“Thank you, you’ve been very thorough.”
“Moscato’s a good, hardworking man, I admire him for that. I hope he’s not in any kind of trouble.”
“I hope so, too.”
As soon as the man left, the inspector picked up the envelope with all the receipts from Moscato’s business trip, which the manager had left for him on his desk. Without opening it, he put it in a drawer.
With this gesture, he signed off on an investigation that had never been an investigation.
Six months later, he got a phone call. At first he didn’t recognize the man at the other end.
“What was the name, sorry?”
“Angelo Liotta. Remember? I’m the manager of the cement works. You called me into the station to ask—”
“Ah, yes, of course I remember. What can I do for you?”
“Well, we’re closing the books for the fiscal year, and I need the receipts I left with you.”
What was he talking about? Then Montalbano remembered the envelope he’d never opened.
“I’ll get them back to you by the end of the day.”
Fearing he might forget it, he immediately grabbed the envelope, put it on the desk, and looked at it. For reasons that were never clear to him, he opened it. He studied the receipts one by one, then put them back in the envelope. Leaning back in his chair, he closed his eyes for a few minutes, thinking. Then he took the receipts out again and put them in order on his desk, one after the other. The first one on the left, which was dated May 4, was for filling up the gas tank; the last slip of paper on the right was a train ticket, dated May 17, from Palermo to Montelusa. It didn’t add up. This meant that Saverio Moscato must have driven from Vigàta to the airport in his car and, when his business trip was over, returned to Vigàta by train. And Pietro Sanfilippo’s testimony in fact confirmed that he’d returned by train. The question, then, was very simple: Who brought Moscato’s car back to Vigàta when he was away in Milan?
“Mr. Sanfilippo? Montalbano here. I need some information. When your friend Moscato drove to the airport to catch his flight for Milan, were you in the car with him?”
“Is that still on your mind, Inspector? Did you know that since we spoke, several different people have come to town claiming they’ve seen Michela in Milan, Paris, even London? Anyway, no, I wasn’t in the car with him, but I think you’re on the wrong track. If he came back on the train, how could he have gone there in his car? And Michela couldn’t have driven him there, either, since she didn’t know how to drive.”
“How’s your friend doing?”
“Saverio? I haven’t seen him in a long time. He quit his job at the cement works and gave up his place in town.”
“Do you know where he went?”
“Of course. He’s living in the country, in that house in Trapani province around Belmonte. I wanted to go visit him, but he made it clear that . . .”
But the inspector was no longer listening. Belmonte, Sanfilippo had said. And indeed, printed in the upper left-hand corner of the filling-station receipt were the words: “Pagano-Belmonte Service Station (TR).”
He stopped at that very same service station to ask what road to take to Saverio Moscato’s house and was duly informed. It was a small, modest house, but well maintained and completely isolated. The man who came to the door only vaguely resembled the Saverio Moscato he had met. Poorly dressed, in haphazard fashion, and wearing a long beard, Moscato barely seemed to recognize the inspector. And his eyes, which Montalbano studied closely, had entirely lost their flame. Now there was only black ash. The man showed him into a very modest dining room.
“I was just passing through,” Montalbano began.
But he didn’t go on. The other had practically forgotten about him and just stood there staring at his hands. Through the window Montalbano could see the backyard: a rose garden, flowers, and plants, contrasting strangely with the rest of the stark landscape. He stood up and went into the garden. Right in the middle was a big white stone, hemmed in by countless rosebushes. Montalbano bent over the little enclosure and touched the stone with his hand. Moscato, too, had come outside. Montalbano could sense him standing behind him.
“This is where you buried her, isn’t it?”
He asked the question softly, without raising his voice. And just as softly came the answer he hoped for and feared.
“Yes.”
“That Friday, in the afternoon, Michela wanted us to come here, to Belmonte.”
“Had she ever been here before?”
“Once, and she liked it a lot. I could never say no to her, no matter what she asked. We decided to spend all day Saturday here, then on Sunday I was going to drive her back to Vigàta in the morning and take the train to Palermo in the afternoon. Saturday was a fantastic day, better than any we’d ever spent together. In the evening, after dinner, we went straight to bed and made love. Then we had a cigarette and started talking.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Well, that’s just it, Inspector. She brought up a certain subject.”
“What subject was that?”
“It’s hard to explain. I used to reproach her . . . No, ‘reproach’ isn’t the right word . . . I used to regret the fact that, because of the life she led before we met, she was no longer able to give me anything she hadn’t already given to someone else.”
“But as far as Michela was concerned, the same was true of you!”
Saverio Moscato gave him a blank look, speechless, ashen-eyed.
“Me?! I’d never slept with a woman before Michela!”
Strangely, without knowing why, the inspector felt embarrassed.
“At a certain point she went into the kitchen, stayed there five minutes, then returned. She was smiling. Then she lay back down beside me. She held me very tight and said she was about to give me something that she’d never given anyone else, and that no one else could ever have again. I asked her what it was, but she wanted to make love again. Only afterward did she tell me what this thing was. It was her death. She’d poisoned herself.”
“And what did you do?”
“Nothing, Inspector. I held her hands in mine. And she never once took her eyes off me. It was over quickly. I don’t think she suffered much.”
“Don’t kid yourself. And don’t underestimate what Michela did for you. Death by poison is a painful thing, I assure you!”
“That very night I dug a grave and put her where she is now. Then I left for Milan. I felt desperate and happy all at once, do you understand? One day, work was over early. It wasn’t even five in the afternoon, so I got on a plane to Palermo, then got in my car, which I’d left at the airport, and drove to Vigàta. I took my time, since I didn’t want to get into town until late at night. I couldn’t risk anyone seeing me. I stuffed her clothes and things into a suitcase and brought it here. I’ve got them all upstairs, in the bedroom. When it came time to drive back to Palermo airport, my car decided not to cooperate. I hid it among those trees over there and called a taxi from Trapani to take me to the airport. I made it barely in time for the first flight out to Milan. Once my work was finished, I came back by train. For the first few days I was in a kind of daze, overjoyed that Michela had the courage to give me what she did. That’s why I moved here, so I could enjoy my happiness alone with her. But then . . .”
“Then?”
“Then, one night, I woke up with a start. I couldn’t feel Michela beside me anymore. And to think that when I’d shut my eyes, I thought I could hear her breathing in her sleep. I called out to her, looked for her all over the house. But she wasn’t there. And that’s when I realized that her tremendous gift had really cost a lot. Too much.”
He started crying, without sobs, silent tears running down his face.
Montalbano stared at a lizard that had climbed to the top of the white tombstone. It basked
in the sunlight, motionless.
THE ARTIST’S TOUCH
The ringing of the telephone was not the ringing of the telephone, but the sound of a drill being applied by a crazed dentist bent on boring a hole in Montalbano’s head. He opened his eyes with great effort and looked at the alarm clock on the bedside table: five-thirty in the morning. It must surely be one of his men at the station trying to reach him to tell him something important. It couldn’t be anyone else, given the hour. He got up out of bed, cursing the saints, went into the dining room, and picked up the receiver.
“Salvo, do you know Potocki?”
He recognized the voice of his friend Nicolò Zito, the newsman for the Free Channel, one of the two private television stations that broadcast in Vigàta. Nicolò wasn’t the type to play stupid jokes, and so Montalbano didn’t get angry.
“Do I know who?”
“Potocki, Jan Potocki.”
“Is he Polish?”
“Apparently, to judge by the name. He’s supposedly the author of a famous book, but out of all the people I asked, not one was able to tell me anything. If even you don’t know him, then I can just stuff it.”
Fiat lux. Maybe the inspector could answer his friend’s unlikely question after all.
“Do you know by any chance if the book’s title is Manuscript Found at Saragossa?”
“That’s it! Shit, Salvo, you’re a god! And have you read the book?”
“Yes, many years ago.”
“Can you tell me what it’s about?”
“But why are you so interested in it?”
“Alberto Larussa, whom you knew well, has committed suicide. His body was found around four o’clock this morning and I was dragged out of bed to cover the story.”
The inspector felt upset. He wasn’t particularly close to Alberto Larussa, but still he used to go and see him every now and then, when invited to his house in Ragona, never missing an opportunity to borrow a few books from his friend’s vast library.
“Did he shoot himself?”
“Who? Alberto Larussa? Do you think he would choose such a banal way to kill himself?”
“So how did he do it?”
“He turned his wheelchair into an electric chair. In a sense he executed himself.”
“So what’s the book got to do with it?”
“It was right there beside the electric chair, on a stool. It’s probably the last thing he read.”
“That’s right, we spoke about it. He liked it a lot.”
“So who was this Potocki?”
“He was born in the late eighteenth century to a military family. He himself was a scholar and a traveler. I think he went from Morocco to Mongolia. The Tsar made him an adviser. He published some ethnological studies. There was a group of islands, I forget where, that were named after him. The novel you asked me about he wrote in French. And that’s about all I know.”
“So why was he so into this book?”
“I told you, Nicolò: He liked it, so he read and reread it. I think he considered Potocki a sort of kindred soul.”
“But he never set foot outside his house!”
“A kindred soul in terms of eccentricity and originality. And at any rate, Potocki also committed suicide.”
“How?”
“He shot himself.”
“That doesn’t seem very original. Larussa topped that.”
Given Alberto Larussa’s notoriety, the morning news was reported by Nicolò Zito, who usually limited himself to the more widely watched evening edition. He devoted the first part of his report to the circumstances that led to the discovery of the body and to the manner in which the suicide was carried out. At around three-thirty the previous night, Martino Zìcari, a hunter, had noticed smoke coming out of a small basement window of Larussa’s house when passing by. Since it was well known that that was Alberto Larussa’s workshop, Zìcari at first was not alarmed. When a gust of wind let him get a whiff of the smoke, however, he did grow alarmed. And so he called the carabinieri, who, after knocking with no results, broke down the door. In the basement they found the half-charred, lifeless body of Alberto Larussa, who had quite cleverly turned his wheelchair into a perfect electric chair. Later a short circuit occurred, leading to the fire that devastated part of the house. Escaping the flames unscathed, however, was a stool beside the body, with the novel by Jan Potocki on it. At this point Nicolò Zito mentioned some of the things Montalbano had told him, then he apologized to viewers for giving only outside shots of Larussa’s house, since the marshal of the carabinieri had forbidden all filming inside.
The second part of the report was used to give the suicide victim’s background. Alberto Larussa was fifty years old and wealthy, but had been paralyzed thirty years earlier when he fell from a horse. He never ventured beyond the walls of his native city of Ragona and had never married. He had a younger brother who lived in Palermo. A passionate reader, he possessed a library of over ten thousand books. After his fall, he’d discovered, entirely by chance, his true vocation: that of jeweler. But a very particular kind of jeweler: He used only cheap materials—iron and copper wire, colored glass of various hues. And yet the design of this cheap jewelry was always highly inventive and elegant, so that the articles became veritable works of art. Larussa didn’t sell them, but gave them away as presents to friends and people he liked. To help himself in his work, he had turned his basement into a highly equipped workshop—where, in the end, he killed himself, leaving no explanation whatsoever.
Montalbano turned the TV off and called up Livia, hoping to find her still at home in Boccadasse, a suburb of Genoa. She was there, and he told her the news. She had known Larussa, and they were fond of each other. Every Christmas Alberto would send her one of his creations as a present. Livia was not a woman who cried easily, but Montalbano could hear her voice cracking.
“But why did he do it? He never seemed like the kind of person who would do anything like that.”
At around three o’clock that afternoon, the inspector rang Nicolò.
“Any new developments?”
“Well, yes, quite a few. Larussa’s workshop had a 380 triphase electrical system. He took all his clothes off, strapped bracelets around his ankles and wrists, a large metal band around his chest, and a kind of headset to his temples. And to increase the effect of the electrical charge, he stuck his feet into a basin full of water. He wanted to be sure. Naturally, he’d made all these gadgets himself with saintly patience.”
“Do you know how he managed to turn on the current? I’m under the impression he was bound hand and foot.”
“The fire chief told me there was a timer. Brilliant, no? Oh, and he’d also downed a bottle of whisky.”
“Did you know he was a teetotaler?”
“No.”
“I want to tell you something that occurred to me just now as you were telling me about the gadgets he’d created to conduct the electrical current. There’s an explanation for why he’d left the novel by Potocki beside him.”
“So, will you finally tell me what’s in this damned book?”
“No, because it’s not the novel itself that’s of interest to our case, but the author.”
“Meaning?”
“I remembered how Potocki killed himself.”
“But you’ve already told me! He shot himself!”
“Yes, but in those days they used muzzle-loading pistols, only one bullet at a time.”
“So?”
“Three years before checking out, Potocki had unscrewed the ball from the lid of a silver teapot of his. He spent a few hours each day filing it down, and it took him three years to give it the right circumference. Then he had it blessed, stuffed it into the barrel of his pistol, and killed himself.”
“Christ! This morning I’d declared Larussa the winner in terms of originality, but now I’d say he
and Potocki are about even. So that book, in short, was left there as a sort of message, as if to say ‘I’ve killed myself in extravagant fashion, like my teacher Potocki.’”
“Let’s say that might be the meaning of it.”
“Why do you say ‘might be’?”
“Because I honestly don’t know.”
The following day it was Nicolò’s turn to call him. He had something interesting to show the inspector on Larussa’s suicide, which continued to spark curiosity because of the imaginative way it was carried out, and so Montalbano went to the Free Channel studios to see what it was. Nicolò had interviewed Giuseppe Zaccaria, who was the administrator of Larussa’s holdings, as well as Carabinieri Lieutenant Olcese, who was conducting the investigation. Zaccaria, a Palermo businessman, was surly and rude.
“I’m under no obligation to answer your questions.”
“Of course you’re not. I was simply asking whether you’d be so kind as to—”
“Oh, go fuck yourself, you and your television station!”
Zaccaria turned his back and was about to leave.
“Is it true that Larussa had an estate estimated at fifty billion lire?”
It was clearly a bluff on Zito’s part, but Zaccaria fell for it. He turned around in a huff, enraged.
“And who fed you that mountain of bullshit?”
“According to my sources—”
“Listen, the late Mr. Larussa was rich, but not that kind of rich. He owned stocks and other investments but, I repeat, nothing like the figure you just blurted out.”
“And who will get the inheritance?”
“Don’t you know he has a younger brother?”
Lieutenant Olcese was a six-foot-five beanpole. Polite but cold as ice.
“The only new information that has emerged, all of it, points to a suicide. Certainly a very elaborate, fanciful suicide, but a suicide nonetheless. Even his brother—” Lieutenant Olcese suddenly broke off. “That’s all, thank you,” he said.
Montalbano's First Case and Other Stories Page 19
