Dear Salvo,
While you were vomiting in the parking lot, two words were hammering away at your brain: cahoots and conspiracy.
Two words you let float around inside you, not wanting to clarify their relationship to each other. Because, if you did, you wouldn’t at all like what you saw. Namely, that Mimì Augello and Dolores Alfano are in cahoots, and conspiring to do something.
Let me try to clarify. There is no doubt that Mimì and Dolores are lovers and that they meet at the house of Pecorini the butcher. Taking a rough guess, their relationship must have begun in September, a few days after Giovanni Alfano was supposed to have boarded his ship.
Who initiated the love affair? Mimì? Or was it Dolores? This is an important point, even if it doesn’t make much substantive difference. I’ll try to explain a little better by backtracking.
From the moment the stranger’s body was found at ’u critaru, Mimì started insisting that I assign the investigation to him.
Why that particular investigation? The answer might be: because it’s the only important case we have on our hands at the moment.
This explanation holds up until I discover, with near certainty, that the critaru corpse has a first and last name: Giovanni Alfano. Who happens to be Dolores’s missing husband. This changes things radically, and raises some unfortunately inevitable questions, which I shall now submit to you, spacing them sufficiently apart to put each into proper relief.
–Did Mimì know that sooner or later I would identify the body as belonging to his mistress’s husband?
–If so, how did Mimì know the body was Giovanni Alfano’s before we connected the critaru corpse with Dolores?
–Is Mimì being pressured or sexually blackmailed by Dolores to have the investigation assigned to him?
–Is it possible Mimì is pressuring me against his own will, because he can’t or doesn’t know how to say no to Dolores?
–Have the two been having terrible quarrels because of this? It would appear they have, based on the scene that Fabio Giacchetti witnessed.
–Who could have told Mimì that the corpse in the critaru was his mistress’s husband? It could only have been Dolores.
–Did Dolores therefore know that her husband not only didn’t take ship, but had been murdered?
–Why, after the body was discovered, did Dolores come to the police station? There can only be one answer: Because she wants to lead me, through skillful, intelligent manipulation, to the conclusion that the murder victim is her husband.
–She also wants to lead me to another inevitable conclusion: that the person who murdered Giovanni is Balduccio Sinagra.
–Several questions, therefore, arise here. Did Dolores latch on to Mimì because he was my second-in-command and she thus hoped to control the course of the investigation through him? Or did Dolores only discover afterwards that Mimì was my second-in-command and then decide to take advantage of the situation? In either case, Dolores’s purpose remains the same.
–Are Mimì and Dolores therefore plotting together to force me to turn the case over to Mimì?
–Does Mimì want it publicly known that he has insistently asked me to assign him the case so as to avoid conflict with Dolores?
–And if this is how things stand, how would you define Mimì’s behavior toward you?
At this point he had to stop, as his nausea had suddenly returned, stirring up a nasty, bitter sort of spittle in his mouth. He got up and went out onto the veranda. It was still dark outside. Not wanting to remain standing, he sat down on the bench.
What to call Mimì’s behavior?
He knew the answer. It had come to him at once, but he hadn’t wanted to say it or write it down.
Mimì had been disloyal to him; there could no longer be any doubt about this.
It wasn’t because he had a lover. That sort of thing, and Mimì’s private life in general, was of no concern to him. Even this time, it would have been of no concern to him—though Mimì was married with a young son—had Livia not dragged him into it.
No, the disloyalty had begun the moment Mimì realized that Dolores wanted something from him not as a lover but as a police officer. Although his vanity as a lady-killer must have taken quite a blow, he hadn’t been able or willing to break with Dolores. Maybe he was too taken with her. Dolores was, after all, the kind of woman who could reduce a man to the state of a postage stamp stuck to her skin. So, at that point, Mimì should have come to him and said, with an open heart: “Look, Salvo, I got involved in this affair, but then this and this happened, and now I need your help to get me out of these straits.” They were friends, weren’t they? But there was more.
Not only had Mimì told him nothing about the predicament he was in, but, faced with a choice between him and Dolores, he had chosen Dolores. He had teamed up with her to force him, Montalbano, to take certain steps. Mimì had thus acted in the woman’s interest. And a friend who acts not in your interest but in the interest of another without telling you, what has he done, if not betrayed your friendship?
At last the inspector was able to say it. Mimì was a traitor.
That word, traitor, once it had formed in his mind, blocked his thought process. For a brief moment the inspector’s brain was a total void. And the void became silence—not only an absence of words, but of even the slightest sound. The bright line barely visible in the darkness, formed by the surf at the edge of the beach, moved ever so gently back and forth, as always, except that now it no longer made its usual breathlike hiss. Now there was nothing. And the throbbing of the diesel of a fishing boat whose wan lights shone in the distance should have been audible from the veranda. But there was nothing. It was as though someone had turned off the soundtrack.
Then, within that silence of the world, perhaps of the universe, Montalbano heard a brief sound arise, unpleasant and strange, followed by another just the same, and still another, also the same. What was it?
It took him a while to realize that the sound was coming from him. He was crying inconsolably.
He made an effort to squelch the desire to let the whole thing slide all the way to hell, and bail out in any way he could. Because that’s the way he was. He was a man capable of understanding many things that others couldn’t or wouldn’t understand, moments of weakness, failures of courage, insolent disregard, lapses of attention, lies, ugly acts with ugly motives, things done out of laziness, boredom, self-interest, and so on. But he could never understand or forgive bad faith and betrayal.
Oh, yeah? My valiant knight, peerless and fearless, says he can never forgive betrayal?
Yes, it’s something I can’t even conceive of. And you, who are me, know this well.
So how is it, then, that you’ve forgiven yourself?
Me? There’s nothing I have to forgive myself for!
Are you really so sure? Would you please be so kind as to backtrack a few evenings in your memory?
Why, what happened?
Have you forgotten? Have we repressed this little fact? What happened is that you felt every bit as dejected as you do tonight, and for the same reason, except that then you had Ingrid beside you. Who comforted you. And, boy, did she ever comfort you.
Well, that happened because—
Montalbà, the whys and wherefores for such an act are all well and good, but the act remains the same: It’s called betrayal.
You know what I say? I say that all this is happening because of that damned critaru, because of the potter’s field.
Explain what you mean.
I think that place, which is the place of the ultimate betrayal, where the betrayer betrays his own life, is cursed. Whoever passes near it, in one way or another, becomes contaminated with betrayal. I betray Livia, Dolores betrays Mimì, Mimì betrays me . . .
All right, then, if that’s the way it is, then get Mimì the hell out of that place. You are all—indeed we are all—in the same boat.
He got up, went inside, sat down, and resumed writing to himself.
14
And so, dear Salvo, as you see, such is the wonderful result I get by putting those two words together. But, if that’s the way it is, quite a few other questions still remain. Question number one. How did Dolores find out that Giovanni had been kidnapped and murdered by someone sent by Balduccio? Number two (with follow-up): Why is Dolores so certain that it was Balduccio who had Giovanni killed? What kind of relationship did Giovanni and Balduccio have?
Number three: Why does Dolores want to control the investigation through Mimì?
Possible answer to Question number one:
Dolores told us she fell asleep at the wheel on the way back from Gioia Tauro and didn’t get back to Vigàta until the next day, after spending the night at a motel. It’s possible, on the other hand, that what she said is not true. That is, that she remained in Gioia Tauro for reasons of her own, and thus found out that Giovanni had not been able to take ship because he’d been kidnapped by Balduccio’s men. But why, then, not tell us this? Perhaps because this would only be a conjecture on her part, if she had no proof. Or perhaps because she didn’t know how her husband had been killed and where the body was. She only learned this when Mimì told her about the dismembered corpse at ’u critaru.
Possible answer to Question two:
Here there can be only one answer. Giovanni was a courier for Balduccio. He must have been very good at it. And Dolores must have been well aware of this activity. One day, however, he “betrays” Balduccio, who then has him killed. Dolores therefore hasn’t the slightest doubt about who ordered her husband’s elimination.
Possible answer to Question three:
Dolores knows—because Giovanni has surely told her—how intelligent and shrewd old Balduccio is. She is moved by an irresistible desire for revenge. She wants Balduccio to pay, and she knows that the old mafioso is capable of beating the justice system, as he has done so many times in the past. With Mimì under her control, she hopes to avert this danger, since she will never let him give up the fight against Balduccio.
Dear Salvo, I have bored myself to tears writing to you. I’ve said the essential. Now it’s up to you.
Good luck.
Day was dawning. As he stood up from the table, cold shivers ran up and down his spine. He undressed and got into a tub so hot it filled the bathroom with steam. When he came out he was red as a lobster. He shaved, made a pot of coffee, and drank his customary mugful. Then he went into the bedroom, got dressed, took out an overnight bag, put in a shirt, a pair of underpants, a pair of socks, two handkerchiefs, and a book he was reading. Going back into the dining room, he reread the letter he’d written to himself, brought it out to the veranda, and set fire to it with his lighter. He glanced at his watch. Almost six-thirty. He went inside and dialed a number on the land line, slipping his cell phone into his pocket.
“Hello?” answered Fazio.
“Montalbano here. Did I wake you up?”
“No, Chief. What is it?”
“Listen, I have to leave.”
Fazio became alarmed.
“Are you going to Boccadasse? What happened?”
“I’m not going to Boccadasse. I hope to be back this evening or tomorrow morning at the latest. If I get back tonight I’ll give you a ring, even if it’s late. All right?”
“Whatever you say, Chief.”
“Don’t forget that thing I asked you about. You absolutely must find out why Pecorini left Vigàta two years ago.”
“Don’t worry.”
“This morning one of Alfano’s friends is coming to the station. I talked with two others yesterday evening. I want you to question the one today.”
“All right.”
“The keys Dolores gave you to the apartment in Gioia Tauro, where are they?”
“On my desk, in an envelope.”
“I’m going to take them. Oh, and listen. If you happen to run into Inspector Augello today, don’t tell him I’ve gone to Gioia Tauro.”
“Chief, the guy doesn’t talk to any of us anymore. But if he happens to ask me, what do I tell him?”
“Tell him I’ve gone to the hospital for a routine checkup.”
“You, go to the hospital of your own will? He’ll never believe it! Can’t you think of anything better?”
“You think of something. But he mustn’t suspect in any way that I’m doing something related to the critaru murder.”
“I’m sorry, Chief, but even if he does suspect something, what’s the problem?”
“Just do as I say and don’t argue.”
The inspector hung up.
Ah, how foul and swampy, how treacherous the ground was around the potter’s field!
Could he have spared himself the journey he was about to make? A journey which, for as poor a driver as he, represented a major effort? Of course, with the help of a good road atlas, he needn’t even have left home. But going in person to see how things stood wasn’t only the better, more serious course of action; it was also possible that the place itself, when seen with his own eyes, would suggest some other, new hypotheses for him to consider. But despite all the justifications he kept coming up with for making this trip, he knew he hadn’t yet admitted the real reason for it. Once past Enna, however, when, on the left, he began to glimpse the mountains in whose folds lay towns like Assoro, Agira, Regalbuto, and Centuripe, he understood why he had left Marinella. Without a doubt, the investigation did have something to do with it, and how. But the truth of the matter was that he had wanted to see the landscape of his youth again, the one he had all around him when he was a deputy inspector at Mascalippa. Wait a second! Hadn’t he found that same landscape depressing at the time? Didn’t the very air in Mascalippa get on his nerves, because it smelled of straw and grass? All true, all sacrosanct. A line of Brecht came to mind: “Why should I love the windowsill from which I fell as a child?” But that line still didn’t quite say it, he thought. Because sometimes, when you’re already almost old, the hated windowsill from which you fell as a little kid comes urgently back into your memory, and you would even go on a pilgrimage to see it again, if you could see it the way you did then, with the eyes of innocence.
Is this what you’ve come looking for? he asked himself as he rolled along the Enna to Catania autostrada at a snail’s pace, driving to distraction all the other motorists unfortunate enough to be traveling the same route as he. Do you think that seeing those mountains from afar, breathing that air from afar, will bring back the ingenuousness, the naivety, the enthusiasm of your first years with the police? Come on, Inspector, get serious; accept that what you’ve lost is gone forever.
He suddenly accelerated, leaving that landscape behind. The Catania–Messina autostrada wasn’t too busy. And, in fact, he was able to board the twelve-thirty ferry across the Strait. Thus, since he had left home at seven, it had taken him five and a half hours to go from Vigàta to Messina. It would have taken somebody like Fazio, driving as he normally did, two hours less.
As soon as the ferryboat had passed the statue of the Blessed Virgin that wishes happiness and good health to all voyagers, and began to dance on the mildly choppy sea, the salty air stirred up a beastly hunger in Montalbano’s stomach. The night before, he hadn’t had a chance to eat anything. He quickly climbed a small staircase that led to the bar. On the counter was a small mountain of piping hot arancini. He bought two and went out onto the deck to eat them. Attacking the first, he reduced it by half with a single bite, and of this half, he swallowed a good portion. He realized his grave mistake at once. How could they call arancini these rice balls fried in hundred-year-old oil and cooked by a cook suffering from violent hallucinations? And how acidic the meat sauce was! He spit the rest of the arancino he still had in his mouth into the sea, and the remaining half and whole arancini met the same watery end. He went back to the bar and drank a beer to get rid of the nasty taste in his mouth. Later, as he was easing his car out of the ferryboat, that little bit of foul arancino, combined with the beer, bubble
d up into his throat. The acid burned so badly that, without realizing it, he swerved and suddenly found himself sideways on the ramp, with the car’s nose pointing out over the water.
“What the hell are you doing? What the hell are you doing?” yelled the sailor who was directing the disembarking vehicles.
Sweating all over, the inspector coaxed the car, one millimeter at a time, back into the proper position, while the eyes of the man driving the tractor trailer behind him seemed to say he was ready to slam him from behind and send him the fuck onto the dock or into the sea, take your pick.
At Villa San Giovanni he went and ate at a truckers’ restaurant where he’d already been twice before. And this third time he was not disappointed either. After an hour and a half at table, that is, around three o’clock in the afternoon, he got back in his car and headed toward Gioia Tauro. He took the autostrada, and in a flash he was already past Bagnara. Continuing on the A3, he was about twenty kilometers from Gioia Tauro when he decided to take the final stretch nice and slow, looking for the bypass to Lido di Palmi. There was a bypass for Palmi, but not for Lido di Palmi. How could that be? He was sure he hadn’t missed it and driven past it. He decided just to continue on to Gioia Tauro. Leaving the autostrada, he headed towards town and stopped at the first filling station he found.
The Potter's Field Page 15