skipping town of the hoped-for de-chastizer who, unable to make up his mind, had dropped both of them before turning his hand to ... to the task) now definitively returned to chastity. Having one day decided to rent, because of the times and the opportunity and his pay, a small redundant portion of his penetralia, that which turned its mold towards Auster, he thought naturally of the paper with the widest circulation: and when it was time to nuncupate the offer in the
Messaggero
he hadn't had the heart to assert to the readers "no women," that cruel "halt!" of the landlady of Ingravallo. No, no, no, in his house . . . quite the contrary: women there were: and women there would be.

Of the male element, in his house, there was only himself: not counting the male
bouche
of the Douche, which from time to time resounded in the tympanic chambers, exciting tonic resonances, revitalizing his head no less than that of twelve million other Italians: more so, for his was a sergeant's head, clever as it was. From time to time, like winding an alarm clock. It came out, the dear voice, needless to say, it came from the box of the radio: with which Fabrizio Santarella had provided himself in Milan, when he had gone there on a "special assignment," to follow the trail of two gentlemen, both named Salvatore; and he had come back from Milan, with the two Salvatores, and in addition, with a radio with two valves: prodigious discovery of that prodigious civilization. Another male voice, and of the baritonal persuasion also, was that very rich and extremely sweet one of a gramophone, in the moments when it was playing male: because right afterwards, perhaps, it got the whim of being female. The marvelous gadget was transformed, that is, with the most perfect nonchalance, from masculine to feminine and vice versa: with disturbing alternations of
impasto:
from the Duke of Mantua to Gilda, from Rodolfo to Mimi. For the rest, in the home of Sergeant Santarella, there were women: and women there would be. Malicious-minded men and, even more, women, said that despite the nine women, the eighteen dainty shoes with eighteen women's heels that clicked about in the hours of domestic
loisir .
. . among the . . . domestic walls, in the presence of the domestic
lares,
who were two fine plaster cats over the unlighted fireplace, delivered, poor Toms, of a male from Lucca, they said, oh yes, while the gramophone from Via Zanardelli ladled into his soul for the twenty-third consecutive time the tiny frozen hand, for him and the whole neighborhood, they said, yes they did say, that he had a weakness for some of the niece-apprentices of Zamira, the dyer of I Due Santi. Well, he liked a bit of skirt, Sergeant Santarella did, like all sergeants.

An expert in the art: only logical. At the right moment he knew how to close his eyes. Or open the both of them, on the other hand.

A marvelous mien: his face full, reddish-tanned in cheeks and nose, blue-black where his shaven beard virilized it.

The generous skin of the Italics, in their baked harvests, in July, in the thresher's sun: scorched, to use Carducci's word. A health like a country horse trader. Those stiff mustachios a la Wilhelm II. That heavy pistol on his left hip, weighing six pounds. He made hearts fill with joy at the very sight of him. The girls, on certain moonlight nights, dreamed of the sergeant. Certain seedy bums with all the poverty of the imminent Empire upon them, certain down-at-the-heel bicycle thieves, dopes who lounged around the streets and dives all day long, at night to labor, were overjoyed to allow him to handcuff them, to be "put inside" by him. When he arrived, goddamnit-to-hell, they could draw breath: their anxiety was over, their danger: it was an end to sweating and running, to fiddling around, jumping at the slightest sound, at the suspicion of a gate's distant squeak: breaking locks, your heart in your mouth: there now, all suffering was at an end: they were seized with joy again, in their hearts, poor boys! their faith in the morrow was restored. They were so pleased, just to see him, that they forget their sad obligation, damn the judge: the obligation to escape with their haul, and—what was worse—with their tools, too, and overloaded: after so much labor, to have to take to your heels, too! So it goes. They greeted him with a glance, with a little laugh of understanding, a laugh that means "between us . . .": they made him spontaneous gifts of whole bunches of picklocks, skeleton keys, whole assortments of jimmies. They asked him, respectfully, for his last match: to light, voluptuously, their last butt. Aaaaah! Ah! they said, exhaling, with voluptuousness in their throats, or expelling the smoke through the nose: "Ah well, all right, you know how it is," they said: and they held out their wrists: there was born in them a sudden longing for the chains on their wrists: as the weary, exhausted man wants only his bed. They held out two light-fingered paws: he could do what he pleased with them: dazzled by that darkened face, by those steady, black, piercing eyes: by those red stripes, on his trousers, those silver chevrons on his sleeve: by that white calfskin bandoleer like the banner of authority, inquiring, pursuing, handcuffing: by that V.E. in the silver grenade on his cap: by that paunch, by that ass. Yes, ass. Because he turned, he spun, raged, then again wheeled around, planted that pair of eyes on the face of one and of all, mustache erect, pointed, like two nails, and black: he acted, deliberated, telephoned, click, clickety, click, yelled into the receiver, asked for the reinforcement of the two privates from headquarters, imparted orders: which all obeyed, that's the beauty of it, and in a kind of algolagniac frenzy, of masochist voluptuousness: caught in the magic circle of the V.E., in the gravitational ellipse of that nucleus of energy so happily irradiated into its satellies: and, after them, into all thieves in general. Who longed only for this, as soon as they saw him: to be overwhelmed into the clink by a glance from him. Then, when everything seemed to be over, and when his women were whispering Papapapa-papapa, there again came the explosions of the shuddering Motoguzzi, adding glory to glory, life to life. It set off amid clouds of dust, leaving behind murmuring girls: the brides: the nieces of Zamira, barefoot: fugitive demon of the red-striped legion, exhaled from crumbling castles: where Night, surprised by these hours not his, ah, had forgotten to replace him in his cavern: when she extinguishes, instead, on the ruins of every tower, the two yellow circles of the owl. The belated wing becomes flabby, like a remnant of tenebrous velvet, in its nest of shadows and rock. Tapestries of ivy ward off the day. He, on the contrary, as soon as the sky was pink and gold: from Rocca di Papa to Castel Savelli, down, from Rocca Orsina to Monte Nuncupale, up: for already the hoe or the mad-dock was at work, in vineyard or among the olive trees. Bang, bang bang, off at top speed, reawakened, the motor shaking between his knees. Or he jolted on it with a restrained rumbling in the morning, where the little road penetrates cautiously into the brush: or where, proceeding up the mountain, it is lost to all solid ground, among thorny hawthorn thickets. Or where strawberries and snakes commingle, at Nemi, beneath the brush. He acted, an active agent: he disappeared, reappeared, like a genie summoned by a spell: immobile by the trunk of an ilex, perhaps, he and his Guzzi steed, one foot on the ground: and a little further on, erect, the pole-like private: the haunting presence with red stripes, with bandoleer of white calfskin over the shoulder, with V.E. in the silver grenade on the cap. Ornament, with handcuffs in his cartridge box, of the Alban headquarters: with two chains ready for four wrists and two packs of cheap cigarettes and a dozen shots of reserve, the centaur-arrow of Via Ardeatina and, even more, Via Appia: at a certain milestone on certain days, he overtook Lancias in full tilt, Maria Santissima, and after Her immediately with railroad crossings favorable: he was up with them, there, they let him pass: not yet the red Lancia of Francesco Messina,
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however, who didn't yet fly to Sicily, in those years, to kiss his Mamma. He took
au ralenti
the wicked curve of the Cecchina station: he only turned off the motor and stopped, the situation demanding it, at the station of Santa Palomba or Campoleone: where the Ardeatina and the Anzio road crossed, at the same level, the hurling advent of the Rome-Naples. Terror of hens on guard, the locomotive-leveler arrives with livid flashes on the pantograph and at the springs and joins: and behind it the whole train and the hammering din of the express, repeated, iterated, at every tie, as if to uproot all the points of the switches. And those hens went on clucking, flying up, strangling themselves in their tormented vocalises, showing feathers, and white plumes, in their vortex. What cannot fear do? It even makes geese fly. Or again, halfway through Le Frattocchie, he had to stop: at the Appia crossing, or at Ca' Francesi, at Tor S. Paolo, at the Ciampino station: heedless, at other times, of the peremptory assertions:
Dangerous curve! Railroad crossing! Bumpy road!
or of their symbols, imported from Milan. The Milanese, Luigi Vittorio, had sown Italy with the rare seed of their warning, of their "road signs."
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Their outstanding signalism, one fine day, made, of the old boot, a new signal. To warn the people, to inculcate in the velocipederasts respect for disciplined ways, and, at the same time, for their own necks: to teach one's neighbor how to live in this world: erect iron stakes in all of Italy, hoist on to them "road signs" enameled, through public oblation, that desire made them water at the mouth: taking as pretexts the most innocuous, the most sleepy crossings, every curve, every fork, every bump, or, as they say, every dip. The technical memento of Bertarelli, of Vitori, of Luis,
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in those years: then, on reblanched walls at the entrance to every hamlet, the totalitario-politico signs of the Turd: ("it is the plow that makes the furrow, but it is the sword that defends it ... in a pig's ass"). Sergeant Santarella, Cavaliere Fabrizio, was, was a "great enthusiast" of the Touring Club; as a "life member" he knew its anthem by heart: "The Touring Hymn," born in Valtel-lina to the hypocarduccian-hyposapphic
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Muse of Giovanni Bertacchi: a nobly caesuraed hymn, like the Marseillaise, and like all anthems in general, with a bold impetuousness in the refrain, that
ritornello
so dear to the hearts of all the life-member motorcyclists: