That Awful Mess on the via Merulana - Carlo Emilio Gadda [123]
"You, Signora, keep still with those fingers!" the Filiorum commanded her indignantly. His cheeks had become red, the red of tomato sauce, whitened to cheese color in the lower portion of his jaws. The objective clarity of ratiocination, in him, got the upper hand of the unreason of the powers of darkness: as if his elementary diploma had been countersigned by Filangieri himself with his own hand, Don Gaetano Filangieri, Prince of Arianello, Minister of the Realm.{63} He wouldn't admit, couldn't tolerate that the "superstition" of past centuries should rise again in magic, in the art of fashioning hunchbacks for one's neighbor, carabiniere as in this case, by that fingering of the witch. There is a uterus in us, always, a reasonable one, which is disturbed by a wink, a hint, a kneading of fingertips with which, despite every new enlightening of the Realm and every diploma on outsized paper, the most enlightened certainties are poisoned.
"Let's go," repeated Corporal Pestalozzi, making up his mind. "I'll leave the machine here," and he turned, "watch out for it: put a chair in front of it, and don't let anybody touch it."
Signora Pacori smiled at him, a little automatic smile, though black in the center: a dry little smile, silly, the kind she was used to dispensing from the counter in gray moments, a habit of her art, of a saleswoman who knows how to look at smokers: she revealed, as usual, the hole: she could do nothing else. Her eyelids closed a moment, as if in foretasted voluptuousness: foretasted out of duty, out of professional obligation. Her little eyes signified, with a moment's flashing, the usual permission: to whom? to what? The malevolence meanwhile, on her forehead, had waxed and polished the two bumps, two strongholds still held by the devil.
"Where is Retalli?" the corporal was saying to the girl. "Corporal, I don't know," she said: her face distraught.
"And your cousin? Where is your cousin? Take me to her. Come on." He seemed seized, really, by the mania to catch somebody, not to go back, empty-handed, to the barracks. A ring—and what a ring!—he had. All right. But now a suspect was needed, an accomplice, male or female, if not the guilty party in person.
"But I . . ." the girl whimpered again, forgetting the umbrella where she had placed it.
"Come on, that's enough. Show me where she is": and he opened the door, inviting her, with the other hand, to make use of both the step and the exit. Lavinia went outside first.
"At the railroad crossing," Zamira then hissed into his ear. But the private also heard her. Still, under her malevolent forehead, the pernicious light of her gaze was not spent. "She's the niece of the signal-keeper: at the crossing. That's where she lives."
"Which crossing?"
"The road to Castel de Leva, to the bridge; then to the left, the crossing at Casal Bruciato": she seemed a deaf-mute, explaining herself with her fingers, with the aphonous movement of her lips. She didn't want Lavinia to hear her, from the road. Farafilio stumbled over the step: "Careful!" she said, maternally: and repeated: "On the road to Divino Amore. Almost to the bridge. Then to the left."
And with that little thrust, with that viaticum, she succeeded in getting off the two comrades, with their four great boots. They would have plenty of dust to swallow! Old Nick had heard the boiling of her prayers, had graciously listened to her reiterated invocations and her pleas.
"Take care of the machine!" the corporal shouted to her again, from outside: as her gaze sharpened in meanness: "at the bridge of Divino Amore!" she shouted, as if to strike again at the rear guard of the vanquished. What fireworks exploded in their wake, what ejaculations, while