Rounding the Mark

by Andrea Camilleri

  “I haven’t got time for jokes, Salvo. See if they’ve got a pair that might work for me and send them over to me as soon as possible. Mine just broke and I’m lost without my glasses.”

  “Don’t you have an extra pair at the office?” asked Montalbano as he was calling Fazio.

  “I do, but I’m not in Montelusa.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Here in Vigàta. On tourist duty.”

  The inspector explained the problem to Fazio.

  “Riguccio? I’m having somebody look into it. How many tourists you got today?”

  “At least a hundred and fifty, on two of our patrol craft. They came across on two big boats that were shipping water and about to crash into the rocks at Lampedusa. From what I could gather, their guides abandoned them at sea and escaped on a dinghy. They were all about to drown, poor things. You know something, Montalbà? I don’t think I can stand to see any more of these wretched people. They—”

  “Tell it to your pals in the government.”

  Fazio came back with a pair of glasses.

  “The left eye’s a three, the right eye, two and a half.”

  Montalbano passed this information on.

  “Perfect,” said Riguccio. “Could you send them over to me? The patrol boats are docking right now.”

  For whatever reason, Montalbano decided to take them himself, personally in person, as Catarella would say. All things considered, Riguccio was an excellent fellow, and it wasn’t the end of the world if the inspector got to Ciccio Albanese’s house a little late.

  He was happy not to be in Riguccio’s shoes. The Montelusa commissioner’s office had asked the harbor authority that they be informed every time a new group of illegal immigrants arrived, and whenever this happened, Riguccio would head off to Vigàta with the requisite convoy of buses, police vans full of policemen, ambulances, and Jeeps, and was greeted every time by the same scenes of tragedy, tears, and sorrow. There were women giving birth, children lost in the confusion, people who’d lost their wits or fallen ill during endless journeys outside on the deck, exposed to the wind and the rain, and they all needed help. When they disembarked, the fresh sea air wasn’t enough to dispel the unbearable stench they carried with them, which was a smell not of unwashed bodies but of fear, anguish, and suffering, of despair that had reached the point beyond which lies only the hope of death. It was impossible to remain indifferent to all this, and that was why Riguccio had admitted he couldn’t stand it any longer.

  When he got to the port, the inspector noticed that the first patrol boat had already lowered its gangplank. The policemen had lined up in two parallel rows, forming a kind of human corridor all the way to the first bus, which was waiting with its motor running. Standing at the bottom of the gangplank, Riguccio thanked Montalbano and put the glasses on. The inspector got the impression his colleague was so intent on supervising the situation that he hadn’t even recognized him.

  Riguccio then gave the signal to begin the disembarkation. The first person to come out was a black woman with a belly so big she looked like she might give birth at any moment. She was unable to walk on her own. A sailor from the patrol boat and a black man helped her along. When they got to the ambulance, there was some shouting when the black man wanted to get in with the woman. The sailor tried to explain to the police that the man was surely her husband, since he’d had his arms around her the whole time on the boat. Nothing doing, it couldn’t be allowed. The ambulance pulled away with its siren wailing. The black man started crying, and the sailor took his arm, accompanying him to the bus and talking to him all the while. Feeling curious, the inspector approached them. The sailor was speaking a dialect; he must have hailed from Venice or somewhere thereabouts, and the black man didn’t understand a thing, but clearly felt comforted by the friendly sound of the sailor’s words.

  Montalbano had just decided to go back to his car when he saw a group of four refugees stumble and stagger as though drunk when they reached the end of the gangplank. For a moment he didn’t understand what was happening. Then he saw a small boy, not more than six years old, dart out between the legs of the four men. But the child disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared, passing through the formation of policemen in the twinkling of an eye. As two officers began to give chase, Montalbano saw the kid heading, with the instinct of a hunted animal, towards the less lighted area of the wharf, where stood the remains of an old silo that had been ringed by a wall for security. He never knew what made him shout to the two policemen:

  “Stop! I’m Inspector Montalbano! Turn back! I’ll go after him myself!”

  The policemen obeyed.

  By now the inspector had lost sight of the kid, but the direction he’d taken could only have led him to one place, and that was an enclosed area, a kind of blind alley between the back of the old silo and the boundary wall of the port, which offered no path of escape. The space, moreover, was cluttered with empty jerry cans and bottles, hundreds of broken fish crates, and at least two or three scrapped outboard motors from fishing boats. It was hard enough to make one’s way through that jumble in the daytime, let alone by the faint glow of a street lamp. Certain that the kid was watching him, he assumed a falsely casual air, walking slowly, one step at a time. He even lit a cigarette. When he’d reached the entrance to the alley, he called out in a soft, calm voice:

  “Come out, little guy, I’m not gonna harm you.”

  No answer. But, listening very hard, he could distinctly hear, under the tide of shouts, wails, curses, car horns, sirens, and screeching tires that reached his ears from the wharf, the faint, panting breath of the little boy, who must have been hiding just a few yards away.

  “Come on out now, I’m not gonna harm you.”

  He heard some rustling. It came from a wooden crate right in front of him. The boy must have been huddled behind it. He could have leapt forward and nabbed him, but chose to keep still. Then he saw the hands, arms, head, and chest slowly appear. The rest of the little body remained hidden by the crate. The boy was holding his hands up, signaling surrender, eyes open wide in terror. But he was trying very hard not to cry, not to show any weakness.

  What corner of hell could he have come from, Montalbano suddenly asked himself in dismay, if at his age he’d already learned the terrible gesture of throwing one’s hands in the air, something he certainly hadn’t seen on television or at the movies?

  The answer came to him at once, in the form of a flash in his brain. And while it lasted, inside this flash—which was just like a photographer’s flash—the crate, the alley, the port, Vigàta itself all disappeared and then reappeared in black and white and shrunken to the size of an old photo he had seen many years before but which had been taken many years before that, during the war, before he was born, and which showed a little Jewish or Polish boy with hands raised and the very same wide-open eyes, the very same desire not to cry, as a soldier pointed a gun at him.

  The inspector felt a sharp pain in his chest, a twinge that took his breath away. Frightened, he closed his eyes tight, then reopened them. Finally, everything returned to normal size, to the light of reality, and the little boy was no longer Jewish or Polish but a little black boy again. Montalbano took a step forward, took the child’s freezing hands in his own and held them tight. And he remained that way, waiting for a little of his own warmth to pass into those tiny fingers. Only when he felt the little hands begin to relax did he take his first step, still holding him by one hand. The little boy followed, willingly entrusting himself to his care. In spite of himself, the inspector thought of François, the Tunisian boy who could have become his son, if Livia had had her way. He managed in time to suppress his emotion, biting his lower lip until it almost bled.

  The disembarkation continued. In the distance he saw a rather diminutive woman making a scene with two small children hanging on her skirts. She was shouting incomprehensibly, pulling her hair out, stamping her feet, tearing her blouse. Three policemen tried to calm h
er down, with little success. Then the woman spotted the inspector and the little boy, and there was no stopping her: she shoved the policemen aside with all her might and rushed towards the two of them with her arms out. At that moment two things happened. First, Montalbano distinctly noticed that upon seeing his mother, the boy stiffened, ready to run away again. Why did he do this instead of running to meet her? Montalbano turned to him and was astonished to see that the boy was looking at him, not at his mother, with a desperate, questioning look in his eyes. Maybe he wanted to be left free to escape because his mother was sure to beat him for running away in the first place. The second thing was that, as she was running, the mother turned her ankle and fell to the ground. The three policemen tried to get her back on her feet but were unable. She couldn’t stand up. She was wailing and touching her left knee, and meanwhile kept gesturing to the inspector to bring the boy to her. As soon as the boy was within reach, she embraced him and overwhelmed him with kisses. But she still couldn’t manage to stand up. She tried repeatedly, but kept falling back down. Finally someone called an ambulance. Two medics stepped out of the car, and one of them, a very thin man with a mustache, bent over the woman and touched her leg.

  “She must have broken it,” he said.

  They loaded her into the ambulance with her three children and left. By now the refugees from the second patrol boat were starting to disembark, but the inspector had already decided to go home to Marinella. He looked at his watch: it was almost ten. No point going to Ciccio Albanese’s house. So much for the striped surmullets. By now they were no longer waiting for him. Anyway, he no longer felt hungry. His stomach was tied in a knot.

  As soon as he got home he called Ciccio. The captain said they’d waited a long time for him, but realized in the end that he wasn’t coming.

  “I’m still available to explain that stuff about the currents,” he said.

  “Thanks, Ciccio.”

  “If you want, I could come by the station in the morning, since I won’t be taking the boat out tomorrow. I’ll bring along my charts.”

  “Okay.”

  He stayed in the shower a long time, to wash away all the things he had seen. He could feel them inside him, reduced to invisible fragments that had entered through his pores. He put on the first pair of pants that came within reach and went into the living room to call Livia. As he reached for the phone, it rang all by itself. He jerked his hand back, as if he’d touched fire. An instinctive, unchecked reaction, which showed that, despite the shower, the thought of what he had seen on the wharf was still churning inside him and making him edgy.

  “Hello, darling. Are you okay?”

  All at once he felt the need to have Livia there beside him, so he could embrace her and be comforted by her. But since he was the way he was, he answered only:

  “Yes.”

  “Over your cold?”

  “Yes.”

  “Completely?”

  He should have realized that Livia was setting him up, but he was too nervous and had other things on his mind.

  “Completely.”

  “So Ingrid must have taken good care of you. Tell me what she did for you. Did she put you to bed? Did she tuck in the sheets? Did she sing you a lullaby?”

  Like a fool, he’d stepped right into the trap. All he could do now was counterattack.

  “Listen, Livia, I’ve had a very trying day. I’m extremely tired and have no desire to—”

  “So you’re really, really tired?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you call Ingrid and get her to perk you up?” He would never win a war of aggression against Livia. Maybe he’d stand a better chance in a defensive war.

  “Why don’t you come down here yourself?”

  He’d intended to use the question tactically, but had said it with such sincerity that Livia was caught off guard.

  “Do you mean that?”

  “Of course. What day is it today, Tuesday? Okay, tomorrow, when you get to work, you ask for a little advance on your vacation time. Then you hop on a plane and come down.”

  “You know, I have half a mind to—”

  “No halves about it.”

  “Oh, Salvo, if only it was up to me . . . We’re very busy at the office these days. But I’ll try anyway.”

  “Among other things, I want to tell you about something that happened to me tonight.”

  “Come on, tell me now.”

  “No, I want to be able to look you in the eye when I tell you.”

  They stayed on the line another half hour, but wished they could talk even longer.

  The phone call, however, had made him miss the Free Channel’s late-night newscast.

  He turned on the television anyway and tuned in to TeleVigàta.

  The first thing they said was that as one hundred and fifty illegal immigrants were being put ashore in Vigàta, a tragedy had occurred in Scroglitti, in eastern Sicily, where a large boat crammed with would-be immigrants slammed into rocks in bad weather. Thus far fifteen bodies had been recovered.

  “But the number of victims is expected to rise,” said a reporter, using what had unfortunately become a stock phrase.

  Meanwhile they showed images of drowned corpses, arms dangling inert, heads thrown back, children wrapped in pointless blankets that could never warm their dead bodies again, relief workers with contorted faces, people running wildly to waiting ambulances, a kneeling priest praying. Upsetting stuff. But for whom? the inspector asked himself. The more one saw those kinds of images—so different yet so similar—the more one got used to them. One looked at them, said “poor things,” and continued eating one’s spaghetti with clam sauce.

  After these images, the purse-lipped face of Pippo Ragonese appeared.

  “In cases such as these,” said the channel’s chief editorialist, “it is absolutely imperative to appeal to cold reason and not let oneself be carried away by instinct and sentiment. We must consider a simple fact: Our Christian civilization cannot allow itself to be altered at its very foundations by the uncontrollable hordes of desperate, lawless people who daily land on our shores. These people represent a genuine threat to us, to Italy, and to the entire Western world. The Cozzi-Pini law recently passed by our government is the only real bulwark we have against this invasion, no matter what the opposition says. But let’s turn to a knowledgeable voice from Parliament, the honorable Cenzo Falpalà, and hear what he has to say on this pressing question.”

  Falpalà was a man whose face expressed above all an effort to let the world know that nobody would ever pull a fast one on him.

  “I have only a brief statement to make. The Cozzi-Pini law is proving that it works quite well. If immigrants are dying, this is precisely because the law provides us with the tools to prosecute the human traffickers who, at the first sign of trouble, have no qualms about throwing those desperate people overboard to avoid arrest. I would like, moreover, to say that—”

  Montalbano suddenly got up and changed the channel, not so much enraged as disheartened by so much presumptuous stupidity. They were deluded to think they could stop an historic migration with police measures and laws. He remembered the time he noticed that the hinges on the main door of a church in a Tuscan town had been bent backwards by a force so strong as to push them in the opposite direction from the one in which they’d been designed to go. When he asked a man from the town to explain this, he was told that, during the war, the Nazis had put all the town’s men inside the church, locked the door, and started throwing in hand grenades from above. The people inside, in their desperation, had forced the door to open in the opposite direction, and many had managed to escape.

  Well, those people flooding in from all the poorest, most devastated parts of the world were strong enough and desperate enough to turn history’s hinges back on themselves. And tough shit for Cozzi, Pini, Falpalà, and company, who were both the cause and the effect of a world filled with terrorists who could kill three thousand Americans in a sing
le blow, with Americans who considered the thousands of civilians killed by their bombs “collateral damage,” with motorists who squashed pedestrians with their cars and never stopped to help them, with mothers who killed infants in their cradles for no reason at all, with children who slit the throats of mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters for money, with fraudulent balance sheets that according to new rules were no longer considered fraudulent, with people who should have been thrown in jail years ago but who were not only free but rewriting the rules and dictating the law.

  To distract himself and calm his nerves a little, he channel-surfed for a while until he came to a station showing two very swift sailboats racing neck-and-neck in a regatta.

  “This long-awaited, fierce, but highly sporting contest between the Stardust and the Brigadoon, permanent rivals, is about to draw to a close. Yet we still can’t say which will emerge as the winner of this magnificent competition. The upcoming turn at the buoy will surely be decisive.”

  There was a panning shot from a helicopter above. A dozen other boats straggled behind the two in the lead.

  “We’re at the buoy!” the announcer yelled.

  The first boat went into its maneuver, elegantly putting about and rounding the mark as closely as possible before heading back the same way it had come.

  “But what’s happening to the Stardust?” asked the announcer, upset. “Something’s not right.”

  Strangely, the Stardust had made no sign of any maneuver, but just charged on straight ahead, even faster than before, riding a stiff aft wind. There was no getting around it. Was it possible the crew never even saw the buoy? Then something unheard of happened. Apparently out of control—maybe the rudder was stuck—the Stardust went and rammed straight into a kind of trawler sitting motionless in its path.

  “Unbelievable! She just rammed the officials’ boat broadside! The two vessels are starting to sink! Here comes help! Unbelievable! It looks like nobody’s hurt. Believe me, friends, in all my years covering sailing competitions, I have never seen anything like it!”