im6 The Scent of the Night (2005)

by Andrea Camilleri

  The amazing thing about this whole business, he thought, hands squeezing the steering wheel as he drove back towards Marinella, was that he wasn't upset at the person who'd written the anonymous letter, surely a secret vendetta on the part of Lohengrin Pera, the only one in a position to reconstruct the story of Francois and his mother. And he wasn't even upset at the commissioner. The rage he was feeling was against himself. How could he have forgotten so utterly about the passbook for the live hundred million lire? He'd entrusted it to a friend of his, a notary -- this much he remembered perfectly -- so that he could manage the money and turn it over to Francois as soon as he came of age. He also remembered, though rather vaguely this time, that about ten days later the same notary had sent him a receipt. But he had no idea where he'd stuck it. The worst of it was that he'd never made any mention of this passbook to either Mimi Augello or his sister. Which meant that Mimi, though totally unaware of anything, might well be called to task by Bonetti-Alderighi's fertile imagination, when in fact he was innocent as Christ.

  In scarcely an hour's time he made his house look like a place that had been visited by skillful, conscientious burglars. Drawers pulled completely out of his desk, the papers inside strewn across the floor, next to books half opened, skimmed and abused. In the bedroom both night tables were thrown wide open, ditto the armoire and dresser, their contents scattered over the bed and the chairs. Montalbano looked and kept on looking, and finally became convinced that never in a million years would he succeed in finding what he was searching for. Then, just when he'd given up hope, inside a box in the dresser's bottom drawer, next to a photo of his mother, who'd died before an image of the living person could form in his memory, together with a photo of his father and a few of his rare letters, Montalbano found the envelope sent to him by the notary, opened it, took out the document, read it, reread it, went out of the house, got in his car, remembered that in one of the first buildings at the edge of Vigata there was a tobacco shop with a photocopier, copied the document, got back in his car, went home, took fright at the shambles he'd made of his house, started looking for a sheet of paper and an envelope, cursing all the while, found these, sat down at his desk, and wrote:

  Esteemed Commissioner of Vigata Police,

  Given that you are inclined to lending an ear to anonymous letters, I won't sign this one. Enclosed herewith is a copy of a receipt from the notary Giulio Carlentini, clarifying the position of Inspector Salvo Montalbano. The original is of course in the possession of the present writer and may be viewed upon polite request.

  Signed,

  a friend

  He got back in his car, went to the post office, sent the letter registered mail with return receipt requested, left, leaned over to open his car door, and froze in that position like somebody suddenly seized by one of those violent back spasms that, at the slightest move, stab you like a knife, and all you can do is stand perfectly still in the hope that some miracle might, at least momentarily, make the pain go away. What had made the inspector blanch was the sight of a woman passing by at that moment, apparently on her way to a nearby delicatessen. It was none other than Mariastella Cosentino, vestal of the temple of ragioniere Gargano. Having closed up the agency at the end of the afternoon shift, she was buying groceries before going home. The sight of Mariastella Cosentino had brought to mind a chilling thought, followed by an even more chilling question: What if, by some terrible luck, the notary had invested Francois's money with Gargano's firm? If so, the cash by now had already evaporated and headed towards the South Seas, which meant not only that the kid would never see a lira of his mother's estate, but also that he, Montalbano, after having just sent that taunting letter to the commissioner, would have an awfully hard time explaining the money's disappearance. Try as he might to say he had nothing to do with it, the commissioner would never believe him. At the very least he would think the inspector had plotted with the notary to split the poor orphan's five hundred million lire.

  He managed to rouse himself, opened the car door, and sped off, screeching the tyres the way policemen and imbeciles often do, in the direction of the notary Carlentini's office. There, he raced up two flights of stairs, getting winded in the process. The door was closed, and outside was a small sign posting the office hours. It was an hour after closing time, but somebody might still be inside. He rang the doorbell and, just to be sure, knocked as well. Barely had the door begun to open when he burst through it with a violence worthy of Catarella. The girl who had come to the door jumped back, terrified.

  'What ... what do you want? Please ... please don t hurt me.'

  She was obviously convinced the man before her was a robber. She had turned deathly pale.

  'I'm sorry if I frightened you' said Montalbano. 'I have no reason to hurt you. Montalbano's the name.'

  'Oh, how silly of me' the girl said. 'I remember you now. I saw you once on television. Please come in.'

  'Is Mr Carlentini here?' the inspector asked, following her inside.

  'You haven't heard?'

  'Haven't heard what?' said Montalbano, becoming even more distressed.

  'Poor Mr Carlentini--'

  'Is dead?' Montalbano howled, as if she'd just informed him that the person he loved most in the world had died. The girl looked at him with mild stupefaction. 'No, he isn't dead. He had a stroke. He's recovering.' 'But can he speak? Can he remember things?' 'Of course.'

  'How can I talk to him?'

  'Now?'

  'Now!'

  The girl glanced at her watch.

  'Maybe there's still time. He's at Santa Maria Hospital in Montelusa.'

  She went into a room full of papers, folders, dossiers, and binders, dialled a number, and asked for Room 114. Then she said:

  'Giulio--' But she interrupted herself. It was a well-known fact that the notary never let a pretty one get away. And the young woman on the phone was thirtyish and tall, with long black hair down to the small of her back and beautiful legs.

  'Mr Carlentini' she continued. Inspector Montalbano's here at the office and would like to speak with you ... OK? I'll talk to you later'

  She handed the phone to Montalbano and discreedy left the room

  'Hello, Mr Carlentini? Montalbano here. I just wanted a little information from you. Do you remember, a few years back, I turned over to you a passbook account for five hundred million lire... ? Oh, so you do remember? I'm asking you because I was worried you might have invested the money with Mr Gargano's firm and so ... No, no, please don't be offended ... no, of course not, I didn't mean ... As you can imagine, I ... OK, OK, I'm very sorry. And get well soon.'

  He hung up. The notary, at the mere mention of Gargano's name, had taken offence.

  'Do you think I would be so stupid as to trust in a crook like Gargano?' he had said.

  Francois's money was safe.

  Still, as he was getting in his car to go to the station, Montalbano swore he would make ragioniere Gargano pay, dearly and in full, for the terrible fright he'd given him.

  FOUR

  But he never made it to the station, for on the way there he determined he'd had a rough day and therefore deserved a consolation prize. He'd heard vague mention of a trattoria that had opened a few months back about six miles past Montelusa, off the provincial road to Giardina, where the food was supposed to be good. He even remembered the name, Giugiu 'u Carritteri, that is, 'Giugiu the Carter'. After failing four times to find the right road, and at the very moment he'd decided to turn back and put in yet another appearance at the Trattoria San Calogero -- since meanwhile he was getting more and more ravenous -- he saw in the beam of the headlights a sign for the restaurant, a hand-painted piece of wood attached to a lamppost. After five minutes of authentic dirt road of the sort that no longer exists -- all pits and rocks -- he finally arrived, though for a moment he suspected it might all be a hoax on the part of Giugiu, who was probably only pretending to be a carter when he was actually a rally driver.

  Still feeling
suspicious, he was hardly convinced by the secluded little white house he came to. Poorly whitewashed and with no neon sign, it consisted of a single, ground-floor room with another room on top. A dim, depressing light filtered out through the two windows on the bottom floor. Surely the final touch on the hoax. There were two cars in the parking area. He got out and hesitated, feeling indecisive. He didn't want the evening to end with food poisoning. He tried to remember who it was that had recommended the place to him, and it finally came back to him: Assistant Inspector Lindt, the son of a Swiss couple ('Any relation to the chocolate?' he'd asked when they were introduced), who until six months ago had worked in Bolzano.

  'That guy probably can't tell a chicken from a salmon!' he said to himself.

  But at that moment, borne ever so lightly on the evening breeze, an aroma reached his nostrils and opened them up; it was a scent of genuine, savoury cooking, of dishes cooked the way the Lord intended them to be. His misgivings dispelled, he opened the door and went inside. There were eight small tables in the room, one of which was taken by a middle-aged couple. He sat down at the first table he came upon.

  'I'm sorry, but that one's reserved,' said the waiter and owner, a bald, sixtyish man, tall and paunchy, with a handlebar moustache.

  Obediendy, the inspector stood back up. He was about to set his buttocks down at the next table when the man with the moustache spoke again. 'That one too.'

  Montalbano began to feel irritated. Was this guy messing him around or something? Was he trying to pick a fight?

  "They're all reserved. If you want, I can set a place for you here,' the waiter-owner said, seeing the troubled look in his customer's eyes.

  He was pointing to a tiny little sideboard covered with cutlery, glasses, and dishes, very near the kitchen door, through which wafted that aroma that sated you before you'd even begun eating.

  'That'd be great,' said the inspector.

  He found himself sitting as if in the corner at school, with the wall practically in his face. To view the room he would have had to sit sideways in the chair and twist his neck halfway around. But what the hell did he care about viewing the room?

  If you feel up to it, I've got burning pirciati tonight,' said the man with the moustache.

  Montalbano was familiar with pirciati, a kind of pasta, but wondered what the 'burning' referred to. He didn't want to give the man the satisfaction of being asked how the pirciati were cooked, so he limited himself to a single question:

  'What do you mean, "If I feel up to it"? 'Exactly what I said; "If you feel up to it,"' was his reply.

  'Oh, I feel up to it, don t you worry about that'

  The man shrugged, disappeared into the kitchen, then returned a few minutes later and started eyeing the inspector. The other couple in the room called him over and asked for the bill. The man with the moustache brought it, and they paid and left without saying goodbye.

  Saying hello and goodbye must not be the rule around here, thought Montalbano, remembering that he himself, upon entering, did not say hello to anyone.

  The man with the moustache came out of the kitchen and assumed the exact same pose as before.

  It'll be ready in five minutes,' he said. 'Want me to turn on the television while you're waiting?'

  'No.'

  Finally, a woman's voice called out from the kitchen. 'Giugiu!'

  The pirciati arrived. They smelled like heaven on earth. The man with the moustache leaned against the doorjamb as though settling in to witness a performance.

  Montalbano decided to let the aroma penetrate all the way to the bottom of his lungs.

  As he was greedily inhaling, the man spoke.

  'Want a bottle of wine within reach before you begin eating?'

  The inspector nodded yes; he didn't feel like talking.

  A one-litre jug of very dense red wine was set before him. Montalbano poured out a glass of it and put the first bite in his mouth. He choked, coughed, and tears came to his eyes. He had the unmistakable impression that his taste buds had caught fire. In a single draught he emptied the glass of wine, which didn't kid around as to its alcohol content.

  'Go at it nice and easy,' the waiter-owner said.

  'But what's in it}' asked Montalbano, still half choking.

  'Olive oil, half an onion, two cloves of garlic, two salted anchovies, a teaspoon of fine capers, black olives, tomatoes, basil, half a pimento, salt, Pecorino cheese, and black pepper,' the man ran down the list with a hint of sadism in his voice.

  'Jesus'' said Montalbano. 'And who's in the kitchen?'

  'My wife,' said the man with the moustache, going to the door to greet three new customers.

  Punctuating his forkfuls with gulps of wine and alternating groans of extreme agony and unbearable pleasure (Is there such a thing as extreme cuisine, like extreme sex? he wondered at one point), Montalbano even had the courage to soak up the sauce left in the bottom of the bowl with his bread, periodically wiping away the beads of sweat that were forming on his brow.

  'And what would you like for a second course, sir?'

  The inspector understood that with that 'sir', the owner was paying him military honours.

  'Nothing.'

  'Youre right. The problem with burning pirciati is that you don t get your taste buds back till the next day'

  Montalbano asked for the bill, paid a pittance, got up, headed towards the door and, in accordance with local custom, did not say goodbye. Right beside the exit he noticed a large photograph, and under it the following words:

  MILLION LIRE REWARD TO ANYONE WITH INFORMATION ON THIS MAN.

  'Who is he?' he asked, turning to the man with the moustache.

  'You don t know him? That's that damn son of a bitch of a broker, Ernanuele Gargano, the man who--' 'Why do you want information on him?' 'So I can catch him and cut his throat.' 'What did he do to you?'

  'To me, nothing. But he stole thirty million lire from my wife.'

  'Tell the lady she shall have her revenge,' the inspector said solemnly, putting his hand over his heart He realized he was totally drunk.

  The moon in the sky was frightening, so much did it seem like daylight outside. Montalbano drove down the road giddily, thinking he could handle it, screeching around the curves, taking his speed alternately down to six and up to sixty miles an hour. Halfway between Montelusa and Vigita he saw the billboard behind which lay hidden the little road that led to the dilapidated cottage with the great Saracen olive tree beside it. Since over his last couple of miles he'd barely avoided crashing head-on into two different cars coming in the opposite direction, he decided to turn down this road and sit out his drunkenness under the branches of that tree, which he hadn't been to visit for almost a year.

  As he bore right to turn onto the little road, he immediately had the impression he'd made a mistake, since in the place of the narrow country road there was now a broad band of asphalt. Maybe he'd confused one billboard with another. He put the car in reverse and ended up backing into one of the supports of the billboard, which began to teeter dangerously, ferraguto furniture -- montelusa, it read. No doubt about it, that was the right sign. He drove back out onto the road and after going about a hundred yards he found himself in front of the gate to a small villa that had just been built. The little rustic cottage was gone, the Saracen olive tree too. He felt disoriented. He recognized nothing in a landscape that had once been so familiar to him.

  Was it possible that one litre of wine, no matter how strong, could reduce him to such a state? He got out of the car and, as he was pissing, kept turning his head to look around. The moonlight afforded good visibility, but what he saw looked alien to him. He took a torch out of the glove compartment and proceeded to circle round the enclosure. The house was finished but clearly not inhabited; the windowpanes still had protective Xs of masking tape over them. The garden inside the enclosure was fairly large. They were building some sort of gazebo there; he could see a pile of tools nearby. Shovels, pickaxes, cement troughs. Wh
en he got to the area behind the house, he stumbled into what at first seemed to him a bush of buckthorn. He pointed the torch, got a better look, and cried out He'd seen death. Or, rather, the threshold of death. The great Saracen olive tree lay before him, moribund, having been felled and uprooted. It was dying. They had cut the branches from the trunk with an electric saw, and the trunk itself had been deeply wounded by an axe. The leaves had withered and were drying up. In his confusion Montalbano realized he was weeping, sniffing up the mucus that kept dripping out of his nose, breathing in starts the way little children do. He reached out and placed his hand over the space of a particularly wide gash. Under his palm he could still feel a slight dampness from the sap; it was oozing out little by little, like the blood of a man slowly bleeding to death. He lifted his hand from the wound and tore off a few leaves, which still resisted. He put them in his pocket Then his tears gave way to a kind of lucid, controlled rage.