“What can I do for you, Chief?”
“Fazio, can you tell me where the district called ‘The Moor’ is located?”
“Just a sec, Chief.”
Fazio had activated his computer brain. Inside his head he had, among other things, a detailed map of the municipal area of Vigata.
“It’s over by Monteserrato, Chief.”
“Explain to me how you get there.”
Fazio explained. Then he said:
“Sorry, but Catarella insists on talking to you. Where are you calling from?”
“From Trapani.”
“What are you doing in Trapani?”
“I’ll tell you later. Pass me Catarella.”
“Hallo, Chief? I just wanted to say that this morning—”
“Cat, what is a Smallie?”
“Somebody from Smallia, Chief, in Africa. Inn’t that what they’re called? Or is it Smallians?”
He hung up, sped off in his car, then stopped in front of a large hardware store. Self-service. He bought himself a crowbar, a big pair of pliers, a hammer, and a small hacksaw. When he went to pay, the cashier, a dark, pretty girl, smiled at him.
“Have a good robbery,” she said.
He didn’t feel like answering. He went out and got back in his car. Shortly afterward, he happened to look at his watch. It was almost two, and a wolflike hunger came over him. He saw a trattoria called, according to its sign, DAL BOR-BONE, with two tractor-trailers parked in front. Therefore the food must be good. A brief but ferocious battle ensued between the angel and the devil inside him. The angel won, and he continued on to Vigata.
“Not even a sandwich?” the devil whined.
“No.”
Monteserrato was the name of a line of hills, of considerable height, separating Montelusa from Vigata. They practically began at the sea and continued on for five or six kilometers inland. Atop the last ridge stood a large, old farming estate. It was an isolated spot. And so it had remained, despite the fact that at the time of the public- works construction craze, in their desperate search for a place that might justify the building of a highway, bridge, overpass, or tunnel, the authorities had linked it to the Vigata-Montelusa provincial road with a ribbon of asphalt. Old Headmaster Burgio had once spoken to him of Monteserrato a few years back. He told him of how, in 1944, he’d made an excursion to Monteserrato with an American friend, a journalist to whom he’d taken an immediate liking. They walked for hours across the countryside, then began climbing, stopping occasionally to rest. When they came within view of the estate, and its high enclosure of walls, they were stopped by two dogs of a sort that neither the headmaster nor the American had ever seen before. With a greyhound’s body but a very short, curled, piglike tail, long ears as on a hunting dog, and a ferocious look in the eye. The dogs literally immobilized them, snarling whenever they made the slightest move. Finally somebody from the estate came by on horseback and accompanied them. The head of the family took them to see the remains of an ancient monastery, where Burgis and the American saw an extraordinary fresco, a Nativity, on a damp, deteriorating wall. One could still read the date: 1410. Also portrayed in the painting were three dogs, in every way identical to the ones that had cornered them on their arrival. Many years later, after the asphalt road was built, Burgio had decided to go back there. The vestiges of the monastery no longer existed; in their place now stood a vast garage. Even the wall with the fresco had been knocked down. Around the garage one could still find little pieces of colored plaster on the ground.
The inspector found the little chapel that Fazio had told him to look for; ten yards beyond began a dirt road that descended down the hillside.
“Be careful, it’s very steep,” Fazio had said.
Talk about steep! It was practically vertical. When he was halfway down, he stopped, got out, and looked out from the edge of the road. The panorama that unfolded before him could be seen as either hideous or beautiful, depending on the observer’s tastes. There were no trees, no other houses than the one whose roof was visible about a hundred yards down. The land was not cultivated. Left to itself, it had produced an extraordinary variety of wild plants. Indeed, the tiny house was utterly buried under the tall grass, except, of course, for the roof, which clearly had been redone a short while before, its tiles intact. With a sense of dismay, Montalbano saw electrical and telephone wires, originating at some distant, invisible point, leading into the former stable. They were incongruous in that landscape, which appeared to have looked this way since the beginning of time.
15
At a certain point along the dirt road, on the left-hand side, the repeated comings and goings of a car had opened a kind of trail through the tall grass. It led straight up to the door of the former stable, a door recently remade in solid wood and fitted with two locks. In addition, a chain of the sort used to protect motorbikes from theft was looped through two screw eyes and secured by a big padlock. Beside the door was a tiny window, too small for even a five-year-old child to pass through, blocked by iron bars. Beyond the bars, one could see that the pane was painted black, either to prevent one from seeing in or to keep the light from filtering out at night.
Montalbano had two possible courses of action: either return to Vigata and ask for reinforcements or set about breaking and entering, even though he was convinced this would be a long and arduous task. Naturally, he opted for the latter. Removing his jacket, he picked up the little hacksaw he’d been lucky enough to buy in Trapani and got down to work on the chain. After fifteen minutes, his arm began to ache. After half an hour, the pain had spread halfway across his chest. After an hour, the chain broke, with the help of the crowbar, which he used for leverage, and the pliers. Drenched in sweat, he removed his shirt and spread it out on the grass, hoping it would dry a little.
