The Scent of the Night (20 page)

'Thank you, Dr La Spina. For your trouble, I'd like to—'

'Never mind about that. I’v
ve been her doctor since she was a little girl But I don t feel right leaving her alone. I'd like to call a nurse.'

I
’
ll be staying with her, don't worry about it'

They said goodbye. The inspector waited till the car was out of sight then went back in the house and locked the door. Now came the hardest part going back, of his own accord, into the nightmare of the fiction, becoming a character in the story again. He walked by Mariastella's room and saw her sleeping under a blanket
of faded rose colour.
He saw
the rose-shaded lights ...the dressing table ... the delicate array of crystal ...
Yet hers was not a placid sleep. Her long, iron-grey hair seemed to move continuously over the pillow. He made up his mind, opened the other door, turned on the overhead fight and went in. The wrapping sparkled from the reflections of the light off the plastic He went up to it and bent down to have a look. Emanuele Gargano's vest was singed right over the heart
’
the bullet hole was clearly visible. He had not committed suicide. The pistol had been neatly placed on the other nightstand. Mariastella had shot him in his sleep. On the nightstand closer to the dead man lay a wallet and a Rolex. On the floor beside the bed was an open briefcase; inside were some co
mputer diskettes and papers. Pell
egrino's briefcase.

Now he had to bring the story to its conclusion. Was there,
in the second pillow ...the indentation of a he
ad.
And was there, on that same pillow,
a long strand of iron-grey hair.

He forced himself to look. There was no indentation, no strand of iron-grey hair on the pillow.

He breathed a sigh of relief. At least he'd been spared that. He turned off the light, closed the door, went back in Mariastella's room, pulled up a chair, and sat down beside her. Somebody had once told him that sedated sleep is dreamless. Then why was that poor body occasionally tossed and shaken by violent starts as if by a strong electrical charge? And that same somebody had also said that one could not truly cry in one's sleep. Then why were big tears seeping out from under the woman's eyelids? What did anyone, even scientists, know about what could happen in the mysterious, indecipherable, ineffable country of sleep? He took one of her hands in his. It was hot. He had overestimated Gargano. The man was only a con artist; the murder of Pellegrino had got to him. After pushing his car into the sea and seizing the briefcase, he had run to Mariastella, certain that she would never talk, never betray him. And Mariastella had welcomed him, consoled him, taken him in. Then, after she'd let him fall asleep, she shot him. Was it jealousy? A mad reaction to learning of her Emanuele's relationship with Giacomo? No, Mariastella would never have done that. Then he understood: she'd shot him out of love, to spare the only human being she'd ever really loved in her life the contempt, the dishonour, the imprisonment that awaited him. There could be no other explanation. The darker side of the inspector's mind (or perhaps the brighter) suggested a possible solution to him: grab the whole package, put it in the boot of his car, take it to the spot where Giacomo was murdered, and fling it into the sea. No one would ever suspect any involvement on Mariastella Cosentino's part And he would have the pleasure of seeing the look on Guamotta's face when he found Gargano's corpse carefully wrapped in plastic. Why had the Mafia wrapped him up? Guarnotta would ask himself in dismay. But he was a cop.

He stood up. It was already eight o'clock. He went to the phone; maybe Guarnotta was still in his office.

'Hello, Guarnotta? Montalbano here.'

He explained to him what he needed to do. Then he went back into Mariastella's room, wiped the sweat from her brow with a comer of the sheet sat down, and again took one of her hands in his.

Then, after he didn't know how long, he heard the cars pull up. He opened the front door and went out to meet Guarnotta.

'Did you call an ambulance and a nurse?'

'They're on their way.'

'Look around carefully. There's a briefcase in there that might help you recover the stolen money.'

On the way back to Marinella, he had to pull over twice and stop. He was unable to drive. He was drained, and not just physically. The second time, he got out of the car. By now it was completely dark outside. He took a deep breath. And he noticed that the scent of the night had
changed It now had a light, fresh smell, a
scent of young grass, citronella
, and wild mint. He drove off again, exhausted but revived

Upon entering his house, he froze. Livia was standing in the middle of the room, frowning, eyes flashing with anger. She was holding up with both hands the sweater he had forgotten to bury. Montalbano opened his mouth but no sound came out. Livia slowly lowered her arms, and her face changed expression.

'Oh my God Salvo, what's wrong? What's happened?'

She threw the sweater to the ground and ran to embrace him.

‘
What's happened to you, darling? What's the matter?'

And she held him tight, desperate and frightened

Montalbano was still unable to speak or return her embrace. He had only one thought in his mind clear and strong:

It's a good thing she's here.

Author's Note

The idea of assigning Montalbano an investigation into the dealings of a financial 'wizard' (a rather anomalous case, sort of a
divertissement)
came to me while reading an article by Francesco ('Ciccio', to friends) La Licata entitled "Multinational Mafia', which mentioned the case of one Giovanni Sucato (the 'wizard'), who had 'managed, through a kind of pyramid scheme in the millions, to build an empire. Then he was blown up in his car.' My story is far more modest and, especially at the end, much different. Particularly different were my reasons for telling it
.
For here the Mafia have nothing to do with it despite the convictions of Inspector Guamotta, one of the characters. Nevertheless I must state that all names and situations are purely invented and have no basis in reality. Any similarity to real characters, etc ... The short story by William Faulkner that Montalbano finds himself living inside of is 'A Rose for Emily'.

Notes

page 8 — raginiere
Emanuele Gargano — A
ragioniere
is someone who holds a degree in
ragioneria,
the study of business administration and accounting.

page
26 —
'two billion lire' — At the time this novel was written, right before the conversion to euros, it took about three thousand lire to equal one British pound. Thus two billion lire would have been worth about £650,000.

Page 2
6
— a million lire... twenty billion lire' — See note above. Twenty billion lire at the time would have equalled about £6.5 million.

page 34
lupara
’
—
A sawn-off shotgun, traditionally the weapon of choice among mafiosi and bandits in Sicily. It has since been replaced by more modern firearms.

Page 3
6 —
Lohengrin Pera, that son of a bitch from the Secret Service — Coerced by Montalbano into making certain concessions against his will, the sinister Pera is an important minor character in Camilleri's
The Snack Thief
(Picador, 2005).

page
40 —
five hundred million lire — About £160,000 at the time.

page
41
— tobacco shop — Tobacco products are controlled by the government in Italy and sold in specially designated shops.

page
47
— who until six months ago had worked in Bolzano — Bolzano is in a far northern, Alpine region of Italy where roughly half the population speaks German.

page
49
— Saying hello and goodbye must not be the rule around, here —
In Italy it is customary for people, even clients, to greet each other upon entering and exiting places of public commerce such as shops and restaurants.

page 5
4
— as Orlando in fury had done with his sword — A reference to the classic sixteenth-century Italian chivalric romance,
Orlando Furioso,
by Ludovico Ariosto (1434—1533).

P
ag
e 67
—
Turi
.. Turiddru — Sicilian diminutives for the name Salvatore.

page 77
D
’
Annunz
to — Gabriele D'Annunzio (1863—1938), an Italian poet and author much celebrated in his time, wrote a novel entitled
Forse che si, forse c
he no (Maybe Yes, Maybe No),
published in 191
0.

page
79 — salary of two million two hundred thousand lire — About £715,000.

page
81
—
The tombs shall open, the dead shall rise —
A line from the Italian national anthem, often ironically quoted to express astonishment at the occurrence of an unusual event.

page
83 —
nunnatu —
Sicilian for
neonato
(i.e., newborn'). Calogero is referring to tiny baby fish that one is not allowed to catch except on occasions such as the one alluded to here. Also called
cicirell
a
(or
cicu
reddra).

page 94 — patati cunsati
— Seasoned potatoes.

page 99
—
‘
May you bear only sons' - The full expression, uttered often as a toast at weddings, is
auguri e figli masch
i
(literally, 'best wishes and male children').

page
112
— A
debate between those in favour of and those against building a bridge over the Strait of Messina — Whether or not to build a bridge over the turbulent Strait of Messina, site of the passage between Scylla and Charybdis in ancient Greek myth, has long been a subject of pub
lic debate in Italy. Most recentl
y Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, even while slashing social benefits and privatizing many state-run industries, revived the project to span the Strait, as part of a broad public-works programme intended above all to serve his own greater glory. Camilleri's reference to the question should be seen in this context.

page
123
— Punta Raisi — The airport of Palermo.

page
136 — 'Excursion to Tindari' —
Excursion to Tinda
ri
(Picador, 2005) is the previous book in the Inspector Montalbano series.

page 147
—
Thirty million lire' — Just under £10,000.

page 150 — Nottata persa e f
iglia femmina
— Literally: 'a night lost, and it's a girl'. A Sicilian saying first quoted by Camilleri in
Excursion to Tind
ari,
it means more or less 'what a lot of wasted effort'. As the narrator explains in that book, it is 'the proverbial saying ... of the husband who has spent a whole night beside his wife in labour, only to see her give birth to a baby girl instead of that much-desired son.'

page
1
5
9 —
‘
La
donna e mobile' — Aria from Giuseppe Verdi's opera
Rigoletto.

page
162
— the violin of Maestro Cataldo Barbera — A reference to the reclusive violinist of Camilleri's
Voice of the Violi
n
(Picador, 2005), whose virtuosic skills ultimately inspire Inspector Montalbano to solve the case of that book.

page 179
—
pasta 'ncasdata
— One of the many forms of southern Italian
pasta al
forn
o,
that is. a casserole of oven-baked pasta and other ingredients.
Pasta 'ncasciata
generally contains small macaroni,
nana
or
caciocavall
o
cheese, ground beef, mortadella or salami, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, aubergine, grated Pecorino cheese, basil, olive oil and a splash of white wine.

page
181
— 'Seven hundred million lire in all
’
— About £230,000.

page
187
— 'that guy who was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge ... that other guy, the one who faked being kidnapped by the Mafia, shot himself in the leg, and then drank
a
cup of poisoned coffee in prison...' — The man found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge was Roberto Calvi, President of the Banco Ambrosiano, a bank with ties to the Vatican, not to mention a host of holdings in offshore companies and Swiss bank accounts, and closely connected to a shadowy network of secret Masonic lodges, mafiosi, politicians, and arms traders. The second man Montalbano alludes to was Michele Sindona, a financier at the centre of a similar, and indeed related, web of interests. It was, in fact, while investigating Sindona that the Italian courts eventually discovered the existence of the famous
P2
Masonic lodge — whose membership included industrial barons, intelligence men, neo-Fascists, mafiosi, and numerous politicians — triggering a scandal that would ultimately spell the ruin, in the early 1990s, of the Christian Democratic Party, which had dominated the Italian government since the end of the Second World War.

page
168
— 'So he plays the fool,.as the saying goes, to avoid going to war'
— Fa u f
issa pi nun ir
i a la guerra.
A Sicilian-Calabrian expression that essentially means to feign ignorance or to play dumb'.

page 106
—
'O Gesu binidtto!
-
O blessed Jesus! (Sicilian dialect).

page
208
— Signora Clementina — Clementina Vasile-Cozzo is a character in both
The Snack Thief and Voice of the Violin
and a friend of Inspector Montalbano.

Notes by Stephen Sartarell
i