The Terra-Cotta Dog

12

Rousing himself from the spell that had paralyzed him, Montalbano started shouting to everyone to stand with their backs to the wall and not to move, not to tread on the floor of the cave, which was covered with a very fine, reddish sand. Where it had filtered in from was anyones guess. Maybe it was on the walls. There was no trace of this sand whatsoever in the other cave; perhaps it had somehow halted the decomposition of the corpses.

These were a man and a woman, their ages impossible to determine by sight. That they were of different sex the inspector could tell by the shapes of their bodies and not, of course, by any sexual attributes, which had been obliterated by natural process. The man was lying on his side, arm extended across the breast of the woman, who was supine. They were therefore embracing, and would remain in that embrace forever. In fact, what had once been the flesh of the man's arm had sort of stuck to and fused with the flesh of the woman's breast. No, they would be separated soon enough, by the hand of Dr. Pasquano. Standing out under the wizened, shriveled flesh was the white of their bones. The lovers had been dried out, reduced to pure form. They looked as if they were laughing, the lips pulled back, stretched about the mouth and showing the teeth. Next to the dead mans head was the bowl, with some round objects inside; next to the woman was the earthenware jug, the kind in which peasants used to carry cool water around with them as they worked. At the couples feet, the terra-cotta dog. It was about three feet long, its colors, gray and white, still intact. The craftsman who made it had portrayed it with front legs extended, hind legs folded, mouth half-open with the pink tongue hanging out, eyes watchful. Lying down, in short, but on guard. The rug had a few holes through which one could see the sand of the cave floor, but these may well have been already there when the rug was put in the cave.

"Everybody out!" Montalbano ordered. Then, turning to Prestand the cameraman: "And turn off those lamps. Now."

He had suddenly realized how much damage the heat of the floodlights and their own mere presence must be causing. He was left alone in the cave. By the beam of the flashlight, he carefully examined the contents of the bowl: those round objects were metal coins, oxydized and covered with verdigris. Gently, with two fingers, he picked one up, seemingly the best preserved: it was a twenty-centesimo piece, minted in 1941, with a portrait of King Victor Emmanuel on one side and a female profile with the Roman fasces on the other. When he aimed the light at the dead man's head, he noticed a hole in his temple. He was too well versed in such matters not to realize that it had been made by a firearm. The man had either committed suicide or been killed.

But if it had been a suicide, where was the weapon?

The woman's body, on the other hand, bore no trace of violent, induced death. Montalbano remained pensive. The two were naked, yet there was no clothing in the cave. What did it mean?

Without growing first yellow and dim, the flashlight suddenly went out. The battery had died. He was momentarily blinded and couldn't get his bearings. To avoid damaging anything, he crouched down on the sand, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark; in a minute he would surely start to glimpse the faint glow of the passage way. Yet those few seconds of total darkness and silence were enough for him to notice an unusual odor that he was certain he had smelled before. He tried to remember where, even if it was of no importance. Ever since childhood he had always associated a color with every smell that caught his attention; this smell, he decided, was dark green. From this association he was able to remember where he had first noticed it. It was in Cairo, inside the pyramid of Cheops, in a corridor off-limits to tourists which he had been able to visit courtesy of an Egyptian friend. And all at once he felt like a quaquaraqu worthless man, with no respect for anything. That morning, by surprising the two kids making love, he had desecrated life; and now, by exposing the two bodies that should have remained forever unknown to the world in their embrace, he had desecrated death.

Perhaps because of this feeling of guilt, Montalbano did not wish to take part in the evidence-gathering, which Jacomuzzi and his crime lab team, along with Dr. Pasquano, began at once. He had already smoked five cigarettes, seated atop the boulder that served as a door to the weapons cave, when he heard Pasquano call to him in an agitated, irritated voice.

"Where the hell is the judge?"

"You're asking me?"

"If he doesn't get here soon, things are going to turn nasty. I've got to get these corpses to Montelusa and put them in the fridge. They're practically decomposing before our eyes. What am I supposed to do?"

"Have a cigarette with me," Montalbano said, trying to pacify him.

...

Judge Lo Bianco arrived fifteen minutes later, after the inspector had smoked another two cigarettes.

Lo Bianco glanced distractedly at the scene and, since the dead were not from the time of King Martin the Younger, said hastily to the coroner:

"Do whatever you want with them. It's ancient history, in any case."

TeleVig had immediately discovered the proper angle from which to present the story. The first thing one saw on the evening news at 8:30 was Prests excited face announcing an extraordinary scoop for which, he said, they were in debted to one of those ingenious intuitions that make Inspector Salvo Montalbano of Vig, a figure perhaps unique among crime investigators across the island of Sicily and, why not?, in all of Italy. He went on to recount the inspectors dramatic arrest of the fugitive Tano the Greek, the bloodthirsty Mafia boss, and his discovery of the weapons cache inside the Crasticeddru cave. Then they played some footage of the press conference held after Tanos arrest, in which an insane-looking, stammering man who answered to the name and title of Inspector Montalbano, was having trouble putting together four consecutive words. Prest resumed his account of how this exceptional detective had become convinced that behind the cave of weapons there must be another cave connected to it.

"Trusting in the inspectors intuition," said Prest "I followed him, assisted by my cameraman, Gerlando Schirir"

At this point Prest adopting a tone of mystery, raised a few questions: "What sort of secret, paranormal powers did the inspector possess? What was it made him think that an ancient tragedy lay hidden behind a few rocks blackened by time? Did the inspector have X-ray vision, like Superman?"

Upon hearing this last question, Montalbano who was watching the broadcast from his home and for the last half hour had been unsuccessfully searching for a clean pair of underpants, which he knew must be around somewhere, told the newsman to go fuck himself.

As the chilling images of the bodies in the cave started rolling, Prest expounded his thesis with conviction. Since he didn't know about the hole in the mans head, he spoke of two people who had died for love. In his opinion, the lovers, their passion opposed by their families, had shut themselves up in the cave, sealing off the passage way and letting themselves starve to death. They had furnished their final refuge with an old rug and a jug full of water, and had waited for death in each others arms. Of the bowl full of coins he said nothing: it would have clashed with the scene he was painting. The two, Prest went on, had not been identified; their story had taken place at least fifty years ago. Then another newscaster started talking about the days events: a six- year-old girl raped and bludgeoned to death with a stone by a paternal uncle; a corpse discovered in a well; a shoot-out at Merfi resulting in three dead and four injured; a laborer killed in an industrial accident; the disappearance of a dentist; the suicide of a businessman who had been squeezed by loan sharks; the arrest of a town councillor in Montevergine for graft and corruption; the suicide of the provincial president, who had been indicted for receiving stolen goods; a dead body washed ashore...

Montalbano fell into a deep sleep in front of the television.

...

"Hello, Salvo? Gege're. Let me talk, and don't interrupt with your usual bullshit. I need to see you. I need to tell you something."

"Okay, Gege. Even tonight's okay, if you want."

"I'm not in Vig, I'm in Trapani."

"So when?"

"What day is today?"

"Thursday."

"How about Saturday midnight at the usual place?"

"Listen, Gege. Saturday night I'm having dinner with someone, but I can come anyway. If I'm a little late, wait for me."

The phone call from Gege, who from his tone of voice sounded worried enough not to tolerate any joking, had woken him up just in time. It was ten oclock, and he tuned in to the Free Channel. Nicolto, with his intelligent face, red hair, and Red ideas, opened the newscast with the story of a laborer who died at his workplace in Fela, roasted alive in a gas explosion. He listed a series of examples to demonstrate how, in at least ninety percent of the cases, management was blithely indifferent to safety standards. He then moved on to the arrest of some public officials charged with various forms of embezzlement and used this instance to remind viewers of how several different elected governments had tried in vain to pass laws that might prevent the cleanup operation currently under way. His third item was the suicide of the businessman strangled by debts to a loan shark, and here he criticized the governments provisions against usury as utterly inadequate. Why, he asked, were those investigating this scourge so careful to keep loan-sharking and the Mafia separate? How many different ways were there to launder dirty money?

Finally, he came to the news of the two bodies found in the cave, but he approached it from a peculiar perspective, indirectly challenging the angle that Prest and TeleVig had taken on the story. Somebody, he said, once asserted that religion is the opium of the people; today, instead, one would have to say that the real opium is television. For example: Why had certain people presented this case as a story of two lovers thwarted in their love? What facts authorized anyone to advance such a hypothesis? The two were found nude: what had happened to their clothes? No trace of any weapon was found in the cave. How would they have killed themselves? By starving to death? Come on! Why did the man have a bowl beside him containing coins no longer current today but still valid at the time of their deaths? To pay Charons toll? The truth, claimed the newsman, is that they want to turn a probable crime into a certain suicide, a romantic suicide. And in our dark days, with so many threatening clouds on the horizon, he concluded, we puff up a story like this to drug people, to distract their attention from the serious problems and divert them with a Romeo-and-Juliet story, one scripted, however, by a soap-opera writer.

"Darling, it's Livia. I wanted to tell you I've booked our tickets. The flight leaves from Rome, so you'll have to buy a ticket from Palermo to Fiumicino; I'll do the same from Genoa. We'll meet at the airport and board together."

"Mm-hmm."

"I've also reserved our hotel. A friend of mine has stayed there and said it's really nice without being too fancy. I think you'll like it."

"Mm-hmm."

"We leave in two weeks and a day. I'm so happy. I'm counting the days and the hours."

"Mm-hmm."

"Salvo, what's wrong?"

"Nothing. Why should there be anything wrong?"

"You don't sound very enthusiastic."

"Of course I am, what do you mean?"

"Look, Salvo, if you wiggle out of this at the last minute, I'll go anyway, by myself."

"Come on."

"But what's wrong with you?"

"Nothing. I was sleeping."

...

"Inspector Montalbano? Good evening. This is Headmaster Burgio."

"Good evening. What can I do for you?"

"I'm very sorry to disturb you at home. I just heard on television about the two bodies that were found."

"Could you identify them?"

"No. I'm calling about something that was said in passing on TV, but which might be of interest to you. I'm talking about the terra-cotta dog. If you have no objection, I thought I'd come by your office tomorrow morning with Burruano, the accountant. Do you know him?"

"I know who he is. Ten oclock all right?"

...

"Here," said Livia. "I want to do it here, right away."

They were in a kind of park, dense with trees. Crawling about at their feet were hundreds of snails of every variety, garden snails, tree snails, escargots, slugs, periwinkles.

"Why right here? Let's get back in the car and in five minutes we'll be home. Around here, somebody might see us."

"Don't argue, jerk!" Livia shot back, grabbing his belt and trying awkwardly to unbuckle it.

"I'll do it," he said.

In an instant Livia was naked, while he was still struggling with his trousers, then his underpants.

She's accustomed to stripping in a hurry, he thought, in a surge of Sicilian jealousy.

As Livia threw herself down on the wet grass, legs spread, caressing her breasts with her hands, he heard, to his disgust, the sound of dozens of snails being crushed under the weight of her body.

"Come on, hurry up," she said.

Montalbano finally managed to strip down naked, shuddering in the chill air. Meanwhile, a few snails had started slithering over Livias body.

"And what do you expect to do with that?" she asked critically, eyeing his cock. With a look of compassion, she got up on her knees, took it in her hands, caressed it, and put her lips around it. When she felt he was ready, she resumed her prior position.

"Fuck me to kingdom come," she said.

When did she become so vulgar? he wondered, bewildered.

As he was about to enter her, he saw the dog a few steps away, a white dog with its pink tongue sticking out, growling menacingly, teeth bared, a string of slobber dribbling from its mouth. When did it get there?

"What are you doing? Has it gone soft again?"

"Theres a dog."

"What the hell do you care? Give it to me."

At that exact moment the dog sprang into the air and he froze, terrified. The dog landed a few inches from his head, turned stiff, its color lightly fading, then lay down, its front legs extended, hind legs folded. It became fake, turned into terra-cotta. It was the dog in the cave, the one guarding the dead couple.

Then all at once the sky, trees, and grass disappeared, walls of rock formed around them and overhead, and in horror he realized that the dead couple in the cave were not two strangers, but Livia and himself.

He awoke from the nightmare breathless and sweating, and immediately in his mind he begged Livias forgiveness for having imagined her as so obscene in the dream. But what was the meaning of that dog? And those disgusting snails slithering all over the place?

That dog had to have a meaning, he was sure of it.

Before going to the office, he stopped at a kiosk and bought Sicily's two newspapers. Both of them prominently featured the story of the bodies found in the cave; as for the discovery of the weapons, they had prominently forgotten about that. The paper published in Palermo was certain that it had been a love suicide, whereas the one published in Catania was also open to the possibility of murder, while not, of course, discounting suicide, and indeed its headline read: double suicide or dual homicide? implying some vague, mysterious distinction between double and dual. On the other hand, no matter what the issue, this newspaper customarily never took a position. Whether the subject was a war or an earthquake, it always liked to play both sides of the fence, and for this had gained a reputation as an independent, freethinking daily. Neither of the two dwelt on the jug, the bowl, or the terra-cotta dog.

The instant Montalbano appeared in the doorway, Catarella asked him what he should say to the hundreds of journalists who were certain to phone, wanting to speak with the inspector.

"Tell them I've gone on a mission."

"What, you've become a missionary?" quipped the policeman, lightning-quick, chuckling noisily to himself. Montalbano concluded that he'd been right, the previous evening, to unplug the telephone before going to bed.