The Dance of the Seagull (8 page)

“Something happen?”

“No, nothing.”

Montalbano sat down at his usual table.

“What can I get for you?”

“Everything.”

He stuffed himself shamefully. It was a good thing there weren’t any other patrons there, aside from a guy who never looked away from the newspaper in front of him, which was propped up against a bottle.

When Montalbano had finished, Enzo congratulated him.

“Enjoy it in good health, Inspector.”

“Thanks.”

“Would you like a
digestivo
?”

“No.”

There wasn’t even room for a drop of water in his belly. If he had a digestive liqueur, he was liable to explode like the fat man in the Monty Python movie.

When he got into the car, the interior actually seemed smaller. Walking along the jetty, he took very small steps, perhaps because he couldn’t walk any faster, perhaps just to make it last longer. When he got to the flat rock, he sat down. Despite his long sleep the night before, he suddenly felt very woozy. Apparently he still wasn’t caught up. He turned back, got into the car, and headed off to Marinella for a two-hour nap.

He reappeared at the station just before five o’clock.

“Ahh Chief Chief! Seein’ as how F’rinsix sint a f’rinsic pitcher o’ one o’ the two disseasts inna well, I soitched a soitch o’ poissons whereforwhom’z diclared a diclaration as missing.”

“And?”

“Nuttin’, Chief, zwaz nuttin’.”

“And did they tell you anything about the other one?”

“Nuttin’, Chief.”

“Try and see if there’s anything among last week’s declarations about a man around sixty who’d been operated on in his right leg.”

“Straightaways, Chief.”

“In the meantime, send me Fazio.”

Catarella balked and stared at him.

“Sorry, I meant Galluzzo.”

The habit was so ingrained . . . A sudden twinge of melancholy pricked him, unexpectedly.

“Your orders, Chief.”

Signora Fazio phoned around six.

“They let me see him! And he recognized me right away! The first thing he said was that he wanted to see the chief. So I went and asked for the chief of surgery, who was still at the hospital. When he came into the room, my husband got angry. It was you he wanted to see!”

“Did you tell him I’m coming to see him tomorrow morning?”

“Yes, Inspector.”

Between one thing and another, it was suddenly eight o’clock. Montalbano decided it was time to leave. Not that he was hungry. At lunch he’d eaten almost a ton. He was just tired of being in the office.

Passing by Catarella, he said goodbye. When he was about to get in the car, out of the corner of his eye he saw Catarella come flying out of the building like a cannonball and race towards him.

“What’s wrong?”

“Ahh Chief Chief! Iss the c’mishner’s onna tiliphone. Jeezus, Chief, y’oughter ’ear ’is voice, y’oughter!”

“Why, what kind of voice has he got?”

“’Slike a lion inna jangle!”

8

Cursing the saints, he went back into his office, and the moment he said “Hello” into the receiver, he was assailed by an enraged commissioner.

“You are completely out of your mind! This is insane! Stuff for the
madhouse
!”

“But weren’t they abolished?”

It had slipped out. Luckily Mr. C’mishner didn’t even hear it.

“There’s an exchange of fire, one of our men is wounded—thank God not seriously—and with a little phone call to Lattes, you wipe your hands of it! Utter insanity!”

“Who else was I supposed to call, since you weren’t there?”

“All right, but you should at least have left a detailed report on my desk! Come here at once. I’ll be waiting for you.”

There was no way he could go. Because if the guy asked him exactly how Fazio was wounded, he wouldn’t have known what the hell to reply.

“Just right now I can’t, Mr. Commissioner.”

“Listen, Montalbano, I am ordering you—”

“I just got a call from the hospital telling me that Fazio, my man, has regained consciousness and wants to see me . . .”

“Then come to my office immediately after you go to see him.”

“But the hospital’s in Fiacca!”

“Wait a second! Fiacca is not in your territorial jurisdiction! Why did you take him there?”

“Because we found Fazio not far from the outskirts of—”

“Found? What do you mean you ‘found’ Fazio?”

“Mr. Commissioner, sir, it’s a very complicated story.”

“Then you can explain it all to me tomorrow morning at nine o’clock sharp.”

Jeez, what a pain in the ass! He had to come up with another lie, quick.

“I’m terribly sorry, sir, but I can’t make it at nine.”

“You’re joking, aren’t you?”

Montalbano lowered his voice and assumed a conspiratorial tone.

“It’s a very private matter, you see, and I wouldn’t want anyone—”

“Postpone it!”

“I can’t, sir, believe me, I really can’t! You see, Dr. Gruntz is coming all the way from Zurich.”

“And who is this doctor?”

“He’s the top specialist in the field.”

“What field?”

That, indeed, was the question. In what goddamned field might a Swiss named Gruntz be the top specialist? Better glide over it. Muddy the waters a little more. He didn’t answer the question directly.

“He’s coming straight to my house at nine-thirty, to perform a double Scrockson on me, the effects of which—as I’m sure you know—can last from three up to five hours. And so I’ll have to lie still in bed for that time. But I could definitely come to see you in the afternoon.”

“I’m sorry, but what did you say Dr. Gruntz is coming to do?” the commissioner asked, apparently impressed.

“The double Scrockson.”

“And what’s its purpose?”

What indeed could be the purpose of something with such a highfalutin name? Montalbano blurted out the first whopper that came into his head.

“What, you mean you don’t know? It’s a Western adaptation of a procedure practiced by Indian yogis. It involves inserting a plastic tube into the anus, which is then expertly, painstakingly maneuvered so that it comes out of—”

“That’s quite enough, thank you! I’ll expect you tomorrow afternoon at four o’clock,” Commissioner Bonetti-Alderighi interrupted him.

When he got back home to Marinella, the only sun left was a reddish strip of sky on the horizon over the sea. The surf was panting softly. No sign of any birds. His conversation with the commissioner had whetted an appetite that hadn’t existed before he picked up the phone. Maybe it was the desire for a kind of compensation. He’d once read that in antiquity, after a plague epidemic had ended, people would eat and fuck like there was no tomorrow. But could he really liken Bonetti-Alderighi to a plague epidemic? Well, maybe not the plague, but cholera, yes, sort of.

Opening the refrigerator, he felt as if he was looking at a great discovery, some sort of vast treasure buried by pirates. Adelina had gone overboard cooking for him. The works: eggplant parmesan, pasta and sausage, caponata, eggplant dumplings,
caciocavallo di Ragusa
, and passuluna olives. Apparently there wasn’t any fresh fish at the market. He set the table on the veranda, and as the eggplant parmesan and pasta were warming up, he drank two glasses of cold white wine to Fazio’s health. When he got up to phone Livia, a good three hours had passed since he’d first sat down.

He slept badly.

As he was about to leave for Fiacca at eight-thirty the following morning, it occurred to him that at his normal cruising speed, as Livia so irritatingly called it, by the time he got to the hospital, Fazio was liable to be already discharged. So he called the police station.

“Ahh, what izzit, Chief? Ahh? Wha’ happened?” asked Catarella, immediately alarmed.

“Nothing’s happened, Cat. Calm down. I just want you to tell Gallo to come and pick me up in Marinella and take me to Fiacca.”

“Straightaways, Chief.”

But the truth of the matter was that he just didn’t feel like driving. He was too agitated. His curiosity to know what Fazio had to tell him was eating him alive. It had come over him the moment he’d lain down in bed and hadn’t left him since. Indeed he’d spent practically the whole night forming hypotheses and conjectures, all without the slightest foundation.

About ten minutes later he heard the siren of the squad car approaching at high speed. Imagine Gallo missing a chance to race around with the siren on!

He always watched Gallo closely when sitting beside him during drives where they had to get somewhere fast. Gallo at the wheel seemed loose and relaxed; he was an excellent driver, and clearly it gave him a great deal of pleasure. At certain moments, perhaps without realizing it, he would start murmuring the words to a little children’s song:
La beddra Betta / cu ’na quasetta
 . . . And so Montalbano realized that when at the wheel of a wildly speeding car, Gallo lost at least thirty years of age and became a little kid again.

“Did you have your own little car with pedals when you were a kid?” the inspector asked him as they were leaving for Fiacca.

Gallo gave him a confused look.

“Why do you ask?”

“I dunno, just to make conversation.”

“No, sir, I never did. I always wanted one, but my father couldn’t ever afford to buy me one.”

Maybe that was why . . . But then he suddenly felt embarrassed at the thought that had come into his mind. Which was that Gallo’s passion for driving fast was a compensation for what he’d missed as a child. American movie stuff, like when they tell you that someone became a bank robber because his father had denied him a pizza when he was five.

In his younger days, such thoughts would never even have grazed the surface of his mind. Apparently with age, even the brain slackens, like the muscles and skin . . . His eye fell on the speedometer: 170 kilometers per hour.

“Don’t you think you’re going a little fast?”

“Want me to slow down?”

He was about to say yes, but he wanted to get there and talk to Fazio as soon as possible.

“No, but be careful. I don’t want to end up in a body cast in the bed next to Fazio’s.”

The inspector was in the habit of getting lost in hospitals. And to think that he did everything possible to avoid the problem. Not only would he get precise instructions upon entering as to which elevator to take, which floor to get off at, which ward to visit, but . . . It was hopeless. In the brief distance traveled between the information desk and the elevator area, he would completely forget everything he’d been told. And so, once inside elevator A instead of elevator B, he would inevitably end up in the neurosurgery ward when he was supposed to go to the accident ward. And then began a veritable
via crucis
to find the right ward. He would go down the wrong corridors, open doors exposing bare-assed patients, and have endless insults heaped upon him . . .

This time, too, the tradition was maintained. In short, after he’d been wandering the hallways for about half an hour, lost and covered in sweat, a nurse of about thirty, tall and blond with blue-green eyes and long legs like one of those unreal nurses one sees in hospital dramas, crossed paths with him for the second time and, noticing he looked unhappier than ever, like an orphan from Burundi, took pity on him and asked:

“Excuse me, are you looking for someone?”

“Yes.”

“Just tell me where you want to go, and I’ll take you there.”

In his mind Montalbano prayed that the Good Lord, after granting her the title in the worldwide Miss Nurse contest, would throw open the pearly gates for her when she died. The young woman left him outside the door to Fazio’s room, which was closed.

He knocked discreetly, but nobody answered. Already agitated, he broke out in a cold sweat. Maybe they’d changed his room?

So how was he going to figure out where they’d moved him to? Perhaps it was best to have a look first, and see if the room was actually empty. As he was reaching for the doorknob like a burglar trying not to make a sound, the door was suddenly opened from the inside, and Fazio’s wife appeared.

“Let’s talk outside,” she whispered to him, closing the door behind her.

“What’s wrong?” asked Montalbano, worried.

The woman had two dark circles under her eyes, and the inspector thought he saw more white hair on her head than the last time he’d seen her.

“I just wanted to let you know that my husband didn’t have a good sleep last night. He had nightmares. The doctor said he shouldn’t talk to you for more than five minutes. I’m so sorry, Inspector, but—”

“That’s all right, signora, I understand. Don’t worry, I won’t tire him out, I promise.”

At this point a dwarflike nurse materialized next to Fazio’s wife and, without saying hello, cast a malevolent glance at the inspector and then looked at her watch.

“You have exactly five minutes, starting now.”

What was this, a race against the clock?

Signora Fazio opened the door for him, then slowly closed it behind him. She understood that the inspector wanted to be alone when talking to her husband. What a great woman!

Fazio was either sleeping or keeping his eyes closed. The only part of his body not under the sheet was his head, which looked like that of a pilot from the early days of aviation, when they used to wear a kind of leather cap that covered the neck and ears as well, leaving only the face uncovered. The only difference was that Fazio’s head covering was made of gauze.

To Montalbano it looked as if the visible part of his face between the cheekbones and mouth had changed, with the skin resting directly on the bone and no more flesh in between. Maybe it was the effect of the bandaging. Beside the head of the bed was a metal chair, which Montalbano quietly sat down in. What to do now? Wake him up or let him sleep? His curiosity was strong, but he overcame it out of affection for Fazio. Even if the investigation was held up for a day, no harm would be done. At that moment, Fazio opened his eyes, looked at him, and recognized him.

“Chief . . .” he said in a weary, faraway voice that nevertheless had a note of happiness in it.

“Hi,” said Montalbano, touched.

And he took into his own the hand that Fazio had meanwhile pulled out from under the sheet. They remained that way for a few moments, not saying anything, each enjoying the other’s warmth. Then Fazio spoke.