The Sicilian Method

by Andrea Camilleri

  “No, Fazio, but you’ll find all the information you need in the Trinacriarte folder I left on my desk.”

  “Right, I remember.”

  “Good. I’ll see you at the office.”

  He was on his way out when his cell phone rang. It was Livia. Matre santa! How long had it been since they’d spoken? He decided he’d better grab the upper hand before it was too late.

  “Livia! Where on earth have you been?”

  “You’re asking me? Where on earth have you been, rather? . . . I called you repeatedly last night but got no answer. I started getting worried, and so I—”

  “You did the right thing.”

  There wasn’t anything else for him to say. He’d completely forgotten to call her.

  “Is the investigation really taking up so much—”

  “Yes, Livia, frankly, it is. I came home very late.”

  “Think it’ll keep you busy for a long time to come?”

  “I’m afraid it may, unfortunately. I still don’t feel I have a good grasp on the case.”

  “Then I guess there’s no point in me reserving a flight for Palermo . . .”

  Her words stirred a feeling of tenderness in Montalbano. Not displeasure. He felt guilty and tried to make up for it.

  “I promise that the minute I’m free,” he said, “I’ll come and see you in Boccadasse, and we’ll go somewhere together.”

  “All right . . .” said Livia. She sounded disconsolate, but at least not resentful.

  * * *

  —

  He found Fazio waiting for him at the office.

  “What have you got to tell me?”

  “Chief, Signora Ortolani will be here at nine, but Lopez, the lawyer, has to go to the courthouse, so he was wondering if he could come in the afternoon.”

  “Sure, fine.”

  “Okay, excuse me for just one minute, so I can inform Lopez,” said Fazio.

  He pulled out his cell phone, dialed a number, spoke briefly, hung up, then asked Montalbano: “Mind telling me who they are?”

  The inspector remained silent for a moment, then started half singing, in a soft voice, the famous waltz from The Merry Widow.

  “‘Though I say not / what I may not / . . . it’s true, it’s true, / you love me so.’”

  Montalbano’s brain had traveled a path all by itself, going from Signora Ortolani to Winnie, the character in Beckett’s Happy Days, who at the end of the play intones the widow’s song.

  Fazio, saucer-eyed, just looked at him.

  So Montalbano felt the need to explain. And explain he did.

  “I’ve also got the information on Signora di Donato you asked me for,” Fazio said when the inspector had finished.

  “Tell me everything.”

  “What a sad scene, Inspector. Tragic, really. The lady’s seventy years old and had a little grocery store in the old part of town. And like all these small-business people, she was going bankrupt. So she tried to save her business by borrowing some money from Catalanotti, which turned out to be pointless, since in the end she was forced to close her shop anyway. But, since she’s an honest woman, she showed me the envelope in which she’d set aside nineteen thousand euros. She was getting ready to pay Catalanotti back. She even wanted to give me the money, since she didn’t know anymore who to give it to.”

  “And wha’d you do? Did you take it?”

  “No, Chief.”

  “So wha’d you say to her?”

  Fazio didn’t answer.

  “What did you say to her?” the inspector pressed.

  “I told her that for the time being, at least, she could keep the money, since at any rate nobody’s gonna come around asking for it.”

  “You did the right thing,” said Montalbano.

  Fazio resumed speaking.

  “Nico Dilicata was released from the hospital yesterday evening. What do we want to do?”

  “What time did Lopez say he was coming in?”

  “Four o’clock.”

  “Then have the kid come to the station at six.”

  “I’ll call him right away, and if you haven’t got any more orders, I’m gonna go to my office.”

  “Okay, see you later. But when Signora Ortolani gets here at nine, I want you present, too.”

  He’d been signing papers for an hour when the telephone rang.

  “Chief, ’ere’s a lady here say she’s a ’orticultist or sum’n an’ she wants a talk t’yiz poissonally in poisson ’cuz Fazio summonsed ’er. Whaddo I do?”

  “Show her into my office and on your way here get Fazio.”

  The door opened, and Fazio stepped aside to let in a blond woman of about fifty, rather plump, all made up and coiffed, wearing a spotted overcoat that she’d probably borrowed from Cruella De Vil.

  “Please sit down, signora,” the inspector said, gallantly rising to his feet and gesturing towards a chair in front of his desk.

  The woman walked with a sort of wobble, as though on a ship at sea.

  She sat down on the edge of the chair, adjusted her skirt, looked at the inspector, and smiled. All things considered, if one forgot about the mask she was wearing, her face seemed to have a likable expression.

  Fazio introduced himself and sat down in the other chair.

  “You’ll have to forgive me, but I feel awfully nervous,” the woman said in a voice coming entirely from her head and as chirpy as a baby chick’s.

  She stood up. “Could I use the bathroom?” she asked.

  “Show her the way,” Montalbano said to Fazio.

  The inspector felt bewildered. In the photo he’d seen the night before, the woman, like all of her colleagues, had decidedly dark hair.

  So how was it she was now a blonde?

  Might she be the woman who had been Catalanotti’s companion for those evening meals on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday?

  At first glance, however, she seemed to have a pleasant personality, unlike the quarrelsome character Enzo had described to him.

  Signora Ortolani returned a short while later, followed by Fazio. She sat down, readjusting her skirt. The first question Montalbano asked caught her so much by surprise that the purse she was holding in her lap fell to the floor.

  “How long have you been a blonde?”

  “Excuse me?! . . .”

  “Yesterday I saw a photo of you in which you had chestnut hair. I want to know how long it’s been since you changed your hair color.”

  The woman sat there for a moment in silence, unable to speak, then, making an effort, she began to chirp.

  “Sir . . . sir . . . yes, I know I made a mistake. My sister said the same thing. But with this sort of thing, it’s not always easy to turn back . . .”

  Montalbano stopped her.

  “What are you saying, signora?”

  “I know, I know, I should never have done it. But that day . . . I was desperate. I felt, well, like a stranger to myself. I simply had to do something extreme. So I got in my car and went out.”

  “Try to explain yourself a little better, Signora Ortolani. What was this extreme thing you did?” asked Montalbano.

  The poor woman, sinking more and more into her chair, took a deep breath, emitted a chirping sound a little sadder than the others, and said: “It’s all my own fault. I have no justification.”

  Fazio and Montalbano exchanged a glance.

  Then Fazio took the plunge. “Are you talking about the murder of Catalanotti?”

  “Whaaaaat????” the woman shrieked.

  “Signora Ortolani,” Fazio resumed, “you were telling us about something extreme you did . . .”

  “Of course, I was talking about dyeing my hair blond.”

  Montalbano went over to the window, opened it, silently cursed the entire world outside, closed
the window, and sat back down.

  “Let me ask you the question again: How long have you been a blonde?”

  “Thirty-three days.”

  Then she couldn’t have been Catalanotti’s dinner companion.

  Signora Ortolani perked up and asked: “Blond hair doesn’t suit me, does it, Inspector?”

  “Signora,” said Montalbano, changing the subject, “I called you in because Scimè the lawyer told me you played the protagonist’s role in Happy Days, under Catala—”

  The woman squirmed visibly in her chair like a chicken puffing up her feathers.

  “Oh, what an unforgettable production! One of those that leave an indelible mark on an actress’s life. So rare, so magical . . .”

  “Okay, I wanted to know what method Catalanotti used to put you in the right state of mind for interpreting the role.”

  “I remember it as though it was yesterday. He took me to a splendid hotel by the sea. There were very few people there, because it was low season. We spent three beautiful days together. Or, at least I think we did . . .”

  “What do you mean, at least you ‘think’?”

  “Well, on the first day he took me down to the beach, to a secluded spot. A lifeguard was following us with a shovel and a beach umbrella. Carmelo had him dig a deep hole, then asked me to get in it. The hole was then filled back up with sand, and only my head remained outside. Then they planted the big umbrella over my head.

  “‘Stay like that. I’ll be back in half an hour,’ Carmelo said. But you know what, Inspector? He didn’t come back until the sun was already setting. I was exhausted, and I was terribly thirsty. Every so often I would cry out, but there wasn’t anyone around to hear me. I must say, however, that it was also an amazing experience, being alone with myself. I remember eating with a tremendous appetite that evening. The following day Carmelo had another hole dug for me, but this time he left my bust and arms outside. He’d asked me to bring along my purse, which I did. When I later opened it, immersed in the sand as I was, I saw all the objects I normally keep in there in a completely different light. I started examining them one by one, as though seeing them for the first time. Just think, I couldn’t even remember how to take the cap off my lipstick. They all seemed like unfamiliar, unknown objects. On the third day I had the most upsetting experience of all. Carmelo asked me to get back into the hole up to my chest again, and after the lifeguard left, he took a revolver out of his trouser pocket. And he said, ‘Take it.’ And so I took it, though I was terrified. I’ve always been scared to death of guns. ‘Careful,’ he said, ‘it’s loaded.’ And then he left.”

  “And what happened?” asked Montalbano.

  “It was so strange! Just think, after less than an hour of staring at the gun, studying it, I was no longer afraid of it. I took it in my hand and practically started caressing it. It was a high-caliber revolver. Very heavy, but all of a sudden it sort of became part of my hand. The desire to use it began to grow slowly inside me. Then at one point I tried to throw it far away. But I didn’t throw it far enough, because I could still reach it. A few hours went by, and I started to dig out the sand around me; I wanted to come out of the hole, pick up the gun, and shoot it—at whom, I didn’t know, maybe in the air, or at the first passerby. I’d dug down almost to my knees and would have been out of there before long, when suddenly Carmelo appeared and yelled: ‘That’s enough!’ I froze. Then I saw that he had a pair of binoculars hanging from his neck and I realized he’d been watching me the whole time. So, anyway, these were the first auditions; he ended up needing quite a few more—five or six—and only at the end of it all did Carmelo tell me I was fit to take on the role. That made me very happy.”

  “That’s a rather dangerous method,” Montalbano observed.

  “Well, but he did intervene at exactly the right moment, so he never put me in any real danger, since he was keeping an eye on me the whole time. On those days and during all the other auditions . . . And so it suddenly all became clear to me. I realized what the problem was for anyone trying to approach that play: Why does Winnie have a revolver?”

  “Why does she?” Fazio and Montalbano asked in unison.

  “Because she has reached a point in her existence where she could easily just kill herself and her partner or else start singing the waltz from The Merry Widow.”

  By the time she’d finished telling her story, her forehead was beaded with sweat and her hands were trembling slightly, so deeply had she been involved in her story.

  “Would you like a little water?” Fazio asked her.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  After avidly drinking down a glass, she resumed speaking.

  “Well, it certainly was a system all his own. I remember, at first he wouldn’t even let me read Beckett’s entire text. He’d merely given me a sheet of paper with a few lines on it that I was supposed to repeat while I was buried in the sand.”

  “And when did he finally give you permission to read the whole play?” Montalbano asked.

  “After he found Willie, my partner, whom he’d put through even harsher trials than mine. Only then did he let us read it, together, for the first time.”

  Montalbano thought of the printed sheets of paper in the folders in the closet of Catalanotti’s home.

  Apparently those excerpts of dialogue must have been lines from the play he was preparing.

  “And afterwards, when he’d found the right actors, how did he go about getting ready for production?”

  “Inspector, Carmelo would want to meet with each of us individually, even the costume designer, the lighting technician, and the set designer. He would keep us all intentionally apart. He even went so far as to forbid us to talk to one another. And, I must say, we all respected his wishes. When we were finally able to rehearse onstage, Carmelo would have us repeat the same line fifty, sixty times, until we were exhausted. After which we would have to come up with some kind of full-body improvisation on the line we’d been repeating. We would do two or three more improvisations, then go back to repeating the written line aloud. I’m not sure I’m being clear.”

  “That’s about as clear as it gets. But what would Catalanotti himself do during these rehearsals? Did he intervene much? Would he interrupt you? Did he take notes?”

  “He would interrupt us a lot, and, yes, he would also take notes.”

  “Tell me something, signora. Your theater company seems to be an amateur one, surely of great merit, but not professional. So I’m wondering: What was his justification for subjecting you to these terribly demanding trials?”

  “I’ll try to explain, Inspector. Carmelo had an uncanny ability to extract, from every one of us, everything—and I mean everything—we had inside. And to use it for dramatic purposes. It was a kind of therapy, a cure. Believe me, after every performance my boyfriend and I felt like breaking into a run, we felt so . . . so liberated, so unleashed. We had to pay a very high, overwhelming price for it, and some of our associates certainly weren’t up to the task. It’s not everyone who feels like confronting their innermost, hidden truths.”

  “Now I want you to think for a moment,” said Montalbano, interrupting her again. “As far as you know, this talent of his for stripping people down naked and liberating them from their complexes, their excess baggage, their reticence, was it something Catalanotti used only for theatrical purposes?”

  The woman remained silent for a moment.

  “You have to believe me, Inspector, but even though he was able to achieve such a level of intimacy onstage, we would never see him outside of the theater. It was all played out on the floorboards. I don’t even know where he lived, and I have no idea whether he had a family, a wife, children . . . I know nothing about him.”

  She paused ever so briefly, then looked the inspector in the eye.

  “I’ll even say more: I don’t want the obscenity of Carmelo’s deat
h suddenly to reveal to me any aspects of his personality that we had willingly left out of the picture, out of some tacit agreement, when he was alive.”

  Montalbano looked at her in admiration. The woman who spoke like a chirping chick was worthy of the greatest respect.

  “And I will honor your agreement,” said the inspector, holding his hand out to her.

  Fazio was opening the door to see her out when Montalbano said: “One more thing, signora. You know, I’m of the opinion that blond hair actually looks rather good on you.”

  Signora Ortolani very nearly fainted in Fazio’s arms.

  Fazio came back almost at once, but when he saw the inspector lost in thought, he simply sat down and said nothing.

  Montalbano seemed not to have even noticed that he’d returned. But then two words uttered under his breath escaped from his lips: “Too bad.”

  Fazio now felt authorized to speak.

  “Why?”

  “I was thinking of Catalanotti. I would have liked to meet him and talk to him. Rarely have I come up against a personality as complex as his. We’re clearly dealing with a real artist here. Maybe the only one in the troupe. And so I’m wondering: Which one was murdered? The artist or the moneylender?”

  “I beg your pardon, Chief, but it seems a little weird to me that a real artist could also be a moneylender.”

  “But you’re wrong, Fazio. There’ve been great artists who robbed, killed, and raped. Catalanotti was quite capable of keeping his activities separate, and in fact Signora Ortolani just told us she didn’t know the first thing about his private life, and I believe her. And Scimè, too, didn’t know about that side of him. And you know what, Fazio? The more we talk, the more I’m convinced that the key to it all lies precisely in my question: Which of the two was murdered?”

  Fazio didn’t know what to say.

  “All right, then,” said the inspector with a sigh, “let’s move on to other things.”

  “Ah,” said Fazio, “I forgot to tell you something. When I rang Nico Dilicata to summon him here this evening, he told me the doctors have forbidden him to walk, so he can’t leave his home.”

  “No problem, that just means we’ll go to him this evening.”