Voice of the Violin

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‘Excuse me,’ said Serravalle, ‘what is the setting of your story?’

‘Bologna’ said Montalbano.

He continued, ‘Sometime during the past year, roughly speaking, this gentleman meets a young woman from the upper-middle class. They become lovers. Their relationship is risk free. The woman’s husband, for reasons that would take too long to explain here, turns not a blind eye, as they say, but two blind eyes on their affair. The lady still loves her husband, but is very attached, sexually, to her lover.’

He stopped short.

‘May I smoke?’ Montalbano asked. ‘Of course’ said Serravalle, pushing an ashtray closer to him.

Montalbano took the packet out slowly, extracted three cigarettes, rolled them one by one between his thumb and forefinger, opted for the one that seemed softest to him, put the other two back in the packet, then started patting himself in search of his lighter.

‘Sorry I can’t help you, I don’t smoke’ said the antique dealer.

The inspector finally found the lighter in the breast pocket of his jacket, studied it as if he’d never seen it before, lit the cigarette, and put the lighter back in his pocket.

Before starting to speak, he looked wild-eyed at Serravalle. The antiquarian’s upper lip was moist; he was beginning to sweat.

‘Where was I?’

‘The woman was, very attached to her lover.’

‘Oh, yes. Unfortunately, our protagonist has a very nasty vice. He gambles, and gambles big. Three times in the last three months he’s been caught in illegal gambling dens. One day, just imagine, he ends up in hospital, brutally beaten. He claims he was assaulted and robbed, but the police suspect, I say suspect, it was a warning to pay up old gambling debts. In any event, the situation for our protagonist, who keeps on gambling and losing, gets worse and worse. He confides in his girlfriend, and she tries to help him as best she can. Sometime before, she’d had this idea to build a house in Sicily, because she liked the place. Now this house turns out to be a perfect opportunity because, by inflating her costs, she can funnel hundreds of millions of lire to her boyfriend. She plans to build a garden, probably even a swimming pool, new sources of diverted money. But it turns out to be a drop in the ocean, hardly two or three hundred million. One day, this woman, who, for the sake of convenience, I’ll call Michela —’

‘Wait a second,’ Serravalle broke in with a snicker that was supposed to be sardonic. ‘And your protagonist, what’s his name?’

‘Let’s say … Guido,’ said Montalbano, as if this were a negligible detail.

Serravalle grimaced. The sweat was now making his shirt stick to his chest.

‘You don’t like that? We can call them Paolo and Francesca, if you like. The essence remains the same.’

He waited for Serravalle to say something, but since he didn’t open his mouth, Montalbano continued.

‘One day, Michela, in Vigata, meets a famous violin soloist who has retired there. They take a liking to each other, and Michela tells him about an old violin she inherited from her great-grandfather. Just for fun, I think, she shows it to the Maestro, and he, upon seeing it, realizes he’s in the presence of an instrument of tremendous value, both musically and monetarily. A couple of billion lire, at least. When Michela returns to Bologna, she tells her lover the whole story. If what the Maestro told her is true, they can easily sell the violin, since Michela’s husband has only seen it once or twice, and nobody is aware of its real value.

All they have to do is replace it with any old violin, and Guido’s troubles will be over for ever.’

Montalbano stopped talking, drummed on the case with his fingers, and sighed.

‘Now comes the worst part,’

he said.

‘Well,’ said Serravalle, ‘you can tell me the rest another time.’

‘I could, but then I’d have to make you come back here from Bologna or else go there myself. Too much trouble. But since you’re polite enough to listen to me, even though you’re dying of the heat in here, I’ll explain to you why I consider this the worst part.’

‘Because you’ll have to talk about a murder.^‘I’

Montalbano looked at the antique dealer, mouth agape.

‘You think that’s why? No, I’m accustomed to murder. I consider it the worst part because I have to leave the realm of concrete fact and venture into a man’s mind, enter his thoughts. A novelist would have the road laid out in front of him, but I’m simply a reader of what I think are good books. Excuse me for digressing. At this point our protagonist gathers some information on the Maestro whom Michela spoke to him about. And he discovers that not only is he a great performer of international renown, but also a connoisseur of the history of the instrument he plays. In short, there’s a ninety-nine per cent chance his hunch is right on target.

There is no question, however, that, if left in Michela’s hands, the matter will take for ever to settle. Not only will she want to sell the instrument, well, quietly, yes, but also legally, so of those two billion lire, after sundry expenses, commissions and the workings of our government, which will swoop down from above like a highwayman, she’ll be left in the end with less than a billion. But there’s a shortcut. And our protagonist thinks about it day and night. He talks about it with a friend. This friend, whom we’ll call, say, Eolo.

It had gone well for him; conjecture had become certainty. As though struck by a large-calibre bullet, Serravalle abruptly stood up from his chair only to fall heavily back down in it. He undid the knot of his tie.

‘Yes, let’s call him Eolo.

Eolo agrees with the protagonist that there’s only one way: eliminate the lady and seize the violin, replacing it with another of little value. Serravalle persuades him to give him a hand. Most importantly, theirs is a secret friendship, perhaps based on gambling, and Michela has never seen Eolo before.

On the appointed day, they take the last flight out of Bologna together, changing at Rome for the connecting flight to Palermo. Now, Eolo Portinari—’

Serravalle gave a start, but feebly, as when a dying man is shot a second time.

‘How silly of me, I gave him a last name! Anyway,

Eolo Portinari is travelling without luggage, or almost, whereas Guido brings along a large suitcase. Aboard the plane, the two men pretend not to know each other. Shortly before flying out of Rome, Guido phones Michela, telling her he’s on his way down. He says he needs her and she should come and pick him up at Punta Raisi airport. Maybe he gets her to think he’s fleeing his creditors, who want to kill him. Landing in Palermo, Guido heads to Vigata with Michela, while Eolo rents a car and also heads to Vigata, though at a safe distance. During the drive, the protagonist probably tells his girlfriend that his life was in danger if he remained in Bologna. He’d come up with the idea of hiding out for a few days at Michela’s new house. Who would ever think of looking for him down there? The woman, happy to have her lover with her, accepts the idea. Before they get to Montelusa, she stops at a bar, buys two sandwiches and a bottle of mineral water. But as she’s doing this, she stumbles on a stair and falls, and Serravalle is seen by the owner of the bar. They arrive at Michela’s house after midnight. Michela immediately takes a shower and runs into her man’s arms. They make love once, and then her lover asks her if they can do it a special way. And at the end of this second coupling, he presses her face into the mattress, suffocating her. And do you know why he asked Michela to do it that way? No doubt they’d done it before, but at that moment, he didn’t want his victim to look at him as he was killing her. Right after he’s committed the murder, he hears a kind of moan outside, a muffled ay. He goes to the window and sees, in a tree right next to the house, Illuminated by the light from the window, a Peeping Tom, or so he thinks, who has just witnessed the murder. Still naked, the protagonist rushes outside, grabbing some sort of weapon along the way, and strikes the stranger in the face with it, though the intruder manages to escape. But our protagonist hasn’t got a minute to lose. He gets dressed, opens up the display case, grabs the violin, and puts it in his suitcase. From this same suitcase he pulls out the cheap violin and puts this in the old violin’s case. A few minutes later, Eolo comes by in his car and the protagonist gets in. What they do next is of no importance. The following morning they’re at Punta Raisi to take the first flight for Rome. Up to this point everything has gone well for our protagonist who makes sure to keep track of developments by reading the Sicilian newspapers. Things begin to go even better when he learns that the murderer has been found and that he actually had enough time to admit his guilt before being killed in a gun battle. The protagonist realizes there’s no longer any need to wait before putting the violin up for sale on the black market, and so he turns it over to Eolo Portinari, who will try to make a deal. But then a new complication arises. The protagonist learns the case has been reopened. He jumps at the opportunity to go to the funeral and races down to Vigata so he can talk to Michela’s friend Anna, the only friend he knows and the only person who might be able to tell him how things stand After talking to her. he goes back to his hotel. And here he receives a phone call from