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” [2] -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 [3] 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.” [4]
“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.
The so-called boat was a rather large and elegant yacht, and it was docked at the central quay. It was flying, go figure, a Panamanian flag. Waiting for him at the foot of the gangway was a naval lieutenant, who must have been Garrufo, and Dr. Raccuglia.
A short distance away, a sailor from the Harbor Office stood guard over a dinghy lying on the quay.
There was no sign of anybody on the yacht’s decks. The owner and crew must have been below.
“What’s the problem, Doctor?”
“Sorry to make you come all the way here, but I wanted you to see the body before the ambulance comes and takes it away to Montelusa for the autopsy.”
“Why?”
“Because the corpse shows certain-”
“I’m sorry, Doctor, I didn’t make myself clear. Why do you think the matter falls within my jurisdiction? Wasn’t the body found in international-”
“The dinghy with the corpse in it,” Lieutenant Garrufo interrupted him, “was intercepted right outside the mouth of the harbor, not in international waters.”
“Oh,” said Montalbano.
He’d tried to unload the case onto someone else and it hadn’t worked. But perhaps all was not lost, and he could still push the bitter cup away from his lips. (Damn clichés!)
“But the boat may have been brought here from far away by the currents, which have been very strong with all the bad weather…”
Garrufo smiled at this second, pathetic attempt.
“Inspector, I realize it’s a headache for you, but there’s no doubt whatsoever that the boat had just drifted out of this port, indeed because of the very same currents you mention. Understand?”
The lieutenant placed special emphasis on the word this. Montalbano surrendered.
“All right, let’s have a look,” he said. “Where is he?”
“Follow me,” said the lieutenant. “I’ll lead the way.”
On the deck, not a soul. They went below to the mess room. On the table in the middle of the space lay the body, covered by an oilcloth.
Montalbano had imagined the corpse differently. Lying before him was a well-built male specimen of about forty, completely naked. Aside from the face, there were no wounds or scars on the front of the body. The face, on the other hand, had been reduced to a pulp of flesh and bone that didn’t look like anything.
“Did you take off his clothes or was he…?”
“They told me that’s how they found him in the dinghy. Naked,” said Garrufo.
“And on the back, are there any-?”
“No wounds on the back, either.”
A sickly-sweet smell festered in the room. The corpse wasn’t fresh. As the inspector was about to ask another question, a woman appeared through a door, dressed in greasy overalls and wiping her hands with an equally greasy rag.
“How much longer you guys going to keep that thing here?” she asked gruffly.
She opened the door to one of the two cabins giving onto the mess room, went inside, and closed the door behind her.
At once a man of about fifty with a goatee came in, skinny as a rail and sunburnt, wearing spotless, wrinkleless white trousers, a blue blazer with silver buttons, and a military sort of cap on his head.
“Hello. I’m Captain Sperlì,” he said, introducing himself to Montalbano.
Apparently he’d already met the other two. Based on his accent, he had to be from Genoa.
“Is your engineer a woman?” the inspector asked.
The captain chuckled.
“No, she’s the owner. Since the auxiliary engine wasn’t doing too well, which is what’s been holding us up for so long, the lady wanted to check it out for herself.”
“And she’s competent?” Montalbano asked again.
“She certainly is,” said the captain. Then, in a lower voice: “She’s better than the engineer himself.”
At that moment they heard someone calling from the deck.
“Anybody there?”
“I’ll take care of this,” said the captain.
A few moments later, two men in white tunics came down, lifted the oilcloth together with the corpse, and carried it away.
“In your opinion, Doctor,” Montalbano said, “how long-”
He was interrupted by the reappearance of the captain. Behind him was a sailor in a black wool sweater with the name Vanna written across the chest. In his hands he had a bottle of mineral spirits and a rag. He cleaned off the surface of the tabletop and then spread over it a white tablecloth he had taken from a small closet.
“Please make yourselves comfortable,” said the captain. “Will you have a drink?”
Nobody declined.
“In your opinion, Doctor,” Montalbano began again after a sip of a whisky he’d never had before which tasted like the best he’d ever drunk, “how long-”
The cabin door opened again, and the woman from before reappeared. She had changed her clothes and was now wearing jeans and a blouse. She had no trace of jewelry on her. She was tall, dark, attractive, and elegant. She must have been close to fifty but had the body of a forty-year-old. She went to the closet, took a glass, and held it out, without a word, in front of the captain. He filled it almost to the brim with whisky. Still standing, she brought it to her lips and drank half of it in a single gulp. Then she wiped her lips with the back of her hand and said to the captain:
“Sperlì, tomorrow morning we’re getting out of here, so I want you to-”
“Just a minute,” Montalbano cut in.
The woman looked at him as if noticing only then that he was there. And instead of speaking to him directly, she addressed the captain.
“Who’s he?”
“He’s Inspector Montalbano.”
“Inspector of what?”
“Police,” replied the captain, a bit embarrassed.
Only then, after looking him up and down, did the woman deign to ask him directly:
“What were you going to say?”
“There’s no way you can leave the port tomorrow.”
“And why not?”
“Because we have to investigate the circumstances of that man’s death. The judge is going to want to question you and-”
“What did I say, Sperlì?” the woman asked severely.
“All right, all right, just drop it,” the captain said.
“Signora, tell me, too, what you said to the captain,” Montalbano butted in.
“I’d simply advised him to forget about the dinghy and not bring the body aboard because it was bound to create a host of problems for us. But he-”
“I am a man of the sea,” said the captain, to justify his actions.
“You see, signora-” Lieutenant Garrufo began.
“No, I don’t see, I’ve seen enough,” the woman cut him off, upset. Then, setting her now empty glass down on the table, she added: “And how long, Inspector, do you think we’ll be kept here?”
“In the best of cases, no more than a week, signora.”
She stuck her hands in her hair.
“But I’ll go crazy! What the hell am I going to do in a hole like this?”
Despite her obnoxious words and manner, the woman was unable to make Montalbano dislike her.
“You can go visit the Greek temples of Montelusa,” he suggested, half seriously and half mockingly.
“And then what?”
“Then there’s the museum.”
“And then what?”
“I dunno, you could visit some of the neighboring towns. At Fiacca, for example, they make a kind of pizza called tabisca, which has-”
“I’ll need a car.”
“Can’t you use your niece’s?”
She looked at him in amazement.
“What niece?”
<a l:href="#_ftnref2">[2]</a> In Italy, members of parliament are called “honorables” (onorevoli).
<a l:href="#_ftnref3">[3]</a> A thinly disguised reference to the Bossi-Fini law, drawn up by Umberto Bossi and Gianfranco Fini, respective leaders of the xenophobic Northern League and the National Alliance, a right-wing party descended directly from the Neofascist MSI party founded after World War II. Enacted in 2002 by the Italian parliament, with the ruling coalition of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party and these two smaller parties holding an absolute majority, this heavy-handed law, among its many provisions, makes it illegal for individuals not belonging to E.U. member nations to enter the country without a work contract; requires all non-E.U. individuals who lose their jobs while in the country to repatriate to their country of origin; abolishes the sponsorship system that had previously enabled non-E.U. individuals to enter the country under the patronage of a sponsor already in Italy; establishes the government’s right to decree a quota of the number of non-E.U. individuals allowed to enter the country over the period of one year; makes all foreign nationals not in conformity with these new guidelines subject to criminal proceedings and/or forced repatriation.
<a l:href="#_ftnref4">[4]</a> Garruso is a common Sicilian insult, homophobic in nature but used generally to mean “jerk,” “prick,” “asshole,” etc. A literal translation would be more like “faggot.”