The Shape of Water

8

He returned home tired, intending to go straight to bed, but almost mechanically—it was sort of a tic—he turned on the television. The TeleVigàta anchorman, after talking about the event of the day, a shoot-out between petty mafiosi on the outskirts of Miletta a few hours earlier, announced that the provincial secretariat of the party to which Luparello belonged (actually, used to belong) had convened in Montelusa. It was a highly unusual meeting, one that in less turbulent times than these would have been held, out of due respect for the deceased, at least thirty days after his passing; but things being what they were, the troubling situation called for quick, lucid decisions. And so a new provincial secretary had been elected, unanimously: Dr. Angelo Cardamone, chief osteologist at Montelusa Hospital, a man who had always fought with Luparello from within the party, but fairly and courageously and always out in the open. This clash of ideas—the newsman continued—could be simplified in the following terms: Engineer Luparello was in favor of maintaining the four-party governing coalition while allowing the introduction of pristine new forces untrammeled by politics (read: not yet subpoenaed for questioning), whereas the osteologist tended to favor a dialogue, however cautious and clear-eyed, with the left. The newly elected secretary had been receiving telegrams and telephone calls of congratulation, even from the opposition. Cardamone, who in an interview appeared moved but determined, declared that he would commit himself to the best of his abilities not to betray his predecessor’s hallowed memory, and concluded by asserting that he would devote “his diligent labor and knowledge” to the now-renovated party.

“Thank God he’ll devote it to the party,” Inspector Montalbano couldn’t help but exclaim, since Dr.

Cardamone’s knowledge, surgically speaking, had left more people hobbled than a violent earthquake usually does.

The newsman’s next words made the inspector prick up his ears. To enable Cardamone to follow his own path without losing sight of the principles and people that represented the very best of Luparello’s political endeavors, the members of the secretariat had besought Counselor Pietro Rizzo, the engineer’s spiritual heir, to work alongside the new secretary. After some understandable resistance, given the onerous tasks that came with the unexpected appointment, Rizzo had let himself be persuaded to accept. In his interview with TeleVigàta, Rizzo, also deeply moved, declared that he had no choice but to assume this weighty burden if he was to remain faithful to the memory of his mentor and friend, whose watchword was always and only: “to serve.”

Montalbano reacted with surprise. How could this new secretary so blithely swallow having to work, with official sanction, alongside the man who had been his principal adversary’s most loyal right-hand man? His surprise was short-lived, however, and proved naive once the inspector had given the matter a moment’s rational thought. Indeed that party had always distinguished itself by its innate inclination for compromise, for finding the middle path. It was possible that Cardamone didn’t yet have enough clout to go it alone and felt the need for extra support.

He changed the channel. On the Free Channel, the voice of the leftist opposition, there was Nicolò Zito, the most influential of their editorialists, explaining how in Sicily, and in the province of Montelusa in particular, mutatis mutandis—or zara zabara, to say it in Sicilian—things never budged, even when there was a storm on the horizon. He quoted, with obvious facility, the prince of Salina’s famous statement about changing everything in order to change nothing and concluded that Luparello and Cardamone were two sides of the same coin, the alloy that coin was made of being none other than Counselor Rizzo.

Montalbano rushed to the phone, dialed the Free Channel’s number, and asked for Zito. There was a bond of common sympathy, almost friendship, between him and the newsman.

“What can I do for you, Inspector?”

“I want to see you.”

“My dear friend, I’m leaving for Palermo tomorrow morning and will be away for at least a week.

How about if I come by to see you in half an hour?

And fix me something to eat. I’m starving.”

A dish of pasta with garlic and oil could be served up without any problem. He opened the refrigerator: Adelina had prepared a hefty dish of boiled shrimp, enough for four. Adelina was the mother of a pair of repeat offenders, the younger of whom was still in prison, having been arrested by Montalbano himself three years earlier.

~

The previous July, when she had come to Vigàta to spend two weeks with him, Livia, upon hearing this story, became terrified.

“Are you insane? One of these days that woman will take revenge and poison your soup!”

“Take revenge for what?”

“For having arrested her son!”

“Is that my fault? Adelina’s well aware it’s not my fault if her son was stupid enough to get caught. I played fair, didn’t use any tricks or traps to arrest him. It was all on the up-and-up.”

“I don’t give a damn about your contorted way of thinking. You have to get rid of her.”

“But if I fire her, who’s going to keep house for me, do my laundry, iron my clothes, and make me dinner?”

“You’ll find somebody else!”

“There you’re wrong. I’ll never find a woman as good as Adelina.”

~

He was about to put the pasta water on the stove when the telephone rang.

“I feel like crawling underground for waking you at this hour” was the introduction.

“I wasn’t sleeping. Who is this?”

“It’s Counselor Pietro Rizzo.”

“Ah, Counselor Rizzo. My congratulations.”

“For what? If it’s for the honor my party has just done me, you should probably offer me your condolences. Believe me, I accepted only out of a sense of undying loyalty to the ideals of the late Mr. Luparello.

But to get back to my reason for calling: I need to see you, Inspector.”

“Now?!”

“Not now, of course, but bear in mind, in any case, that it is an improcrastinable matter.”

“We could do it tomorrow morning, but isn’t the funeral tomorrow? You’ll be very busy, I imagine.”

“Indeed. All afternoon as well. There will be some very important guests, you know, and of course they will linger awhile.”

“So when?”

“Actually, on second thought, I think we could do it tomorrow morning, but first thing. What time do you usually get to the office?”

“Around eight.”

“Eight o’clock would be fine with me. It won’t take but a few minutes.”

“Listen, Counselor, precisely because you will have so little time tomorrow morning, could you perhaps tell me in advance what it’s about?”

“Over the phone?”

“Just a hint.”

“All right. I have heard—though I don’t know how much truth there is in the rumor—that an object found by chance on the ground was turned over to you. I’ve been instructed to reclaim it.”

Montalbano covered the receiver with one hand and literally exploded in a horselike whinny, a mighty guffaw. He had baited the Jacomuzzi hook with the necklace, and the trap had worked like a charm, catching the biggest fish he could ever have hoped for. But how did Jacomuzzi manage to let everyone know things he wasn’t supposed to let anyone know? Did he resort to lasers, to telepathy, to magical shamanistic practices? Montalbano heard Rizzo yelling on the line.

“Hello? Hello? I can’t hear you! What happened, did we get cut off ?”

“No, excuse me, I dropped my pencil and was looking for it. I’ll see you tomorrow at eight.”

~

As soon as he heard the doorbell ring, he put the pasta in the water and went to the door.

“So what’s for supper?” asked Zito as he entered.

“Pasta with garlic and oil, and shrimp with oil and lemon.”

“Excellent.”

“Come into the kitchen and give me a hand.

Meanwhile, my first question is: can you say ‘improcrastinable’?”

“Have you gone soft in the head? You make me race all the way from Montelusa to ask me if I can say some word? Anyway, of course I can say it. No problem.”

He tried to say it three or four times, with increasing obstinacy, but he couldn’t do it, getting more and more marble-mouthed with each try.

“You have to be very adroit, very adroit,” said the inspector, thinking of Rizzo, and he wasn’t referring only to the lawyer’s adroitness in casually uttering tongue twisters.

As they ate, they spoke of eating, as always happens in Italy. Zito, after reminiscing about the heavenly shrimp he had enjoyed ten years earlier at Fiacca, criticized these for being a little overdone and regretted that they lacked a hint of parsley.

“So how is it that you’ve all turned British at the Free Channel?” Montalbano broke in without warning, as they were drinking an exquisite white wine his father had found near Randazzo. He had come by with six bottles the previous week, but it was merely an excuse for them to spend a little time together.

“In what sense, British?”

“In the sense that you’ve refrained from dragging Luparello through the mud, as you would certainly have done in the past. Jesus Christ, the man dies of a heart attack in a kind of open-air brothel among whores, pimps, and buggers, his trousers down around his ankles—it’s downright obscene—and you guys, instead of seizing the moment for all it’s worth, you all toe the line and cast a veil of mercy over how he died.”

“We’re not really in the habit of taking advantage of such things.”

Montalbano started laughing.

“Would you do me a favor, Nicolò? Would you and everyone else at the Free Channel please go fuck yourselves?”

Zito started laughing in turn.

“All right, here’s what happened. A few hours after the body was found, Counselor Rizzo dashed over to see Baron Filò di Baucina, the ‘red baron,’ a millionaire but a Communist, and begged him, with hands folded, not to let the Free Channel mention the circumstances of Luparello’s death. He appealed to the sense of chivalry that the baron’s ancestors seem, long ago, to have possessed. As you know, the baron owns eighty percent of the network. Simple as that.”

“Simple as that, my ass. And so you, Nicolò Zito, who have won the admiration of your adversaries for always saying what needed to be said, you just say ‘yes, sir’ to the baron and lie down?”

“What color is my hair?” asked Zito by way of reply.

“It’s red.”

“I’m red inside and out, Montalbano. I belong to the bad, rancorous Communists, an endangered species.

I accepted the whole bit because I was convinced that those who were saying we shouldn’t sully the poor bastard’s memory by dwelling on the circumstances of his death actually wished him ill, not well, as they were trying to make us think.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, let me explain, my innocent friend. The quickest way to make people forget a scandal is to talk about it as much as possible, on television, in the papers, and so on. Over and over you flog the same dead horse, and pretty soon people start getting fed up.

‘They’re really dragging this out!’ they say. ‘Haven’t we had enough?’ After a couple of weeks the saturation effect is such that nobody wants to hear another word about that scandal. Now do you understand?”

“I think so.”

“If, on the other hand, you hush everything up, the silence itself starts to talk, rumors begin to multiply out of control until you can’t stop them anymore.

You want an example? Do you know how many phone calls we’ve received at the studio precisely because of our silence? Hundreds. So is it true that Mr.

Luparello used to do two women at a time in his car?

Is it true that Mr. Luparello liked to do the sandwich, fucking a whore while a black man worked on him from behind? Then the latest, which came in tonight: is it true that Luparello used to give all his prostitutes fabulous jewels? Apparently somebody found one at the Pasture. Speaking of which, do you know anything about this story?”

“Me? No, that’s just bullshit,” the inspector calmly lied.

“See? I’m sure that in a few months some asshole will come to me and ask if it’s true that Luparello used to bugger little four-year-olds and then stuff them with chestnuts and eat them. The slandering of his name will become eternal, the stuff of legend.

That, I hope, will help you understand why I agreed to sweep it all under the rug.”

“And what’s Cardamone’s position?”

“I don’t know. That was very strange, his election.

In the provincial secretariat they were all Luparello’s men, you see, except for two, who were Cardamone’s, but they were there just for the sake of appearances, to show that they were democratic and all. Clearly the new secretary could have been and should have been a follower of Luparello. Instead, surprise: Rizzo stands up and proposes Cardamone. The other members of the clique were speechless but didn’t dare object. If Rizzo’s talking this way, it must mean there’s something lurking beneath all this which could turn dangerous; better follow the counselor down that path.

And so they vote in favor. Cardamone gets the call, accepts the post, and himself proposes that Rizzo work alongside him, to the great dismay of his two representatives in the secretariat. But here I understand Cardamone: better to have Rizzo aboard—he must have thought—than at large like a loose cannon.”

Zito then proceeded to tell him about a novel he was planning to write, and they went on till four.

~

As he was checking the health of a succulent plant, a gift from Livia that he kept on the windowsill in his office, Montalbano saw a blue government car pull up, the kind equipped with telephone, chauffeur, and bodyguard, the latter of which got out first and opened the rear door for a short, bald man wearing a suit the same color as the car.

“There’s someone outside who needs to talk to me,” he said to the guard. “Send him right in.”

When Rizzo entered, the inspector noted that the upper part of his left sleeve was covered by a broad black band the width of a palm: the counselor was already in mourning for the funeral.

“What can I do to win your forgiveness?”

“For what?”

“For having disturbed you at home, at so late an hour.”

“But you said the matter was improcr—”

“Improcrastinable, yes.”

Such a clever man, Counselor Pietro Rizzo!

“I’ll come to the point. Late last Sunday night a young couple, highly respectable people, having had a bit to drink, decided to indulge an imprudent whim.

The wife persuaded the husband to take her to the Pasture. She was curious about the place and what goes on there. A reprehensible curiosity, to be sure, but nothing more. When the pair arrived at the edge of the Pasture, the woman got out of the car. But almost immediately people began to harass her with obscene propositions, so she got back in the car and they left.

Back at home she realized she’d lost a precious object she was wearing around her neck.”

“What a strange coincidence,” muttered Montalbano, as if to himself.

“Excuse me?”

“I was just noting that at around the same time, and in the same place, Silvio Luparello was dying.”

Rizzo didn’t lose his composure, but assumed a grave expression.

“I noticed the same thing, you know. Tricks of fate.”

“The object you mention, is it a solid-gold necklace with a heart studded with precious stones?”

“That’s the one. I’m here to ask you to return it to its rightful owners, with the same discretion, of course, as you showed when my poor Mr. Luparello was found dead.”

“You’ll have to forgive me,” said the inspector,

“but I haven’t the slightest idea of how to proceed in a case like this. In any event, I think it would have been a different story if the owner herself had come forward.”

“But I have a proper letter of attorney!”

“Really? Let me see it.”

“No problem, Inspector. You must understand, before bandying my clients’ names about, I wanted to be quite sure that you had the same object they were looking for.”

He reached into his jacket pocket, extracted a sheet of paper, and handed it to Montalbano. The inspector read it carefully.

“Who’s this Giacomo Cardamone that signed the letter?”

“He’s the son of Dr. Cardamone, our new provincial secretary.”

Montalbano decided it was time to repeat the performance.

“But it’s so strange!” he mumbled again almost inaudibly, assuming an air of deep contemplation.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

Montalbano did not answer at once, letting the other stew a moment in his own juices.

“I was just thinking that in this whole affair, fate, as you say, is playing too many tricks on us.”

“In what sense, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“In the sense that the son of the new party secretary happens to be in the same place at the same time as the old secretary at the moment of his death. Curious, don’t you think?”

“Now that you bring it to my attention, yes. But I am certain there is not the slightest connection between the two matters, absolutely certain.”

“So am I,” said Montalbano, adding, “I don’t understand this signature next to Giacomo Cardamone’s.”

“That’s his wife’s signature. She’s Swedish. A rather reckless woman, frankly, who seems unable to adapt to our ways.”

“How much is the piece worth, in your opinion?”

“I’m no expert, but the owners said about eighty million lire.”

“Then here’s what we’ll do: Later this morning I’m going to call my colleague Jacomuzzi—he’s got the necklace at the moment—and have it sent back to me. Tomorrow morning I’ll send it over to your office with one of my men.”

“I don’t know how to thank you—”

Montalbano cut him off.

“And you will give my man a proper receipt.”

“But of course!”

“As well as a check for ten million lire—I’ve taken the liberty of rounding off the value of the necklace—

which would be the usual percentage due anyone who finds valuables or large sums of money.”

Rizzo absorbed the blow almost gracefully.

“That seems quite fair. To whom should I make it out?”

“To Baldassare Montaperto, one of the two street cleaners who found Luparello’s body.”

The lawyer carefully wrote down the name.