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Unfinished business

Lindsey Marchant

Gadda unfailingly makes one aware of his sense of enquiry and confusion. A confusion which especially in the Mess he tries to rectify through obsessive investigation into the justice, or rather, into the injustice of the world. Attempting to find a truth, in such context, turns out to be an amazingly irrational activity. There may be a lot of frustration in store for the reader, but the point is not so much the inconclusiveness of the investigation. Mystery instead is, or rather «the messy interrelatedness of reality with its concausality and impossible closure», and with it the cognitive process, both as «grotesque deformation and tragic awareness» (Sbragia 1996a:130).

In all this, detective Ingravallo stands for Gadda’s take on the whole meaning of life. His character is crucial, in particular, to the understanding of the closure of the book, in the inability to reach out beyond the book, or behind it, i.e., behind that face of the clock where one could bump into the «quid più vero, più sottilmente operante» (Opinione sul neorealismo, SGF I 630).

A dark figure in more ways than one, Ingravallo is generally cast in shade. The scene is set, both physically and psychologically – shadow prevails. He is emotionally imbalanced, for reasons that are revealed in the process of narration. He gives the impression of having always been a sorry figure (keep Freud in mind here: an individual repeats himself always).

Physically, Ingravallo is scrawny. Considering the role of food in the Mess (a clear quantification of one’s lot in life), then Ingravallo has a poor life. His eating too is unfinished business, divided between desire and repression, want and lack. The unlit, half-smoked cigarette protruding from his mouth also cries out for attention – a poor replacement for a mother-child relationship. Yet more unfinished business.

Typically, all this survives in the mental, takes the form of unrequited love. In Liliana, that is, Ingravallo sees his true ideal. She is everything that could give meaning to his (unhappy) life. His is narcissistic love, and in it he feels on an equal footing with his object of desire: the kind of equal footing that there can be between embodiment of Value and upholder of the Law. A love never to be realised, unfinished, as Liliana is both the true object of desire and the site of all sexual prohibitions and transgressiveness. A sublime repression of feeling, made all the more poignant in death.

But then, there is also Assunta, i.e., the intense sexual desire for Assunta, another (this time wonderful) embodiment of all things dark. Again, Ingravallo represses, leaves things unfinished. All this unfinished stuff makes one finally wonder. To what extent is he conscious of ever starting anything? Does Ingravallo ever perceive a beginning and an end, in his emotional affairs? Is he capable of that? Both at the beginning and the end of the book Ingravallo is sexually excited by Assunta’s physicality and beauty. Yet only at the end he seems almost (yes, almost) on the point of realising something deeper.

Emotional imbalance parallels narrative imbalance in this book. Ingravallo and the book share many characteristics. The two are bound. More than a character (but what are characters, after all?), he is a narrative device, a structuring principle. Hence keep in mind Ingravallo the detective versus Ingravallo the anonymous lover, for in the face of his professionalism our detective is emotionally involved, gets the book involved. He makes false accusations. He is provoked into accusing Giuliano (after all, as well as being his rival in love, he has dared reducing Liliana to the level of a mere mortal – or rather, with him Liliana has played the fully embodied, desiring carnal woman).

In turn, Ingravallo must question his own sense of morality – for as a professional he is not allowed to know the victim. He must merely re-construct life from death. He must gather clues, be accurate – that’s all. And yet Liliana’s death forces him to revise the basis of his knowledge (the knowledge he supposed to have of her). That death (Liliana’s) and that life (Liliana’s still) indeed don’t match. Did he really know her? Can one really know anyone – anything?

This murder puts our inspector to the test. Even more than his role as detective, it questions his re-construction of truth. What truth is he putting together in this instance, as in all instances? The end, or non-end, of the book perhaps marks the crucial point of realisation. Who is he to accuse Assunta? Is he in any position to judge? And what about us too? us as readers and as co-detectives, as reading aides of Ingravallo?

Judgement held. There may be no obvious culprits, or single answers, but we persist, in the pursuit of right and wrong, in the attempt «to retrace and unravel the manifold threads that constitute the mess or evil of reality gone awry» (Sbragia 1996a: 134). A fundamental need drives us, we must make sense of the whole mess: our sense of justice prevails. Reason versus confusion. In order to contain disaster – to remain masters (of the bloody mess).

Pecoraro suggests that as a whole, the Mess can be seen as a critique of the Fascist regime. Ingravallo’s role as an upholder of the law is representative of the political fascist structure, albeit a critical one. The inspector voices distaste for certain autocratic injustices but is nonetheless, by the nature of his position, an upholder, a spokesman – a cog. Everything comes to a head when, at the end of the book, he is provoked by Assunta, by her black furrow, symbolic of his secret, sexually sadistic desires (De Benedictis 1991).

quella piega nera verticale tra i due sopraccigli dell’ira, nel volto bianchissimo della ragazza, lo paralizzò, lo indusse a riflettere: a ripentirsi, quasi.

To repent, almost. To leave things almost unfinished. To realise the «multiplicity of perspective» (Sbragia 1996a:130). Ingravallo is prompted to feel the guilt of his position as upholder of the System. He is prompted to re-realise his position in the whole pile of shit – he himself part and parcel of it, the guilty party. He is responsible (first of all, but not exclusively) in a social sense. Assunta, the presumed culprit, has a life surrounded by tragedy and death: by Liliana’s murder and her dying father, suitably dying in the company of the fossil-woman Veronica. She is the innocent guilty one – he the guilty innocent. Who is he to accuse her?

The final pages reek of death as the father exudes the final faeces (and perhaps exuding, through resonance, even fascism: the fasci of fascism). Assunta is pale-faced, dark-eyed, surreal in the black vertical fold stamped on her forehead. Yet her belief («fede imperterrita negli enunciati di sue carni, ch’ella pareva scagliare audacemente all’offesa») triggers ideas of resurrection. We may be frail, vulnerable. But embodiment – that flesh! – is all powerful too. An occult evidence, an obvious mystery: triggering an awakening in the conscience, of the conscience, a new tragic awareness of life, evil, dissipation, death.

Everything hinges on the almost. The quasi. The god-almighty knot of knots.

Gadda è lungi dal volere insinuare che i nodi non si sciolgono, e che l’opera debba rimanere «aperta». Anche se di fatto non ha voluto o saputo concluderla, anche se chi legge resta con l’impressione che il narratore abbia perso il filo del racconto, come un giocatore di scacchi che, dopo aver cercato di prevedere il maggior numero possibile di mosse, affaticato dal calcolo sposti la prima pedina che lo liberi dal compito di ulteriormente riflettere e decidere… (Roscioni 1995a: 93)