"But. ." and Doctor Fumi waved the hole of his two fingers, extending his little finger, "hens that lay golden eggs! when they lay them. Their father, the mother, back in Chicago, think the girls are coming to look at the pictures in the museums, to study how the Madonna is dressed up, how pretty she is: how handsome San Gennaro is, too": and he was shaking his head, at the certainty of those fathers and mothers: "The Beato Angelico Chapel! The Raphael rooms! The frescoes of Pinturicchio!"{45} He sighed. "Those little things have other rooms on their minds," he murmured. "The Assumption of the Virgin!" he exclaimed: "by Titian, Tiziano Vecellio!" and the last name, in that dirty room of police headquarters, lent an added propriety to the first name: as if this Titian were a fellow with all his documents in order, a person whom suspicion couldn't even graze. "The portrait of the Madonna — the spit and image — with those seven wax angels over her head!. ."
When he was assistant chief at the Frari station in Venice, the five scarlet Cherubim of one of the six Enthroned Madonnas of Giovan Bellino (Galleria dell'Accademia) had become impressed on his memory, his genteel however bureaucratized memory, like the seven seals of the Apocalypse, in a lead-colored sky. And he had thrown in the Assumption: which has a dance of putti all around the Virgin's head, vice versa, some with doves' wings, others without: one, wingless, with a tambourine: singing ho-sannas.
"That's what their parents think, back in Boston, in Brooklyn." He tapped his index finger against his forehead, hammering. His eyes assumed a knowing look, the sly face, reproducing the slyness of those relatives. "They think these girls travel around Italy in herds, a hundred at a time, like little kids in a boarding school. A hundred at the museum, a hundred at the opera, a hundred at the aquarium, you know, where they keep the fish, under water; a hundred at the Baths of Caracalla, a hundred at San Callisto following that monk with the candle, which then goes out. Those girls — Ingravallo — not in a pig's eye." He turned to his inferiors. "Those girls, as soon as they get off the boat, Ingravallo, you follow me. . bzzz bzz": he fluttered, with his hands, casting them here and there like thunderbolts, with the eyes of the Thunderer.
"One slips away here, another there, you understand me?" and his eyes, luminous in their sadness, gathered assent on all sides. "Each on her own, and God for all! Taormina, Cernobbio, Positano, Baveno," he was becoming stubborn: "Capri, Fiesole, Santa Margherita, Venezia," his tone hardened, with stern emphasis in its crescendo, a vertical wrinkle in the middle of his brow: "Cortina d'Ampiezzo!"
"D'Ampezzo," grumbled Ingravallo.
"D'Ampezzo, d'Ampezzo: all right, Ingravallo, you're our philosophy professor." He frowned: "Cortina, Positano! And — see you later!" he waved his hand in the air, a farewell to somebody who wasn't there: "See you here, six months from now"; the index plunged. "Here, here on the dock, Beverello. In exactly six months." He was silent. He sighed, knowingly. "Raphael my foot!" he exclaimed, in a new jerk, in a return of his contempt: which contempt rolled and died away beneath his preceding statements, like thunder after a storm in flight. "Rooms!" and he became agitated. "Pinturicchio! The room they're after is another kind, Pompeo, and you have to hunt for that room, if it takes all night!" Stilled at last, to himself: "And the Pinturicchio they want… is another man, too. ."
The girls, no sooner were they dished up on to the Beverello from the tenebrous belly of the Count, felt at once, in their hearts, and since they were girls one couldn't say they were wholly wrong, they understood, they sensed suddenly that in the land of the fine arts, and of the fine artisans, they would prefer a live painter to a Pinturicchio deceased. Ingravallo, too, had read Norman Douglas as well as Lawrence: and had distilled Calabria, Sardinia (growling) as from a phial of super-effective elixir. He remembered that one of the two great erotologists, but he didn't recall which one, had become transformed into a geodesist, and had considered the wisdom of drawing up a map of the male contour line, extending it to all the surface of the earth. He had then triangulated, in his geodesy, also the Circean territory, extracting from it the documented certitude that Circe had not chosen badly the site wherein to exercise her art, which was the art of putting young men to sleep. This territory of the most profitable drowsiness, that is to say, of the highest level of male potential was, according to Norman Douglas or according to Lawrence, a spheric triangle, or rather, a geodetic one. And the vertices, the extreme geodetic strongholds of the unmatchable triangle, he, Norman Douglas, or he, Lawrence, saw as emerging from the three cities of Reggio (Calabria), Sassari, and Civitavecchia, to the great vexation of the citizens of Palermo. "He could have moved a little farther north, this sonovanologist," Ingravallo thought, silently, clenching his teeth in anger: "and a little more to the east," his unconscious prompted him, "to the top of the Matese mountains."{46} He shrugged: "It's his business!" And, teeth still clenched, he drew the conclusion: a conclusion probably unjust: which, in any case, is of no interest to the present report.
*** *** ***
The girl's broken but explicit admissions continued trickling out until eleven, or thereabouts. The annoyance, or the wrath, at some points, in her spirit seemed to overcome her love, the ardent remembrance of the flesh. Diomede, at the beginning, had come to see her at Zamira's, every day. Far from her eyes, and from the greedy exercise of his own, the enflamed young man, it seemed, could not stay for more than a few hours. Or else he accompanied her, burning, trembling, at times, for a good stretch of road, or a dirt track which turned into the fields, solitary, hesitating in his walk, between two thickets, with every hesitation, both of his person and his heart: and of his senses. They took the path that followed the oak thicket, in the direction of Tor Ser Paolo, or the little road of the Fountain of Health, towards Casa del Butiro. Ines, now, seemed to be thinking. Her lips parted, as if in the intention of uttering a new word: "Zamira, she liked him a lot, in her way. She sort of confided in him." She whispered to him, in fact, certain long tales, under his nose, looking him in the face, staring hard, devouring him with her eyes, her too, oh yes, why not? with a cackling voice, whispering, like in the confessional. A psspsspss like she was saying a prayer to him, or giving him good advice: good only for him, since he had special need, for the health of his soul. She wouldn't stop that psspsspss. .: sometimes, for greater security, after looking all around, and maybe even standing up on her tiptoes, she would put her mouth to the boy's ear: the exquisite secrets were not for the nose, but for the secret privacy of the tympanum. "Like she was saying a prayer, one of those long ones, that gives you a stomach ache. Worse than the double Rosary of Christmas Eve. ." As if to give him secret instructions, hah, concerning undertakings, or deeds, or obligations, or opportunities, or troubles, or dealings, or expedients… of considerable moment. Zamira spoke to him then, to Diomede, with a rolling of the eyes and a galloping of the tongue like a foreign minister new to his frock coat, but already smart,{47} when he feeds new words to the beloved ambassador in a low voice, in a selective "aside": and keeps vigil, at the same time, and maintains at the proper distance and in the proper awe the others: who seem to be mocking him by their gaze alone, with their calm foxy confidence, consummate in their art: the thin beak saturated with subtle initiatives: the tail with provident experience, and the back with unforgettable lashings. In the toothless mouth, the hole, black: from which, between one word and the next, she sucked back in the already erogated saliva, with a kind of slightly damp sibi-lance where her r's wallowed backwards, like one who, cast up by the wave, is pulled back by the undertow. A hesitation of tiny, sweet bubbles, on the lips, accompanied this salvage: which, with a sudden sweep, shortly thereafter, the pointed and scarlet tip of the tongue was assigned to conclude. Yes, a sparkle of the eyes, in her face, when she so much as spoke to him, to the boy, to Diomede: yes, within the two serous blisters beneath her eyes, two black dots, her eyes, two pinheads. You'd have said that Old Nick had finally revealed to her where the treasure was to be found, buried, the long lost pile of gold doubloons: or the elixir of requited love for lovers. A livid smile distorted her mouth, to one side, diaphragming the hole: over the skin of half her face a yellowish cast — something fearsome— like certain unhealthy fires, of Beelzebub's mint.