That Awful Mess on the via Merulana - Carlo Emilio Gadda [64]
"But women have their pride, too: a physical one, like I say. You probably know this better than me." Ingravallo was biting back his fury, black as a thunderstorm. "She .. . Liliana . . . when I talked with her sometimes, all alone, the way cousins do . . . you know, I could see . . . she lived on that dream of hers, you might say: that with another man . . . Another man! A tall order! with all that religion of hers! So ... in that fantasy, she ... in her guts . . . she thought ... it seemed to her that . . . the other, that other man, could have been me . . ."
"Ah," said Don Ciccio, "my warmest congratulations!" A horrible grimace, his face like tar.
"Don't laugh, Doctor," the suspect cried, pompously, his youthful pallor all gleaming in the "special" hundred-watt light. "No, don't laugh. Time and again Liliana talked to me about it! She told me always that she had loved Remo . . . sincerely; I mean, she was kind of a goose about it, I'd say, poor thing." Ingravallo, in his heart, couldn't help conceding this: "an only daughter! without a mother! with no experience . . ." She had loved him "from the first day she saw him," naturally. "She loved him still, she respected him, poor Lilianuccia!": the voice hesitated, then got going again: "For nothing in the world, religion aside, would she have thought of betraying him. But when she saw the years passing in that way, the best years of her life, without even the hope for . . . for the fruit of that love ... it was, for her, it was like a tormenting disappointment. She felt humiliated, the way they all feel when the baby doesn't come off: more than sadness, it's a kind of spite, to think that other women are triumphant, and they aren't. The most bitter of all of life's disappointments. So, for her, the world was nothing but weariness: nothing but tears. Tears that gave her no comfort. Weeping and weariness. A swamp. Enough to drive her mad."
"Let's skip the weariness, Doctor Valdarena . . . What about the chain, and the diamond? Let's get down to facts. It looks to me like we're wasting time here. We can do without these flights . . . these flights of fancy": he made a gesture as if dismissing some winged creature, urging the falcon up into the blue. "Let's talk a little about this anchor chain": and, taking it by one end, he swung it under his nose, looking him steadily in the eyes, blackly, "about this little gadget," and he weighed it in his other hand, "this tiny little thing." He seemed, at most, curious, wanting to observe minutely: like an ape into whose hand someone has dropped a toy whistle. Curly and black, that pitchy head, bent thus over the fingers and the metal that makes every mouth water, seemed to emanate tenebrous preconceived notions; and the procedural brightness of the room, as soon as the notions appeared, apparently forced them to curl up in that way, to become permanent, like a shiny, carbon fleece, on the skull: "We have read the will of the Signora Liliana, rest her soul, poor woman, and she left these to you," and he set down the chain, picking up the ring from the table and beginning to weigh it in the palm of his hand, "because old grandfather Romilio, Signor Balducci says— was that his name? Romilio? Have I got it right? Ah, Rutilio? Grandfather Rutilio wanted it to go to his grandchildren, to his own flesh and blood ... all in the family, I understand, I understand, and therefore to you, their pride and joy. But how come we found the stuff in your room? And how did the opal turn into an onyx? a what? .. . Yes, I meant to say ... a jasper?"
Giuliano raised his right hand, which appeared white, vivid, faintly traced with blue, the flexible veins of adolescence: he showed, on his ring finger, the magnificent jasper which prison hadn't taken from him: the one Ingravallo remembered seeing on his finger at the Balduccis', after dinner on the 20th of February, as they were taking their coffee. "She wanted it to