Journal of Italian Translation

Roberto De Lucca/ Carlo Emilio Gadda
109
those lucky pieces in there, poor sap! Like a capon in the middle of a bunch
of roosters!… but still with some sharp beak on him, I’ll tell you!”
The ring he’d given back to the Signora after a couple days, “If I remember
rightly, it was when she came by the store to look at the jasperstones.” He
was supposed to hand the fob over to Giuliano in person, coming by himself
to get it, bring the chain: “Yep, that one”: he recognized it perfectly. “That
chain, you know the one?” Liliana had said, “You know that chain, Mister
Ceccherelli, you remember? The one you estimated at two thousand lire? I
want to give that one away as a present. And grandfather’s ring, with the
gem, remember? The one you figured was worth nine and a half thousand?”
Ingravallo showed him the ring as well. “It’s this one, all right: three carats
and a little left over. A magnificent water.” He took it, turned it, studied it:
held it up against the light: “All the time he said to me, grandpa said: remember,
Liliana, that has to stay in the family! You know to whom I mean!” Her
grandfather’s word, a holy formula almost for her: that was plain: anyway,
she’d repeated it twice, in the shop: “Ain’t I right?”, he asked in the presence
of Gallone and Giuseppe Amaldi, who acknowledged with their heads.
Liliana herself had insisted on explaining everything to Amaldi: how the
two letters that he was supposed to engrave were linked together, how she
wanted the jasperstone to be set: bulging a little from the oval setting:
Ceccherelli traced with the nail of his little finger the clean contour of the
stone, green, seal mounted, that is to say slightly overhanging the setting,
and backed with a thin gold plate, in order to hide and encase the uncut face.
Apart from the jewelers, who were heard in the morning, the Valdarena
family and consorts, that is Giuliano’s grandmother, Balducci himself, the
pair of aunts from Banchi Vecchi, unca Carlo, auntie Elvira and just about
the whole of the relatives, had been thrashing about for the last three days
every which way to get a hold on the lifeline and pull him out, Giuliano, from
the fix he’d got himself into, poor guy, though he was as innocent as a baby.
Easier said than done. But after those three depositions in his defense by the
three jewelers, that were middling enough, there was the one, better still, by
the head teller of the bank: the Banco di Santo Spirito. According to the bank
balance (on the savings account passbooks), it turned out that Liliana had
withdrawn the ten thousand lire there, just on January 23: two days before
the gift: the one she’d given on the twenty-fifth, at home, when he’d dropped
by to visit them, and had found just her. Del Bo, the head teller, knew Liliana:
he’d served her that day: at window eight, beaming paternally. Round about
noon. Oh yes, he remembered it like yesterday: as he was shelling out the ten
bills onto the counter – ten big crumby leaves, the leprous kind that’ve been
lying in the pants wallet of a goatherd from Passo Fortuna or on a winesplotched
bar of some tavern keeper in the Castelli – she’d said, with that
velvety voice of hers, and those big, deep eyes: “Please, Sor Cavalli, see if you
can’t give me some nice new ones, if you have any: you know I like them sort
of clean…”: because she called him Cavalli instead of Del Bo. “Like this?”
he’d asked, one hand already stashing away the rags, the other hand pinch-