The Potter's Field
Page 21
“Holy shit!”
The color of his face, on the other hand, changed often: initially red, it turned yellow, then purple, and then a blend of all three colors.
“So, tomorrow morning, what I want you to do,” the inspector concluded, “is this: The minute Mimì gets to the office, you tell him that an idea came to you during the night, and then you hand him a copy of the article.”
“What do you think Inspector Augello will do?”
“He’ll race to Montelusa to talk to Tommaseo, claiming it’s proof, then he’ll do the same with the commissioner and even with Musante. He’ll waste the whole morning running from one office to another. You, then, will throw down your ace, and make things more difficult for him.”
“And then what?”
“Tomorrow evening, as soon as Dolores gives herself away, Macannuco will phone me at the station. I’ll call Mimì and tell him she’s been arrested. You should be there, too. I can’t imagine what his reaction will be.”
At six P.M. the following evening, Mimì Augello returned to the office dead tired and in a rage over all the time he’d wasted in Montelusa. But he also seemed worried about something else.
“Has Signora Alfano called you?” the inspector asked.
“Called me? Why would she do that? Has she called Fazio, by any chance?”
“No, she hasn’t.”
He was agitated. It looked like Dolores had left without saying anything. And was keeping her cell phone turned off. Apparently she urgently needed to go to Catania to talk to Arturo Pecorini.
“And how did it go in Montelusa?”
“Don’t get me started, Salvo! What a bunch of imbeciles ! All they do is shilly-shally, take their time, and find excuses. What better proof do you want than that newspaper article! But I’ll be there again tomorrow, talking to Tommaseo!”
He left, furious, and went into his office.
At seven that evening, Macannuco rang.
“Bingo! Montalbano, you are a genius! When, as you suggested, Signora Trippodo let Dolores have a glimpse of a bloody syringe, Dolores dug her own grave. And you want some good news? She gave up immediately. She realized the jig was up and confessed, blaming it all on her lover, the butcher. Who, incidentally, was arrested about fifteen minutes ago at his butcher shop in Catania . . . So there you go. Anyway, bye now, I’ll keep you informed.”
“Informed of what? No need to bother anymore, Macannù. I’ll learn the rest from the newspapers.”
The inspector took three, four, five deep breaths, to get his wind back.
“Fazio!”
“Your orders, Chief.”
A quick glance sufficed to communicate their thoughts. There was no need for words.
“Go tell Mimì I want to see him, and you come back, too.”
When the two returned, Montalbano was swaying back and forth in his chair, hands in his hair. He was putting on a performance of surprise, shock, and dismay.
“Matre santa! Matre santa!” he said.
“What is it, Salvo?” Mimì asked, frightened.
“I just got a call from Macannuco! Matre santa! Who would’ve thought it?”
“Why, what happened?” Mimì nearly yelled.
“He’s just arrested Dolores Alfano in Gioia Tauro!”
“Dolores?! In Gioia Tauro?!” Mimì repeated, flabbergasted.
“Yes.”
“What for?”
“For the murder of her husband!”
“But that’s impossible!”
“No, it’s true. She confessed.”
Mimì closed his eyes and fell to the floor too fast for Fazio to catch him. And at that moment Montalbano realized that Mimì had suspected all along, but had never been able to admit, not even to himself, that Dolores was involved up to her neck in her husband’s murder.
The day after his arrival in Boccadasse, the inspector had just entered Livia’s apartment when the phone rang. It was Fazio.
“How are you doing, Chief?”
“Not great, not bad, just getting along.”
His dress rehearsal for retirement was going well. Indeed that was a typical reply for a retiree.
“I wanted to let you know that Inspector Augello left today with his wife and son for a couple of weeks’ rest in the town where Beba’s parents live. I also wanted to tell you how pleased I am at the way you were able to set everything right. When will you be back, Chief?”
“Tomorrow evening.”
The inspector went and sat by the big picture window. Livia would be pleased to hear about Beba and Mimì. Balduccio Sinagra had had his lawyer Guttadauro call Montalbano to tell him how pleased the boss was to see Dolores arrested. Fazio, too, was pleased. And so was Macannuco, whom the inspector had seen on television, being congratulated by journalists for his brilliant investigation. And surely Mimì, who’d been in a pretty nasty pickle, had to be pleased, even if he couldn’t admit it to anyone. So, when all was said and done, the inspector had managed to lead them all out of the treacherous terrain of ’u critaru. But what about him? How did he, Montalbano, feel?
“I’m just tired” was his bleak reply.
Some time ago he had read the title, and only the title, of an essay called: “God Is Tired.” Livia had once asked him provocatively if he thought he was God. A fourth-rate, minor god, he had thought at the time. But, as the years passed, he’d become convinced he wasn’t even a back-row god, but only the poor puppeteer of a wretched puppet theater. A puppeteer who struggled to bring off the performances as best he knew how. And for each new performance he managed to bring to a close, the struggle became greater, more wearisome. How much longer could he keep it up?
Better, for now, not to think of such things. Better to sit and gaze at the sea, which, whether in Vigàta or Boccadasse, is still the sea.
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Author’s Note
As is obvious, the names of characters, companies, streets, hotels, etc., are fabricated out of whole cloth and have no connection to reality.
Notes
3–4 with a coppola on his head: The coppola is a typical Sicilian beret made of cloth and with a short visor.
4 Totò Riina: Savatore (“Totò”) Riina (born 1930) is the former leader of the infamous Corleonesi clan of the Sicilian Mafia and became the capo di tutt’i capi (“boss of bosses”) in the early 1980s. Riina’s faction was responsible for the spectactular murders of the anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino (both in 1992), crimes that led to a serious crackdown on the Mafia and ultimately the arrest of Riina in 1993. Riina, one of whose nicknames is La Belva, or “The Beast,” is known to be particularly bloodthirsty and violent.
4 Bernardo Provenzano for vice president, one of the Caruana brothers for foreign minister, Leoluca Bagarella at Defense: Provenzano (born 1932), another prominent member of the Corleonesi clan, became Riina’s de facto successor until his capture in 2006. Alfonso Caruana (born 1946), along with his brothers Gerlando and Pasquale, ran a vast international network of drug trafficking, shifting their bases from Sicily to Canada to Venezuela and back to Canada by way of Switzerland and London (hence the “foreign minister” post in Montalbano’s dream); he was captured in 1998 and convicted in Canada, then extradited to Italy in 2004, where he had already been twice convicted in absentia, and where he still awaits final sentencing. Leoluca Bagarella (born 1932), another Corleonese and Riina’s brother-in-law, was arrested in 1995, ultimately convicted for multiple murders, and is currently serving a life sentence.
9 a “white death”—the shorthand used by journalists when someone suddenly disappears without so much as saying goodbye: Literal translation of the Italian morte bianca.
17 Montalbano recalled having seen something similar in a famous painting. Brueghel? Bosch?: The painting is The Blind Leading the Blind (1568), by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, at the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples. It is inspired by a statement by Jesus Christ in the Gospels (Matthew 15:13–14 and
Luke 6:39–40): “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into the ditch?” (Gospel of Luke)
17 ’u critaru: Sicilian for il cretaio, or “the clay field.” From creta (crita in Sicilian), which means “clay.”
40 Don’t you like Guttuso?: Renato Guttuso (1911–1987) was a Sicilian-born painter and passionate anti-Fascist and Communist who rose to prominence after the Second World War.
54 A joyous start is the best of guides, as Matteo Maria Boiardo famously said: Matteo Maria Boiardo (1440–1494), a poet of the Italian Renaissance who thrived at the court of the dukes of Este in Ferrara, is best known for writing the chivalric verse romance Orlando Innamorato, first published in 1495.
67 He committed a massacre of nunnati—newborns, that is: Nunnatu, Sicilian for neonato, or “newborn” (also called cicirella in certain other parts of Sicily), is a tiny newborn fish available only at certain times of the year. Whitebait.
68 purpiteddro a strascinasali: Baby octopus cooked in salted water and dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.
68 aggravated, as the ancient Romans used to say: From the Latin ad + gravare, “to make heavy.”
95 His eye fell upon a book by Andrea Camilleri . . . a popular version of the Passion of Christ: Cf. Andrea Camilleri, La scomparsa di Patò (Milan: Mondadori, 2000).
149 “I’m coming too,” . . . “No, you stay here”: A wry reference to the 1968 pop hit single “Vengo anch’io. No tu no” by Vincenzo Jannacci (born 1935), whose title Camilleri cites verbatim in this brief exchange between Montalbano and Fazio.
203 another Vittorio Emanuele, Umberto’s son, the one known in the scandal sheets for a stray shot he had once fired: In 1978, when his rubber dinghy was accidentally taken from the docks after a violent storm off the Corsican shore, Vittorio Emanuele IV, banished heir to the throne of Italy, carelessly shot at a man on the yacht to which the dinghy had been attached. He missed his target but mortally wounded Dirk Hamer, a young German who had been sleeping belowdecks.
203 As the lady was fumbling with the napoletana: A napoletana is a Neapolitan coffeepot consisting of two superimposed cylindrical elements, formerly of aluminum, and a double filter. When the water in the lower part begins to boil, one is supposed to turn the pot over to allow filtration.
226 the miraculous intervention of Padre Pio: Pio of Pietrelcina, whose given name was Francesco Forgione (1887–1968), was a devout priest (Padre Pio means “Father Pius”) reputed to perform miracles. Among other things he “received the stigmata” and was said by witnesses to have levitated while saying the Mass. Immensely popular during his lifetime, he was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002 and remains widely venerated in Italy, particularly in the South.
228 the arrest of two regional parliamentary deputies of the Center-Right on suspicion of collusion with the Mafia. While we have, of course, only the deepest respect for the magistrature, we cannot help but note that it moves all too often in only one direction: The despised Pippo Ragonese is using the same argument as has been made ad nauseam by Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi during his repeated legal troubles: to wit, that the magistrature—the Italian state institution least compromised by the endemic corruption that plagues the other branches of government—prosecutes only politicians of the Right and Center-Right (in other words, Berlusconi’s own coalition) because it is irredeemably “communistic” and therefore prejudiced against its “ideological enemies.”
238 A nice little pact between the Mafia and the ’Ndrangheta : The ’Ndrangheta is the Calabrian Mafia. In this statement the Mafia is intended to refer specifically to the Sicilian Mafia.
243 killed by lupara bianca: Lupara (“wolf gun”) is the Sicilian term for a sawed-off shotgun, formerly the weapon of preference of the Mafia. Lupara bianca, or “white lupara,” is a term coined by Italian journalists to designate those deaths at the hands of the Mafia where the victims vanish without a trace.
265 hair standing straight up so that he looked like the advertisement for Presbítero pencils: Camilleri is referring to Italian ads from the first half of the twentieth century that featured the face of a man with spiky hair consisting of pencils standing on end.
Notes compiled by Stephen Sartarelli
Also by Andrea Camilleri
The Shape of Water
The Terra-Cotta Dog
The Snack Thief
Voice of the Violin
Excursion to Tindari
The Smell of the Night
Rounding the Mark
The Patience of the Spider
The Paper Moon
August Heat
The Wings of the Sphinx
The Track of Sand
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1
Matthew 27: 3–7.