Treasure Hunt

by Andrea Camilleri

  The rolling metal shutter of Enzo’s trattoria was pulled three-quarters down. Which meant that there was someone inside. He parked, got out, went up to the shutter and squatted.

  “Anybody there?”

  “Who is it?”

  “Montalbano.”

  “Wait, I’ll come and open.”

  When Enzo saw the inspector standing before him, he gave him a puzzled look.

  “What is it, Inspector?”

  “I need some information. How many restaurants and trattorias are there in Vigàta?”

  “Just a second while I count.”

  He closed his eyes and started counting with his fingers.

  “Eleven, I think,” he finally said.

  “Are there any that serve lamb’s head?”

  Enzo opened his eyes wide in astonishment.

  “You feel like eating lamb’s head?”

  “It’s the furthest thing from my mind. I just want to know.”

  “No trattoria or restaurant around here makes it, Inspector. Maybe if you order it specially. But as a regular dish, not a chance.”

  He paused.

  “But I think I remember somebody saying, a while back, that there was a place where . . .”

  He seemed doubtful, and Montalbano didn’t force him.

  “Let’s go inside,” Enzo said finally. “Would you like a coffee?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  There was a waiter mopping the floor. Enzo went and busied himself in the kitchen, then returned a few minutes later. The coffee was good, but Enzo still seemed lost in thought. All at once he slapped his forehead.

  “Michele Lauria!”

  He ran over to the wall phone, grabbed the phone book that was on a wooden shelf beside it, flipped a few pages, and found a number.

  “Michè, is this an okay time to call? Can you talk for a minute? I wanted to ask you something. Was it you that mentioned a wine tavern to me where they also sell roast meats? Including lamb’s head? Yes? And can you tell me where it is and how you get there?”

  He listened for a few moments, thanked him, set down the receiver, and turned towards Montalbano with a big smile.

  “Do you know the road to Gallotta?”

  9

  And so he was back on the hamster wheel. Montalbano took the roundabout, began to drive up Via dei Mille, passed the cemetery, the ugly buildings, the little houses, and reached the top, the end of the road. He stopped for a moment. On the left, the wooden shack with the photographs. Gallotta straight ahead, about four miles away. In between lay the road that plunged into the valley and climbed back up the hill, around the top of which the town sat perched. Those four miles of road cutting through the countryside were unpaved, a dirt road, though practicable for cars. He’d driven down it once before, over the course of an investigation, and remembered it well.

  He restarted the car and started to descend slowly into the valley. After a couple of miles the climb began. Up to that point he had crossed paths with one other car coming the other way and three men on horseback.

  He kept looking to the left and right for signs, but saw nothing. At last, when he was starting to lose hope, about a quarter mile from Gallotta, on the left, he saw a dirt lane marked by a tree with a piece of wooden plank nailed to it bearing the words: WINE AND FOODE.

  The lane was narrow, but the car could fit. It was lined on both sides with a dense growth of tall trees. About thirty yards up there was a clearing with a small two-story house. On the front door there was the same sign as on the tree, with the same spelling mistake, except that the letters were all larger. Sitting beside the door in a wicker chair was a disheveled woman of about seventy wearing an apron and slippers.

  When she saw a car coming, she stood up and went inside. The inspector pulled up, got out of the car, and followed her. Inside was a large room with some ten tables covered with oilcloth and a counter at the back, which the woman had gone behind. Behind her were two barrels of wine, a rather large refrigerator, and built-in shelves with bottles and glasses.

  “What can I get for you?”

  “A glass of wine, thanks.”

  The woman tapped it directly from the barrel. It was excellent.

  “What sort of food have you got?”

  “That’s only in the evening, when we make stuff to eat with the wine.”

  So they only cooked in the evenings, when the townfolk came to play cards and drink.

  “Is it true that you make lamb’s head?”

  “Yessir, but only Saturdays. When there’s more people.”

  “How do you cook it?”

  “Sometimes we stew it, sometimes we fry it, or roast it, or bake it . . .”

  It all corresponded.

  “What about the other days?”

  “Sausages, pork ribs, cacio all’argintera, that kind of thing.”

  “Could I have another?”

  The old woman poured him another glass. He paid, said goodbye, and went out. Now, what came next? He took the poem out of his pocket.

  . . . drink two glasses of wine

  and proceed without haste

  to a place where you’ll find

  a small piece of the sky.

  Now came the hard part. The poem’s instructions were too vague. Proceed without haste. Fine, but where to? Get in the car and . . . No, wait a second. He sensed instinctively that he shouldn’t take the car.

  And indirectly, the poem itself implied this. Eat the sheep’s head, drink two glasses of wine, proceed without haste—that is, take a nice slow walk, to aid digestion, the way he customarily did along the jetty after eating. Therefore the place that looked like a piece of the sky must be somewhere around there. He took a good look around. And he noticed that the dirt track he had taken to the clearing in which he now stood continued. Except that it stopped being a dirt road and turned into a sort of trail through the dense growth of trees, full of pits and dips. He drew near to it. There were visible tire tracks from cars, clearly off-road vehicles. His car could never manage it. Indeed, probably no town car could.

  The woman came out and sat back down in the wicker chair.

  He could have asked her where the path led, but he didn’t want to attract too much attention to himself, which might spark curiosity and questions. The best thing was to find out for himself.

  He realized immediately, after taking his first steps, that even on foot it wasn’t going to be easy. On either side of the trail were old, huge carob trees, which cast dark shadows and had roots that crisscrossed the path here and there like snakes under sand. It was an unending alternation of humps and dips that forced you to balance your body in a precarious way. If you twisted an ankle, you were screwed. Days would go by before anyone found you. A hare darted hastily across the path in front of him. Then a grass snake over six feet long, a big green thing that didn’t deem him worthy of a glance. How long had it been since he’d seen animals running free? And how long since he’d heard so many birds all singing together?

  After some ten minutes of this, he began to feel tired. He wasn’t used to walking with one foot a yard higher than the other, with his body leaning worse than the Tower of Pisa. He sat down under a carob tree and fired up a cigarette.

  When he was a little kid, he was told that quadrupeds liked to eat carob beans, but he really liked them himself, though he wasn’t a quadruped. He gobbled them up raw, when they were really sweet, as well as baked, when they took on a slightly bitterish taste. One time he ate so many that he had a bellyache for two days.

  Feeling sufficiently rested, he resumed walking. Some ten minutes later he realized he’d reached his destination. The path led to a very large clearing with a tiny little lake in the middle. It wasn’t clear how it had formed or what it was doing there. It was about as big as a soccer field, perfectly circular, and looked like an artificial lake but wasn’t. His challenger had been correct in writing that it was a small piece of the sky. Because the motionless water had the exact same color as t
he sky. A flock of birds were quenching their thirst and a few were also bathing. A short distance away from them, on the shore, a curled-up dog lay asleep.

  Montalbano sat down on the ground.

  The path circled the little lake, then climbed up a slope as far as a small two-story house, behind which was a sort of thicket. The inspector figured that if he’d come this far, he might as well forge on.

  After another brief rest, he stood up and headed towards the house.

  As he slowly approached and began to get a better look at it, he noticed that the house was half in ruins. The front door was gone, as was the frame of the window next to it. And the window of the floor above was likewise simply a rectangular opening.

  He went inside.

  The ground floor consisted of a single room. To the right were the remains of a brickwork stove with two wood-fired burners. To one side, a sort of stone sink built into the wall and the remains of a clay jug beside it. On the floor, a few condoms, two syringes, and a sleeping bag riddled with holes . . .

  No furniture.

  To the left, a wooden staircase led upstairs. Before climbing it, Montalbano shook it with both hands to see if it would hold up. The wood was neither damp nor worm-eaten. He went up.

  The upstairs room was totally empty, like the one below. Here, too, condoms and syringes.

  He raced out of the house, afraid that if he lingered there too long, he might find fleas running all over his body.

  He sat for a while eyeing the lake. Charming, no doubt, but it told him nothing at all that might relate to the treasure hunt. After all, his challenger had frankly warned him:

  No scales will fall from your eye,

  no answer will make you smile.

  He couldn’t claim to have wasted his time, because his walk had been quite pleasant and healthy. Or, perhaps not so healthy as all that, since a flea had just bitten him on the hand.

  Going back the same way he had come, still leaning like the Tower of Pisa as he walked, medical collar pinching his neck because he was sweating so profusely, he got very tired.

  So tired that when he reached the clearing where he’d left the car, he got inside and just rested for a few minutes, smoking a cigarette. The wicker chair beside the door was empty. Perhaps the old woman had gone inside to prepare the food for that evening.

  A short while later, he started up the car and drove off.

  The only result he’d obtained—he thought while driving back to headquarters—was no big deal, but it was a little hole in the darkness around him, no bigger than the head of a pin, through which shone a faint shaft of light.

  And this was that Via dei Mille, the road to Gallotta, and the area around Gallotta itself, was well-known and well-traveled terrain for the prankster. Montalbano was more than certain that not even Fazio knew about the little lake the color of the sky.

  “Anyone call for me, Cat?”

  “Nossir, Chief, not f’yiz or fr’innybuddy ellis.”

  So the dead calm continued. As he was about to head back to his office, Catarella stopped him.

  “Chief, tink y’could gimme a hand?”

  “With what?”

  “Witta crassword puzzle.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “’Ere iss writt’ ’at ‘they fought against the mice.’ Five litters. Mine comes out ‘bread.’ But I never seen bread fightin’ wit’ mice. If anyting, iss the mice eatin’ the bread.”

  “It’s the ‘Batracomiomachia,’” said the inspector.

  Catarella turned pale.

  “Matre santa, Chief, wha’ kinda words come outta you mout’!”

  “Don’t worry, the word you’re looking for is ‘frogs.’”

  “’Scuse me, Chief, but then wha’ss the ‘thing that sees at night,’ ain’t it a bat?”

  “No, Cat, it’s radar.”

  “Jeezis, iss true! Tanks, Chief!”

  “Listen, Cat, do you know that little lake up by Gallotta?”

  “Nossir, Chief, when I go onna nickpick, I like to go to the beach.”

  “Get Fazio for me, would you?”

  How was it that his desk was newly covered with papers to sign? It occurred to him that if all of mankind suddenly vanished from the face of the earth, for days and days the papers to be signed would probably keep on mysteriously accumulating on the desks of the world’s offices.

  “What is it, Chief?”

  “Fazio, do you know anything about a very small lake in the area outside Gallotta?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Fazio’s answer took him by surprise. He’d been totally convinced that even Fazio didn’t know about it.

  “Do you go there for nickpicks, as Catarella calls them?”

  “Nah, Chief, I’m not too keen on picnics, but about two years before you came here to work, something happened there.”

  “What kind of thing?”

  “Near the lake there’s a little house where a peasant used to live, a widower, I think his name was Parisi—yeah, Tano Parisi, who lived with a beautiful daughter, sixteen years old. One day Tano came and reported the disappearance of his daughter, whose name I don’t remember. And she’s never been heard from since.”

  “Was there an investigation?”

  “Of course! I took part in it myself. The chief inspector at the time, Bonvicino, had the father arrested.”

  “Why?”

  “There were rumors that Tano, the father, took advantage of her. The town doctor didn’t say it outright, but he let Inspector Bonvicino know that the girl was pregnant.”

  “But couldn’t she have had a relationship with somebody else?”

  “Well, exactly. Other folks in town said that it was true that the father took advantage of her, but that she was also doing it with a man in Gallotta. They said he was the one that got the kid pregnant, and that the girl jumped in the lake and killed herself because she was too scared to tell her father she was pregnant.”

  “But is it deep enough?”

  “It’s extremely deep, Chief. Every so often some geologist goes up there to study it. They have no explanation for it.”

  “Doesn’t it have a name?”

  “You mean the lake?”

  “Yes.”

  “They just call it ’u Lacu d’o Signuri, God’s Lake. They say that God, when he stretched the canvas of the sky over creation, had a little piece left over. So he tore it off, rolled it up, poked his finger into the ground to make a really deep hole, right there outside Gallotta, stuck the rolled-up sky all the way down and then changed it to water. And that’s why it’s so deep and has that color.”

  So his challenger also knew the legend.

  “And what ever happened to the girl’s father?”

  “He was acquitted for lack of evidence. But the people who kept on believing he was his own daughter’s killer wouldn’t give up and on certain nights they’d go and shoot at his house. Tano figured that sooner or later they were going to kill him, so he moved to another town. But why are you so interested in this lake? Did something happen at the campsite?”

  “What campsite?”

  “For a while some foreign kids’ve been camping in the woods behind the house. Livin’ the natural life, bare-assed and drugged out. Every so often things take a bad turn and somebody gets knifed.”

  “Chief? ’At’d be your cleanin’ lady onna line. C’n I put her true?”

  “Go ahead . . . Hello, Adelì. How are you feeling?”

  “Fine, sir. I wannit a say I’s comin’ a beck a work tomorrow.”

  “Do you feel up to it?”

  “Yessir, I do. But you gotta do me a favor. I don’ wanna looka like I’s a stick a my nose inna you business . . .”

  “Go on, speak.”

  “You gotta get ridda those dolls. They gimme the creeps. Jesus, whatta scare they givva me!”

  “Don’t worry, Adelì, they’re already gone.”

  He ate very little. He didn’t like eating in restaurants alone
at night. By now he was accustomed to eating at home in the evening. At least it would be the last time, and tomorrow he could open the refrigerator or oven and find another of Adelina’s wonderful surprises.

  He sat at home watching the late edition of the news, national and local. In Salemi a man returning from his nearby country house was murdered and, naturally, nobody had heard or seen a thing. The motive appeared to have been a matter of inheritance that had been dragging on for years, but the case was turning out to be rather complicated just the same. Montalbano suddenly felt a pang of envy for the police detective in charge of the investigation.

  What? Was he starting to suffer from homicide withdrawal? Before going to bed, he decided to try to make peace with Livia, and so he called her.

  “Hi. Listen, despite the fact that you hung up on me this morning—”

  “I didn’t hang up on you.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No, I didn’t. The line went dead. I kept saying ‘hello, hello’ and then I finally hung up.”

  “Why didn’t you try calling back?”

  “Because I’d already heard the essential part, that is, that you weren’t coming anymore, and I didn’t feel like phoning you from the office. And if you really want to know, I knew all along you wouldn’t come.”

  “Livia, I swear—”

  “Just drop it.”

  There was a pause, with the estimated temperature at about 40 below. Then Livia resumed talking, though it probably would have been better if she hadn’t.

  “And what’s the excuse this time?”