She didn’t say whom, but it was clear she was talking about François, former snack thief, now family genius.
“Did you buy it for him yourself ?”
Livia dodged the question.
“Want to come down to the beach with me?”
“Right now or after I’ve eaten?”
“Right now.”
There was a sliver of moon shedding its light. They walked in silence. In front of a little pile of sand, Livia sighed sadly.
“You should have seen the castle he made! It was fantas-tic! It looked like Gaudì!”
“He’ll have time to make another.”
He was determined not to give up. Like a cop, and a jealous one at that.
“What store did you find the puzzle in?”
“I didn’t buy it myself. Mimì came by this afternoon, just for a second. The puzzle belongs to a nephew of his who—” He turned his back to Livia, thrust his hands in his pockets, and walked away, imagining dozens of Mimì’s nephews and nieces in tears, systematically despoiled of their toys by their uncle.
“Come on, Salvo, stop acting like a jerk!” said Livia, running up to him.
She tried to slip her arm in his; Montalbano pulled away.
“Fuck you,” Livia said calmly, and she went back to the house.
What was he going to do now? Livia had avoided the quarrel, and he would have to get it out of his system on his own. He walked irritably along the water’s edge, soaking his shoes and smoking ten cigarettes.
I’m such a fucking idiot! he said to himself at a certain point. It’s obvious that Mimì likes Livia and Livia’s fond of Mimì. But, this aside, I’m only giving Mimì grist for his mill. It’s clear he enjoys pissing me off. He’s waging a war of attrition against me, as I do against him. I have to plan a counteroffensive.
He went home. Livia was sitting in front of the television, which she had turned down very low in order not to wake François, who was sleeping in their bed.
“I’m sorry, seriously,” he said to her as he walked past her on his way to the kitchen.
In the oven he found a casserole of mullet and potatoes that smelled inviting. He sat down and tasted his first bite: exquisite. Livia came up behind him and stroked his hair.
“Do you like it?”
“Excellent. I must tell Adelina—”
“Adelina came this morning, saw me, said ‘I don’ wanna disturb,’ turned around, and left.”
“Are you telling me you made this casserole yourself ?”
“Of course.”
For an instant, but only an instant, the casserole went down the wrong way when a thought popped into his head: that she’d made it only to win forgiveness for this business with Mimì. But then the deliciousness of the dish prevailed.
o o o
Before sitting down beside Montalbano to watch television, Livia stopped a moment to admire the jigsaw puzzle. Now that Salvo had calmed down, she could freely talk about it.
“You should have seen how fast he put it together. It was stunning. You or I would have taken longer.”
“Or we would have got bored first.”
“But that’s just it. François also thinks puzzles are boring, because they have fixed rules. Every little piece, he says, is cut so that it will fit with another. Whereas it would be more fun if there were a puzzle with many different solutions!” “He said that?”
“Yes. And he explained it better, since I was drawing it out of him.”
“And what did he say?”
“I think I understood what he meant. He was already familiar with the Statue of Liberty and therefore when he put the head together he already knew what to do; but he was forced to do it that way because the puzzle’s designer had cut out the pieces in a way that obliged the player to follow his design. Is that clear so far?” “Clear enough.”
“It would be fun, he said, if the player could actually create his own alternative puzzle with the same pieces. Don’t you think that’s an extraordinary thought for so small a child?” “They’re precocious nowadays,” said Montalbano, immediately cursing himself for the banality of the expression.
He’d never talked about children before, and couldn’t help but to resort to clichés.
o o o
Nicolò Zito gave a summary of the Tunisian government’s official statement on the fishing-boat incident. Having conducted the necessary investigations, they had no choice but to reject the protest of the Italian government, since the Italians were powerless to prevent their own fishing boats from invading Tunisian territorial waters. That night, a Tunisian military patrol boat had sighted a trawler a few miles from Sfax. They gave the order to halt, but the fishing boat tried to flee. The patrol then fired a burst of warning from the ship’s machine gun that unfortunately struck and killed a Tunisian fisherman, Ben Dhahab, whose family had already been granted substantial aid by the government in Tunis. The tragic incident should serve as a lesson.
“Have you managed to find out anything about François’s mother?”
“Yeah, I have a lead, but don’t get your hopes up,” replied the inspector.
“If . . . if Karima were never to come back . . . what . . .
would happen to François?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“I’m going to bed,” said Livia, abruptly standing up.
Montalbano took her hand and brought it to his lips.
“Don’t get too attached to him.”
o o o
He delicately freed François from Livia’s embrace and laid him down to sleep on the sofa, which had already been made up. When he got into bed, Livia pressed her back against him, and this time did not resist his caresses. On the contrary.
“And what if the kid wakes up?” Montalbano asked at the crucial moment, still acting the swine.
“If he wakes up, I’ll go console him,” Livia said, breathing heavily.
o o o
At seven o’clock in the morning, he slipped softly out of bed and locked himself in the bathroom. As always, the first thing he did was look at himself in the mirror and twist up his mouth. He didn’t like his own face. So why the hell was he looking at it?
He heard Livia scream sharply, rushed to the door, and opened it. Livia was in the living room; the sofa was empty.
“He’s run away!” she said, trembling.
In one bound, the inspector was on the veranda. He could see him: a tiny little dot at the edge of the water, walking towards Vigàta. Dressed as he was, in only his underpants, he dashed off in pursuit. François was not running, but walking with determination. When he heard footsteps coming up behind him, he stopped in his tracks, without turning round.
Montalbano, gasping for air, crouched down before him but said nothing.
The little boy wasn’t crying. His eyes were staring into space, past Montalbano.
“Je veux maman, ” he said. I want Mama.
Montalbano saw Livia approaching at a run, wearing one of his shirts; he stopped her with a single gesture, giving her to understand she should go back to the house. Livia obeyed.
The inspector took the boy by the hand, and they began to walk very, very slowly. For fifteen minutes neither of them said a word. When they came to a beached boat, Montalbano sat down on the sand, François sat beside him, and the inspector put his arm around him.
“Iu persi a me matri ch’era macari cchiù nicu di tia, ” he began, telling the child he’d lost his own mother when he was even smaller than François.
They started talking, the inspector in Sicilian and the boy in Arabic, and they understood each other perfectly.
Montalbano confided things he’d never told anyone before, not even Livia.
He told him about the nights when he used to cry his heart out, head under the pillow so that his father wouldn’t hear him, and the despair he would feel every morning, knowing his mother wasn’t in the kitchen to make him breakfast, or, a few years later, to make him a snack to take to school. It’s an emptiness that can never be filled again; you carry it with you to the grave. The child asked him if he had the power to bring his mother back. No, replied Montalbano, nobody has that power. He had to resign himself. But you had your father, observed François, who really was intelligent, and not only because Livia said so. True, I had my father. And so, the boy asked, am I really going to end up in one of those places where they put children who have no father or mother?