A drawer in the table was half-open. Inside was some raffia string, a packet of candles, a box of kitchen matches, a hammer, some nails, and some screws.
“Did you open this drawer yourselves?”
“No, Chief. That’s how it was when we got here. And that’s how we left it.”
On a shelf in front of the oven there was a roll of light brown packing tape about an inch and a half wide. It must have been taken from the half-open drawer and never put back.
Montalbano went over to the oven and removed the tin clip, which was simply resting against the edge of the opening.
“Could you give me a flashlight?”
“We’ve already looked in there,” said Fazio, handing him a flashlight. “There’s nothing.”
But in fact there was something: a rag once white but now completely black with cinders. On top of this, over an inch of very fine soot had fallen just inside the opening, as if it had been dislodged and fallen from the front part of the oven’s vault.
The inspector put the makeshift latch back in place.
“I’m gonna hang on to this,” he said, putting the flashlight in his pocket.
Then he started doing something that seemed strange to Fazio and Gallo. He closed his eyes and began walking, at a normal pace, from the wall on the side with the kitchen and oven to the table and then back again, then from the table to the front door and back again. In short, he was pacing back and forth with his eyes closed all the while, looking like he’d lost his mind.
Fazio and Gallo didn’t dare say anything. Then the inspector stopped.
“I’m going to stay here tonight,” he said. “You guys turn off the lights, lock the doors and windows, and put the seals back up. We have to make it look like there’s nobody in here.”
“Why would any of them want to come back?” asked Fazio.
“I don’t know, but just do as I say. You, Fazio, drive my car back to Vigàta. Oh, and another thing: After you’ve put the seals back on the door, go into the stall and take care of the donkey. The poor animal must be hungry and thirsty.”
“Whatever you say,” said Fazio. “Do you want me to come and get you tomorrow morning in my car?”
“No, thanks. I can walk back to Vigàta.”
“But it’s a long way!”
Montalbano looked him in the eye and Fazio didn’t insist.
“Inspector, could you tell me something before we leave? I’m curious why you think our reconstruction of Giacomo Firetto’s murder doesn’t work.”
“Because Firetto was watching the door as he was eating at the table. If anyone came in, he would have seen him and reacted accordingly. Whereas everything is in order in this room; there’s no sign of any struggle.”
“So what? Maybe one guy came in first with a gun trained on Giacomo, told him not to move, while a second guy circled around the table and shot him in the back of the head.”
“And you think that someone like Giacomo Firetto—based on what you just told me about him—is the kind of guy who’s going to let himself be killed just like that, scared stiff, without making a move? He’s as good as dead, so he’s gonna try something desperate. There’s your answer. Good night.”
He heard them close the door, heard them fumbling to put the seals back up (which consisted of a sheet of paper with something scribbled on it and a stamp, stuck to one half of the door with two pieces of adhesive tape), heard them tramping in the stall next door, cursing, as they saw to the donkey’s needs (apparently the animal wanted nothing to do with the two strangers), heard them start up the car and drive off. He remained motionless in the total darkness, near the table. A few seconds later, the sound of rain reached his ears as it started falling again outside.
He took off his jacket and his tie, which he was still wearing, having had to put it on for the meeting in Palermo, and finally his shirt, remaining bare chested. With flashlight in hand, he walked resolutely towards the oven, removed the tin cover, set this down on the floor, trying to make no sound, stuck one arm inside the oven, and pressed the “on” button on the flashlight. He was able to fit his entire torso into the oven, standing on tiptoe. Twisting himself around, he found himself resting with his back on the floor of the oven, half his body inside, and his buttocks, legs, and feet outside. A bit of soot fell into his eyes but didn’t prevent him from seeing the revolver stuck to the ceiling of the oven, right near the opening, with two strips of packing tape that glistened in the beam of the flashlight. Turning this off, he came out of the oven, put the cover back on, cleaned himself up as best he could with a handkerchief, put his shirt and jacket back on, and stuffed the tie into his pocket.
Then he sat down in a chair that was almost in front of the two burners. And to pass the time, but not only, the inspector started thinking of a book he’d read a few days earlier. In it, the author, Fernando Pessoa, maintains—through the words he puts into the mouth of his character, Detective Quaresma—that if someone walking down a street sees a man fallen on the sidewalk, he will instinctively ask himself: Why has this man fallen here? But this, Pessoa maintains, is already an error of reasoning and therefore possibly an error of fact. The man walking down the street didn’t see the man fall down; he saw him already on the ground. It is not a known fact that the man fell down in that spot. The only fact is that he’s already there, lying on the ground. He may have fallen somewhere else and been taken there and laid down on the sidewalk. It could be any number of things, Pessoa maintains.
So how to explain to Fazio and Gallo that the only fact of the matter, aside from the dead body, was that Antonio Firetto was not at the scene of the crime at the moment they arrived? And that it was not a fact that his son’s killers took him away, but an error of reasoning?
He remembered another example, which supported the first. Pessoa maintains, still through Detective Quaresma, that if a man is inside, in a living room, while it’s raining outside, and he sees a wet man enter the room, he inevitably will think that the visitor’s clothes are drenched because he’s been out in the rain. But such a thought cannot be considered a fact, since the man inside did not see the visitor outside in the rain. He may have spilled a bucket full of water on himself inside.
So how to explain to Fazio and Gallo that a mafioso “executed” by a bullet fired precisely into the base of his skull wasn’t necessarily eliminated by the Mafia for having slipped up or given signs of wanting to turn himself in?
Pessoa also maintains . . .
He never did find out what else Pessoa maintained at that moment. The day’s weariness came crashing down on him all at once like a hood adding darkness to the darkness already in the room. His head dropped onto his chest and he drifted off. Before sinking into a deep sleep, he managed to give himself an order: Sleep the way cats do—where they seem to be sleeping deeply, but the smallest thing is enough to make them spring to their feet and into a position of self-defense. He didn’t know how long he slept, assisted by the constant sound of rain in the background, but then he was awakened suddenly, just like a cat, by a soft noise around the front door. It could merely have been some animal. Then he heard a key turn in the lock and the door open cautiously. He stiffened in his chair. The door closed again. He hadn’t seen it either open or close, and had seen no change in the wall of total darkness either outside or inside. The man had entered but remained very near the door without moving. The inspector, too, didn’t dare move. In fact he was worried his very breath might betray him. Why didn’t the person come forward? Perhaps he smelled a foreign presence in his home, like an animal returning to its den. At last the man took two steps towards the table and stopped again. The inspector felt reassured: He could now, if he so wished, leap up from his chair and grab the man. But there was no need.
“Who are you?” an old man’s voice asked softly but firmly, without fear.
So he had indeed sniffed him out, a foreign shadow in the mass of shadow
s in the room, within which the man could by long-established habit distinguish what was in its proper place and what was not. Montalbano was at a disadvantage. However much he may have committed to memory the placement of every object in the room, he realized that the other man could close his eyes and move freely about, whereas he himself felt the absurd need to keep his eyes wide open in that total darkness.
He also realized that to say one wrong word at that moment would have been an irremediable mistake.
“I’m a police inspector; Montalbano’s the name.”
The man didn’t move, didn’t speak.
“Are you Antonio Firetto?”
He’d addressed him using the polite form of voi, and in a tone that implied consideration and respect.
“Yes.”
“How long was it that you hadn’t seen Giacomo?”
“Five years. Do you believe me?”
“I believe you.”
Therefore the whole time his son was a fugitive he’d never come here. Perhaps he didn’t dare.
“Why did he come yesterday?”
“I don’ know why. ’E was tired, very tired. ’E din’t come in a car, ’e walked here. ’E came inside, gave me a hug, and trew hisself down on the bed wit’ ’is shoes on. When ’e woke up a while later, ’e tol’ me ’e was hungry. That was when I noticed he had a weapon—a revolver, on the bedside table. When I ast ’im why ’e was goin’ roun’ wit’ a gun, ’e said it was ’cause there’s a lotta bad people about. An’ ’e started laughin’. It made my blood run cold.”
“Why?”
“It was the way ’e laughed, Inspector. We din’t say no more, Inspector. ’E stayed in bed, an’ I came in here to make somethin’ to eat. Just for him. I coun’t eat. I felt somethin’ like an iron hand close up my stomach.”
He interrupted himself, sighing. Montalbano respected his silence.
“That laugh kept echoin’ inside my head,” the old man resumed. “It said a lot. It said the whole truth about my son, the truth I never wanted to believe. When the potatoes was done, I called him. He got up and came in here, put his gun on the table, and started eatin’. An’ so I ast ’im: ‘How many people you killed?’ An’ he said—cool an’ calm like ’e was talkin’ ’bout ants—he said: ‘Eight.’ An’ then ’e said somethin’ ’e never oughta tol’ me. ’E said: ‘I even killed a nine-year-old boy.’ An’ ’e kep’ on eatin’. Great God almighty, ’e kep’ on eatin’! An’ so I grabbed the gun an’ shot ’im in the back of the head. Just once, like they do when they’s executin’ a man.”
Executed, Fazio had said. He’d been right. The pause was very long this time. Then the inspector spoke.
“Why did you come back?”
“’Cause I wanted to kill myself.”
“With the revolver you hid in the oven?”
“Yessir. It was my son’s. It’s missing a bullet.”
“You had all the time in the world to kill yourself. Why didn’t you do so right away?”
“My hand was shakin’ too much.”
“You could’ve hanged yourself from a tree.”
“I ain’t Judas, Mr. Inspector.”
Right. He wasn’t Judas. And he couldn’t throw himself into a well like a desperate wretch. He was a poet who until the end hadn’t wanted to see the truth.
“So what are you gonna do now, arrest me?”
The same deep, steady voice, without fear.
“I should.”
The old man made a sudden, violent move, taking Montalbano by surprise. In the darkness the inspector heard the tin used to close the oven fall to the floor. Surely the old man now had the gun in his hand and was aiming it at him. But Montalbano wasn’t the least bit afraid; he knew he only had a part to play. He stood up slowly, but once on his feet felt dizzy and as tired as if buried under slabs of cement.
“I got this gun trained on you, sir,” said the old man. “An’ I’m orderin’ you to get outta this house immediately. I wanna die here, killed by my own son’s gun. Sittin’ in the same chair where I shot ’im. If you’re a man, you’ll understand.”
Wearily, Montalbano headed for the door, opened it, and went out. It had stopped raining. And he was certain he wouldn’t find a ride into Vigàta.
THE CAT AND THE GOLDFINCH
Signora Erminia Todaro, eighty-five years old and the wife of a retired railwayman, left the house as she did every morning to go first to Holy Mass and then to buy groceries at the market. It wasn’t so much faith that made Signora Erminia a churchgoer, but the fact that she couldn’t sleep, as happens to almost all elderly people. The morning Mass helped her to pass a bit of time, as her days, who knew why, became longer and emptier. During those same morning hours, her husband, the former railwayman, whose name was Agustinu, would sit at the window giving onto the street and not move until his wife came home and told him that lunch was ready.
And so Signora Erminia stepped out onto the street, adjusted her overcoat—since it was a bit cool outside—and started walking. From her right arm hung an old black purse with her ID card, a photo of her daughter, Catarina, who lived in Forlì, married to a man named Genuardi, a photo of their three children, three photos of the children of the Genuardis’ children, a holy picture of Santa Lucia, twenty-six thousand lire in bills, and 750 in coins. Former railwayman Agustinu later said he saw a small motorbike being driven by someone with a helmet come up very slowly behind his wife. At a certain point the driver, as though fed up with going along at Signora Erminia’s walking pace, which you certainly could not say was very fast, accelerated and passed the woman. Then he did a strange thing: After making a U-turn, he came back and headed straight for Signora Erminia. At that moment there wasn’t another living soul on the street. When he was three paces away from Signora Erminia, the cyclist stopped, set one foot down on the ground, pulled a revolver out of his pocket, and pointed it at the lady. Who, being unable to make out even a dog from six inches away despite her thick glasses, kept walking, blissfully unaware, towards the man who was threatening her. When Signora Erminia found herself almost nose-to-nose with the man, she noticed the gun and was quite astonished that anyone should have any reason for shooting her.
“What are you doing, young man? Are you going to kill me?” she asked, more in surprise than fear.
“Yes,” said the man, “if you don’t give me your purse.”
Signora Erminia slid her purse off her arm and handed it to the man. By this point Agustinu had managed to open the window. He thrust his body out, at the risk of crashing to the ground below, and started yelling: “Help! Help!”
The man fired. Just one shot—at Signora Erminia, not at her husband who was making all the racket. The signora fell to the ground, and the man turned his motorbike around, accelerated, and vanished. At the sound of the ex-railwayman’s shouts, a number of windows opened, and men and women poured out into the street to help Signora Erminia, who lay in the middle of the street. To their great relief, they immediately realized that the signora had only fainted from fright.
Signorina Esterina Mandracchia, seventy-five years old and a retired schoolteacher who had never married, lived alone in an apartment inherited from her parents. The distinguishing feature of Signorina Mandracchia’s three rooms with bath and kitchen was that the walls were completely papered with holy images by the thousands. In addition, there were many little statues: a Madonna under a bell jar, a baby Jesus, a Saint Anthony of Padua, a crucifix, a San Gerlando, a San Calogero, and others not so easily identified. Signorina Mandracchia always attended early morning Mass, and then went back for evening vespers. That morning, two days after the phantom shooting of Signora Erminia, Signorina Mandracchia stepped out of her house. As she later told Inspector Montalbano, she’d just set out for the church when a small motorbike with a helmeted driver passed her on the street. After going a few more yards, the motorbike made a U-turn,
came back, and stopped a few steps in front of her, whereupon the driver pulled out a revolver. The former teacher, despite her age, had excellent vision. She put her hands up, as she’d seen done so many times on television.
“I surrender,” she said, trembling.
“Give me your purse,” said the man.
Signorina Esterina slid her purse off her arm and handed it to him. The man took it and fired the gun, missing her. Esterina Mandracchia did not scream, did not faint. She simply went straight to the inspector and reported the crime. In her purse, she declared, she had at least a hundred holy images and exactly 18,300 lire.
“I eat less than a sparrow,” she explained to Montalbano. “A panino will last me two days. Why would I need to go around with a lot of money in my purse?”
Pippo Ragonese, the political commentator of TeleVigàta News, had two outstanding features: a purse-lipped face that looked like a chicken’s ass, and a contorted imagination that saw conspiracies everywhere. An avowed enemy of Montalbano, Ragonese didn’t miss this opportunity to attack him yet again. In fact he claimed that the unusual purse-snatching served the precise political purposes of an as-yet not well identified group of leftist extremists, who, with these sorts of terrorist actions, aimed at dissuading believers from going to church, in hopes of ushering in a new age of atheism. The reason the Vigàta Police hadn’t yet arrested the pseudo–purse snatcher must be looked for in the subliminal hindrance exerted by the chief inspector’s political ideas, which certainly didn’t tend toward the center or the right. “Subliminal hindrance,” the commentator said—and he said it twice, in case anyone had heard wrong the first time.
But Montalbano didn’t get upset. Actually he had a good laugh over it. He didn’t laugh the following day, however, when he was called in by Police Commissioner Bonetti-Alderighi—who, in the bewildered inspector’s presence, didn’t quite buy the news commentator’s thesis, but nevertheless took out a trial subscription, inviting the inspector to “accompany” him down the same path.
Montalbano's First Case and Other Stories Page 43