IM1 The Shape of Water (2002)

by Andrea Camilleri

  THE SHAPE OF WATER

  ANDREA CAMILLERI

  Translated by Stephen Sartarelli

  Viking

  VIKING Published by the Penguin Group Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124,Australia Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth,Middlesex,England

  First published in 2002 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Putnam Inc.

  Translation copyright Stephen Sartarelli, 2002 All rights reserved

  Originally published in Italian as La forma dellacqua by Sellerio editore. 1994 Sellerio editore via Siracusa 50 Palermo.

  PUBLISHERS NOTE This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Publication Data

  Camilleri,Andrea. [La forma dellacqua. English] The shape of water / Andrea Camilleri ; translated by Stephen Sartarelli. p. cm.

  ISBN: 1-4362-7197-5

  I. Title.

  PQ 4863.A3894 F6713 2002 853'.914dc21 2001058140

  Set in Bembo Designed by Jaye Zimet

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  1

  No light of daybreak filtered yet into the courtyard of Splendor, the company under government contract to collect trash in the town of Vig. A low, dense mass of clouds completely covered the sky as though a great gray tarp had been drawn from one corner to another. Not a single leaf fluttered. The sirocco was late to rise from its leaden sleep, yet people already struggled to exchange a few words. The foreman, before assigning the areas to be cleaned, announced that this day, and for some days to come, Peppe Schari and Caluzzo Brucculeri would be absent, excused from work. More than excused, theyd been arrested: the previous evening theyd attempted to rob a supermarket, weapons in hand. To Pino Catalano and Saro Montapertoyoung land surveyors naturally without employment as land surveyors, but hired by Splendor as temporary ecological agents thanks to the generous string-pulling of Chamber Deputy Cusumano, in

  whose electoral campaign the two had fought body and soul (and in that order, with the body doing far more than the soul felt like doing)the foreman assigned the jobs vacated by Peppe and Caluzzo, that is, the sector that went by the name of the Pasture, because in a time now beyond memory a goatherd had apparently let his goats roam there. It was a broad tract of Mediterranean brush on the outskirts of town that stretched almost as far as the shore. Behind it lay the ruins of a large chemical works inaugurated by the ubiquitous Deputy Cusumano when it seemed the magnificent winds of progress were blowing strong. Soon, however, that breeze changed into the flimsiest of puffs before dropping altogether,but in that brief time it had managed to do more damage than a tornado, leaving a shambles of compensation benefits and unemployment in its wake. To prevent the crowds of black and not-so-black Senegalese, Algerians, Tunisians, and Libyans wandering about the city from nesting in that factory, a high wall had been built all around it, above which the old structures still soared, corroded by weather, neglect, and sea salt,looking more and more like architectures designed by Gaudnder the influence of hallucinogens.

  Until recently the Pasture had represented, for those who at the time still went under the undignified name of garbage collectors,a cakewalk of a job:amid the scraps

  of paper, plastic bags, cans of beer and Coca-Cola, and shit piles barely covered up or left out in the open air, now and then a used condom would appear, and it would set one thinking,provided one had the desire and imagination to do so,about the details of that encounter. For a good year now, however, the occasional condom had turned into an ocean, a carpet of condoms, ever since a certain minister with a dark,taciturn face worthy of a Lombroso diagram had fished deep into his mind, which was even darker and more mysterious than his face, and come up with an idea he thought would solve all the Souths law-and-order problems. He had managed to sell this idea to a colleague of his who dealt with the army and who, for his part, looked as if he had walked right out of a Pinocchio illustration, and together the two had decided to send a number of detachments to Sicily for the purpose of controlling the territory, to lighten the load of the carabinieri, local police, intelligence services, special operations teams, coast guard, the highway police, railway police and port police, the anti-Mafia, antiterrorism, antidrug, antitheft and antikidnapping commissions, and othershere omitted for the sake of brevityquite busy with other business. Thanks to the brilliant idea of these two eminent statesmen, all the Piedmontese mamas boys and beardless Friulian conscripts who just the night before

  had enjoyed the crisp, fresh air of their mountains suddenly found themselves painfully short of breath,huffing in their temporary lodgings, in towns that stood barely a yard above sea level, among people who spoke an incomprehensible dialect consisting not so much of words as of silences, indecipherable movements of the eyebrows, imperceptible puckerings of the facial wrinkles. They adapted as best they could, thanks to their young age, and were given a helping hand by the residents of Vig themselves, who were moved to pity by the foreign boys lost, bewildered looks. The one who saw to lessening the hardship of their exile was a certain Geg Gullotta, a fast thinker who until that moment had been forced to suppress his natural gifts as a pimp by dealing in light drugs. Having learned through channels both underhanded and ministerial of the soldiers imminent arrival, Gegad had a flash of genius, and to put said flash to work for him he had promptly appealed to the beneficence of those in charge of such matters in order to obtain all the countless convoluted authorizations indispensable to his planthose in charge being, that is, those who truly controlled the area and would never have dreamt of issuing officially stamped permits. Geg in short, succeeded in opening a specialized market of fresh meat and many and sundry drugs, all light, at the Pasture. Most of the meat came from the former Eastern

  Bloc countries, now free at last of the Communist yoke which, as everyone knows, had denied all personal, human dignity; now, between the Pastures bushes and sandy shore, come nightfall, that reconquered dignity shone again in all its magnificence. But there was also no lack of Third World women, transvestites, transsexuals, Neapolitan faggots, Brazilian viadossomething for every taste,a feast,an embarrassment of riches.And business flourished, to the great satisfaction of the soldiers, Gegand those who, for a proper cut of the proceeds, had granted Gegermission to operate.

  Pino and Saro headed toward their assigned work sector, each pushing his own cart. To get to the Pasture it took half an hour,if one was slow of foot as they were. The first fifteen minutes they spent without speaking, already sweaty and sticky. It was Saro who broke the silence.

  That Pecorilla is a bastard, he announced.

  A fucking bastard, clarified Pino.

  Pecorilla was the foreman in charge of assigning the areas to be cleaned,and he nurtured an undisguised hatr
ed for anyone with an education, having himself managed to finish middle school, at age forty, only thanks to Cusumano,who had a man-to-man talk with the teacher. Thus he manipulated things so that the hardest, most demeaning work always fell to the three

  university graduates in his charge. That same morning, in fact, he had assigned to Ciccu Loreto the stretch of wharf from which the mail boat sailed for the island of Lampedusa. Which meant that Ciccu, with his accounting degree, would be forced to account for the piles of trash that noisy mobs of tourists,many-tongued yet all sharing the same utter disregard for personal and public cleanliness, had left behind on Saturday and Sunday while waiting to embark. And no doubt Pino and Saro, after the soldiers two days off duty, would find the Pasture one big glory hole.

  When they reached the corner of Via Lincoln and Viale Kennedy (in Vig there was even a Cortile Eisenhower and a Vicolo Roosevelt), Saro stopped.

  Im going to run upstairs and see how the little guys doing, he said to his friend. Wait here. Ill only be a minute.

  Without waiting for Pinos answer, he slipped into one of those midget high-rises that were not more than twelve stories high, having been built around the same time as the chemical works and having just as quickly fallen into ruin, when not abandoned altogether. For someone approaching from the sea, Vig rose up like a parody of Manhattan,on a reduced scale.And this explained, perhaps, the names of some of its streets.

  Nenthe little guy, was awake; he slept on and off some two hours a night, spending the rest of the time

  with eyes wide open, without ever crying. Who had ever seen a baby that didnt cry? Day after day he was consumed by an illness of unknown cause and cure. The doctors of Vig couldnt figure it out;his parents would have to take him somewhere else, to some big- shot specialist, but they didnt have the money. Nen grew sullen as soon as his eyes met his fathers, a wrinkle forming across his forehead. He couldnt talk, but had expressed himself quite clearly with that silent reproach of the person who had put him in these straits.

  Hes doing a little better, the fevers going down, said Tana, Saros wife, just to make him happy.

  The clouds had scattered, and now the sun was blazing hot enough to shatter rocks. Saro had already emptied his cart a dozen times in the garbage bin that had appeared, thanks to private initiative, where the rear exit of the factory used to be, and his back felt broken. When he was a few steps from the path that ran along the enclosure wall and led to the provincial road, he saw something sparkle violently on the ground. He bent down to have a better look. It was a heart-shaped pendant, enormous, studded with little diamonds all around and with one great big diamond in the middle. The solid-gold chain was still attached, though broken in one spot. Saros right hand shot

  out, grabbed the necklace, and stuffed it in his pocket. The hand seemed to have acted on its own, before his brain, still flabbergasted by the discovery, could tell it anything. Standing up again, drenched in sweat, he looked around but didnt see a living soul.

  Pino, who had chosen to work the stretch of the Pasture nearest the beach, at one point spotted the nose of a car about twenty yards away, sticking out of some bushes a bit denser than the rest. Unsure, he stopped; it wasnt possible someone could still be around here at this hour, seven in the morning, screwing a whore. He began to approach cautiously, one step at a time, almost bent over, and when hed reached the taillights he quickly stood straight up. Nothing happened, nobody shouted to fuck off, the car seemed vacant. Coming nearer, he finally made out the indistinct shape of a man, motionless, in the passenger seat, head thrown back. He seemed to be in a deep sleep. But by the look and the smell of it, Pino realized something was fishy. He turned around and called to Saro, who came running, out of breath, eyes bulging.

  What is it? What the hell do you want?

  Pino thought his friends questions a bit aggressive but blamed it on the fact that he had run all that way.

  Get a load of this, he said.

  Plucking up his courage, Pino went up to the drivers side and tried to open the door but couldnt: it was locked. With the help of Saro, who seemed to have calmed down, he tried to reach the other door, against which the mans body was partially leaning, but the car, a large green BMW, was too close to the shrub to allow anyone to approach from that side. Leaning forward, however, and getting scratched by the brambles, they managed to get a better look at the mans face. He was not sleeping; his eyes were wide open and motionless. The moment they realized that the man was dead, Pino and Saro froze in terrornot at the sight of death but because they recognized him.

  I feel like Im taking a sauna, said Saro as he ran along the provincial road toward a telephone booth. A blast of cold one minute, a blast of heat the next.

  They had agreed on one thing since overcoming their paralysis upon recognizing the deceased: before alerting the police, they had to make another phone call. They knew Deputy Cusumanos number by heart, and Saro dialed it. But Pino didnt let the phone ring even once.

  Hang up, quick! he said.

  Saro obeyed automatically.

  You dont want to tell him?

  Lets just think for a minute, lets think hard. This is very important. You know as well as I do that Cusumano is a puppet.

  Whats that supposed to mean?

  Hes a puppet of Luparello, who is everything or was everything. With Luparello dead, Cusumanos a nobody, a doormat.

  So?

  So nothing.

  They turned back toward Vig, but after a few steps Pino stopped Saro.

  Rizzo, the lawyer, he said.

  Im not going to call that guy. He gives me the creeps. I dont even know him.

  I dont either, but Im going to call him anyway.

  Pino got the number from the operator. Though it was still only seven forty-five, Rizzo answered after the first ring.

  Mr. Rizzo?

  Yes?

  Excuse me for bothering you at this hour, Mr. Rizzo, but ...we found Mr. Luparello, you see, and...well, he looks dead.

  There was a pause. Then Rizzo spoke.

  So why are you telling me this?

  Pino was stunned. He was ready for anything, except that bizarre response.

  But ...arent you his best friend? We thought it was only right

  I appreciate it. But you must do your duty first. Good day.

  Saro had been listening to the conversation, his cheek pressed against Pinos. They looked at each other, nonplussed. Rizzo acted as if theyd told him theyd just found some nameless cadaver.

  Shit! He was his friend, wasnt he? Saro burst out.

  What do we know? Maybe they had a fight, said Pino to reassure him.

  So what do we do now?

  We go and do our duty, like the lawyer said, concluded Pino.

  They headed toward town, to police headquarters. The thought of going to the carabinieri didnt even cross their minds, since they were under the command of a Milanese lieutenant. The Vig police inspector, on the other hand, was from Catania, a certain Salvo Montalbano, who, when he wanted to get to the bottom of something, he did.

  2

  Again.

  No, said Livia, still staring at him, her eyes more luminous from the amorous tension.

  Please.

  No, I said no.

  I always like being forced a little, he remembered her whispering once in his ear; and so, aroused, he tried slipping his knee between her closed thighs as he gripped her wrists roughly and spread her arms until she looked as though crucified.

  They eyed each other a moment, panting, when suddenly she surrendered.

  Yes, she said. Now.

  At that exact moment the phone rang. Without even opening his eyes, Montalbano reached out with his arm to grab not the telephone so much as the fluttering shreds of the dream now inexorably vanishing.

  Hello! he shouted angrily at the intruder.

  Inspector, weve got a client. He recognized Sergeant Fazios voice; the other sergeant, Tortorella, was still in the hospital with the nasty bullet hed t
aken in the belly from some would-be mafioso who was actually just a pathetic two-bit jerk-off. In their jargon a client meant a death they should look into.

  Who is it?

  We dont know yet.

  How was he killed?

  We dont know. Actually, we dont even know if he was killed.

  I dont get it, Sergeant. You woke me up to tell me you dont know a goddamn thing?

  Montalbano breathed deeply to dispel his pointless anger, which Fazio tolerated with the patience of a saint.

  Who found him? he continued.

  A couple of garbage collectors in the Pasture. They found him in a car.

  Ill be right there. Meanwhile phone the Montelusa department, have them send someone from the lab, and inform Judge Lo Bianco.

  As he stood under the shower, he reached the conclusion that the dead man must have been a member of

  the Cuffaro gang. Eight months earlier, probably due to some territorial dispute, a ferocious war had broken out between the Vig Cuffaros and the Sinagra gang, who were from Fela. One victim per month, by turns, and in orderly fashion: one in Vig, one in Fela. The latest, a certain Mario Salino, had been shot in Fela by the Vigatese, so now it was apparently the turn of one of the Cuffaro thugs.

  Before going outhe lived alone in a small house right on the beach on the opposite side of town from the Pasturehe felt like calling Livia in Genoa. She answered immediately, drowsy with sleep.

  Sorry, but I wanted to hear your voice.

  I was dreaming of you, she said. You were here with me.

  Montalbano was about to say that he, too, had been dreaming of her, but an absurd prudishness held him back. Instead he asked:

  And what were we doing?

  Something we havent done for too long, she said.

  At headquarters, aside from the sergeant, there were only three policemen. The rest had gone to the home of a clothing-shop owner who had shot his sister over a question of inheritance and then escaped. Montal

  bano opened the door to the interrogation room. The two garbage collectors were sitting on the bench, huddling one against the other, pale despite the heat.