The Elysian gathering of the gentle shades, the summons, the evocation of the compossibilities! Poor, and dear, Zamira! She used to pour out wine for the carters on the Appia, for the carabinieri on their rounds. Standing, these last, having come in from the summer, guns on their shoulders: dusty, overheated, blinded by the immensity: stunned by infinite cicadas: with head and cap amid the cloud of flies, up, up, which gave out a humming at times as of an unseen guitar plucked by the phalanges of a ghost. She, after having brought the drink, took her chair again, wielding her needles, toothless (the front ones) in the circle of her tender novices likewise seated at their work: working with the needle, or knitting. Heads bowed, but raised, however, promptly, from time to time, one after the other, each after her neighbor: to thrust back with one hand, as if bored, the tangle of falling hair. But at that moment! they emitted a flash, those eyes: black, shining, emergent from boredom; then they lingered, bored, on the indifference of an object, a button, the butt of a rifle, the corporal's service revolver, or a little lower down, or a little higher, a little more to the right, a little more to the left. A scent of country women, in short skirts. What promises, what demographic hopes, poor darlings, for the eternal spring of the Fatherland, of our beloved Italy! What knees, Madonna! what big knees. . Stockings — never even dreamed of. Underwear? Hm. The mountain women wore more, to hear the Bull roar in the stands.{34} Their plump legs held tight together, like they were hatching an egg, or brooding over a treasure. Or else, the complete opposite: feet on the crossbar of the chair, so that, if one assumed a position of vantage, there were panoramas — you can imagine. What thighs!
A man's gaze plunged the penumbra, then in the shadows: it wound, it climbed among the passes of hope, as an explorer of caves dives and climbs, or a chimney sweep. Not to mention carabinieri! Grumpy, as their duty bound them to be, their eyes never stopped searching. And the eyes that came back to them! Eyes? Furtive arrows! Shots, that make the heart die in the chest, of those standing carabinieri: while at the same time the seamstress spoke to them about Libya: the fourth shore{35}: the dates that were ripening, exquisite, and the officers that she had known there and who had "courted" her with success. This remembering courting captains and colonels for the benefit of plain privates was a stratagem of seduction. Her eyes began to sparkle again then, tiny, pointed, black, darting: under the multiple furrowing of her forehead, under the rumpled pergola of her hair, which was gray and hard, like the fur of a mandrill. Considerable saliva lubricated the outburst of her speech, evocative or oracular as it happened to be: the lips, thirsting, fevered like her gums, dry or viscid, which, deprived of the cutting edge of the former ivory, seemed today the entrance, the free antechamber of every amorous magic. Of which, to be sure, the tongue was the chief instrument:
Énkete, pénkete, pùfete iné,
Àbele, fàbele, dommi-né. .
The devil couldn't resist this summons.
Yes, yes, Zamira had at her disposal a fine supply of niece-apprentices: and reserves, then, scattered along the Via Appia, the Ardeatina, or the Anziate, at this or that milestone, supplementary seamstresses: who, in any unusual situation, clickety-clack, were there to lend a hand: and they lent it: as for example, during the summer maneuvers of the Fourth Bersaglieri Regiment. For the patrols, for the carabinieri, patient upholders of law and order in the infinite summer, such organization was not required: the roster of the immediate employees and nieces was enough. All of them such, more or less, the nieces, to render those vinous visits sweet, and of the most joyous, the most disturbing, sheltered from the dog-day sun after miles, white miles, for the dusted and sweating bearers of guns. On patrol, after having walked their musket along highway and trails, or the heavy revolver, with all its bullets in it, and a couple of magazines in their cartridge box, the unconquerable servants of duty loved to cool off a moment in that harem of Zamira's, so warmly shadowed and silent: which was for all adepts the vestibule of the happy hypothesis, the sanctum of consultations, of Alban consolations. The moment of gentle anguish was fleeting, ah, what else can a moment be? but the following moment followed it: the integral of the fleeting moments is the hour: the unmatch-able hour, where a precise thought was deviated towards hope and towards anguish, like a flashing shuttle, in the warp of furtive glances, mute dissent or mute consent.
The fact is that the carabinieri used to stop off at her place, la Pacori's, the seamstress's: neither headquarters nor discipline opposed this: and at times, they had recourse to her. Little jobs of mending: when perhaps a button is about to come loose, and its stem must be reinforced. One morning, one of those overgrown boys had taken off his tunic, blushing, to have a tear mended: which he had picked up he couldn't remember from what berry bush or hawthorn. Another time, another youth, his pants: so people said: for a motive not entirely analogous, they went on to add. Zamira sent him down to the cellar to take them off: and after him she sent Clelia, or — according to other reports — Camilla, to take the trousers and bring them up to be mended, in the workshop. The divestment of the royal servant required some time: such a long, sweet time! Whereupon the girls, above, at a certain point began to cough, to snicker, to say ahem, especially Emma, that bold-face: until Zamira lost her patience, became angry and scolded them all, calling them a word that wasn't clearly understood, hissing drool from the hole.
Also the sergeant, Sergeant Fabrizio Santarella, hum, one of the two centaurs of the Alban headquarters, the higher in rank of the two motorcyclists, he, too, had taken the seer-dyer some jerseys to be dyed: big packages. He was heralded from afar, from Torraccio, from the last houses of le Frattocchie, from the Robine Vecchie at other times or from Cassera to Sant'Ignazio, or from the Sanctuary of Divine Love: he approached, scattering shots, he arrived, re-echoing, boom boom boom boom: the motorcycle was stilled at the door. They were women's jerseys, those packages: because Sergeant Santarella, who one day had been dragged to the altar by one woman (and not even a very swollen one), lived with nine: his wife, her old blind mother and her slightly feeble-minded sister, a sister of his own, unmarried and chaste, with all the psychic ornaments which from chastity descend upon sisters: three daughters, not yet of an age where chastity is a problem, and two tenants, twin sisters, once about to lose their chastity, but by now (after congruent skipping town of the hoped-for de-chastizer who, unable to make up his mind, had dropped both of them before turning his hand to… to the task) now definitively returned to chastity. Having one day decided to rent, because of the times and the opportunity and his pay, a small redundant portion of his penetralia, that which turned its mold towards Auster, he thought naturally of the paper with the widest circulation: and when it was time to nuncupate the offer in the Messaggero he hadn't had the heart to assert to the readers "no women," that cruel "halt!" of the landlady of Ingravallo. No, no, no, in his house. . quite the contrary: women there were: and women there would be.