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By Root 1461 0

without too much splashing, however. She, beneath her orange-blossom crown, within her veil, had bowed her head. So let him give back, back what was wrongly taken, this fool of a hunter, this traveler in textiles. How had he used her beauty? Or how wasted it? such gentle beauty? and the cash? the grand old cash, equally beautiful? Where had he stashed it away, the loot? Those gold pieces with the Gentleman King's ugly face on them? Those nicely round, bright yellow pieces of the days before this Puppet in Palazzo Chigi, yelling from his balcony like an old-clothes man. She had forty-four of them, Liliana had, forty-four gold marengos: which went clink-clank in a little bag of pink silk, a bag her grandmother had sent wedding sweets in.{14} And they weighed more than a pair of kidneys at Christmas. "And now where have they gone to?" the kinfolk thought. "What does he know about them, our hunter friend here?" Manet sub Jove frigido. To what marriage indeed has he reserved his wife, his bride's carnal and dowrial validity? What has he made of that tender flesh, this apoplectic salesman? and with that nice nest egg? which was so much a part of it? Yes, the tidy bundle! left her by a stubborn rumination of time, of the economic virtues of the lending clan? Thus, as she had inherited that tepid flesh from the accumulated vehemence of generations, after many a hard morning. Liliana's relatives seemed to be saying: "Oh! gentle bride, stuffed with nice cash! treasure of the years! Unexpected accrediting of the equinox! Let him cough up, that is to say, spit back, this hick of a commercial traveler! Let him not dare accuse Giuliano, splendid offshoot of the old stock, only because he has to face comparison with him now." Their minds, the minds of those two old bags Aunt Marietta and Aunt Elvira, pursued their private whims: "Giuliano, flower of the Valdarena clan! Replete with fertile days! Bud of life!"

There exists a dramatic region of every rancor, from the spleen and from the gall bladder inside the gnawing liver, to the very penumbras behind the household furniture where the lares officiate: the gods that see and remain silent, breathing in the dead odor of naphthalene in cupboards. But at the first appearance of the blade, they had trembled, unable to cry out: and in the room's opaque volumes, now, they were shocked and weeping, with the nerves of martyrs. Well, it was there, between the legs of the corporal and the locksmiths, when Manuela's globes had been shoved aside, that all those envenomed phantoms wandered. Erect and hard, the aunts awaited justice: Oreste didn't know himself how to behave.

Valdarena, at the Collegio Romano, had been subjected to repeated questioning: the alibis he had produced (office, clerks in the office) were watertight up until nine twenty, but not after that. He said he had been out, downtown. Out where? With whom? Clients? Women? Tobacconist? Two or three times he blushed, as if at a lie. He had even trotted out his barber, but then had immediately retracted this affirmation: no, he had had his hair cut the day before. Actually none of the tenants had seen him, at that earlier hour. Only at ten thirty-five, when he had called for help. The Felicetti kid: brought before him, face to face, denied having seen him on the stairs: the one who went to say good morning to the Bottafavis, who had met the cheese-bearers: "n . . o . . ." she said, with great tugging at her lips, so that she could hardly blurt out: "he ... wasn't... there..." After which she went mute: and pressed by new and repeated questions, then by exhortation of every kind, she hung her head, in tears. She almost said yes, but she couldn't quite make up her mind: she wouldn't open her mouth. Finally, as big drops ran down her cheeks, it seemed to everybody that she wanted to shake her head: no. Her Mamma, kneeling beside her, face to face, patted her on the head, from which statements issue; she whispered in one ear, kissing her: "Tell the nice man, dear, tell the truth. Tell me, yes, now didn't you see this gentleman here, on the