“What did you study?” Montalbano asked at this point. What the man was telling him wasn’t enough; he wanted to know more.
“Modern literature. I studied with Giuseppe De Robertis and my thesis was on Foscolo’s Le Grazie.”
Hats off, thought Montalbano, a literary enthusiast.
In the meantime, war broke out. Called up to serve again, Carlo was sent to fight in North Africa. After six months on the front, a letter from the Florence railway office informed him that his father had died, cut down by machine-gun fire. Now he was utterly alone in the world. He didn’t even know the names of any relatives his parents might have had. Taken prisoner by the Americans, he was sent to a concentration camp in Texas. He spoke good English, and this was a big help, to the point that he became a sort of interpreter. That was how he met Evelyn, the daughter of the administrative director of the camp. Upon his release from the camp at the end of the war, he and Evelyn got married. In 1947, at his request, the University of Florence sent a certification of his degree. It wasn’t valid in the United States, so he resumed his studies until he received a teaching certificate. After acquiring American citizenship, he changed his name from Zuccotti to Zuck, as the Americans already called him.
“Why did you come back here?”
“That’s the hardest question,” said the old man.
For a moment he seemed lost in a labyrinth of memories. The inspector remained silent, waiting.
“At a certain point, Inspector, life for an old man like me becomes little more than a list of the dead. Which after a while becomes so long that you feel like you’ve been left alone in the middle of a desert. And so you try desperately to get your bearings, but you don’t always succeed.”
“So your wife, Evelyn, is no longer with you?”
“We had one child, James. Just one. Apparently mine is a family of only children. And he lost his life in Vietnam. My wife never got over it. And she rejoined our son eight years ago.”
Once again, Montalbano said nothing.
At this point the old professor smiled. It was a smile that made it seem to Montalbano as if the sky had darkened and a fist had emerged and grabbed his heart.
“What an ugly story, Inspector. Ugly in the literal sense, a cross between Giacometti’s melodrama of civil death and certain situations such as you find in Pirandello. Why did I come back here, you ask? On impulse. All things considered, this is where I spent the best years of my life—the best, yes, only because I wasn’t yet acquainted with grief. Which is saying a lot, incidentally. From my loneliness in Chicago, Vigàta started to shine as bright as a star. But the moment I set foot back in town, the illusion vanished. It was a mirage. I’ve been unable to find a single one of my old schoolmates, and even the house I used to live in no longer exists. Now there’s a ten-story apartment building in its place. And the three train stations have been reduced to one, with hardly any traffic. Then I discovered I was listed among the war dead, so I went to the records office. It was apparently a mistake on the part of the military. They thought I was dead.”
“Excuse me for asking, but when you saw your name there, what did you feel?”
The old man thought about this for a moment.
“Regret,” he said softly.
“Regret for what?”
“That things didn’t go the way it says on the monument to the dead. I had to live instead.”
“Listen, Professor, I’m sure I could get you a meeting with the mayor by tomorrow. Where are you staying?”
“At the Hotel Tre Pini. It’s outside Vigàta. I have to take a cab to come and go. In fact, could you please call me one now?”
That afternoon he was unable to talk to the mayor, who was in a meeting and afterwards had to go out for some door-to-door canvassing. The inspector wasn’t received until the following morning. He told the mayor the life story of Carlo Zuccotti, the living dead man. When he’d finished, the mayor laughed so hard that tears came to his eyes.
“You see, Inspector? Our quasi townsman Pirandello didn’t really need much imagination to invent such stories! All he had to do was transcribe what actually goes on around here!”
Unable to box the man’s ears, Montalbano decided not to vote for him.
“And do you, Inspector, have any idea what the guy wants from me?”
“No. He probably just wants you to have the plaque changed.”
“Good God!” the mayor said in irritation. “That’d be quite an expense.”
“Professor? Inspector Montalbano here. The mayor can see you at five o’clock this evening. Is that okay? That way you can still catch your plane back to Chicago tomorrow.”
Total silence at the other end.
“Did you hear me, Professor?”
“Yes. But last night . . .”
“Last night?”
“I lay awake all night thinking of that plaque. I thank you for your kindness, but I’ve made up my mind. I think it’s the best thing.”
“And what’s that?”
“Well, since I’m already here . . .”
Montalbano bolted out of his chair, nearly ran into Catarella in the hallway, pushed him violently out of the way, got in his car, and sped off. The mile and a half to the hotel outside Vigàta seemed like fifty.
He burst into the lobby.
“Professor Zuccotti’s room?”
“There’s no Zuccotti here.”
“Charles Zuck, asshole.”
“Room 115, first floor,” said the bewildered receptionist.
The elevator was occupied on the upper floors. The inspector dashed up the stairs, taking two at a time. Out of breath, he knocked at the door to room 115.
“Professor? Open up! This is Inspector Montalbano!”
“Just a moment,” the old man said softly from within.
Then a gunshot rang out, sharp and violent, inside the room.
And Salvo Montalbano knew that the mayor of Vigàta would be spared the expense of remaking the plaque.
SEVEN MONDAYS
1
The two men standing inside the new bus shelter, waiting patiently for the night-shift circular to pass, exchanged a little smile, though they didn’t know each other. The reason for their mirth was the persistent snoring, louder than a chain saw, coming from inside a great big cardboard box turned upside down—no doubt a vagrant, some poor bastard who had found temporary shelter from the cold and rain and who, comforted by the bit of body heat the box managed to retain, had decided it best to close his eyes, blow off the whole stinking world, and bid good night to all. At last the bus arrived, the two men got on, and it left. But then a man arrived on the run.
“Stop! Stop!” he cried.
The driver must certainly have seen him, but kept on going. The man cursed and looked at his watch. There wouldn’t be another bus for an hour, at four a.m. The man stood there thinking for a moment, and after a barrage of curses decided to walk to his destination. He fired up a cigarette and headed off. At once the snoring stopped, the giant box teetered, and slowly the head of a tramp emerged, half-hidden by an old hat full of holes and pulled down to his eyes. Stretched out on the ground as he was, the vagrant looked around carefully, turning his head slowly from side to side. When he was certain there wasn’t a living soul about, and that the windows of the houses in front of him were all shuttered, the man crawled out of his box like a snake sloughing off its skin.
Standing up, he didn’t look like such a vagrant after all. Small in stature, he was close shaven and wearing a threadbare but well-made suit. The man slipped two fingers into the front breast pocket of his jacket and extracted a pair of glasses. Putting these on, he came out from under the shelter, turned right, and, after barely ten paces, stopped in front of a gate bolted shut with a big padlock and chain. Over the gate was a large neon sign, now extinguished, that said: RISTORANTE LA SIRENETT
A—EVERY KIND OF FISH. It started raining. Not too hard, but enough to drench one’s clothes. The man fiddled a bit with the padlock—which was more appearance than substance and, in fact, put up little resistance to his picklock—and soon he had opened one side of the gate, just enough to slip inside. Shutting it behind him, he put the chain back and reclosed the padlock until it clicked. There was a short, well-tended walkway leading to the front door of the restaurant. The man followed it, but halfway down it, turned right and headed towards the garden behind the building, where some thirty tables would be set up as soon as the weather permitted. Despite the pitch-darkness the man moved with assurance, not bothering to turn on the flashlight he had in his hand. He was getting soaked by the rainfall but paid no attention. Actually he felt hotter than if it were summertime, and even felt like taking off his jacket, shirt, and trousers and standing there naked in the cooling rain. Perhaps he even felt a little fever coming on?
The fish tank, pride of the establishment, was at the back of the garden, to the left. Whoever so wished could go to the tank and personally select the fish he wanted to eat. Equipped with a landing net, he had to fish it out himself. This wasn’t always so easily done, and in those cases everyone had a good laugh and a great time, with all sorts of innuendos and double entendres about fish, especially if there were a few women in the group. The fun, however, usually ended when the bill arrived, as it was well known that the prices in that establishment were more than a little steep.
Standing at the edge of the tank, the man began muttering to himself in a sort of whisper that sounded both angry and plaintive. The night was so dark that you couldn’t see a thing, not even whether the tank was full or empty. He lowered his hand slowly into the tank, cringing absurdly in fear that some fish, if there were any left, might attack him and eat one of his fingers. Feeling the freezing-cold water, he withdrew his hand at once. Then he decided to turn on the flashlight for a split second: The brief flash was enough to catch a silver gleam from the fishes just below the surface of the water. There were a great many of them; apparently the tank had been refilled that evening. This—thought the intruder—would make matters easier, since, for all intents and purposes, he had to catch a fish with a landing net in the dark. The less he used the flashlight, the better. Beyond the garden and across the street loomed a tall building of some ten stories, and there was the danger that some idiot suffering from insomnia had seen the beam of the flashlight and raised the alarm. The intruder felt as if he was sweating all over, and indeed he was. He removed his jacket, which more than anything else impeded his movements, set it down on a plastic chair, and turned the flashlight on for another split second.
He spotted at least three little nets lying on the edge of the tank. Sometimes a group of asshole customers would stage contests between themselves, such as whoever loses pays for everyone. He grabbed a net, knelt down very close to the edge, dipped the net into the water, holding it with both hands, traced a broad semicircle with it, and pulled it back out. He could tell by the weight that he hadn’t caught a thing. But he wanted to make sure, so he felt the net. There were only a few residual drops of water in it. He tried again several times, always with the same result.
He crouched down into a squat, dead tired, panting so hard that he became afraid that someone in the goddamned apartment building might hear him. He didn’t have all this time to waste. He had to be back outside the restaurant a good ten minutes before the circle line passed again at four o’clock, because it was usually mobbed—with people still half-asleep, yes, but still able, if necessary, to recognize someone.
He had an idea, and it seemed like a good one. Taking the net into his left hand, he dipped it into the water and traced a quick half circle, but, before finishing, he turned on the flashlight in his right hand. He’d guessed right: A throng of fish had taken refuge in the part of the tank the net didn’t reach. And so he stood up, grabbed another net, balanced himself on the edge of the tank, and waited about five minutes for the fish to calm down and resume swimming about freely. He even held his breath. Then he sprang into action. As he was tracing the usual semicircle with the first net, he lowered the second one to head off the fleeing fish.
It worked. He could feel that at least three fish had swum into the net all by themselves. Tossing aside the empty net, he hopped down from the edge, set the other one with the fish down on the ground, and turned on the flashlight. He immediately noticed a big gray mullet. Smiling, he sat down on the rim of the tank and waited for the fish to finish their vain struggle against death. When he was certain they had stopped moving, he tossed the other two fish back into the water, since they were too small and of no use to him, laid the mullet down on the rim of the tank, extracted a pistol from his back pocket, put a silencer on it, stuck the lighted flashlight in his mouth, and, holding the fish’s body still with one hand, fired a shot at it with the other, holding the gun vertically so that the bullet didn’t decapitate it but only reduced its head to a bloody pulp. He turned off the flashlight and held completely still. Despite the silencer, the shot had sounded to him as if it must have woken up the whole town of Vigàta. But nothing happened. No window opened, no voice called out asking what was going on.
And so the man dug into the pocket of his trousers, extracted the already-written note he had brought with him, and slipped it under the dead fish.
The four o’clock circle line was very long in coming, arriving some ten minutes late.
As it pulled away, among its sleepy passengers sat the man who had just murdered a mullet.
“Hey, Chief, do you know that restaurant called La Sirenetta, the one near the monument to Luigi Pirandello?” Fazio asked later that Monday morning, the twenty-second of September, as he walked into Inspector Montalbano’s office.
The inspector was in a good mood. The previous day had been cold and rainy, but with the new morning, an August-like sun had returned, offset by a crisp wind. And Fazio, too, to judge from his face, seemed free of unpleasant thoughts.
“Of course I know it, but that’s nothing to brag about. I went there once with Livia, just to check it out, and that was more than enough. It’s all smoke and mirrors. Well-dressed waiters, excellent, impeccable service, fancy cutlery, heart-attack prices, but when you come right down to it, no substance. The dishes they serve taste like they were made by a cook in an irreversible coma.”
“I’ve never eaten there.”
“Good for you. Why did you mention it?”
“Because early this morning, Signor Haber, the owner, who’s also a distant relative of my wife’s, called me up here and told me a very strange story that made me curious. So I went there. Did you know the restaurant’s got a big tank full of living fish that you—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know everything. Go on. So what happened?”
“Well, last night someone picked the padlock and broke in, took a fish out of the tank, and shot it in the head.”
Montalbano looked astounded.
“They shot a fish?!”
“Yessirree. And then, under the corpse . . . I mean the body . . . whatever . . . under the dead fish they slipped a little piece of paper with some writing on it.”
“And wha’d it say?”
“That’s just it. Between the rain, the water from the tank, and the fish’s blood, the ink dissolved. And the piece of paper got completely soaked, so that when I picked it up, it sort of fell apart.”
“Why the hell would someone go to all that trouble, even risking arrest, just to shoot a fish?”
“I really can’t say, Chief, but you’re the boss here. Why don’t you tell me?”
“Are you sure the fish was shot?”
“Absolutely certain. The empty shell was on the ground. I’ve got it right here.”
He dug into his jacket pocket, pulled it out, and handed it to the inspector, who took it and looked at it.
“Don’t bother sen
ding this to Forensics,” Montalbano said by way of comment. “They’ll think we’re insane. He used a 7.65.”
He tossed the shell into a drawer of his desk.
“Right,” said Fazio. “If you ask me, it was some kind of warning. Which probably means our man Haber missed a payment.”
Montalbano shot him an irritated glance.
“With all your experience, how can you possibly talk such tripe? If they’d missed a payment, the racket would have massacred all the fish and burnt down the restaurant for good measure.”
“So what could it mean?”
“It could mean nothing or it could mean everything. It might just have been some kind of stupid bet between two customers . . .”
“So what do we do now?” Fazio asked after a pause.
“What kind of fish was it?”
“A mullet half the size of my arm.”
“Gray mullet or red mullet?”
“Gray, Chief.”
“The gray mullet’s a saltwater fish, isn’t it?”
“You can find them in freshwater, too, but they don’t taste as good as the ones from the sea.”
Montalbano's First Case and Other Stories Page 33
