All these novelties instead of the ash-blue opal that Balducci had seen there other times: a stone with two faces, recto and verso, and also very good-looking, he explained to Ingravallo, but… A sublunar stone, an elegiac stone, with soft, suffused milkiness as in a Nordic sky (nuits de Saint Petersbourg) or perhaps of silica paste, set and frozen slowly in the cold light, in the twilight dawn of the 60th parallel. On one side was carved the monogram R.V., Rutilio Valdarena: the other side was smooth. The name of the grandfather, the archetype of all the Valdarenas: who, as a kid, had been blond: a reddish blond, they used to say. When the grandfather died, the chain (with the fob) had gone to Uncle Peppe, on whose waistcoat of black velvet with yellow dots it had hung for a few months, on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation. Her grandfather had meant it to go to Liliana, of course: to little Liliana: from her Grandad Rutilio: who, however, had temporarily left it to Uncle Peppe, in a kind of equitable trusteeship. And, when it came to Uncle Peppe the opal fob with the benign and beneficent warmth of all fobs and charms and coral horns, but with the sinister cancer-promoting aptitudes which ab aeterno had dwelt in the noble and melancholy frigidity of that gem. Seven and a half months after the grandfather's death, the uncle had not been able to evade his obligation, so nicely opaline, to transfer to Liliana the ownership of the gold chain, in accordance with the paternal wilclass="underline" with that toy attached to it. Because it was then, Balducci declared grimly, that the uncle had become unforgettable.
"Poor, dear Uncle Peppe!" the survivors wept. Balducci could see his features again in the remembering mirror of his heart, as husband of the niece. Allocated there, in his big chair, amid a souffle of cushions, surrounded by his relations who hung from his lips; two fine, gray walrus-mustachios, and two large, yellow horse-teeth orchestrated his sad smile, the good yellowing smile of the "gentleman of the old school," former, distinguished client of the Baths of Chianciano. While in that posture so abandoned to the opinions of Doctor Beccari, and with that slightly Mongoloid tinge in his mustache and his cheeks, he celebrated within his immediate family the great virtues of the same and all the Valdarena clan in general, the bluish fob of the Lord's day used to rest on his black waistcoat on an axis with his liver and duodenum. Titillated by the thin, waxy fingers of the trustee, the gem covered both organs, duodenum as well as liver: alternating from one to the other a bit, perhaps: like a girl who is keeping at bay two swains at the same time. It was, to be precise, of cancer of the liver, supplemented by a similar affliction of the duodenum, that the bearer of the opal found himself forced to succumb.
O powerful emanation of the doubly ill-starred bioxide! to the damnation of the abdominal tract, by God! and half the tripes of Peppe! Witness-bearing presence of an invisible light, it was the son, that reverse talisman, of the un-imitated elegy; a standard-bearer of the distant September dawn, page to the milky-blue reticence of the Polar semester. Worthy, in its nobility, to have bejeweled the finger of a count of the palace, who had fallen asleep at Roncesvalles, with seven windows in his heart: or of a viscount, suddenly gone pale in the September prisons. Bearer of a double curse, Ingravallo conjectured, given its double face. The double evil eye must come from the bioxide. The combined duodenum-liver cancer is one of those double numbers that the cancer lottery rarely comes out with, from the modern cancerological cabala: whether in Europe or abroad.
Everybody, then and there, took fright; they began to touch wood, some here, some there. "And as for Liliana, well, Doctor, it seems to me.. " and this time, again, poor Balducci let out a sob, his voice shook. He wept. At Santo Stefano del Cacco he was summoned daily, you might say.
In the little writing desk near the balcony, in Via Nicotera, Sergeant Di Pietrantonio, assisted by Private First-Class Paolillo, found ten thousand lire: ten one-thousand notes, brand new. The members of the family, aghast at the death of Liliana, then at the young man's arbitrary arrest, as they called it, were unable to indicate the source of the money. At the Standard Oil they denied having given him anything beyond his usual salary at the end of February. Ten thousand lire! It was unlikely that Giuliano, even in a year, could have saved that much from his earnings: as a recent graduate and starting employee, a young representative, a good-looking young man. With the expenses of his marriage in sight, which is tantamount to saying, in part expended.
A salary, good as it was, and some percentage on the deals that he handled might allow him, in Rome, to eat, clothe and wash himself, and pay for the fine room and bath at Signora Amalia's: manicures and cigarettes extra: extra his grandmother's fettucine. His women, given his charm, the quality that made Don Ciccio so jealous, apparently didn't cost him very much. "He had many invitations," according to his relatives: and also from his landlady, not herself the owner of the little villa. "Yes, he brought ladies to his room. No, not the lady in the picture. Some ladies of the aristocracy. ." (so she trilled). Ingravallo drew a breath "mentally" with great circumspection. The room's entry was private. In announcing this prerogative of the room, she, the landlady, assumed a serious, haughty voice, like a building contractor, when he says, "a fine view, three baths."
"Oh, he had invitations everywhere. Because everybody was devoted to him." "Every woman" grunted Don Ciccio, within himself, gazing again into those deep, big eyes of Signora Amalia, circled by two blue crescent moons which were pendants to the two golden crescents she wore in her ears: which, at the first turn of her head, seemed about to go "ding-dong." Like an odalisque of the Sultan.
Ingravallo subjected Valdarena, who had already been heard once that day, to yet another questioning. Night had fallen, it was happast seven. He had lighted, as reinforcement, a "special" bulb, which hung down to his desk. He showed him all of a sudden, without forewarning, the corpora delicti: that is to say, the chain, the diamond ring, the ten one-thousand lire notes, not to mention among these exhibits the photograph of Liliana, which, for good measure, he had left in. Valdarena, seeing that money and those objects on the desk, along with Liliana's picture, suddenly blushed: Don Ciccio had removed a newspaper which was concealing them. The young man sat down: then slowly he stood up: he wiped the sweat from his forehead: he regained his composure: he looked his preyer in the eye. There was a sudden movement of his neck, of his whole head, with a sweep of his hair: as if he had resolved to cast himself into the worst of it. He entered instead the bold, almost eloquent phase, of his own stubbornness and his own apology; he was silent for half a minute, then, "Officer," he shouted, with the haughtiness of one who insists on the legitimacy of a deed, of another person's sentiments which, nevertheless, concerns him: "there's no point in my keeping silent any more, out of fear of what people might say or out of respect for a dead person, a poor murdered woman: or out of shame for myself. Liliana, my poor cousin, yes, she was very fond of me. That's all there is to it. She wasn't in love with me, maybe. . No. I mean. . not in the way another woman, in her place, would have loved me. Oh! Liliana! But if her conscience" (sic) "had permitted her, the religion in which she was born and raised. . well, I'm sure that she would have fallen in love with me, that she would have loved me madly." Ingravallo turned pale. "Like all the other women."