Journal of Italian Translation

Roberto De Lucca/ Carlo Emilio Gadda
111
ing a fresh wad with two fingers, holding it up against the light, like: “Shiny
new, look!… Just yesterday they got here from the Banca d’Italia: just off the
press. Nice little smell, just take a whiff. Fresh from the Mint. What, you’re
nervous about germs? You’re right!… Pretty lady like you.”
“No, Sor Cavalli, it’s just that I’m giving a present”, Liliana had answered.
“Newlyweds?” “Yes, newlyweds.” “Ten grand’s always nice to get:
especially for a pair of newlyweds.” “A cousin: who’s like a brother. Just
think! I practically played the part of mother when he was a baby.” She’d
said it just like that: he remembered perfectly: he could swear on the Bible.
“My best wishes to the happy couple: and to you too, Signora.” They’d
shaken hands.
Sunday the 20th, in the morning, more background given by Balducci
to the two officers, then to dottor Fumi alone, when don Ciccio, toward half
past noon, was prompted to “handle another file”. He preferred to “step out
for a moment”. There was indeed no shortage of “other files” on his table.
The table, in fact, overflowed onto the shelves, and from there to the cabinets:
with people climbing up and stomping down as well as loitering outside:
this one smoking, that one flicking away a butt, another hawking phlegm on
the walls. All smoky and stifling, the charming Cacco atmosphere, in a syncretic
little fragrance sort of like a barracks or the upper gallery of the Teatro
Jovinelli: ‘tween armpits and feet, and still other perfumes more or less like
March cheese, that to get a whiff of was sure bliss. “Files” there were enough
to wallow in, to scull around inside: and folks, then, in the hall! Christ! Beat
the tower of Babel on a shopping day. Balducci got some hints (and better
than hints) of an “intimate nature” off his chest: partly impromptu, spilling
out as the sales-and-huntsman surrendered to that sort of logorrhea certain
pained or perhaps repentant souls succumb to, as soon as the healing phase
sets in, as a bruise succeeds a blow: the phase of post-trauma scar formation
when they feel both heaven and mankind have extended pardon; partly,
instead, drawn from him with the mildest mouth-twine by affable dialektike,
ardent discourse, mobile fervor of eyes, maieutic ingenuity and the charitable
anaesthesia of Parthenopean speech and gesture: with the action at
once gentle and persuasive, gotcha! of a kindly toothpuller. And here’s the
molar. Liliana, by now, had got it into her head that from her husband… that
she wasn’t getting any kids out of him. She considered him a good husband,
of course, “any way you look at it”, but there wasn’t, you know, the slightest
hint of a little bundle on the way. In ten years of marriage, almost, not even a
token: and she’d wed at twenty-one. The doctors had laid it on the line: either
her or him. Or both. Her? To prove it wasn’t her fault, she would have had to
try with another guy. Even Doctor D’Andrea had told her that. So that out of
those ongoing disappointments, those ten years, or nearly, where the pain,
the humiliation, desperation and tears had put down roots; from those useless
years of her beauty those sighs dated, those ahs, those long glances at
every woman, not to mention the ones with a baby in the oven!… What the