That Awful Mess on the via Merulana - Carlo Emilio Gadda [34]
"What women were they?" Ingravallo asked, absently. "Show me your hands!" he said to Doctor Valdarena. "Come over to the light." The young man's hands seemed perfectly clean: a white skin, healthy, warm, faintly veined: suffused with the warmth of youth: a signet ring of yellow gold, with a stupendous jasper, and in the jasper an initial: on the right ring-finger, it stood out, solid, imposing, ready to seal a letter, one would have said, a secret avowal. But the right cuff of his shirt . . . bloodstained! in the corner: from the gold of the cuff link to the cuff's edge.
"This blood here?" Ingravallo said, his mouth twisting with revulsion, still clasping that hand by the fingertips. Giuliano Valdarena blanched: "Doctor Ingravallo, believe me! I confess: I did touch poor Liliana's face. I bent over her: then I knelt on one knee. I wanted to caress her. She was cold! ... Yes, it was to say good-bye to her! I couldn't help myself. I wanted to pull down that skirt of hers, my poor cousin! in that awful condition! But then I didn't have the courage ... to touch her a second time. She was cold. No, no. And then . . ."
"Then—what?"
"Then I thought, I realized I didn't have the right to touch anything. I ran outside. I called. I rang the bell opposite. Who is it? Who is it? they said. It was a woman's voice. But they wouldn't open."
"They were right. Then what?"
"Then ... I yelled again. Some other people came down ... or came up. People came, that's all I know. They wanted to see for themselves, too. They started to scream. We called the police. What else should I have done?"
Don Ciccio stared at him, hard, and let go of the hand. His grimace of revulsion persisted, a slight contraction of the nose, of a single nostril. He reflected for a moment, still looking the man in the face. "How come you're so calm?"
"Calm? I can't cry. For years I haven't had any reason to. Not even when my mother ... she married a second time and went to live in Turin. The tip of my cuff must have grazed the wound, her neck: I guess it had to . . . with all that blood! I have to leave day after tomorrow; I've already been given my instructions. I felt like I was leaving home, my own family. I wanted to see her and say good-bye, poor, poor Liliana. Poor ... so splendid and unhappy, she was!" The others remained silent. Don Ciccio scrutinized him, sternly. "A caress! My God! I didn't have the strength to kiss her: she was so cold! Then I went out; I almost ran away. I was afraid of death, believe me. I called for help. The door was open, like a ghost had disappeared through it. Liliana! Lilianuccia!"
Ingravallo bent down and looked at the other man's trousers, at the thigh, the knees: on the left knee, a slight trace of dust.
"Where did you kneel down? With which knee?"
"Ah ... by the buffet, the little one. Let me think now. With the left knee. Yes. To keep from kneeling in all that blood.
Don Ciccio glared at him, doggedly.
"See here, Doctor Valdarena, you've got to tell me everything the way it really was. Trying to use your imagination ... at a time like this ... in this place . . . you can figure it out for yourself, can't you? ... it would be a bad mistake."
"Why, what do you mean? I'm telling you just what happened. Try to understand me."
"What's supposed to make me believe you, eh? Let's hear it. I'm all ears. You're the one who has to give us a trail to follow, in our investigation here. For your own good."
They reported to Ingravallo that Gina, the ward, had come back from the Sacred Heart at that very moment. On Thursdays school