the men, those men, blackmailed her with their gaze alone, afire, broken at intervals by signals and flashes, not pertinent to the case, of a repugnant greed. Those men, from her, wanted to hear, to know. Behind them was Justice: a machine! A torment, that's what Justice was. Hunger was better: and going on the street, and feeling the rain drizzling in your hair: better to go and sleep on a bench by the river, in Prati. They wanted to know. Well? What sort of dealings did this Diomede traffic in? She shut up. And they: come on, come on, talk, spill it. They weren't asking her to do any harm to anyone, after all: only to tell the truth, they begged her. Some truth! Putting people in jail for it. People . . . who have to shift for themselves: they have to live the best they can. Talk, spill. And be quick about it. No harm, after all. And, in the contrary case, bad papers for her. They needed him for the law, because a big crime had been committed, in all the papers it was. They showed her some of them. Rubbish. She waved the newsprint under her nose, slapping a hand on it as if to say: there you are. (She drew her head back.) For the law: "not to hurt you or anybody else," Grabber added calmly, persuasive, with a deep voice that came right straight from his heart. He was one of the Brothers of Happy Death, Grabber was, the ones who wear hoods over their heads and accompany the deceased : when it came to consoling widows there was nobody like him on the force. "Diomede," the girl said to herself, "is bound to be innocent. Giving a girl a slap or two, the coward, doesn't mean he cuts women up with a knife." She was reserved. She hesitated. "With these cops, a girl never knows." Maybe it was better to satisfy them, she thought. Better for Diomede, and better for herself, too. That would be an end of it, at least! They'd quit their nagging. Pompeo would take her back to the dormitory. She'd throw herself on the planks; hard as they were, she could still fall asleep there. Maybe even those four-legged relatives would fall asleep too, poor babies! She was dead tired: her head swam: worn out.
"What did Diomede do?" she started. "What were those women he had hanging around him? What sort of women were they?"
She, between humiliation and the fury of the great jealousy she suffered, her face still plunged into her elbow, her hair falling lankly even beyond the elbow, hiding her whole forehead . . . ended by saying, sure, he was capable of going even with old bags, as long as they . . .
"As they—?"
Well, of course, yes, no: she didn't want to insult herself, since she also went with him. It was ... it was for his own interest. Because he had been out of a job for two months: and he couldn't find work: another job, a little better, to keep going.
"So what does he do?" asked Doctor Fumi, mildly. "What would his job be, if he wasn't out of work?" The great eyes of the inquisitor widened, a little yellowish at the corners, they rested sadly on that tangle of hair, which streamed, like a fountain, from the girl's elbow. "Electrician!" she sobbed, without raising her head entirely, only extracting it slightly from that defense of arm and elbow, and allowing its voice to escape. Now, with softened tears, she was dampening the sleeve, where there reappeared a hole, at the point of the bone, and the rip of the blouse and jersey and the white of the skin, at the shoulder. "And now he has an English woman," she stated, resuming her sobs, in that bath, with bathed words: "an ugly American, he has, but what do I know about it? She isn't old, though, not this one, but with hair like straw!" She wiped her nose on her cuff. "She has money, that's what she has": and again she burst into sobs.
"And who is she? Do you know who she is? Where does she live? Can you tell us? Speak up. This American, this English woman . . ."
"What do you think? Who do you think I am? She's probably there, in one of those swell hotels, where rich people stay . . ."
"There? Where?"
"There, in the fancy part of town, Via Boncompagni, Via Veneto. How should I know? I