Journal of Italian Translation

Roberto De Lucca/ Carlo Emilio Gadda
Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulana
Chapter 5
The excerpt here ends just as the narrator reports briefly on Liliana’s funeral.
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But Ceccherelli and his “shop boy”, a certain Gallone, skinny old gent
with specs, and an assistant, one Amaldi or Amaldini, deposed wholly on
Giuliano’s side. Ceccherelli, backed by the other two, corroborated down to
the last detail both the order received by the poor Signora, more than two
months before, and the sundry phases of the readying of the fob: “It’s for
family getting married, so I’m counting on you.” She’d shown him a gold
signet ring, solid yellow gold, with a bloodstone jasper, very fine, engraved
with the initials G.V., in gothic letters, sort of: “I’d like the jasper on the chain
to match this one here.” She’d left him the ring. He’d made a wax impression:
first of the monogram, then of the whole stone, which protruded from
its setting. Liliana Balducci had then come back to the store twice, picking
the gem from five that had been shown her, stock furnished specially by
Digerini and Coccini, the suppliers he’d dealt with for ages, so they’d provided
them on loan without batting an eyelash. It was likewise fully confirmed
that Ceccherelli had been asked to remove the opal, gorgeous, despite
that jinx it hauled around with it like all opals have, and that he’d accepted
it in fact as part payment despite that R.V., not deeply engraved: “But let me
tell you something, I don’t give a crap about folks’ superstitions, excuse my
French here… You’d almost think we’re back in the dark ages, almost! In all
honesty, I just focus on doing my job, as above board as possible. In forty
years I’ve had this shop, take it from me, officer, I haven’t logged one complaint!
Not a pin! Anyway just to be on the safe side, I chucked it right in this
special drawer here I got for that stuff, just right as soon as I got it pried out of
the setting with the pliers, without even laying a pinky on it, like. The pliers
I ran over to the barber to have disinfected with alcohol: the doohickey I just
chucked it in that drawer there, last one on the way to the can… Alfredo, you
know the one I mean, Peppì, you too… a bunch of those coral good luck
charms heaped in there, so if that old opal got it in his head to lay some curse
on the shop… What, put a curse on it? Yeah, right: like to see him try, with all