Montalbano's First Case

  Montalbano’s First Case

  Andrea Camilleri

  Translated by Gianluca Rizzo and Dominic Siracusa

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  About the Author

  1

  Montalbano had been given a sort of prediction, in the most indirect of ways, concerning his upcoming promotion to inspector. It came exactly two months before the official communication, with all its customary stamps.

  In fact, in all government offices worthy of the name, predicting (or forecasting, if you prefer) the future, more or less distant, of each member of said office—and of those nearby—is a trivial, obvious, and everyday exercise. There’s no need, for instance, to peruse the entrails of a quartered carcass or to consult the flight of birds like in the olden days. Nor is it necessary to read the bottoms of coffee cups, as people do nowadays. And yet, in those offices, oceans of coffee are brewed and consumed every day. No, to make a prediction (or forecast, if you prefer), all it takes is half a word, the start of a look, a faint murmur, and the intention to raise one’s brow. And these predictions (or forecasts, et cetera) are not exclusive to the bureaucrats’ careers, transfers, promotions, reprimands, notes of merit or demerit, but often and happily extend to their private lives.

  “Mark my words, before the week’s out, Falcuccio’s wife will make a cuckold of him with the specialist Stracuzzi,” the accountant Piscopo whispered to the surveyor Dalli Cardillo as they watched their colleague Falcuccio head to the lavatory, blissfully unaware.

  “Are you serious?” the surveyor asked, taken aback.

  “As a heart attack.”

  “And how are you so sure?”

  “Please,” Piscopo said with a half smile, as he tipped his head over one shoulder and placed his right hand on his heart.

  “Have you ever seen Mrs. Falcuccio?”

  “Me? No, never. Why do you ask?”

  “Because I know her.”

  “So what?”

  “You see, my dear accountant, she’s fat, hairy, and half a midget.”

  “What difference does that make? Are you saying that fat, hairy half midgets lack that thing all other women have between their legs?”

  And the extraordinary thing is that, seven days after that conversation, as predicted, Mrs. Falcuccio was found panting with pleasure—“Mother Mary! I’m dying!”—in the vast, widowed bed of Stracuzzi.

  If this is what happens in a regular office, imagine the degree of accuracy of those predictions (or forecasts, et cetera) made in a police station where the entire staff, with no hierarchical distinction, is specifically trained and instructed to note even the smallest clue, the slightest shift in the wind, and to draw all the pertinent conclusions.

  The news of his promotion didn’t catch Montalbano off guard; it was standard procedure, as they often say in those offices, and he had more than paid his dues during his apprenticeship as deputy of Mascalippa, a small town lost within the Erean Mountains, serving under Chief Inspector Libero Sanfilippo. What Montalbano was worried about was where they were going to send him, what they called the destination. And that word, destination, was much too similar to another word: destiny. In fact, a promotion also meant a transfer. And thus a change in residence, in routine, in friendships: a whole new destiny to discover. Honestly, he had grown tired of Mascalippa and its surroundings, but not of its inhabitants, who were neither worse nor better than any others, with the right percentage of criminals and upstanding citizens, idiots and smart people; no, what he couldn’t endure any longer was the landscape. Let’s get one thing straight: If there was a part of Sicily he really loved to look at it, it was the dry and scorched Sicily, yellow and brown, where stubborn patches of green jumped out like a shot from a cannon; where the little houses balanced on top of the hills looked like white dice that were about to roll down at the first strong gust of wind; where at high noon even lizards and snakes couldn’t muster the strength to hide in the brush or under a stone and just lay there resigned to their fate, regardless of what it might bring. And most of all, he liked to look at the beds of what used to be rivers and creeks, or at least that’s how the street signs referred to them—Ipsas, Salsetto, Kokalos—now nothing more than a long line of white stones and dusty pebbles. He liked looking at that landscape, of course he did: but living inside it, day in and day out, was enough to drive a man insane. That’s because he was a man of the sea. In Mascalippa, on certain mornings at dawn, when he would open the window and take a deep breath, instead of feeling his lungs fill with air, he had the impression that they were being emptied, as if he were drowning. Certainly, the early morning air of Mascalippa was good for you, special, it smelled of hay and grass, of open countryside, but it wasn’t enough for him—and actually, one of these days it was going to suffocate him. He needed the sea breeze, he needed the smell of seaweed, he needed to taste the salt when he licked his lips. He needed long walks by the sea early in the morning, with the waves that came up to caress his feet. A destination to a mountain town like Mascalippa would have been worse than ten years in the can.

  The same morning that someone who had nothing to do with police station, but who was still a government employee (that is, the local postmaster), had prophesized his transfer, Montalbano was summoned by his boss, Chief Inspector Libero Sanfilippo. He was a real cop, one of those who knew if someone was telling the truth or bullshitting before they even opened their mouth. And at the time, in 1985, his kind was already an endangered species. Like those doctors who had what was called a “clinical eye,” and could diagnose their patients’ ailments just by looking at them; nowadays, if they don’t have at least a hundred different lab results cooked up by a thousand different technologically advanced machines, they don’t understand a goddamn thing, not even a good old-fashioned flu. Years later, when Montalbano happened to think back on those first years of his career, Libero Sanfilippo held a place of prominence; without making a big deal out of it, he had taught Montalbano many things. First and foremost, how to keep his inner balance in the face of serious and upsetting events.

  “If you let yourself be overrun by your emotions, by dismay, horror, indignation, and empathy, you’re completely fucked,” Sanfilippo had reminded him every chance he got. But Montalbano could only follow this principle in part, because at times, in spite of his resistance, he was overwhelmed by his feelings and emotions.

  Second, Sanfilippo had told him how to cultivate the clinical eye that Montalbano had envied so much in his superior. But, concerning this second teaching, he took only what he could: Clearly, that kind of X-ray vision, like Superman’s, was, for the most part, a gift of nature.

  The negative side of Chief Inspector Sanfilippo—at least in the eyes of his liberal deputy—was his complete, blind devotion to all order worthy of a capital O. The institutional Order. The public Order. The social Order. In his first few days in Mascalippa, Montalbano had wondered why a sufficiently educated gentleman would so passionately trust an abstract idea that, as soon as you applied it to the real world, took on the unpleasant shape of a nightstick and a pair of handcuffs. His answer came one day when, by chance, he happened to steal a glance at his superior’s ID. His full name read Libero Pensiero Sanfilippo. Mother of God! Libero Pensiero, Volontà, Libertà, Palingenesi, Vindice—these were all typical names anarchists gave to their sons and daughters! Undoubtedly, the chief inspector’s father was an anarchist and his son, out of spite, not only had become a cop, but also became obsessed with the idea of Order in an extreme attempt to destroy his father’s genetic legacy.
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  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Good morning. Please shut the door and take a seat. You can smoke if you want. But please watch the ashes.”

  Yup. That was because in addition to Order with a capital O, Sanfilippo also liked the lowercase order. If as much as a speck of ash fell outside the ashtray, Sanfilippo would start to get antsy; he’d change color, and you could tell he was suffering.

  “How’s the Amoruso-Lonardo case coming? Any developments?” the inspector began.

  Montalbano wavered. What case? Filippo Amoruso: sixty years old, retired, had moved the wall around his garden slightly while making repairs, annexing about five inches of the garden belonging to his neighbor, Pasquale Lonardo: eighty years old, retired. The latter, upon discovering the misdeed, had declared in the presence of a third party that he had repeated carnal congress with the late mother, known to each and all as the greatest of whores, of said Amoruso. After hearing said statement, Amoruso, without uttering a single sound, proceeded to insert five inches of steel into the belly of said Lonardo, oblivious to the fact that said Lonardo, in that precise moment, was holding a hoe, which he used to crack his opponent’s head before collapsing to the ground. Now both men were in the hospital, charged with disorderly conduct and attempted murder. The chief inspector’s question, in all its pointlessness, could mean only one thing: he was beating around the bush before getting to what he really wanted to talk about. Montalbano braced for impact.

  “Not really,” he said.

  “Good, good.”

  Silence. Montalbano moved his left buttock a few inches forward and crossed his legs. He wasn’t feeling at ease. Something in the air made him nervous. In the meantime, Sanfilippo had produced a handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and was using it to polish his desk.

  “Yesterday afternoon, as I’m sure you know, I was in Enna. The chief asked to speak to me,” he said suddenly.

  Montalbano uncrossed his legs and didn’t say a word.

  “He notified me of my promotion to deputy chief of police and my transfer to Palermo.”

  Montalbano felt a knot in his throat.

  “Congratulations,” he managed to articulate.

  Did he really summon him to tell him something that everyone and their mother had known for over a month? The chief inspector removed his glasses, held the lenses up to the light, and put them back on.

  “Thanks. He also told me that you’d be promoted in a couple of months at most. Have you heard anything about it?”

  “Yeh’,” Montalbano mumbled. He couldn’t utter the letter s, because his tongue had grown stiff; he was tense and wound as tightly as a spring.

  “The chief asked me if I thought it was a good idea for you to take my place.”

  “Here?”

  “Of course. Here in Mascalippa. Where else?”

  “Bu-bu-bu-bu …” Montalbano stammered.

  And it wasn’t clear whether he was stuttering or if he had run out of t’s. He knew it! From the moment he had entered that room he’d been expecting the bad news! And here it was, delivered right on time. In a matter of seconds he saw the landscape of Mascalippa and its surroundings pass before his eyes. It was certainly splendid, but not his cup of tea. For good measure, he also saw four cows grazing on the withering grass. He felt a cold shiver down his spine, like a bout of malaria.

  “I told him I didn’t think it was a good idea,” Sanfilippo said looking at him with a half smile.

  Did that son of a bitch of a superior want to give him a heart attack? Did he want to see him fall to the floor gasping for breath? Although he was on the brink of a nervous breakdown, Montalbano’s spirit of contradiction got the better of him.

  “And why, in your opinion, isn’t it a good idea for me to be the chief inspector of Mascalippa?”

  “Because you’re completely incompatible with the environment.”

  He paused, and widened his smile.

  “Or rather, the environment is incompatible with you.”

  Sanfilippo was a hell of a cop!

  “When did you figure it out? I didn’t do anything to …”

  “The hell you didn’t! You didn’t speak, you didn’t say anything—you’re right about that. But you did it, and you did plenty. A few weeks after you got here I already had you all figured out.”

  “What in the world did I do exactly?”

  “I’ll give you only one example. You remember that time we went to interview those farmers on Mount Stellario and we had lunch with that family of shepherds?”

  “Yes,” Montalbano said, biting his lip.

  “They had set a table outside, it was a beautiful day, the mountaintops were still white with snow. Do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “You kept your head down, you didn’t want to look at the view. They offered us fresh ricotta cheese and you murmured that you weren’t hungry. Then the head of the household said that it was so clear that you could see the lake. He pointed to it, down there in the valley. I looked. A gem sparkling in the sun. I invited you to look at that wonderful sight. You agreed, but you closed your eyes immediately and turned white. You didn’t touch any of the food, and then there was that other time …”

  “Enough, please, have mercy.”

  The chief inspector was enjoying himself, toying with Montalbano like a cat with a mouse. So much so that he had forgotten to tell him how his conversation with the chief had ended. As Montalbano was still recovering from the memory of that awful day spent on Mount Stellario, he had the gnawing sensation that Sanfilippo didn’t have the courage to tell him the truth. That is, that the chief was sticking to his original plan: Montalbano was going to become the chief inspector of Mascalippa.

  “And the chief?” he dared.

  “What about the chief?”

  “What did he have to say about your observation?”

  “That he would think about it. But if you want to know what I think …”

  “Of course I want to know!”

  “I think I managed to convince him. He’ll let his superiors decide where to transfer you.”

  And what were they going to decide, the Higher-Ups, the Supreme Beings, the Gods, who like all other gods worthy of the name, reside in Rome? This nagging question prevented him from enjoying the suckling pig that the trattoria owner Santino had ceremoniously announced the day before.

  “Today, you didn’t do me proud,” Santino said, slightly offended, having seen him eat without gusto.

  Montalbano opened his arms and shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of resignation. “Sorry, Santì, but I’m not feeling too well.”

  He left the trattoria and suddenly found himself lost in the nothingness, trying to feel his way around. When he had entered the trattoria the sun was out; about an hour later, a thick and gloomy fog had risen. That was how it was in Mascalippa.

  He headed home with a shrunken heart, avoiding, only at the last second, collisions with other human shadows. The day was dark and the darkness had seeped inside him as well. As he walked, he made a decision that he knew to be final, indisputable: if they were going to assign him to a town like Mascalippa, he would have to resign. He’d rather become a lawyer, or an assistant to a lawyer, or the security guard in a law office, as long as he was in a place by the sea.

  He had rented a small apartment composed of two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen, right downtown, so that, when he opened the window, he couldn’t see the mountains and the hills. There was no central heat and in spite of the four electric heaters that were constantly on during winter nights, the best thing to do was to go to bed and bury yourself under the blankets, with only your face and a hand poking out to read. Reading and thinking about what he had read were things he always liked to do; that was why the two rooms were filled to the rafters with books. He could easily start one in the evening and go on till morning, without any breaks. Luckily there was no risk of being disturbed at night by violent crimes. God only knew why all the killings, shootings, and
bloody fistfights always happened during the day. And there was never a need to open an investigation; they were all crimes without mystery: John shot Bob over some money and readily confessed; Jack stabbed Tom over his cheating wife and confessed. If he wanted to use his brain, Montalbano was forced to solve the weekly crossword puzzle. Anyway, the years he spent in Mascalippa working under someone like Sanfilippo hadn’t been wasted—on the contrary.

  That night, however, the idea of staying in bed to read or watching some bullshit program on TV seemed completely unbearable. By then, Mery had certainly returned home from the school where she taught Latin. They had met in college during their years of protest. They were the same age—actually, she was four months younger than he. From the moment they first saw each other, they knew they were birds of a feather, and shortly thereafter they went from friendship to a sort of romantic relationship that was absolutely free: when they felt like seeing each other, one called the other and they met. Later, they fell out of touch. Around 1975, Montalbano had heard that Mery had gotten married but had that she broken it off after less than a year. He ran into her by chance, in Catania, on Via Etna, a week after he had been assigned to Mascalippa. Desperate, he had gotten in his car, driven for over an hour, and arrived in Catania with the intention of seeing a movie that had just come out: the movies they showed in the one theater in Mascalippa were at least three years old. There, in the lobby, as he was waiting in line to buy his ticket, he heard somebody calling his name. It was she, Mery, on her way out of the theater. She had been beautiful and voluptuous as a girl, but now maturity and experience had given her a collected, almost secret kind of beauty. In the end, Montalbano didn’t see the movie; he followed Mery to her apartment, where she lived alone without any plans of getting married ever again. The first time around had been more than enough. Montalbano had spent the night with her, and the next morning at six, he had driven back to Mascalippa. From then on it had become a sort of routine—Montalbano would make the drive to Catania at least a couple times a week.