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of Desdemona's despair, the people got so threatening that the panicky
carabinieri
captain, in an effort to appease them, made a curious gesture.
He called out his troops, and gave the order to present arms to the
maid's coffin, just as if she had been a State dignitary.
The commonly accepted hypothesis about Desdemona's death was
that the police had driven the poor maid crazy by third degree methods,
and gotten a confession which she later felt she could erase only by
dying. That left several details to be explained: the manner of the
suicide; the fact that the
carabinieri
could let the girl burn herself to
death without any of them realizing what was happening; the missing
hospital records. The case was brought before Parliament. The Minister
of Police has promised an investigation. After which, nobody expects
to hear anything more about Desdemona Palombi. She may have been a
good girl, but since she did not belong to the class from which
brave
persone
are drawn she obviously was in no position to bear the brunt
of scandal.
Italy's Big Two, the Catholics and the Stalinists, show no eagerness
to follow up scandals in any case. A diffused fear seems to be in the
air
that once you start calling things by their name, some awful mixup
might ensue, and too many cats be let out of too many bags. Hence, the
most rabid polemics are accompanied by a singular lack of concrete
references. A spade may be called "an instrument of imperialistic ag–
gression" or "a treacherous bolshevist weapon," but never just a spade.
An outstanding example of this tendency is the furious controversy be–
tween the Stalinist press and the
Osservatore Romano
about Cardinal
Mindszenty. The Stalinists call their victim a fascist, a spy, and a black
marketeer, knowing perfectly well that these are obligatory metaphors
and lies, and that the real point of the question is elsewhere. On the
other hand, they insist that they have nothing whatsoever against the
clergy, the Church, or religion, in fact that they are good Catholics, or
nearly so. The Vatican organ, on its part, spends most of its energy in
refusing obvious Stalinist slander against Mindszenty, while at the same
time maintaining that the Cardinal was perfectly ready to get along
with the Hungarian progressive democratic State (which is obviously
false). A naive observer might be led to conclude that,
if
this is how
the matter really stands, and if no irreconcilable struggle between two
totalitarian powers is involved, then neither side would want the scandal
to be irreparable, and maybe the whole Mindszenty affair is only a violent
search for compromise.
At this point, an Italian is reminded of what happened last De–
cember, when Stalinist Senator Spano challenged to a public debate
