That Awful Mess on the via Merulana - Carlo Emilio Gadda [79]
Once, several times (Don Lorenzo went on to say), without being much aware at that point of the "figure" or "position" of mother that Liliana Balducci intended to assume, she—that is to say, this Virginia—in the house there in Via Merulana, when the husband had escaped to his trains, and when the maid was out, she had embraced and kissed the signora. "When she got certain whims in her . . . her head." Don Lorenzo managed to recover himself: with the steady voice of charity he reported: she, at those moments, well, it had to be one of two things: either she was out of her mind, or else she felt she had to play-act like that. What was certain was that she used to embrace and kiss the mistress of the house.
"Mistress?" interrupted Doctor Fumi, narrowing his brows.
"Mistress, stepmother—it's all the same." She kissed her, the way a panther might give a kiss: "Oh Signora Liliana, darling, you're like the Madonna for me!" then, in a low low voice, in an even more stifled tone of ardor: "I love you, love you, love you; one of these days I'm going to just eat you up": and she grasped her wrist, and twisted it, staring at her: she twisted it like a vise, mouth to mouth, till each could breathe the other's breath, tit to tit. Don Corpi rectified, naturally enough: "I mean, moving close to her with her face and bosom." But both Ingravallo and Doctor Fumi had understood the first time.
One day, in an access of filial love, she really did bite her ear: and that time Liliana took fright. Madonna! How it hurt! She ran all the way to the Quattro Santi, at full tilt. Pale, breathless, she had displayed the part known as the lobule, still dotted by the little circle ... of those teeth! My God! All in fun . . . but nasty fun, just the same. If fun is the word for it.
Then they had tried to drag her into the church, "to make her say some prayers, as many prayers as she could. Prayer, you might say, is the ticket to Paradise: or to Purgatory, at least. If you're carrying a heavy suitcase, you don't get past the Customs in Paradise . . . not the first time. But her pray? Not on your life! She hummed them under your nose, till you wanted to slap her, like a song, those Roman songs they sing with the guitar . . . sad ones, between nose and throat: or else shaking her head all the time, with her eyes on the tips of her shoes, avemaria avemaria, la-la-la-la gratiaplena gratiaplena, as if to mock the whole lot of us, the Madonna included. The Madonna! Now really! A singsong that would have put a baby to sleep. Shameless! Because if there's somebody who can help us out in this world, it's the Madonna, and her alone: because the good Lord . . . it looks to me like we do our best to give him a pain in the . . . the heart . . ." Don Corpi recovered himself: a second time.
Or maybe she wore her veil, but with her head in the air, at the high mass, in a kind of happy asthenia or bored echolalia: she became distracted, with the mother-of-pearl rosary that Liliana had given her: she held the book upside down, so she couldn't read it, even if she had been able to understand any of it. The feast of Corpus Domini.. . would you believe it? . . . she had the nerve to ape the canons of San Giovanni, as they chanted their office? with a man's voice? which only the devil could have lent her, at that moment. Even the saints from their thrones seemed to protest, all of them, painted though they were, because she had really made them lose all patience. He had looked her in the face, stopping his chant . . . sitting at the right of Monsignor Velani. Then, after Mass, he had told her a thing or two, on the spot, under the portico, when they came to say hello to him, her and Liliana! But her only act of contrition was to shrug her shoulders, that animal: "till you wanted to give her a