"Doctor? what should I remember?"
"Remember the person who helped you so much, when you deserved so little."
"Yes, the family where I worked: but why didn't I deserve it?"
"The family! Signora Liliana, you mean! who had her throat cut by a murderer!" and his eyes were such that, this time, Tina was frightened: "by a murderer," he repeated, "whose name," he spoke, curule, "whose full name we know!. . and where he lives: and what he does. ." The girl turned white, but didn't say a word.
"Out with his name! yelled Don Ciccio. "The police know this name already. If you tell it right now," his voice became deep, persuasive: "it's all to the good, for you."
"Doctor Ingravalli," repeated Tina to gain time, hesitating, "how can I say it, when I don't know anything?"
"You know too much, you liar," shouted Ingravallo again, his nose to hers. Di Pietrantonio was stunned. "Cough it up, that name, you've got here: or the corporal'll make you spill it, in the barracks, at Marino: Corporal Pestalozzi."
"No, sir, no, Doctor: it wasn't me!" the girl implored then, simulating, perhaps, and in part enjoying, a dutiful fear: the fear that whitens the face a little, but still resists all threats. A splendid vitality, in her, beside the moribund author of her days, which should have been splendid: an undaunted faith in the expressions of her flesh, which she seemed to hurl boldly to the offensive, in a prompt frown, with a scowclass="underline" "No, it wasn't me!" The incredible cry blocked the haunted man's fury. He didn't understand, then and there, what his spirit was on the point of understanding. That black, vertical fold above the two eyebrows of rage, in the pale white face of the girl, paralyzed him, prompted him to reflect: to repent, almost.
NOTES
The name Remo (Remus) Gadda imagines as being disliked by the Fascists because of their cult of Romulus, founder of Rome. Eleuterio is the Italian translation of the Greek name which means "free." It's unlikely that many Fascists gave these names any thought.
The title "signorino," now disappearing from Italian usage, was given — usually by the women of the family — to unmarried men, young or old. The word, when used by Ingravallo, has a slightly contemptuous nuance.
The initials PV and BM — which will be encountered later on— are indications of various bus lines in the Rome of 1927.
One of the difficulties of the Countess' surname is that it is perilously close to several Italian obscenities, such as cazzo, caca.
Luigi Facta had been the ineffectual Prime Minister of Italy at the time of the March on Rome. Mussolini made him a Senator in 1924.
Margherita Sarfatti, one-time mistress of Mussolini and author of the fulsome biography, Dux.
Mussolini, in 1927, was also Foreign Minister. His offices were in Palazzo Chigi.
Faiti and Cengio are mountains where the Italian army fought bitterly and suffered severe losses in the First World War, and where Gadda's brother was killed. For a moment, here, Gadda identifies himself openly with Ingravallo and attributes his own bereavement to the fictional character.
Sgurgola is a small village not far from Rome, often used by Romans to indicate a backward locality, a place from which peasants come.
At a later date, Mussolini, with great bombast, was to ask the wives of Italv to sacrifice their gold wedding rings to the Fatherland.
A typical Gaddian private joke. Pope Pius XI was fond of blessing newlyweds, referring to them as sposi novelli ("fresh bridal pairs"); polli novelli is the characteristic Roman advertisement for fresh chickens. (Among Gadda's less well-known achievements is the construction, as engineer, of the Vatican Power Station for Pius XI. He also wrote the official description of it.)
Cola di Rienzo (1312-54), medieval revolutionary figure who was executed. The words "fat, he was" are a quotation from a contemporary chronicle.
Ferrania is a small city near Savona. Mussolini had planned an oil pipeline there. It was never built.
Reference to an Italian custom: recently married couples send sugared almonds in tulle bags to those who have sent — or should send — wedding presents.
cinobalànico, a word invented by Gadda, a Greco-Italian adjective created from an obscene Roman dialect expression meaning "badly done."
Cesare Beccaria, Italian reformer and humanitarian (1738-94), author of the famous Dei delitti e delle pene. The Pirroficoni case was an actual event (as, for that matter, was the crime which inspired Il pasticciaccio).
Luigi Federzoni was Mussolini's Minister of the Interior.
A Gaddian parody of the Latin inscriptions on buildings all over Italy, a custom initiated by the Popes and continued with gusto by the Fascists, who were fond of translating their names and titles into Latin. Rosa Maltoni was the maiden name of Mussolini's mother.
Irnerius, teacher of law of Bologna, was the first great commentator on Roman law (1065–1125).
Prati, a section of Rome on the left bank of the Tiber, a fashionable residential district in the early years of this century.
La Gajola is a little island off the tip of Cape Posillipo, just outside Naples.
Vittorio Amedeo II of Sardinia once gave his Collare dell'Annunziata (a decoration corresponding, more or less, to the Garter) to a group of poor subjects — an episode included in all Italian school-books for the edification of young students during the Monarchy.
The Italian Mint is in Piazza Verdi, Rome.
A reference to Alcide de Gasperi, Prime Minister of Italy at the time this book was being written.
Mussolini numbered the years of the "Fascist Era." The Year Fifteen would be 1937.
The little town of Predappio was Mussolini's birthplace.
Barbisa is the Milanese dialect word for the female organ.
"Comit" is the abbreviation for the Banca Commerciale Italiane.
Alessandro Galilei (1691–1737), architect of St. John Lateran, the beloved "San Giovanni" of the Romans.
Virginia assumes that the word pediatra (pediatrician) has something to do with feet (piedi).
Rome's Regina Coeli prison is on the Via della Lungara.
The law in Italy is enforced not only by the police, locally, but also by the carabinieri (formerly the Royal Carabinieri), a national force with a long tradition. There is ill-concealed rivalry between the two forces.
Another reference to Mussolini, son of Rosa Maltoni.
The "mountain" is that of the French revolutionary Convention. The "bull" is Danton. An obscure reference, prompted by Gadda's wide reading in French history.
The "fourth shore," an Italian jingoist slogan, referring to the shore of Libya, Italy's onetime colony.
A private reference. The Sicilian sculptor Francesco Messina was, apparently, at one time the owner of a red Lancia.
The Milanese engineer Luigi Vittorio Bertarelli was President of the Italian Touring Club and sponsored, about this time, a campaign to set up the standard Italian road signs all over the country, arousing Gadda's ire.
Vitori and Luis are Milanese dialect for Vittorio and Luigi, the names of the hapless Bertarelli.
"Hypocarduccian" is a reference to the patriotic poet Giosue Carducci (1835–1907).
References to the Italian revolution of 1848 and the brief Roman Republic of 1849.