The widower sketched out a list of their bonds, as best he could, from memory: his own as well as Liliana's: to facilitate the proof, he said, that when it came to him, they ought to consider him beyond all suspicion, even a momentary cloud. "Me? My own little Liliana? What? You're kidding?" His lips began to tremble, he burst into sobs which made his necktie jerk. When those tears were dried, he began summoning up his memory: with the aid of a little leather notebook, alligator skin it was: the kind real gents carry. He had brought it with him. Their holdings were noted down in it. Liliana kept a safe-deposit box at the bank, at branch number 11 of the Banca Commerciale, which had a safe-deposit service, a caveau of the most modern kind: at Piazza Vittorio, just opposite the market, under the arcades: right corner of Via Carlo Alberto. But then, there was another one at Corso Umberto, at the Banco di Santo Spirito. "Liliana's father, my poor old father-in-law, was a straight sort of man: a man with a real instinct: he didn't believe there was going to be any revolution, not this time, he said to me, and he said it was no good trusting corporations; first of all. . because they're anonymous; you don't know their name or what they're up to, or where they are. Why, if one day it comes into their heads to say: this dope here, I think I'll screw him, then what can you do? You think you can track them down up there in Milan and say, hey, Signora Societa Anonima, I want my dough back. The hell you say. No, no. Five-year bonds! he used to say. They're safer than gold! he said, because gold is up today and down tomorrow: but bonds… and a bit of consolidated, five per cent maybe, the sort of investment that lets you get your sleep at night. All stuff guaranteed by the government: the Italian government! It's like a granite building, the government, take it from me: there, nobody wants to screw you. What would they get out of it? And this new one, they say wants to do things seriously." Having quoted his father-in-law, at a sad smile from Doctor Fumi, Balducci reserved the right to produce detailed, exact lists. Himself. Liliana.
He furnished "unexceptionable" commercial references and bank references, then various clarifications about his position as a sales representative, in the textiles line, for certain producers up north. The question of cash, one might say, between him and his wife, simply didn't exist. "We never wanted for anything, not me, and not Liliana. Never any trouble, never a worry… no lack of ready cash, never, a loan. . not even from today to tomorrow. Notes?" In their family they didn't even know what the word meant.
"Commercial bills, in my business: yes. . you can't do business without them."
How was it, with all their means, that they lived there, among those wormy shopkeepers, retired merchants, com-mendatores making fifteen hundred a month?
"Well, the idea of having to move… laziness. My father-in-law had bought the apartment, and had even lived there with Liliana before she was married. I met her there": and once again the poor man couldn't keep back his tears. His heavy voice shook: "we got married there! Me and Lilianuc-cia!" Doctor Fumi felt tears rising in his throat, too: like a level of water, rising in a well. Liliana's father, it was. He had a sharp eye, for a deal! "You know how it is, doctor…" They had already known each other for a few years: business affairs. And then… She, only child, her mother dead: a beauty! Ah, those were the days!
They had become engaged, they had been married in that house. Then, once they were husband and wife. . They were in love, they were company for each other. Their tastes were modest. They kept to themselves. "I didn't feel like working to work for the other fellow, that was it. One of these days we all have to die, and we had no kids. Like life was trying to spite us! And then… the armistice after the war! And besides, by then we were all settled down, we were used to the place. There's central heating, even if it doesn't heat all that well, but still! It was good enough for us. There was a modern bath… A few broken dishes, a few odd chairs. But who doesn't have them? Liliana didn't like having people around her too much. With that obsession of hers, to adopt a girl.. and that poor little animal, Lulu, who didn't want to move for anything! Her, too! What's happened to her now, poor animal? A bad sign!"
The war! All their worries about getting out of the draft! All the documents! A job! And yet, he had made it. Well, not exactly exempted, but more or less. A leather belt, a big revolver: "I was scary to look at": he shook his head.
"So I stayed in Via Merulana. . Seventeen, after two years of being engaged, I said to myself, it looks to me like they're not going to stop this so soon. So to hell with it. If we're going to do it, let's go ahead. You probably remember what the apartment situation was then: with all those refugees! There was plenty of room at my father-in-law's: you couldn't find a thing anywhere else. So I moved in. . with my father-in-law. There was nothing else to do. That house — it was like it was ours, I mean mine and Liliana's."
"It was your… er.. nest, I understand."
"You understand: being able to loaf around in your shirtsleeves whenever you felt like it." You long for a little peace and quiet, after work, after the trains, to do as you please: and not have to get involved with all your neighbors' messes.
And that melancholy of Liliana's. That kind of obsession. And then, with the Santi Quattro practically next door. "Why, Liliana, she'd never have let me take her away from Santi Quattro!"
So everything had sort of conspired to keep them where they were, in that awful building at number two hundred and nineteen. Now he regretted it. . Anybody else, in their position, would have looked for something better. Now he understood: too late! A nice little place in Prati,{20} a little villa overlooking the Tiber… He sighed.
"And… the rest of it?"
"The rest. . Ah, well, a man's only human. When you travel all the time… A little something extra here and there, of course. ." Doctor Fumi was looking at him. But in that direction… a moment of hesitation: a certain increase, however slight, in the natural ruddiness of the face.
*** *** ***
Giuliano Valdarena had undergone three bouts of questioning in a single day, not counting the first one on Thursday, at the scene of the crime, in the presence, so to speak, of the victim's witnessing body. Three officials were following the course of things, three "bloodhounds"; including Don Ciccio, the most hounding of all. Then Fumi and Corporal Di Pietrantonio, or Sergeant, as may be. Precious hours and days: ideas, conjectures, hypotheses: which never came to anything. Valdarena and Balducci, cousin and husband, were brought face to face: the morning of the 19th, which was a Saturday: Balducci had gone to stay at the Hotel d'Azeglio. Grave, serious, the husband; more upset and anguished, Valdarena, more nervous. They looked at each other squarely, spoke to each other: they seemed to be meeting after years of separation, brought closer together in grief: each seeking in the other's face the horrible motive of the evil, not however attributing it to each other. Ingravallo and Doctor Fumi never took their eyes off the pair. No sign of animosity. Giuliano, restless at times: as if at recurrent gusts of fear. Their statements showed up no contradiction. They added little, virtually nothing, to what had already been recorded.