“So?”
“What do you mean ‘So?’ It’s taken me until fifteen minutes ago to find a volunteer in Gallotta. I’m waiting for his answer.”
The answer arrived half an hour later. Alcide Maraventano had agreed to receive Montalbano. But it must be a short visit. And the inspector, moreover, must come alone. Otherwise he wouldn’t be let in.
Alcide Maraventano’s house was the way Montalbano remembered it. Shutters unhinged, plaster chips falling off the façade and littering the ground, broken windowpanes replaced by sheets of cardboard and planks of wood, the cast-iron gate half falling down.
The only difference was that the formless mass that had once been the garden of the ex-priest (or maybe not) had now become a sort of equatorial forest. Montalbano regretted not bringing a machete. He tore his jacket trying to extricate himself from a tangle of branches and brambles, cursing the saints as he reached the front door, which was closed. He knocked. No answer. He knocked again, this time with two powerful kicks.
“Who is it?” asked a voice that seemed to call from beyond the grave.
“Montalbano.”
He heard a strange sound, as of iron against iron.
“Push, come inside, then close the door behind you.”
The bolt was operated by a metal wire that, when pulled from somewhere inside the house, would raise it.
He entered the same large room as the previous time, a vast space everywhere cluttered with books: in piles up to the ceiling, on the floor, on the furniture, on the chairs. The ex-priest (or maybe not) was sitting in his usual place behind a wobbly table and had a gigantic thermometer in his mouth.
“I’m taking my temperature,” said Alcide Maraventano.
“What kind of thermometer is that?” the bewildered inspector couldn’t refrain from asking.
“A fermentation thermometer. Afterwards I do the math,” said the priest (or maybe not), taking it out of his mouth for a moment and then putting it back at once.
6
“Are you unwell?” the inspector asked.
“You mean the thermometer? No, I’m fine—I just like to run a little check every now and then.”
He’d answered again with the thermometer in his mouth, and his words came out sounding like a drunkard’s.
“I’m glad to hear it, since I’d been told that—”
“That I was nearing the end? I’d said that to some idiot who took it the wrong way. All the same, I’m ninety-four years old and then some, my friend. So it’s not entirely wrong to say that I’m nearing the end. Except that nowadays we say ‘nearing the end’ to mean that we’re in some sort of death throes, and it’s time to call the priest for the final confession.”
What could he say to that? The reasoning was flawless. At last Maraventano took the thermometer out of his mouth, looked at it, set it down on the table, shook his head, grabbed one of the three baby bottles in front of him, and started sucking.
“I doubt that you came here to inquire about my health. What can I do for you?”
Montalbano told him everything, from the fish to the elephant, in a single breath. He even confessed his fears concerning the next move of this man who thought he was God or at least that he was in close communication with him.
Alcide Maraventano sat there listening, never once interrupting him. When Montalbano had finished, he asked him:
“Do you have any of the messages with you?”
The inspector naturally had brought them with him and handed them to the old man. Maraventano cleared away some space on his table, set them down in a row, and then looked at Montalbano and started chuckling.
“What do you find so amusing?” the inspector asked, perplexed.
And since the old man didn’t reply, he tweaked him a little.
“Hard to make heads or tails of it, eh?”
“Hard?” said Maraventano, taking the now empty baby bottle out of his mouth. “Why, it’s elementary, my friend!—as Sherlock Holmes might say to Dr. Watson. Have you ever happened to read any of the Sifre ha-’iyyun?”
“I haven’t yet had the chance,” said Montalbano, unruffled. “What is it?”
“They’re the so-called Books of Contemplation, probably written around the mid-thirteenth century.”
Montalbano threw up his hands, as if in regret. Not only had he never read them, he’d never even heard of them.
“But surely you’ve read a few pages of Mosè Cordovero,” conceded Maraventano.
And who on earth was he? For whatever reason, the name sounded Venetian to Montalbano.
“Was he a doge?” he guessed blindly.
“Don’t be silly,” Maraventano replied severely.
Montalbano started to feel awkward and began to sweat. He was suddenly back in school, again the mediocre student he’d always been from elementary school through university. He didn’t say another word, but only hung his head and started drawing circles with his forefinger in the dust on the table.
I’m screwed, he thought. This guy’s going to flunk me.
“Come now,” Alcide Maraventano said to reassure him, “you can’t tell me you’ve never heard the name of Isaac Luria!”
Never, professor, never. And he was about to offer the classic excuse and say “It wasn’t in my textbook,” but said instead:
“I can,” in a voice that came out sounding like that of a young rooster crowing meekly for the first time, “but I really don’t see what . . .”
Alcide Maraventano looked at him, sighed, shook his head, and started getting up from his chair. It seemed to take him forever to stand up, so long was the man. Finally, after uncoiling like a snake, that beanpole body that culminated in a tottering skull began to walk away.
“I’m going to get a book. I’ll be right back,” he said.
The inspector heard him climb the stairs, emitting a painful “ah” with each step. He felt almost ashamed to be making the poor old man go to all that effort, but Alcide Maraventano was the only person who might be able to tell him something about a problem that seemed to have no solution. He felt like lighting a cigarette, but was too afraid to do so: With all that paper around him, most of it dry, yellowed, and hundreds of years old, it wouldn’t take much to set the whole place on fire.
A good twenty minutes went by. Try as he might to prick up his ears, he didn’t hear the slightest sound upstairs. Maybe the old man had gone into a room that wasn’t directly above where Montalbano was sitting.
Then all at once he heard a frightful boom, a terrible explosion that shook the whole house. A few pieces of plaster fell from the ceiling. Was it an earthquake? A bottle of gas that had burst? Having leapt so far out of his chair that he nearly hit his head against the ceiling, he noticed a sort of white curtain fall from the doorway that led to the stairs. It must have been dust, a cloud of dust formed by the plaster fragments falling from the floor above. The staircase was probably rickety and dangerous, but the inspector felt duty-bound to climb it, cautiously, to go and help the priest (or maybe not). The dense dust cloud entered his lungs, and he started coughing. His eyes began to water. Then he noticed some movement on the landing at the top of the stairs.
“Anyone there?” he asked, half-choking.
“Who else would it be? I’m here,” came the calm, unflustered voice of Alcide Maraventano.
Through the fog the priest (or maybe not) appeared, a large tome under his arm, his tunic having turned from mold-green to chalk-white from the dust cloud. Alcide Maraventano looked like the skeleton of a dead pope as he came down the stairs.
“But what happened?”
“Nothing. A bookcase fell, making another three or four stacks of books fall in turn.”
“And what’s all this dust?”
“Don’t you know that books gather dust?”
He sat back down in his chair, took a
few sucks from a baby bottle, as his mouth had gone dry, cleared his throat, opened the large tome, and started turning the pages.
“This,” he said, “is Vital’s commentary on the thought of his teacher, Luria.”
“Thanks for clearing that up,” said Montalbano. “But I’d like to know what we’re talking about.”
Maraventano looked at him in shock.
“You still haven’t caught on? We’re talking about the Qabbalah and its interpretations.”
The Kabbala! He’d heard mention of it, of course, but always as something mysterious and secret, something esoteric.
“Ah yes, here we are,” said Maraventano, finding the page he was looking for. “Listen to this. ‘When the Ein Sof thought to create the worlds and produce the emanation, to bring the perfection of his actions into the light, he concentrated himself at the middle point situated at the exact center of his light. The light became concentrated and retracted entirely around that central point . . .’ Is that clear to you now?”
“No,” said Montalbano, flummoxed.
He understood the meaning of the words, of course, but couldn’t grasp the connections between them.
“Then let me cite Cordovero,” said Maraventano, “who claims that for human beings to be able to grasp his greatness, the Ein Sof, the supreme being, is forced to contract.”
“I’m starting to understand,” the inspector finally said.
“And when he’s finished contracting, he shall appear to mankind in all his power and light.”
“Madunnuzza santa!”
He’d suddenly grasped what the madman who thought he was God was getting at.
“That imbecile hasn’t understood a thing about the Qabbalah,” Maraventano concluded.
“That imbecile,” Montalbano added, “isn’t planning to kill just one man, he’s preparing a massacre.”
Maraventano looked at him.
“Yes,” he said, “I think that’s a highly plausible hypothesis.”
Montalbano felt his throat go dry and was tempted to grab a baby bottle and start sucking.
“Why do you say he hasn’t understood a thing about the Kabbala?”
Maraventano smiled.
“I’ll give you just one example. The point of greatest concentration of the light, the central point, is the locus of creation, not destruction, again according to Luria and Vital. That man, however, thinks it’s the other way around. You must stop him. By any means necessary.”
“Can you explain to me why he always springs into action very early every Monday morning?”
“I can venture a guess. Because Monday is the dawn of the light, the day in which the Creator is believed to have started his work.”
“Listen,” Montalbano pressed him, realizing that every iota of additional information was a huge plus, “do you know anyone in Vigàta or nearby who has had any dealings in these things? Think hard. There can’t be many people around who’ve devoted themselves to such difficult and complex studies.”
Alcide Maraventano plunged deep into the bottomless well of his memory and in the end came up with something.
“There was one man, but a great many years ago. Sometimes he would come and discuss things with me. His name was Saverio Donzello, and he was a few years older than me. He died quite a while ago. Lived in Vigàta. I remember going to his funeral; he was buried there.”
“In the Vigàta cemetery?” Montalbano asked in surprise.
“And why not?” retorted Alcide Maraventano. “He dealt in the Qabbalah not for religious reasons, but because he was a scholar.”
“Did he have any children?”
“He never told me anything about himself.”
After saying this, the old man sat back in his large chair, leaned his head back, and remained in that position. Montalbano waited a few minutes and then, pricking his ears up, heard an ever so faint snoring. Maraventano had fallen asleep. Or was he just pretending? Whatever the case, it could mean only one thing: that the visit was over.
The inspector got up and went out of the room on tiptoe.
With an air of disdain, Mimì Augello slapped some ten pages filled with dense writing down on the desk.
“That’s the list of everyone with last names beginning in D. For your information, there are four hundred and two of them in all, between men, women, lads, lasses, geezers, old bags, children and newborns.”
“And they’re all here?”
“Yes, they’re all on that list.”
“Mimì, don’t start acting like Catarella.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, are they all here in Vigàta? Physically present? Or are some of them away?”
“How should I know?”
“You have to know. When we decide to bring them all together, I want to be absolutely certain that they’re all there. I want to know who’s out of town on business, who’s away studying or sick, that sort of thing. I also need to know who intends to go away before next Monday, and who, on the other hand, is going to be coming back before Monday. Is that clear?”
“Very clear. But how am I going to do that?”
“Work it out with Fazio, employ as many men as you need. Go from house to house and conduct a sort of census.”
“And what if people start asking questions?”
“Just give them some bullshit for an answer. You’re a pretty good bullshitter, aren’t you, Mimì?”
He grabbed the list as soon as Mimì left. What did Maraventano say the Kabbala scholar’s name was? Ah yes, Saverio Donzello. There were three Donzellos on the list: Francesco, Tiziano, and, indeed, Saverio. He had to be a grandson. Who probably had nothing whatsoever to do with the whole affair. Since his last name began with a D, he was a potential victim, which meant he probably wasn’t the insane fanatic. But everything had to be checked out.
He slept badly that night, tossing and turning for hours in bed. Too many questions, doubts, uncertainties boring into his brain.
Should he inform the commissioner of what was happening? It was certainly his duty to do so. And if his boss didn’t believe him, could he continue to act on his own? That the madman was planning a massacre he was certain. It was as if the man had told him poissonally in poisson, as Catarella would say.
And every so often the words of Alcide Maraventano would force their way into his consciousness: Because Monday is the dawn of the light, the day in which the Creator is believed to have started his work. These words disturbed him, but he didn’t know why.
There had to be a Bible somewhere in the house that he’d borrowed from someone but never given back. It took him a while to find it, but in the end he did. He went back to bed and started reading. “And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made . . .” In other words, “on the seventh day he rested.” And so? What importance could this sentence possibly have for the investigation he was conducting? He didn’t know why or how, but he felt, in his bones, that it meant something, that seventh day, something important.
The man walked slowly, head down as if watching where he was stepping, given the faint light cast by the streetlamps, a few of which were broken. There wasn’t so much as a dog about. Everyone had gone to bed—or at least so they thought, whereas in fact they’d gone to a rehearsal of the eternal rest into which they would be cast a few days hence, thanks to his efforts. Everyone: old people who already felt death’s breath on their necks, children and babies just born, men and women in their prime. The thought of the approaching day, the Day, triggered a shudder in the area of the man’s groin that rose like an electrical shock along his spine and went up into his brain, causing a sudden feeling of drunkenness so extreme that the shadows of the buildings started swirling around him. He closed his eyes, breathing heavily and moaning in pleasur
e. He had to stand still for a moment, until the drunken feeling passed and he could once again go on his way. He started singing voicelessly, in his head: “Dies irae, dies illa . . .”
Late the following morning, Mimì Augello came in, saying thirty-five people had been taken off the list.
“If you want I can give you the details. Four have emigrated to Belgium, six to Germany, three are studying in Palermo—”
“Are you sure none of them will be back before Monday?”
“Absolutely certain.”
Then, after a pause:
“They besieged me with questions.”
“And wha’d you say?”
“I said that there was a brand-new law passed by the European Union requiring that a survey be made of people’s displacements inside and outside the country in a random sample of cities.”
“And did they believe that?”
“Some did, some didn’t.”
“And what did the ones who didn’t say?”
“Nothing. They were probably just cursing under their breath.”
“Then why did they answer?”
“Because we represent the law, Salvo.”
“Which means that, in the name of the law, we have the power to make up whatever bullshit we like?”
“Has it taken you this long to figure that out?”
Montalbano decided it was best not to probe the question any further.
“So now you know where they live. Okay, listen up, Mimì. I want you to do something for me, some very fine, subtle, but tedious work. I want you to take a road map of Vigàta and mark with an X every house inhabited by one of these people whose last name begins with D. Then trace the shortest possible route between them so that if need be, we can warn them all in the least amount of time.”
“Okay.”
“If we’re unable to stop the madman first, we’ll have to talk to all these people, possibly even Sunday evening right after dinner, and then transport them all to the Cinema Mezzano. I’ve already spoken with the owner; there’s room for five hundred people there.”
Montalbano's First Case and Other Stories Page 38
