That Awful Mess on the via Merulana - Carlo Emilio Gadda [129]
"Yes, I see that you've got that flag in your hand: but . . . are you the signal-man? Is that what you're trying to make me believe?"
"No, my uncle had to go down to Ciampino, to the office. He's the chief here. But when he has to go someplace, then I stay here for him."
Chief, in her lexicon, meant signal-man.
"Let me have a look at the other rings, if there are any: at your corals: all the jewelry you have: your Sunday earrings."
"Jewelry? I don't have any corals, not even earrings. What do you think? Poor as we are, hungry all the year round?"
"Your uncle is a government employee: you work as a seamstress, when you work. Let's not waste any time. Show me what you have. If the stuff is yours, nobody's going to touch it. And if it isn't, I have a search warrant. And if we start searching and then something funny turns up . . . Seek and ye shall find: and if you find, you have to report to the superiors. I hope I'm making myself clear. I don't know if you know the regulations . . ."
"What regulations? I don't know what you mean . . ."
"The re-gu-la-tions," he shouted, "the law! what the law says!"
"Sorry, Corporal, I don't follow you."
"There's a law, right? And a list of regulations, where it tells us what to do, how we're supposed to proceed. We . . . have to obey the regulations. So watch out. Don't force me to search the house," which was, really, no more than a cabin, "or the room where you keep the stuff . . . your things. It would be an aggravating circumstance for you: Article 788": (788 my ass: he invented it on the spot): "the article is clear as a bell." The girl peered at him, now that she was a little more self-confident in answering, her big tan eyes set in the pork fat of her eyelids, with the miserly hesitation of the peasant who demurs at opening her mouth, between fear and suspicion. The old woman had acted as if she had things to do in the garden: and had gone down there with a little hoe which was heard intermittently striking the ground. The dog, its snarling passed, still stared fiercely, with that zeal peculiar to the stupid.
"If we have to do the searching," Pestalozzi added again, "it'll be worse for you. I told you. Seek and ye shall find. You understand me?" The squat girl, as if the corporal had pointed a pistol in her face, shook herself and turned, walked away like a somnambulist, went into the house—or cabin, as may be. The two men followed her. From that telephone booth-cum-kitchen which was the ground-floor room, they went up, on steps of gray peperino, to the floor above, into a smaller room, irregular, as required by the stair well. It was occupied by three beds, and ill-furnished for the rest. Pestalozzi and Cocullo, after the girl, could barely squeeze into it. A smell of clothing, if you call clothing the lipoids, the amino acids, the urea, the sweat, in short, in which the clothing of the poor is steeped: a window with a grille and mosquito net: no furniture, beyond the three beds, which seemed three pallets for dogs, and a minimal little cupboard with a scalene fragment on it, of a mirror long since broken forever. On the wall, over one of the little beds, with a little olive branch with shriveled leaves, in its dark frame, a two-lira oleograph, yellowed at the edges, which Pestalozzi recognized on the spot. It was the Madonna del Divino Amore, over the postern of Castel di Leva, who had appeared to the tormented man lost in the night, pursued by ferocious, barking dogs who were about to claw and tear him apart,