That Awful Mess on the via Merulana - Carlo Emilio Gadda [70]
As for the ring, he had given it back to the signora after a couple of days, "if I remember rightly, it was when she came back to the shop to look at the jaspers." He was to give the fob to Giuliano in person, who was to come by and collect it, bringing the chain with him: "yes, that one": he recognized it perfectly. "That chain," Liliana had said, "You know? Signor Ceccherelli, you know it well. Remember? The one you estimated at two thousand lire? . . . That's the one I gave away. And grandfather's ring, too, with the diamond, you remember? You estimated it at nine thousand five hundred?" Ingravallo also showed him the ring. "This is the one, no question about it: a diamond of twelve and a half carats, to say the very least. A marvelous fire." He took it, turned it around, looked at it: he held it up against the light: "Time and again grandfather used to say to me: remember, Liliana, this must stay in the family! You know to whom I mean!" The words of her grandfather, a sacred formula almost, for her: that was clear: well, she had repeated it twice, there in the shop: "isn't that so?": in the presence of Gallone, and in the presence of Giuseppe Amaldi: both of whom nodded their confirmation. To Amaldi Liliana herself chose to explain every detail: what the two intertwined letters he had to engrave were to be like, and how she wanted the stone set: jutting out slightly from the oval setting: Ceccherelli, with his little fingernail followed the firm binding of the green stone, mounted as a seal, that is to say, projecting a bit from the setting: and with a little band of gold on the back, to conceal the rough side, and to enclose it.
In addition to the jewelers, who were heard in the morning, it must be said that the Valdarena family and its ramifications, that is to say Giuliano's grandmother, Balducci himself, and the two aunts from Via dei Banchi Vecchi, and Uncle Carlo, Aunt Elvira, and more or less all the kinfolk had been groping around for three days, some in this direction, some in that, seeking the road to salvation, the way to get Giuliano out, out of the mess in which he found himself, poor boy, through no fault or sin of his own. Easier said than done. But after the three clarifying statements of the three jewelers, which were one good thing, there came immediately the even better statement of the head cashier of the bank, the man from the Banco di Santo Spirito. From the master file of her account (the savings account) it turned out that she, Liliana, had withdrawn the ten thousand lire, right on the 23rd of January, two days before making the present, which she had given him on the 25th, at her house, when he had gone to visit the Balduccis and had found her alone. The head cashier, Public Accountant Del Bo, knew Liliana: he had done as she requested, that time: he happened to be at the window, number 8, full of paternal smiles. A few minutes before noon. Yes, yes, he remembered perfectly: at the moment when he was snapping out those ten notes on the glass counter—ten filthy, freckled old blankets, they were, the mangy kind, that have come from the accordionlike wallet of some sheep-trader from Passo Fortuna or from the wine-damp counter of a tavern in the Castelli— she had said to him, with that soft voice of hers and those deep, deep eyes: "Please, Signor Cavalli, see if you can't give me fresh, clean bills, if you have them: you know how I like new ones . . . ," she had called him Cavalli rather than Del Bo. "Like this?" he had said to her, taking away the dirty ones he had in his hand; and he showed her a fresh pack, in the air, against the light, holding it by one corner, letting it dangle from two fingers. "Nice and shiny, look! . . . They just arrived yesterday from the Bank of Italy: the mint has just spat them out. They have a nice odor: sniff. The day before yesterday morning they were still at Piazza Verdi.{23} What? Afraid of germs? You're right ... a handsome lady like yourself."
"No, Signor Cavalli . . . the fact is that I have to make someone a present,"