The Potter's Field (24 page)

At this point he had to stop, as his nausea had suddenly returned, stirring up a nasty, bitter sort of spittle in his mouth. He got up and went out onto the veranda. It was still dark outside. Not wanting to remain standing, he sat down on the bench.

What to call Mimì's behavior?

He knew the answer. It had come to him at once, but he hadn't wanted to say it or write it down.

Mimì had been disloyal to him; there could no longer be any doubt about this.

It wasn't because he had a lover. That sort of thing, and Mimì's private life in general, was of no concern to him. Even this time, it would have been of no concern to him—though Mimì was married with a young son—had Livia not dragged him into it.

No, the disloyalty had begun the moment Mimì realized that Dolores wanted something from him not as a lover but as a police officer. Although his vanity as a lady-killer must have taken quite a blow, he hadn't been able or willing to break with Dolores. Maybe he was too taken with her. Dolores was, after all, the kind of woman who could reduce a man to the state of a postage stamp stuck to her skin. So, at that point, Mimì should have come to him and said, with an open heart: “Look, Salvo, I got involved in this affair, but then this and this happened, and now I need your help to get me out of these straits.” They were friends, weren't they? But there was more.

Not only had Mimì told him nothing about the predicament he was in, but, faced with a choice between him and Dolores, he had chosen Dolores. He had teamed up with her to force him, Montalbano, to take certain steps. Mimì had thus acted in the woman's interest. And a friend who acts not in your interest but in the interest of another without telling you, what has he done, if not betrayed your friendship?

At last the inspector was able to say it. Mimì was a traitor.

That word,
traitor
, once it had formed in his mind, blocked his thought process. For a brief moment the inspector's brain was a total void. And the void became silence—not only an absence of words, but of even the slightest sound. The bright line barely visible in the darkness, formed by the surf at the edge of the beach, moved ever so gently back and forth, as always, except that now it no longer made its usual breathlike hiss. Now there was nothing. And the throbbing of the diesel of a fishing boat whose wan lights shone in the distance should have been audible from the veranda. But there was nothing. It was as though someone had turned off the soundtrack.

Then, within that silence of the world, perhaps of the universe, Montalbano heard a brief sound arise, unpleasant and strange, followed by another just the same, and still another, also the same. What was it?

It took him a while to realize that the sound was coming from him. He was crying inconsolably.

He made an effort to squelch the desire to let the whole thing slide all the way to hell, and bail out in any way he could. Because that's the way he was. He was a man capable of understanding many things that others couldn't or wouldn't understand, moments of weakness, failures of courage, insolent disregard, lapses of attention, lies, ugly acts with ugly motives, things done out of laziness, boredom, self-interest, and so on. But he could never understand or forgive bad faith and betrayal.

You know what I say? I say that all this is happening because of that damned
critaru
, because of the potter's field.

He got up, went inside, sat down, and resumed writing to himself.

Day was dawning. As he stood up from the table, cold shivers ran up and down his spine. He undressed and got into a tub so hot it filled the bathroom with steam. When he came out he was red as a lobster. He shaved, made a pot of coffee, and drank his customary mugful. Then he went into the bedroom, got dressed, took out an overnight bag, put in a shirt, a pair of underpants, a pair of socks, two handkerchiefs, and a book he was reading. Going back into the dining room, he reread the letter he'd written to himself, brought it out to the veranda, and set fire to it with his lighter. He glanced at his watch. Almost six-thirty. He went inside and dialed a number on the land line, slipping his cell phone into his pocket.

“Hello?” answered Fazio.

“Montalbano here. Did I wake you up?”

“No, Chief. What is it?”

“Listen, I have to leave.”

Fazio became alarmed.

“Are you going to Boccadasse? What happened?”

“I'm not going to Boccadasse. I hope to be back this evening or tomorrow morning at the latest. If I get back tonight I'll give you a ring, even if it's late. All right?”

“Whatever you say, Chief.”

“Don't forget that thing I asked you about. You absolutely must find out why Pecorini left Vigàta two years ago.”

“Don't worry.”

“This morning one of Alfano's friends is coming to the station. I talked with two others yesterday evening. I want you to question the one today.”

“All right.”

“The keys Dolores gave you to the apartment in Gioia Tauro, where are they?”

“On my desk, in an envelope.”

“I'm going to take them. Oh, and listen. If you happen to run into Inspector Augello today, don't tell him I've gone to Gioia Tauro.”

“Chief, the guy doesn't talk to any of us anymore. But if he happens to ask me, what do I tell him?”

“Tell him I've gone to the hospital for a routine checkup.”

“You, go to the hospital of your own will? He'll never believe it! Can't you think of anything better?”

“You think of something. But he mustn't suspect in any way that I'm doing something related to the
critaru
murder.”

“I'm sorry, Chief, but even if he does suspect something, what's the problem?”

“Just do as I say and don't argue.”

The inspector hung up.

Ah, how foul and swampy, how treacherous the ground was around the potter's field!

Could he have spared himself the journey he was about to make? A journey which, for as poor a driver as he, represented a major effort? Of course, with the help of a good road atlas, he needn't even have left home. But going in person to see how things stood wasn't only the better, more serious course of action; it was also possible that the place itself, when seen with his own eyes, would suggest some other, new hypotheses for him to consider. But despite all the justifications he kept coming up with for making this trip, he knew he hadn't yet admitted the real reason for it. Once past Enna, however, when, on the left, he began to glimpse the mountains in whose folds lay towns like Assoro, Agira, Regalbuto, and Centuripe, he understood why he had left Marinella. Without a doubt, the investigation did have something to do with it, and how. But the truth of the matter was that he had wanted to see the landscape of his youth again, the one he had all around him when he was a deputy inspector at Mascalippa. Wait a second! Hadn't he found that same landscape depressing at the time? Didn't the very air in Mascalippa get on his nerves, because it smelled of straw and grass? All true, all sacrosanct. A line of Brecht came to mind: “Why should I love the windowsill from which I fell as a child?” But that line still didn't quite say it, he thought. Because sometimes, when you're already almost old, the hated windowsill from which you fell as a little kid comes urgently back into your memory, and you would even go on a pilgrimage to see it again, if you could see it the way you did then, with the eyes of innocence.