The Track of Sand (23 page)

“It’s a plausible hypothesis.”

“Thanks for understanding without need of further explanation.”

“Listen, Doctor. Any distinguishing marks?”

“Appendectomy scar.”

“That should help in the identification.”

“The identification of whom?”

“The dead man, who else?”

“The dead man never had an appendectomy!”

“But you just said he did!”

“You see, my friend? That’s another sign of aging.You asked me the question in such a confused way that I thought you were asking me if
I
had any distinguishing marks.”

Pasquano was just pulling his leg. He amused himself trying to get on Montalbano’s nerves.

“All right, Doctor, now that we’ve cleared up that misunderstanding, I will repeat my question, as straightforwardly as possible, so that it won’t require too much mental effort on your part, which could be fatal: Did the dead body on which you performed the autopsy today have any distinguishing marks?”

“I’d say it most certainly did.”

“Could you please tell me what those are?”

“No. It’s something I’d rather put in writing.”

“But when will I get your report?”

“When I have the time and the desire to write it.”

And there was no way to persuade him otherwise.

The inspector stayed a little while longer at the office, and then, as there was still no sign or word from either Fazio or Augello, he went home.

Shortly before he was about to go to bed, Livia phoned. This time, too, things did not go well.The conversation did not end in a squabble, but barely missed.

Words were no longer enough to help them get along and understand each other. It was as if their words, if you looked them up in the dictionary, had different and opposite definitions depending on whether he or Livia was using them.And these double meanings were a continual cause of confusion, misunderstandings, and quarrels.

But if they got together and were able to remain silent, one beside the other, things completely changed. It was as if their bodies started first to sniff each other, to pick up the other’s scent from a distance, then to speak to one another, with complete understanding, in a wordless language made up of small signs such as a leg moving an inch or two to get closer to the other, or a head leaning ever so slightly towards the other head. And, inevitably, the two bodies, still silent, would end up in a desperate embrace.

He slept poorly and was even startled awake by a nightmare in the middle of the night. How was it possible that he had gone years and years without even the slightest thought about horses and horse racing, and now he was actually dreaming about them?

He found himself in a hippodrome with three tracks running parallel to one another. With him was Commissioner Bonetti-Alderighi, impeccably dressed in riding clothes. For his part, Montalbano was unshaven and disheveled, in a shabby suit with one torn sleeve. He looked like a panhandler on the street.The grandstand was packed with people shouting and gesticulating.

“Augello, put on your glasses before mounting!” Bonetti-Alderighi commanded him.

“I’m not Augello. I’m Montalbano.”

“It makes no difference, put them on just the same! Can’t you see you’re blind as a bat?”

“I can’t put ’em on, I lost ’em onna way ’ere, I got holes in m’ pockets,” he replied, feeling ashamed.

“Penalty! You spoke in dialect!” shouted a voice, as if from a loudspeaker.

“You see the trouble you’re getting me in?” the commissioner reproached him.

“I’m sorry.”

“Get the horse!”

He turned to grab the horse, but realized it was made of bronze and half collapsed, sitting on its haunches, exactly like the RAI horse.

“How can I?”

“Grab it by the mane!”

The instant his hand touched the mane, the horse thrust its head between the inspector’s legs, hoisted him up on its neck, and raised its head, making him slide down the neck, so that he ended up mounted, but backwards, facing the animal’s haunches.

He heard laughing from the grandstand. Feeling insulted, with great effort he turned around, grabbing the mane as hard as he could, because the horse, having now become flesh and blood, was not saddled and had no reins.

Someone fired some sort of cannon, and the horse set off at a gallop towards the middle track between the other two.

“No! No!” Bonetti-Alderighi yelled.

“No! No!” the people in the grandstand repeated.

“You’re on the wrong track,” Bonetti-Alderighi yelled.

Everyone was gesticulating, but he couldn’t make out the gestures and saw only blurry splotches of color, since he had lost his glasses. He realized the horse was doing something wrong, but how do you tell a horse it’s doing something wrong? And why wasn’t it the right track?

He understood why a moment later, when the animal began to walk with great effort.The track was made of sand, the same kind of sand as a beach. But very fine and deep, so that the horse’s hooves sank further into it with each step until they were completely submerged. A track of sand. Why was this happening to him, of all people? He tried to turn the animal’s head to the left, so that it would take the other track. But he suddenly realized that the other, parallel tracks were gone; the hippodrome with its fences and grandstand had vanished, and even the track he was on was no longer there, because it had all become an ocean of sand.

Now, with each labored step it took, the animal sank further and further, first with its legs, then its belly, then even its chest submerged in sand.At some point he no longer felt the horse moving beneath him. It had suffocated to death in the sand.

He tried to climb down from the animal, but the sand kept him imprisoned there. He realized he was going to die in that desert. As he started to cry, a man materialized a few steps away from him, but he couldn’t make out the man’s face, again because he didn’t have his glasses.

“You know the way out of this situation,” the man said to him.

He wanted to answer him, but as soon as he opened his mouth, the sand came pouring in, threatening to suffocate him.

In a desperate attempt to draw a breath, he woke up.

He had dreamt a sort of mishmash of fantasy and things that had actually happened to him. But what did it mean that he was racing on the wrong track?

He got to the office later than usual, because he’d had to stop at the bank after finding a letter in his mailbox threatening to cut off his electricity for failure to pay the last bill. But he had arranged for the bank to pay the bills! He stood in line for almost an hour, showed the letter to a clerk, who began looking things up. It turned out that the bill had been paid on time.

“There must have been a mistake, sir.”

“And what am I supposed to do?”

“Don’t worry, sir, we’ll take care of it.”

For a long time he had been thinking about rewriting the Constitution. Since everybody and his dog was doing it, why couldn’t he? Article One would begin as follows:“Italy is a precarious republic founded on mistakes.”

“Ahh Chief, Chief ! F’rensics jist now sint us this invilope!”

The inspector opened it on his way to his office.

It contained a few photographs of the man found dead in Spinoccia, with related information as to age, height, color of eyes, etc....There was no mention of distinguishing marks.

There was no point in passing the photos on to Catarella and asking him to search the missing persons files for faces that might match. He was putting them back into the envelope when Mimì Augello came in. He took them back out and handed them to his second-in-command.

“You ever seen this guy?”

“Is that the dead man from Spinoccia?”

“Yes.”

Mimì put on his glasses. Montalbano squirmed uneasily in his chair.

“Never seen him before,” said Augello, laying the photos and envelope on the desk and putting the glasses back in his shirt pocket.

“Could I try them?”

“Try what?”

“The glasses.”

Augello handed them to him. Montalbano put them on, and everything suddenly looked like a blurry photograph. He took them off and gave them back to Mimì.

“I can see better with my father’s pair.”

“But you can’t ask everyone you meet with glasses if you can try them on! You simply have to go see an eye doctor! He’ll examine you and prescribe—”

“Okay, okay. I’ll go one of these days.Tell me, how is it I didn’t see you all day yesterday?”

“I spent the whole morning and afternoon looking into the business of that little boy, Angelo Verruso. Remember?”

A little boy not six years old, returning home from school, had started crying and refused to eat. Finally, after much insistence, his mother had succeeded in getting the child to tell her that his teacher had forced him into a closet and made him do “dirty things.” When the mother asked him for details, the kid said the teacher had taken his thingy out and made him touch it. A sensible woman, Signora Verruso did not believe that the teacher, a family man of about fifty, was capable of such behavior; on the other hand, neither did she want to disbelieve her son.

Since she was a friend of Beba, she spoke to her about it.And Beba, in turn, had talked to her husband, Mimì, about it.Who had then related the whole matter to Montalbano.

“How’d it go?”

“Listen, we’re better off dealing with criminals than with these little kids. It’s impossible to tell when they’re telling the truth and when they’re fibbing. And I also have to proceed with caution; I don’t want to destroy the teacher. All it takes is for a rumor to start circulating, and he’s ruined . . .”

“But what was your impression?”

“That the teacher didn’t do anything. I didn’t hear a single bad thing about him.Anyway, the closet the kid mentions is barely big enough to hold a bucket and two brooms.”

“So why, then, would the kid make up a story like that?”

“In my opinion, to get back at the teacher, who he thinks is mean to him.”

“Deliberately?”

“Are you kidding? Want to know what Angelo’s latest exploit was? He shat on a newspaper, folded it up into a little package, and slipped it into one of the drawers in the teacher’s desk.”

“So why did they name him Angelo?”

“When he was born, the parents obviously had no idea how the little imp would turn out.”

“Is he still going to school?”

“No, I advised the mother to report him sick.”

“Good idea.”

“Good morning, Inspectors,” said Fazio, coming in.

He saw the photos of the dead man.

“Can I take one of these?” he asked.“I’d like to show it around.”

“Go ahead.What did you do yesterday afternoon?”

“I kept asking around about Gurreri.”

“Did you go talk to his wife?”

“Not yet. I’ll be going later today.”

“What did you find out?”

“Chief, what Lo Duca told you is true, at least in part.”

“What part?”

“That Gurreri left his home over three months ago. All the neighbors heard him.”

“Heard what?”

“Heard him yelling at his wife, calling her a whore and a slut, and saying he was never coming back.”

“Did he say he wanted to take revenge on Lo Duca?”

“No, they didn’t hear him say that. But they also can’t swear he didn’t say it.”

“Did the neighbor lady tell you anything else?”

“No, the neighbor lady didn’t, but Don Minicuzzu did.”

“And who is Don Minicuzzu?”

“A guy who sells fruits and vegetables directly in front of where Gurreri lives and can see who goes in and out of the building.”

“And what did he tell you?”

“Chief, according to Minicuzzu, Licco has never set foot in that building. So how could he be Gurreri’s wife’s lover?”