Montalbano's First Case and Other Stories

by Andrea Camilleri

  He went back to the station more confused than ever.

  “I’ve done everything you asked,” Fazio said as soon as he saw the inspector come in, then followed him into his office.

  “So?”

  “So,” said Fazio, pulling from his pocket a piece of paper he glanced at every so often, “the father, Gerlando Monaco, son of Giacomo Gerlando and Elvira La Stella, was born in Vigàta on—”

  “Excuse me, Fazio,” Montalbano interrupted him, “but why are you telling me these things?”

  “What things?” Fazio asked, looking perplexed.

  “The father, the mother, and all the rest . . . What the hell do I care about them? I asked you to see if Rosanna’s father had a criminal record and to find out what people said about him around town. Nothing more.”

  “He’s got a clean record,” Fazio replied stiffly, putting the piece of paper back in his pocket. “And in town, hardly anybody knows him, but the few who do, say he’s a good man.”

  “Does he have any grown children?”

  Fazio was about to pull the piece of paper back out, but the inspector shot him a dirty look.

  “Two sons. Giacomo, aged twenty-one, and Filippo, aged twenty. They work with him in the country. And everybody says they’re good boys.”

  “So, the only one who’s strayed appears to be Rosanna.”

  The inspector told him that the mother considered her a “slut,” and that they made her sleep in a former pigsty.

  “At any rate, tonight the girl’s father is coming by, and we’re going to try to find out a little more. Do you know if she’s eaten anything?”

  “Galluzzo bought her a panino, but she wouldn’t touch it. And she hasn’t drunk a drop of water either.”

  “Well, sooner or later she’ll collapse,” said Montalbano, “and then she’ll decide to eat and drink. And talk.”

  “About that revolver . . .” Fazio began.

  “Did you discover anything?”

  “There wasn’t anything to discover, sir. It’s a Cobra, a gun that doesn’t kid around. American. And that’s not all: the serial number was filed off.”

  “In short, you’re trying to tell me it’s a criminal’s weapon.”

  “That’s right.”

  “So somebody must have given it to Rosanna to shoot somebody with.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And who would this somebody be?”

  “Dunno.”

  “And who was she supposed to shoot?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Fazio, you should try to find out everything there is to know about this girl.”

  “It won’t be easy, sir. From what I could gather, her family is rather isolated from everyone else in town. They haven’t got any friends, just acquaintances.”

  “Just try anyway. Oh, and one more thing. Send one of our men to tell the girl’s mother to send a few changes of underwear for her daughter. She can give it to her husband to bring when he comes.”

  He went and looked through the spy hole of the holding cell. Rosanna was standing, head propped against the wall. The panino remained untouched, the glass of water too. It was a problem. He called Galluzzo.

  “Listen, has she asked to use the bathroom?”

  “No, sir. I asked her myself, but she didn’t even bother to answer. If you ask me, Inspector . . .”

  “If I ask you?”

  “If you ask me, she’s having a tantrum.”

  “A tantrum?”

  “Yeah. She’s got a grown woman’s body, and her ID card says she’s an adult, but she must have the brain of a child.”

  “Are you saying she’s retarded?”

  “No, Chief. She’s a child. She’s mad because you prevented her from doing what she wanted to do.”

  A totally insane idea flashed through Montalbano’s mind.

  “Let me into the cell. Then open the bathroom door and leave it open.”

  He entered the cell. She was still standing with her head against the wall. He went up beside her and yelled with all the breath in his lungs, like one of those marine sergeants in American movies:

  “Go to the bathroom! Now!”

  Rosanna gave a start and turned around in terror. The inspector cuffed her on the back of the head. The girl brought a hand to the spot on the nape of her neck where she’d been struck, and her eyes filled with tears. She shielded her face with her left forearm, as if she expected to be struck again. Galluzzo was right. She was a child. But the inspector didn’t let this affect him.

  “Go to the bathroom!”

  Meanwhile half the staff at the station had come running to see what was happening.

  “What’s going on? Who is it?”

  “Out! Out of here, all of you!” Montalbano yelled, feeling the veins on his neck ready to explode. “And you, get moving!”

  Like a sleepwalker, the girl began to move and went out the door.

  “Over here,” Galluzzo said promptly.

  Rosanna went into the bathroom and closed the door. The inspector gave Galluzzo a questioning look. He’d never used that bathroom before.

  “There’s no danger,” said Galluzzo. “You can’t lock it from the inside.”

  A few minutes later they heard the toilet flushing, then the door opened and Rosanna walked past them as if they weren’t there and returned to the holding cell, where she turned and faced the wall again. Face to the wall, as if being punished. Rosanna was punishing herself.

  “Well, at least it worked,” Galluzzo commented.

  “Gallù, I can’t very well go through that whole rigamarole every time she has to use the potty!” Montalbano said in exasperation.

  He’d spread out all the contents of Rosanna’s handbag across the top of his desk and was studying them. A small, fake-leather change purse containing a ten-thousand-lira note, folded up several times over, plus three thousand-lira notes, five five-hundred-lira coins, four of one hundred lire, and one of fifty.

  But there was something else inside the change purse that had nothing to do with money: a small piece of pink elastic. Maybe a sample to show to the dressmaker.

  Rosanna had also kept her round-trip, Vigàta-Montelusa bus tickets. There were six of them, which meant that the girl had gone at least six times to stake out her post inside the courthouse entrance.

  ID card, a small, empty bottle of fingernail polish, traces of coagulated liquid inside the cap.

  And something strange: an envelope with nothing written on it but containing the skeleton of a rose whose petals had all fallen off. Though, when he really thought about it, there wasn’t anything so strange about that rose. It was inside an envelope but it could easily have been between the pages of a book, where most people put that sort of thing. And so Rosanna, having no books, had put that rose—which surely had some sentimental value for her—in an envelope, which she always carried around with her. In conclusion, there was nothing that might seem out of place in a girl’s purse.

  But then for a second, and only a second, a strange detail flashed in Montalbano’s brain, making all those objects seem less obvious. But he was unable to bring into focus what it was.

  This made him uneasy and nervous.

  He was gathering Rosanna’s things to put them away in a drawer when the switchboard operator appeared.

  “Sorry to disturb you, sir, but there’s a gentleman who says he’s your father.”

  “All right, put him on.”

  “He’s here in person.”

  His father?! He suddenly remembered, with a sense of shame, that he’d never written to him to tell him about his promotion and transfer.

  “Show him in.”

  They embraced in the middle of the room with a touch of emotion and a touch of embarrassment. His father was, as usual, elegantly dressed and carried hi
mself with equal elegance. Utterly unlike his own usually shabby self. They hadn’t seen each other for over four months.

  “How did you find me?”

  “I read an article in the newspaper that sort of welcomed you to Vigàta. And so, since I was passing by anyway, I decided to come and say hello. But I’ll be on my way in just a minute.”

  “Can I get you anything?”

  “No, that’s all right, thanks.”

  “How are you, Papà?”

  “I can’t complain. I’ll be retiring in just a few years.”

  “What do you think you’ll do, afterwards?”

  “I’m going to enter into a partnership with a friend who has a small wine production company.”

  “And what brings you this way?”

  “I went this morning to see your mother, to tidy up the grave a little. Today’s the anniversary, did you forget?”

  Yes, he had forgotten. All he could remember about his mother was a color, like spikes of ripe wheat.

  “What do you remember about your mother?”

  Montalbano hesitated for a moment.

  “The color of her hair.”

  “It was a beautiful color. Anything else?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Just as well.”

  Montalbano balked.

  “What do you mean?”

  This time it was his father who hesitated.

  “There were . . . misunderstandings, arguments, quarrels . . . between your mother and me . . . All my fault. I didn’t deserve a wife like her.”

  Montalbano felt awkward. He and his father had never confided much in each other.

  “I was rather fond of the ladies.”

  The inspector didn’t know what to say.

  “Are you busy with anything important these days?” his father asked, clearly trying to change the subject.

  Montalbano felt grateful for it.

  “No, nothing important. Though I do have a rather curious case on my hands . . .”

  And he told him about Rosanna, stressing mostly the girl’s indecipherable behavior.

  “Could I see her?”

  Montalbano really hadn’t expected such a request.

  “Gee, Papà, I don’t know if it’s allowed . . . Well, all right, come.”

  He led the way and was the first to look through the spy hole. The girl was standing with her back to the wall, staring straight at the door. The inspector stepped aside for his father, who looked through the hole for a long time, then turned around and said:

  “It’s really getting rather late for me. Would you walk me to my car?”

  Montalbano went out with him. They embraced vigorously, no longer embarrassed.

  “Come back soon, Papà.”

  “Yes. And, Salvo, one thing: Be careful.”

  “About what?”

  “About that girl. I wouldn’t trust her.”

  As he watched him leave, Montalbano felt a treacherous wave of melancholy come over him.

  It was already evening when Gerlando Monaco, the girl’s father, appeared at the station carrying a plastic bag with a change of underwear for Rosanna. He too was of indeterminate age, hunched as he was from work and burnt red, cooked like a brick from the oven. Contrary to his wife, however, he seemed nervous and troubled.

  “Why’d you arrest her, eh?” was his first question.

  “She had a revolver.”

  Gerlando Monaco turned pale, staggered, and fell silent, hand groping for a chair, on which he plopped down heavily.

  “Madonna biniditta! That girl’s gonna bring my whole house down! A revolver! An’ who gave it to her?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out. You have any ideas?”

  “Me?? Ideas?!”

  He seemed quite sincere in his bewilderment.

  “Listen, could you explain to me why you make your daughter sleep in a pigsty?”

  Gerlando Monaco became defensive, his expression a cross between humiliation and offense, and stared at the floor. “These is family matters and none o’ your business,” he muttered.

  “Look at me,” the inspector said sternly. “If you don’t tell me immediately what I want to know, tonight you’re going to be keeping your daughter company.”

  “Okay. My wife don’t want ’er about the house no more.”

  “Why not?”

  “’Cause she got herself pregnant.”

  “At fifteen? Who was it?”

  “I dunno. An’ my wife don’ know neither. My wife beat ’er up pretty bad, but the girl din’t wanna say who done it.”

  “And the two of you didn’t have any idea?”

  “Mister Inspector, I wake up inna mornin’ when iss still dark and I come home when iss dark again, an’ my wife’s always after the little kids. The girl, Rosanna, started cleanin’ people’s houses when she was ten . . .”

  “So she’s never gone to school?”

  “Never. She don’ know how to read or write.”

  “What’s the name of the family your daughter works for?”

  “I don’ know no names! She’s changed families a hundred times! An’ three years ago, when she got pregnant, the family she worked for was a couple of old folks.”

  “And how does Rosanna get by now?”

  “She still cleans people’s houses when she can. ’Specially in summer when the ferners come.”

  “Who takes care of Rosanna’s child?”

  Gerlando Monaco gave him a look of astonishment.

  “What child?”

  “Didn’t you just tell me Rosanna got pregnant?”

  “Oh. My wife took ’er to a midwife woman. But then she had . . . a whatchacallit, when you lose a lot o’ blood.”

  “Hemorrhage.”

  “Right. It was like she was dying. An’ maybe it was better if she did.”

  “Why did you make her abort?”

  “Mister Inspector, try to think. Isn’t it enough to have a whore for a daughter without having a bastard for a grandchild?”

  When Gerlando Monaco left the room, Montalbano was unable to stand up. He had a sort of dull pain in the pit of his stomach, as if a hand were twisting his guts. A girl, barely ten years old, already a servant, illiterate, probably raped at age fifteen, made pregnant, beaten, subjected to a clumsy, illegal abortion, nearly killed by the butchery, now working again as a servant and forced to live in a former pigsty. Her holding cell must seem to her like a four-star hotel room. Now the question was: Was it proper for a police inspector to want to free the girl, give her back her gun, and tell her to shoot whoever she felt like shooting?

  6

  He couldn’t very well go the whole day without eating just because the problem of Rosanna was gnawing at him. At the Trattoria San Calogero, he scarfed down some fifteen different seafood antipasti for starters, but they were so light and delicate that they seemed to enter his mouth without notice. How could he resist, especially considering he hadn’t eaten anything at midday? He suddenly had a brilliant idea, and signaled to Calogero to approach.

  “Listen, Calù. Now I want you to bring me a really fine sea bass, but in the meantime I want you to prepare three mullets alla livornese. With a lot of sauce, nice and fragrant. I mean it. Then have them delivered to the police station half an hour after I leave here. And also send along some bread and a bottle of mineral water. And knife, fork, glass, and dish, all plastic.

  “No sir, I could never do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because mullets alla livornese would lose all their flavor on a plastic dish.”

  When he got back to the semideserted station, he went and had a look at Rosanna through the spy hole. She was sitting on the straw mattress, hands on her knees. Her eyes had lost their stare, however, and she looked slightly mor
e relaxed. The panino remained untouched. The water in the glass had gone down barely perceptibly. Maybe she’d wet her lips, which must have been not only dry but burning.

  When the dish of mullets arrived, the inspector had the delivery boy set it down on his desk. Then he got the keys to the holding cell from the guard, grabbed a chair, opened the door, put the chair right in front of the girl, and left, leaving the door open. The girl hadn’t moved.

  He returned with the dish of mullets and put it on the chair. Then he went out and came back with the plastic bag, which he tossed onto the straw bed.

  “Your father brought you some clean underwear.”

  He went out again and returned with another chair, which he set down next to the first one. There was a faint aroma of mullets alla livornese in the holding cell. He left and came back minutes later with the water, bread, and cutlery. The aroma had grown much more intense, a real provocation. Montalbano sat down in the chair and started staring at the girl. Then he began to clean the fish, putting the heads and bones in the plate that had served to cover the food.

  “Eat,” he said when he’d finished.

  The girl didn’t move. And so the inspector took a small piece of mullet on the fork and delicately rested it on Rosanna’s closed lips.

  “Shall I feed you?”

  The way we do with very small children, perhaps accompanying the gesture with a little song.

  “Now Rosanna’s gonna be a good girl and eat all this wonderful fish.”

  How the fuck did he come up with that line? Luckily none of his men were anywhere nearby, or they would have thought he’d lost his mind.

  The girl’s lips opened just far enough to let the food in. She chewed and swallowed. And then Montalbano rested a little piece of bread soaked in sauce on her newly closed lips.

  “And now Rosanna’s gonna eat some bread so she won’t be hungry anymore.”