Montalbano didn’t answer, and Mimì left, shaking his head.
Surely, thought the inspector, he’s convinced I’m getting more senile with each day that goes by. Why doesn’t he just worry about himself? He’s the one who’s forced to wear glasses, even though he’s a lot younger . . .
The first quatrain of the poem served no purpose. The directions didn’t start until the second stanza, with the words: where does the street become tight.
He got down from the chair, grabbed a pen and a sheet of paper, then climbed back up.
But he couldn’t see much. The sun had shifted and there wasn’t much light coming in through the window anymore.
He got down again, turned on the overhead light as well as the desk lamp, which he shone on the papers. Then he climbed back up on the chair. The desk lamp wasn’t aimed properly.
He got down, positioned it better, then climbed back up. The telephone rang.
He got down, cursing and laughing, feeling as if he were in a Beckett play.
“Ahh Chief, Chief! Ahh Chief!”
Usually Catarella reserved this Greek-choral exordium for telephone calls from the commissioner, the supreme deity, when Zeus manifested himself from Olympus.
“What is it?”
And indeed.
“’At’d be the C’mishner ’izzoner ’oo wants a talk t’yiz immidiotly!”
“Put him on.”
“Montalbano? What is this business?”
“What business, Mr. Commissioner?”
“Dr. Arquà has sent me a detailed report.”
He said he’d do it, and he did it, the motherfucking bastard. Let’s pretend to know nothing about it.
“A report on what, sir?”
“On your request for the Forensic Department’s intervention.”
“Ah, yes.”
“According to Dr. Arquà, you either wanted to play a silly joke on him, his team, Dr. Tommaseo, and Dr. Pasquano . . .”
Jesus, so many doctors! More than in a hospital!
“. . . or you are no longer able to tell the difference between a dead body and an inflatable doll.”
Montalbano decided he needed to summon legalese-bureaucratese to the rescue again immidiotly, as Catarella would say.
“Whereas, concerning the second part of the report drafted and just now submitted to you by Dr. Arquà, wherein I am apprised of being the object, not of any circumstantiated impugnment, but of a base and gratuitous insinuation that nevertheless proves prejudicial in my regard, I intend to avail myself of the right to a defense accorded me by august institutional authority in the face of the abovementioned—”
“Listen, it’s just a matter of—”
“Please let me finish.”
Dry and brusque, like someone who has suffered an offense to his dignity and honor.
“As concerns instead the first part, wherein the aforementioned doctor ascribes the occurrence in question to some carnivalesque impulse on my part, I find myself in the position, my better sense notwithstanding, of being forced to inform the cognizant jurisdictional authority of its easily demonstrated personal, incontrovertible accountability in the matter.”
“Its meaning whose, excuse me?”
“Its meaning yours, Mr. Commissioner.”
“Mine?!”
“Yessir, yours. With all due and unmitigated respect, sir, I would call to your attention that in accepting the Arquà report for perscrutation and then demanding an explanation of me, you effectively impugn me for what is a prejudicially foregone conclusion on your part, and in so doing endorse the hypothesis that I am a person capable of such silly jokes, thereby junking, in a single stroke, a distinguished, exemplary career spanning more than two decades and achieved through sacrifice and absolute devotion to work—”
“Good God, Montalbano!”
“—through hardship and honesty, with never a scam, never a kickback, irrespective of the contingency, notwithstanding the failure to securitize the—”
“Montalbano, stop it! I didn’t mean in any way to offend you!”
Now it was time to pull out the cracking voice, on the verge of tears.
“And yet you did! Perhaps without meaning to, but you did! And I am so pained, so aggrieved that—”
“Listen, Montalbano, hear me out. I really had no idea it would upset you so. Let’s drop the whole thing for now. Next time we have a chance, we can talk about it again, okay? But calmly, without getting excited, all right?”
“Thank you, Mr. Commissioner.”
He congratulated himself. He’d put on a good performance, extricating himself without wasting too much time. He called Catarella.
“I’m not here for anyone,” he told him.
And he climbed back up on the chair and started to study the sheets, sector by sector, taking notes.
After half an hour or so, it turned out that sixty percent of the streets in Vigàta narrowed at some point of their course. But there were only three that did so in an especially emphatic way. He wrote down their names and then proceeded to the second clue, the one that said that the street turned into a wheel.
How the hell could a street turn into a wheel?
Unless it meant that at that point there was a bus terminus that he was supposed to take. He reexamined the three streets.
Then he suddenly noticed that one of them, Via Garibaldi, to be precise, after narrowing towards the end like the trousers men used to wear, merged into a roundabout.
That must be the wheel the poem was talking about!
Then, after circling the roundabout, there was a street, Via dei Mille, which climbed up the hill where there was a cemetery halfway up the slope, and then continued through the newly built districts north of the town. He was sure he’d found it.
He looked at his watch: five-thirty. Therefore he had all the time in the world. Then he cursed the saints, remembering that he wouldn’t be getting his car back from the mechanic’s until the following morning. But there was no harm in trying.
“Montalbano here. I was wondering whether my car—”
“In about half an hour you can come an’ pick ’er up, Inspector.”
Who was the patron saint of auto mechanics? He didn’t know. So, just to be sure, he thanked them all.
He went out and told Catarella he was leaving and wouldn’t be back that evening.
“But tomorrow inna mornin’ you’ll be back, Chief?”
“Not to worry, Cat. See you tomorrow.”
Christ, if he were ever to die, Catarella was liable to die, too, of sadness, as sometimes happened with certain dogs. And would Livia die of sadness if he were gone?
“Shall we turn the question around? If Livia passed away, would you die of sadness?” Montalbano Two asked obnoxiously.
He preferred not to answer.
Forty-five minutes later, he was taking the roundabout and coming out onto Via dei Mille.
Passing the cemetery, he continued driving uphill between two unending walls of concrete, gray tenement houses rather like a cross between a Mexican high-security prison and a bunker-style loony bin for stark raving mad murderers conceived in some stark raving mad murderer’s nightmare. For some reason it was called low-income housing.
According to those architectural geniuses, working-class people were supposed live in homes where the moment you stuck the key in the door and went inside for the first time, the walls began to crumble before your eyes like underground frescoes when the air and light come in.
Small rooms so dark you had to keep the lights turned on at all times and it felt like northern Sweden in winter. The architects’ single great achievement was that they had actually managed to cancel out the Sicilian sun.
When the inspector was a little boy his uncle used to take him sometimes to the house of a friend who had some land in that area, and he remembered that on the right-hand side of that street, at the time a dirt road, it was all a dense grove of majestic Saracen olive trees, and on the left, an expanse of vineyards as far as t
he eye could see.
And now only cement. He started insulting them all in his mind, architects, engineers, surveyors, contractors, and masons, with a rage so irrational that he could feel the blood thumping in his temples.
“But why do I let it get to me so much?” he asked himself.
True, the destruction of nature, the death of good taste, the prevalence of ugliness were not only harmful, they were offensive, too. But it was clear that a good part of his rage was simply due to the fact that at a certain age you become intolerant and don’t let a single thing slide. Further proof that he was getting old.
The road continued up the hill, but now on either side of the road there were small homes without pretension, luckily, with little gardens in back where chickens and dogs circulated freely. Then, all at once, the little houses disappeared and the road continued between two dry-walls and then, about a hundred yards ahead, suddenly ended.
Montalbano stopped and got out.
It wasn’t true, actually, that the road ended; it was only the asphalt that did, because from that point forward the road turned into the dirt track of old, all the way down into the valley. He’d reached the very top of the hill and stood there a few moments, enjoying the panorama.
Behind him the sea, before him the distant town of Gallotta, perched atop a hill, to the right the ridge of Monserrato, which divided the territory of Vigàta from that of Montelusa. Not many patches of green. Nowadays hardly anyone worked the land anymore, a waste of effort and money.
And what now? Where was he supposed to go? In the spot where he found himself, at the top of the hill, not only were there no houses, but there wasn’t a living soul about.
travel the whole road and you’ll see
a place quite familiar to you
So said the poem, whose directions he had followed. He’d traveled the whole road, but there wasn’t anything familiar to him. Was this some kind of joke?
About ten yards from the road stood a wooden shack, about ten feet by ten, in bad shape, and it certainly wasn’t familiar to him. At any rate it was the only place where he might ask for information.
It wasn’t really a proper lane that led to the shed, but rather a dirt path barely showing any sign of the passage of man. To see it you had to study the ground very carefully, indicating that it wasn’t trod on very often.
Montalbano took the path to the closed front door. He knocked, but no one answered. Pressing his ear to the wood, between planks, he heard nothing at all. By this point it was clear the shack was uninhabited.
So what to do now? Should he force open the door or turn back and admit defeat?
“Let’s go for broke,” he said.
He went back to the car, took out a monkey wrench, and returned to the hut. Since the door wasn’t flush with the jamb, he stuck the wrench in the gap and used it as a lever. The wood was very damp and broke on the third try. Two kicks were enough, and the lock fell to the floor on the inside. Montalbano opened the door and went in.
There was no furniture, not even a chair or stool. Nothing.
But the inspector remained paralyzed, mouth open, throat suddenly dry, and broke into a cold sweat.
Because there wasn’t an inch of wall space that wasn’t covered with photographs of him. So that was why the poem said the place would be familiar to him.
Finally managing to move, he went up to the wall in front of him to have a better look at them. They weren’t exactly photographs, but computer printouts of the images that TeleVigàta had broadcast.
Him talking to Fazio, him starting his climb up the firemen’s ladder, him coming down after Gregorio Palmisano had shot his gun, him climbing back up, stopping halfway, resuming his climb, and leaping over the balustrade . . . On every wall in the hut the same images were repeated. But a white envelope stood out in the middle of the central wall, attached with a piece of adhesive tape. He tore it off angrily, so that five or six of the photographs fell to the floor. He grabbed one at random, stuck it in his jacket pocket together with the envelope, and left.
“Wha’ssa story, Chief? You back? You tol’ me y’wasn’t comin’ back,” said Catarella, half surprised, half pleased.
“Are you sorry I am?”
Montalbano had changed his mind in the car. Catarella nearly had a heart attack.
“Whatcha sayin’, Chief? If y’ask me, whinniver y’appear ’ere poissonally in poisson, I almos’ feel like gittin’ down on my knees!”
For a split second Montalbano had a horrendous vision of himself clad in a light-blue cloak like Our Lady of Fatima.
“I need you to explain something for me.”
Catarella staggered for a second, as if he’d just been clubbed in the head. Too many emotions in too few seconds.
“Me . . . asplain t’yiz? Asplain? You kiddin’ me?”
The inspector pulled out of his pocket the photograph from the hut and shoved it under Catarella’s nose. It showed him putting his foot down on the firemen’s ladder with what wasn’t exactly an air of nonchalance.
“What is this?” he asked.
Catarella gave him a confused look.
“’Ass you, Chief! Dontcha rec’nize yisself?”
“I didn’t ask you who that is, but what!” said Montalbano, pinching the sheet of paper between his thumb and index finger.
“Iss paper,” Catarella replied.
Montalbano cursed, but only in his mind. He didn’t want to make Catarella upset, but just get him to explain a few things about “pewters.”
“Is that a photograph or not?”
Catarella took it out of his hands.
“If I mays,” he said.
He studied it for a few moments, then gave his sentence.
“’Iss is a photaraff ’ass not rilly a photaraff.”
“Good, good! Go on.”
“’Iss pitcher wadn’t took wit’ a camera, but transferrated from a VHS to a pewter ann’ ’enn prinnit.”
“Splendid! And how did it get onto the VHS?”
“’Ey musta riccorded the pogram on TeleVigàta.”
“And how did they make the photographs?”
“By ’ookin’ up a viddeo riccorder to a priph’ral of a pewter, a priph’ral ’ass called a viddeo ’quisition.”
The inspector didn’t understand a goddamn thing about the last part, but he’d found out what he’d wanted to know.
“Cat, you’re a god!”
Catarella suddenly turned bright red, opened his arms, spreading his fingers, and did a half-pirouette. Whenever Montalbano praised him, he got so puffed up he became like a peacock spreading its tail.
As soon as he got back home, he remembered that there was nothing to eat, and he felt a little hungry. It would have been a mistake to skip supper because, later in the night, that little bit of hunger would turn into out-and-out ravenousness. He pulled the letter out of his pocket, still unopened, along with the photograph, set them both down on the table, went to splash a little water on his face, and then remained undecided about what to do about dinner, since he didn’t feel like going back to Enzo’s after having been there for lunch.
The telephone rang.
“Hello?”
“How long has it been since we last saw each other?” said a beautiful female voice that he recognized immediately.
“Since the days of Rachele,” he replied. “Have any news of her?”
“Yes, she’s doing well. I was just admiring your brave deeds on TV the other day and I felt like seeing you again.”
“That can be arranged.”
“Are you free this evening?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then, I’ll come by in half an hour. In the meantime try to think of a nice place to take me out to dinner.”
He was pleased to hear from Ingrid, his Swedish friend, confidante, and sometimes accomplice.
To make that half hour go by, he thought he would read the new instructions for the treasure hunt. He picked up the envelope but then put i
t back down almost immediately. There might be something in it that would upset him. Reading it before going out to eat was therefore out of the question, since there was the risk it might make him lose his appetite.
All at once he remembered what had happened with Adelina, and he went and opened the closet to check on the dolls. They were gone.
Apparently Pasquale had put them somewhere else. But where? They weren’t in the kitchen. He opened the armoire, but they weren’t there either. Want to bet he took them home with him? Perhaps the best thing was to give him a ring, so he could also get an update on Adelina.
6
Pasquale’s wife answered the phone and told him her husband had gone out and would be back in about an hour.
“Should I have him call you?”
“No, thank you. I’m going out now and won’t be back till late.”
“Should I tell him anything?”
“Well, yes.”
He had to say it in a roundabout way so that she wouldn’t understand what he was talking about . . .
“Tell him I urgently need those things we were talking about, and to call me tomorrow morning.”
Then he went and sat on the veranda to smoke a cigarette.
When he saw Ingrid in the doorway, he did a double take.
How was it that the years didn’t pass for that woman? The gears of time had jammed for her. In fact, she looked even younger to him than the last time he’d seen her, and more than a year had gone by. She was dressed the same way as usual, jeans, blouse, and sandals. And she was as elegant as if she were wearing a designer dress.
They hugged warmly. Ingrid didn’t use perfume, she didn’t need to, because her skin smelled like just-picked apricots.
“Want to come in?”
“Not now, maybe later. Have you decided where to go?”
“Yes, there’s a restaurant on the shore, at Montereale, where—”
“The one with the antipasti? I know it. Let’s take my car.”
He couldn’t figure out what make Ingrid’s car was, but it was the sort of model she really liked. A two-seater, and flat as a filet of sole.
Treasure Hunt Page 6
