“Ask her what color.”
The exchange between Buscaìno and the old woman was long and labored.
“I believe she said metallic gray.”
“And what did Karima and this young man do?” What a man and woman do, uncle. The woman heard the bed creaking over her head.
Did he sleep with Karima?
Only once, and the next morning he drove her to work in his automobile.
But he was a bad man. One night there was a lot of commotion. Karima was shouting and crying, and then the bad man left.
She had come running and found Karima sobbing, her naked body bearing signs of having been hit. Fortunately, François hadn’t woken up.
Did the bad man by any chance come to see her last Wednesday evening?
How had the uncle guessed? Yes, he did come, but didn’t do anything with Karima. He only took her away in his car.
What time was it?
It might have been ten in the evening. Karima brought François down to her, saying she’d be spending the night out.
And in fact she came back the next morning around nine, then disappeared with the boy.
Was the bad man with her then?
No, she’d taken the bus. The bad man arrived a little later, about fifteen minutes after Karima had left with her son. As soon as he learned the woman wasn’t there, he got back in his car and sped away to look for her.
Had Karima told her where she was going?
No, she hadn’t said anything. The old woman had only seen them heading on foot towards the old quarter of Villaseta, where the buses stop.
Did she have a suitcase with her?
Yes, a very small one.
He told the old woman to look around. Was there anything missing from the room?
She threw open the doors of the armoire, and the scent of Volupté exploded in the room. She opened a few drawers and rummaged around in them.
When she’d finished, she said that Karima had packed that suitcase with a pair of slacks, a blouse, and some panties.
She didn’t wear bras. She’d also thrown in a change of clothes and some underwear for the boy.
The inspector asked the woman to look very carefully.
Was anything else missing?
Yes, the large book she kept next to the telephone.
The book turned out to be some sort of diary or ledger.
Karima must certainly have taken it with her.
“She’s not planning to stay away very long,” Fazio commented.
“Ask her,” the inspector told Buscaìno, “if Karima spent the night out often.”
Now and then, not often. But she always let her know.
Montalbano thanked Buscaìno and asked him:
“Could you give Fazio a ride to Vigàta?”
Fazio gave his superior a perplexed look.
“Why, what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to hang around a little longer.”
o o o
Among the many photographs the inspector began to examine were those in a large yellow envelope, some twenty-odd photos of Karima in the nude, in various poses from provocative to downright obscene, a kind of sampling of the merchandise, which was obviously of the highest quality.
How was it a woman like that hadn’t succeeded in finding a husband or rich lover to take care of her so she wouldn’t have to prostitute herself ? There was a shot of a pregnant Karima some time before, gazing lovingly at a tall, blond man and literally hanging from him. Probably François’s father, the Frenchman passing through Tunisia. Other photos showed Karima as a little girl with a boy slightly older than her. They bore a strong resemblance, had the same eyes.
Brother and sister, no doubt. Actually there were a great many photos of her with her brother, taken over the years.
The last must have been the one in which Karima, with her infant son, a few months old, in her arms, stood next to her brother, who was wearing some sort of uniform and holding a submachine gun. He took this photograph and went downstairs.
The woman was crushing minced meat in a mortar, fold-ing in grains of cooked wheat. On a platter beside her, all ready to be roasted, were some skewers of meat, with each morsel wrapped in a vine leaf. Montalbano brought his fingertips together, pointing upwards, artichokelike— a cacòcciola, in Sicilian—and shook his hand up and down. The old woman understood the question and, pointing to the mortar, said: “Kubba.”
Then she picked up one of the skewers.
“Kebab,” she said.
The inspector showed her the photo and pointed at the man. The woman answered something incomprehensible.
Montalbano felt pissed off at himself. Why had he been in such a hurry to send Buscaìno away? Then he remembered that for years and years the Tunisians had been mixed up with the French. He gave it a try.
“Frère?”
The old woman’s eyes lit up.
“Oui. Son frère Ahmed.”
“Où est-il?”
“Je ne sais pas,” said the woman, throwing up her hands.
After this exchange straight out of a French conversation manual, Montalbano went back upstairs and grabbed the photo of the pregnant Karima with the blond man.
“Son mari?”
The old woman made a gesture of scorn.
“Simplement le père de François. Un mauvais homme.” She’d met too many of them—bad men, that is—had the beautiful Karima, and was apparently still meeting them.
“Je m’appelle Aisha,” the old woman said out of the blue.
“Mon nom est Salvo,” said Montalbano.
o o o
He got in the car, found the pastry shop he’d caught a glimpse of on the way, bought twelve cannoli, and drove back to the house. Aisha had set a table under a tiny pergola behind the cottage, at the front of the garden. The countryside was deserted. Before doing anything else, Montalbano un-wrapped the pastry tray, and the old woman immediately ate two cannoli as an appetizer. Montalbano wasn’t too thrilled with the kubba, but the kebabs had a tart, herbal flavor that made them a little more sprightly, or so, at least, he defined them according to his imperfect use of adjectives.
During the meal Aisha probably told him the story of her life, but she’d forgotten her French and was speaking only Arabic. Nevertheless, the inspector actively participated: when the old woman laughed, he laughed too; when she grew sad, he put on a face fit for a funeral.
When supper was over, Aisha cleared the table, while Montalbano, at peace with himself and the world, smoked a cigarette. When the old woman returned, she was wearing a mysterious, conspiratorial expression. In her hand was a narrow, flat black box that probably once held a necklace or something similar. Aisha opened it, and inside was a savings-account passbook for the Banca Popolare di Montelusa.
“Karima,” the old woman said, bringing her forefinger to her lips, meaning that this was a secret and should remain so.
Montalbano took the booklet from the box and opened it.
An even five hundred million lire.
o o o
The previous year—Signora Clementina Vasile Cozzo told him—she’d suffered a terrible spell of insomnia she could do nothing about. Luckily it lasted only a few months. She would spend most of the night watching television or listening to the radio. Reading, no. She couldn’t read for very long, because after a while her eyes would start to flutter.
Once—it must have been around four in the morning, perhaps earlier—she heard the shouts of two drunkards quarrel-ing right under her window. She opened the curtain, just out of curiosity, and noticed that the light was on in Mr.
Lapècora’s office. What could Mr. Lapècora be doing there at that hour of the night? But Mr. Lapècora was not there, in fact. Nobody was there; the front room of the office was empty. So Signora Vasile Cozzo concluded that somebody had left the light on. Suddenly, however, from the other room, which she knew existed but couldn’t see from her window, there emerged a young man who used to come to the office now and then, even when Lapècora wasn’t there.