He had just fallen asleep after a night worse than almost any other in his life, when a thunderclap as loud as a cannon blast fired two inches from his ear startled him awake. He sat up with a jolt, cursing the saints. Sleep seemed a distant memory, never to return. It was useless to remain in bed.
He got up, went over to the window, and looked outside. It was a textbook storm: sky painted uniformly black, bone-chilling lightning bolts, billows ten feet high charging forward, shaking their great white manes. The surging sea had eaten up the beach, washing all the way up under the veranda. He glanced at his watch: not quite 6 A.M.
He went into the kitchen, prepared a pot of coffee, and sat down, waiting for it to bubble up. Little by little, the dream he had just had began to resurface in his memory. What a tremendous pain in the ass. This had been happening to him for several years now. Why did he always have to remember every shitty little thing he happened to dream? As far as he knew, not everyone, upon waking up, dragged their dreams behind them. They simply opened their eyes, and everything that had happened to them during their sleep, good and bad, disappeared. But not him. And the worst of it was that these were problematic dreams. They raised a great many questions for most of which he had no answer. And in the end he would always get upset.
The previous evening he had gone to bed in good spirits. A week had gone by at the station with nothing of importance happening, and he’d decided to take advantage of the situation to surprise Livia and appear at her doorstep in Boccadasse unannounced. He had turned out the light, lain down in bed, and fallen asleep almost immediately. He’d started dreaming at once.
“Cat, I’m leaving for Boccadasse tonight,” he’d said, walking into the station.
“I’m coming too!”
“No, you can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because!”
At this point Fazio cut in.
“I’m sorry, Chief, but you really can’t go to Boccadasse.”
“Why not?”
Fazio looked a little apprehensive.
“Do you mean to tell me you’ve forgotten, Chief?”
“Forgotten what?”
“You died yesterday morning at exactly seven fifteen.”
And he pulled a little piece of paper out of his pocket.
“You, Salvo Montalbano, son of-”
“Knock it off with the public records! Did I really die?! How did it happen?”
“You had a stroke.”
“Where?”
“Here, at the station.”
“When?”
“When you’s talkin’ witta c’mishner,” Catarella chimed in.
Apparently that sonofabitch Bonetti-Alderighi had pissed him off so badly that…
“If you want to come and have a look…,” said Fazio, “a mortuary chapel was set up in your office.”
They’d pushed aside the mountains of paper on his desk and laid the open coffin there. He looked at himself. He didn’t look dead. But he was immediately convinced that the corpse in the coffin was his.
“Have you informed Livia?”
“Yes,” said Mimì Augello, coming up to him. Then he hugged him tightly and said, crying, “I’m so sorry.”
And a sort of chorus kept repeating:
“We’re so sorry.”
The chorus was made up of Bonetti-Alderighi, his cabinet chief Dr. Lattes, Jacomuzzi, Headmaster Burgio, and two undertakers.
“Thanks,” the inspector said.
Then Dr. Pasquano came forward.
“How did I die?” Montalbano asked him.
Pasquano flew off the handle.
“What! Still busting my balls, even in death! Just wait for the autopsy results!”
“But can’t you just give me a rough summary?”
“It looks like a sudden, massive stroke, but there are a few things that don’t-”
“Oh, no you don’t!” the commissioner broke in. “Inspector Montalbano can’t investigate his own death!”
“Why not?”
“It wouldn’t be right. He’s too personally involved. Anyway, the law makes no allowance for that sort of thing. I’m sorry. The case will be assigned to the new captain of the flying squad.”
At this point Montalbano got worried and took Mimì aside.
“When is Livia coming?”
Mimì seemed uneasy.
“Well, she said…”
“She said what?”
Mimì stared at his shoes.
“She said she didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
“Whether she could make it to the funeral.”
He stormed out of the room, enraged, and ran into the courtyard, which was crowded with funeral wreaths and a waiting hearse. He pulled out his cell phone.
“Hello, Livia? Salvo here.”
“Hi, how are you? Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”
“What’s this about you not knowing if you can make it to-”
“Salvo, listen. If you had lived, I would have done everything in my power to stay with you. I might even have married you. After wasting my life chasing after you, what else could I do? But now that I’m suddenly faced with this unique opportunity, you must understand-”
He turned off the cell phone and went back inside. He noticed they’d put the lid back on the coffin and the cortège was starting to move.
“Are you coming?” Bonetti-Alderighi asked him.
“Yeah, I guess,” he replied.
But as soon as they got to the courtyard, one of the pallbearers fell, and the coffin crashed to the ground with a boom that woke him up.
After that, he’d been unable to fall back asleep, besieged by unanswered questions. One, above all, hammered away at him. What did Livia mean when she said she wanted to take advantage of the opportunity? Quite simply, it meant that his death represented a sort of liberation for her. The follow-up question could only be: How much truth was there in a dream? In this particular case, even a tiny grain of truth was too much.
Because it was true that Livia had had more than her fill. In fact, she’d had enough to fill a whole boatload of shipping containers. But how was it possible that his conscience only showed up in dreams, ruining his sleep? All the same, he thought, the fact that Livia had no intention of coming down to Sicily for his funeral was not right, whatever her reasons might be. In fact, it was downright mean.
When he got into the car to go the station, he noticed that the sea had come almost all the way up to the house and was less than a couple of feet from the parking area. He’d never seen the water come up this far. The beach was gone. It was all one great expanse of water.
It took him a good fifteen minutes and a couple of hundred curses before the car’s engine decided to do what it was supposed to do, and this, naturally, only aggravated the state of his nervous system, which was already on the ropes from the nasty weather conditions.
He’d gone barely fifty yards when he had to stop. There was a line of traffic extending as far as the eye could see-or, rather, as far as the windshield wipers, which couldn’t quite manage to wipe away the pouring rain, allowed the eye to see.
The column of traffic was made up entirely of cars headed towards Vigàta. In the opposite lane there wasn’t so much as a motor scooter.
After about ten minutes of this, he decided to pull out of the jam, turn back, and, at the junction with the Montereale road, take another route into town. It was longer, but it would, at least, get him to his destination.
But he was unable to budge, as the nose of his car was wedged right into the back of the car in front of him, and the car behind him had done the same to him.
It was hopeless. He had to stay put. He was trapped. Sandwiched. And the worst of it was that he had no idea what the hell had happened to create this situation.
After another twenty or so minutes he lost patience, opened the car door, and got out. In the twinkling of an eye he was soaked straight down to his underpants. He started running towards the front of the column of cars and soon came to the point of obstruction, the cause of which was immediately obvious: the sea had washed the road away. Completely. Both lanes were gone. In their place was a chasm, at the bottom of which lay not earth but yellowy, foamy water. The nose of the first car in the column was actually sticking out over the edge. Another ten inches and it would have plummeted below. The inspector, however, became immediately convinced that the car was still in danger, because the road surface was still crumbling, though very slowly. In some twenty minutes, that car was destined to be swallowed up by the chasm. The downpour made it impossible to see inside the vehicle.
He went up to the car and tapped on the window. After a pause it was opened barely a crack by a young woman just over thirty wearing eyeglasses with lenses as thick as bottle bottoms. She looked terrified.
She was alone in the car.
“You have to get out,” he said to her.
“Why?”
“I’m afraid your car’s going to get swallowed up if help doesn’t arrive immediately.”
She made a face like a child about to start crying.
“But where will I go?”
“Take whatever you need, and you can come in my car.”
She just looked at him and said nothing. Montalbano realized she didn’t trust him, a total stranger.
“Listen, I’m a police inspector.”
Perhaps it was the way he said it, but the girl seemed convinced. She grabbed a sort of handbag and got out of the car.
They started running side by side, then Montalbano had her get in his car.
Their clothes were so wet that when they sat down the weight of their bodies made the water ooze out of her jeans and his trousers.
“Montalbano’s the name.”
The young woman eyed him, bringing her head closer.
“Ah, yes. Now I recognize you. I’ve seen you on TV.”
She started sneezing and didn’t stop. When she’d finally finished, her eyes were watering. She removed her glasses, wiped her eyes, and put them back on.
“My name is Vanna. Vanna Digiulio.”
“Seems like you’re catching a cold.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“Listen, do you want to come to my place? I’ve got some dry clothes that belong to my girlfriend. You could change into them and set these clothes out to dry.”
“I’m not sure that would be right,” she objected, suddenly reserved.
“You’re not sure what would be right?”
“For me to come to your place.”
What was she imagining? That he would jump on her the moment she entered? Did he give the impression of being that kind of man? And hadn’t she ever looked at herself in the mirror?
“Listen, if you’re not-”
“And how would we get to your house?”
“On foot. It’s barely fifty yards from here. It’s going to be hours before anyone gets us out of this jam.”
As Montalbano, after changing clothes, prepared a caffelatte for her and a mug of coffee for himself, Vanna took a shower, put on a dress of Livia’s that was a bit too wide for her, and came into the kitchen, crashing first into the doorjamb and then against a chair. How did she ever get a driver’s license, with eyes like hers? A rather homely girl, poor thing. When she was wearing jeans, one couldn’t tell, but now that she was wearing Livia’s dress, Montalbano noticed that she had bandy, muscular legs. They looked more like a man’s legs than a woman’s. And on top of almost nonexistent breasts and a mousy face, she even had an ungainly walk.
“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 <strong>[1]</strong>, 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.”
<a l:href="#_ftnref1">[1]</a> La solitudine dei numeri primi, by author and mathematician Paolo Giordano, 2008 (English translation by Shaun Whiteside, Penguin, 2009).