Read Online That Awful Mess on the via Merulana by Carlo Emilio Gadda - Free Book Online Page A

horizontally and on his chest, as if he were nursing them: the kind of package from de luxe grocers, filled with galatine or pate and tied with a little blue cord. And sometimes, for that matter, they also delivered them to his house, at two hundred and nineteen, at the very top; they "handed" them to him, as the Florentines would say. (Little artichokes in oil. Tunnied veal.)
    "Signor Filippo here," Signora Manuela repeated. "Well, sometimes you've had one come, a boy with packages, and a white apron. I've never looked him in the face, so I couldn't come right out and describe him. But now that I think of it, the one this morning could have been yours, more or less. One evening, when I ran after him, he yelled down the stairs that he was going to your house, said he had to deliver some ham."
    All eyes were trained on Commendatore Angeloni. The object of this attention became confused.
    "Me? Grocery boys? . . . What ham?"
    "Why, commendatore dear," Signora Manuela implored, "you wouldn't make me look like a liar, would you, telling me it isn't true in front of the officer here? . . . After all, you live alone . . ."
    "Alone?" Signor Filippo rebutted, as if living alone were a sin.
    "Well, is there anybody up there with you? Not even a cat...
    "What do you mean by saying I'm alone?"
    "I mean that if somebody delivers food to your house, when it rains, or in the evening . . . well, it can happen, can't it? Can't it? . . . Am I right?" Her tone was conciliating, as if she had winked at him to say: what kind of mess are you getting me into, you fathead?
    And apparently, it was a mess. Signor Filippo's embarrassment was obvious: that stammering, that sudden pallor: those glances so filled with uncertainty, even with anguish. Interest and suspense gripped them all: all the tenants looked at him agape: at him, at the concierge, at the officer.
    The only sure thing, Ingravallo said to himself, was that the concierge hadn't seen the delivery boy's face this time, either: if he had been a delivery boy. She had seen his heels and also his . . . shall we say his back? That much, yes . . . Professoressa Bertola, now, she had seen his face: it was white, with white lips: but she hadn't seen him the other times. So she had nothing to say either.
    The murderer, too . . . Signora Manuela had to admit finally that she wouldn't be able to recognize him again. No. She had never seen him before. Never. Like a thunderbolt it was!
    And the two revolver shots, in that darkness of the stairs, hah, God only knows where they ended up.
    Officer Ingravallo cut it short. He invited to the police station Signora Manuela Pettacchioni, concierge, and the Signora Teresina Menegazzi nee Zabala, where clerks could type up and the ladies could sign further, if there were further, statements: the second of the above-named, in particular, had to make an official charge. The damages were rather great: the case was serious enough. It was a question of aggravated burglary, and for a value, if not a sum, fairly impressive in its total: about thirty thousand lire, more or less, between the gold things and the jewels (a strand of pearls, a large topaz, among others); and roughly four thousand seven hundred in cash, in the old wallet. "The wallet of my poor Egidio," la Menegazzi sobbed, on hearing herself summoned.
    Commendatore Angeloni was asked, with all proper respect, to remain at the police's disposal, for further clarifications. Another nice euphemism. "Remain at disposal," meant, in effect, accompanying Don Ciccio on the various seesaw of trams and buses as far as the Santo Stefano del Cacco Station. In addition Signor Filippo had to skip his lunch.
    "I'm afraid I couldn't, thank you," he said sadly to Pompeo, who suggested he break his nervous waiting with a healthy pair of sandwiches. "I haven't any appetite; this is the wrong moment." "Whatever you say, Commendatore. In any case, when you feel like it, Peppino Er Maccheronaro has a place here in Via del Gesù