“The only news we’ll ever hear of that poor woman is when she dies.”
“Is she in her right mind?”
“Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But even when she seems to understand, in my opinion she doesn’t.”
“Could I see her?”
“Follow me.”
Montalbano felt apprehensive. But he knew well that it was a false apprehension, dictated by his desire to postpone an encounter that would be very hard for him to bear.
“What if she asks who I am?”
“Are you kidding? That would be a miracle.” Halfway down the corridor there was a broad, comfortable staircase leading upstairs, where there was another corridor, this one with six doors.
“That’s Mr. Mistretta’s bedroom; that’s the bathroom, and that’s the lady’s bedroom. It’s easier for the help if she sleeps alone. Those doors across the hall are the girl’s room—poor thing!—another bathroom, and a guest room,” the nurse explained.
“Could I see Susanna’s room?”
“Certainly.”
He opened the door, poked his head in, and turned on the light. A small bed, armoire, two chairs, a small table with books, a bookcase. All in perfect order. And almost totally anonymous, like a hotel room only temporarily inhabited.
Nothing personal, no posters, no photographs. Like the cell of a lay nun. He turned off the light and closed the door. The nurse gently opened the other door. At the same moment, the inspector’s forehead and palms broke into a heavy sweat. An uncontrollable terror always came over him whenever he found himself face to face with a dying person. He didn’t know what to do. He had to give strict orders to his legs to prevent them from running away of their own accord and dragging him along with them. A dead body didn’t frighten him. It was the imminence of death that shook him to the depths of his soul.
He managed to get hold of himself and cross the threshold. Then began his personal descent into hell. He was immediately assailed by the same unbearable odor he had smelled in the room of the legless man, the husband of the woman who sold eggs. Except that here the odor was denser. It stuck to one’s skin like a very fine film. It was, moreover, brownish-yellow in color, with streaks of fiery red. A color in motion.
This had never happened before. The colors evoked by smells had always seemed as though painted on canvas. They held still. Now, however, the red streaks were starting to form a whirlpool. By this point the sweat had drenched his shirt. The woman’s regular bed had been replaced by a hospital bed whose whiteness sliced through Montalbano’s memory and tried to pull him backwards, to the days of his recovery. Beside the bed were oxygen canisters, an I.V. stand, and some complicated paraphernalia on a small table. A small cart (also white, for Christ’s sake!) was literally covered with vials, small bottles, gauze, measuring glasses, and other containers of vary-ing size. From where he had stopped, barely two steps inside the door, the bed looked empty to him. No human contour could be seen under the taut covers. Even the two pointed mounds formed by the feet when one lies supine were missing. And that sort of strange grey ball forgotten on the pillow was too small to be a head; perhaps it was a large rubber en-ema syringe whose color had faded. He advanced another two steps and froze in horror. That thing on the pillow was indeed a human head that had nothing human about it, a hairless, dried-up tangle of wrinkles so deep they looked like they’d been carved with a drill bit. Its mouth was open, a black hole without so much as a hint of white teeth. He had once seen something similar in a magazine, the handiwork of head-hunters, practiced on their prey. As he stood there staring, unable to move and almost not believing his eyes, out of the hole that was the mouth came a sound created only by the dry, burnt-up throat: “Ghanna . . .”
“She’s calling her daughter,” said the nurse.
Montalbano backpedaled, stiff-legged, knees refusing to bend. To avoid falling, he leaned on a side table.
Then the unexpected happened. Clack. The jamming of the mechanism in his head rang out like a pistol shot. Why? It certainly wasn’t three twenty-seven and forty seconds in the morning. He was sure of that. And so? Panic assailed him with the viciousness of a rabid dog. The desperate red of the smell became a vortex that threatened to suck him in. His chin began to tremble. His knees, no longer stiff, turned to pudding. To avoid falling, he clutched the marble top of the side table. Luckily the nurse, who was busy with the dying woman, noticed nothing. Then the part of his brain not yet seized by blind fear reacted, enabling him to respond properly.
That Thing which had marked him as the bullet penetrated his flesh was trying to tell him that it was here, too, in this very room. Lurking in a corner, ready to appear at the right moment and in the form most appropriate—bullet, tumor, flesh-burning fire, life-drowning water. It was merely a presence made manifest. It didn’t concern him. It wasn’t his turn yet.
And this sufficed to give him some strength. At that moment he noticed a photograph in a silver frame on the side table. A man, Mr. Mistretta, was holding the hand of girl of about ten, Susanna, who in turn held the hand of an attractive, healthy, smiling woman full of life, Signora Giulia. The inspector kept staring at that happy face, to cancel out the image of the other face on the pillow, if one could still call it that. Then he turned heel and went out, forgetting to say goodbye to the nurse.
o o o
He raced like a madman toward Marinella, got home, pulled up, got out of the car but did not go inside. Instead he ran down the beach to the water, took off his clothes, waited a few seconds for the cold night air to chill his skin, then began to advance slowly into the water. With each step the cold cut him with a thousand blades, but he needed to clean his skin, flesh, bones, and still further within, down to his very soul.
He started to swim. But after about ten strokes, a hand armed with a dagger must have emerged from the black waters and stabbed him in the exact same spot as his wound. At least that was how it seemed to him, so sudden and violent was the pain. It began at the wound and spread throughout his body, becoming unbearable, paralyzing. His left arm froze up, and it was all he could do to turn over on his back and do the dead man’s float.
Or was he dying in earnest? No, by this point he darkly knew that it was not his fate to die in the water.
Finally, and ever so slowly, he was able to move again.
o o o
He swam back to shore, picked up his clothes, and smelled his arm, seeming still to detect a trace of the horrendous stench of the dying woman’s chamber. The saltwater hadn’t succeeded in getting rid of it. He would have to wash every pore in his skin, one by one. Panting as he climbed the steps of the veranda, he tapped at the French doors.
“Who is it?” Livia asked from within.
“Open up, I’m freezing.”
Livia opened the door and saw him standing there naked, dripping wet and purple with cold. She started crying.
“Livia, please . . .”
“You’re insane, Salvo! You want to die! And you want to kill me, too! What did you do? Why? Why?” Despairing, she followed him into the bathroom. The inspector covered his entire body with liquid soap, and when he was all yellow he stepped into the shower stall, turned on the water, and began scraping his skin with a piece of pumice stone. Livia, who’d stopped crying, looked at him petrified.
He let the water run a long time, nearly emptying the tank on the roof.
As soon as he got out of the shower, Montalbano asked wild-eyed:
“Can you smell me?”
And as he was asking this question, he took a whiff of his arm. He looked like a hunting dog.
“But what’s got into you?” Livia asked, distressed.
“Just come here and smell me, please.”
Livia obeyed, running her nose over Salvo’s chest.
“What do you smell?”
“Your skin.”
“Are you sure?”
Finally satisfied, the inspector put on a clean set of under-wear, a shirt, and a pair of jeans.
&
nbsp; They went into the living room. Montalbano sat down in an armchair, Livia settled into the one beside it. For a short spell neither said a word. Then, with her voice still unsteady, Livia asked: “Better now?”
“Better.”
Another stretch of silence. Then Livia again:
“Are you hungry?”
“I’m hoping I will be soon.”
More silence. Then Livia ventured:
“Want to tell me about it?”
“It’s hard.”
“Just try, please.”
And so he told her about it. It took time, for it really was hard for him to find the right words to describe what he had seen. And what he had felt.
When he had finished, Livia asked a question, only one, but it hit the nail on the head.
“Would you explain to me why you went to see her? What need was there?”
Need. Was that the right word? Or the wrong word? True, there was no need, but at the same time, inexplicably, there was.
Ask my hands and feet, he would have liked to reply. Better not delve too deeply. There was still too much confusion in his head. He threw up his hands.
“I can’t explain it, Livia.”
As he was saying these words, he realized they were only half true.
They talked a while more, but Montalbano’s appetite did not return. His stomach was still in knots.
“Do you think Peruzzo will pay?” Livia asked as they were about to get into bed.
It was the question of the day. Inevitable.
“He’ll pay, he’ll pay.”
He’s already paying, he wanted to add, but said nothing.
o o o
As he held her tight and kissed her upon entering her, Livia sensed that he was sending a desperate plea for consolation.
“Can’t you feel that I’m here?” she whispered in his ear.
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When he awoke, it was already broad daylight. Maybe there had been no clack that night, or if there had, it hadn’t been loud enough to make him open his eyes. It was time to get up, but he chose to lie in bed instead. Though he said nothing to Livia, his bones ached, clearly a consequence of his swim the evening before. And the fresh scar on his shoulder had turned purple and throbbed. Livia noticed that something wasn’t right, but decided not to ask any questions.
o o o
Between one chore and another, he arrived at the office a little late.
“Ahh, Chief, Chief! The pitchers Cicco De Cicco made for you’s blown up on your desk!” Catarella said, looking around with suspicion, as soon as the inspector walked in.
De Cicco had, in fact, done an excellent job. In the enlargements it became clear that the crack in the concrete just under the rim of the basin wasn’t a crack at all. It was a deceptive play of light and shadow created by a piece of string hanging from a nail. Attached to the other end of the string was a large thermometer of the sort used to measure the temperature of must. Both the string and thermometer were black from prior use and the soot that had accumulated on them.
There was no doubt in Montalbano’s mind: The kidnappers had stuck the girl in a long-abandoned wine vat. So there had to be a press nearby, at a higher level. But why hadn’t they bothered to remove the thermometer? Perhaps they hadn’t paid any mind to it, having got used to seeing the vat the way it had always been. If you see something enough times you often end up not noticing it anymore. Whatever the case, this discovery greatly reduced the area of the search. They were no longer looking for a secluded country cottage, but a veritable farmstead, one perhaps partially in ruin.
He immediately got on the phone to Minutolo and told him of his discovery. Minutolo thought this was a very important development and said that since this considerably lessened the number of targets for their search, he would immediately issue new orders to the men out scouring the countryside.
Then he asked:
“What do you think of the news?”
“What news?”
“Didn’t you see TeleVigàta’s eight o’clock report?”
“Do you think the first thing I do in the morning is turn on the TV?”
“The kidnappers phoned TeleVigàta, and the TV station recorded everything, then played the recording on the air.
The same disguised voice. He says that ‘the person concerned’
has until tomorrow evening. Otherwise nobody will ever see Susanna again.”
Montalbano felt a cold shudder run up his back.
“They’ve invented the multimedia kidnapping. Didn’t they say anything else?”
“I’ve reported the whole call to you word for word. In fact, they’re sending me the tape in a little bit, if you want to come hear it. The judge is up in arms, he wants to put Ragonese in jail. And you know something? I’m starting to get seriously worried.” “Me too,” said Montalbano.
So the kidnappers no longer deigned to call the Mistretta home. They had achieved their goal, which was to involve Antonio Peruzzo without ever mentioning his name. Public opinion was unanimously against him. Montalbano was now certain that if the kidnappers ended up killing Susanna, people would hold it not against them but against the uncle, who had refused to do his duty and intervene. Kill? Wait a second. The kidnappers never used that word. They clearly spoke good Italian and knew what to do with the language. They’d said that nobody would ever see the girl again. And when speaking to common folk, a word like kill would certainly have made more of an impression. So why hadn’t they used it? He seized upon this lin-guistic fact with all the intensity of his despair. It was like holding onto a blade of grass to keep from falling off a cliff.
Perhaps the kidnappers intended to leave a margin for negotia-tion and did so by avoiding the use of a verb from which there was no return. Whatever the case, one had to act fast. But how?
o o o
That afternoon Mimì Augello, who’d got sick of lolling about the house, popped up at the office with two bits of news.
The first was that late that morning, Signora Valeria, Antonio Peruzzo’s wife, when about to get in her car in a Montelusa parking lot, was recognized by three women, who surrounded her, shoved her, knocked her to the ground, and started spitting on her, screaming that she ought to be ashamed of herself and should advise her husband to stop wasting time and pay the ransom. More people, meanwhile, had gathered round to lend support to the three women. What saved Signora Valeria was a patrol of Carabinieri that happened to be passing by. At the hospital, the engineer’s wife was found to have contusions, bruises, and cuts.
The second bit of news was that two large trucks belonging to Peruzzo Ltd. had been set on fire. To avoid any misun-derstandings or misinterpretations, on a wall nearby someone had written pay up now, asshole!
“If the kidnappers kill Susanna,” Mimì concluded, “Peruzzo’s gonna get lynched.”
“Do you think the whole thing’s going to come to a bad end?” asked Montalbano.
“No,” Mimì said at once, without having to think twice.
“But, say the engineer doesn’t pay a cent? The kidnappers have sent him a kind of ultimatum.”
“Ultimatums are made to be violated. They’ll come to an agreement, you’ll see.”
“How’s Beba doing?” asked the inspector, changing the subject.
“Pretty well, actually. By the way, Livia came by to see us, and Beba told her we were planning to ask you to be our son’s godfather at the baptism.”
No, come on! Was the whole town set on making him godfather?
“And that’s the way you inform me?”
“Why, you want a notarized document or something? Did you somehow imagine we wouldn’t ask you?”
“Of course not, but—”
“Anyway, Salvo, I know you too well. If I hadn’t asked you, you would have felt offended and pulled a long face on me.”
Montalbano realized it was best to steer the conversation away from his character, which lent itself to contradi
ctory interpretations.
“And what did Livia say?”
“She said you would be overjoyed, especially since it would even things out, though I don’t know what she meant by that.”
“Me neither,” Montalbano lied.
Of course he knew exactly what she’d meant: a criminal’s son and a policeman’s son, both with him as their godfather.
That would even things out, according to Livia, who, when she put her mind to it, could be just as mean as him, if not more.
o o o
It was now evening. He was about to leave the station to go home when Nicolò Zito called.
“I haven’t got any time to explain ’cause I’m about to go on the air,” he said in a rush. “Watch my newscast.” The inspector dashed down to the café. There were about thirty people there, and the television was tuned to the Free Channel. A message on the screen read: “In a few minutes, an important announcement on the Mistretta kidnapping.” He ordered a beer. The message disappeared, giving way to the news logo. Then Nicolò appeared, sitting behind his custom-ary glass desk. He was wearing the face he reserved for momentous occasions.
“This afternoon,” he said, “we were contacted by Francesco Luna, a lawyer who has defended the concerns of Engineer Antonio Peruzzo more than once. He asked us to allow him the airtime to make an announcement. It is not an interview.
He also stipulated we must not follow his declaration with any commentary of our own. We decided to accept his conditions, despite their restrictions, because this is a very important moment for the fate of Susanna Mistretta, and Mr. Luna’s words may go a long way towards clarifying matters and leading to a happy resolution of this delicate and dramatic case.” Cut. A typical lawyer’s office appeared. Dark wood bookcases full of unread books, collections of laws dating back to the late nineteenth century but surely still in effect, because in Italy no part of any hundred-year-old law is ever thrown away. Same as with pigs. Mr. Luna looked exactly the way his name would suggest: lunar. Round, full-moon face, obese, full-moon body. Obviously influenced by this fact, the lighting engineer bathed the whole scene in a blue, lunar light.
The lawyer was spilling out of an armchair. In his hand he held a sheet of paper, which he looked down at from time to time as he spoke.
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