ONE He jolted awake, sweaty and short of breath. For a few seconds he didn’t know where he was. Then the soft, regular breathing of Livia, who lay asleep beside him, brought him back to a familiar, reassuring reality. He was in his bedroom in Marinella. What had yanked him from his sleep was a sharp pang, cold as a knife blade, in his wounded shoulder. He didn’t need to look at the clock on the nightstand to know that it was three-thirty in the morning – actually, three twenty-seven and forty seconds. The same thing had been happening to him for the last twenty days, ever since the night Jamil Zarzis, a trafficker in small Third World children, had shot and wounded him, and he had reacted by killing the man. Twenty days, but it was as though the mechanism of time had got stuck at that moment. Some gear in the part of his brain that measures the passing hours and days had gone ‘clack’, and ever since, if he was asleep, he would wake up, and if he was awake, everything around him would stop in a sort of imperceptible freeze-frame. He knew very well that during that split-second duel, it had never crossed his mind to check what time it was, and yet – and this he remembered very clearly – the moment the bullet fired by Jamil Zarzis penetrated his flesh, a voice inside him – an impersonal female voice, slightly metallic, like the voices you hear over PA systems in train stations and supermarkets – had said, ‘It is three twenty-seven and forty seconds.’ * ‘Were you with the inspector?’ ‘Yes, Doctor.’ ‘Your name?’ ‘Fazio, Doctor.’ ‘How long has he been wounded?’ ‘Well, Doctor, the exchange of fire took place around three-thirty. So, a little more than half an hour ago. Oh, Doctor . . .’ ‘Yes?’ ‘Is it serious?’ The inspector was lying down, utterly still, eyes shut, which led everyone to think he was unconscious and they could speak openly. Whereas in fact he heard and understood everything. He felt simultaneously dazed and lucid, but had no desire to open his mouth and answer the doctor’s questions himself. Apparently the injections they’d given him to kill the pain had affected his whole body. ‘Don’t be silly! All we have to do is extract the bullet lodged in his shoulder.’ ‘O Madonna santa!’ ‘There’s no need to get so upset! It’s a piece of cake. Besides, I really don’t think it did much damage. With a bit of physical therapy, he should recover one hundred per cent use of his arm. But why, may I ask, are you still so concerned?’ ‘Well, you see, Doctor, a few days ago the inspector went out by himself on an investigation . . .’ * Now, as then, he keeps his eyes closed. But he can no longer hear the words, which are drowned out by the loud, pounding surf. It must be windy outside, the whole shutter is vibrating from the force of the gusts, emitting a kind of wail. It’s a good thing he’s still convalescing; he can stay under the covers for as long as he wants. Consoled by this thought, he decides to open his eyes just a crack. * Why could he no longer hear Fazio talking? He opened his eyes just a crack. The two men had stepped a short distance away from the bed and were over by the window. Fazio was talking and the doctor, dressed in a white smock, was listening, a grave expression on his face. Suddenly Montalbano realized he had no need to hear Fazio’s words to know what he was saying to the doctor. Fazio, his friend, his trusty right-hand man, was betraying him. Like Judas. He was obviously telling the doctor about the time he’d found the inspector lying on the beach, drained of strength after the terrible chest pain he’d had in the water . . . Imagine the doctors’ reaction upon hearing this wonderful news! Before ever removing that damned bullet, they would give him the works: examine him inside and out, poke him full of holes, lift up his skin piece by piece to see what there was underneath . . . * His bedroom is the same as it’s always been. No, that’s not true. It’s different, but still the same. Different because there are Livia’s things on the dresser: purse, hairpins, two little perfume bottles. And, on the chair across the room, a blouse and skirt. And though he can’t see them, he knows there’s a pair of pink slippers somewhere near the bed. He feels a surge of emotion. He melts, goes all soft inside, turns to liquid. For twenty days this has been his new refrain, and he doesn’t know how to put a stop to it. The slightest thing will set it off and bring him, treacherously, to the point of tears. He’s embarrassed, ashamed of his new emotional fragility, and has to create elaborate defences to prevent others from noticing. But not with Livia. With her he couldn’t pull it off. So she decided to help him, to lend him a hand by dealing firmly with him, not allowing him any opportunities to let himself go. But it’s no use. Because this loving approach on Livia’s part also triggers a mixed emotion of happiness and sadness. He’s happy that Livia used up all her holiday to come and look after him, and he knows that the house is happy to have her there. Ever since she arrived, when he looks at his bedroom in sunlight it seems to have its colour back, as though the walls had been repainted a luminous white. Since nobody can see him, he wipes away a tear with a corner of the sheet. * White all around, and amidst the white, only the brown of his naked skin. (Was it once pink? How many centuries ago?) A white room, in which he’s being given an electrocardiogram. The doctor studies the long strip of paper, shakes his head in doubt. Terrified, Montalbano imagines that the graph the doctor is examining looks exactly like the seismograph of the Messina earthquake of 1908, which he once saw reproduced in a history magazine: a crazy, hopeless jumble of lines traced as if by a hand driven mad by fear. They’ve found me out! he thinks to himself. They realize that my heart functions on alternating current, higgledy-piggledy, and that I’ve had at least three heart attacks! Then another doctor, also in a white smock, enters the room. He looks at the strip, at Montalbano, and at his colleague. ‘Let’s do it again,’ he says. Maybe they can’t believe their eyes, can’t understand how a man with an electrocardiogram like that is still in a hospital bed and not on a marble slab in the morgue. They look at the new strip, their heads now very close together. ‘Let’s do a telecardiogram,’ is the verdict. The doctors seem perplexed. Montalbano wishes he could tell them that, if this is the way it is, they shouldn’t even bother extracting the bullet. They should let him die in peace. But, damn it, he forgot to make a will. The house in Marinella, for example, should definitely go to Livia, so that some fourth cousin doesn’t turn up and claim it. * Right, because the house in Marinella has been his for a few years now. He never thought he’d be able to buy it. It cost too much for the salary he earned, which barely let him set anything aside. Then one day his father’s former partner wrote to him saying he was ready to liquidate his father’s share of the vineyard, which amounted to a considerable sum. So not only had he the money to buy the house, but there was a fair amount left over to put away. For his old age. And that was why he needed to draw up a will, since, without wanting to, he’d become a man with property. Once again, however, after he got out of the hospital he couldn’t bring himself to go and see the notary. But if he ever did get around to seeing him, the house would go to Livia, that much was certain. As for François, the son who wasn’t his son but could have been, he knew exactly what to leave him. Enough money to buy himself a nice car. He could already see the indignant expression on Livia’s face. What? And spoil him like that? Yes, ma’am. A son who wasn’t a son but could (should?) have been one should be spoiled much more than a son who’s really a son. Twisted logic, yes, but still logical. And what about Catarella? Surely he had to put Catarella in his will. So what would he leave him? Certainly not any books. He tried to recall an old song of the Alpine Regiment called ‘The Captain’s Testament’ or something similar, but couldn’t remember it. The watch! That was it. He would leave Catarella his father’s watch, which his business partner had sent to him. That way he could feel like part of the family. The watch was the answer. * He can’t read the clock on the wall in the cardiology unit because there is a kind of greyish veil over his eyes. The two doctors are very attentively watching some sort of TV screen, occasionally moving a mouse. One of them, the doctor who’s supposed to perform the operation, is named Strazzera, Amedeo Strazzera. This time the machine spits out not a strip of paper but a series of photographs or something similar. The two doctors study and study them, then finally sigh as though worn out after a long walk. Strazzera approaches while his colleague goes and sits down in a chair – white, of course. The doctor looks sternly at the inspector and bends forward. Montalbano is expecting him to say: ‘You must stop pretending you’re alive! Shame on you!’ How does the poem go? ‘The poor man, not knowing how much he’d bled, / kept on fighting when in fact he was dead.’ But the doctor says nothing and begins to sound his chest with the stethoscope. As if he hasn’t already done this at least twenty times. Finally he straightens back up, looks over at his colleague, and asks: ‘What do we do?’ ‘I would let Di Bartolo have a look at him,’ says the other. Di Bartolo! A legend. Montalbano had met him a while back. By now he must be over seventy. A skinny old man with a little white beard that made him look like a goat, he could no longer conform to human society or the rules of common courtesy. Once, after examining, in a manner of speaking, a man known to be a ruthless loan shark, he told the patient he couldn’t tell him anything because he was unable to locate his heart. Another time, in a cafe, he said to a man he’d never seen before, who was sipping a coffee, ‘Do you know you’re about to have a heart attack?’ And lo and behold, he had a heart attack right then and there, maybe because a luminary such as Di Bartolo had just told him it was coming. But why do these two want to call in Di Bartolo if there is nothing more to be done? Maybe they want to show the old master what a phenomenon this Montalbano is, the way he inexplicably goes on living with a heart that looks like Dresden after the bombing. While waiting, they decide to take him back to his room. As they’re opening the door to push the stretcher through, he hears Livia’s voice call out desperately: ‘Salvo! Salvo!’ He doesn’t feel like answering. Poor thing! She’d come down to Vigàta to spend a few days with him and got this nice surprise instead. * ‘What a nice surprise!’ Livia had said to him the day before, when, upon his return from a check-up at Montelusa Hospital, he’d appeared in the doorway with a large bouquet of roses in his hands. And she’d burst into tears. ‘Come on, don’t start!’ he’d said, barely holding back himself. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ ‘Well, you never have before!’ ‘And when have you ever given me a bouquet of roses before?’ He lays his hand on her hip, but gently, so as not to wake her. * He’d forgotten – or else hadn’t noticed during his earlier meetings with him – that Dr Di Bartolo not only looked but also sounded like a goat. ‘Good day, everybody,’ he bleats upon entering, followed by ten or so doctors, all dressed without fail in white smocks and crowding into the room. ‘Good day,’ replies everybody – that is, Montalbano, since he’s the only body in the room when the doctor appears. Di Bartolo approaches the bed and looks at him with interest. ‘I’m glad to see that, despite my colleagues’ efforts, you can still understand and know what you want.’ He makes a gesture and Strazzera appears beside him and hands him the test results. Di Bartolo barely glances at the first sheet and then tosses it onto the bed, does the same with the second, ditto the third and the fourth. In a matter of seconds, Montalbano’s head and torso disappear under the paper. In the end he hears the doctor’s voice but can’t see him because the photos of the telecardiogram are over his eyes. ‘Mind telling me why you called me here?’ The bleat sounds rather irritated. Apparently the goat is getting cross. ‘Well, Doctor,’ Strazzera’s voice hesitantly begins, ‘the fact is, one of the inspector’s men told us that a few days ago he’d had a serious episode of . . .’ Of what? Montalbano can no longer hear Strazzera. Maybe he’s telling the next instalment in Di Bartolo’s ear. Instalment? This isn’t some soap opera. Strazzera said ‘episode’. But isn’t a soap opera instalment called an episode? ‘Pull him up for me,’ orders Dr Di Bartolo. They remove the sheets of paper covering him and gently lift him up. A circle of doctors in white surround the bed, religiously silent. Di Bartolo applies the stethoscope to Montalbano’s chest, moves it an inch, then moves it another inch and stops. Seeing his face so close, the inspector notices that the doctor’s jaws are moving continuously, as if he is chewing gum. All at once, he understands. The doctor is ruminating. Dr Di Bartolo actually is a goat. Who now hasn’t moved for a long time. He’s listening, immobile. What do his ears hear in there? Montalbano wonders. Buildings collapsing? Fissures suddenly opening up? Subterranean rumbles? Di Bartolo keeps listening interminably, not moving a fraction of an inch from the spot he’s singled out. Doesn’t it hurt his back to stay bent over like that? The inspector begins to sweat from fear. The doctor straightens up. ‘That’s enough.’ The other doctors set Montalbano back down. ‘In my opinion,’ the luminary concludes, ‘you could shoot him another three or four times, extract the bullets without anaesthesia, and his heart would definitely stand up to it.’ Then he leaves, without saying goodbye to anyone. Ten minutes later, the inspector’s in the operating room. There’s a bright white light. A man stands over him, holding a kind of mask in his hand, which he places over Montalbano’s face. ‘Breathe deeply,’ he says. He obeys. And can’t remember anything else. * How is it, he asks himself, they haven’t yet invented an aerosol cartridge for when you can’t sleep? Something you stick in your nose and push, and the gas or whatever it is comes out, and you fall asleep right away? That would be handy, an anti-insomnia anaesthesia. He suddenly feels thirsty, gets out of bed gingerly, to avoid waking Livia, goes into the kitchen, and pours himself a glass of mineral water from an already open bottle. Now what? He decides to exercise his right arm a little, the way the physiotherapist taught him. One, two, three, and four. One, two, three, and four. The arm works fine. Well enough for him to drive with ease. Strazzera was absolutely right. Except that sometimes his arm falls asleep, the way your leg does when you stay in the same position for too long without moving and the whole limb feels full of pins and needles. Or armies of ants. He drinks another glass of water and goes back to bed. Feeling him slip under the covers, Livia murmurs something and turns her back to him. * ‘Water,’ he implores, opening his eyes. Livia pours him a glass, holding his head up with her hand at the base of the skull so he can drink. Then she puts the glass back on the nightstand and disappears from the inspector’s field of vision. He manages to sit up a little in bed. Livia’s standing in front of the window, and Dr Strazzera is beside her, talking to her at great length. Montalbano hears a little giggle come from Livia. What a witty guy, this Dr Strazzera! And why is he hanging all over Livia? And why doesn’t she feel the need to take a step back? OK, I’ll show them. ‘Water!’ he yells in rage. Livia jumps, startled. ‘Why is he drinking so much?’ Livia asks. ‘It must be an effect of the anaesthetic,’ says Strazzera. And he adds: ‘But, you know, Livia, the operation was child’s play. I was even able to make it so that the scar will be practically invisible.’ Livia gives the doctor a grateful smile, which infuriates the inspector even more. An invisible scar! So he won’t have any problem entering the next Mr Muscle competition. * Speaking of muscle, or whatever you want to call it . . . He slides over, ever so gently, until his body is pressed up against Livia’s back. She seems to appreciate the contact, to judge by the way she moans in her sleep. Montalbano extends a cupped hand and places it over one of her tits. As if by conditioned reflex, Livia puts her hand over his. But here the operation grinds to a halt. Because Montalbano knows perfectly well that if he proceeds any further, Livia will put an immediate stop to it. It’s already happened once, on his first night back from the hospital. ‘No, Salvo. Out of the question. I’m afraid you might hurt yourself.’ ‘Come on, Livia. It’s my shoulder that was injured, not my—’ ‘Don’t be vulgar. Don’t you understand? I wouldn’t feel comfortable, I’d be afraid to . . .’ But his muscle, or whatever you want to call it, doesn’t understand these fears. It has no brain, is not used to thinking. It refuses to listen to reason. So it just stays there, bloated with rage and desire. * Fear. Terror. He begins to feel this the second day after the operation, when, around nine in the morning, the wound starts to throb painfully. Why does it hurt so much? Did they forget a piece of gauze in there, as so often happens? Or maybe not gauze, but a thirty-centimetre scalpel? Livia notices at once and calls Strazzera. Who comes running, probably leaving in the middle of some open-heart surgery. But that’s how things are now: the moment Livia calls, Strazzera comes running. The doctor says the reaction was to be expected, there’s no reason for Livia to be alarmed. And he sticks another needle into Montalbano. Less than ten minutes later, two things happen: first, the pain starts to subside; and second, Livia says: ‘The commissioner’s here.’ And she leaves. Bonetti-Alderighi enters the room accompanied by the chief of his cabinet, Dr Lattes, whose hands are folded in prayer, as if he were at a dying man’s bedside. ‘How are you? How are you?’ asks the commissioner. ‘How are you? How are you?’ Lattes echoes him, as in a litany. The commissioner begins to speak, but Montalbano hears only scraps of what he’s saying, as if a strong wind were carrying away his words. ‘. . . and therefore I’ve recommended you be given a solemn citation . . .’ ‘. . . solemn citation . . .’ echoes Lattes. ‘La-de-da-de-da-de-ation,’ says a voice in Montalbano’s head. Wind. ‘. . . while awaiting your return, Inspector Augello . . .’ ‘Oh good fellow, good fellow,’ says the same voice in his head. Wind. Eyelids drooping, inexorably closing. * Now his eyelids are drooping. Maybe he can finally fall asleep. Just like this, pressed up against Livia’s warm body. But there’s that damn shutter that keeps wailing with every gust of wind. What to do? Open the window and try to close the shutter more tightly? Not a chance. It would surely wake Livia up. But maybe there is a solution. No harm in trying. Instead of fighting the shutter’s wail, try to echo it, incorporate it in the rhythm of his own breathing. ‘Iiiih!’ goes the shutter. ‘Iiiih!’ goes the inspector, softly, lips barely open. ‘Eeeeh!’ goes the shutter. ‘Eeeeh!’ echoes the inspector. That time, however, he didn’t keep his voice down. In a flash, Livia opens her eyes and sits up in bed. ‘Salvo! Are you unwell?’ ‘Why?’ ‘You were moaning!’ ‘I must have been doing it in my sleep. Sorry. Go back to sleep.’ Damned window!