In the two preceding days, on top of everything else— Via Merulana isn't the only street in this world — he had twice gone to the main office of the Tranvie dei Castelli: he liked to stretch his legs a little, around eleven, rather than tangle up his soul and his ears with the confused and groping reports of some subordinate. Gaudenzio and Pompeo were occupied elsewhere. "Those who want to go, go; those who don't want to, send. ." The number and the series of the ticket, the hole on the date, the 13th, and the tear at the stop, Torraccio, had happily allowed him to establish the day, hour, car where the ticket was sold; he had also been able to interrogate the conductor who had sold it, summoned to the manager's office with the driver, the morning of Ingravallo's second visit. At Due Santi, Torraccio, Le Frattocchie, last Sunday, in the early afternoon, a number of people had got on: a crowd. It was impossible for the two men to remember everybody: some of them, yes, and they indicated the more easily recognized customers: not without some bickering between driver and conductor, confusing Sunday with the day before or the day after. The conductor, Merlani Alfredo, denied having seen a young man in an overall, blue or gray. "With a cap pulled over his eyes?" No. "With a scarf around his neck? A scarf?" Yes. . that he had… "A kind of scarf or a big muffler of green wool?. ." Yes, yes. "Green like dark grass." He warmed to the question. He had been struck by the fact, as he gave him the ticket, that the scarf was all wrapped around half his face, his customer's: "he had his chin inside," as if it were God knows how cold, the 13th of March, at Torraccio. No, he didn't have a cap. Bareheaded, yes, but with his head bent over, not looking you in the face: a great clump of hair, all rumpled up, and nothing else. He didn't know who he might be. No, maybe he wouldn't even recognize him again. That was all he could say.
It was eleven now. Officer Ingravallo was about to get on the tram, at the corner of Via d'Azeglio. The few cars at the disposal of the police were wandering over the seven hills, or busy in the forums and squares, or on the Pincio or the Gianicolo, idly, or perhaps to amuse those gentlemen of the era of the hejira, the big shots with the fezzes: or they stole a nap at the Collegio Romano, like so many hacks, but always ready to take the brass for a ride: you never know. There were great visits in those very days from the plenipotentiaries of Iraq and chiefs of the General Staff of Venezuela, a coming and going of people plastered with medals: poured out in shoals at Naples, down the gangways of every hoarse-voiced ocean liner.
These were the first explosions, the first tremors in Palazzo Venezia, after a year and a half of novitiate, of the Death's Head in frock coat or in morning clothes: the grim looks were already there, the vomiting stream of words: the period of the black derbies and the dove-colored spats was, you might say, about to come to an end: with those short little toad-arms, and those ten fat fingers that hung at his sides like two clumps of bananas, like a black minstrel's gloves. The glorious national destiny hadn't yet had room to show itself, as it would later, in all its splendor. Margherita,{6} the nymph Egeria now reduced to playing Dido Abandoned, was still launching the Novecento, the neuf-cent, modern art, the nightmare of the Milanese of the time. She attended the vernissages, the launchings, the oils, the watercolors, the sketches, insofar as a gentle Margherita can attend. He had tried on the feluca, five felucas. They fit him to a T. The glinting eyes of the hereditary syphilitic (also syphilitic in his own right), the illiterate day-laborer's jaws, the rachitic acromegalic face already filled the pages of Italia Illustrata: already, once they were confirmed, all the Maria Barbisas of Italy were beginning to fall in love with him, already they began to invulvulate him, Italy's Magdas, Milenas, Filomenas, as soon as they stepped down from the altar: in white veils, crowned with orange blossoms, photographed coming out of the narthex, dreaming of the orgies and the educatory exploits of the swinging cudgel. The ladies, at Maiano or at Cernobbio, were already choking in venereal sobs addressed to the strengthener of Italy. Journalists from Itecaquan went to interview him at Palazzo Chigi,{7} noted his rare opinions, greedily, down in a notebook, in all haste, so as not to miss a single crumb. The opinions of Lantern Jaw crossed the ocean, and at eight in the morning they were already a cabled article, desde Italia, in the prensa of the pioneers, of the far-flung merchants of vermouth. "The fleet has occupied Corfu! That man is the salvation of Italy." The next morning the contradiction: desde la misma Italia. "Tail between legs." And the Magdalenes were at it: producing Sons of the Wolf for the Fatherland. The cars of the police remained "stationed": at the Collegio Romano.
It was eleven o'clock on March 17th, and Officer Ingravallo, in Via d'Azeglio, already had one foot on the tram step and with his right hand he grasped the brass handle, to hoist himself aboard. When Porchettini, all out of breath, overtook him: "Doctor Ingravallo! Doctor Ingravallo!"
"What do you want? What's wrong with you?"
"Listen, Doctor Ingravallo. The Chief sent me," he lowered his voice still further. "In Via Merulana. . something horrible's happened. . early this morning. They called the station, it was ten-thirty. You had just left. Doctor Fumi was looking all over for you. Meanwhile he sent me straight over there, with two men, to have a look. I kinda thought I'd find you there. . Then they sent me to your house to look for you."
"Well, what was it?"
"You mean you don't know already?"
"How should I know? I was just going to take a little ride. ."
"They cut her throat, they. . sorry… I know she's kind of a relative."
"Whose relative?. ." Ingravallo said, frowning, as if to reject any kinship with whomsoever.
"Well, a friend, I guess. ."
"Friend? What friend? Friend of who?" Pressing together, tulip-shape, the five fingers of his right hand, he seesawed that flower in the digito-interrogative hypotyposis customary among the Apulians.
"They found the signora… Signora Balducci. ."
"Signora Balducci?" Ingravallo blanched, gripped Pompeo by the arm. "You're crazy!" and he clutched it tight, until Grabber felt that a vise was crushing him, a machine.
"Sir, it was her cousin found her, Doctor Vallarena. . Valdassena. They called the station right away. He's there too, now, in Via Merulana. I left instructions. He told me he knows you. He says," Pompeo shrugged, "he says he had gone to pay her a visit. To say good-bye to her, because he's leaving for Genoa. Say good-bye, at this time of the morning? I said. And he says he found her lying on the floor, in a pool of blood. Madonna! that's how we found her, too, on the parquet floor in the dining room, lying there, with her skirt all pulled up, in her underwear, you might say. Her head turned away, sorta. . With the throat all sawed up, all cut up one side. You should see that cut, sir!" He clenched his hands, as if imploring, then passed his right hand over his brow. "And the face! I almost fainted! But you'll have to see it for yourself in a little while. What a slice! Not even a butcher could have. . Just horrible: and those eyes! they were staring, wide open, staring at the sideboard. The face all drawn, drawn, and white as a clean sheet. . did she have t.b.?. . she looked like it had been terrible hard work, dying. ."
Ingravallo, pallid, emitted a strange whine, a sigh, or the moan of a wounded man. As if he too felt faint. A wild boar with a bullet in his body.
"Signora Balducci, Liliana. ." he stammered, looking Grabber in the eyes. He took off his hat. On his forehead, at the rim of the crisp black of his hair, a little line of drops: sudden sweat. Like a diadem of terror, of suffering. His face, usually an olive-white, was now floured with anguish. "Come on. Let's go!" He was damp; he looked exhausted.