As in comic books, Montalbano saw the lightbulb flash in his brain.
...
He screeched to a halt in front of the Anti-Mafia Commission offices. The guard on duty raised his submachine gun in alarm.
"I'm Inspector Montalbano!" he shouted, holding up his drivers license, the first thing he'd happened to grab. Short of breath, he ran past another officer acting as usher and yelled: "Please inform Mr. De Dominicis that Inspector Montalbano's on his way up, quick!"
In the elevator, taking advantage of being alone, Montalbano mussed up his hair, loosened his tie, and unbuttoned his top button. He thought of pulling his shirt a bit out of his trousers, but decided that would be excessive.
"De Dominicis, I've got it!" he said, panting slightly, closing the door behind him.
"You've got what?" asked De Dominicis, alarmed by the inspectors appearance and rising from his gilded armchair in his gilded office.
"If youre willing to give me a hand, I'll let you in on an investigation that.."
He stopped, putting a hand over his mouth as if to prevent himself from saying anything more.
"What's it about? Give me a hint, at least."
"I can't, believe me, I really can't."
"What am I supposed to do?"
"By this evening at the latest, I want to know what the subject of the university thesis of someone named Calogero Rizzitano was. His academic adviser was a certain Professor Cotroneo, I think. He must have graduated in late 1942. The subject of this thesis is the key to everything. We could deal a mortal blow to.."
Again he interrupted himself, became bug-eyed, and said to himself dementedly:
"I haven't said anything, you know."
Montalbano's agitation infected De Dominicis.
"What can we do? The students ...at the time...why, there must have been thousands! Assuming the records still exist."
"What are you saying? A few dozen, not thousands. At the time, all the young men were in the service. It should be easy to find out."
"Then why don't you look into it yourself ?"
"They would be sure to waste a great deal of my time with their red tape, whereas for you they would open every door."
"Where can I reach you?"
"I'm heading back to Vig in a hurry; I don't want to lose track of certain developments. Phone me as soon as you've got any news. Call me at home, don't forget. Not at the office; there may be a mole there."
He waited until evening for De Dominicis's call, which never came. This did not worry him, however; he was sure that De Domenicis had swallowed the bait. Apparently, even for him, the going had not been easy.
The next morning he had the pleasure of seeing Adelina the housekeeper again.
"Why haven't you been around these days?"
"Whattaya mean, why?"
"Cause the young lady don't like seein me bout the house when she's here, that's why."
"How did you know Livia was gone?"
"I found out in town."
Everybody, in Vig, knew everything about everyone.
"What'd you buy for me?"
"I'm gonna make you pasta con le sarde,and purpi alla carrettera for after."
Exquisite, but deadly. Montalbano gave her a hug.
...
Around midday the telephone rang and Adelina, who was cleaning the house top to bottom to get rid of every trace of Livia's presence, went to answer.
"Signuri, Dr. Didumminici wants you."
Montalbano, who'd been sitting on the veranda re-reading Faulkner's Pylon for the fifth time, rushed inside. Before picking up the receiver, however, he quickly established a plan of action for getting De Dominicis out of his hair once he'd obtained the information.
"Yes? Hello? Who's this?" he said in a tired voice full of disappointment.
"You were right, it was easy. Calogero Rizzitano graduated on November 13, 1942. You'd better write this down, because the title is a long one."
"Wait while I look for a pen. For what it's worth..."
De Dominicis noticed the flatness in Montalbanos voice.
"Are you all right?"
Complicity had made De Dominicis more concerned and personal.
"Am I all right? Need you ask? I told you I needed an answer by last night! I'm no longer interested! You're too late. Everything's fucked now, fizzled out."
"I couldn't have done it any sooner, believe me."
"All right, all right. Let's have the title."
"The Use of Macaronic Latin in the Mystery Play of the Seven Sleepers by an Anonymous Sixteenth-Century Author. Now you tell me what the Mafia could have to do with a title"
"It has a lot to do with it! It has everything to do with it! Except that now, because of you, I don't need it anymore and I certainly can't thank you for it."
He hung up and burst into a high-pitched whinny of joy. Immediately a sound of breaking glass could be heard in the kitchen: in terror, Adelina must have dropped something. Taking a running start, he leapt from the veranda onto the sand, executed a somersault, then a cartwheel, then a second somersault and a second cartwheel. The third somersault failed, and he collapsed on the sand, out of breath. Adelina ran towards him from the veranda screaming:
"Madunnuzza beddra! He's gone crazy! He's broke is neck!"
...
To set his own mind at rest, Montalbano got in his car and drove to the Montelusa public library.
"I'm looking for a mystery play," he said to the chief librarian.
The chief librarian, who knew him as a police inspector, was mildly astonished but said nothing.
"All we've got," she said, "are the two volumes of D'Ancona and two more by De Bartholomaeis. But these books cant be taken out. You'll have to consult them here."
He found the Mystery Play of the Seven Sleepers in the second tome of the D'Ancona anthology. It was a short, very na text. Lillo's thesis must have centered around the dialogue between two heretical scholars who expressed themselves in an amusing macaronic Latin. But what most interested the inspector was the long preface by D'Ancona. It contained everything: the quotation from the Koranic sura, the legends itinerary through various European and African countries, in all its different variants and mutations. Professor Lovecchio had been correct: sura number eighteen of the Koran, taken by itself, would have proved a very tough nut to crack. It had to be complemented with the contributions of other cultures.
...
"I'm going to venture a hypothesis, and I'd like to have your approval," said Montalbano, who had brought the Burgios up-to-date on his latest discoveries. "You both told me, with a great deal of conviction, that Lillo saw Lisetta as a little sister and was crazy about her. Right?"
"Yes," the two said in chorus.
"Good. Now, let me ask you a question. Do you think Lillo would have been capable of killing Lisetta and her young lover?"
"No," said the old couple without a moments hesitation.
"I'm of the same opinion," said Montalbano, "precisely because it was Lillo who put the two bodies in a position, so to speak, to be hypothetically resurrected. No killer wants his victims to come back to life."
"And so?" asked the headmaster.
"If, in an emergency, Lisetta had asked him to put them up, she and her boyfriend, at the Rizzitano house on the Crasto, how do you think Lillo would have responded?"
Signora Angelina didn't pause to think twice.
"He would have done whatever Lisetta asked of him."
"Let's try, then, to imagine what happened during those days in July. Lisetta runs away from Serradifalco, with luck she makes it to Vig, meets up with Mario Cunich, and the boyfriend deserts his postor strays from his ship, let's say. The two now have nowhere to hide. Going to Lisetta's house would be like walking into the wolf's den; it's the first place her father would look. So she asks Lillo Rizzitano for help; she knows he won't say no. Lillo puts the couple up at his house at the foot of the Crasto, where he's been living alone since the rest of his family was evacuated. Who killed the two lovers, and why, we don't know, and perhaps we never will. But there can be no doubt that it was Lillo who buried them in the cave, because he followed, step by step, both the Christian and the Koranic versions of the story. In both cases, the sleepers will one day awake. But what did he mean, what was he trying to say by staging that scene? Was he trying to tell us that the two lovers are asleep and will one day awake or be awakened? Or was he hoping, in fact, that someone in the future would find them and wake them up? Purely by chance, it was I who found them and woke them up. But, believe me, I really wish I had never discovered that cave."