That Awful Mess on the via Merulana - Carlo Emilio Gadda [25]
"Is this your boy?" Don Ciccio asked the Professoressa.
"What!" she said, with a start, indignant over that "your." Don Ciccio turned to the concierge: "You recognize him? Is he the one this morning?"
"No, it's not him. The one this morning ... I didn't see his face—how many times do I have to tell you? But he was just a kid, compared to this one."
Don Ciccio then addressed Commendatore Angeloni: "Is he the one who brought you the ham?"
"Yes, sir."
"What about you?" he said to the boy. "What have you got to say?"
"Me?" the youth shrugged, looking at the others, face by face. "What should I know? What do you want with me, anyway?" Don Ciccio frowned hard. "Mind your manners, young fellow. You have been invited to appear, in accordance with the law . . ." he was almost chanting: "Article 229 of the Procedural Code. Do you admit knowing the Commendatore, here present?" and, with his chin, he indicated Angeloni.
"He came to the store last year a few times: after that, he never turned up any more. Once I delivered a ham to his house, all the way up to his door, on Via Merulana. It was raining hard. I got soaked."
"Were you there only once, or several times? Do you know the house?"
"Me? ... the house? I went there maybe two or three times, when there was something to deliver." The answer was prompt, and at the same time, embarrassed. A certain anxiety to get it over with.
"And you, Commendatore?"
"I can confirm this young man's statement. He came two or three times, in fact." He was making an effort, that was clear; he wanted to seem more tranquil. "I even gave him a tip . . ."
"Aha! You gave him a tip," Don Ciccio smoothed his forehead: he seemed to congratulate himself on this fact, and yet with an inexplicable irony. He concentrated again. He bent his head over the signed statements. He shuffled them a little. Again he questioned Signora Pettacchioni, nodding towards the boy: "Is this the boy that you told me shouted at you once . . . from the top of the stairs?"
"No, he's not that one, either. I'm sure. That boy could be the same as the one this morning . . . they were both smaller than this one. That one, Officer, had a politer voice, and he was wearing short pants, too, if it wasn't the same one . . .
"This one has short pants, too."
"Officer!... but these are sport pants. That one was more of a kid, I tell you. This one looks ready to go off to the army. And besides, besides, when was it that this one came to Via Merulana? A year ago? The one I mean, it was maybe two or three months, at the most. It was just after All Souls' Day."
Ingravallo drew in his breath, as if he wished to arrive at some conclusion.
"For the moment, you can go." His eyes stopped on the young man. "But don't forget . . . this is no place ... to start acting up . . ." The boy went out, followed by a slow, persistent, official gaze. Collecting his papers and, with them, the threads of the results, Ingravallo began:
"The Signora Pettacchioni, here present, if I've got it right, testifies that she has seen another delivery boy come to your house with hams . . . several times, a younger looking boy, it seems, I mean more resembling the one seen this morning, whom the Professoressa . . ." he pointed . . . "was able to see in the face, and is therefore in a position to identify. Am I right, Signora Bertola?" The latter nodded.
Angeloni breathed again. For a brief moment he assumed a moralist's tone: "Well, Signora Manuela is the concierge, after all. She . . ."
"She what?" said the occupant of the conciergerie, menacingly. Angeloni withdrew into his shell again, like a snail, leaving only his nose exposed, outside the husk of his soul. He meant perhaps that, being the concierge, her mission was in fact that of keeping an eye on the people who passed by.
"What I mean is ..." he became mixed up: he spoke with the slightly nasal tone of a paper trumpet. "Well, I've told you before, Officer. I just buy things where I happen to find them. What