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By Root 1373 0

every fork, every bump, or, as they say, every dip. The technical memento of Bertarelli, of Vitori, of Luis,{38} in those years: then, on reblanched walls at the entrance to every hamlet, the totalitario-politico signs of the Turd: ("it is the plow that makes the furrow, but it is the sword that defends it ... in a pig's ass"). Sergeant Santarella, Cavaliere Fabrizio, was, was a "great enthusiast" of the Touring Club; as a "life member" he knew its anthem by heart: "The Touring Hymn," born in Valtel-lina to the hypocarduccian-hyposapphic{39} Muse of Giovanni Bertacchi: a nobly caesuraed hymn, like the Marseillaise, and like all anthems in general, with a bold impetuousness in the refrain, that ritornello so dear to the hearts of all the life-member motorcyclists:

Forward! And on we go!

Which eliminates, as one can see, any possibility of going into reverse.

Santarella, setting to a hypothetic melos that life-enhancing meter, went along humming it and savoring in spirit—as one might gnaw on a toothpick after dinner— in its fugitive pregnancy, along the rumbling and the rush of the succeeding miles: from the dusty trapeze of the road. Then, near Ciampino or La Palomba, he raised his eyes: up and up: white caravans of clouds, crossing the sky in mid-March, pursued by no royal representative: but they too, had somebody who saw to hooking them: and this was the silvered peaks of the antennae, like the teeth of a currycomb biting into cotton into the fleece of the fleeting, the snowy flock was ripped by a perpetual deformability, then was gathered in an unreachable alternation of presages, with the wind high, cold shreds of blue.

VII

"Ines Cionini ..."

"Yes, Chief?" Paolillo asked.

"To be kept at our disposal! . . ." Poor girl, she was to await the dawn on the flat board of the night tank, wrapped in a tan army blanket under the Sign of the Louse: in the company of other Nereids fished from the ocean by the patrol, wrapped in similar double vicuna, and similarly involved with the relations of the Same, and from time to time sighing or even eloquent in their sleep: and in the presence of a pan mute, uncovered, in a corner: known as the "Commendatore": an authoritative sort, in fact, the Lord Treasurer of excrements. It brought the spirit back to certain Roman abundance and looseness of living and acting, to a certain pre-forty-eight (or pre-forty-nineish){40} and quite Gregorian{41} "loisir de sieger."

Poor girl: when, however, that order was given, well, Sor Paolillo came for her again at ten.

As to Pestalozzi, at a certain point he had asked Doctor Fumi leave to go, begging him for time to take a bit of refreshment, after the long and not perfect day's work: an idea Fumi also found excellent. Having plunged down from the most salubrious hills, the super-sergeant centaur had interpreted the desire of one and all. They agreed to meet at quarter-past nine, or half-past. Before going off again, logically, Pestalozzi wanted to agree on the sequel: the conclusion of what had already been accomplished. In a shuffling along the halls and stairs, the assembly broke up.

In the meanwhile, having gone to Palazzo Simonetti in Via Lanza, Ingravallo ripened what the Deuce on his throne in the Palazzo del Mappamondo would have called "the instructions to be imparted . . ." to the inferior levels of the hierarchy: that is to say, to the earthenware vessels, one below the next, which drank in gulping, the cascades of his truculent foolishness: each from the behind of the other. It was late. Drizzling. Everything was still topsyturvy in the night. Don Ciccio ladled into his mouth the lean broth, but not really so lean, emphasizing in a brothy trail the poverty of the proteins and the peptonic ingredients: then, fed up, he chewed and gulped down a few morsels for better or worse, without a word, his big head over the plate of that stew of rubber gristle, poor Don Ciccio! the amorous target of an occasional "But what's on your mind this evening, Doctor?" from his unequaled landlady, all anxieties, all concern: who wouldn't stop spinning