“What donkey?” Losurdo shouted.
“Mine, you sonofabitch!”
Then, turning to Fazio and Galluzzo, he explained:
“This morning I found my donkey . . . dead! One shot to the head! An’ it was this here sonofabitch that killed him!”
At the sound of the words “one shot to the head,” Fazio froze and pricked up his ears.
“Let me get this straight,” he said slowly to Gaggiano. “Are you telling me you found your donkey dead this morning, killed by one shot to the head?”
“Yessir.”
Fazio then literally disappeared before the eyes of Galluzzo, Gaggiano, and Losurdo, who all turned to stone as if an angel had passed, said “Amen,” and frozen everyone in the act of whatever they were doing.
“Why’d he run away?” Gaggiano and Losurdo asked in unison.
Fazio arrived at the Gaggiano house all sweaty and out of breath. The donkey was still tied to a tree nearby, but lay dead on the ground. A trickle of blood oozed out of one ear. He found the shell at once, practically between the animal’s legs, and at a glance it looked exactly like the others. But there was no trace of a message anywhere. As he started looking around for it, thinking an early morning gust of wind might have blown it away, a window of the cottage opened and Signora Gaggiano appeared.
“Did ’e kill ’im?” she asked in a powerful voice.
“Yes,” Fazio replied.
The floodgates opened, the shit hit the fan, and all hell broke loose.
“Aaaaaahhhhh!” Signora Gaggiano wailed, vanishing from the window. Despite the distance at which he stood, Fazio heard her body hit the floor. He broke into a run again, went into the house, climbed up the wooden staircase, and entered the only upstairs room, the bedroom. Signora Gaggiano lay under the window, unconscious. What to do? Fazio knelt down beside her and gently slapped her twice.
“Signora! Signora!”
No reaction. He went back downstairs, took a glass, filled it with water from a jug, went back up, wet his handkerchief with the water, then wiped the woman’s face several times, continuously calling out to her:
“Signora! Signora!”
At last, with God’s help, the woman opened her eyes and looked at him.
“Djou arrest ’im?”
“Arrest who?”
“My husband.”
“What for?”
“What? Din’t he kill Armando?”
“No, signora.”
“So why’d you say ’e did?”
“I thought you were asking me about the donkey!”
“What donkey?”
As he was trying to come up with a contorted logical explanation for the misunderstanding, Fazio, from the window, saw Galluzzo approaching with Gaggiano and Losurdo. To keep them from attacking each other, Galluzzo had them both handcuffed and walking at a distance of about five paces from each other. Fazio forgot about the woman, who at any rate seemed to have recovered just fine, and went out to meet the trio.
With the help of Galluzzo and the two peasants, he managed to move the donkey’s carcass. Beneath it they found a piece of graph paper.
I HAVEN’T STOPPED CONTRACTING.
4
Fazio scrambled back to the station to tell everyone about the animal killer’s latest exploit, but the others didn’t have time to absorb the information and ponder its meaning.
“Ahh, Chief, Chief!” Catarella shouted, bursting into the room. “Whaa’? Dja fergit?”
“Forget what?”
“Yer meetin’ witta c’mishner! He called jess now an’ said they’s aspecting you!”
“Shit!” said Montalbano, dashing out of the room.
A second later he stuck his head inside the door:
“In the meantime, you guys keep talking about this.”
“Thanks for giving us permission,” said Mimì.
Fazio sat down.
“Well, if we’re gonna talk about it . . .” he said listlessly. It was a known fact that he wasn’t terribly fond of Augello.
“All right, then,” Mimì began, “our anonymous animal hater—”
He wasn’t even able to finish his sentence before Catarella burst into the room again.
“There’s summon onna phone wants a speak to the Chief, but seein’ as how the Chief ain’t here, you wan’ me to put the call tru to yiz poissonally?”
“In poisson,” said Mimì.
“Is this Inspector Montalbano?” asked an unknown and clearly annoyed voice.
“No, I’m Inspector Augello, his second-in-command. What can I do for you?”
“I’m a neighbor of Ragioniere Portera.”
“So?”
“At this very moment, Ragioniere Portera is shooting at his wife yet again. So my question is: When the hell are you guys gonna put an end to this crap?”
“I’m on my way.”
Signora Romilda Fasulo Portera was sixty years old, extremely short, with legs so bowed they looked like corkscrews, one eye looking east, the other looking west, and yet her husband was convinced she was a great beauty and had suitors galore to whom, every so often, she granted favors.
And so, on average about twice a month, after one of their ritual quarrels that could be heard as far as the neighboring streets, the ragioniere would pull out the revolver he always kept in his jacket pocket and fire three or four shots at his spouse, always rigorously missing her. Signora Romilda didn’t even have to move; she would simply keep on doing whatever she’d been doing as the shots rang out, saying only:
“One of these days you’re really gonna kill me, Giugiù.”
Montalbano had tried once to make the man see reason, but there was no way.
“Inspector, my wife is the pure reincarnation of the slut Messalina!”
“Stop and think for a minute, Signor Portera. Even if your wife really was the reincarnation of Empress Messalina, can you tell me when she would have the time or opportunity to cheat on you? I’m told she never leaves the house alone, you never let her take a step without you, you accompany her everywhere, to church, to go shopping . . . And you yourself never go out for more than five minutes, to buy the newspaper. So you tell me when and how she meets these lovers of hers.”
“Ah, Inspector, when a woman sets her mind to doing something, she always finds a way, believe me . . .”
This time, however, Mimì Augello, who was on edge over the killing of the donkey, took off the kid gloves. He disarmed Portera (who at any rate hadn’t the slightest intention of resisting), confiscated the weapon, and decided to handcuff the trigger-happy ragioniere to the bedpost.
“I’ll come by this evening to free you,” he said.
“And what if I need to go? I took a diuretic!”
“Ask your wife to give you a hand, and I’d advise her to do just that. But if she won’t, I guess you’ll just have to pee your pants.”
Commissioner Bonetti-Alderighi was in a bad mood and made no effort to hide it.
“Let me begin by saying, Montalbano, that yesterday I held a meeting on this same subject with your counterparts from the other commissariats under my jurisdiction. With you, however, I thought it was better we meet alone, so I could devote the whole morning to you.”
“Why alone?”
“Because you—and please don’t take offense—seem sometimes to have serious difficulty grasping the gist of the problems I present to you. And I don’t think you do it in bad faith.”
For some time Montalbano had found that, if he pretended to be utterly incapable of understanding the slightest thing, the commissioner would leave him in peace, summoning him to his office only when he had no choice. On this occasion the matter involved the measures to be taken in the face of recent landings of illegal immigrants on Sicilian shores. Their talk lasted more than three hours, because eve
ry so often Montalbano felt obliged to interrupt.
“I didn’t quite get that,” he would say. “If you’d be so kind as to repeat it more slowly . . .”
And his superior was always so kind as to start again at the beginning.
After the discouraged commissioner sent him on his way, the inspector ran into Dr. Lattes, the chief of the commissioner’s cabinet, known as “Lattes e Mieles” for his unctuous falsity, in the hallway. Lattes grabbed Montalbano by the arm and took him aside. Then he got up on tiptoe and whispered in his ear:
“Have you heard the news?”
“No,” said Montalbano in a similarly conspiratorial tone.
“I’ve been told from a highly placed source that our commissioner, who so well deserves it, is going to be transferred. Would you be interested in contributing to a good-bye present, a nice little token of affection that I think could be—”
“Whatever you like,” said the inspector, leaving him in the lurch and walking away.
He went out of Montelusa Central Police singing La donna è mobile, so happy was he to learn that Bonetti-Alderighi would soon be out of his hair.
He celebrated at the Trattoria San Calogero with a giant platter of grilled fish.
They were finally able to meet back up again at five o’clock in the afternoon.
“So far,” Montalbano said at once, “the guy has written ‘Hail g . . .’ In my opinion, the statement will turn out to be ‘Hail God.’
“Oh Madunnuzza santa!” Fazio exclaimed.
“What are you so worried about?”
“Chief, whenever they start bringing religion into the picture, I get scared.”
“What makes you think that’s what he means to say?” asked Augello.
“Before calling you both in here I did a little telephone investigation and got some specific information from city hall. There are five people in the area who own donkeys, and their names are Di Rosa, D’Antonio, Gaggiano, Gerlando, and Musso. Di Rosa keeps his practically in town, and Gerlando’s right on the outskirts, whereas our guy went all the way out to that godforsaken mountain to kill a donkey. Why? Because the animal’s owner’s last name has two G’s in it on top of the first letter—whereas, for example, Gerlando’s only got the initial. Therefore we can surmise that by choosing a surname that not only starts with G but has two other G’s in it, he intended for the G in his message to be capitalized.”
“That makes sense,” Augello admitted.
“And if my argument makes sense,” said the inspector, “then this whole business is starting to look pretty nasty and dangerous. With religious fanatics it’s always better to steer clear of them, as Fazio says, because they’re capable of anything.”
“Well, if that’s the way it is,” Mimì continued, “then I understand even less what he means when he says he’s contracting. I’ve always read and heard that God makes himself manifest in all his greatness, power, and magnificence, not in his smallness. Until proven otherwise, to contract means to shrink.”
“That’s what it means for us,” said the inspector. “But who knows what it means for him?”
“You could also interpret it another way,” Mimì resumed after a reflective pause.
“And what would that be?”
“It’s possible that he wants to say ‘Hail,’ comma, ‘God,’ after which he’s gonna grab the gun, shoot himself, and a good night to all.”
“But how’s he gonna make a comma?” Fazio objected timidly.
“That’s his problem,” Augello cut him off.
“Mimì, among all the bullshit you’ve been spouting, there was one thing you said that was right. Which was that the things he was killing were growing in size. And that worries me. A fish, a chicken, a dog, a goat, a donkey. What animal’s turn is it this time?”
“Well,” said Mimì, “at some point he’s gonna have to stop, since there aren’t any elephants in this part of the world.”
He was the only one who laughed at his joke.
“Maybe it’d be better if we informed the commissioner,” said Fazio.
“Maybe it’d be better if we informed the Animal Protection Society,” said Mimì, who when he got going with the bad jokes could no longer control himself.
The morning of Monday, October 27, started out in nasty fashion, with high winds, lightning, and thunder.
Having slept poorly due to an excess of calamari and baby octopus, half of them fried and the other half dressed in olive oil and lemon juice, he decided to lie in bed a little longer than usual. His mood was so dark that if he were to run into anyone who wanted to talk, he was liable to attack him. Anyway, if there were any new developments at the station, everyone would certainly come running to bust his balls.
He dozed off without realizing it and woke up again around nine. How was that possible? Want to bet the phone was off the hook? He went and checked: all in order. Maybe the station had called him and he hadn’t heard the phone ring?
“Hello, Catarella, Montalbano here.”
“I rec’nize yiz straightaways from yer voice, Chief.”
“Have there been any phone calls?”
“F’yiz poissonally in poisson, nah.”
“For anyone else?”
“’Oo’s ‘anyone else,’ Chief, if ya don’ mine me askin’?”
“Augello, Fazio, Galluzzo, Gallo . . .”
“Nah, Chief, no calls f’them.”
“Then for whom?”
“’Ere’s one f’me, Chief, bu’ I needed t’know foist if I’s anyone else or not.”
As soon as he went into his office, Augello and Fazio came in. They were perplexed. There had been no news of any killing of humans or animals.
“I wonder why he skipped a Monday?”
“Maybe he was prevented from going out,” said Mimì. “The weather’s been bad and maybe he wasn’t feeling well, maybe he got the flu. There could be any number of reasons.”
“Or else he did exactly what he had to do, but we haven’t found out about it yet and nobody’s reported it,” said Montalbano.
Montalbano, Augello, and Fazio spent the rest of that Monday morning practically running to the switchboard every time they heard the phone ring, each time making Catarella break out in a cold sweat, since he didn’t know the reason for all this avid interest. The three men’s agitation grew by the hour, to the point that to avoid the possibility of some violent scuffle, the inspector decided to go home for lunch—home, and not out, because on Saturday his housekeeper Adelina had left a note:
Isspecter, on Munnday I mekka yu pasta ncasciatta.
Pasta ’ncasciata! A dish that made one moan with pleasure at every bite, but which Adelina rarely made for him because it took so long to prepare.
Since the wind had dropped, he ate out on the veranda amidst the lightning and thunder. But with that gift of God in front of him, which he relished not only with his palate but with his whole body, he no longer gave a damn about the bad weather. And since the good minister still allowed the so-called free citizen of the republic to smoke in his own home, he turned on the television, tuned in to the Free Channel, which at that hour was broadcasting the news, dropped into an armchair, and fired up a cigarette.
As his eyelids started drooping, he thought that a half-hour nap might be a good idea. Bending forward to turn the TV off, he reached out and then froze with his ass in midair.
On the screen was an image of a dead elephant. The TV camera did a slow pan of the animal’s head, then zoomed in on an enormous eye mangled by a bullet. He turned up the volume.
“. . . utterly inexplicable,” said the voice of Nicolò Zito, his newsman friend, off-camera. “The Wonderland Circus arrived in Fiacca on Saturday morning and gave its first performances that same evening. On Sunday, on top of the children’s matinee, the circus gave afternoon and evening performances as
well. Everything went fine, but at about three o’clock this morning, Signor Ademaro Ramirez, the circus’s director, was woken up by some unusual trumpeting coming from the elephants’ cage, which is close to his camper. When he got up and went to the cage, he immediately noticed that one of the three elephants was lying on its side in an abnormal position, while the other two elephants seemed very agitated. At that moment the trainer, likewise awakened by the trumpeting, also arrived, and tried with great effort to calm the animals, which were dangerously upset. When she was able to enter the cage, the trainer realized that the elephant lying on the ground, whose name was Alachek, had been killed by a single pistol shot fired with great precision and cold calculation into its left eye.”
The image of the trainer appeared, a good-looking blonde who was crying inconsolably. Still off-camera, the newsman’s voice continued the report as the camera showed other animals featured in the circus.
“One disturbing detail is that Marshal Adragna of the carabinieri, who is conducting the investigation, found a piece of graph paper inside the cage, on which was written the enigmatic statement: ‘I’m almost done contracting.’ Investigation of this mysterious occurrence is . . .”
He turned off the TV. The first thing he did was call up Mimì Augello.
“Did you know that there are in fact elephants in this part of the world?”
“What do you—?”
“I’ll explain later. In an hour, max, at the station.”
Then he called Fazio.
“An elephant was killed.”
“Are you joking?”
“I’m in no mood for jokes. The elephant was part of a circus, in Fiacca. They found a piece of paper with a message. I think you’re friends with Marshal Adragna, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, he’s an old friend.”
“Okay then, I want you to go up to Fiacca, and see if your friend has recovered the shell. If so, have him lend it to you for a day. Oh and, while you’re at it, see if he’ll let you have the message too.”
As he was driving to the station, he realized there was something in all this that didn’t add up. If his theory was correct—and he sensed that it was—then the animal killer needed a name that began with the letter O. So how did the Wonderland Circus fit in? Even the elephant’s name began with an A. And so?
Montalbano's First Case and Other Stories Page 36
