The Age of Doubt (2 page)

“Where’d you put your clothes?”

“I saw a little heater in the bathroom, and I turned it on and put my jeans, blouse, and jacket in front of it.”

He sat her down and served her the caffelatte with a few of the biscotti Adelina normally bought for him and which he normally never ate.

“Excuse me a minute,” he said after drinking his first cup of coffee, and he got up and phoned the police station.

“Ah Chief Chief! Ahh Chief!”

“What’s wrong, Cat?”

“Iss the oppocalypso!”

“What happened?”

“The wind blew the roof tiles offa the roof in probable cause o’ which the water’s comin’ inna rooms!”

“Has it done any damage?”

“Yessir. F’rinstince, alla papers that was a toppa yer desk awaitin’ f’yiz to sign ’em ’sgot so wet they’s turn to paste.”

A hymn of exultation, deriding the bureaucracy, welled up joyously in Montalbano’s breast.

“Listen, Cat, I’m here at home. The road into town has collapsed.”

“So you’s consiquintly outta reach.”

“Unless Gallo can find a way to come and get me . . .”

“Wait a sic an’ I’ll put ’im on, ’e’s right here.”

“What is it, Chief?”

“Well, I was on my way to the station when I ran into a traffic jam about fifty yards down the road from my house. The storm tides washed away the road. My car is stuck there and can’t move. And so I’m stranded here at home. If you could manage to find a—”

Gallo didn’t let him finish his sentence.

“I’ll be there in half an hour, max,” he said.

The inspector returned to the kitchen, sat back down, and fired up a cigarette.

“Do you smoke?” he asked the young woman.

“Yes, but my cigarettes are all wet.”

“Take one of mine.”

She accepted and held out her cigarette for him to light.

“I feel mortified for causing you so much trouble—”

“Not at all! In half an hour somebody’s going to come by to pick me up. Were you on your way to Vigàta?”

“Yes. I had an appointment at ten, at the port. My aunt is supposed to be arriving. I came all the way from Palermo. But in this weather, I doubt that . . . I bet she doesn’t come in until this afternoon.”

“There aren’t any mail boats or ferries that come into the port at ten in the morning, you know.”

“I know. My aunt has her own boat.”

The word “boat” got on his nerves. Nowadays when someone says “come and see my boat,” you find yourself looking at a one-hundred-twenty-foot vessel.

“Rowboat?” he asked, innocent as a lamb.

She didn’t get the joke.

“It’s a big boat with a captain and a four-man crew. And she’s always sailing. Alone. I haven’t seen her for years.”

“Where’s she going?”

“Nowhere.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My aunt likes sailing the high seas. She can afford it. Apparently she’s very rich. When Zio Arturo died, he left her a large inheritance and a Tunisian manservant named Zizì.”

“So she bought the boat with her inheritance?”

“No, Zio Arturo already had the boat. He also liked to spend a lot of time at sea. He didn’t work, but he had a ton of money. Nobody knew where it came from. Apparently he had some sort of partnership with a banker named Ricca.”

“And what do you do, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Me?”

She seemed to hesitate for a moment, as if she needed to choose from the many different things she did.

“I’m a student.”

In the half hour that followed, Montalbano learned that the girl, who was an orphan and lived in Palermo, was studying architecture, didn’t have a boyfriend, and, well aware that she was no beauty, loved to read and listen to music. He also learned that she didn’t use perfume, lived with a cat named Eleuterio in an apartment that she owned, and preferred going to the movies to sitting in front of the television. Then she stopped all at once, looked at the inspector, and said:

“Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For listening to me. It’s not every day that a man will sit and listen to me for so long.”

Montalbano felt a little sorry for her.

Then Gallo arrived.

“The road’s still out,” he said, “but the firemen and road crews are at the site. It’s gonna take hours.”

Vanna stood up.

“I’m going to go change.”

When they went outside, the downpour had actually intensified. Gallo took the Montereale road and at the crossroads turned towards Montelusa. A good half hour later, they arrived in Vigàta.

“Let’s take the young lady to the Harbor Office,” the inspector said.

When Gallo pulled up, Montalbano said to Vanna:

“Go and see if they have any news. We’ll wait for you here.”

Vanna returned about ten minutes later.

“They said my aunt’s boat sent word that they’re proceeding slowly but are all right, and they expect to pull into port around four o’clock this afternoon.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“What am I supposed to do? I’ll wait.”

“Where?”

“Oh, I dunno, I’m unfamiliar with this town. I guess I’ll go and sit in a café.”

“Why don’t you come with us to the police station? You’ll be a lot more comfortable than in a café.”

There was a small waiting room at the station. Montalbano sat her down there, and since he had bought
a novel just the day before titled
The Solitude of Prime Numbers
, he brought the book to her.

“Fantastic!” said Vanna. I’ve been wanting to buy this. I’ve heard a lot of good things about it.”

“If you need anything, ask Catarella, the switchboard operator.”

“Thanks. You’re a real—”

“What’s the name of your aunt’s boat?”

“Same as mine. The
Vanna
.”

Before leaving the room, he eyed the girl. She looked like a wet dog. The clothes she had put back on hadn’t completely dried and were all wrinkled. Her bun of black hair had come apart and covered half her face. And she had a strange way of sitting that the inspector had noticed in certain refugees, who always look ready to leave the chair in which they are sitting, or to stay seated in that chair for eternity.

He stopped at Catarella’s post.

“Call up the Harbor Office and tell them that if the
Vanna
contacts them again, I want to know what they said.”

Catarella looked flummoxed.

“What’s wrong?” the inspector asked.

“How’s Havana gonna contact the Harbor Office?”

Montalbano’s heart sank.

“Never mind. I’ll handle it myself.”

2

His office was unusable. Water was pouring down from the ceiling as if there were ten broken pipes overhead. Since Mimì Augello wouldn’t be coming in that morning, the inspector took over his deputy’s room.

Around one o’clock, as he was getting up to go out for lunch, the phone rang.

“Chief, ’at’d be the Harbor Office onna phone, but I don’ tink the man’s a officer ’cause ’e says ’e’s Lieutinnint wha’ss ’is name . . . damn, I forgot!”

“Cat, a lieutenant
is
an officer, even though you don’t have to be an officer to work at the Harbor Office.”

“Oh, rilly? So wha’ss it mean?”

“What’s what mean? Never mind, I’ll explain later. Put him on.”

“Good afternoon, Inspector. This is Lieutenant Garrufo from the Harbor Office.”

“Good afternoon. What can I do for you?”

“We’ve just now got some news from the
Vanna
. They’re not far offshore, in the waters just a short ways beyond the port. But as the weather’s not letting up, they figure they won’t be able to dock until about five
P.M
., since they’ll have to sail a bit farther out to sea and take a different tack, which—”

“Thanks for letting me know.”

“They said something else, too.”

“And what was that?”

“Well, there was a lot of static on the line and I’m not sure we heard correctly, but there seems to be a dead man on board.”

“One of the crew?”

“No, no. They’d just picked him up when they hailed us. He was in a dinghy that by some miracle hadn’t capsized.”

“Maybe from a shipwreck.”

“Apparently not, as far as we could gather . . . But we’d better all wait till they come into port, don’t you think?”

He certainly did think they should wait.

He was almost certain, however, and would have bet his life on it, that the dead body belonged to some luckless, hungry, thirsty wretch who’d been waiting for weeks of hopeless agony to see the smoke of a steamship or even the simple profile of a fishing boat.

Better not think about such things, as the stories the fishermen told were horrific. The nets they cast into the water often came back up with corpses and body parts which they would throw back into the sea. The remains of hundreds and hundreds of men, women, and children who, after a ghastly journey through godforsaken deserts and wastelands that had decimated their numbers, had hoped to come ashore in a country where they might be able to earn a crust of bread.

And for that journey they had given up everything, sold their bodies and souls, to pay in advance the slave traders who trafficked in human bodies and often did not hesitate to let them die, throwing them into the sea at the slightest sign of danger.

And then, for those survivors who made it to dry land, what a fine welcome they received in our country!

“Reception camps” they were called, though most often they were veritable concentration camps.

And there were even people—known, curiously, as
“honorables”—who still weren’t satisfied and wanted to see them dead. They said our sailors should shell their boats, since their human cargo were all disease-carrying criminals who had no desire to work.

Pretty much the same thing that had happened to our own folk, way back when they left for America.

Except that now everyone had forgotten this.

When he thought about it, Montalbano was more than certain that, with the
Cozzi-Pini law and similar bullshit, the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph themselves would have never even made it to their cave.

He went to tell the girl about the Harbor Office’s communication with the boat.

“Listen, the
Vanna
called the Harbor Office and said they’ll be entering port around five o’clock.”

“Oh, well. I guess I’ll have to sit tight. Can I stay here?”

She had accompanied her request with a hopeful hand gesture, like someone begging for alms.

“Of course you can,” said the inspector. He couldn’t very well kick a wet dog out of a temporary shelter.

Her smile of thanks made him feel so sorry for her that he asked without thinking:

“Actually, would you like to join me for lunch?”

Vanna immediately accepted. Gallo drove them to the restaurant, since it was still raining, though not quite as hard as before.

It was a pleasure to watch her eat. She set to her food as if she had been fasting for days. The inspector did not mention the corpse the
Vanna
had taken aboard. It would have ruined her appreciation of the crispy fried mullets she was wolfing down with visible delight.

When they came out of the trattoria it had stopped raining. Glancing up at the sky, the inspector became convinced it wasn’t just a momentary letup, but that the weather was changing in earnest. There was no need to phone Gallo to come and pick them up. They returned to the station on foot, even though the road was more mud and water than asphalt.

The moment they got there, they found Gallo waiting for them.

“They’ve built a temporary bridge. You have to get your cars out of there at once.”

It took them about an hour, but at last Vanna and Montalbano were able to drive back to Vigàta, each in his and her own car.

“Ahh Chief! The Harbor’s Office juss called sayin’ as how the
Havana
’s comin’ in to portside!”

Montalbano glanced at his watch. It was four-thirty.

“Do you know how to get to the port?” he asked Vanna.

“Yes, don’t worry. I really want to thank you for your exquisite kindness, Inspector.”

She took the novel out of her purse and handed it to him.

“Did you finish it?”

“I’ve got about ten pages to go.”

“Then keep it.”

“Thanks.”

She held her hand out to him, and he shook it. She stood there a moment, looking at him, then leapt forward, threw her arms around his neck, and kissed him.

It had stopped raining outside, but not in Montalbano’s office. Water was still dripping from the ceiling. Apparently the space under the roof had become a leaking cistern. The inspector set himself up again in Augello’s office. A short while later, there was a knock at the door. It was Fazio.

“The masons will be here tomorrow to fix the roof. The cleaning women will also be coming. I had a look at the papers that were on your desk. Might as well throw them away.”

“So throw them away.”

“And then what’ll we do, Chief?”

“About what?”

“All those documents needed replies, but now we don’t know anymore what the questions were.”

“What the hell do you care?”

“I don’t. But what are you going to say to the commissioner when he starts asking you why you have so many outstanding memos unanswered?”

He was right.

“Listen, are any of those documents still intact?”

“Yessir.”

“How many?”

“About thirty.”

“Take them and put them under a faucet. Let the water run over them for about two hours.”

“But that’ll ruin them, Chief!”

“That’s the idea. When they’re nice and soaked, put them with the already useless ones. We don’t want to miss this excellent opportunity.”

“But—”

“Wait, I haven’t finished. Then grab a chair, climb up on top of the filing cabinet, and pour about twenty pitchersful of water over it. But without opening any drawers.”

“So it’ll look like the water came from the roof?”

“Exactly.”

“Chief, the records cabinet is made of steel. It’s watertight.”

Montalbano seemed disappointed.

“Oh, well. Forget about the filing cabinet.”

Fazio looked bewildered.

“But why?”

“Look, before they can figure out which documents were destroyed and redraft them, a good month, at the very least, will go by. Don’t you think that’s an incredible stroke of luck? A month without having to sign a bunch of papers that are as useless as they are overdue?”

“If you say so . . . ,” said Fazio, leaving.

“Cat, call up Dr. Lattes for me.”

He would tell the cabinet chief that they were forced to use boats to make their way around the station and that all their documents had become illegible. And he would also confess to a fear he had. Might this deluge not be the sign of an imminent Great Flood? For a bureaucrat and religious fanatic such as Lattes, such words might trigger a heart attack.

“Scuse me, Chief, but izzit possible fer summon a have a lass name of ‘Garruso’?”

“Nah, I don’t think so.”

“But there’s a liutinnint atta Harbor’s Office onna phone who says ’ass ’is name,
Garruso. Mebbe ’e’s from up north.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Cuz ’ss possible the Northers don’ know iss a bad word down ’ere, Chief.”

“No need to worry, Cat. The lieutenant’s name is ‘Garrufo,’ with an
f
.”

“Jeez, whatta rilief!”

“Why do you care so much?”

“Well, I’s a li’l imbarissed to call a liutinnint a ‘garruso.’”

“Put ’im on.”

“Inspector Montalbano? This is Garrufo.”

“What can I do for you, Lieutenant?”

“We’ve got a problem. The dead man.”

People often say that death is a liberation. For those who die, naturally. Because for those who go on living it’s almost always a colossal pain in the ass.

“Explain.”

“Dr. Raccuglia is on the scene here, and he very strongly advised that we ask you to come and have a look.”

Raccuglia was the harbor physician, a serious, much-admired person. On top of that, the inspector liked him. And so Montalbano really had no choice but to go and have a look, as the lieutenant put it.

“All right, I’m on my way.”

As soon as he stepped outside he noticed that the sky was perfectly clear again. Only the gleaming constellation of puddles in the street bore witness to what had happened just a few hours before. The sun was beginning to set, but was strong enough to make it hot outside. Sicily’s getting to be like a tropical island, the inspector thought, with rain and sunshine continually alternating in a single day. Except that, according to what one saw in ’Murcan films, on tropical islands you could eat, drink, and not give a fuck about anything, whereas here you only ate what the doctor allowed you to eat, drank only what your liver allowed you to drink, and every minute of life was a ballbuster. That made quite a difference.