"Why not?" said Montalbano, polite and open to anything.
At eight, Fazio knocked on the door and brought him all the dailies available in Vig, as he'd been ordered to do the night before. The inspector leafed through them while repeatedly answering the phone. All of them, with greater or lesser degrees of emphasis, reported the story. The headline that most amused him was the one in the Corriere, which read: Police Inspector identifies terra-cotta dog dead for fifty years. All of it, even the irony, was grist for his mill.
Adelina was amazed to find him at home and not out, as was usually the case.
"Adelina, I'm going to be staying home for a few days. I'm waiting for an important phone call, so I want you to make my siege comfortable."
"I didn't unnastand a word you said."
Montalbano then explained that her task was to alleviate his voluntary seclusion by putting a little extra imagination in her lunch and dinner dishes.
Around ten, Livia called.
"What's going on? Your phone is always busy!"
"I'm sorry. It's just that I've been getting all these calls in reference to"
"I know what they're in reference to. I saw you on TV. You were so unselfconscious and glib, you didn't seem yourself. It's obvious you're better off when I'm not around."
He rang Fazio at headquarters and asked him to bring all mail home to him and to buy an extension cord for the phone. The mail, he added, should be brought to him at home each day, as soon as it arrived. And Fazio should pass the word on: anyone who asked for him at the office must be given his private number by the switchboard operator, with no questions asked.
Less than an hour passed before Fazio arrived with two unimportant postcards and the extension cord.
"What's new at the office?"
"What's new? Nothing. You're the one who attracts the big stuff. Inspector Augello only gets the little shit: purse snatchings, petty theft, a mugging here and there."
"I attract the big stuff ? What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means what I said. My wife, for instance, is scared of rats. Well, I swear, she draws them to her like a magnet. Wherever she goes, the rats soon arrive."
For forty-eight hours he'd been like a dog on a chain. His field of action was only as large as the extension cord would allow, and therefore he could neither walk on the beach nor go out for a run. He carried the phone with him everywhere, even when he went to the bathroom, and every now and then the mania took hold of him, after twenty-four hours he would pick up the receiver and bring it to his ear to see if it was working. On the morning of the third day a thought came into his mind:
Why bother to wash if you can't go outside?
This was followed by another, closely related thought:
So what need is there to shave?
On the morning of the fourth day, filthy and bristly, wearing slippers and the same shirt since the first day, he gave Adelina a fright.
"Maria santissima, signuri! Whata happen to you? Are you sick?"
"Yes."
"Why don you call a doctor?"
"It's not the sort of thing for a doctor."
...
He was a very great tenor, acclaimed in all the world. That evening he was to sing at the Cairo Opera, at the old theater, which hadn't yet burned down, though he knew well that it would soon be devoured by flames. He'd asked an attendant to inform him the moment Signor Gege sat down in his box, the fifth from the right on the second level. He was in costume, the last touches having been applied to his makeup. He heard the calclass="underline" Who's on next? He didn't move. The attendant arrived, out of breath, and told him that Signor Gege who hadn't died, this was well known, he'd escaped to Egypt, hadn't shown up yet. He dashed onto the stage, looking out into the theater through a small opening in the curtain: it was mobbed. The only empty box was the fifth from the right, second level. He made a split-second decision: he returned to his dressing room, took off his costume and put his regular clothes back on, leaving the makeup, including the long, gray beard and thick, white eyebrows, untouched. Nobody would ever recognize him again, and therefore he would never sing again. He well understood that his career was over and he would have to scramble to survive, but he didn't know what to do about it. Without Gege couldn't sing.
He woke up bathed in sweat. In his own fashion, he had produced a classic Freudian dream, that of the empty theater box. What did it mean? That the pointless wait for Lillo Rizzitano would ruin his life?
"Inspector? It's Headmaster Burgio. It's been a while since we last spoke. Have you any news of our mutual friend?"
"No."
Monosyllabic, hasty, at the risk of seeming impolite, he had to discourage long or pointless phone conversations. If Rizzitano were to make up his mind, he might think twice if he found the line busy.
"I'm afraid the only way we'll ever get to talk to Lillo, if you'll forgive my saying so, is to hire a medium."
...
He had a big squabble with Adelina. The housekeeper had just gone into the kitchen when he heard her start yelling. Then she appeared in the bedroom.
"Signuri, you dint eat nothin yesterday for lunch or dinner!"
"I wasn't hungry,Adel"
"I work mself to death cookin dlicious things and you jes turn up ya nose at em."
"I don't turn up my nose at them, I'm just not hungry, as I said."
"An this houses become a pigsty! You don want me to wash the floor, you don want me to wash ya clothes! For five days you been wearin the same shirt ann a same shorts! You stink, signuri!"
"I'm sorry, Adelina. I'll snap out of it, you'll see."
"Well, lemme know when you snap out of it, and I'll come back. Cause I ain't settin foot back in ere. Call me when ya feelin better."
...
He went out onto the veranda, sat down on the bench, put the telephone beside him, and stared at the sea. He couldn't do anything else, read, think, write, nothing. Only stare at the sea. He was losing himself in the bottomless well of an obsession, and he knew it. He remembered a film he'd seen, perhaps based on a novel by Datt, in which a police inspector stubbornly kept waiting for a killer who was supposed to pass through a certain place in the mountains, when in fact the guy would never come through there again. But the inspector didn't know this, and so he waited and waited, and meanwhile days, months, years went by . . .
Around eleven oclock that same morning, the telephone rang. Nobody had called since Headmaster Burgio, several hours before. Montalbano didn't pick up the receiver; he froze as though paralyzed. He knew, with utter certainty though he couldn't have explained why who would be there at the other end.
He made an effort, and picked up.
"Hello? Inspector Montalbano?"
A fine, deep voice, even though it belonged to an old man.
"Yes, this is he," said Montalbano. And he couldn't refrain from adding:" Finally!"
"Finally," the other repeated.
They both remained silent a moment, listening to their breathing.
"I've just landed at Palermo. I could be at your place in Vig by one-thirty this afternoon at the latest. If that's all right with you, perhaps you could tell me exactly how to find you. I've been away a long time. Fifty-one years."
25
He dusted, swept, and scrubbed the floors with the speed of a slapstick silent movie. Then he went into the bathroom and washed up as he had done only once before in his life, when, at age sixteen, he'd gone on his first date. He took an interminable shower, sniffing his armpits and the skin on his arms, then doused himself, for good measure, with eau de cologne. He knew he was being ridiculous, but he chose his best suit, his most serious tie, and polished his shoes until they looked as if they had their own internal light source. Then he got the idea to set the table, but only for one. He was, it was true, in the throes of a canine hunger, but he was sure he would not be able to swallow.