Excursion to Tindari

5

The moment he stepped out of his car at eight-thirty the next morning, he could already hear, from the street, a tremendous uproar inside the police station. He went in.The first ten people summoned—five husbands and their respective wives—had shown up extremely early and were behaving exactly like children in a nursery school. They were laughing, joking, pushing one another, embracing. It immediately occurred to him that someone should perhaps consider creating community nursery schools for the aged.

Catarella, assigned by Fazio to maintain public order, had the unfortunate idea to shout out:

“The inspector himself in person has arrived!”

In the twinkling of an eye, that kindergarten playground turned inexplicably into a battlefield. Barreling into one another, tripping each other up or holding one another back by an arm or by the coattails, all present assailed the inspector, trying to get to him first. And during the struggle, they spoke and shouted so loudly that a deafened Montalbano understood not a word amidst the clamor.

“What is going on here?” he asked in a military voice.

Relative calm ensued.

“No favorites, now!” shouted one, barely taller than a midget, nestling up under the inspector’s nose. “We must proceed in strick flabettical order!”

“No sir, no sir! We’ll proceed in order of age!” another proclaimed angrily.

“What’s your name?” the inspector asked the quasi-midget, who’d managed to speak first.

“Abate’s the name, first name Luigi,” he said, looking around, as if to rebut any differences of opinion.

Montalbano congratulated himself for guessing right. He’d made a bet with himself that the pipsqueak who was advocating that they proceed in alphabetical order was named either Abate or Abete, since there were no names like Alvar Aalto in Sicily.

“And yours?”

“Arturo Zotta. And I’m the oldest person here!”

The inspector was right about the second one, too.

Having wended his adventure-filled way through those ten people, who seemed more like a hundred, the inspector barricaded himself in his office with Fazio and Galluzzo, leaving Catarella on guard to contain any further geriatric riots.

“But why are they all here already?”

“If you really want to know the full story, Inspector, four of the people you summoned, two husbands with their wives, showed up at eight o‘clock this morning,” Fazio explained. “What do you expect? They’re old, they don’t get enough sleep, the curiosity was eating them alive. Just think, there’s a couple out there that wasn’t supposed to be here till ten.”

“Listen, let’s agree on a plan. You’re free to ask whatever questions you think most appropriate. But there are a few that are indispensable. Write this down. First question: Did you know the Griffos before the excursion? If so, where, how, and when? If anyone says they knew the Griffos beforehand, don’t let them leave, because I want to talk to them. Second question: Where were the Griffos sitting on the bus, both on the way there and on the way back? Third question: During the excursion, did the Griffos talk to anyone? And if so, what about? Fourth question: Do you know what the Griffos did during the day they spent at Tindari? Did they meet anyone there? Did they go into anyone’s house? Any information they may have is essential. Fifth question: Did the Griffos get off the bus at any of the three extra stops made on the way back at the request of the passengers? If so, at which of the three? Did they see them get back on the bus? Sixth and final question: Do they remember seeing the Griffos after the bus returned to Vigàta?”

Fazio and Galluzzo looked at each other.

“Sounds like you think something happened to the Griffos on the way back,” said Fazio.

“It’s just a conjecture. But it’s what we’re going to work with. If someone then comes out and says he saw them get off in Vigàta and go quietly home, we’ll take our conjecture and stick it where the sun don’t shine. And we’ll start all over again. One important thing, however. Try not to get side-tracked; if we give these geezers too much rope, they’re likely to tell us their life stories. And another thing: when questioning couples, arrange it so that one of you gets the wife and the other the husband.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise the one will affect what the other says, in all good faith.You two will take three apiece, I’ll take the rest. If you do as I say, with the Virgin’s blessing we’ll be done in no time.”

From the first interrogation, the inspector realized that he’d almost certainly been wrong in his prediction, and that every dialogue could easily stray into absurdity.

“We met a few minutes ago. I believe your name is Arturo Zotta, is that right?”

“Of course it’s right. Arturo Zotta, son of Giovanni Zotta. My father had a cousin who was a tinsmith, an’ people often mistook him for my father. But my father—”

“Mr. Zotta, I—”

“I also wanted to say that I’m very pleased.”

“About what?”

“‘Cause you did as I said you should do.”

“And what’s that?”

“Go by age. ‘Cause I’m the oldest of the lot, I am. I’ll be seventy-seven in three months and five days. You gotta respect the elderly.That’s what I keep tellin’ my grandchildren, who’re a nasty bunch. It’s lack of respect that’s screwin’ up the whole stinking world! You weren’t even born in Mussolini’s day. With Mussolini around, there was respect and plenty of it. And if you didn’t have no respect, wham! He’d cut your head right off. I remember—”

“Mr. Zotta, to be honest, we decided not to follow any order at all, alphabetical or—”

The old man giggled to himself, all in ee sounds.

“Was I right, eh? Was I? I‘da bet my life on it! In this place, which should be a temple of order—nosirree! They don’t give a good goddamn about order! Ass-backwards, that’s how they do things here! Anything goes! Pell-mell, harum-scarum, topsy-turvy! You like walking on your hands? That’s what I say. And then we complain when our kids take drugs and steal and kill ...”

Montalbano cursed himself. How did ever let himself get trapped by this ancient motormouth? He had to stop the avalanche. Immediately, or he would be inexorably swept away by it.

“Mr. Zotta, please, let’s not digress.”

“Wha‘?”

“Let’s not get off the subject!”

“Who’s gettin’ off the subject? You think I got up at six in the morning just to come here and talk about the first thing that comes into my head?You think I don’t got better things to do? I know I’m retired and all, but—”

“Did you know the Griffos?”

“The Griffos? Never seen ‘em before the tour. And after the tour, neither, can’t say as I met ’em even then. The name, yes. I heard ‘em call it out when the driver was calling the roll before leaving, and they said ’Present.‘We didn’t even say hello or talk. Not a peep. They just stayed real quiet and all by themselves, mindin’ their own business. Now I say, Mr. Inspector, these excursions are nice when everybody stays together.You joke, you laugh, you sing songs. But if—”

“Are you sure you never met the Griffos?”

“Where wouldIamet ‘em?”

“I dunno, at the market, the tobacco shop ...”

“My wife does the shopping an’ I don’t smoke. On the other hand ...”

“On the other hand?”

“I used to know a guy named Pietro Giffo. Mighta been a relative, only the r was missing. This Giffo was a traveling salesman, the kind of guy who liked a good joke. One time—”

“Did you by any chance run into the Griffos at any time during the day you spent in Tindari?”

“Me and the wife, we never see anyone from the group when we get to where we’re going. We go to Palermo? I got a brother-in-law there. We go down to Erice? I got a cousin lives there. They roll out the red carpet, invite us to lunch. And Tindari, forget about it! I got a nephew there, Filippo, he come to pick us up at the bus stop, took us to his house, and his wife served us a sfincione for the first course, and for the second—”

“When the driver called roll for the return home, were the Griffos present?”

“Yessir, I heard ‘em answer.”

“Did you notice if they got off the bus at any of the three extra stops the bus made on the way back?”

“I was just telling you, Inspector, what my nephew Filippo gave us to eat. Well, we couldn’t even get up out of our seats, that’s how stuffed we were! On the way back, when we stopped for caffellatte like we planned, I didn’t even want to get off the bus. But then the wife reminded me it was all paid for anyways. What we gonna do, waste our money? So I just had a little spot of milk with two cookies. And immediately I start to feel sleepy. Always happens to me after I eat. Anyways, I nodded off. And it’s a good thing I didn’t have any coffee! ‘Cause, lemme tell you, when I drink coffee—”

“—You can never get to sleep. Once you got back to Vigàta, did you see the Griffos get off the bus?”

“Dear Inspector, at that hour, dark as it was, with me practically not knowing if.my own wife was gettin’ off the bus!”

“Do you remember where you sat?”

“That I do, I remember where we was sittin‘, the wife and me. Right in the middle of the bus. In front of us was the Bufalottas, behind us was the Raccuglias, and beside us the Persicos. We already knew all of them, it was our fifth tour together. The Bufalottas, poor things, they need to take their mind off their troubles. Their oldest boy, Pippino, died when—”

“Do you remember where the Griffos were seated?”

“In the last row, I think.”

“The one with five seats in a row, without armrests?”

“I think so.”

“Good. That’s all, Mr. Zotta, you can go now.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean we’re done. You can go home.”

“What? What the hell is this anyway? You trouble a seventy-seven-year-old man and a seventy-five-year-old woman for this kind of bullshit? We got up at six in the morning for this! You think that’s right?”

,When the last of the old folks had left it was nearly one o‘clock, and the police station looked as if it had been the site of a very crowded picnic. Granted, there was no grass in the office, but where are you going to find grass nowadays? That stuff that still manages to grow on the outskirts of town, you call that grass? Four stunted, half-yellowed blades where, if you stick your hand in there, chances are ninety-nine out of a hundred you’ll get pricked by a hidden syringe?

With these fine thoughts, a bad mood was descending again on the inspector when he realized that Catarella, assigned cleanup duty, had come to a sudden halt, broom in one hand and something not clearly identifiable in the other.

“My, my, my! Wouldja look at that!” Catarella muttered, flabbergasted as he eyed what he’d picked up off the floor.

“What is it?”

All at once Catarella’s face turned a flaming red.

“A profellattict, Chief!”

“Used?!” the inspector asked, astonished.

“No, Chief, still in its wrapper.”

There: that was the only difference from the trash left behind at a real picnic. As for everything else, the same depressing filth, tissue paper, cigarette butts, cans of Coca-Cola and orangeade, bottles of mineral water, pieces of bread and cookies, even an ice-cream cone slowly melting in a corner.

As Montalbano had already tabulated from an initial comparison of the answers given to him, Fazio, and Galluzzo—and this, no doubt, was another, if not the main reason for his foul mood—it turned out that they knew not a whit more much about the Griffos than they had before.

The bus had exactly fifty-three seats, not counting the driver’s. The forty passengers had all gathered in the front part of the coach, twenty on one side of the aisle, twenty on the other. The Griffos, on the other hand, had sat in two of the five seats in the final row, on both the outward and return journeys, with the big rear window behind them. They had spoken to no one and no one had spoken to them. Fazio reported that one of the passengers had said to him: “You know what? After a while we forgot all about them. It was as if they weren’t traveling in the same coach with us.”

“But,” the inspector cut in, “we still don’t have the deposition of that couple whose wife is sick. Scimè, I think they’re called.”

Fazio gave a little smile.

“Did you really think Mrs. Scimè was going to miss the party? With all her girlfriends there? No, she came, together with her husband, though she could barely stand up. She had a fever of a hundred and two. I talked to her, Galluzzo talked to the husband. No dice. The lady could have spared herself the strain.”

They looked at each other in dejection.

“A night wasted, and it’s a girl,” commented Galluzzo, quoting the proverbial saying—Nottata persa e figlia fìmmina—of the husband who has spent a whole night beside his wife in labor, only to see her give birth to a baby girl instead of that much-desired son.

“Shall we go eat?” asked Fazio, getting up.

“You two go ahead. I’m going to stay a little while yet. Who’s on duty?”

“Gallo.”

Left to himself, he started studying the sketch Fazio had made of the bus’s layout. There was a small isolated rectangle at the top with the word “driver” written inside, followed by twelve rows of four little rectangles, each bearing the name of its occupant, or left empty when vacant.

Eyeing it, the inspector became aware that Fazio must have resisted the temptation to draw much larger rectangles with the vital statistics of each occupant inside: first and last name, father’s name, mother’s maiden name, etc. In the last row of five seats, Fazio had written “Griffo” in such a way that each of the letters occupied one of the five little rectangles, except for the double f. Apparently he hadn’t managed to find out which of the five places the vanished couple had sat in.

Montalbano started to imagine the journey to himself. After the initial greetings, a few minutes of inevitable silence as people got comfortable, unburdening themselves of scarves, caps, and hats, checking purses or pockets for reading glasses, house keys, etc. Then the first signs of cheer, the first audible conversations, the overlapping phrases ... And the driver asking: Want me to turn on the radio? A chorus of “no” ... And maybe, from time to time, somebody turning around towards the back, towards the last row where the Griffos sat next to each other, immobile and as though deaf, since the eight vacant seats between them and the other passengers formed a kind of barrier against the sounds, the words, the noise, the laughter.

At this point Montalbano slapped himself on the forehead. He’d forgotten! The driver had told him something very specific, and he’d let it completely slip his mind.

“Gallo!”

What came out of his mouth was less the name than a strangled cry. The door flew open, a frightened Gallo appeared.

“What’s wrong, Inspector?”

“Call me the bus company on the double, I forget the name. If there’s anyone there, let me talk to them.”

He was in luck. The accountant answered.

“I need some information. On the excursion to Tindari last Sunday, was there anyone else in the coach besides the driver and passengers?”

“Of course. You see, Inspector, our company allows sales representatives for certain businesses to present their products. Kitchenware, detergents, knickknacks, that sort of thing ...”

This was said in the tone of a king granting a favor.

“How much do you get paid for this?” asked Montalbano, the disrespectful subject.

The accountant’s regal tone turned into a kind of painful stammering.

“Well ... you h-have to c-consider ... that the percentage—”

“I’m not interested. I want the name and telephone number of the salesperson who went on that excursion.”

“Hello? Is this the Dileo household? Inspector Montalbano here. I’d like to speak to Mrs. or Miss Beatrice Dileo.”

“This is Beatrice Dileo, Inspector. And it’s ”miss.“ I was wondering when you would get around to questioning me. If you hadn’t called by the end of the day, I was going to come to the station tomorrow.”

“Have you finished your lunch?”

“I haven’t started yet. I just got back from Palermo. I had an exam at the university. Since I live alone, I ought to be preparing something to eat, but I don’t really feel like it.”

“Would you like to meet me for lunch?”

“Sure, why not?”

“Meet me in half an hour at the Trattoria San Calogero.”

The eight men and four women eating in the trattoria at that moment all stopped, one after another, forks in midair, to stare at the girl who’d just walked in. A real beauty, tall, slender, long blond hair, blue eyes. The kind one sees on the covers of magazines, except that this one had the look of a nice family girl. What was she doing in the Trattoria San Calogero? The inspector had barely the time to ask himself this question when the creature headed straight for his table.

“You’re Inspector Montalbano, aren’t you? I’m Beatrice Dileo.”

She sat down. Montalbano remained standing for a moment, at a loss. Beatrice Dileo hadn’t a trace of makeup on her face; she looked that way naturally. Perhaps that was why the women present continued to eye her without envy. How can one envy a jasmine flower?

“What’ll it be?” asked Calogero, approaching their table. “Today I’ve got a risotto in squid ink that’s really special.”

“Sounds good to me. And what’ll you have, Beatrice?”

“I’ll have the same, thanks.”

Montalbano was pleased to note that she didn’t add the typically female admonition: Not too much, mind you. Just two spoonfuls. One spoonful. Three grains of rice, no more. Unbearable.

“For the second course, there’s last night’s catch of seabass, or else—”

“Forget the ‘or else.’ I’ll have the bass. How about you, Beatrice?”

“The bass.”

“For you, Inspector, the usual mineral water and Corvo white. For you, signorina?”

“The same.”

What were they, married?

“By the way, Inspector,” Beatrice said with a smile, “I have a confession to make. When I’m eating, I’m unable to speak. So you should interrogate me now, before the risotto comes, or between courses.”

Jesus! So it was true: the miracle of meeting one’s spiritual twin did sometimes happen. Too bad that, at a glance, she looked to be twenty-five or so years younger than he.

“Never mind the interrogation. Tell me about yourself instead.”

And so before Calogero arrived with the special risotto, which was more than simply special, Montalbano learned that Beatrice was indeed twenty-five years old, had finished her course work in literature at the University of Palermo, and served as a representative of Sirio Kitchenware to support herself while continuing her studies. Sicilian despite appearances, surely of Norman extraction, she was born at Aidone, where her parents still lived. Why did she herself live and work in Vigàta? Simple: two years earlier in Aidone, she’d met a boy from Vigàta, also a student at Palermo, but in law. They fell in love, she had a terrible quarrel with her parents, and she followed the boy to Vigàta. They took an apartment on the sixth floor of an ugly tenement in Piano Lanterna. But from the bedroom balcony you could see the sea. After four months of bliss, Roberto—that was her boyfriend’s name—left her a polite little note telling her he was moving to Rome, where his fiancée, a distant cousin, was waiting for him. She hadn’t had the nerve to go back to Aidone. End of story.

Then, with their noses, palates, and throats invaded by the heavenly scent of the risotto, they fell silent, as agreed.

They resumed speaking while waiting for the bass. The subject of the Griffos was broached by Beatrice herself.

“That couple who disappeared—”

“Excuse me, but if you were in Palermo, how did you know—”

“The manager of Sirio phoned me yesterday and said you summoned all the passengers for questioning.”

“Okay, go on.”

“I naturally have to bring a collection of samples with me. If the coach is full, the samples—which are cumbersome and fill two big boxes—are put in the baggage compartment. But if the coach isn’t full, I usually put them in the last row, the one with five seats. I fit the two boxes into the two seats farthest from the exit, so as not to get in the way of people getting on or off the bus. Well, the Griffos went straight to the last row and sat down there.”

“Which of the three remaining places did they take?”

“Well, he sat in the center seat, the one with the aisle in front of it. His wife sat beside him. The seat left unoccupied was the one closest to the exit. When I arrived at seven-thirty that morning—”

“With the samples?”

“No. The boxes had already been put on the bus the evening before, by an employee of Sirio. The same employee also comes and takes them away when we return to Vigàta.”

“Go on.”

“When I saw them sitting right next to the boxes, I suggested they might want to find better seats, since the coach was still almost entirely empty and no places were reserved. I pointed out that, since I had to display the merchandise, I might be a nuisance to them, always going back and forth. The woman didn’t even look at me. She only stared straight ahead; I thought she was deaf. The husband, on the other hand, looked worried—no, not worried, but tense. He replied that I could do whatever I needed to do, but they preferred to stay where they were. Halfway through the journey, when I had to get down to work, I asked him to move.You know what he did? He bumped his hip against his wife‘s, forcing her to move into the open seat beside the exit, and slid into her seat, so I could get my frying pan. But when I turned around, with my back to the driver, microphone in one hand and frying pan in the other, the Griffos were already back in their old places.”

She smiled.

“I feel pretty ridiculous when I do that routine. But then ... There’s one passenger who’s almost always there, Cavaliere Mistretta, who’s forced his wife to buy three full sets. Get it? He’s in love with me! You can’t imagine the looks his wife gives me. Anyway, to each buyer we give a complimentary talking watch, the kind the vù cumprà sell for ten thousand lire apiece. But all passengers get a free ballpoint pen with the company name, Sirio, written on it. Well, the Griffos didn’t even want the pen.”

The fish arrived and, once again, silence reigned.

“Would you like some fruit? Coffee?” Montalbano asked when, sadly, all that was left of the bass were the bones and the heads.

“No,” said Beatrice, “I like to keep that aftertaste of the sea.”

Not just a twin, but a Siamese twin.

“Anyway, Inspector, the whole time I was giving my sales talk, I kept looking over at the Griffos. They just sat there, stock-still, only he turned around a few times to look back through the rear window. As if he was afraid some car might be following the bus.”

“Or the opposite,” said the inspector. “To make sure that some car was still following the bus.”

“Maybe. They didn’t eat with us in Tindari. When we all got off the bus, they remained seated. When we got back on, they were still there. On the drive back they didn’t once get out, not even when we stopped for caffellatte. Of one thing I’m certain, however: it was Mr. Griffo who asked that we stop at the café-trattoria Paradiso. We were almost home, and the driver wanted to keep going. But he protested. And in the end almost everybody got out. I stayed inside. Then the driver honked the horn, the passengers reboarded, and the bus left.”

“Are you sure the Griffos also got back on?”

“I can’t say for certain. During the stop, I started listening to music on my Walkman, so I was wearing headphones. And my eyes were closed. In the end I dozed off. I didn’t reopen my eyes till we were back in Vigàta and most of the passengers had already got off the bus.”

“So it’s possible the Griffos were already walking back home.”

Beatrice opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again.

“Go on,” the inspector said. “Whatever it is, even if it seems silly to you, might be of use to me.”

“Okay. When the company employee went into the bus to take away the samples, I gave him a hand. As I was pulling the first of the big boxes toward me, I leaned one hand on the seat where Mr. Griffo should have been sitting just a few minutes before. Well, it was cold. If you ask me, those two did not get back on the bus after the stop at the café Paradiso.”