The Shape of Water

16

“Hello, Montalbano? It’s Mimì Augello. Sorry to disturb you, but I called to reassure you. I’ve come back to home base. When are you leaving?”

“The flight from Palermo’s at three, so I have to leave Vigàta around twelve-thirty, right after lunch.”

“Then we won’t be seeing each other, since I think I have to stay a little late at the office. Any news?”

“Fazio will fill you in.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“Up to and including Thursday.”

“Have fun and get some rest. Fazio has your number in Genoa, doesn’t he? If anything big comes up, I’ll give you a ring.”

His assistant inspector, Mimì Augello, had returned punctually from his holidays, and thus Montalbano could now leave without problems. Augello was a capable person. Montalbano phoned Livia to tell her his time of arrival, and Livia, pleased by the news, said she would meet him at the airport.

When he got to the office, Fazio informed him that the workers from the salt factory, who had all been “made mobile”—a pious euphemism for being fired—had occupied the train station. Their wives, by lying down on the tracks, were preventing all trains from passing. The carabinieri were already on the scene. Should they go down there, too?

“To do what?”

“I don’t know, to give them a hand.”

“Give whom a hand?”

“What do you mean, chief ? The carabinieri, the forces of order, which would be us, until proved to the contrary.”

“If you’re really dying to help somebody, help the ones occupying the station.”

“Chief, I’ve always suspected it: you’re a communist.”

~

“Inspector? This is Stefano Luparello. Please excuse me. Has my cousin Giorgio been to see you?”

“No, I don’t have any news.”

“We’re very worried here at home. As soon as he recovered from his sedative, he went out and vanished again. Mama would like some advice: shouldn’t we ask the police to conduct a search?”

“No. Please tell your mother I don’t think that’s necessary. Giorgio will turn up. Tell her not to worry.”

“In any case, if you hear any news, please let us know.”

“That will be very difficult, because I’m going away on holiday. I’ll be back Friday.”

~

The first three days spent with Livia at her house in Boccadasse made him forget Sicily almost entirely, thanks to a few nights of leaden, restorative sleep, with Livia in his arms. Almost entirely, though, because two or three times, by surprise, the smell, the speech, the things of his island picked him up and carried him weightless through the air, for a few seconds, back to Vigàta. And each time he was sure that Livia had noticed his momentary absence, his wavering, and she had looked at him without saying anything.

~

Thursday evening he got an entirely unexpected phone call from Fazio.

“Nothing important, chief. I just wanted to hear your voice and confirm that you’ll be back tomorrow.”

Montalbano was well aware that relations between the sergeant and Augello were not the easiest.

“Do you need comforting? Has that mean Augello been spanking your little behind?”

“He criticizes everything I do.”

“Be patient, I’ll be back tomorrow. Any news?”

“Yesterday they arrested the mayor and three town councillors. For graft and accepting bribes.”

“They finally succeeded.”

“Yeah, but don’t get your hopes too high, chief.

They’re trying to copy the Milanese judges here, but Milan is very far away.”

“Anything else?”

“We found Gambardella, remember him? The guy who was shot at when he was trying to fill his tank?

He wasn’t laid out in the countryside, but goat-tied in the trunk of his own car, which was later set on fire and completely burnt up.”

“If it was completely burnt up, how did you know Gambardella was goat-tied?”

“They used metal wire, chief.”

“See you tomorrow, Fazio.”

This time it wasn’t the smell and speech of his island that sucked him back there but the stupidity, the ferocity, the horror.

~

After making love, Livia fell silent for a while, then took his hand.

“What’s wrong? What did your sergeant tell you?”

“Nothing important, I assure you.”

“Then why are you suddenly so gloomy?”

Montalbano felt confirmed in his conviction: if there was one person in all the world to whom he could sing the whole High Mass, it was Livia. To the commissioner he’d sung only half the Mass, skipping some parts. He sat up in bed, fluffed up the pillow.

“Listen.”

~

He told her about the Pasture, about Luparello, about the affection a nephew of his, Giorgio, had for him, about how at some point this affection turned (degenerated?) into love, into passion, about the final tryst in the bachelor pad at Capo Massaria, about Luparello’s death and how young Giorgio, driven mad by the fear of scandal—not for himself but for his uncle’s image and memory—had dressed him back up as best he could, then dragged him to the car to drive him away and leave the body to be found somewhere else. . . .

He told her about Giorgio’s despair when he realized that this fiction wouldn’t work, that everyone would see he was carrying a dead man in the car, about how he got the idea to put the neck brace he’d been wearing until that very day—and which he still had in the car—on the corpse, about how he had tried to hide the brace with a piece of black cloth, how he became suddenly afraid he might have an epileptic fit, which he suffered from, about how he had phoned Rizzo—

Montalbano explained to her who the lawyer was—

and how Rizzo had realized that this death, with a few arrangements, could be his lucky break.

He told her about Ingrid, about her husband Giacomo, about Dr. Cardamone, about the violence—he couldn’t think of a better word—to which the doctor customarily resorted with his daughter-in-law (“That’s disgusting,” Livia commented), about how Rizzo had suspicions as to their relationship and tried to implicate Ingrid, getting Cardamone but not himself to swallow the bait; he told her about Marilyn and his accomplice, about the phantasmagorical ride in the car, about the horrific pantomime acted out inside the parked car at the Pasture (Livia: “Excuse me a minute, I need a strong drink”). And when she returned, he told her still other sordid details—the necklace, the purse, the clothes—he told her about Giorgio’s heartrending despair when he saw the photographs, having understood Rizzo’s double betrayal, of him and of Luparello’s memory, which he had wanted to save at all costs.

“Wait a minute,” said Livia. “Is this Ingrid beautiful?”

“Very beautiful. And since I know exactly what you’re thinking, I’ll tell you even more: I destroyed all the false evidence against her.”

“That’s not like you,” she said resentfully.

“I did even worse things, just listen. Rizzo, who now had Cardamone in the palm of his hand, achieved his political objective, but he made a mistake: he underestimated Giorgio’s reaction. Giorgio’s an extremely beautiful boy.”

“Oh, come on! Him, too!” said Livia, trying to make light.

“But with a very fragile personality,” the inspector continued. “Riding the wave of his emotions, devastated, he ran to the house at Capo Massaria, grabbed Luparello’s pistol, tracked down Rizzo, beat him to a pulp, and shot him at the base of the skull.”

“Did you arrest him?”

“No, I just said I did worse than destroy evidence.

You see, my colleagues in Montelusa think—and the hypothesis is not just hot air—that Rizzo was killed by the Mafia. And I never told them what I thought the truth was.”

“Why not?”

Montalbano didn’t answer, throwing his hands up in the air. Livia went into the bathroom, and the inspector heard the water running in the tub. A little later, after asking permission to enter, he found her still in the full tub, her chin resting on her raised knees.

“Did you know there was a pistol in that house?”

“Yes.”

“And you left it there?”

“Yes.”

“So you gave yourself a promotion, eh?” asked Livia after a long silence. “From inspector to god—a fourth-rate god, but still a god.”

~

After getting off the airplane, he headed straight for the airport café. He was in dire need of a real espresso after the vile, dark dishwater they had forced on him in flight. He heard someone calling him: it was Stefano Luparello.

“Where are you going, Mr. Luparello, back to Milan?”

“Yes, back to work. I’ve been away too long. I’m also going to look for a larger apartment; as soon as I find one, my mother will come live with me. I don’t want to leave her alone.”

“That’s a very good idea, even though she has her sister and nephew in Montelusa—”

The young man stiffened.

“So you don’t know?”

“Don’t know what?”

“Giorgio is dead.”

Montalbano put down his demitasse; the shock had made him spill the coffee.

“How did that happen?”

“Do you remember, the day of your departure I called you to find out if you’d heard from him?”

“Of course.”

“The following morning he still hadn’t returned, so I felt compelled to alert the police and carabinieri.

They conducted some extremely superficial searches—

I’m sorry, perhaps they were too busy investigating Rizzo’s murder. On Sunday afternoon a fisherman, from his boat, saw that a car had fallen onto the rocks, right below the San Filippo bend. Do you know the area? It’s just before Capo Massaria.”

“Yes, I know the place.”

“Well, the fisherman rowed in the direction of the car, saw that there was a body in the driver’s seat, and raced off to report it.”

“Did they manage to establish the cause of the accident?”

“Yes. My cousin, as you know, from the moment Father died, lived in a state of almost constant derangement: too many tranquilizers, too many sedatives. Instead of taking the curve, he continued straight—he was going very fast at that moment—and crashed through the little guard wall. He never got over my father’s death. He had a real passion for him. He loved him.”

He uttered the two words, “passion” and “love,”

in a firm, precise tone, as if to eliminate, with crisp outlines, any possible blurring of their meaning. The voice over the loudspeaker called for passengers taking the Milan flight.

As soon as he was outside the airport parking lot, where he had left his car, Montalbano pressed the accelerator to the floor. He didn’t want to think about anything, only to concentrate on driving. After some sixty miles he stopped at the shore of an artificial lake, got out of the car, opened the trunk, took out the neck brace, threw it into the water, and waited for it to sink. Only then did he smile. He had wanted to act like a god; what Livia said was true. But that fourth-rate god, in his first and, he hoped, last experience, had guessed right.

~

To reach Vigàta he had no choice but to pass in front of the Montelusa police headquarters. And it was at that exact moment that his car decided suddenly to die on him. He got out and was about to go ask for help at the station when a policeman who knew him and had witnessed his useless maneuvers approached him. The officer lifted up the hood, fiddled around a bit, then closed it.

“That should do it. But you ought to have it looked at.”

Montalbano got back in the car, turned on the ignition, then bent over to pick up some newspapers that had fallen to the floor. When he sat back up, Anna was leaning into the open window.

“Anna, how are you?”

The girl didn’t answer; she simply glared at him.

“Well?”

“And you’re supposed to be an honest man?”

Montalbano realized she was referring to the night when she saw Ingrid lying half naked on his bed.

“No, I’m not,” he said. “But not for the reasons you think.”