Rounding the Mark

by Andrea Camilleri

  Here the commentator started laughing. And Montalbano laughed, too, as he turned off the TV.

  He slept poorly, drifting off into short dreams from which he woke up in a daze every time. One of these dreams struck him in particular. He was with Dr. Pasquano, who had to perform an autopsy on an octopus.

  Nobody seemed surprised by this. Pasquano and his assistants treated the matter like business as usual. Only Montalbano found the situation odd.

  “Excuse me, Doctor,” he said, “but since when have we been doing autopsies on octopi?”

  “Don’t you know? It’s a new directive from the minister of justice.”

  “Oh. And, afterwards, what are you going to do with the remains?”

  “They’re going to be distributed to the poor, for them to eat.”

  The inspector wasn’t convinced.

  “I don’t understand the reasoning behind this directive.”

  Pasquano gave him a long stare and then said:

  “It’s because things are not what they seem.”

  Montalbano remembered that this was the same thing the doctor had said to him about the corpse he’d found in the water.

  “Want to see?” asked Pasquano, brandishing the scalpel and then lowering it.

  Suddenly the octopus turned into a child, a little black boy. Dead, of course, but with his eyes still wide open.

  As he was shaving, the scenes of the previous evening on the wharf ran through his head again. Little by little, as he reviewed them with a cold eye, he began to feel uneasy, disturbed. There was something that didn’t jibe, some detail that clashed with the rest.

  He stubbornly played the scenes over in his head, trying to bring them more into focus. No dice. He lost heart. This was surely a sign of aging. He used to be able to find the flaw, the jarring note in the overall picture, without fail.

  Better not to think about it.

  5

  As soon as he entered his office, he summoned Fazio.

  “Any news?”

  Fazio looked surprised.

  “Chief, there hasn’t been enough time. I’m still working on the preliminaries. I’ve checked the missing persons reports, of course, both here and in Montelusa—”

  “Well done!” the inspector said snidely.

  “Why are you mocking me, Chief?”

  “You think that corpse was out for an early morning swim and heading home?”

  “No, but I had to check things out here, too. Then I asked around, but it looks like nobody knew him.”

  “Did you get an ID profile on him?”

  “Yessir. About forty years old, five foot eight and a half, black hair, brown eyes. Stocky build. Distinguishing marks: an old scar on the left leg, just under the knee. He probably limped. And that’s it.”

  “Nothing to get excited about.”

  “Yeah. That’s why I decided to do something.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “Well, considering that you’re not too fond of Dr. Arquà, I went to Forensics and asked a friend for a favor.”

  “And what was that?”

  “I asked if he could make me a computerized sketch of what the guy might have looked like before he died. It should be ready by tonight.”

  “Listen, I never ask Arquà for any favors, not even if you put a knife to my throat.”

  “Don’t worry, Chief. It’ll remain between me and my friend.”

  “What do you intend to do in the meantime?”

  “Hit the road. I’ve got a few chores to take care of first, but then I’m going to take my own car and check out the towns along the coast, both to the west and to the east. I’ll contact you the minute I have any news.”

  As soon as Fazio left, the door flew open and slammed violently against the wall. Montalbano, however, didn’t move; he knew it was Catarella. By now he was used to these entries. What could he do? Shoot him? Keep the door to his office always open? All he could do was put up with it.

  “ ’Pologies, Chief. Hand slipped.”

  “Come in, Cat.”

  He said it with the exact same intonation as the De Rege brothers’ legendary “Come in, cretin.”

  “Chief, seeing as how a journalist phoned this morning asking for you, I jes’ wanted to let you know that he said he was gonna call you back.”

  “Did he tell you his name?”

  “Pontius Pilate, Chief.”

  Was it too much to expect Catarella ever to get anybody’s name right?

  “Listen, Cat, when Mr. Pilate calls back, tell him I’m in an urgent meeting with Caiphas, at the Sanhedrin.”

  “D’jou say Caiphas, Chief? I sure won’t forget that!”

  But he remained standing in the doorway.

  “Something wrong, Cat?”

  “Lass nite I seen you on TV, Chief.”

  “What do you do, Cat, spend all your free time watching me on TV?”

  “No, Chief, it was by accidint.”

  “What was it, a replay of me naked? I must be getting good ratings!”

  “No sir, you was drissed. I seen you past midnight on the Free Channel. You was on the docks, tellin’ two of our men to go back ’cause you could take care of things y’self. Man, what a thorty you got!”

  “Okay, Cat, thanks. You can go now.”

  He felt rather worried about Catarella. Not because he had any doubts about his sexuality, but because if he, the inspector, resigned—as he’d already decided to do—surely Catarella would suffer terribly, like a dog abandoned by its master.

  Ciccio Albanese showed up around eleven-thirty, empty-handed.

  “You didn’t bring the charts you mentioned?”

  “If I showed them to you, would you understand them?”

  “No.”

  “So why should I bring them? It’s better if I explain things myself.”

  “Tell me something, Ciccio. Do all of you trawler captains use maps?”

  Albanese looked at him cockeyed.

  “Are you kidding? In our line of work, we know our stretch of sea by heart. Some of it we learned from our dads, some of it we learned by ourselves. For the new stuff, we get some help from radar. But the sea’s always the sea.”

  “So why do you use maps?”

  “I don’t, Inspector. I look at ’em and study ’em ’cause it’s something I like to do. But I don’t bring ’em aboard with me. I prefer to rely on experience.”

  “So, what can you tell me?”

  “First of all, I gotta tell you that before coming here this morning, I went to see u zù Stefanu.”

  “I’m sorry, Ciccio, but I don’t—”

  “Stefano Lagùmina, but we all call him u zù Stefanu. He’s ninety-five years old, but his brain’s as sharp as anyone’s. U zù Stefanu don’t go out to sea no more, but he’s the oldest fisherman in Vigàta. He used to have a lateener before he got a trawler. Whatever the man says is gospel.”

  “So you wanted to consult with him.”

  “Yessir. I wanted to make sure my hunch was right. And u zù Stefanu agrees with me.”

  “And what are your conclusions?”

  “Here’s how I see it. The dead man was carried by a surface current that we all know well, and which runs east to west, always at the same speed. The spot off Marinella where you bumped into the body is where this current comes closest to shore. You follow?”

  “Perfectly. Go on.”

  “It’s a slow current. You know how many knots?”

  “No, and I don’t want to know. And just between you and me, I don’t even know how many knots there are in a mile.”

  “Well, a mile’s one thousand eight hundred fifty-one point eighty-five meters long. An Italian mile, that is. ’Cause in England—”

  “Forget about it, Ciccio.”

  “Whatever you say, Inspector. As I was saying, this current comes from far away. It’s not native. To give you an idea, we run into it way down at Capo Passero. That’s where it enters our waters, and then it hugs the coast up to Mazara.
After that it goes its own way.”

  And there you have it! This, of course, meant that the body could have been thrown into the sea at just about any point along the southern coast of Sicily! Albanese read the discouragement on the inspector’s face and came to his aid.

  “I know what you’re thinking. But I have something important to tell you. A little before Bianconara, this current is cut off by another, stronger current going in the opposite direction. And so a body floating from Pachino over to Marinella would never actually get to Marinella because the second current would carry it into the Gulf of Fela.”

  “So that means that my dead body’s story definitely begins after Bianconara.”

  “Exactly, Inspector. You’ve understood everything.”

  Thus the likely area of investigation was reduced to some sixty kilometers of coastline.

  “And I now should tell you,” Albanese continued, “that I also talked to u zù Stefanu about the condition the body was in when you found it. I could see for myself: the man’d been dead at least two months. You agree?”

  “Yes.”

  “So I say: a corpse isn’t gonna take two months to float from Bianconara to Marinella. Maybe ten, fifteen days, at the most, if you figure in the speed of the currents and all.”

  “And so?”

  Ciccio Albanese stood up and held his hand out to Montalbano.

  “That kind of question’s not for me to answer. I’m only a sailor. That’s where you come in, Inspector.”

  A perfect assignation of roles. Ciccio didn’t want to venture into waters not his own. All Montalbano could do was thank him and accompany him to the door. After the captain left, the inspector called Fazio.

  “Have you got a map of the province?”

  “I’ll find one.”

  After Fazio brought him one, he looked at it a moment and said:

  “By way of consolation, I can tell you that, based on the information given me by Ciccio Albanese, the dead man you need to identify definitely hung out somewhere between Bianconara and Marinella.”

  Fazio gave him a confused look.

  “So?”

  The inspector took offense.

  “What do you mean, ‘So’? That greatly reduces the area we need to investigate!”

  “Chief, everybody and his dog knows that the current starts at Bianconara! You don’t think I was gonna go all the way to Fela to start asking questions!”

  “Okay, okay. The fact remains that we now know there are only five towns you have to visit.”

  “Five?”

  “Yes, five! You can look at the map and count them yourself.”

  “Chief, there’s eight towns in all. On top of the five, you have to add Spigonella, Tricase, and Bellavista.”

  Montalbano looked down at the map, then looked up again.

  “This map’s from last year. How come they’re not on it?”

  “They’re unauthorized towns.”

  “Unauthorized towns? There probably are no more than four houses—”

  Fazio interrupted him, shaking his head.

  “No, Chief. They’re towns, really and truly. The owners of those houses pay property tax to the nearest municipality. They’ve got sewers, running water, electricity, and phone service. And every year they get a little bigger. Everybody knows those houses are never going to be torn down, because no politician wants to lose their votes. You know what I mean? So in the end they’re granted amnesty and authorization and everybody ends up happy. And that’s to say nothing of all the houses and cottages built on the beach! Four or five of them even have a kind of private entrance gate.”

  “Get out of here!” Montalbano ordered, upset.

  “Hey, Chief, it’s not my fault,” said Fazio, going out.

  Late that morning, the inspector received two phone calls that aggravated his bad mood. The first was from Livia, who said she hadn’t been able to get an advance on her vacation time. The second was from Jacopello, Pasquano’s assistant.

  “Is that you, Inspector?” he said straight off.

  “Yes, it’s me,” said Montalbano, instinctively lowering his voice.

  They were like two conspirators.

  “Excuse me for talking this way, but I don’t want any of my colleagues to hear. I wanted to let you know that Dr. Mistretta moved the autopsy up to this morning, and he’s convinced that it was an accidental drowning. Which means that he won’t request those tests that Dr. Pasquano wanted done. I tried to persuade him to change his mind, but there was no way. If you’d made that bet with me, you’d have won.”

  What now? How was he ever going to proceed officially? By ruling out homicide, that dickhead Mistretta’s report slammed the door on any possibility of investigation. And the inspector didn’t even have a missing persons report in hand. No cover at all. For the moment, that corpse was a nuddru ammiscatu cu nenti—a combination of nothing and naught. But, like the reader exhorted by Eliot in his lines on Phlebas, the drowned Phoenician in “Death by Water”—“Gentile or Jew / O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, / Consider Phlebas . . .”—Montalbano would keep on thinking of that nameless corpse. It was a matter of honor, for it was the dead man himself who, one cold morning, had come looking for him.

  It was now time to eat. Okay, but where? The confirmation that the inspector’s world was starting to go to the dogs had come barely a month after the G8 meetings, when, after a meal of considerable magnitude, Calogero, the owner-cook-waiter of the Trattoria San Calogero, had announced he was retiring, however reluctantly.

  “You shitting me, Calò?”

  “No, Inspector. As you know, I’ve had two bypasses and am seventy-three years old and counting. Doctor don’t want me to work anymore.”

  “And what about me?” Montalbano had blurted out.

  He had suddenly felt as unhappy as a character in a pulp novel, like the girl seduced and abandoned and kicked out of her home with the child of sin in her womb, or the young woman selling matches in the snow, or the orphan rummaging through garbage for something to eat . . .

  By way of reply, Calogero had thrown his hands up in despair. The terrible day had come when Calogero whispered:

  “Don’t come by tomorrow. I’m closed.”

  They had embraced, practically weeping. And his Via Crucis had begun. Between restaurants, trattorias, and osterias, he’d tried half a dozen new places in the days that followed, but they were no great shakes. Not that you could say, in all honesty, that their food was bad. The fact was that they all lacked that indefinable touch that Calogero’s dishes had. For a while he had opted to eat at home instead of going out. Adelina made him one meal a day, but this created a problem: If he ate that meal at midday, then in the evening he would have to make do with a little cheese and olives and salted sardines or salami; if, on the other hand, he ate it in the evening, that would mean that at midday he had made do with cheese, olives, salted sardines, or salami. In the long run, the situation became disheartening. He went out hunting again and found a good restaurant near Capo Russello. It was right on the beach, the dishes were civilized, and it didn’t cost a great deal. The problem was that between driving there, eating, and driving back, it took three hours at the very least, and he didn’t always have that kind of time.

  That day he decided to try out a trattoria that Mimì had suggested.

  “Have you eaten there?” Montalbano had asked him suspiciously, having a very low opinion of Mimì’s palate.

  “Actually, no, but a friend who’s even a bigger pain in the ass than you spoke well of it.”

  Since the trattoria, called Da Enzo, was in the uphill part of town, the inspector resigned himself to driving there. From the outside, the dining room looked like a corrugated sheet-metal construction; the kitchen must have been inside the house next to it. The whole thing had a temporary feeling about it, which Montalbano liked. He went in and sat down at an empty table. A thin man with blue eyes, about sixty years old, who’d been overseeing the activities of
the two waiters, approached and planted himself in front of the inspector without a word of greeting. He was smiling.

  Montalbano gave him a questioning look.

  “I knew it,” the man said.

  “You knew what?”

  “That after all that running around, you would come here. I was waiting for you.”

  Apparently word of his calvary following the closing of his usual trattoria had spread across town.

  “Well, here I am,” the inspector said drily.

  They looked each other in the eye. The shootout at the OK Corral had begun. Enzo summoned a waiter:

  “Set the table for Inspector Montalbano and keep an eye on the room. I’m going into the kitchen. I’ll see to the inspector myself.”

  The antipasto of salted octopus tasted as though it were made of condensed sea and melted the moment it entered his mouth. The pasta in squid ink could have held its own against Calogero’s. And the mixed grill of mullet, sea bass, and gilthead had that heavenly taste the inspector feared he had lost forever. Music began to play in his head, a kind of triumphal march. He stretched out blissfully in his chair and took a deep breath.

  After a long and perilous journey over the sea, Odysseus had finally found his long lost Ithaca.

  Partially reconciled with life, he got in his car and headed towards the port. There was no point dropping in at the càlia e simenza shop, which was closed at that hour. He left his car on the wharf and started to walk along the jetty. He ran into the usual angler, who greeted him with a wave of the hand.

  “They biting?”

  “Not even if you pay them.”

  When he reached the rock under the lighthouse, he sat down. He fired up a cigarette and savored it. When he’d finished, he threw it into the sea. Jostled by the motion of the water, the butt grazed first the rock he was sitting on, then the rock behind it. An idea flashed into Montalbano’s brain. If that had been a human body instead of a butt, that body would not have grazed those rocks, but bumped against them, even if not very hard. Just as Ciccio Albanese had said. Looking up, he saw his car on the wharf in the distance. He realized he’d left it in the exact same spot where he’d stood with the little boy as his mother kicked up such a row that she broke her leg. He got up and headed back. He wanted to know how that whole business had turned out. The mother was surely in a hospital somewhere with her leg in a cast.