“How?”
“I don’t know. Maybe by putting him in an orphanage under a false name.”
“Why?”
“Because he met some people he wasn’t supposed to meet.”
Still staring at the sea, Livia thought about Montalbano’s last words.
“I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“If these people François met are Tunisians, perhaps illegal immigrants, couldn’t you, as policemen—”
“They’re not only Tunisian.”
Slowly, as if making a great effort, Livia turned and faced him.
“They’re not?”
“No. And I’m not saying another word.”
“I want him.”
“Who?”
“François. I want him.”
“But, Livia—”
“Shut up. I want him. No one can take him away from me like that, you least of all. I’ve thought long and hard about this, you know, these last few hours. How old are you, Salvo?” “Forty-four, I think.”
“Forty-four and ten months. In two months you’ll be forty-five. I’ve already turned thirty-three. Do you know what that means?”
“No. What what means?”
“We’ve been together for six years. Every now and then we talk about getting married, and then we drop the subject.
We both do, by mutual, tacit consent. And we don’t resume the discussion. We get along so well just the way things are, and our laziness, our egotism, gets the better of us, always.” “Laziness? Egotism? What are you talking about? There are objective difficulties which—”
“—which you can stick up your ass,” Livia brutally concluded.
Montalbano, disconcerted, fell silent. Only once or twice in six years had Livia ever used obscenities, and it was always in troubling, extremely tense circumstances.
“I’m sorry,” Livia said softly. “But sometimes I just can’t stand your camouflage and hypocrisy. Your cynicism is more authentic.”
Montalbano, still silent, took it all in.
“Don’t try to distract me from what I want to say to you.
You’re very good at it; it’s your job. What I want to know is: when do you think we can get married? Give me a straight answer.”
“If it was only up to me . . .”
Livia leapt to her feet.
“That’s enough! I’m going to bed. I took two sleeping pills and my plane leaves Palermo at noon tomorrow. But first I want to finish what I have to say. If we ever get married, it’ll be when you’re fifty and I’m thirty-eight. In other words, too late to have children. And we still haven’t realized that somebody, God or whoever is acting in His place, has already sent us a child, at just the right moment.” She turned her back and went inside. Montalbano stayed outside on the veranda, gazing at the sea, but unable to bring it into focus.
o o o
An hour before midnight, he made sure Livia was sleeping profoundly, then he unplugged the phone, gathered together all the loose change he could find, turned off the lights, and went out. He drove to the telephone booth in the parking lot of the Marinella Bar.
“Nicolò? Montalbano here. A couple of things. Tomorrow morning, around midday, send somebody along with a cameraman to the neighborhood of police headquarters.
There are some new developments.”
“Thanks. What else?”
“I was wondering, do you have a very small videocamera, one that doesn’t make any noise? The smaller the better.”
“You want to leave posterity a document of your prowess in bed?”
“Do you know how to use this camera?”
“Of course.”
“Then bring it to me.”
“When?”
“As soon as you’ve finished your midnight news report.
But don’t ring the doorbell when you get here, Livia’s asleep.”
o o o
“Hello, is this the prefect of Trapani? Please excuse me for calling so late. This is Corrado Menichelli of the Corriere della Sera. I’m calling from Milan. We recently got wind of an extremely serious development, but before publishing our report on it, we wanted to confirm a few things with you personally, since they concern you directly.” “Extremely serious? What is this about?”
“Is it true that pressure was put on you to accommodate a certain Tunisian journalist during his recent visit to Mazàra? I advise that you think a moment before answering, in your own interest.” “I don’t need to think for even a second!” the prefect exploded. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you remember? That’s very odd, you know, since this all happened barely three weeks ago.”
“None of this ever happened! No pressure was ever put on me! I don’t know anything about any Tunisian journalists!”
“Mr. Prefect, we have proof that—”
“You can’t have proof of something that never happened!
Let me speak immediately to the editor-in-chief !” Montalbano hung up. The prefect of Trapani was sincere; the head of his cabinet, on the other hand, was not.
o o o
“Valente? Montalbano here. I just spoke with the prefect of Trapani; I was pretending to be a reporter for the Corriere della Sera. He doesn’t know anything. The whole thing was set up by our friend, Commendator Spadaccia.” “Where are you calling from?”
“Not to worry. I’m calling from a phone booth. Now here’s what we should do next, providing that you agree.” To tell him, he spent every last piece of change but one.
o o o
“Mimì? Montalbano here. Were you sleeping?”
“No, I was dancing. What the fuck did you expect?”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Hell, yes! After the position you put me in!”
“Me? What position?”
“Sending me to take away the kid. Livia looked at me with hatred. I had to tear him out of her arms. It made me feel sick to my stomach.”
“Where’d you take François?”
“To Calapiàno, to my sister’s.”
“Is it safe there?”
“Very safe. She and her husband have a great big house with a farm, three miles from the village, very isolated. My sister has two boys, one of them the same age as François.
He’ll be fine there. It took me two and a half hours to get there, and two and a half to drive back.”
“Tired, eh?”
“Very tired. I won’t be in tomorrow morning.”
“All right, you won’t be in, but I want you at my house, in Marinella, by nine at the latest.”
“What for?”
“To pick Livia up and drive her to the Palermo airport.”
“Okay.”
“How come you’re suddenly not so tired anymore, eh, Mimì?”
o o o
Livia was now having a troubled sleep, groaning from time to time. Montalbano closed the bedroom door, sat down in the armchair, and turned on the television at very low volume.
On TeleVigàta, Galluzzo’s brother-in-law was saying that the Foreign Ministry in Tunis had issued a statement regarding some erroneous information about the unfortunate killing of a Tunisian fisherman aboard an Italian motor trawler that had entered Tunisian waters. The statement denied the wild rumors according to which the fisherman was not, in fact, a fisherman, but the rather well-known journalist Ben Dhahab.
It was an obvious case of two men with the same name, since Ben Dhahab the journalist was alive and well and still working. In the city of Tunis alone, the statement went on to say, there are more than twenty men named Ben Dhahab. Montalbano turned off the television. So the tide had started to turn, and people were running for cover, raising fences, putting up smoke screens.
o o o
He heard a car pull up and stop in the clearing in front of the house. The inspector rushed to the door to open up. It was Nicolò.
“I got here as fast as I could,” he said, entering.
“Thanks.”
“Livia’s asleep?” the newsman asked, looking around.
“Yes. She’s leaving for Genoa tomorrow morning.”
“I’m so sorry I won’t have a chance to say good-bye to her.”
“Nicolò, did you bring the videocamera?”
The newsman reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a gadget no larger than four packs of cigarettes stacked two by two.
“Here you are. I’m going home to bed.”
“No you’re not. First you have to hide this somewhere it won’t be visible.”
“How am I going to do that, if Livia’s sleeping in the next room?”
“Nicolò, I don’t know why you’ve got it into your head that I want to film myself fucking. I want you to set up the camera in this room.”
“Tell me what it is you want to film.”
“A conversation between me and a man sitting exactly where you are now.”
Nicolò looked straight ahead and smiled.
“Those shelves full of books seem like they were put there for that very purpose.”
Taking a chair from the table, he set it next to the bookcase and climbed up on it. He shuffled a few books, set up the camera, sat back down where he was before, and looked up.
“From here you can’t see it,” he said, satisfied. “Come and check for yourself.”
The inspector checked.
“That seems fine.”
“Stay there,” said Nicolò.
He climbed back up on the chair, fussed about, and got back down.
“What’s it doing?” asked Montalbano.
“Filming you.”
“Really? It makes no noise at all.”
“I told you the thing’s amazing.”
Nicolò repeated his rigmarole of climbing onto the chair and stepping back down. But this time he had the camera in his hand and showed it to Montalbano.
“Here’s how you do it, Salvo. To rewind the tape, you press this button. Now bring the camera up to your eye and press this other button. Go ahead, try.”
Montalbano did as he was told and saw a very tiny image of himself ask in a microscopic voice: “What’s it doing?” Then he heard Nicolò’s voice say, “Filming you.”
“Fantastic,” the inspector said. “There’s one thing, though. Is that the only way to see what you’ve filmed?”
“Of course not,” Nicolò replied, taking out a normal-looking videocassette that was made differently inside.
“Watch what I do. I remove the tape from the videocamera, which as you can see is as small as the one in your answering machine, and I slip it inside this one, which is made for this purpose and can be used in your VCR.” “Listen, to make it record, what do I do?”
“Push this other button.”
Seeing the inspector’s expression, which looked more confused than convinced, Nicolò grew doubtful.
“Will you be able to use it?”
“Come on!” replied Montalbano, offended.
“Then why are you making that face?”
“Because I can’t very well climb onto a chair in front of the guy I want to film. It would make him suspicious.”
“See if you can reach it by standing on tiptoe.” He could.
“Then it’s simple. Just leave a book out on the table, then ca-sually put it back on the shelf, meanwhile pressing the button.”
o o o
Dear Livia,
Unfortunately I can’t wait for you to wake up. I have to go to Montelusa to see the commissioner. I’ve already arranged to have Mimì come and take you to the airport. Please try to be as calm and untroubled as possible. I’ll phone you this evening. Kisses, salvo
A traveling salesman of the lowest rank would have expressed himself with more affection and imagination. He rewrote the note and, strangely, it came out exactly the same as the previous one. Nothing doing. It wasn’t true that he had to see the commissioner; he merely wanted to skip the good-byes. It was therefore a big fat lie, and he had never been able to tell one directly to someone he respected. Little fibs, on the other hand, he was very good at. And how.
o o o
At headquarters he found Fazio waiting for him, upset.
“I’ve been trying to call you at home for the last half hour. You must’ve unplugged the telephone.”
“What’s the problem?”
“Some guy called saying he accidentally found the dead body of an old woman in Villaseta, on Via Garibaldi, in the same house where we caught the little kid. That’s why I was looking for you.” Montalbano felt something like an electric shock.
“Tortorella and Galluzzo have already gone there. Galluzzo just called and said it was the same old lady he took to your house.”
Aisha.
The punch Montalbano gave himself in the face wasn’t hard enough to knock out his teeth, but it made his lip bleed.
“What the hell are you doing, Chief ?” said Fazio, flab-bergasted.
Aisha was a witness, of course, just like François. But the inspector’s eyes and attention had all been on the kid. A fucking idiot, that’s what he was. Fazio handed him a handkerchief.
“Here, clean yourself up.”
o o o
Aisha was a twisted little bundle at the foot of the stairs that led up to Karima’s room.
“She apparently fell and broke her neck,” said Dr.
Pasquano, who’d been summoned by Tortorella. “But I’ll be able to tell you more after the autopsy. Although to send an old lady like this flying, you’d only need to blow on her.” “And where’s Galluzzo?” Montalbano asked Tortorella.
“He went to Montelusa to talk to a Tunisian woman the deceased was staying with. He wanted to ask her why the old lady came back here, to find out if anybody had called her.” As the ambulance was leaving, the inspector went inside Aisha’s house, lifted a stone next to the fireplace, took out the bank book, blew the dust off, and put it in his pocket.
“Chief !”
It was Galluzzo. No, nobody had called Aisha. She’d simply decided to go home. She woke up one morning, took the bus, and did not miss her appointment with death.
o o o
Back in Vigàta, before going to headquarters, he stopped in at the office of a notary named Cosentino, whom he liked.
“What can I do for you, Inspector?”
Montalbano pulled out the bank book and handed it to the notary, who opened it, glanced at it, and asked:
“So?”
The inspector launched into an extremely complicated explanation; he wanted him to know only half the story.
“What I think you’re saying,” the notary summarized,
“is that this money belongs to a woman you presume to be dead, and that her son, a minor, is her only heir.”
“Right.”
“And you’d like for this money to be tied up in some way, so that the child could only enter into possession when he comes of age.”
“Right.”
“But why don’t you simply hold on to the booklet yourself, and when the time comes, turn it over to him?”
“What makes you think I’ll still be alive in fifteen years?”
“I see,” said the notary. He continued: “Let’s do this: you take the book back with you, I’ll give the matter some thought, and let’s talk again in a week. It might be a good idea to invest that money.” “It’s up to you,” said Montalbano, standing up.
“Take the book back.”
“You keep it. I might lose it.”
“Then wait and I’ll give you a receipt.”
“If you’d be so kind.”
“One more thing.”
“Tell me.”
“You must be absolutely certain, you know, that the mother is dead.”
o o o
From headquarters, he phoned home. Livia was about to leave. She gave him a rather chilly good-bye, or so it seemed to him. He didn’t know what to do about it.
“Is Mimì there yet?”
“Of course. He’s waiting in the car.”
“Have a good trip. I’ll call you tonight.” He had to move on, not let Livia tie him up.
“Fazio!”
“At your command.”
“Go to the church where Lapècora’s funeral is being held. It must’ve already started by now. Bring Gallo along.
When people are expressing their condolences to the widow, I want you to approach her and, with the darkest look you can muster up, say: ‘Signora, please come with us to police headquarters.’ If she starts to make a scene, starts screaming and shouting, don’t hesitate to use force to put her in the squad car. And one more thing: Lapècora’s son is sure to be there in the cemetery. If he tries to defend his mother, hand-cuff him.”
o o o
ministry of transportation and automobile
registration:
concerning the extremely sensitive investigation of homicide of two women names karima and aisha absolutely must know personal particulars and address of owner of automobile license plate am 237 gw stop please reply promptly stop signed salvo montalbano vigata police montelusa province.
At the Automobile Registration office, before passing the fax on to the person in charge, they were sure to have a laugh at his expense and think him some kind of idiot for the way he formulated his request. But the person in charge, for his part, would understand the gambit, the challenge hidden in the message, and be forced to make a countermove. Which was exactly what Montalbano wanted.
2 1 5
0p>
16
Montalbano’s office was located at the opposite end of the building from the entrance to police headquarters, and yet he still heard all the shouting that broke out when Fazio’s car arrived with the widow Lapècora inside. Though there were hardly any journalists or photographers around, dozens of idlers and rubberneckers must have joined their modest number.
“Signora, why were you arrested?”
“Look over here, signora!”
“Out of the way! Out of the way!”
Then there was relative calm and someone knocked at his door. It was Fazio.
“How’d it go?”
“She didn’t put up much resistance. But she got upset when she saw the journalists.”
“What about the son?”
“There was a man standing next to her in the cemetery, and everyone was expressing their condolences to him too, so I thought he must be the son. But when I told the widow she had to come with us, he turned his back and walked away. So I guess he wasn’t her son.” “Ah, but he was, Fazio. Too sensitive to witness his mother’s arrest. And terrified that he might have to pay her legal fees. Bring the lady in here.”
“Like a thief, that’s how you’re treating me! Just like a thief !” the widow burst out as soon as she saw the inspector.
Montalbano made a dark face.
“Did you mistreat the lady?”
As if reading from a script, Fazio pretended to be embarrassed.
“Well, since we were arresting her—”
“Who ever said you were arresting her? Please sit down, ma’am, I apologize for the unpleasant misunderstanding. I won’t keep you but a few minutes, only as long as it takes to draw up a report of your answers to a few questions. Then you can go home and that’ll be the end of it.” Fazio went and sat down at the typewriter, while Montalbano sat behind his desk. The widow seemed to have calmed down a little, although the inspector could see her nerves jumping under her skin like fleas on a stray dog.
“Signora, please correct me if I’m wrong. You told me, as you’ll remember, that on the morning of your husband’s murder, you got out of bed, went into the bathroom, got dressed, took your purse from the dining room, and went out. Is that right?” “Absolutely.”
“You didn’t notice anything abnormal in your apartment?”
“What was I supposed to notice?”
“For example, that the door to the study, contrary to custom, was closed?”
He’d taken a wild guess, but was right on the mark. Initially red, the woman’s face blanched. But her voice remained steady.
“I think it was open, since my husband never closed it.”
“No, it was not, signora. When I entered your home with you, upon your return from Fiacca, the door was closed.
I reopened it myself.”
“What does it matter if it was open or closed?”
“You’re right, it’s a meaningless detail.” The widow couldn’t help heaving a long sigh.
“Signora, the morning your husband was murdered, you left for Fiacca to visit your ailing sister. Right?”
“That’s what I did.”
“But you forgot something, and for that reason, at the Cannatello junction, you got off the bus, waited for the next bus coming from the opposite direction, and returned to Vigàta. What did you forget?” The widow smiled; apparently she’d prepared herself for such a question.
“I did not get off at Cannatello that morning.”
“Signora, I have statements from the two bus drivers.”
“They’re right, except for one thing. It wasn’t that morning, but two mornings before. The bus drivers got their days wrong.”
She was shrewd and quick. He would have to resort to trickery.
He opened a drawer to his desk and took out the kitchen knife in its cellophane bag.
“This, signora, is the knife that was used to murder your husband. With only one stab wound, in the back.” The widow’s expression didn’t change. She didn’t say a word.
“Have you ever seen it before?”
“You see so many knives like that.”
Very slowly, the inspector again slipped his hand into the drawer, and this time he withdrew another cellophane bag, this one with a small cup inside.
“Do you recognize this?”
“Did you take that yourselves? You made me turn the house upside down looking for it!”
“So it’s yours. You officially recognize it.”
“Of course I do. What use could you have for that cup?”
“It’s going to help me send you to jail.” Of all the possible reactions, the widow chose one that, in a way, won the inspector’s admiration. In fact, she turned her head towards Fazio and politely, as if paying a courtesy call, asked him: “Has he gone crazy?”
Fazio, in all sincerity, would have liked to answer that in his opinion the inspector had been crazy since birth, but he said nothing and merely stared out the window.
“Now I’ll tell you how things went,” said Montalbano.
“That morning, hearing the alarm clock, you got up and went into the bathroom. You necessarily passed by the door to the study, which you noticed was closed. At first you thought nothing of it, then you reconsidered. And when you came out of the bathroom, you opened it. But you didn’t go in, at least I don’t think you did. You waited a moment in the doorway, reclosed the door, went into the kitchen, grabbed the knife, and put it in your purse. Then you went out, you caught the bus, you got off at Cannatello, you got on the bus to Vigàta, you went back home, you opened the door, you saw your husband ready to go out, you argued with him, he opened the door to the elevator, which was on your floor because you’d just used it. You followed behind him, you stabbed him in the back, he turned halfway around, fell to the ground, you started the elevator, you reached the ground floor, and you got out. And nobody saw you. That was your great stroke of luck.” “But why would I have done it?” the woman asked calmly. And then, with an irony that seemed incredible at that moment and in that place: “Just because my husband had closed the door to his study?” Montalbano, from a seated position, bowed admiringly to her.
“No, signora; because of what was behind that closed door.”
“And what was that?”
“Karima, your husband’s mistress.”
“But you said yourself that I didn’t go into the room.”
“You didn’t need to, because you were assailed by a cloud of perfume, the very stuff that Karima wore in abun-dance. It’s called Volupté. It has a strong, persistent scent.
You’d probably smelled it before from time to time on your husband’s clothes. It was still there in the study, less strong, of course, when I went in that evening, after you came home.” The widow Lapècora remained silent; she was thinking over what the inspector had just said.
“Would you answer me one question?” she then asked.
“As many as you like.”
“Why, in your opinion, didn’t I go into the study and kill that woman first?”
“Because your brain is as precise as a Swiss watch and as fast as a computer. Karima, seeing you open the door, would have put herself on the defensive, ready for anything. Your husband, hearing her scream, would have come running and disarmed you with Karima’s help. Whereas by pretending not to notice anything, you could wait and catch him in the act a little later.” “And how do you explain, just to follow your argument, that my husband was the only one killed?”
“When you returned, Karima was already gone.”
“Excuse me, but since you weren’t there, who told you this story?”
“Your fingerprints on the cup and on the knife told me.”
“Not on the knife!” the woman snapped.
“Why not on the knife?”
The woman started biting her lip.
“The cup is mine, the knife isn’t.”
“The knife is also yours; it’s got one of your fingerprints on it. Clear as day.”
“But that can’t be!”
Fazio did not take his eyes off his superior. He knew there were no fingerprints on the knife. This was the most delicate moment of the trick.
“And you’re so sure there are no fingerprints on the knife because when you stabbed your husband you were still wearing the gloves you’d put on when you got all dressed up to go out. You see, the fingerprint we took from it was not from that morning, but from the day before, when, after using the knife to clean the fish you had for dinner, you washed it and put it back in the kitchen drawer. In fact, the fingerprint is not on the handle, but on the blade, right where the blade and the handle meet. And now you’re going to go into the next room with Fazio, and we’re going to take your fingerprints and compare them.” “He was a son of a bitch,” said Signora Lapècora, “and he deserved to die the way he did. He brought that whore into my home to get his jollies in my bed all day while I was out.” “Are you saying you acted out of jealousy?”
“Why else?”
“But hadn’t you already received three anonymous letters? You could have caught them in the act at the office on Salita Granet.”
“I don’t do that kind of thing. But when I realized he’d brought that whore into my home, my blood started to boil.”
“I think, signora, your blood started to boil a few days before that.”
“When?”
“When you discovered your husband had withdrawn a large sum from his bank account.”
This time, too, the inspector was bluffing. It worked.
“Two hundred million lire!” the widow said in rage and despair. “Two hundred million for that disgusting whore!” That explained part of the money in Karima’s bank book.
“If I didn’t stop him, he was liable to eat up the office, our home, and our savings!”
“Shall we put this all in a statement, signora? But first tell me one thing. What did your husband say when you appeared before him?”
“He said: ‘Get the hell out of my way. I have to go to the office.’ He’d probably had a spat with the slut, she’d left, and he was running after her.”
o o o
“Mr. Commissioner? Montalbano here. I’m calling to let you know that I’ve just now managed to get Mrs. Lapècora to confess to her husband’s murder.”
“Congratulations. Why did she do it?”
“Self-interest, which she’s trying to disguise as jealousy. I need to ask a favor of you. Could I hold a press conference?” There was no answer.
“Commissioner? I asked if I could—”
“I heard you perfectly well, Montalbano. It’s just that I was speechless with amazement. You want to hold a press conference? I don’t believe it!”
“And yet it’s true.”
“All right, go ahead. But later you must explain to me what’s behind it.”
o o o
“Are you saying that Mrs. Lapècora had long known about her husband’s relations with Karima?” asked Galluzzo’s brother-in-law in his capacity as a reporter for TeleVigàta.
“Yes. Thanks to no less than three anonymous letters that her husband had sent to her.”
At first they didn’t understand.
“Do you mean to say that Mr. Lapècora actually denounced himself to his wife?” asked a bewildered journalist.
“Yes. Because Karima had started blackmailing him. He was hoping his wife’s reaction would free him from his predicament. But Mrs. Lapècora did not intervene. Nor did their son.” “Excuse me, but why didn’t he turn to the police?”
“Because he thought it would create a big scandal.
Whereas, with his wife’s help, he was hoping matters would stay within the, uh, family circle.”
“But where is this Karima now?”
“We don’t know. She escaped with her son, a little boy.
Actually one of her friends, who was worried about their disappearance, asked the Free Channel to air a photo of the mother and her son. But so far nobody has come forward.” They thanked him and left. Montalbano smiled in satisfaction. The first puzzle had been solved, perfectly, within its specific outline. Fahrid, Ahmed, and even Aisha had been left out of it. With them in it, had they been properly used, the puzzle’s design would have been entirely different.
o o o
He was early for his appointment with Valente. He stopped in front of the restaurant where he’d gone the last time he was in Mazàra. He gobbled up a sauté of clams in breadcrumbs, a heaping dish of spaghetti with white clam sauce, a roast turbot with oregano and caramelized lemon, and he topped it all off with a bitter chocolate timbale in orange sauce. When it was all over he stood up, went into the kitchen, and shook the chef ’s hand without saying a word, deeply moved. In the car, on his way to Valente’s office, he sang at the top of his lungs: “Guarda come dondolo, guarda come dondolo, col twist . . .”
o o o
Valente showed Montalbano into a room next to his own.
“It’s something we’ve done before,” he said. “We leave the door ajar, and you, by manipulating this little mirror, can see what’s happening in my office, if hearing’s not enough.” “Be careful,Valente. It’s a matter of seconds.”
“Leave it to us.”
o o o
Commendatore Spadaccia walked into Valente’s office. It was immediately clear he was nervous.
“I’m sorry, Commissioner Valente, I don’t understand.
You could have easily come to the prefecture yourself and saved me some time. I’m a very busy man, you know.”
“Please forgive me, Commendatore,” Valente said with abject humility. “You’re absolutely right. But we’ll make up for that at once; I won’t keep you more than five minutes. I just need a simple clarification.” “All right.”
“The last time we met, you told me the prefect had been asked in some way—”
The commendatore raised an imperious hand, and Valente immediately fell silent.
“If that’s what I said, I was wrong. His Excellency knows nothing about all this. Anyway, it’s the sort of bullshit we see every day. The ministry, in Rome, phoned me; they don’t bother His Excellency with this kind of crap.” Obviously the prefect, after getting the phone call from the bogus Corriere reporter, had asked the chief of his cabinet for an explanation. And it must have been a rather lively discussion, the echoes of which could still be heard in the strong words the commendatore was using.
“Go on,” Spadaccia urged.
Valente threw up his hands, a halo hovering over his head.
“That’s all,” he said.
Spadaccia, dumbstruck, looked all around as if to verify the reality of what was happening.
“Are you telling me you have nothing more to ask me?”
“That’s right.”
Spadaccia slammed his hand down on the desk with such force that even Montalbano jumped in the next room.
“You think you’ve made an ass of me, but you’ll pay for this, just wait and see!”
He stormed out, fuming. Montalbano ran to the window, nerves taut. He saw the commendatore shoot out the front door like a bullet towards his car, whose driver was getting out to open the door for him. At that exact moment, the door of a squad car that had just pulled up opened, and out came Angelo Prestìa, who was immediately taken by the arm by a policeman. Spadaccia and the captain of the fishing boat stood almost face-to-face. They said nothing to each other, and each continued on his way.
The whinny of joy that Montalbano let out now and then when things went right for him terrified Valente, who came running from the next room.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“It worked!”
“Sit down here,” they heard a policeman say. Prestìa had been brought into the office.
Valente and Montalbano stayed where they were; each lit a cigarette and smoked it without saying a word to the other.
Meanwhile the captain of the Santopadre was simmering on a low flame.
o o o
They entered with faces like the bearers of black clouds and bitter cargoes. Valente went and sat behind his desk; Montalbano pulled up a chair and sat down beside him.
“When’s this aggravation gonna end?” the captain began.
He didn’t realize that with his aggressive attitude, he had just revealed what he was thinking to Valente and Montalbano: that is, he believed that Commendator Spadaccia had come to vouch for the truth of his testimony. He felt at peace, and could therefore play indignant.
On the desk was a voluminous folder on which Angelo Prestìa’s name was written in large block letters—voluminous because it was filled with old memos, but the captain didn’t know this. Valente opened it and took out Spadaccia’s calling card.
“You gave this to us, correct?”
Valente’s switch from the politeness of last time to a more coplike bluntness worried Prestìa.
“Of course it’s correct. The commendatore gave it to me and said if I had any trouble after taking the Tunisian aboard I could turn to him. Which I did.”
“Wrong,” said Montalbano, fresh as a spring chicken.
“But that’s what he told me to do!”
“Of course that’s what he told you to do, but as soon as you smelled a rat, you gave that calling card to us instead.
And in doing so, you put that good man in a pickle.”
“A pickle? What kind of pickle?”
“Don’t you think being implicated in premeditated murder is a pretty nasty pickle?”
Prestìa shut up.
“My colleague Montalbano,” Valente cut in, “is trying to explain to you why things went as they did.”
“And how did they go?”
“They went as follows: if you had gone directly to Spadaccia and hadn’t given us his card, he would have taken care of everything, under the table, of course. Whereas you, by giving us the card, you got the law involved. So that left Spadaccia with only one option: deny everything.” “What?!”
“Yessirree. Spadaccia’s never seen you before, never heard your name. He made a sworn statement, which we’ve added to our file.”
“The son of a bitch!” said Prestìa. Then he asked: “And how did he explain how I got his card?”
Montalbano laughed heartily to himself.
“He suckered you there, too, pal,” he said. “He brought us a photocopy of a declaration he made about ten days ago to the Trapani police. Says his wallet was stolen with everything inside, including four or five calling cards, he couldn’t remember exactly how many.” “He tossed you overboard,” said Valente.
“Where the water’s way over your head,” Montalbano added.
“How long you gonna manage to stay afloat?” Valente piled it on.
The sweat under Prestìa’s armpits formed great big blotches. The office was filled with an unpleasant odor of musk and garlic, which Montalbano saw as rot-green in color. Prestìa put his head in his hands and muttered: “They didn’t give me any choice.”
He remained awhile in that position, then apparently made up his mind:
“Can I speak with a lawyer?”
“A lawyer?” said Valente, as if greatly surprised.
“Why do you want a lawyer?” Montalbano asked in turn.
“I thought—”
“You thought what?”
“That we were going to arrest you?”
The duo worked perfectly together.
“You’re not going to arrest me?”
“Of course not.”
“You can go now, if you like.”
It took Prestìa five minutes before he could get his ass unstuck from the chair and run out the door, literally.
o o o
“So, what happens next?” asked Valente, who knew they had unleashed a pack of demons.
“What happens next is that Prestìa will go and pester Spadaccia. And the next move will be theirs.” Valente looked worried.
“What’s wrong?” asked Montalbano.
“I don’t know . . . I’m not convinced . . . I’m afraid they’ll silence Prestìa. And we would be responsible.”
“Prestìa’s too visible at this point. Bumping him off would be like putting their signature on the entire operation.
No, I’m convinced they will silence him, but by paying him off handsomely.”
“Will you explain something for me?”
“Sure.”
“Why are you stepping into this quicksand?”
“And why are you following behind me?”
“First of all, because I’m a cop, like you, and secondly, be cause I’m having fun.”
“And my answer is: my first reason is the same as yours.
And my second is that I’m doing it for money.”
“And what’ll you gain from it?”
“I know exactly what my gain will be. But you want to bet that you’ll gain something from it too?”
o o o
Deciding not to give in to the temptation, he sped past the restaurant where he’d stuffed himself at lunch, doing 120
kilometers an hour. A half kilometer later, however, his resolution suddenly foundered, and he slammed on the brakes, provoking a furious blast of the horn from the car behind him. The man at the wheel, while passing him, glared at him angrily and gave him the finger. Montalbano then made a U-turn, strictly prohibited on that stretch of road, went straight into the kitchen, and, without even saying hello, asked the cook: “So, exactly how do you prepare your striped mullet?” 2 3 1
0p>
17
The following morning, at eight o’clock sharp, he showed up at the commissioner’s office. His boss, as usual, had been there since seven, amid the muttered curses of the cleaning women who felt prevented from doing their jobs.
Montalbano told him about Mrs. Lapècora’s confession, explaining how the poor murder victim, as if trying to side-step his tragic end, had written anonymously to his wife and openly to his son, but both had let him stew in his own juices. He made no mention of either Fahrid or Moussa—of the larger puzzle, in other words. He didn’t want the commissioner, now at the end of his career, to find himself implicated in an affair that stank worse than a pile of shit.
And up to this point it had gone well for him; he hadn’t had to pull any wool over the commissioner’s eyes. He’d only left a few things out, told a few half-truths.
“But why did you want to hold a press conference, you who usually avoid them like the plague?”
He had anticipated this question, and the answer he had ready on his lips allowed him another at least partial omission, if not an outright lie.
“This Karima, you see, was a rather unusual sort of prostitute. She went not only with Lapècora, but with other people as well. All well on in years: retirees, businessmen, professors. By limiting the case to Lapècora, I’ve tried to prevent the poison, the insinuations, from spreading to a bunch of poor wretches who, in the end, didn’t really do anything wrong.” He was convinced it was a plausible explanation. And in fact, the commissioner’s only comment was:
“You have strange morals, Montalbano.”
And then he asked:
“But has this Karima really disappeared?”
“Apparently, yes. When she learned her lover had been killed, she ran away with her little boy, fearing she might be implicated in the homicide.”
“Listen,” said the commissioner. “What was that business with the car all about?”
“What car?”
“Come on, Montalbano. The car that turned out to belong to the secret services. They’re nasty people, you know.” Montalbano laughed. He’d practiced the laugh the night before, in front of a mirror, persisting until he got it right.
Now, however, contrary to his hopes, it rang false, too high-pitched. But if he wanted to keep his excellent superior out of this mess, he no longer had any choice. He had to tell a lie.
“Why do you laugh?” asked the commissioner, surprised.
“Out of embarrassment, believe me. The person who gave me that license number phoned me the next day and said he’d made a mistake. The letters were right, but he’d got the number wrong. It was 837, not 237. I apologize. I feel mortified.” The commissioner looked him in the eye for what seemed like an eternity. Then he spoke in a soft voice.
“If you want me to swallow that, I’ll swallow it. But be very careful, Montalbano. Those people don’t kid around.
They’re capable of anything, and whenever they slip up, they blame it on certain colleagues who went astray. Who don’t exist. They’re the ones who go astray. It’s in their nature.” Montalbano didn’t know what to say. The commissioner changed subject.
“Tonight you’ll dine at my house. I don’t want to hear any arguments. You’ll eat whatever there is. I’ve got two things I absolutely have to tell you. But I won’t say them here, in my office, because that would give them a bureaucratic flavor, which I find unpleasant.” It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky, and yet Montalbano had the impression that a shadow had fallen across the sun, making the room turn suddenly cold.
o o o
There was a letter addressed to him on the desk in his office.
He checked the postmark, as he always did, to try and discover its provenance, but it was illegible. He opened the envelope and read:
Inspector Montalbano,
You dont know me and I dont know what your like. My name is Arcangelo Prestifilippo and I am your fathers business partner in the vineyard which is producing very well, thank the Lord. Your father never talks about you but I found out he collects all the newspapers that talk about you and when he sees you on tv sometimes he starts crying but tries to not let other people see.
Dear Inspector, I feel my heart give out because the news I got to tell you isnt good. Ever since Signora Giulia, your father’s second wife went up to Heaven four years ago, my partner and friend hasnt been the same. Then last year he started feeling bad, he would run out of breath even just from climbing some stairs and he would get dizzy. He didnt want to go to the doctor, nothing doing. And so I took advantage because my son who works in Milan and is a good doctor, came to town, and I took him to your father’s house. My son looked at him and got upset because he wanted your father to go to the hospital. He made such a big fuss and talked so much that he convinced your father to go to the hospital with him before he went back to Milan. I went to see him every night and ten days later the doctor told me they did all the tests and your father had that terrible lung disease. And so your father started going in and out of the hospital for treatment which made all his hair fall out but didnt make him one bit better. And he told me specially to not tell you about it, he said he didnt want you getting all worried.
But last night I talked to the doctor and he said your father is near the end now, he got only one month maybe, give or take a few days. And so in spiter your dad’s strict orders I wanted you to know whats happening. Your fathers in the Clinica Porticelli, the telefone number is 341234. Theres a phone in his room. But its better if you come see him in person and pretend you dont know nuthin bout him being sick. You already got my phone number, its the same as the vineyard office where I work all day long.
I am very sorry.
Best regards,
arcangelo prestifilippo
A slight tremor in his hands made him struggle to put the letter back in the envelope, and so he slipped it into his pocket. A profound weariness came over him, forcing him to lean heavily, eyes closed, against the back of his chair. He had trouble breathing; there seemed suddenly to be no air in the room. He stood up with difficulty, then went into Augello’s office.
“What’s wrong?” asked Mimì as soon as he saw his face.
“Nothing. Listen, I’ve got some work to do. I mean, I need a little time alone, some peace and quiet.”
“Anything I can do to help?”
“Yes. Take care of everything yourself. I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t have anybody call me at home.”
o o o
He passed by the càlia e simenza shop, bought a sizable cornet, and began his stroll along the jetty. A thousand thoughts raced through his head, but he was unable to seize a single one. When he arrived at the lighthouse he kept on walking.
Directly below the lighthouse was a large rock, slippery with green moss. In danger of falling into the sea with each step, he managed to reach the rock and sat down, cornet in hand.
But he didn’t open it. He felt a kind of wave surge up from some part of his lower body, ascend towards his chest, and from there continue rising towards his throat, forming a knot that took his breath away. He felt the need to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. Then, amidst the jumble of thoughts crowding his brain, a few words forced their way into clarity until they came together in a line of verse: Father, you die a little more each day . . .
What was it? A poem? By whom? And when had he read it? He repeated the line under his breath:
“Father, you die a little more each day . . .” And at last, out of his previously blocked, closed throat came the cry, but more than a cry it was the shrill wail of a wounded animal, followed, at once, by a rush of unstoppable, liberating tears.
o o o
A year before, when he’d been wounded in a shoot-out and ended up in the hospital, Livia had told him his father was phoning every day. He’d come only once to see him in person, when he was convalescing. He must have already been sick at the time. To Montalbano he’d merely looked a little thinner, nothing more. He was, in fact, even better dressed than usual, having always made a point of looking smart. On that occasion he’d asked his son if he needed anything. “I can help,” he’d said.
o o o
When had they started to grow silently apart? His father had always been a caring, affectionate parent. That, Montalbano could not deny. He’d done everything in his power to lessen the pain of the loss of his mother. Whenever Montalbano fell ill as an adolescent—which luckily was not very often—his father used to stay home from work so he wouldn’t be alone.
What was it, then, that hadn’t worked? Perhaps there had always been a nearly total lack of communication between the two; they never could find the words to express their feelings for each other. So often, when very young, Montalbano had thought: My father is a closed man. And probably—though he realized it only now—his father had sat on a rock by the sea and thought the same of him. Still, he’d shown great sensitiv-ity; before remarrying, for example, he’d waited for his son to finish university and win the placement competition. And yet when his father finally brought his new wife home, Montalbano had felt offended for no reason. A wall had risen between them; a glass wall, it’s true, but a wall nonetheless. And so their meetings had gradually decreased in number to one or two a year. His father would usually arrive with a case of the wines produced by his vineyard, stay half a day, and then leave. Montalbano would always find the wine excellent and proudly offer it to his friends, telling them his father had made it. But had he ever told his father the wine was excellent? He dug deep in his memory. Never. Just as his father collected the newspapers that talked about him and felt like crying whenever he saw him on television, and yet had never, in person, congratulated him on the success of an investigation.
o o o
He sat on that rock for over two hours, and when he got up to go back into town, his mind was made up. He would not go to visit his father. The sight of him would surely have made his father realize how gravely ill he was. It would have made things worse. Anyway, he didn’t really know if his father would be happy to see him. Montalbano, moreover, had a fear, a horror, of the dying. He wasn’t sure he could stand the fear and horror of seeing his father die. On the brink of collapse, he might run away.
o o o
When he got back to Marinella he still had that harsh, heavy feeling of weariness inside. He undressed, put on his bathing suit, and dived into the sea. He swam until his legs began to cramp. Returning home, he realized he was in no condition to go to the commissioner’s for dinner.
“Hello? Montalbano here. I’m very sorry, but—”
“You can’t come?”
“No, I’m really very sorry.”
“Work?”
Why not tell him the truth?
“No, Mr. Commissioner. It’s my father. Somebody sent me a letter. It looks like he’s dying.”
At first the commissioner said nothing; the inspector only heard him heave a long sigh.
“Listen, Montalbano. If you want to go see him, even for an extended stay, go ahead, don’t worry about anything. I’ll find a temporary replacement for you.”
“No, I’m not going. Thanks anyway.”
Again the commissioner didn’t speak. He must have been shocked by some of the inspector’s words; but he was a polite, old-fashioned man, and did not bring the subject up again.
“Montalbano, I feel awkward.”
“Please don’t, not with me.”
“Do you remember I said I had two things to say to you at dinner?”
“Of course.”
“Well, I’ll say them to you over the phone, even though, as I said, I feel awkward doing so. And this probably isn’t the most appropriate moment, but I’m afraid you might find out from another source, like the newspapers. . . . You don’t know this, of course, but almost a year ago I put in a request for early retirement.” “Oh God, don’t tell me they—”
“Yes, they granted it.”
“But why do you want to retire?”
“Because I no longer feel in step with the world, and because I feel tired. To me, the betting service for soccer matches is still called Sisal.”
The inspector didn’t understand.
“I’m sorry, I don’t get it.”
“What do you call it?”
“Totocalcio.”
“You see? Therein lies the difference. A while ago, some journalist accused Montanelli of being too old, and as proof, he cited the fact that Montanelli still called Totocalcio Sisal, as he used to call it thirty years ago.” “But that doesn’t mean anything! It was only a wise-crack!”
“It means a lot, Montalbano, a lot. It means unconsciously holding on to the past, not wanting to see certain changes, even rejecting them. And I was barely a year away from retirement, anyway. I’ve still got my parents’ house in La Spezia, which I’ve been having refurbished. If you like, when you come to Genoa to see Miss Livia, you can drop in on us.” “And when are—”
“When am I leaving? What’s today’s date?”
“The twelfth of May.”
“I officially leave my job on the tenth of August.” The commissioner cleared his throat, and the inspector understood that they had now come to the second thing, which was perhaps harder to say.
“About the other matter . . .”
He was hesitant, clearly. Montalbano bailed him out.
“It couldn’t possibly be worse than what you just told me.”
“It’s about your promotion.”
“No!”
“Listen to me, Montalbano. Your position can no longer be justified. In addition, now that I’ve been granted early retirement, I’m not, well, in a strong bargaining position. I have to recommend your promotion, and there won’t be any obstacles.” “Will I be transferred?”
“There’s a ninety-nine percent chance of it. Bear in mind that if I didn’t recommend you for the appointment, with all your successes, the ministry might see that in a nega-tive light and could end up transferring you anyway, but without a promotion. Couldn’t you use a raise?” The inspector’s brain was running at full speed, smoking, in fact, trying to find a possible solution. He glimpsed one and pounced on it.
“And what if, from this moment on, I no longer arrested anyone?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I mean, what if I pretend not to solve any more cases, if I mishandle investigations, if I let slip—”
“—rubbish, Montalbano, the only thing you’re letting slip is idiocies. I just don’t understand. Every time I talk to you about promotion, you suddenly regress and start reason-ing like a child.”
o o o
He killed an hour lolling about the house, putting some books back on the shelf and dusting the glass over the five engravings he owned, which Adelina never did. He did not turn on the television. He looked at his watch: almost ten p.m. He got in his car and drove to Montelusa. The three cinemas were showing the Taviani brothers’ Elective Affinities, Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty, and Travels with Goofy. Without the slightest hesitation, he chose the cartoons. The theater was empty. He went back to the man who had torn his ticket.
“There’s nobody there!”
“You’re there. What do you want, company? It’s late. At this hour, all the little kids are asleep. You’re the only one still awake.”
He had so much fun that, at one moment, he caught himself laughing out loud in the empty theater.
o o o
There comes a moment—he thought— when you realize your life has changed. But when did it happen? you ask yourself. And you have no answer. Unnoticed events kept accumulating until, one day, a transformation occurred—or perhaps they were perfectly visible events, whose importance and consequences, however, you never took into account. You ask yourself over and over, but the answer to that “when” never comes. As if it mattered!
Montalbano, for his part, had a precise answer to that question. My life changed, he would have said, on the twelfth of May.
o o o
Beside the front door to his house, Montalbano had recently had a small lamp installed that went on automatically when night fell. It was by the light of this lamp that he saw, from the main road, a car stopped in the clearing in front of the house.
He turned onto the small lane leading to the house, and pulled up a few inches from the other car. As he expected, it was a metallic gray BMW. Its license-plate number was am 237 gw.
But there wasn’t a soul to be seen. The man who’d driven it there was surely hiding somewhere nearby. Montalbano decided it was best to feign indifference. He stepped out of the car,whistling,reclosed the door,and saw somebody waiting for him. He hadn’t noticed him earlier because the man was standing on the far side of the car and was so small in stature that his head did not exceed the height of the car’s roof. Practically a midget, or not much more than one. Well dressed, and wearing small, gold-rimmed glasses.
“You’ve made me wait a long time,” the little man said, coming forward.
Montalbano, keys in hand, moved towards the front door.
The quasi-midget stepped in front of him, shaking a kind of identity card.
“My papers,” he said.
The inspector pushed aside the little hand holding the documents, opened the door, and went inside. The man followed behind him.
“I am Colonel Lohengrin Pera,” said the elf.
The inspector stopped dead in his tracks, as if someone had pressed the barrel of a gun between his shoulder blades.
He turned slowly around and looked the colonel up and down. His parents must have given him that name to compensate somehow for his stature and surname. Montalbano felt fascinated by the colonel’s little shoes, which he must surely have had made to measure; they wouldn’t even have fit in the “sottouomo” category, as the shoemakers called it—that is, for “sub-men.” And yet the services had enlisted him, so he must have been tall enough to make the grade. His eyes, however, behind the lenses, were lively, attentive, dangerous.
Montalbano felt certain he was looking at the brains behind the Moussa affair. He went into the kitchen, still followed by the colonel, put the mullets in tomato sauce that Adelina had made for him into the oven, and started setting the table, without once opening his mouth. On the table was a seven-hundred-page book he’d bought from a bookstall and had never opened. He’d been drawn by the title: The Metaphysics of Partial Being. He picked it up, stood on tiptoe, and put it on the shelf, pressing the button on the videocamera. As if somebody had said “roll ’em,” Colonel Lohengrin Pera sat down in the right chair.
2 4 5
0p>
18
Montalbano took a good half hour to eat his mullets, either because he wanted to savor them as they deserved, or to give the colonel the impression that he didn’t give a flying fuck about what the man might have to say to him. He didn’t even offer him a glass of wine. He acted as if he were alone, to the point where he even once burped out loud. For his part, Lohengrin Pera, once he’d sat down, had stopped moving, limiting himself to staring at the inspector with beady, viperlike eyes. Only when Montalbano had downed a demitasse of espresso did the colonel begin to speak.
“You understand, of course, why I’ve come to see you.” The inspector stood up, went into the kitchen, placed the little cup in the sink, and returned.
“I’m playing aboveboard,” the colonel continued, after waiting for him to return. “It’s probably the best way, with you. That’s why I chose to come in that car, for which you twice requested information on the owner.” From his jacket pocket he withdrew two sheets of paper, which Montalbano recognized as the faxes he’d sent to Automobile Registration.
“Only you already knew who the car belonged to; your commissioner must certainly have told you its license number was cloaked. So, since you sent me these faxes anyway, it must mean their intention was more than simply to request information, however imprudently. I therefore became convinced—correct me if I’m wrong—that for your own reasons, you wanted us to come out into the open. So here I am: your wish has been granted.” “Would you excuse me a minute?” Montalbano asked.
Without waiting for an answer, he got up, went into the kitchen, and returned with a plate on which was a huge, hard piece of Sicilian cassata ice cream. The colonel settled in pa-tiently and waited for him to eat it.
“Please continue,” said the inspector. “I can’t eat it when it’s like this. It has to melt a little first.”
“Before we go any further,” resumed the colonel, who apparently had very strong nerves, “let me clarify something.
In your second fax, you mention the murder of a woman named Aisha. We had absolutely nothing to do with that death. It must surely have been an unfortunate accident. If she’d needed to be eliminated, we would have done so immediately.” “I don’t doubt it. I was well aware of that too.”
“So why did you state otherwise in your fax?”
“Just to turn up the heat.”
“Right. Have you read the writings and speeches of Mussolini?”
“He’s not one of my favorite authors.”
“In one of his last writings, Mussolini says that the people should be treated like a donkey, with a carrot and a stick.”
“Always so original, that Mussolini! You know something?”
“What?”
“My grandfather used to say the same thing. He was a peasant and, since he wasn’t Mussolini, he was referring only to the ass, the donkey, that is.”
“May I continue the metaphor?”
“By all means!”
“Your faxes, as well as your having persuaded Vice-Commissioner Valente of Mazàra to interrogate the captain of the fishing boat and the head of the prefect’s cabinet, these and other things were the stick you used to flush us out.” “So where does the carrot come in?”
“The carrot consists in the declarations you made at the press conference you held after arresting Mrs. Lapècora for the murder of her husband. You could have dragged us into that one by the hair, but you didn’t. You were careful to keep that crime within the confines of jealousy and greed. Still, that was a menacing carrot; it said—” “Colonel, I suggest you drop the metaphor; at this point we’ve got a talking carrot.”
“Fine.You, with that press conference, wanted us to know that you had other information in your possession which, at that moment, you were unwilling to show. Am I right?” The inspector extended a spoon towards the ice cream, filled it, and brought it to his mouth.
“It’s still hard,” he said to Lohengrin Pera.
“You discourage me,” the colonel commented, but he went on. “Anyway, since we’re laying our cards on the table, will you tell me everything you know about the case?”
“What case?”
“The killing of Ahmed Moussa.”
He’d succeeded in making him say that name openly, as duly recorded by the tape in the videocamera.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I love the sound of your voice, the way you speak.”
“May I have a glass of water?”
To all appearances, Lohengrin Pera was perfectly calm and controlled, but inside he was surely close to the boiling point. The request for water was a clear sign.
“Go get it yourself in the kitchen.”
While the colonel fussed about in the kitchen with the glass and faucet, Montalbano, who was looking at him from behind, noticed a bulge under his jacket, beside the right buttock. Want to bet the midget is armed with a gun twice his size? He decided not to take any chances and brought a very sharp knife, which he had used to cut the bread, closer to him.
“I’ll be explicit and brief,” Lohengrin Pera began, sitting down and wiping his lips with a tiny handkerchief, an embroidered postage stamp. “A little more than two years ago, our counterparts in Tunis asked us to collaborate with them on a delicate operation aimed at neutralizing a dangerous terrorist, whose name you had me repeat just a moment ago.” “I’m sorry,” said Montalbano, “but I have a very limited vocabulary. By ‘neutralizing’ do you mean ‘physically eliminating’?”
“Call it whatever you like. We discussed the matter with our superiors, naturally, and were ordered not to collaborate.
But then, less than a month later, we found ourselves in a very unpleasant position, where it was we who had to ask our friends in Tunis for help.”
“What a coincidence!” Montalbano exclaimed.
“Yes. Without any questions, they gave us the help we wanted, and so we found ourselves morally indebted—”
“No!” Montalbano yelled.
Lohengrin Pera gave a start.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“You said: morally indebted.”
“As you wish. Let’s say merely ‘indebted,’ without the adverb, all right? But excuse me; before going on, I have to make a telephone call. I keep forgetting.”
“Be my guest,” the inspector said, gesturing towards the phone.
“Thanks; I’ve got a cell phone.”
Lohengrin Pera was not armed. The bulge on his buttock was his portable phone. He punched in a number that Montalbano was unable to read.
“Hello? This is Pera. All’s well, we’re talking.” He turned off the cellular and left it on the table.
“Our colleagues in Tunis discovered that Ahmed’s favorite sister, Karima, had been living in Sicily for years, and that, through her work, she had a vast circle of acquaintances.” “Vast, no,” Montalbano corrected him. “Select, yes. She was a respectable prostitute; she inspired confidence.”
“Ahmed’s right-hand man, Fahrid, suggested to his chief that they establish a base of operations in Sicily and avail themselves of Karima’s services. Ahmed rather trusted Fahrid; he didn’t know he’d been bought by the Tunisian secret services. With our discreet assistance, Fahrid came here and made contact with Karima, who, after a careful review of her clients, chose Lapècora. Perhaps by threatening to inform his wife of their relationship, Karima forced Lapècora to reopen his old import-export business, which turned out to be an excellent cover. Fahrid was able to communicate with Ahmed by writing coded business letters to an imaginary company in Tunis. By the way, in your press conference you said that at a certain point Lapècora wrote anonymously to his wife, informing her of his liaison. Why did he do that?” “Because he smelled something fishy in the whole arrangement.”
“Do you think he suspected the truth?”
“Of course not! At the most, he probably thought they were trafficking drugs. If he’d discovered he was at the center of an international intrigue, he’d have been killed on the spot.” “I agree. At first, our primary concern was to keep the impatience of the Tunisians in check. But we also wanted to be certain that, once we put the bait in the water, the fish would bite.” “Excuse me, but who was the blond young man who showed up now and then with Fahrid?”
The colonel looked at him with admiration.
“You know that too? He’s one of our men who would periodically go and check up on things.”
“And while he was at it, he would fuck Karima.”
“These things happen. Finally Fahrid persuaded Ahmed to come to Italy by tempting him with the prospect of a big weapons shipment. As always with our invisible protection, Ahmed Moussa arrived at Mazàra, according to Fahrid’s instructions. Under pressure from the chief of the prefect’s cabinet, the captain of the fishing boat agreed to take Ahmed aboard, since the meeting between Ahmed and the imaginary arms dealer was supposed to take place on the open sea.
Without the slightest suspicion, Ahmed Moussa walked into the trap. He even lit a cigarette, as he’d been told to do, so that they might better recognize each other. But Commendator Spadaccia, the cabinet chief, made a big mistake.” “He hadn’t warned the captain that it would not be a clandestine meeting, but an ambush,” said Montalbano.
“You could say that. The captain, as he’d been told to do, threw Ahmed’s papers into the sea and divided the seventy million lire the Arab had in his pocket with the rest of the crew. Then, instead of returning to Mazàra, he changed course. He had his doubts about us.” “Oh?”
“You see, we had steered our motor patrols away from the scene of the action, and the captain knew this. If that’s the situation, he must have thought, who’s to say I won’t run into something on the way back in—a missile, a mine, even another motor patrol that would sink my boat to destroy all trace of the operation? That’s why he came to Vigàta. He was shuffling the cards.” “Had he guessed right?”
“In what sense?”
“Was there someone or something waiting for the fishing boat?”
“Come now, Montalbano! That would have been a useless massacre!”
“And you engage only in useful massacres, is that it? And how do you plan to keep the crew quiet?”
“With the carrot and the stick, to quote again that writer you don’t appreciate. In any case, I’ve said everything I had to say.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no?”
“I mean: that’s not everything. You have very cleverly taken me out to sea, but I haven’t forgotten those left behind on land. Fahrid, for example. He must have learned, from one of your informers, that Ahmed had been killed; but the fishing boat had docked at Vigàta, inexplicably—for him.
This troubled him. At any rate, he must now proceed to the second part of his assignment. That is, neutralizing, as you put it, Lapècora. So he shows up at the guy’s front door and, to his amazement and alarm, finds out that somebody got there first. And so he shits in his pants.” “I beg your pardon?”
“He gets scared, he no longer knows what is happening.
Like the captain of the fishing boat, he thinks your people are behind it. It looks to him like you’ve begun removing from circulation everyone who was in some way involved in the operation. For a moment, perhaps, he suspects it might have been Karima who did away with Lapècora. You may not know this, but Karima, under orders from Fahrid, forced Lapècora to hide her in his apartment; Fahrid didn’t want Lapècora to get any brilliant ideas during those critical hours.
Fahrid, however, didn’t know that once she’d carried out her mission, Karima had gone back home. In any event, at some point that morning, Fahrid met up with Karima, and the two must have had a violent argument in the course of which he told her that her brother had been killed. Karima then tried to escape. She failed, and she was murdered. She would have had to be eliminated anyway, at some later point, on the quiet.” “As I’d suspected,” said Lohengrin Pera, “you’ve figured it all out. Now I ask you to pause and think. You, like me, are a loyal, devoted servant of our state. And so—”
“Stick it up your ass,” Montalbano said softly.
“I don’t understand.”
“Let me repeat: you can take our state and stick it up your ass. You and I have diametrically opposed concepts of what it means to be a servant of the state. For all intents and purposes, we serve two different states. So I beg you please not to liken your work to mine.” “So now you want to play Don Quixote, Montalbano?
Every community needs someone to wash the toilets. But this does not mean that those who wash the toilets are not part of the community.”
Montalbano felt his rage growing; one more word would surely have been a mistake. He reached out with one hand, brought the dish of ice cream nearer, and began to eat. By now Lohengrin Pera had got used to the ritual, and once Montalbano started nibbling the ice cream, he stopped talking.
“Karima was killed, correct?” asked Montalbano after a few spoonfuls.
“Unfortunately, yes. Fahrid was afraid that—”
“I’m not interested in why. I’m interested in the fact that she was killed by the authority of a loyal servant of the state such as yourself. How would you call this specific case, neutralization or murder?” “Montalbano, you can’t use the standard of common morality—”
“Colonel, I already warned you once: do not speak of morality in my presence.”
“I merely meant that sometimes, the reason of state—”
“That’s enough,” said Montalbano, who had wolfed down the ice cream in four angry bites. Then, suddenly, he slapped his forehead.
“What time is it, anyway?”
The colonel looked at his wristwatch, a dainty, precious item that looked like a child’s toy.
“It’s already two o’clock.”
“Why on earth hasn’t Fazio arrived?” Montalbano asked himself, pretending to be worried. Then he added: “I have to make a phone call.”
He got up, went over to the phone on his desk two yards away, and started speaking in a loud voice so that Lohengrin Pera would hear everything.
“Hello, Fazio? Montalbano here.”
Fazio, drowsy with sleep, spoke with difficulty.
“Chief. What is it?”
“Come on, did you forget about the arrest?”
“What arrest?” said Fazio, at sea.
“The arrest of Simone Fileccia.”
Simone Fileccia had been arrested the day before, by Fazio himself. And, in fact, Fazio understood at once.
“What should I do?”
“Come pick me up at my place, and we’ll go get him.”
“Should I bring my own car?”
“No, better make it a squad car.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“Wait.”
The inspector put his hand over the receiver and turned to the colonel.
“How much more time will this take?”
“That’s up to you,” said Lohengrin Pera.
“Be here in, say, twenty minutes or so,” the inspector said to Fazio, “not before. I have to finish talking to a friend.” He hung up, sat back down. The colonel smiled.
“Since we’ve got so little time, tell me your price immediately, if you’ll forgive the expression.”
“I come cheap, very cheap,” said Montalbano.
“I’m listening.”
“Two things, that’s all. Within a week, I want Karima’s body to turn up, and in such a way that there can be no mistake as to its identification.”
A billy club to the head would have had less effect on Lohengrin Pera. Opening and closing his mouth, he gripped the edge of the table with his tiny hands, as if afraid he might fall out of his chair.
“Why?” he managed to utter with the voice of a silkworm.
“None of your fucking business,” was the firm, blunt reply.
The colonel shook his little head from left to right and right to left, looking like a spring puppet.
“It’s not possible.”
“Why?”
“We don’t know where she was . . . buried.”
“And who does know?”
“Fahrid.”
“Has Fahrid been neutralized? You know, I’m starting to like that word.”
“No. He’s gone back to Tunisia.”
“Then there’s no problem. Just get in touch with his playmates in Tunis.”
“No,” the midget said firmly. “The matter has been put to rest at this point.We have nothing to gain by stirring things up again with the discovery of a corpse. No, it’s not possible. Ask me anything you like, but that is one thing we cannot grant you. Aside from the fact that I can’t see the purpose of it.” “Too bad,” said Montalbano, getting up. Automatically, Lohengrin Pera also stood up, in spite of himself. But he wasn’t the type to give in easily.
“Well, just for curiosity’s sake, would you tell me what your second demand is?”
“Certainly. The commissioner of Vigàta has put in a request for my promotion to vice-commissioner—”
“We shall have no problem whatsoever having it accepted,” said the colonel, relieved.
“What about having it rejected?”
Montalbano could distinctly hear Lohengrin Pera’s world crumble and fall to pieces on top of him, and he saw the colonel hunch over as if trying to shield himself from a sudden explosion.
“You are totally insane,” said the colonel, sincerely terrified.
“You’ve just noticed?”
“Listen, you can do whatever you like, but I cannot give in to your demand to turn up the body. Absolutely not.”
“Shall we see how the tape came out?” Montalbano asked politely.
“What tape?” said Lohengrin Pera, confused.
Montalbano went over to the bookcase, stood up on tiptoe, took out the videocamera, and showed it to the colonel.
“Jesus!” said the colonel, collapsing in a chair. He was sweating.
“Montalbano, for your own good, I implore you . . .” But the man was a snake, and he behaved like a snake. As he appeared to be begging the inspector not to do anything stupid, his hand had moved ever so slightly and was now within reach of the cell phone. Fully aware that he would never make it out of there alone, he wanted to call for rein-forcements. Montalbano let him get another centimeter closer to the phone, then sprang. With one hand he sent the cell phone flying from the table, with the other he struck the colonel hard in the face. Lohengrin Pera flew all the way across the room, eyeglasses falling, then slammed against the far wall back first, and slid to the ground. Montalbano slowly drew near and, as he’d seen done in a movie about Nazis, crushed the colonel’s little glasses with his heel.
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And while he was at it, he went for broke, pounding the cell phone violently into the ground with his heel until he’d half-pulverized it.
He finished the job with a hammer he kept in his tool drawer. Then he approached the colonel, who was still on the floor, groaning feebly. As soon as he saw the inspector in front of him, Lohengrin Pera shielded his face with his forearms, as children do.
“Enough, for pity’s sake,” he implored.
What kind of man was he? A punch in the face and a trickle of blood from his split lip, and he’s reduced to this?
Montalbano grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket, lifted him up, and sat him down. With a trembling hand, Lohengrin Pera wiped away the blood with his embroidered postage stamp, closed his eyes, and appeared to faint.
“It’s just that . . . blood . . . I can’t stand the sight of it,” he muttered.
“Yours or other people’s?” Montalbano inquired.
He went into the kitchen, grabbed a half-full bottle of whisky and a glass, and set these in front of the colonel.
“I’m a teetotaler.”
Montalbano felt a little calmer now, having let off some steam.
If the colonel, he thought, wanted to phone for help, then the people who were supposed to come to his rescue must certainly be in the neighborhood, just a few minutes’
drive from the house. That was the real danger. He heard the doorbell ring.
“Chief ? It’s me, Fazio.”
He opened the door halfway.
“Listen, Fazio, I have to finish talking to that person I mentioned. Wait in the car. I’ll call you when I need you.
But be careful: there may be some people in the area who are up to no good. Stop anyone you see approaching the house.” He shut the door and sat back down in front of Lohengrin Pera, who seemed lost in dejection.
“Now try to understand me, because soon you won’t be able to understand anything anymore.”
“What do you intend to do to me?” asked the colonel, turning pale.
“No blood, don’t worry. I’ve got you in the palm of my hand, I hope you realize that. You were foolish enough to blab the whole story in front of a videocamera. If I have the tape aired on TV, it’s going to kick up such a fucking row on the international scene that you’ll be selling chickpea sandwiches on a street corner before it’s all over. If, on the other hand, you let Karima’s body be found and block my promotion—and make no mistake, the two things go hand in hand—I give you my word of honor that I’ll destroy the tape.
You have no choice but to trust me. Have I made myself clear?”
Lohengrin Pera nodded his little head “yes,” and at that moment the inspector realized that the knife had disappeared from the table. The colonel must have seized it when he was talking to Fazio.
“Tell me something,” said Montalbano. “Are there such things, that you know of, as poisonous worms?” Pera gave him a questioning look.
“For your own good, put down the knife you’re holding inside your jacket.”
Without a word, the colonel obeyed and set the knife down on the table. Montalbano opened the whisky bottle, filled the glass to the brim, and held it out to Lohengrin Pera, who recoiled with a grimace of disgust.
“I’ve already told you I’m a teetotaler.”
“Drink.”
“I can’t, believe me.”
Squeezing the colonel’s cheeks with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand, Montalbano forced him to open his mouth.
o o o
Fazio heard the inspector call for him after waiting some forty-five minutes in the car, as he was starting to drift off into a leaden sleep. Upon entering the house, he immediately saw a drunken midget, who had vomited all over himself to boot. Unable to stand on his feet, the midget, leaning first against a chair and then against the wall, was trying to sing “Celeste Aida.” On the floor, Fazio noticed a pair of glasses and a cell phone, both smashed to pieces. On the table were an empty bottle of whisky, a glass, also empty, and three or four sheets of paper and identity cards.
“Listen closely, Fazio,” said the inspector. “I’m going to tell you exactly what happened here, in case anybody questions you. I was returning home this evening, around midnight, when I saw, at the top of the lane that leads to my house, this man’s car, a BMW, blocking my path. He was completely drunk. I brought him home with me because he was in no condition to drive. He had no identification in his pockets, nothing. After several attempts to sober him up, I called you for help.” “Got it,” said Fazio.
“Now, here’s the plan. You’re going to pick him up—he doesn’t weigh much, in any case—put him in his BMW, get behind the wheel, and put him in a holding cell. I’ll follow behind you in the squad car.” “And how are you going to get back home afterwards?”
“You’ll have to drive me back. Sorry. Tomorrow morning, as soon as you see he’s recovered his senses, you’re to set him free.”
o o o
Back at home, he removed the pistol from the glove com-partment of his car where he always kept it, and stuck it in his belt. Then he took a broom and swept up all the frag-ments of Lohengrin Pera’s cell phone and glasses, and wrapped them in a sheet of newspaper. He took the little shovel that Mimì had given François and dug two deep holes almost directly below the veranda. In one he put the bundle and covered it up, in the other he dumped the papers and documents, now shredded into little pieces. These he sprinkled with gasoline and set on fire. When they had turned to ash, he covered up this hole as well. The sky was beginning to lighten. He went into the kitchen, brewed a pot of strong coffee, and drank it. Then he shaved and took a shower. He wanted to be completely relaxed when he sat down to enjoy the videotape.
He put the little cassette inside the bigger one, as Nicolò had instructed him to do, then turned on the TV and the VCR. After a few seconds with the screen still blank, he got up and checked the appliances, certain he’d made some wrong connection. He was utterly hopeless with this sort of thing, to say nothing of computers, which terrified him.
Nothing doing this time, either. He popped out the larger cassette, opened it, looked at it. The little cassette seemed poorly inserted, so he pushed it all the way in. He put the whole package back into the VCR. Still nothing on the goddamn screen. What the hell wasn’t working? As he was asking himself this, he froze, seized by doubt. He dashed to the phone.
“Hello?” answered the voice at the other end, pronounc-ing each letter with tremendous effort.
“Nicolò? This is Montalbano.”
“Who the hell else could it be, Jesus fucking Christ?”
“I have to ask you something.”
“Do you know what time it is?”
“I’m sorry, really sorry. Remember the videocamera you lent me?”
“Yeah?”
“Which button was I supposed to push to record? The top one or the bottom one?”
“The top one, asshole.”
He’d pushed the wrong button.
o o o
He got undressed again, put on his bathing suit, bravely entered the freezing water, and began to swim. After tiring and turning over to float on his back, he started thinking that it was not, in the end, so terrible that he hadn’t recorded anything. The important thing was that the colonel believed he had and would continue to do so. He returned to shore, went back in the house, threw himself down on the bed, still wet, and fell asleep.
o o o
When he woke up it was past nine, and he had the distinct impression he couldn’t go back to work and resume his everyday chores. He decided to inform Mimì.
“Hallo! Hallo! Whoozat talkin’ onna line?”
“It’s Montalbano, Cat.”
“Izzat really ’n’ truly you in person, sir?”
“It’s really and truly me in person. Let me speak with In spector Augello.”
“Hello, Salvo. Where are you?”
“At home. Listen, Mimì, I don’t think I can come in to work.”
“Are you sick?”
“No. I just don’t feel up to it, not today nor tomorrow. I need to rest for four or five days. Can you cover for me?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks.”
“Wait. Don’t hang up.”
“What is it?”
“I’m a little concerned, Salvo. You’ve been acting weird for the last couple of days. What’s the matter with you? Don’t make me start worrying about you.”
“Mimì, I just need a little rest, that’s all.”
“Where will you go?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll call you later.”
o o o
Actually, he knew exactly where he would go. He packed his bag in five minutes, then took a little longer to select which books to bring along. He left a note in block letters for Adelina, the housekeeper, informing her he’d be back within a week. When he arrived at the trattoria in Mazàra, they greeted him like the prodigal son.
“The other day, I believe I understood that you rent rooms.”
“Yes, we’ve got five upstairs. But it’s the off-season now, so only one of ’em’s rented.”
They showed him a room, spacious and bright and looking straight onto the sea.
He lay down on the bed, brain emptied of thoughts, chest swelling with a kind of happy melancholy. He was loosing the moorings, ready to sail out to the country of sleep, when he heard a knock on the door.
“Come in, it’s unlocked.”
The cook appeared in the doorway. He was a big man of considerable heft, about forty, with dark eyes and skin.
“What are you doing? Aren’t you coming down? I heard you were here and so I made something for you that . . .” What the cook had made, Montalbano couldn’t hear, because a sweet, soft melody, a heavenly tune, had started playing in his ears.
o o o
For the last hour he’d been watching a rowboat slowly approaching the shore. On it was a man rowing in sharply rhythmic, vigorous strokes. The boat had also been sighted by the owner of the trattoria; Montalbano heard him cry out: “Luicì! The cavaliere’s coming back!”
The inspector then saw Luicino, the restaurateur’s sixteen-year-old son, enter the water to push the boat up onto the sand so the passenger wouldn’t get his feet wet. The cavaliere, whose name Montalbano did not know, was smartly dressed, tie and all. On his head he wore a white Panama hat, with the requisite black band.
“Cavaliere, did you catch anything?” the restaurateur asked him.
“A pain in the ass, that’s what I caught.” He was a thin, nervy man, about seventy years old. Later, Montalbano heard him bustling about in the room next to his.
o o o
“I set a table over here,” said the cook as soon as Montalbano appeared for dinner, and he led him into a tiny room with space for only two tables. The inspector felt grateful for this, since the big dining room was booming with the voices and laughter of a large gathering.
“I’ve set it for two,” the cook continued. “Do you have any objection if Cavaliere Pintacuda eats with you?” He certainly did have an objection: he feared he would have to talk while eating.
A few minutes later, the gaunt septuagenarian introduced himself with a bow.
“Liborio Pintacuda, and I’m not a cavaliere,” he said, sitting down. “There’s something I must tell you, even at the risk of appearing rude,” the non-cavaliere continued. “I, when I’m talking, do not eat. Conversely, when I’m eating, I don’t talk.” “Welcome to the club,” said Montalbano, sighing with relief.
The pasta with crab was as graceful as a first-rate balle-rina, but the stuffed bass in saffron sauce left him breathless, almost frightened.
“Do you think this kind of miracle could ever happen again?” he asked Pintacuda, gesturing towards his now empty plate. They had both finished and therefore recovered the power of speech.
“It’ll happen again, don’t worry, just like the miracle of the blood of San Gennaro,” said Pintacuda. “I’ve been coming here for years, and never, I repeat, never, has Tanino’s cooking let me down.” “At a top-notch restaurant, a chef like Tanino would be worth his weight in gold,” the inspector commented.
“Yes he would. Last year, a Frenchman passed this way, the owner of a famous Parisian restaurant. He practically got down on his knees and begged Tanino to come to Paris with him. But there was no persuading him. Tanino says this is where he’s from, and this is where he’ll die.” “Someone must surely have taught him to cook like that.
He can’t have been born with that gift.”
“You know, up until ten years ago, Tanino was a small-time crook. Petty theft, drug dealing. Always in and out of jail. Then, one night, the Blessed Virgin appeared to him.” “Are you joking?”
“I try hard not to. As he tells it, the Virgin took his hands in hers, looked him in the eye, and declared that from the next day forward, he would become a great chef.”
“Come on!”
“You, for example, knew nothing of this story of the Virgin, and yet after eating the bass, you specifically used the word ‘miracle.’ But I can see you don’t believe in the super-natural, so I’ll change subject. What brings you to these parts, Inspector?” Montalbano gave a start. He hadn’t told anyone there what he did for a living.
“I saw your press conference on television, after you arrested that woman for killing her husband,” Pintacuda explained.
“Please don’t tell anybody who I am.”
“But they all know who you are, Inspector. Since they’ve gathered that you don’t like to be recognized, however, they play dumb.”
“And what do you do of interest?”
“I used to be a professor of philosophy. If you can call teaching philosophy interesting.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Not at all. The kids get bored. They no longer care enough to learn how Hegel or Kant thought about things.
Philosophy instruction should probably be replaced with some subject like, I don’t know, ‘Basic Management.’ Then it still might mean something.”
“Basic management of what?”
“Life, my friend. Do you know what Benedetto Croce writes in his Memoirs? He says that he learned from experience to consider life a serious matter, as a problem to be solved. Seems obvious, doesn’t it? But it’s not. One would have to explain to young people, philosophically, what it means, for example, to smash their car into another car one Saturday night. And to tell them how, philosophically, this could be avoided. But we’ll have time to discuss all this. I’m told you’ll be staying here a few days.” “Yes. Do you live alone?”
“For the fifteen days I spend here, very much alone. The rest of the time I live in a big old house in Trapani with my wife and four daughters, all married, and eight grandchil-dren, who, when they’re not at school, are with me all day. At least once every three months I escape and come here, leaving no phone number or forwarding address. I cleanse myself, take the waters of solitude. For me this place is like a clinic where I detoxify myself of an excess of sentiment. Do you play chess?”
o o o
On the afternoon of the following day, as he was lying in bed reading Sciascia’s Council of Egypt for the twentieth time, it occurred to him that he’d forgotten to tell Valente about the odd agreement he’d made with the colonel. The matter might prove dangerous for his colleague in Mazàra if he were to continue investigating. He went downstairs where there was a telephone.
“Valente? Montalbano here.”
“Salvo, where the hell are you? I asked for you at the office and they said they had no news of you.”
“Why were you looking for me? Has something come up?”
“Yes. The commissioner called me out of the blue this morning to tell me my request for a transfer had been accepted. They’re sending me to Sestri.”
Valente’s wife, Giulia, was from Sestri, and her parents also lived there. Until now, every time the vice-commissioner had asked to be transferred to Liguria, his request had been denied.
“Didn’t I say that something good would come out of this affair?” Montalbano reminded him.
“Do you think—?”
“Of course. They’re getting you out of their hair, in such a way that you won’t object. And they’re right. When does the transfer take effect?”
“Immediately.”
“See? I’ll come say good-bye before you leave.” Lohengrin Pera and his little gang of playmates had moved very fast. It remained to be seen whether this was a good or a bad sign. He needed to do a foolproof test. If they were in such a hurry to put the matter to rest, then surely they had wasted no time in sending him a message as well.
The Italian bureaucracy, usually slow as a snail, becomes lightning-quick when it comes to screwing the citizen. With this well-known truth in mind, he called his commissioner.
“Montalbano! For God’s sake, where have you run off to?”
“Sorry for not letting you know. I’ve taken a few days off to rest.”
“I understand. You went to see—”
“No. Were you looking for me? Do you need me?”
“Yes, I was looking for you, but I don’t need you for anything. Just rest. Do you remember I was supposed to recommend you for a promotion?”
“How could I forget?”
“Well, this morning Commendator Ragusa called me from the Ministry of Justice. He’s a good friend of mine. He told me that, apparently . . . some obstacles have come up—
of what kind, I have no idea. In short, your promotion has been blocked. Ragusa wouldn’t, or couldn’t, tell me any more than that. He also made it clear that it was useless, and perhaps even unwise, to insist. Believe me, I’m shocked and offended.” “Not me.”
“Don’t I know it! In fact, you’re happy, aren’t you?”
“Doubly happy, Commissioner.”
“Doubly?”
“I’ll explain when I see you in person.”
He set his mind at rest. They were moving in the right direction.
o o o
The following morning, Liborio Pintacuda, a steaming cup of coffee in hand, woke the inspector up when it was still dark outside.
“I’ll wait for you in the boat.”
He’d invited him to a useless half day of fishing, and the inspector had accepted. Montalbano put on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. Sitting in a boat with a gentleman dressed to the nines, he would have felt silly in a bathing suit.
Fishing, for the professor, proved to be exactly like eating. He never opened his mouth, except, every now and then, to curse the fish for not biting.
Around nine in the morning, with the sun already high in the sky, Montalbano couldn’t hold back any longer.
“I’m losing my father,” he said.
“My condolences,” the professor said without looking up from his fishing line.
The words seemed flat and inappropriate to the inspector.
“He hasn’t died yet. He’s dying,” he clarified.
“It makes no difference. For you, your father died the very moment you learned he was going to die. Everything else is, so to speak, a bodily formality. Nothing more. Does he live with you?” “No, he’s in another town.”
“By himself ?”
“Yes. And I can’t summon the courage to go see him in this state, before he goes. I just can’t. The very idea scares me.
I’ll never have the strength to set foot in the hospital where he’s staying.”
The old man said nothing, limiting himself to replacing the bait the fishes had eaten with many thanks. Then he decided to talk.
“You know, I happen to have followed an investigation of yours, the one about the ‘terra-cotta dog.’ In that instance, you abandoned an investigation into some weapons trafficking to throw yourself heart and soul into tracking a crime from fifty years ago, even though solving it wasn’t going to yield any practical results. Do you know why you did it?” “Out of curiosity?” Montalbano guessed.
“No, my friend. It was a very shrewd, intelligent way for you to keep practicing your unpleasant profession, but by escaping from everyday reality. Apparently this everyday reality sometimes becomes too much for you to bear. And so you escape. As I do when I take refuge here. But the moment I go back home, I immediately lose half of the benefit. The fact of your father’s dying is real, but you refuse to confirm it by seeing it in person. You’re like the child who thinks he can blot out the world by closing his eyes.” Professor Liborio Pintacuda, at this point, looked the inspector straight in the eye.
“When will you decide to grow up?”
2 7 5
0p>
20
As he was going downstairs for supper, he decided he would head back to Vigàta the following morning. He’d been away for five days. Luicino had set the table in the usual little room, and Pintacuda was already sitting at his place and waiting for him.
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Montalbano announced.
“Not me. I need another week of detox.”
Luicino brought the first course at once, and thereafter their mouths were used only for eating. When the second course arrived, they had a surprise.
“Meatballs!” the professor exclaimed, indignant. “Meatballs are for dogs!”
The inspector kept his cool. The aroma floating up from the dish and into his nose was rich and dense.
“What’s with Tanino? Is he sick?” Pintacuda inquired with a tone of concern.
“No sir, he’s in the kitchen,” replied Luicino.
Only then did the professor break a meatball in half with his fork and bring it to his mouth. Montalbano hadn’t yet made a move. Pintacuda chewed slowly, eyes half closed, and emitted a sort of moan.
“If one ate something like this at death’s door, he’d be happy even to go to Hell,” he said softly.
The inspector put half a meatball in his mouth, and with his tongue and palate began a scientific analysis that would have put Jacomuzzi to shame. So: fish and, no question, onion, hot pepper, whisked eggs, salt, pepper, breadcrumbs. But two other flavors, hiding under the taste of the butter used in the frying, hadn’t yet answered the call. At the second mouthful, he recognized what had escaped him in the first: cumin and coriander.
“Kofta s ! ” he shouted in amazement.
“What did you say?” asked Pintacuda.
“We’re eating an Indian dish, executed to perfection.”
“I don’t give a damn where it’s from,” said the professor.
“I only know it’s a dream. And please don’t speak to me again until I’ve finished eating.”
o o o
Pintacuda waited for the table to be cleared and then suggested they play their now customary game of chess that, equally customarily, Montalbano always lost.
“Excuse me a minute; first I’d like to say good-bye to Tanino.”
“I’ll come with you.”
The cook was in the process of giving his assistant a serious tongue-lashing for having poorly cleaned the pans.
“When you do that, they end up tasting like yesterday’s food and nobody can tell what they’re eating anymore.”
“Listen,” said Montalbano, “is it true you’ve never been outside of Sicily?”
He must have inadvertently assumed a coplike tone, because Tanino seemed suddenly to have returned to his days as a delinquent.
“Never, Inspector, I swear! I got witnesses!” Therefore he could never have learned that dish from some foreign restaurant.
“Have you ever had any dealings with Indians?”
“Like in the movies? Redskins?”
“Never mind,” said Montalbano. And he said good-bye to the miraculous cook, giving him a hug.
o o o
In the five days he’d been away—as Fazio reported to him—
nothing of any importance had happened. Carmelo Arnone, the man with the tobacco shop near the train station, had fired four shots at Angelo Cannizzaro, haberdasher, over a woman. Mimì Augello, who happened to be in the area, had courageously confronted the gunman and disarmed him.
“So,” Montalbano commented, “Cannizzaro came away with little more than a good scare.”
It was well known to everyone in town that Carmelo Arnone didn’t know how to handle a gun and couldn’t even hit a cow at point-blank range.
“Well, no.”
“He hit him?” asked Montalbano, stunned.
Actually, Fazio went on to explain, he hadn’t hit his target this time either. One of the bullets, though, after striking a lamppost, had ricocheted back and ended up between Cannizzaro’s shoulder blades. The wound was nothing, the bullet had lost all its force by then. But in no time the rumor had spread all over town that the cowardly Carmelo Arnone had shot Angelo Cannizzaro in the back. So Cannizzaro’s brother, Pasqualino, who dealt in fava beans and wore glasses with lenses an inch thick, armed himself, tracked down Carmelo Arnone, and shot at him, missing twice. That is, he missed both the target and the identity of the target. Deceived by a strong family resemblance, he had mistaken Carmelo’s brother Filippo, who owned a fruit-and-vegetable store, for Carmelo himself. As for missing the target, the first shot had ended up God-knows-where, while the second had injured the pinky on the left hand of a shopkeeper from Canicattì who’d come to Vigàta on business. At this point the pistol had jammed, otherwise Pasqualino Cannizzaro, firing blindly, would surely have wrought another slaughter of the innocents.
Ah and, also, there were two robberies, four purse snatch-ings, and three cars torched. Routine stuff.
There was a knock at the door, and Tortorella came in after pushing the door open with his foot, arms laden with a good six or seven pounds of papers.
“Shall we make good use of your time while you’re here?”
“Tortorè, you make it sound like I’ve been away for a hundred years!”
Since he never signed anything without first carefully reading what it was about, Montalbano had barely dispatched a couple of pounds of documents when it was already lunchtime. Though he felt some stirring in the pit of his stomach, he decided not to go to the Trattoria San Calogero.
He wasn’t ready yet to desecrate the memory of Tanino, the cook directly inspired by the Madonna. The betrayal, when it came, would have to be justified, at least in part, by absti-nence.
He finished signing papers at eight that evening, with aches not only in his fingers, but in his whole arm.
o o o
By the time he got home, he was ravenous; in the pit of his stomach there now was a hole. How should he proceed?
Should he open the oven and fridge and see what Adelina had made for him? He reasoned that, if going from one restaurant to another could technically be called a betrayal, to go from Tanino to Adelina certainly could not. Rather, it might be better defined as a return to the family fold after an adulterous interlude. The oven was empty. In the fridge he found ten or so olives, three sardines, and a bit of Lampedu-san tuna in a small glass jar. On the kitchen table there was some bread wrapped in paper, next to a note from the housekeeper.
Since you didna tell me when you was commin back, I cook and cook and then I gotta thro alla this good food away.
I’m not gonna cook no more.
She didn’t want to go on wasting things, clearly, but more importantly, she must have felt offended because he hadn’t told her where he was going (“All right, so Ima just a maid, sir, but sommatime you treeta me jes like a maid!”).
He listlessly ate a couple of olives with bread, which he decided to accompany with some of his father’s wine. He turned the television on to the Free Channel. It was time for the news.
Nicolò Zito was finishing up a commentary on the arrest of a town councilman in Fela for embezzlement and graft. Then he moved on to the latest stories. On the outskirts of Sommatina, between Caltanissetta and Enna, a woman’s body had been recovered in an advanced state of decomposition.
Montalbano bolted upright in his armchair.
The woman had been strangled, stuffed into a bag, and thrown into a rather deep, dry well. Beside her they found a small suitcase that led to the victim’s identification. Karima Moussa, aged thirty-four, a native of Tunis who had moved to Vigàta a few years earlier.
The photo of Karima and François that the inspector had given Nicolò appeared on the screen.
Did the viewing audience remember the Free Channel’s report on the woman’s disappearance? No trace, meanwhile, had turned up of the little boy, her son. According to Inspector Diliberto, who was conducting the investigation, the killer might have been the Tunisian woman’s unknown pro-curer. There nevertheless remained, in the inspector’s opinion, numerous details to be cleared up.
Montalbano whinnied, turned off the TV, and smiled.
Lohengrin Pera had kept his word. He stood up, stretched, sat back down, and immediately fell asleep in the armchair. An animal slumber, probably dreamless, like a sack of potatoes.
o o o
The next morning, from his office, he called the commissioner and invited himself to dinner. Then he called police headquarters in Sommatino.
“Diliberto? Montalbano here. I’m calling from Vigàta.”
“Hello, colleague. What can I do for you?”
“I wanted to know about that woman you found in the well.”
“Karima Moussa.”
“Yes. Are you absolutely certain about the identification?”
“Without a shadow of a doubt. In her bag, among other things, we found an ATM card from the Banca Agricola di Montelusa.”
“Excuse me for interrupting, but anyone, you see, could have put—”
“Let me finish. Three years ago, this woman had an accident for which she was given twelve stitches in her right arm at Montelusa Hospital. It checks out. The scar was still visible despite the body’s advanced state of decomposition.” “Listen, Diliberto, I just got back to Vigàta this morning after a few days off. I’m short on news and found out about the body on a local TV station. They reported you still had some questions.” “Not about the identification. But I’m certain the woman was killed and buried somewhere else, not where we found her after receiving an anonymous tip. So my question is: Why did they dig her up and move the body? What need was there to do that?” “What makes you so sure they did?”
“You see, Karima’s suitcase was soiled with bodily waste from its first period alongside the corpse. And in order to carry the suitcase to the well where it was found, they wrapped it in newspaper.” “So?”
“The newspaper was only three days old. Whereas the woman had been killed at least ten days earlier. The coroner would bet his life on it. So I need to figure out why she was moved. And I have no idea; I just can’t understand it.” Montalbano had an idea, but he couldn’t tell his colleague what it was. If only those fuckheads in the secret services could do something right for once! Like the time when, wanting to make people believe that a certain Libyan airplane had crashed in Sila on a specific day, they staged a show of explosions and flames, and then, in the autopsy, it was determined that the pilot had actually died fifteen days earlier from the impact. The flying cadaver.
o o o
After a simple but elegant dinner, Montalbano and his superior retired to the study. The commissioner’s wife withdrew in turn to watch television.
Montalbano’s story was long and so detailed that he didn’t even leave out his voluntary crushing of Lohengrin Pera’s little gold eyeglasses. At a certain point, the report turned into a confession. But the commissioner’s absolution was slow in coming. He was truly annoyed at having been left out of the game.
“I’m mad at you, Montalbano. You denied me a chance to amuse myself a little before calling it quits.”
o o o
My dear Livia,
This letter will surprise you for at least two reasons. The first is the letter itself, my having written it and sent it. Un-written letters I’ve sent you by the bushel, at least one a day. I realized that in all these years, I’ve only sent you an occa-sional miserly postcard with a few “bureaucratic, inspectorly” greetings, as you called them.
The second reason, which will delight you as much as surprise you, is its content.
Since you left exactly fifty-five days ago (as you can see, I keep track), many things have happened, some of which concern us directly. To say they “happened,” however, is incorrect; it would be more accurate to write that I made them happen.
You reproached me once for a certain tendency I have to play God by altering the course of events (for others) through omissions great and small, and even through more or less damnable falsifications. Maybe it’s true. Actually, it most certainly is. But don’t you think this, too, is part of my job?
Whatever the case, you should know at once that I’m about to tell you of another supposed transgression of mine, one that was aimed, however, at turning a chain of events in our favor, and was therefore not for or against anyone else. But first I want to tell you about François.
Neither you nor I have even mentioned his name since the last night you spent in Marinella, when you reproached me for not having realized that the boy could become the son we would never have. What’s more, you were hurt by the way I had the child taken from you. But, you see, I was terrified, and with good reason. He had become a dangerous witness, and I was afraid they would make him disappear (or “neutralize” him, as they say euphemistically).
The omission of that name has weighed heavily on our phone conversations, making them evasive and a little loveless.
Today I want to make it clear to you that if I never once mentioned François before now, it was to keep you from nurturing dangerous illusions. And if I’m writing to you about him now, it is because this fear has subsided.
Do you remember that morning in Marinella when François ran away to look for his mother? Well, as I was walking him home, he told me he didn’t want to end up in an orphanage. And I replied that this would never happen. I gave him my word of honor, and we shook on it. I made a promise, and I will keep it at all costs.
In these fifty-five days Mimì Augello, on my request, has been calling his sister three times a week to see how the boy is doing. The answers have always been reassuring.
The day before yesterday, in Mimì’s company, I went to see him (by the way, you ought to write Mimì a letter thanking him for his generosity and friendship). I had a chance to observe François for a few minutes while he was playing with Mimì’s nephew, who’s the same age. He was cheerful and carefree. As soon as he saw me (he recognized me at once), his expression changed. He sort of turned sad. Children’s memories, like those of the elderly, are intermittent. I’m sure the thought of his mother had come back to him. He gave me a big hug and then, looking at me with bright, tearless eyes—he doesn’t seem to me a boy who cries easily—he didn’t ask me what I was afraid he’d ask, that is, if I had any news of Karima. In a soft voice, he said only: “Take me to Livia.”
Not to his mother. To you. He must be convinced he’ll never see his mother again. And unfortunately, he’s right.
You know that from the very first, based on unhappy experience, I was convinced that Karima had been murdered. To do what I had in mind, I had to make a dangerous move that would bring the accomplices to her murder out in the open.
The next step was to force them to produce the woman’s body in such a way that, when it was found, it would be certain to be identified. It all went well. And so I was able to act “officially” on behalf of François, who has now been declared motherless. The commissioner was a tremendous help to me, putting all his many acquaintances to work. If Karima’s body had not been found, my steps would have surely been hindered by endless bureaucratic red tape, which would have delayed the resolution of our problem for years and years.
I realize this letter is getting too long, so I’ll change register.
1) In the eyes of the law, Italian as well as Tunisian, François is in a paradoxical situation. In fact, he’s an orphan who doesn’t exist, inasmuch as his birth was never registered either in Sicily or Tunisia.
2) The judge in Montelusa who deals with these questions has sort of straightened out his status, but only for as long as it takes to go through the necessary procedures. He has assigned him temporarily to the care of Mimì’s sister.
3) The same judge has informed me that while it is theo-retically possible in Italy for an unmarried woman to adopt a child, in reality it’s all talk. And he cited the case of an actress who was subjected to years of judicial pronouncements, opin-ions, and decisions, each one contradicting the last.
4) The best way to expedite matters, in the judge’s opinion, is for us to get married.
5) So get your papers ready.
A hug and a kiss. Salvo
P.S. A friend of mine in Vigàta who’s a notary will administer a fund of one-half billion lire in François’s name, which he’ll be free to use when he comes legally of age. I find it fitting that our son should be officially born the exact moment he sets foot in our house, and more than fitting that he should be helped through life by his real mother, whose money that was.
o o o
your father is nearing the end do not delay if you ever want to see him again. arcangelo prestifilippo.
He’d been expecting these words, but when he read them the dull ache returned, as when he’d first found out.
Except that now it was compounded by the anguish of knowing what duty required him to do: to bend down over the bed, kiss his father’s forehead, feel his dry, dying breath, look him in the eye, say a few comforting words. Would he have the strength? Drenched in sweat, he thought this must be the inevitable test, if indeed it was true that he must grow up, as Professor Pintacuda had said.
I will teach François not to fear my death, he thought. And from this thought, which surprised him by the very fact that he’d had it, he derived a temporary peace of mind.
o o o
Right outside the gates of Valmontana, after four straight hours of driving, was a road sign indicating the route to follow for the Clinica Porticelli.
He left the car in the well-ordered parking lot and went in. He felt his heart beating right under his Adam’s apple.
“My name is Montalbano. I’d like to see my father who’s staying here.”
The person behind the desk eyed him for a moment, then pointed to a small waiting room.
“Please make yourself comfortable. I’ll call Dr. Brancato for you.”
He sat down in an armchair and picked up one of the magazines that lay on a small table. He put it back down at once. His hands were so sweaty they had wet the cover.
The doctor, a very serious-looking man of about fifty in a white smock, came in and held out his hand to him.
“Mr. Montalbano? I am very, very sorry to have to tell you that your father died peacefully two hours ago.”
“Thank you,” said Montalbano.
The doctor looked at him, slightly bewildered. But it wasn’t him the inspector was thanking.
2 8 9
AU T H O R ’ S N OT E
One critic, when reviewing my book The Terra-Cotta Dog, wrote that Vigàta, the nonexistent town in which all my novels are set, is “the most invented city of the most typical Sicily.” I cite these words in support of the requisite declaration that all names, places, and situations in this book have been invented out of whole cloth. Even the license plate.
If fantasy has somehow coincided with reality, the blame, in my opinion, lies with reality.
The novel is dedicated to Flem. He liked stories like this.
2 9 1
N OT ES
1 sardines a beccafico: Sarde a beccafico are a famous Sicilian spe-cialty named after a small bird, the beccafico ( Sylvia borin, garden war-bler in English), which is particularly fond of figs; indeed the name beccafico means “fig-pecker.” The headless, cleaned sardines are stuffed with sautéed breadcrumbs, pinenuts, sultana raisins, and anchovies, then rolled up in such a way that, when removed from the oven, they resemble the bird.
6 “the prefect”: The prefetto is the local representative of the central Italian government; one is assigned to each province. They are part of the national, not local bureaucracy.
29 alalonga all’agrodolce: Alalonga (literally “longwing”) is a particularly delicious species of small tuna. All’agrodolce means
“sweet and sour,” and in this case involves sautéing a small steak of the fish in a sauce of vinegar, oil, sugar, and parsley.
29 The Northern League . . . towards secession: The Lega Nord is a right-wing political party based in the northern regions of Italy (Lombardy,Veneto, Piedmont) and known for its prejudices against foreign immigrants and southern Italians. Until recently they had been threatening to constitute a separate national entity under the historically dubious name of Padania (after the Po River, which runs from the Piedmont through Lombardy and the Veneto), and to secede from the Italian republic.
2 9 3
N O T E S
38 They spread their hands apart, looking sorrowful: Spreading the hands apart, palms open, is a gesture typical of southern Italians and seen often among Italian Americans, most notably Al Pacino in many of his movie roles. It usually expresses helplessness and resignation to fate.
39 A smell of stale perfume, burnt straw in color: As seen in the first two novels, Montalbano synesthetically associates colors with smells.
51 E te lo vojo dì che sò stato io: b>“And I want to say that it was me.” The lines are a refrain from a popular Italian song of the early 1970s by the Fratelli DeAngelis. In it a man confesses to a friend that it was he who committed an unsolved crime of passion some thirty years before, and that he has kept the truth inside him all these years.p>
51 “goat-tied”: The Sicilian word is incaprettato (containing the word for goat, capra), and it refers to a particularly cruel method of execution used by the Mafia, where the victim, facedown, has a rope looped around his neck and then tied to his feet, which are raised behind his back, as in hog-tying. Fatigue eventually forces him to lower his feet, strangling himself in the process.
69 “Italy is a Republic founded on construction work”: A send-up of the first sentence of the Italian constitution: “Italy is a Republic founded on work.”
73 a gesture that meant “gone away”: Normally this consists of tapping the edge of the right hand against the open left palm, a sign used equally in Italy, France, Spain, and North Africa to mean “let’s go” or “gone.” 79 Montalbano brought his fingertips together, pointing upwards,
artichokelike: This is a familiar gesture of questioning used by all Italians.
2 9 4
N O T E S
79 “Frère . . . Salvo”: The French conversation translates as follows:
“Brother?”
[. . .]
“Yes. His brother Ahmed.”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” [. . . .]
“Her husband?”
[. . .]
“Just François’s father. A bad man.”
[. . .]
“My name is Aisha,” [. . .]
“Mine is Salvo,” [. . .]
81 five hundred million lire: About $300,000 at the time of the novel’s publication in 1998.
96 two hundred twenty thousand lire . . . three hundred eighty
thousand . . . one hundred seventy-seven thousand lire: Respectively, about $150, $200, and $95 at the time.
105 he was going out to the nearest tobacco shop: Tobacco products in Italy are distributed by the state monopoly and sold only in licensed shops, bars, and cafés.
107 when Montelusa was called Kerkent: The fictional Montelusa is modeled on the city of Agrigento (the ancient Agrigentum), called Girgenti by the Sicilians and Kerkent by the Arabs.
109 children’s late-morning snacks: Lunch in Italy isn’t usually eaten until one or one-thirty in the afternoon, and mothers often pack a snack for their children to quell their late-morning hunger.
121 torroncini: Marzipan pastries filled with pumpkin jam and covered with roasted almonds.
123 “the Lacapra case”: Lapècora means “the sheep,” while Lacapra means “the goat.”
2 9 5
N O T E S
124 pasta ’ncasciata: A casserole of pasta corta—that is, elbow macaroni, penne, ziti, mezzi ziti, or something similar—tomato sauce, ground beef, Parmesan cheese, and béchamel.
131 “By repenting . . . turning state’s witness against the Mafia”:
In Italy Mafia turncoats are called pentiti, “repenters,” and many people, like Montalbano, believe they are treated too leniently by the government.
131 càlia e simenza: A snack food of chickpeas and pumpkin seeds, sometimes with peanuts as well.
136 “Is this” . . . “s’appelle?”: The French here translates as fol lows:
“Is this your uncle?”
“Yes.”
“What’s his name?”
[. . .]
“Ahmed?”
“Just Ahmed?”
“Oh, no. Ahmed Moussa.”
“And your mother? What’s her name?”
147 “nine hundred thousand”: At the time of the novel’s writing, about $500.
156 “Pippo Baudo”: A famous Italian television personality and master of ceremonies for a number of different variety shows.
159 No one must ever know that Inspector Montalbano was rescued
by the carabinieri. The carabinieri, considered not very intelligent in the popular imagination, are a national paramilitary police force. They and the local police forces are often in competition with each other.
162 “On Saturday”: Italian children attend school Monday through Saturday.
167 Forty-four million two hundred thousand annually: About $23,000.
2 9 6
N O T E S
179 Didìo . . . “The Wrath of God”: Di Dio means “of God” in Italian.
191 Totò and Peppino: Totò, born Antonio de Curtis to a princely family, was one of the greatest comic actors of twentieth-century Italy. He made many famous films with Peppino, born Peppino De Filippo, another great comic and, like Totò, from Naples.
192 Wasn’t that title abolished half a century ago?: Much used and abused during the Fascist era, the title “Your Excellency” was finally banned after World War II, though many government digni-taries still defy the ban.
223 “Two hundred million lire!”: About $110,000.
225 “Guarda come dondolo . . . col twist”: “See how I sway, see how I sway, doing the twist.” Lines from a popular song written and performed by Edoardo Vianello.
241 “Montanelli”: Indro Montanelli (1909–2001) was a famous journalist who began his long career during the time of the Fascists, whom he initially supported. He continued to work as a columnist and social critic until his death.
244 to compensate . . . for his . . . surname: Pera means “pear” in Italian.
263 “Celeste Aida”: A famous aria from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Aida.
269 “the miracle of the blood of San Gennaro”: San Gennaro (St.
Januarius) is the patron saint of Naples. Though little is known about him, his celebrity lies in the alleged miracle of the “liquefac-tion” of his blood, which is kept in a small glass vial in the epony-mous cathedral of that city. The miracle is believed to occur some eighteen times a year, but the main event is on September 19, the saint’s feast day, when large crowds always gather to witness it. Failure to liquefy is believed to be a dire portent.
283 a certain Libyan airplane . . . from the impact: On June 27, 1980, an Italian airliner crashed into the sea near the Sicilian island of Ustica. All eighty-one people on board died, and the incident has remained shrouded in mystery. The most prevalent theory is that the plane was shot down by a missile during a NATO exercise, but NATO has always denied this. The radar data, meanwhile, have disappeared. Many rumors (never confirmed) have since surfaced saying that an aerial battle had taken place during an attempt by NATO to shoot down the plane in which Colonel Ghaddafi was traveling. Whatever the case, shortly after the incident a fallen Libyan warplane was recovered in the Calabrian mountains, which the Italian secret service said had crashed the same day as the airliner. The only problem was that the pilot would have to have been dead while flying the airplane, since a verifiable autopsy (after an earlier one had been proven false) showed that he’d died twelve days before the crash.
Notes compiled by Stephen Sartarelli.
2 9 8
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