The Safety Net

by Andrea Camilleri

  * * *

  After lolling about the office for some three hours, the inspector decided it was time to go eat.

  The film crew had naturally also invaded Enzo’s trattoria, and what irked Montalbano most was the tremendous, deafening chaos the combination of Swedes and Italians managed to make while eating. Which was intolerable to him, as silence was normally the condiment to his meals.

  And so he made a deal with Enzo that his table should always be set in the little room adjacent to the main room. There were few other tables there, and Montalbano made him promise that nobody from the crews, either Italian or Swedish, would be allowed, for any reason, to set foot in that room.

  Despite all the bother, his appetite luckily wasn’t lacking, and he chowed down seriously on antipasti, spaghetti with fresh tuna sauce, and a platter of mullet. After which he went back outside.

  Luckily there was no sign of any filming activity on the jetty. And so he was able to have a pleasant stroll, tranquil and undisturbed. And quiet, above all. Sitting down on the flat rock, he realized that, if things continued along their present course, the best solution might be to take a few vacation days and go see Livia in Boccadasse.

  The idea that he would have to meet strangers that evening, and even put on a good face and make conversation with people he found utterly insufferable, made him feel so agitated that he made a sudden decision.

  When he got back to the station, he summoned Fazio.

  “Listen, I’m going home. If you should need me for anything, just call.”

  Once he got home he decided that the best thing to do would be to lie down for a spell, and so he undressed and lay down in bed, hoping to doze for half an hour or so.

  To his great surprise, when he woke up it was past seven. And so he dashed into the bathroom, changed his shirt, took the good suit out of the armoire, got into it, put on a tie, and looked at himself in the mirror.

  Adelina was absolutely right. He looked just like a black seagull.

  * * *

  Town hall was a sea of lights. A number of burning torches had been placed across the façade, and two floodlights lit up the entire building. The Italian and Swedish flags were flying side by side on the balcony. The meeting celebrating the sistering of Vigàta with Kalmar would be held in the conference hall. While waiting, the guests dallied in the great anteroom, where the tables that would serve the buffet after the ceremony were already laid out with white tablecloths and set.

  Montalbano got there a little late, and by that time the anteroom was already full of people. As soon as she saw him come in, Ingrid rushed up to him and, taking his arm, led him to a giant about six-foot-six, a sort of blond bear—if any had ever existed—who was introduced to him as the director of the TV movie.

  Ingrid then immediately presented him to two of the three Swedish actresses, adding that the third one had suffered a slight malaise and would therefore not be attending the ceremony.

  It took him one look around to ascertain that Mimì Augello wasn’t present, either. Which was very odd. Might he be suffering from the same malaise as the Swedish actress?

  * * *

  Then some people started saying that the guests should move into the council chamber and take their assigned places. And that was how Montalbano found himself sitting in the front row between the town priest and the commander of the Harbor Office. Also in the front row were a carabinieri lieutenant, but he’d been diplomatically seated four places down from the inspector.

  The wall behind the high-backed chairs of the mayor and his council was entirely covered with a large nineteenth-century tapestry depicting Vigàta and its port.

  At a certain point, from the anteroom came the sound of a sort of light waltz that nobody had ever heard before. The mayor of Vigàta, Signor Pillitteri, gestured for everyone to stand, and they all obeyed. After the waltz ended, they were all about to sit back down when the national anthem began, and everyone rose again. As they were finally settling in, however, everyone noticed that the four Swedes present were still standing.

  “Why are they still on their feet?” Pillitteri asked Ingrid.

  Ingrid asked one of the men in her native language, the man answered, and she translated:

  “He says they’re waiting for the Swedish national anthem.”

  “But that’s what we played first!” exclaimed Pillitteri.

  Apparently the Vigàta municipal band had given such a personal interpretation to the anthem that the Swedes hadn’t recognized it.

  After the misunderstanding was cleared up, Pillitteri had his Swedish counterpart from Kalmar, a sixtyish man with glasses and sandy hair, sit down beside him. The other three Swedish representatives were sitting in places off to the side, normally reserved for councillors.

  The audience, however, was in its proper place.

  Pillitteri quickly ceded the floor to his Swedish counterpart, who was translated by Ingrid and immediately launched into the complete history of his city. Which everyone, moreover, already knew, since for the past week the two local TV stations had been doing nothing but telling the story of their new sister city, which looked out on the Baltic Sea.

  The mere mention of the Baltic Sea got Montalbano’s brain whirring. Were there mullet in the Baltic Sea? Were there purpiteddri, baby octopi like the kind Enzo fed him, in the Baltic Sea? And, if so, what did they taste like? Surely they must have a different flavor, since he’d already noticed, for example, that the fish from the Adriatic Sea tasted slightly different from the fish in the Tyrrhenian. So one could only imagine the difference of flavor in a fish from so far north as Kalmar.

  The peal of applause brought him back to reality.

  Luckily for everyone, the mayor of Vigàta spoke little, but in fact his speech was cut even shorter by an unexpected incident. Namely, the large tapestry hanging behind him suddenly came detached from the wall and folded over itself halfway, exposing the upper part of a fresco depicting Benito Mussolini astride a white horse, sabre unsheathed. The mayor trailed off, a few people started laughing, a few others applauded, and still a few more got angry, because Pillitteri wrapped things up in a hurry and then invited everyone to go over to the buffet, which, he pointed out with a certain pride, consisted entirely of what he called, in heavily accented English, finghirfud.

  Indeed the mayor’s wife, Ersilia Pillitteri, a smart woman with progressive ideas, had decided to send for some Palermo caterers specializing precisely in finghirfud: naturally, little tidbits one could only eat with one’s fingers. In fact, one saw nor hide nor hair of spoons or forks or knives on any of the serving tables. What there were instead were a great many little tubs and glasses full of colored stuff not easily identified, and for this reason the puzzled Vigatese were loath to reach out and grab any finghirfud. The mayor’s wife decided to set the example. Picking up a transparent glass, she explained that it contained a mousse of baccalà topped with myrtle berries and a laurel leaf; and, using the leaf as a spoon, she started eating it. A few brave souls followed her example. Montalbano grabbed one of the little tubs and studied it carefully. At first glance it seemed to contain a meatball with something white beside it, which could have passed for purée. Unconvinced, he picked up the little meatball with two fingers and bit into it. It wasn’t meat, as he’d thought, but a sort of mishmash of raw broccoli and overcooked green beans pressed around a core of salmon, in an apparent tribute to the Swedish. He felt like spitting it back out, but this seemed unbecoming to him, and so he closed his eyes and swallowed. To get rid of the nasty taste in his mouth, he stuck two fingers into the whitish goo, but this proved even worse, as the goo turned out to be a sort of stracchino cheese gone bad, with a sickly-sweet flavor of coconut.

  Setting the little tub down, he realized there weren’t any more paper napkins to clean his hands with. Cursing the saints, he pulled his handkerchief out of his pocket, staining his sport coat, naturally,
in the process, and, figuring he’d done his duty, he turned his back on the distinguished guests and headed for the door, determined to go and eat at Enzo’s.

  “Inspector Montalbano!”

  He stopped, turned around, and saw coming towards him a man a few years over sixty, tall and well dressed. It was the chief engineer of the municipal government, Ernesto Sabatello.

  “Were you about to leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’d like to come out with you, if you don’t mind.”

  As they started descending the stairs, Sabatello opened the conversation.

  “You know, I had promised myself to come and pay a call on you at the station one of these days, but then . . .”

  “Did you change your mind?”

  “Not at all. It just didn’t seem appropriate to me. Bothering you over an entirely personal matter, and a rather silly one at that . . .”

  They were now outside the town hall.

  “You could give me a few hints right now, if you like . . .” the inspector invited him.

  Sabatello didn’t wait to be asked twice.

  “I’ll steal just a few minutes of your time, and then, if you find the matter of interest to you . . . Anyway, I have to confess that, like everyone else, I let myself get caught up in the search for old Super 8 movies for TeleVigàta. I remembered that we had a big chest in the attic full of home movies, all filmed by my father, who must have been a maniac . . . Luckily the projector was also in the chest, and it still works. Anyway, in short, I looked at all of them and sent the best ones to TeleVigàta. On the other hand . . .”

  “On the other hand?”

  “As I said, I’m sure it’s just something silly and of no importance whatsoever, but I still can’t explain it, because it seems so crazy, so illogical . . .”

  “Want to tell me what you’re talking about?” asked Montalbano, who was beginning to lose patience.

  “Well, among all those reels, which showed all the usual family doings—birthday parties, vacations by the sea, a variety of different landscapes—there were six that were . . . I don’t quite know how to put it . . . that were entirely anomalous.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, they all showed the same scene.”

  Montalbano didn’t find anything so unusual about this. And he said so to Sabatello.

  “If the same scene is shot repeatedly from different angles, I really don’t see what—”

  “Wait,” Sabatello cut him off. “The image is still, and is always shot from the same angle. On top of that—and this is perhaps the strangest part of it all—the six home movies were shot over the course of six years, from 1958 to 1963.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Every reel is wrapped in paper with the date in my father’s handwriting. For six years in a row he made those films in the same month of the year, the same day, and at the same hour: on the twenty-seventh of March, at ten twenty-five in the morning.”

  “But what’s on the screen? What did he film?”

  Sabatello took a breath before answering.

  “Part of a wall. Always the same one.”

  Montalbano looked puzzled.

  “Part of a wall?”

  “That’s right.”

  “But is there anything on that wall?”

  “No, nothing. No writing, drawing, or anything else.”

  “And does the appearance of the wall change over the years?”

  “Well, I suppose a few more cracks begin to appear in the stucco, but nothing more . . . at least as far as I can tell. Perhaps a fresh look with your eyes, which are trained to grasp every tiny detail . . .”

  The inspector realized what the engineer was getting at.

  “If you like, you can lend me the films and the projector.”

  “I’ll get everything to you by tomorrow morning,” the engineer said, smiling.

  They shook hands, and Montalbano dashed off to Enzo’s, hoping that the film crew hadn’t gobbled up the whole restaurant.

  2

  He had a treacherous night, because, despite the fact that he’d eaten at Enzo’s, the nasty taste of the fake meatball and the equally fake purée had stuck to his palate, forcing him to get up cursing two or three times during the night to go into the bathroom and rinse out his mouth, without, moreover, actually achieving any results.

  He didn’t manage to get rid of it until the following morning, by fixing himself some coffee so dense and viscous it looked like petroleum. When he got into his car to go to work he was in a dark mood, prompted by the thought that it was going to be another chaotic day under the sign of the TV carnival.

  And indeed, as though on cue, he found himself behind a haul-away trailer full of 1950s model cars, headed to Vigàta at a snail’s pace.

  * * *

  “Ahh, Chief, inna mornin’ ’iss mornin’ some jinnelman by the name o’ Stampatello come by witta dillivery f’yiz ’at I’m asposta dilliver t’yiz poissonally in poisson.”

  Catarella bent down, picked up a parcel a little bigger than a shoe box, and, turning back to the inspector, said:

  “Ya c’n go on, Chief, I’ll follow up behine yiz witta packitch.”

  Once they were inside his office, Catarella set it delicately down in the middle of the desk, gave a salute, and went back to his post.

  Montalbano sat down and opened the package. It contained the six reels that Sabatello had mentioned, and the apposite projector. There was also a letter addressed to him.

  Dear Inspector Montalbano,

  Thank you, first of all, for making yourself available.

  I am sending herewith the materials I mentioned yesterday.

  I am keen to inform you that the reel shot in 1963 was the only thing Papa filmed that year, because his illness had worsened considerably by then, forcing him to remain in bed most of the time. He died on May 15 of the same year, in the family villa, and therefore in order to film that last footage he had to summon all his remaining strength to get out of bed. This, in my opinion, means that these little home movies were extremely important to him. But why? That is where I hope you will be able to help me.

  I remain at your disposal for any further information you may need.

  I include here my cell phone number.

  With best wishes,

  ERNESTO SABATELLO

  It was the phrase “the only thing Papa filmed that year”—the fact that a man on death’s doorstep would make the effort to film a patch of wall—that really sparked Montalbano’s curiosity. And, considering the fact that the situation at Vigàta Police was one of dead calm, he immediately decided he wanted to get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible.

  He took the calendar off the wall—which featured a large photo of the full staff of Vigàta Police—rehung it from a free nail near the door, closed the window to make the room dark, then turned on the light and plugged in the projector’s cable, which was equipped with a transformer.

  A small white square appeared on the wall before him. He grabbed the first reel and immediately felt paralyzed.

  From what side should he thread it? Through which sprockets was the film supposed to pass in order to be projected? Which button activated the projector?

  No, this really wasn’t his sort of thing.

  To avoid wasting time, he called Catarella in for help. And in the twinkling of an eye the switchboard operator explained the whole arcanum, as well as the button for freezing the image.

  Catarella left, and Montalbano started the projector. But at the first sound made by the film as it ran through the sprockets, he stopped the machine at once and sat there for a few minutes without moving.

  Only God knew from what depths of his brain a scene from his childhood had surfaced in his mind, of his father projecting a Super 8 home movie
in which the image of his mother appeared for only a second, from behind. It was the only image he had of her, and that was always the way she appeared, etched in his memory: from behind, with her long blonde hair swaying gently like wheat in the wind.

  He got up, went to drink a glass of water, then sat back down. He closed his eyes as if to erase all prior imagery from his memory, then reopened them and restarted the projector.

  Sabatello was right. The patch of wall was framed so that one could not see the base or the top of the wall, and one saw nothing else for the three and a half minutes that the film lasted.

  When the first reel was finished, he moved on to the second. It was identical to the first.

  He went forward and back three or four times, sometimes stopping the frame to have a better look at a detail; then, looking at the two films again, one right after the other, he tried to commit to memory everything he saw.

  There was no difference whatsoever between the two.

  There was one new development in the third reel. Out of a crack in the stucco a few blades of stunted grass were now growing. They were already gone, however, in the reel that followed. It must have been a windy day, since the little plants all around were trembling. In the fifth film, what had been the crack had so broadened that a piece of stucco had fallen off, bringing to light the blocks of tufa stone that lay underneath. The final reel, the one from ’63, was exactly the same as the one before it.

  Montalbano turned the projector off, went over to open the window, fired up a cigarette, and smoked it with his elbows resting on the windowsill.

  If the previous evening Sabatello’s words had merely aroused his curiosity, viewing the images had turned his curiosity into a pressing need to understand. At the same time, as he became aware of this need, he became convinced he would never be in any position to give any logical, concrete answer to either himself or Engineer Sabatello.