Rizzitano broke off, exhausted, and heaved a long sigh.
"Would you like a glass of water?"
The old man seemed not to have heard him.
"...that was when I heard someone shouting in the distance. Actually, at first it sounded to me like a wailing animal, a howling dog. But in fact it was Uncle Stefano, calling his daughter. The sound of that voice made my hair stand on end, because it was the agonized, agonizing cry of a cruelly abandoned lover who was suffering and screaming out his pain like an animal; it was not the voice of a father looking for his daughter. It upset me terribly. I opened the door. Outside was total darkness. I shouted that I was alone in the house. I said: Why come looking for your daughter at my house? Then suddenly there he was in front of me, as though catapulted. He ran inside like a madman, trembling, insulting me and Lisetta. I tried to calm him and approached him. He punched me in the face and I fell backward, stunned. Finally I noticed he had a pistol in his hand. He said he was going to kill me. Then I made a mistake: I retorted that he only wanted his daughter so he could rape her again. He shot at me but missed; he was too agitated. Then he took better aim, but another shot exploded in the room. I used to keep a loaded shotgun in my room, near the bed. Lisetta had taken it and fired at her father from the top of the stairs. Struck in the shoulder, Uncle Stefano staggered, and his weapon fell from his hand. Coldly, Lisetta ordered him to get out or she would finish him off. I have no doubt she would have done so without hesitation. Uncle Stefano looked his daughter long in the eye, then began to whimper with his mouth closed, and not only, I suspect, because of his wound. Then he turned his back and left. I bolted all the doors and windows. I was terrified, and it was Lisetta who gave me back my courage and strength. We remained barricaded inside the next morning as well. Around three oclock Mario arrived, we told him what had happened, and he decided to spend the night with us. He didn't want to leave us alone there, since Lisetta's father would surely be back. Around midnight a horrific bombing raid was launched over Vig, but Lisetta remained calm because her Mario was with her. On the morning of July ninth, I went to Vig to see if the house we owned in town was still standing. I strongly advised Mario not to open the door for anyone and to keep the shotgun within reach."
He stopped. "My throat is dry."
Montalbano ran into the kitchen and returned with a glass and a pitcher of cold water. The old man took the glass in both hands; his whole body was shaking. The inspector felt keenly sorry.
"If youd like to rest awhile, we can resume later."
The old man shook his head.
"If I stop now, I'll never resume. I stayed in Vig until late afternoon. The house hadn't been destroyed, but it was a tremendous mess: doors and windows blown out by the shock waves, upended furniture, broken glass. I cleaned up as best I could, and that kept me busy till evening. My bicycle was gone from the entrance way, stolen. So I headed back to the Crasto on foot. It was an hours walk. Actually I had to walk by the side of the main road because there were so many military vehicles, Italian and German, moving in both directions. The moment I arrived at the top of the dirt road that led to my house, two American fighter-bombers appeared overhead and started machine-gunning and dropping fragmentation bombs. The planes were flying very low to the ground and roaring like thunder. I threw myself into a ditch and almost immediately was struck very hard in the back by something that I first thought was a large stone sent flying by an exploding bomb. In fact it was a military boot, with the foot still inside, severed just above the ankle. I sprang to my feet and started running up the driveway, but I had to stop to vomit. My legs were giving out, and I fell two or three times, as behind me the noise of the airplanes began to fade and I could hear the cries and screams and prayers more clearly, and the orders being shouted between the burning trucks. The instant I set foot in my house, I heard two shots ring out upstairs, quickly, one right after the other. Uncle Stefano, I thought, had managed to get inside the house and carry out his revenge. Near the door there was a big iron bar that was used to bolt it shut. I grabbed it and went upstairs without a sound. My bedroom door was open; a man was standing just inside with his back to me, still holding the revolver in his hand."
The old man, who until this point hadn't once looked up at the inspector, now stared him straight in the eye.
"In your opinion, do I have the face of a murderer?"
"No," said Montalbano. "And if you're referring to the man in the room with the gun in his hand, you can set your mind at rest. You acted out of necessity, in self-defense."
"Someone who kills a man is still someone who kills a man. The legal formulas come later. What counts is the will of the moment. And I wanted to kill that man, no matter what he had done to Lisetta and Mario. So I raised the rod and dealt him a blow to the nape of the neck with all my might, hoping to shatter his skull. He fell forward, revealing the scene on the bed. There were Mario and Lisetta, naked, clutching one another, in a sea of blood. They must have been making love when they were surprised by the bombs falling so close to the house, and then embraced each other like that out of fear. There was nothing more to be done for them. Something perhaps could still have been done for the man on the floor behind me, who was gasping his last. With a kick I turned him faceup. He was some flunky of Uncle Stefanos, a cheap thug. Systematically, with the iron bar, I began to beat his head to a pulp. And then I went crazy. I started running from room to room, singing. Have you ever killed anyone?"
"Yes, unfortunately."
"You say unfortunately, which means you felt no satisfaction. What I felt was not so much satisfaction as joy. I felt happy; I sang, as I said. Then I collapsed in a chair, overwhelmed by the horror, horrified with myself. I hated myself. They had managed to turn me into a murderer, and I hadn't been able to resist. On the contrary, I was pleased to have done it. The blood inside me was infected, no matter how hard I might try to cleanse it with reason, education, culture, and whatever else you want. It was the blood of the Rizzitanos, of my grandfather and my father, of men the honest people in town preferred not to mention. Men like them, even worse than them. Then, in my delirium, a possible solution appeared. If Mario and Lisetta were to go on sleeping, then all this horror had never happened. It was a nightmare, a bad dream. And so..."
The old man couldn't go on. Montalbano was afraid he would pass out.
"Let me tell the rest. You took the two kids bodies, transported them to the cave, and set them up there."
"Yes, but thats easy to say. I had to carry them inside one by one. I was exhausted, and literally soaked with blood."
"The second cave, the one you put the bodies in, was it also used to store black-market goods?"