head on the day's sheaf of documents, later told how, at the first bars of this duet, the harassed, intimidated Angeloni promptly and completely lost his bearings. It's a thing that happens to respectable people, to serious gentlemen, or to those who obstinately make a show of being such, in certain situations which are not adapted to them. An incredible anguish seemed to have overwhelmed the Commendatore. It ended with him blowing his nose, red-eyed: he trumpeted like a widow. He insisted he knew nothing, thought nothing, could imagine nothing, concerning that shop assistant. He insisted painfully, against all normal usage, on that term "shop assistant." The more Ingravallo fell back on a folk-loristic tone, between the Tiber and his native Biferno, the more he taunted by saying "grocer's kid" or "delivery boy," the more the other man withdrew like a snail into the pompous shell of high-flown terminology: which, however, was competely out of place, in that atmosphere of generic police distrust, like jellied eels and artichokes in oil. Via Venti Settembre, with its ministries, its clerks, its doormen, must in that implacable hour have seemed to him a paradise more teetering than ever: a distant Olympus, ruled over by a Quirites Commendatore, indeed Grand 'Ufficiale, but alas, hardly likely to succor him. What? Farewell, the magic papers of the sweet bureaucratic inanity? Farewell, the comforting warmth of the Central Administration? The "considerable" increments in the graph of fishing . . . for sardines? The duty exemptions on pickling? The stormy, yet beloved grumbling of the Excise Office, the holy reverberation of the Superior Court? Farewell? Alone, seated on a bench in the station house, with upon him all the hairsplitting of the homicide squad (so he thought) which made his eyes brim. His poor face, the face of a poor man who wants people not to look at him, but with that schnozz in the middle which constantly prompted opinions, unexpressed, from every interlocutor, his face seemed, to Ingravallo, a mute and desperate protest against the inhumanity, the cruelty of all organized investigation.
At times in the past, yes, they had sent some ham to his house. Who? Who, indeed. A difficult question. No, he couldn't put a name to him. He didn't even remember, perhaps, after all this time. He . . . lived alone. He didn't have any regular tradesmen he dealt with. He bought things here and there: today from one, tomorrow from another. From all the shops in Rome, more or less. A little in each, you might say. At random, wherever he happened to be. When he noticed a bargain, or saw they had good things. Perhaps only some little pastry, often. Just to satisfy a whim ... A bit of marinated herring, perhaps, or a spot of galantine. But more than anything, he blew his nose, some cans of tomato sauce to have a little stock at home. It's convenient to have some on hand. And the things were delivered, of course, by the assistants in the shops . . .
He shrugged, his eyebrows relaxed, as if to say: What could be more obvious?
"You once told the concierge" (Don Ciccio yawned) "that you had bought some nice lean ham in Via Panisperna . . ."
"Ah, yes, now that you remind me of it, I remember it too, once ... I bought a whole ham, a little one, a mountain ham, just a few pounds." The small weight of the ham apparently seemed to him a singular attenuating circumstance. "And, yes indeed, I had it sent to me at home. From the grocer in Via Panisperna, yes, the one at the very end, almost at the corner of Via dei Serpenti... He comes from Bologna."
The poor victim of the interrogation was now gasping. Gaudenzio was dispatched to Via Panisperna.
*** *** ***
At a quarter to six, a second round of questioning. Signora Manuela reappeared, with la Menegazzi, summoned urgently, as well as Professoressa Bertola, pale, shivering slightly. The youth that Gaudenzio managed to collect at Via dei Serpenti was introduced, at the right moment. Fairly straightforward, and yet with an appearance not altogether limpid, black hair thoroughly greased