"Come right in, Corporal. They'll be along any minute. Who wants them?" Zamira counter-asked, insinuating, insolent. The handle of that filthy old broom, all burs, was now clasped in her two hands as if she leaned on it, in repose, and to listen. Pestalozzi, now master of his soul, gave the vile woman a thunderous look: "lousy old whore" was its meaning, mute, his lips closed, straight, "you can see for yourself who." She seemed to dissolve into attentions, pushing aside as best she could the filth to the flank of the sideboard, and allocating the broom there too, as if to guard what it had collected. "I'll go call them, if you'll mind the store for me: I can trust you!" she smiled, turning: after taking a shawl from the rag pile: and she started to go out, wagging her tail, for their joy as desiring but abstinent youths. He clenched his anger in his teeth, Pestalozzi did: and held her back promptly by one arm. A wink! and she whirled around suddenly, like a garter snake when you step on its tail.
"If they'll be along any minute, then we'll wait for them here. Don't move. Sit down," he fastened her to a chair, pressing her into it: "There. But if they don't come. . we'll take you in, this time." The good dyeress paled: the harshness was rather, in him, descended from the hills, despite the noncommissioned officers' school. Santa Maria Novella had not shed on him the grace, oh no, of excessive refinement. The respectful glands were gadgets of the future, then, for a noncom; hopes, in the heart of evildoers, of a brighter morrow: the brighter morrow of those days. Harshness, at that time, was borne as a duty: the "courses in human relations" had not yet been set up. The chevrons of sergeanthood, a long promise waved under his nose like a shredded meal beneath a cat's, demanded wisdom, firmness: harshness, when required. Then, once sergeant, he could play the kindly man, the gruff bear with a heart of gold. . full of understanding. So harshness it was: in that moment made even heavier by his annoyance. That breath, those mocking eyes of the sorceress, those lascivious double-entendres—their witchcraft had to be dispelled, the coils of her hypnosis had to be broken. "You, move away from that window," he ordered Cocullo, "hide over there." The motorcycle was now under cover, sheltered from the curious and from the rain But along the provincial road, after the descent from Torraccio, its crackling had been heard more or less by everyone, and by some, he thought, seen, from the little window of the privy: at the hour of rising, when they yawn, in their trousers, wandering about the house with a train of suspenders at their shins, towards the sink, scratching the head in the prickly luxuriance of black hair, a ninth jawbreaking yawn, a rub of the eyelids with the most diligent knuckles and phalanges: whence sleep, so sweet in the morning, is dissipated and vaporizes away slowly, almost despite itself. Consciousness then identifies with itself, resumes its own skin, its lousy cloak. It begins to count again its chickens, the foolish events of the daylight hours. A motorbike on the road. The corporal seemed to reflect: "Have they come to work regular, these last few days? Or have they had justified absences?
"Worked. ." the sly old bag hesitated, "absence? justified?" she stammered, to gain time. No, with such legal language she couldn't, in all conscience, and therefore dared not pretend to be familiar. She was the sincere type, all heart, a woman of few words: deeds, rather, actions. . to the succor of souls, of needful hearts: who had recourse to her… for disinterested advice. And hearts, as we all know, by their own nature. . tend to fraternize. In pairs. Nor could the corporal, from her, insist on law-court style. He had no reason and still less any right to demand it, with all the subtleties and circumlocutions and cavils that becloud it, on the lawyer's tongue. Oh! lawyers! they were so nice! And such good customers! She dreamed for a moment.
But woe that she should be a customer of theirs, she pondered.
"Justified absence of who. ."
"Don't play dumb. Don't pretend you don't understand; you know very well what I mean. The two girls I told you. Who?! Farcioni and Mattonati… Mattonari, that is. I have a feeling that last Tuesday, the fifteenth that is, I suspect. . they didn't turn up. They said they were sick." He invented that "said" out of the whole cloth. He had never met them nor sought them: he also dropped that Tuesday instead of Saturday, to provoke a denial, and the consequent correction. Zamira seemed to be racking her memory.
"Come on, answer. You've got to answer right off, dear Madam, not think about it a year. If you have to think so long, it's surely to make up some lie. Have they come to work regularly? This is what I'm asking you. Or did they stay home some morning? I want to hear this from you, from your own lips. We know it already ourselves, never fear: the carabinieri know everything!"
"Why, what do you know? Why are you asking me, then, if you already know?"
"I told you. Because I want to hear it from you, from you in person, what you think about it and what you have to say. Yes, you, Signora Pacori, Zamira, with your diploma in fortunetelling": and he sought it, on the wall, with his gaze: hanging like an engineering degree in a surveyor's office. But it must have been downstairs, with the Death's Head, in the consulting room, near the padlocked cupboard where the cheese was also stored.
She tried her smile again, her most lascivious one: she recalled her dribble, sucking in from the corners, despite the vault in the midst. She dried her lips, moving her little tongue in a rapid, scything motion, which then rested, for a moment, at the margin of impudence, of sluttidence, as Belli{59} might have said. It was, in general, a slimy and dark red tongue, as if it had also been painted: and at that moment it crouched down among the canines, nice and docile, in a posture of waiting and perhaps of relaunching, since the fence of incisors had rotted away in the wayward years.
"Well, Sergeant dear, what can I tell you? You let me know. ." and she swayed her head, here and there, looking like a silk moth, very coy: and she was careful, at the same time, to wriggle, with the larger part of her proffer-ings, poorly concealed in this early hour, on the edge of the chair: to which she felt nailed. "You let me know, because I imagine, you know too, he he he, that we women, he he he, since we are women, he he he, have our little troubles. . every so often… a punishment of the Lord, he he he, to try our patience, poor us! It isn't our fault if we're not like you men, he he he, who are always able to stand up!"
This time, revolted, it was he, the corporal, who played dumb.
"What troubles? Leave troubles out of it!" She went on, haughtily:
"Well, Sergeant, just think a minute — with that kind heart of yours! You can't deny that it's so. My poor little girls, poor things!" Then, imploring: "You mean you don't have a wife?" shameless! "Or a couple of sisters? Not even one?. . everybody has a sister, you might say. Where's the man these days, with all the men around, who doesn't have a couple of sisters to marry off? Even that big poet, the patriotic one, had one: the poet who made everybody cry, at Christmas, in Libya, at Ain Zara, with the Sixth Bersaglieri. . what was his name? he's dead now, poor thing! What was his name? Giovanni… you know… those places where there's grass," and with her hand she drew the name from her forehead, "Giovanni… Giovanni Prati! No, no. . not Giovanni Prati, wait a minute," and she continued, with her hand, "How can I have forgotten? It's all the trials I've been through. . they've ruined my memory. Giovanni Pascoli!{60} There, now I remember: I knew he had a name like the places where they make hay."