Wind.
Eyelids drooping, inexorably closing.
o o o
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 goddamn 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.”
Goddamned window!
02
A gelid blast is blowing in through the wide-open window. It’s always that way in hospitals.They cure your appendicitis and then make you die of pneumonia. He’s sitting in an armchair. Only two days left, and he can finally go back to Marinella. But since six o’clock that morning, squads of women have been cleaning everything: corridors, rooms, closets, windows, doorknobs, beds, chairs. It’s as if a great cloud of clean-up mania had descended on the place. Sheets, pillowcases, blankets are changed, the bathroom sparkles so brightly it’s blinding; you need sunglasses to go in there.
“What’s going on?” he asks a nurse who’s come to help him get back in bed.
“Some big cheese is coming.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“Listen, couldn’t I just stay in the armchair?”
“No, you can’t.”
A little while later, Strazzera shows up, disappointed not to find Livia in the room.
“I think she might drop in later,” Montalbano sets his mind at rest.
But he’s just being mean. He said “might” just to keep the doctor on tenterhooks. Livia assured him she’d be there to see him, only a little late.
“So who’s coming?”
“Petrotto.The undersecretary.”
“What for?”
“To congratulate you.”
Fuck.That’s all he needs.The honorable Gianfranco Petrotto, former chamber deputy, now undersecretary of the interior, though once convicted for corruption, another time for graft, and a third time let off the hook by the statute of limitations. An ex-Communist and ex-Socialist, now a triumphant member of the party in power.
“Couldn’t you give me a shot to knock me out for three hours or so?” he implores Strazzera.
The doctor throws his hands up and goes out.
The honorable Gianfranco Petrotto arrives, preceded by a power-ful roar of applause that echoes through the corridor. But the only people allowed to enter the room with him are the prefect, the commissioner, the hospital superintendent, and a deputy from the politico’s retinue.
“Everyone else, wait outside!” he commands with a shout.
Then his mouth opens and closes, and he begins to talk. And talk. And talk. He doesn’t know that Montalbano has plugged his ears with surgical cotton to the point where they feel like they’re about to explode and can’t hear the bullshit he’s saying.
o o o
It’s been a while now since the shutter stopped wailing. He barely has time to look at the clock—four forty-five—before he falls asleep at last.
o o o
In his sleep he could faintly hear the telephone ringing and ringing.
He opened one eye, looked at the clock. Six o’clock. He’d slept barely an hour and fifteen minutes. He got up in a hurry, wanting to stop the ringing before it reached Livia in the depths of her sleep. He picked up the receiver.
“Chief, whadd I do, wake you up?”
“Cat, it’s six in the morning. On the dot.”
“Actually my watch gots six oh tree.”
“That means it’s a little fast.”
“You sure ’bout that, Chief?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay, so I’ll put it tree minutes slow. Tanks, Chief.”
“You’re welcome.”
Catarella hung up. Montalbano did likewise, then headed back to the bedroom. Halfway there, he started cursing. What kind of goddamn phone call was that? Catarella calls him at the crack of dawn to find out if his watch has the right time? At that moment the phone rang again. The inspector quickly picked up the receiver after the first ring.
“Beck y’pardin, Chief, but that bizniss ’bout the time made me forget to tell you the real reason for the phone call I jes phoned you about.”
“So tell me.”
“Seems some girl’s motorbike’s been seized.”
“Seized or robbed?”
“Seized.”
Montalbano fumed. But he had no choice but to smother his urge to yell.
“And you wake me up at six in the morning to tell me the Carabinieri or Customs police have impounded a motorbike?
To tell me? Pardon my French, but I don’t give a fuck!”
“Chief, you kin speak whichever langwitch ya like wit-tout beckin my pardin, though, beckin y’pardin, it sounds a lot to me like a ’talian,” Catarella said respectfully.
“And furthermore, I’m not on duty, I’m still convalescing!”
“I know, Chief, but it wasn’t neither the Customs or the Canabirreri that had the seizure.”
“Well, then who was it?”
“ ’Ass just it, Chief. Nobody knows. Ann’ass why they tol’
me to call you poissonally in poisson.”
“Listen, is Fazio there?”
“No, sir, he’s at the scene.”
“How about Inspector Augello?”
“Him too.”
“So who’s left there at the station?”
“For the moment, Chief, ’s jes me holdin’ down the fort.
Mr. Inspector Augello axed me to do ’is doody for ’im, so ’ass what I’m doin.”
Good God! A danger to be avoided as quickly as possible.
Catarella was capable of triggering a nuclear war with a simple purse-snatching. But was it possible Fazio and Augello would go to all this trouble for a routine seizure of a motorbike? And why did they have Catarella call him?
“Listen, I want you to do something. Get ahold of Fazio and tell him to phone me at once here in Marinella.” He hung up.
“What is this, Termini Station?” said a voice behind him.
He turned around. It was Livia, eyes flashing with anger.
When she’d got up she’d slipped on Montalbano’s shirt from the day before instead of her dressing gown. Seeing her thus attired, the inspector felt an overwhelming desire to embrace her. But he held himself back, knowing that Fazio would be calling at any moment.
“Livia, please, my job . . .”
“You should do your job at the station. And only when you’re on active duty.”
“You’re right, Livia. Now come on, go back to bed.”
“Bed? I’m awake now, thanks to you! I’m going to go make some coffee,” she said.
The telephone rang.
“Fazio, would you be so kind as to tell me what the fuck is going on?” Montalbano asked in a loud voice, since there was no longer any need for precaution. Livia was not only awake, but pissed off.