That Awful Mess on the via Merulana (5 page)

"Devils. I don't know how they do it. The devils! Devils."

"Aw shut up," the young man had said to her in a grim, menacing voice, keeping his eye on her, his face almost touching hers. They looked like a tiger's, now, those eyes: the evil soul had seized its prey: he would have defended it at whatever cost. He sneaked away without any difficulty, like a shadow. "Keep quiet!": the terrible injunction. But instead, as soon as she had seen him go out, she had flung herself at the window, yes, that one, that very one, which looked down on the courtyard, and opening it, had shouted, shouted, the tenants said rather that she had screamed wildly: "Thief! Thief! Help! Stop him!" Then ... She wanted to follow him at once, but she was taken ill, worse even than before. She had fallen, or thrown herself, on "her" bed: there. And she pointed it out.

Two hundred and nineteen, five floors plus the roof and the two stairways, A and B, with some offices on B, on the mezzanine: it was like a railroad station. The stairs, both of them easily climbable, and one darker than the other. Stairway A was a bit quieter than its counterpart: all real respectable on that side,
du cote de chez madame.

From the combined and overlapping reports of the concierge and the other lady tenants more prompt in myth-making, whom Ingravallo questioned outside without writing anything down, and again later in the entrance hall below, behind the building's main door and at the little door, guarded first by the corporal, then by a policeman, one could finally reconstruct the event. And verify another circumstance, a fairly curious one, indeed. The delinquent had been boldly pursued. "Ah!" Ingravallo said. "Yes," too boldly perhaps. It seemed that in pursuing him, or pretending to pursue him, down the steps and into the hall, even before Signor Bottafavi of the fourth floor who had also chased him with a revolver, there had been first of all a young man, "yes, a young man." "No, not a young man, a kid . . ." What do you mean, a kid? He was this tall: he looked like a grocer's helper, with an apron all twisted around his waist, but he had sporty pants on, with heavy, long green stockings. "What! Green?" He had darted out, through the entrance, a little after they heard the two shots, two pistol shots on the stairs. And nobody had seen him afterwards. "Yes, I did! On the sidewalk! I was coming from Santa Maria Maggiore! He ran off . . ." The testimonial passion, striking fire in every soul, kindled an epos. All the women talked at once: a confusion of voices and sights: maids, mistresses, broccoli: enormous broccoli leaves came out of a crammed, swollen shopping bag. Shrill or infantile voices added denials or confirmations. All around, a little white poodle wagged its tail excitedly, and from time to time he barked too: as authoritatively as possible.

Ingravallo felt stifled, crushed by the tales and by their tellers.

After the shouts of the Signora Menegazzi, the two Bot-tafavis above, husband and wife, had come out on the landing in their slippers, also shouting, a lovely connubial soprano-baritone duet: "Thief! Thief!" Now they demanded suitable recognition of their courage, of their presence of mind. Bottafavi, indeed, with a big revolver, which he chose to display to Doctor Ingravallo, then to the others present: the women stepped back a pace: "Well, now don't start shooting at us!": the children craned their necks, lost in admiration. They had, from that moment on, a very high opinion of Signor Butt and Fiver, as they called him. He went on narrating, revolver in hand, but unloaded: barrel in the air. He re-created the events with great precision. At that moment, try as he might, he hadn't managed to fire it. Because the safety was on, a little pin in the seventh hole of the drum. And after so many years of that machine's absolute inactivity, he had forgotten that real revolvers— like his, precisely—had that damn safety! which, when it is down, prevents them from going off. So, at the height of things, the thief had slipped away, full tilt. "But didn't you fire two shots?" Ingravallo asked. "Why, officer, you think I'm some crazy kid? . . . Shooting for the fun of it like that?" "But you tried." "Tried. Tried is one thing. My revolver isn't the same as the kind crooks have . . . The ones that really shoot. This revolver here, officer, is a gentleman's weapon. I ... I was a bonded guard when I was a youngster: and I think I know how to handle a gun better than the next fellow. I . . . I'm in full control of my nerves . . ." The thief had got away. By a hairsbreadth: "But next time he won't make it."

"And what about the boy?" "What boy?" "The grocer's boy," the women said. "Didn't you hear what these ladies said? They've been talking about it for an hour . . ." Ingravallo said. "Well, I don't have much to do with grocers: for things like that . . . that's the wife's department," the man answered self-importantly. Grocer's apprentices, obviously, couldn't compete with his revolver. No, he hadn't seen any boy, grocer's or other tradesmen's, butcher's or baker's.

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?