Montalbano's First Case

by Andrea Camilleri

  After unloading the bags, he drove back to the station to tell Fazio he was going to be busy, and that he would return later that morning. He went to a shop and bought sheets, pillowcases, towels, tablecloths, and napkins; then he went to a supermarket and got all sorts of pots, pans, trays, silverware, plates, glasses, and everything else he might need. He also bought some food to keep in the fridge. Driving back to Marinella, his car looked like it belonged to a traveling salesman. He unloaded everything and realized that he was still missing a whole bunch of other things. So he made another run. He didn’t get back to the station until after noon.

  “Is there any news?” he asked Fazio who, while waiting for the deputy inspector to be assigned, was temporarily acting as one.

  “Nothing. Oh, the Honorable Torrisi called twice, from Rome. He asked for you.”

  “Who’s this Torrisi?”

  “Sir, he’s one of the representatives elected from this district.”

  “How many representatives are there?”

  “There are many from this province, but the two that received the most votes are Torrisi and Vannicò.”

  “Do they belong to two different parties?”

  “No, sir. They belong to the same parish—democristiani.”

  The words he had exchanged with the chief in their previous encounter unpleasantly came back to his mind.

  “Did he say what he wanted?”

  “No, sir.”

  He spent that evening and part of the night settling in, putting away his things and moving some furniture. Before returning to Marinella, he went to eat at Trattoria San Calogero, which had become something of a habit. At the beginning of his housework he had felt perfectly in shape, but by the time he went to bed his legs and back felt broken down. He slept like a log—a heavy and dense sleep. He woke up just after dawn, put on the coffee pot, drank half of it, put on his swimsuit, opened the French doors, and went out on the patio. He almost felt like crying; when he was in Mascalippa, he had dreamt of a view like that for months and months. And now, there it was for him to enjoy! He went down to the beach, and starting walking along the shore.

  The water was too cold; there was no way he was going to swim. But the walk had re-energized his mind and body. Finally, he decided to go back to the house and get ready to start his day.

  When he got to the station it was a little late. Before leaving the house he had gone through the rooms writing down everything he still needed. Afterward, he had gone to a carpenter, someone Fazio had recommended, and scheduled an appointment with him to cover a whole wall of the house with shelves for the books he was expecting from Mascalippa and for those he was going to buy in the future.

  He had been sitting behind his desk for about an hour when Fazio showed up to tell him that the Honorable Torrisi was waiting to speak to him.

  “Put him on,” Montalbano said, lifting the receiver.

  “No, sir. He’s outside. He said he got in last night from Rome.”

  Torrisi had really gone out of his way to break his balls!

  There was no way out of it, other than the window on the ground floor. For a moment, he was tempted, but then he told himself it would be undignified. Plus, why all this antipathy if he had never even met the Honorable Torrisi before and didn’t know what he wanted from him?

  “Fine, show him in.”

  The judge was about fifty, short and fat, unkempt, with a big face sporting a smile that couldn’t hide the icy, snakelike look he had in his eyes. Montalbano got up and walked toward him.

  “My dear Chief Inspector! My dear Chief Inspector,” the judge said as he grabbed Montalbano’s hand, shaking it so energetically Montalbano thought it was going to be pulled out of its socket.

  Montalbano led him to the two chairs he kept in a corner of his office.

  “May I offer you anything?”

  “Nothing! Nothing! No snacks for me for at least two months: I made a vow to the Holy Virgin. I just came by to meet you and exchange a few words. You know, I received a lot of votes here in Vigata, so I feel like it’s my moral duty …”

  “The Honorable Vannicò did very well here, too,” Montalbano sarcastically interrupted, wearing the expression of a true and incurable dumbass.

  The atmosphere changed drastically; it seemed as if a layer of ice had covered the walls.

  “Well, yes, Vannicò also …” Torrisi admitted halfheartedly. Then he added, suddenly preoccupied, “Have you met him already?”

  “I haven’t had the pleasure yet.”

  Torrisi looked relieved.

  “You know, Chief Inspector, I’m really concerned with the problems, the troubles, that today’s young people are experiencing, and I am saddened to see that unfortunately things in Vigata are worse than they are elsewhere. Do you know what we’re missing?”

  “No. What are we missing?” Montalbano asked with the face of someone waiting to hear a life-changing revelation.

  “This,” said the judge, touching the lobe of his right ear with the tip of his index finger.

  Montalbano swayed. What did he mean? That one had to wear an earring to understand today’s youth?

  “Excuse me, Judge Torrisi, but I don’t understand what we’re missing.”

  “The ear, my dear Chief Inspector. We don’t listen; we don’t lend our ear to the voice of the youth. For instance, we are quick to judge them for an action that may be wrong but that …”

  And there was light! In a flash, Montalbano understood the purpose of the judge’s visit, and where he was going to take the conversation.

  “And that would be a mistake,” he said putting on a severe air, while inside he was getting a kick out of it.

  “A serious mistake!” the judge added, walking straight into Montalbano’s trap. “I can see that you, Chief Inspector, understand these things! Certainly it was the Lord who sent you here!”

  The judge talked for another half hour, keeping things general and vague. But the sense of his words was: When you go to testify in court, try not to be too rough. Try to understand the problems of a youth. Even though he’s rich, even though he belongs to a powerful family, even though he broke an old man’s nose. The Cuffaros had sent their ambassador and fiduciary. Clearly, the other judge, Vannicò, was the ambassador and fiduciary of the Sinagras. The chief had been right.

  The bad mood he had been in because of the judge’s visit passed at four in the afternoon when Mery arrived. Unfortunately, she had to leave for Catania Sunday evening. But that was time enough for her to straighten out the chief inspector’s house and mind—and body.

  4

  Naturally his bad mood came back on Monday morning, as soon as he opened his eyes, at the very idea of having to show up in court. Once he had met someone who was a superintendent of antiquities; the truth was that this person suffered from a little-known illness: He was afraid of museums. He couldn’t stand being in them alone, and the mere sight of a Greek or Roman statue would almost make him faint. Montalbano’s case wasn’t quite as severe, but having to deal with judges and lawyers was something that made him lose his temper. Not even his stroll on the shore was enough to distract him.

  He went to Montelusa with his own car for two reasons. The first was that he hadn’t been summoned as a police inspector but rather as a private citizen, and thus, using his service vehicle wouldn’t have been right. The second was that the driver on duty that day was a nice officer by the name of Gallo, who treated every road, even the unpaved ones lost in the countryside, as if it were the racetrack in Indianapolis.

  He had never been to the courthouse in Montelusa. It was a four-story building, huge and ugly, with a massive gate for a front door. After the gate, there was a short hallway with a tall ceiling, crowded with so many noisy people it resembled a market. On the left was the carabinieri’s post; on the right was a small room with a sign on the door that read INFORMATION. Here, five men stood in line waiting to ask confused questions to an even more confused employee. Montalbano waited his t
urn and then showed the man his summons. The man picked it up, looked at it, checked it against the register, looked at the postcard once again, rechecked it against the register, looked up at the chief inspector, and finally said, “It should be on the third floor, room five.”

  Why did he say “it should be”? Maybe the courthouse held mobile trials, administered on roller skates? Or maybe the employee didn’t believe there was any certainty in this life?

  That’s when he saw her for the first time, as she came out of the information office. She must have been sixteen, a teenager wearing a cheap summer dress and holding a big, worn-out, shapeless handbag.

  She was leaning against the wall next to the carabinieri’s post. He couldn’t have missed her, with those big black eyes of hers, staring into nothing, and the contrast between her baby face and the curves of her body that were those of a woman. She wasn’t moving; she looked like a statue.

  The hallway led to a big courtyard garden that was very well maintained. How was he going to get to the third floor? Montalbano saw a group of people to his left and walked toward them. There was an elevator. However, next to it, written in pen on a piece of paper hanging from the wall, there was a warning: THIS ELEVATOR IS RESERVED FOR JUDGES AND LAWYERS. Montalbano wondered how many of the forty or so people waiting for the elevator were judges or lawyers—and how many were smartasses pretending to be judges or lawyers. He decided he was going to be part of the latter group. But the elevator wasn’t arriving and the people were growing restless. After a while, a fellow appeared from a window on the second floor.

  “The elevator’s broken.”

  Bitching, moaning, and cursing, everyone walked toward a high arch, under which appeared the beginning of a comfortable, wide staircase. The inspector climbed it all the way to the third floor. The door to room five was open but nobody was inside. Montalbano looked at his watch; it was ten past nine. Was everyone late? He started to think that perhaps the employee in the information office was right to use the conditional and that maybe the hearing was being held in a different courtroom. The hallway was extremely crowded; doors were opening and closing continuously, letting out gusts of legalistic eloquence. Fifteen minutes later he decided to ask someone for help and chose a man pushing a cart overflowing with folders and envelopes.

  “Excuse me, could you help me …”

  And he handed him the postcard. The other looked at it, gave it back to Montalbano, and starting walking again.

  “Didn’t you see the notice?” he asked.

  “No. Where?” the chief inspector said, walking behind him in small steps.

  “On the bulletin board. The hearing has been postponed.”

  “Until when?”

  “Until tomorrow. Maybe.”

  It was clear that there were no straight answers in this building. He walked back down the stairs and waited in line again in the information office.

  “Didn’t you know the hearing in room five has been postponed?”

  “Oh, really? Until when?” asked the information office employee, trying to stay informed.

  And then he saw her for the second time. By now an hour had passed and the girl was still in the exact same position. Certainly, she must have been waiting for somebody, but her immobility was almost unnatural; it was disquieting. For a moment Montalbano thought of approaching her to ask if she needed anything but then he changed his mind and left the building.

  As soon as he got back to the station, they told him he had received a call from Mascalippa and that the truck with his stuff was going to arrive in Marinella at five thirty that evening. He was back in Marinella at five fifteen but, naturally, the truck showed up two hours late, as it was getting dark. To make things worse, the driver had hurt his arm and thus couldn’t help him unload anything. Cursing like a sailor, Montalbano unloaded the boxes one by one and ended up with a dislocated shoulder and all the symptoms of a bilateral hernia. As if that wasn’t enough, the driver demanded a ten-thousand-lira tip, it wasn’t really clear for what, perhaps to repay him for the emotional distress he was forced to endure for being unable to help. Montalbano opened only one box, the one containing his TV. The apartment came with a cable already installed and an antenna on the roof; he connected it, turned it on, and tried to tune in to a channel. Nothing—only white snow and the sound of a fryer. He searched for other channels, but the only thing that changed was the amount of snow and sometimes the fryer turned into the sound of waves or a steel mill. Then he climbed up on the roof and realized that the antenna had been moved, perhaps by a gust of wind. After a long struggle, he managed to turn it a bit. Then he ran downstairs to look at the TV. Now the snow had turned into ectoplasm, a ghost trapped in a fryer. As he desperately surfed through the channels he finally ran into the clear face of a TV host. He was speaking in Arabic. He unplugged the TV and went out to sit on the balcony to cool off. Afterward, he decided to eat something. He thawed out some bread in the oven and ate it with a can of Favignana tuna, oil, and lemon.

  He thought he definitely needed someone to keep the house clean, do his laundry, and prepare his meals. Now that he had his own place, he couldn’t always take care of these things on his own. After getting in bed, he realized he didn’t have anything to read. All his books were still in two boxes—the heaviest ones. He got up, opened the first box, and of course, didn’t find what he was looking for: the mystery by a French writer named Magnan, entitled The Blood of the Atrides. He had already read it, but he liked the way it was written. He opened the second box as well. The book was at the very bottom. He looked at the cover and then put the book back on top of the pile; suddenly he felt very sleepy.

  He got there a bit late, at ten past nine, because he had trouble finding parking. She was in the same spot, wearing the same cheap summer dress, carrying the same bag, and with the same lost look in her big black eyes. Exactly where he had seen her twice before, neither an inch to the left nor an inch to the right. Like one of those people who beg for money and choose their own spot and stay there till they die or till someone takes them to a shelter. Regardless of whether it’s summer or winter, you see them there. She, too, was begging for something—not for money, that much was clear—but what? On the elevator door there was a sheet of paper that read OUT OF ORDER. He climbed up the three flights of stairs and when he entered room five, which was rather small, he found it full of people. Nobody asked who he was or what he was doing there.

  He sat down in the last row, next to a redheaded fellow holding a notebook and a pen, which he used from time to time.

  “Did I miss much?” he asked.

  “The curtain rose ten minutes ago. The prosecutor has the stage.”

  What a funny way of putting it! Curtain! Stage! And yet, judging by his appearance, the man must have been the practical and straightforward type.

  “Excuse me, why did you say that ‘the curtain rose?’ We’re not at the theater, are we?”

  “Well, aren’t we now? This whole thing is make-believe! Where have you been, under a rock?”

  “My name’s Montalbano. I’m the new chief inspector of Vigata.”

  “Pleasure to meet you. My name’s Zito, and I’m a journalist. Please, listen to the prosecution and then tell me whether this is theater or not.”

  After ten minutes of listening to the gentleman in the gown, the chief inspector began to have his doubts.

  “Are you sure that’s the deputy district attorney?”

  “What did I tell you?” the journalist Zito asked triumphantly.

  The prosecutor spoke as if he were a member of the defense. He argued that Giuseppe Cusumano had indeed assaulted the accuser; however, one had to consider the particular emotional state the youth had been thrown into when Mr. Gaspare Melluso, exiting his car, had called Cusumano a cuckold. He asked for the minimum sentence and cited a number of mitigating circumstances. At this point the traffic cop was called to testify.

  How were they running this trial? What kind of order were they f
ollowing? The cop said that he hadn’t really seen anything because he had been busy talking to a couple of stray dogs he found amusing. He realized something had happened when Mr. Melluso fell to the ground. He wrote down the license plate (finding out later that it was registered to Cusumano), and then he drove Mr. Melluso to the emergency room. When questioned by the defense, represented by none other than Representative Torrisi, the cop admitted that he had distinctly heard the word cuckold, but that in all consciousness he couldn’t say who had uttered it. Montalbano was greatly surprised to hear his name called. After having performed the ritual concerning name, date of birth, and a promise to tell the truth, he sat down, but before he could open his mouth, Representative Torrisi asked him a question.

  “You, of course, heard Mr. Melluso call Mr. Cusumano a cuckold, didn’t you?”

  “No.”

  “No? Why not? The officer just testified that he heard it even though he was much farther away than you were!”

  “The officer might have heard it. I didn’t.”

  “Are you sure you hear well, Mr. Montalbano? Did you suffer from any ear infections as a child?”

  The chief inspector didn’t answer and was immediately dismissed. He could have left, but he decided to stay and listen to the representative’s closing argument. And it was a good thing he stayed, because the “particular emotional state” of the youngster was revealed. Three years earlier, Cusumano had married his beloved girlfriend, Mariannina Lo Cascio. In brief, as he was leaving the church, on its very steps, he was handcuffed by two carabinieri who arrested him for skipping bail. In the end, on that fateful day in which he had fought with Melluso, Cusumano had just been released from prison, and was literally racing home to his wife in order to consummate a wedding that, until then, had only been “on paper.” Hearing himself called a cuckold, the youth, who had yet to pick the flower that Mariannina Lo Cascio had lovingly preserved for him …