The Smell of the Night

by Andrea Camilleri

  On the inspector’s desk, Fazio had left a four-foot stack of papers to be signed, with a little note on top saying: “Extremely urgent.” Montalbano cursed the saints, knowing there was no getting around it.

  When he was seated at his usual table in the Trattoria San Calogero, the owner, Calogero, came up to him with a conspiratorial air.

  “We got nunnatu today, Inspector.”

  “But isn’t it illegal to fish for them?”

  “Yes it is, but every now and then we’re allowed to catch one crate per boat.”

  “So why do you mention it as if it’s some kind of secret plot?”

  “‘Cause everybody wants ’em and I haven’t got enough.”

  “How are you going to cook them? With lemon?”

  “No, Inspector. The babies meet their maker in the frying pan, rolled into dumplings.”

  Montalbano had to wait a bit, but it was worth it. The flat, crispy dumplings were studded with hundreds of little black dots, the tiny eyes of the newborn fishlets. The inspector ate them as if participating in a sacred rite, knowing all the while he was ingesting something along the lines of a massacre. To punish himself, he decided not to eat anything else. Once outside the trattoria, as sometimes happened, the irksome voice of his conscience made itself heard.

  To punish yourself, you say? What a hypocrite you are, Montalbano! Wasn’t it rather because you were afraid you might get indigestion? Do you know how many dumplings you put away? Eighteen!

  For one reason or another he went to the port and walked all the way out to the lighthouse, relishing the air of the sea.

  “Fazio, in your opinion, how many ways are there to get to Sicily from the mainland?”

  “Three, Chief. By car, by train, or by boat. Or on foot, if you want.”

  “Fazio, I don’t like you when you try to be clever.” “I wasn’t trying to be clever. During the last war my dad came all the way from Bolzano to Palermo on foot.”

  “Have we got Gargano’s license plate number somewhere?”

  Fazio looked at him in surprise.

  “Wasn’t Augello handling this case?”

  “Well, now I’m handling it. Got a problem with that?”

  “Why should I have a problem with it? I’m gonna go look through Inspector Augello’s papers. Actually, I think I’ll give him a ring. If he finds out I’ve been sticking my nose in his stuff, the guy’s liable to shoot me. Did you sign those papers there? Yes? Then I’ll take them off your hands and bring you some more.”

  “If you bring me any more papers to sign, I’ll make you eat them one by one.”

  Arms full of files, Fazio stopped in the doorway and turned around.

  “If I may say so, Inspector, you’re wasting your time on Gargano. You want to know what I think?”

  “No, but if you really must, go ahead.”

  “Jesus, have you got a chip on your shoulder today! What’d you do, have some food go down the wrong way?”

  And he went out, indignant, without revealing what he thought about the Gargano case. Barely five minutes had passed when the door flew open and slammed against the wall, a small piece of plaster falling to the ground. Catarella appeared, face invisible, hidden by a stack of documents over three feet high in his arms.

  “Beg your pardon, Chief, had to push the door open with my foot ’cause my arms are full.”

  “Stop right there!”

  Catarella froze.

  “What have you got there?” the inspector asked.

  “Papers you’re sposta sign. Fazio just now give ’em to me.”

  “I’m going to count to three, and if you haven’t disappeared I’m going to start shooting.”

  Catarella obeyed, walking backwards and moaning in terror. A little vendetta on the part of Fazio, who’d taken offense.

  A good half hour passed without any sign of Fazio. Had he moved on to sabotage?

  “Fazio!”

  He came in, dead serious.

  “Your orders, sir.”

  “Still haven’t got over it? You’re really taking it hard, eh?”

  “What am I supposed to be taking so hard?”

  “The fact that I didn’t let you tell me what you thought about Gargano. It’s all right, you can tell me.”

  “I don’t want to anymore.”

  Was this the Vigàta Central Police Station or the Maria Montessori Kindergarten? If he gave him a red shell or a button with three holes would Fazio agree to talk in exchange? Better to get on with things.

  “So, about that license plate.”

  “I’m unable to reach Inspector Augello, he doesn’t even answer his cell phone.”

  “Go ahead and look in his files.”

  “You authorizing me?”

  “That’s right. Go.”

  “There’s no need. I’ve got it right here, in my pocket.”

  He pulled out a little scrap of paper and handed it to Montalbano, who refused to take it.

  “How’d you find it?”

  “Looking through Augello’s files.”

  Montalbano felt like slapping him around. When he put his mind to it, Fazio could give an invertebrate a nervous fit.

  “Go back now and look through Augello’s files some more. I want to know the exact day when everyone was expecting Gargano to return.”

  “Gargano was supposed to be here by the first of September,” Fazio said immediately. “There were dividends to pay. By nine in the morning there were already some twenty people waiting for him.”

  Montalbano realized that during the half hour in which Fazio had disappeared he was engrossed in Augello’s papers. The man was a real cop and by now knew everything about the case.

  “Why did they line up like that? Did he pay in cash?”

  “No, Chief. He paid by check, wire, credit transfer, and so on. The ones who lined up to wait for him were the old retirees, who got a kick out of receiving their checks personally from him.”

  “Today’s the fifth of October. That means he hasn’t been heard from for thirty-five days.”

  “No, Chief. The secretary in Bologna said the last time she’d seen him was on the twenty-eighth of August. On that occasion Gargano told her that the following day—that is, the twenty-ninth—he’d be leaving to come down here. Since there are thirty-one days in August, ragioniere Gargano hasn’t been seen for thirty-eight days.”

  The inspector looked at his watch, picked up the phone, and dialed a number.

  “Hello?”

  From her deserted office, Mariastella Cosentino had answered on the first ring, her voice filled with hope. Surely she was dreaming that one day the telephone would ring, and at the other end would be the warm, seductive voice of her beloved boss.

  “Montalbano here.”

  “Oh.”

  The old girl’s disappointment took material form, entered the phone line, traveled the distance between them, and crept into the inspector’s ear in the form of an annoying itch.

  “I need some information, signorina. What means of transport did Mr. Gargano normally use when he came to Vigàta?”

  “He would come by car. His own.”

  “Let me rephrase that. Would he drive all the way from Bologna to here?”

  “Certainly not. I always bought his return tickets. He would load the car onto the Palermo-Naples ferry, and I would reserve a single cabin for him.”

  He thanked her, hung up, and looked at Fazio.

  “Here’s what I want you to do.”

  7

  As soon as he opened the door to his home, he realized Adelina had found a moment to come and tidy up. Everything was in order, the books dusted, the floor sparkling clean. But the housekeeper wasn’t there. On the kitchen table he found a note: Mr. Inspector, Im sending my neece Concetta to help out. She’s a smart an hard workin girl an she gonna make you somtin to eat too. I come beck day afta tomorra.

  Concetta had emptied the washer and spread everything out on the clothes rack. Montalbano’s heart sank wh
en he saw the sweater Livia had given him hanging there, reduced to the right size for a ten-year-old kid. It had shrunk. The girl hadn’t realized that it was an article that should be washed at a different temperature from the rest. A feeling of panic came over him. He had to make it disappear, quick. Destroy all trace of it. The only hope was to burn it, reduce it to ashes. He grabbed it. No, it was still too damp. What to do? Yes, that was it: dig a deep pit in the sand and bury the corpus delicti. He could get to work straightaway, under cover of darkness, just like a murderer. He was about to open the French doors that gave out onto the veranda when the phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, darling, how are you?”

  It was Livia. Feeling absurdly as if he’d been caught in the act, he gave a little cry, dropping the accursed sweater to the floor and trying to hide it under the table with his foot.

  “What’s happening?” asked Livia.

  “Nothing. I burned myself with my cigarette. Did you have a good holiday?”

  “Fantastic. Just what I needed. And what about you? Any news?”

  “The usual stuff.”

  For whatever reason, there was always an awkwardness between them, a kind of prudishness, whenever they tried to begin a conversation.

  “As agreed, I’ll be there day after tomorrow.”

  There? Where was “there”? Was Livia coming to Vigàta? Why? The idea pleased him, no doubt about that, but when had this been “agreed”? But there was no need to ask any questions; Livia knew by now what he was like.

  “Naturally you’ve forgotten that we agreed on the date a couple of weeks ago. We said: better two days earlier.”

  “Come on, Livia, don’t get upset, try to be patient.”

  “You would try the patience of a saint.”

  Oh, God, not another cliché! Sow your wild oats, count your chickens before they hatch, or eat like a horse, when you’re not putting the cart first!

  “Livia, I beg you, please don’t talk that way.”

  “Sorry, darling, but I talk the way all normal people talk.”

  “So, am I abnormal, in your opinion?”

  “Let’s drop it, Salvo. We’d agreed I would come two days before Mimi’s wedding. Or did you forget about Mimi’s wedding too?”

  “Actually, yes, I must confess I had forgotten about that, too. Fazio had to remind me that Mimi’d already gone on leave to get married. It’s very strange.”

  “I don’t find it strange at all,” said Livia in a tone in which one could hear a polar ice pack forming.

  “You don’t? And why not?”

  “Because you don’t forget things, you repress them. It’s completely different.”

  He realized he couldn’t put up with this conversation much longer. Aside from clichés and stock phrases, he couldn’t stand the sallies of cheap psychoanalysis that Livia all too often liked to indulge in—the kind of stuff you get in American movies where, say, some guy kills fifty-two people and then we find out that it’s because one day, when he was a little kid, the serial killer’s father wouldn’t let him eat strawberry jam.

  “What is it I’m repressing, in the learned opinion of you and your colleagues Freud and Jung?”

  He heard a sardonic giggle at the other end.

  “The very idea of marriage,” Livia explained.

  Polar bears were now wandering across the ice floes in her voice. What to do? React harshly and bring the conversation to a bad end? Or pretend submission, compliance, and equanimity? He opted tactically for the latter course.

  “Maybe you’re right,” he said in a repentant tone.

  It turned out to be a winning move, right on target.

  “Let’s drop the subject,” Livia said magnanimously.

  “Oh, no you don’t! I think we should talk about it,” Montalbano countered, realizing he was now on solid ground.

  “Now? Over the phone? We’ll talk about it calmly when I’m there.”

  “Okay. Don’t forget we still have to buy a wedding present.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” Livia said, laughing.

  “Don’t you want to get him one?” asked Montalbano, confused.

  “I’ve already bought the present and sent it off! Do you really think I would wait till the last day? I got a nice little thing I’m sure Mimi will like. I know his tastes.”

  There it was, right on schedule, the usual prick of jealousy. Utterly irrational, but always ready to answer the call.

  “I’m sure you know Mimi’s tastes quite well.”

  He couldn’t help it; the thrust had come out by itself. A moment’s pause from Livia, then the parry:

  “Moron.”

  Another jab:

  “And naturally you thought of Mimi’s tastes and not Beatrice’s.”

  “No, I checked with Beba by phone and asked her advice.”

  Montalbano no longer knew onto what ground he should move the skirmish. Lately their phone conversations had mainly become pretexts for squabbling. The best of it was that this animosity remained independent of the unshakable intensity of their relationship. But then why, when talking on the phone, did they quarrel, on average, at least once every four sentences? Maybe, thought the inspector, it was an effect of the distance between them becoming less and less tolerable with each passing day, since as we grow old—for every now and then one must, yes, look reality in the eye and call things by their proper names—we feel ever more keenly the need to have the person we love beside us. As he was reasoning along these lines (and he liked this line of reasoning, as it was reassuring and banal, like the sayings one finds on the little slip of paper inside Baci Perugina chocolates), he grabbed the sweater from under the table, put it in a plastic bag, opened the armoire, choked on the mothball stink, staggered backwards while kicking the armoire closed, then flung the bag on top of it. It could stay there for the time being. He would bury it before Livia arrived.

  He opened the refrigerator and found nothing special there: a can of olives, another of anchovies, and a piece of tumazzo cheese. He cheered up, however, when he opened the oven. Concetta had prepared a platter of patati cunsati, an extremely simple dish that could be nothing or everything depending on the hand distributing the seasoning and orchestrating the interaction between the onions and capers, the olives and the vinegar and sugar, the salt and the pepper. At first bite, he became convinced that Concetta was a virtuoso in the kitchen and a worthy understudy to her auntie Adelina. After finishing the hefty platter of patati cunsati, he started eating bread and tumazzo, not because he was still hungry, but out of sheer gluttony. He remembered he’d always been a glutton and gourmand, ever since childhood. In fact his father used to call him liccu cannarutu which meant just that, glutton and gourmand. The reminiscence was dragging him towards a twinge of emotion, but he boldly resisted with a splash of straight whisky. Then he got ready for bed. First, however, he wanted to find a book to read. He couldn’t decide between the latest book by Tabucchi and a novel by Simenon, an old one he had never read. As he was reaching out for the Tabucchi, the phone rang. To pick up or not to pick up, that was the question. The idiocy of the sentence that had popped into his mind so mortified him that he decided to answer, however great the hassle that might ensue.

  “Am I disturbing you, Salvo? It’s Mimi.”

  “Not at all.”

  “Were you about to go to bed?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Are you alone?”

  “Who else would you expect to be here?”

  “Could you give me five minutes?”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “Not over the phone.”

  “Okay, come on over.”

  Mimi certainly didn’t want to talk to him about work. About what, then? What could be the problem? Maybe he’d had a spat with Beatrice? A wicked thought entered the inspector’s mind. If it turned out Mimì’d been quareling with his fiancée, he would tell him to call Livia. After all, didn’t he and Livia understand each other perfe
ctly?

  The doorbell rang. Who could that be, at this hour? Mimi was out of the question, since it took at least ten minutes to drive from Vigàta to Marinella.

  “Who is it?”

  “It’s me, Mimì.”

  How did he do that? Then Montalbano understood. Mimi must have been in the neighborhood and called him on his cell phone. He opened the door and his assistant came inside, looking pale, downcast, and long-suffering.

  “Are you unwell?” Montalbano asked, concerned.

  “Yes and no.”

  “What the hell does that mean, ‘Yes and no’?”

  “I’ll explain in a minute. Could I have two shots of whisky, neat?” asked Mimi, sitting down in a chair next to the table.

  The inspector, while pouring the whisky, suddenly froze. Hadn’t they already acted out this exact same scene? Hadn’t they said almost the exact same words?

  Augello emptied his glass in a single gulp, stood up, went and poured himself another glass, and sat back down.

  “Healthwise, I think I’m fine,” he said. “That’s not the problem.”

  For some time now, thought Montalbano, whether in politics, economics, in the public or private spheres, “that” is never the problem. Somebody will say: “There’s too much unemployment,” and the politician will answer: “Actually, that’s not the problem.” A husband will ask his wife: “Is it true you’re cheating on me?” and she will answer: “That’s not the problem.” But since by now he remembered the script perfectly, he said to Mimi:

  “You no longer want to get married.”

  Mimi looked at him, flabbergasted.

  “Who told you?”

  “Nobody. I can see it in your eyes, your face, your whole appearance.”

  “That’s not exactly right. It’s a complicated business.”

  Since “that” was not the problem, it was only natural that this would be “a complicated business.” What would come next? That we were “getting ahead of ourselves” or that it was time to “move on”?

  “The fact is,” Mimi continued, “that I absolutely adore Beba. I like to make love to her, I like the way she thinks, the way she speaks, the way she dresses, the way she cooks—”