im6 The Scent of the Night (2005)

by Andrea Camilleri

  Answer: To take the unhappy woman to the hospital.

  Question: Then why didn't he do this?

  Answer: Because, in fact, Mr Salvo Montalbano, a worm in the guise of a police inspector, wanted to take advantage of Mariastella Cosentino's moment of trauma so that he could knock down her defences and find out everything about her and her relations with Emanuele Gargano, con artist and murderer.

  'Where does it hurt?' Montalbano asked as he put the key in the ignition.

  In my hip and my shoulder. But it's from the fall'

  What she meant was that the sixty-year-old man's car had only given her a hard push, knocking her to the ground. It was her violent fall onto the pavement that had caused the damage. But it wasn't serious. She would wake up the following morning with her hip and shoulder a fine greenish-blue.

  'Tell me where to go.'

  Mariastella instructed him to drive outside of Vigata, having him turn onto a road with no houses but a few rare, solitary villas, some of them in a state of abandon. The inspector had never been down this road before, he was sure of it, because he felt astonished to find an area that remained as though frozen in a time before the so-called construction boom had turned everything into a wilderness of cement,

  'Most of these villas you see were built in the late nineteenth century. They were the country homes of the rich of Vigata. We turned down vast sums of money for ours. That's it over there.'

  Montalbano did not take his eyes off the road, but knew that it was a big, squarish frame house that had once been white, decorated with cupolas and spikes and scrolled balconies in the heavily lightsome style of the seventies...

  At last he looked up and saw the house. It was how he'd imagined it, only better. It corresponded perfectly, like an exact replica, with the image that had been suggested to him. But suggested by whom? Was it possible he'd seen that house before? No, he was certain he hadn't,

  'When was it built?' he asked, afraid of the response.

  In 1870,' said Mariastella.

  SIXTEEN

  'I haven't been upstairs for years and years' said Mariastella, opening up the massive front door. 'I've settled in on the ground floor'

  The inspector noticed the heavy iron grates over the windows. The upstairs windows were instead closed in by shutters of a now indeterminate colour, with many missing slats. The plaster was flaking off the walls.

  Mariastella turned round.

  If you'd like to come inside a minute...'

  Her words were an invitation, but the woman's eyes said the exact opposite. They said: Tor pity's sake, go away and leave me alone.'

  'Thanks' said Montalbano.

  And he went inside. They crossed a large, unadorned foyer, a dim ball from which a stairway mounted into still more shadow. It smelled of dust and disuse -- a close, dank smell Mariastella opened the door to the living room. It was furnished in heavy, leather-covered furniture. The sort of nightmare he had suffered at Signora Clementina's place was becoming more and more oppressive. Inside his brain an unfamiliar voice said: 'Look for the portrait.' He obeyed. He looked all around, and, lo, on a tarnished gilt easel before the fireplace stood a crayon portrait of an elderly man with a moustache.

  Is that your father?' he asked, certain and yet at the same time frightened of the response.

  'Yes' said Mariastella.

  Montalbano now understood that he could no longer hold himself back, that he had to penetrate even further into that incomprehensible, dark area that lay between reality and what his own mind was suggesting to him, a reality that created itself as he was thinking it. He suddenly felt that he had a fever, and it was rising by the minute. What was happening to him? He didn't believe in magic spells, and yet at that moment he needed great faith in his own reason not to believe in them, and to keep both his feet on the ground. He realized he was sweating.

  He'd had, in the past -- however rarely -- the experience of seeing a place for the first time and feeling as if he'd already been there, or of reliving situations he'd been in before. But this was something entirely different. The words that were corning back to him had never been said to him, never been uttered by a human voice. No, he was convinced he had read them somewhere. And these written words had so struck and perhaps troubled him that they had etched themselves in his memory. Forgotten, they were now returning with a vengeance. All at once he understood.

  Sinking into a fear of a sort he'd never felt or conceived before in his life, he understood He realized he was living inside a fiction. He'd been transported inside a short story by Faulkner he'd read many years before. How was it possible? But this was no time for explanations. All he could do was to keep reading and living that story and arrive at its terrible conclusion, which he already knew. There was no other way. He stood up.

  'I'd like you to show me your house.'

  She looked at him with surprise and some irritation at the violent manner in which the inspector had asked her to submit But she didn't have the courage to say no.

  'All right' she said, struggling to stand up.

  The real pain of her fall was clearly starting to make itself felt. Keeping one shoulder raised much higher than the other, and propping up her arm in one hand, she led Montalbano down a long corridor. She opened the first door on the left

  'This is the kitchen.'

  Very big, spacious, but seldom used. Hanging on one wall were some copper pots and pans that had turned almost white from the thick deposits of dust on them. She opened the door across the hall

  'This is the dining room.'

  Massive walnut furniture. It had probably been used once, maybe twice at the most in the last thirty years. She reclosed the door.

  They took a few more steps.

  'Here on the left is the bathroom' said Mariastella. But she didn't open the door. She took another three steps, then stopped in front of a closed door. 'This is my room But it's messy.' She turned towards the door across from it. This is the guest room'

  She opened the door, reached inside, turned on the light, then stood aside to let the inspector pass. A thin, acrid pall as of the tomb seemed to lie everywhere upon this room...

  In a flash Montalbano saw what he was expecting to see: Upon a chair hung the suit, carefully folded; beneath it the two mute shoes and discarded socks.

  And on a bed stained brown with dried blood, carefully wrapped in plastic and even more carefully sealed in adhesive tape, lay the man himself, Emanuele Gargano.

  There's nothing else to see,' said Mariastella Cosentino, turning off the light in the guest room and dosing the door. She turned, now listing to one side, and walked back up the corridor towards the living room Montalbano, however, stayed put, in front of the closed door, unable to move, to take even one step. Mariastella had not seen the corpse. For her, it did not exist, it was not lying on that bloodstained bed. She had completely repressed it As she had done, so many years before, with her father. The inspector heard a kind of storm howling inside his brain, windblown head in a windblown expanse, and was unable to form a sentence, to put two words together that might make some sense. Then a wail came to his lips, a kind of yowl, as of a wounded animal He managed to take a step, wrenching himself painfully out of his paralysis, then ran to the living room. Mariastella was sitting in an armchair. She'd turned pale and was holding her shoulder with her right hand. Her lips were trembling.

  'My God, I'm suddenly in such pain!'

  Ill call you a doctor' said the inspector, seizing upon that moment of normality.

  'Please call Dr La Spina,' said Mariastella.

  The inspector knew him. He was in his sixties and retired, but still treated his friends. He ran into the hall. There was a directory next to the telephone. He could hear Mariastella whimpering in the living room.

  'Dr La Spina? Montalbano here. Do you know Miss Mariastella Cosentino?'

  'Of course, she's a patient of mine. Why, has something happened to her?'

  'She was hit by a car and has a lot of
pain in her shoulder'

  'I'll be right over.'

  At this moment the solution he'd been so convulsively seeking occurred to him. He lowered his voice, hoping the doctor wasn't hard of hearing.

  'Listen, Doctor. I'm going to ask a favour of you, for which I'll assume full responsibility. Please don't ask any questions now, but I need for Miss Mariastella to sleep very deeply for a few hours.'

  He hung up and took three or four deep breaths.

  'He'll be right over' he said, going back into the living room and trying to assume as normal an attitude as possible. 'Does it hurt very badly?'

  'Yes'

  When he later had to retell this story, the inspector could not remember what else they said to each other. Perhaps they had sat in silence. As soon as he heard a car pull up, Montalbano stood up and went to open the door.

  'I mean it, Doctor, treat her, do whatever you need to do, but most important, put her into a deep sleep. It's for her own good.'

  The doctor looked him long in the eye, then decided not to ask any questions.

  Montalbano waited outside, lighting a cigarette and pacing in front of the house. It was dark. The schoolmaster Tommasino came back to mind. What did the night smell of? He breathed deeply. It smelled of rotten fruit, of decomposition.

  The doctor came out of the house about half an hour later.

  'There's nothing broken. She has a nasty contusion on her shoulder, which I've wrapped up, and another on her hip. I persuaded her to get into bed and did as you asked. She's already asleep and should remain so for a few more hours.'

  'Thank you, Dr La Spina. For your trouble, I'd like to--'

  'Never mind about that. I'vve been her doctor since she was a little girl But I don t feel right leaving her alone. I'd like to call a nurse.'

  I'll be staying with her, don't worry about it'

  They said goodbye. The inspector waited till the car was out of sight then went back in the house and locked the door. Now came the hardest part going back, of his own accord, into the nightmare of the fiction, becoming a character in the story again. He walked by Mariastella's room and saw her sleeping under a blanket of faded rose colour. He saw the rose-shaded lights ...the dressing table ... the delicate array of crystal ... Yet hers was not a placid sleep. Her long, iron-grey hair seemed to move continuously over the pillow. He made up his mind, opened the other door, turned on the overhead fight and went in. The wrapping sparkled from the reflections of the light off the plastic He went up to it and bent down to have a look. Emanuele Gargano's vest was singed right over the heart' the bullet hole was clearly visible. He had not committed suicide. The pistol had been neatly placed on the other nightstand. Mariastella had shot him in his sleep. On the nightstand closer to the dead man lay a wallet and a Rolex. On the floor beside the bed was an open briefcase; inside were some computer diskettes and papers. Pellegrino's briefcase.

  Now he had to bring the story to its conclusion. Was there, in the second pillow ...the indentation of a head. And was there, on that same pillow, a long strand of iron-grey hair.

  He forced himself to look. There was no indentation, no strand of iron-grey hair on the pillow.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. At least he'd been spared that. He turned off the light, closed the door, went back in Mariastella's room, pulled up a chair, and sat down beside her. Somebody had once told him that sedated sleep is dreamless. Then why was that poor body occasionally tossed and shaken by violent starts as if by a strong electrical charge? And that same somebody had also said that one could not truly cry in one's sleep. Then why were big tears seeping out from under the woman's eyelids? What did anyone, even scientists, know about what could happen in the mysterious, indecipherable, ineffable country of sleep? He took one of her hands in his. It was hot. He had overestimated Gargano. The man was only a con artist; the murder of Pellegrino had got to him. After pushing his car into the sea and seizing the briefcase, he had run to Mariastella, certain that she would never talk, never betray him. And Mariastella had welcomed him, consoled him, taken him in. Then, after she'd let him fall asleep, she shot him. Was it jealousy? A mad reaction to learning of her Emanuele's relationship with Giacomo? No, Mariastella would never have done that. Then he understood: she'd shot him out of love, to spare the only human being she'd ever really loved in her life the contempt, the dishonour, the imprisonment that awaited him. There could be no other explanation. The darker side of the inspector's mind (or perhaps the brighter) suggested a possible solution to him: grab the whole package, put it in the boot of his car, take it to the spot where Giacomo was murdered, and fling it into the sea. No one would ever suspect any involvement on Mariastella Cosentino's part And he would have the pleasure of seeing the look on Guamotta's face when he found Gargano's corpse carefully wrapped in plastic. Why had the Mafia wrapped him up? Guarnotta would ask himself in dismay. But he was a cop.

  He stood up. It was already eight o'clock. He went to the phone; maybe Guarnotta was still in his office.

  'Hello, Guarnotta? Montalbano here.'

  He explained to him what he needed to do. Then he went back into Mariastella's room, wiped the sweat from her brow with a comer of the sheet sat down, and again took one of her hands in his.

  Then, after he didn't know how long, he heard the cars pull up. He opened the front door and went out to meet Guarnotta.

  'Did you call an ambulance and a nurse?'

  'They're on their way.'

  'Look around carefully. There's a briefcase in there that might help you recover the stolen money.'

  On the way back to Marinella, he had to pull over twice and stop. He was unable to drive. He was drained, and not just physically. The second time, he got out of the car. By now it was completely dark outside. He took a deep breath. And he noticed that the scent of the night had changed It now had a light, fresh smell, a scent of young grass, citronella, and wild mint. He drove off again, exhausted but revived

  Upon entering his house, he froze. Livia was standing in the middle of the room, frowning, eyes flashing with anger. She was holding up with both hands the sweater he had forgotten to bury. Montalbano opened his mouth but no sound came out. Livia slowly lowered her arms, and her face changed expression.

  'Oh my God Salvo, what's wrong? What's happened?'

  She threw the sweater to the ground and ran to embrace him.

  'What's happened to you, darling? What's the matter?'

  And she held him tight, desperate and frightened

  Montalbano was still unable to speak or return her embrace. He had only one thought in his mind clear and strong:

  It's a good thing she's here.

  Author's Note

  The idea of assigning Montalbano an investigation into the dealings of a financial 'wizard' (a rather anomalous case, sort of a divertissement) came to me while reading an article by Francesco ('Ciccio', to friends) La Licata entitled "Multinational Mafia', which mentioned the case of one Giovanni Sucato (the 'wizard'), who had 'managed, through a kind of pyramid scheme in the millions, to build an empire. Then he was blown up in his car.' My story is far more modest and, especially at the end, much different. Particularly different were my reasons for telling it. For here the Mafia have nothing to do with it despite the convictions of Inspector Guamotta, one of the characters. Nevertheless I must state that all names and situations are purely invented and have no basis in reality. Any similarity to real characters, etc ... The short story by William Faulkner that Montalbano finds himself living inside of is 'A Rose for Emily'.

  Notes

  page 8 -- raginiere Emanuele Gargano -- A ragioniere is someone who holds a degree in ragioneria, the study of business administration and accounting.

  page 26 -- 'two billion lire' -- At the time this novel was written, right before the conversion to euros, it took about three thousand lire to equal one British pound. Thus two billion lire would have been worth about PS650,000.

  Page 26 -- a million lire... twenty billion lire' -- See note a
bove. Twenty billion lire at the time would have equalled about PS6.5 million.

  page 34 lupara' -- A sawn-off shotgun, traditionally the weapon of choice among mafiosi and bandits in Sicily. It has since been replaced by more modern firearms.

  Page 36 -- Lohengrin Pera, that son of a bitch from the Secret Service -- Coerced by Montalbano into making certain concessions against his will, the sinister Pera is an important minor character in Camilleri's The Snack Thief (Picador, 2005).

  page 40 -- five hundred million lire -- About PS160,000 at the time.

  page 41 -- tobacco shop -- Tobacco products are controlled by the government in Italy and sold in specially designated shops.