The Patience of the Spider

by Andrea Camilleri

  “I’ve decided, yes, I’ll do it.”

  “Ah, Gesù, Amma so heppy!”

  “Have you set the date?”

  “Iss ahp to you, signore.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, hit depends on when you free.”

  No, it depends on when your son is free, the inspector wanted to say, since Pasquale, the child’s father, was always in and out of jail. But he merely said:

  “Arrange everything yourselves, then let me know. I’ve got all the time in the world now.”

  More than sit down, Francesco Lipari collapsed into the chair in front of the inspector’s desk. His face was pale and the circles under his eyes had turned a dense black, as though painted on with shoe polish. His clothes were rumpled, as if he’d slept in them. Montalbano was shocked. He would have expected the boy to be happy and relieved that Susanna had been freed.

  “Are you not feeling well?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Susanna won’t speak to me.”

  “Explain.”

  “What’s to explain? Ever since I first heard she’d been released, I’ve called her house at least ten times. It’s always her father, her uncle, or someone else who answers the phone. Never her. And they always tell me Susanna’s busy and can’t come to the phone. Even this morning, when I heard that her mother had died—”

  “Where did you hear it?”

  “On a local radio station. I immediately thought: It’s a good thing she got to see her again while she was still alive! And so I phoned, I wanted to be near her, but I got the same answer. She wasn’t available.”

  He buried his face in his hands.

  “What did I do to be treated this way?”

  “You? Nothing,” said Montalbano. “But you have to try to understand. The trauma of being kidnapped is tremendous and very hard to get over. Everyone who’s been through it says the same thing. It takes time.”

  And the Good Samaritan Montalbano fell silent, pleased with himself. All the while he was forming his own, strictly personal opinion of the matter, but preferred not to reveal it to the young man. He therefore stuck to generalities.

  “But wouldn’t having someone beside her who truly loves her help her to get over the trauma?”

  “You want to know something?”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll make a confession. Like Susanna, I think that I, too, would want to be left alone to contemplate my wounds.”

  “Wounds?”

  “Yes. And not just my own, but those I’ve inflicted on others.”

  The boy looked at him, utterly at sea.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Never mind.”

  The Good Samaritan Montalbano wasn’t about to waste his daily dose of goodness all at once.

  “Was there anything else you wanted to tell me?” he asked.

  “Yes. Did you know that Peruzzo was left off the ballot of his party’s candidates?”

  “No.”

  “And did you know that the Customs Police have been searching his offices since yesterday afternoon? Rumor has it that they found, right off the bat, enough material to put him behind bars.”

  “This is the first I’ve heard of it. And so?”

  “So I’ve been asking myself some questions.”

  “And you want me to answer them?”

  “If possible.”

  “I’m willing to answer one question only, provided I can. Make your choice.”

  The boy asked his question at once. Clearly it was the first on his list.

  “Do you think it was Peruzzo who put clippings instead of money in that bag?”

  “Don’t you?”

  Francesco attempted a smile, but didn’t succeed. He only twisted his mouth into a grimace.

  “Don’t answer a question with a question,” he said.

  He was sharp, this kid. Alert and clever. It was a pleasure to talk to him.

  “Why shouldn’t I think it was him?” said Montalbano. “Mr. Peruzzo, according to what we’ve learned about him, is an unscrupulous man with a penchant for dangerous gambits. He probably sized up his situation. The essential thing, for him, was to avoid getting drawn into the case, because once he was, he could only lose. Therefore, why not take yet another risk and try to save six billion lire?”

  “And what if they killed Susanna?”

  “He could claim, as a last resort, that he’d paid the ransom and that it was the kidnappers who hadn’t kept their word. Because there was always the chance that Susanna might recognize one of them, which would have made it necessary to eliminate her. He would have cried and wailed in front of the TV cameras, and some people would have ended up believing him.”

  “And would you have been one of those people, Inspector?”

  “I plead the Fifth,” said Montalbano.

  “Montalbano? This is Minutolo. I spoke with the commissioner.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “He said he didn’t want to take advantage of your courtesy.”

  “Which, translated into the vernacular, means the quicker I get my ass out of the way, the better.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Well, my friend, what do you want me to say? I guess I’ll go back to convalescing and wish you all the best.”

  “But if I need to exchange a few ideas with you, can I—”

  “Whenever you like.”

  “Did you know that the Customs Police have found truckloads of incriminating stuff in Peruzzo’s offices? Everybody thinks he’s screwed for good this time.”

  He picked up the photographic enlargements that he’d had Cicco De Cicco make and put them in an envelope, which he managed, with some effort, to fit in his jacket pocket.

  “Catarella!”

  “Your orders, Chief.”

  “Is Inspector Augello around?”

  “No, Chief. He’s in Montelusa ’cause the c’mishner wants ’Specter Augello to be the inner-in-chief.”

  So the c’mishner had finally marginalized the inspector and was speaking only to Augello, the inner-in-chief.

  “What about Fazio?”

  “He ain’t here, neither, Chief. He went for a minnit over to Via Palazzolo, ’cross from the alimentary school.”

  “What for?”

  “There’s some shopkeeper who din’t wanna pay pertection money shot at the guy who axed him for it but ’e missed.”

  “So much the better.”

  “Smuch the bitter, Chief, but t’make it up he got some guy who’s passin by in the arm.”

  “Listen, Cat. I’m going home to resume my convalescence.”

  “Straightaway straightaway?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I come see you sometimes when I wanna see you sometimes?”

  “Come whenever you like.”

  Before returning to Marinella, he dropped in at the grocer’s where he sometimes got his provisions. He bought green olives, passuluna black olives, caciocavallo cheese, fresh bread sprinkled with giuggiulena, and a jar of Trapanese pesto.

  Back at home, he set the table on the veranda while the pasta cooked. After shilly-shallying a bit, the day had finally surrendered to the late spring sunshine. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, not a breath of wind in the air. The inspector drained the pasta, dressed it with pesto, took the dish outside, and began to eat. A man was walking by along the water, and for a moment he stopped and stared at Montalbano on the veranda. What was so strange about him that a man should eye him as if he were a painting? Perhaps he really was a painting, one that might be titled: The Solitary Pensioner’s Lunch. The idea made him suddenly lose his appetite. He kept eating his pasta, but listlessly.

  The telephone rang. It was Livia. She told him she’d made it back without incident, that everything was all right, she was cleaning her apartment, and would call him back that evening. A brief phone call, but long enough to let the pasta turn cold.

  He didn’t feel like eatin
g any more. A wave of black melancholy had come over him, conceding him only a glass of wine and a bit of giuggiulena bread. He tore off a piece, put it in his mouth, and with the index finger of his right hand began searching about for giuggiulena seeds that had fallen from the crust. He pressed them against the tablecloth with his fingertip until they stuck, then brought his finger to his mouth. The joy of eating bread with giuggiulena lay primarily in this ritual.

  Flush against the veranda’s right-hand wall—on the outside, that is—was a wild shrub that over time had grown in width and height to the point where it now came up to the level of someone sitting on the bench.

  Livia had told him many times that they needed to uproot it, but this had become a difficult proposition. By now the shrub’s roots must have grown as thick and long as a tree’s. Montalbano didn’t know why, but he suddenly had the urge to cut it down. He needed only turn his head a little to the right for the whole bush to enter his field of vision. The wild plant was reviving. Here and there amidst its yellow scrub a few green buds were beginning to emerge. Near the top, between two small branches, a silvery spiderweb sparkled in the sunlight. Montalbano was certain it hadn’t been there the day before, because Livia would have noticed and, with her fear of spiders, would have destroyed it with the broom. It must have been made during the night.

  The inspector stood up and leaned over the railing to get a closer look at it.

  Spellbound, the inspector counted some thirty threads in concentric circles that decreased in diameter as they approached the center. The distance between threads was the same throughout, except in the middle, where it greatly increased. The circular weave, moreover, was held together by a regular sequence of radial threads that emanated from the center and stretched to the outermost circle of the web.

  Montalbano guessed that there were about twenty radial threads of uniform distance from one another. The center of the web was made up of the points of convergence of all the threads, which were held together by a thread different from the rest and spiral in shape.

  How patient that spider must have been!

  It certainly must have encountered some difficulties. A gust of wind shredding the weave, an animal that happened to pass and move a branch…But no matter, the spider had carried on its nocturnal labor, determined to bring its web to completion, whatever the cost, obstinate, deaf and blind to all other stimuli.

  But where was the spider? Try as he might, the inspector couldn’t see it. Had it already left, abandoning everything? Had it been eaten by some other animal? Or was it lurking hidden under some yellow leaf, looking keenly around, with its eight eyes like a diadem, its eight legs ready to spring?

  All at once, the web began ever so delicately to vibrate, to quiver. Not from any sudden breath of wind, for the nearest leaves, even the flimsiest, remained still. No, it was an artificial movement, created intentionally. And by what, if not the spider itself? Apparently the invisible arachnid wanted the web to be taken for something else—a veil of frost, a wisp of steam—and was moving the threads with its legs. It was a trap.

  Montalbano turned back towards the table, picked up a tiny piece of bread, broke it up into even smaller crumbs, and threw them at the web. Too light, they scattered in the air, but one did get caught in the very middle of the web, right on the spiral thread, and stayed there for only a split second. It was there one moment and gone the next. Darting out like a flash from the upper part of the web—which remained hidden under some leaves—a grey dot had enveloped the breadcrumb and vanished. But more than actually witness this movement, the inspector had sensed it. The swiftness with which the grey dot had moved was astonishing. He decided he wanted a better look at the spider’s reaction. He took another crumb, rolled it into a tiny little ball slightly bigger than the last one, and hurled it right into the center of the web, which shook all over. The grey dot pounced again, arrived at the center, covered the bread with its body, but did not return to its hiding place. It held still, perfectly visible, in the middle of its admirable structure of airy geometries. To Montalbano it seemed as if the spider was looking at him, gloating in triumph.

  Then, in nightmarishly slow succession, as in an endless cinematic fadeout and fade-in, the spider’s tiny head began to change color and form, going from grey to pink, its fuzz turning to hair, the eight eyes merging into two, until it looked like a minute human face, smiling with satisfaction at the booty it held tightly between its legs.

  Montalbano shuddered in horror. Was he living a nightmare? Had he drunk too much wine without realizing it? All at once he remembered a passage in Ovid he’d studied at school, the one about Arachne the weaver, turned into a spider by Athena…Could time have started running backwards, all the way back to the dark night of myth? He felt dizzy, head spinning. Luckily that monstrous vision didn’t last long, for the image began at once to blur and reverse the transformation. Yet before the spider turned back into a spider, before it vanished again amidst the leaves, Montalbano had enough time to recognize the face. And, no, it wasn’t Arachne’s. He was sure of that.

  He sat down on the bench, his legs giving out from under him. He had to drink a whole glass of wine to regain a little strength.

  He realized that it must also have been late one night—on one of many nights of anguish, torment, and rage—that the other spider, too, the one whose face he’d just glimpsed, had decided to weave a gigantic web.

  And with patience, tenacity, and determination, never once turning back, that spider had woven its web to completion. It was a marvel of geometry, a masterpiece of logic.

  Yet it was impossible for that web not to contain at least one mistake, however minuscule, one tiny, barely visible imperfection.

  He got up, went inside, and started looking for a magnifying glass that he knew he had somewhere. Ever since Sherlock Holmes, no detective is a true detective if he doesn’t have a magnifying glass within reach.

  He opened every last drawer in the house, made a mess of the place—coming across a letter he’d received from a friend six months before and never opened, he opened it, read it, learned that his friend Gaspano had become a grandfather (Shit! But weren’t he and Gaspano the same age?)—searched some more, then decided there was no point in continuing. He could only conclude, apparently, that he was not a true detective. Elementary, my dear Watson. He went back out on the veranda, leaned on the railing, and bent all the way forward until his nose was almost at the center of the spiderweb. Then he recoiled a little, suddenly scared that the lightning-fast spider might bite his nose, mistaking it for prey. He studied the web carefully, to the point that his eyes began to water. No, the web appeared geometrically perfect, but in reality it wasn’t. There were at least three or four points where the distance between one strand and the next was irregular, and there was even one spot where two threads zigzagged for very brief stretches.

  Feeling reassured, he smiled. Then his smile turned to laughter. A spiderweb! There wasn’t a single cliché more used and abused to describe a scheme plotted in the shadows. He’d never employed it before. Apparently the cliché had wanted to get back at him for his disdain, becoming a reality and forcing him to take it into consideration.

  16

  Two hours later he was in his car on the road to Gallotta, eyes popping because he couldn’t remember where he was supposed to turn. At a certain point he spotted, on his right, the tree with the sign saying FRESH EGGS painted in red.

  The path from the road led nowhere except to the little white die of a cottage where he’d been. In fact it ended there. From a distance he noticed a car parked in the space in front of the house. He drove up the path, which was all uphill, parked near the other car, and got out.

  The door was locked. Maybe the girl was entertaining a client with other intentions than buying fresh eggs.

  He didn’t knock, but decided to wait a little. He smoked a cigarette, leaning against his car. As he tossed the butt on the ground, he thought he saw something appear and disappea
r behind the tiny barred window next to the front door that allowed air to circulate inside when the door was closed. A face, perhaps. The door then opened and a distinguished-looking, chunky man of about fifty came out, wearing gold-rimmed glasses. He was pepper-red with embarrassment.

  “Won’t you come in, Inspector?” the woman called from inside.

  Montalbano went in. She was sitting on the sofa-cot. Its cover was rumpled and a pillow had fallen to the floor. She was buttoning her blouse, long black hair hanging loose on her shoulders, the corners of her mouth smeared with lipstick.

  “I looked out the window and recognized you at once,” she said. “Excuse me just one minute.”

  She stood up and started putting things in order. Like the first time he saw her, she was dressed up.

  “How is your husband feeling?” Montalbano asked, glancing at the door to the back room, which was closed.

  “How’s he supposed to feel, poor man?”

  When she’d finished tidying up and had wiped her mouth with a Kleenex, she asked with a smile:

  “Can I make you some coffee?”

  “Thank you. But I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

  “Are you kidding? You don’t seem like a cop. Please sit down,” she said, pulling out a cane chair for him.

  “Thanks. I don’t know your name.”

  “Angela. Angela Di Bartolomeo.”

  “Did my colleagues come to interrogate you?”

  “Inspector, I did just like you told me to do. I put on shabby clothes, put the bed in the other room…Nothing doing. They turned the house upside down, they even looked under my husband’s bed, they asked me questions for four hours straight, they searched the chicken coop and scared my chickens away and broke three baskets’ worth of eggs…And then there was one of ’em, the son of a bitch—pardon my language—who, as soon as we were alone, took advantage…”

  “Took advantage how?”

  “Took advantage of me, touched my breasts. At a certain point it got to where I couldn’t take it anymore and I started crying. It didn’t matter that I kept saying I wouldn’t ever do any harm to Dr. Mistretta’s niece ’cause the doctor even gives my husband his medicines for free…But he just didn’t want to hear it.”