Montalbano was in the habit of opening his eyes naturally after a night’s sleep, with no need of external stimuli. He did have an alarm clock of sorts, but it was inside him, buried somewhere in his brain. He merely had to set it be-fore falling asleep, telling himself,Don’t forget you have to get up tomorrow at six,and the next morning his eyes would pop open at six o’clock sharp. He’d always considered the alarm clock, the metal kind, an instrument of torture. The three or four times he’d had to use that drill-like noise to wake up— because Livia, who had to leave the next morning, didn’t trust his inner alarm—he’d spent the rest of the day with a headache. Then Livia, after a squabble, bought a plastic alarm clock that instead of ringing made an electronic sound, a kind of unendingbeeeeeep,rather like a little fly that had found its way into your ear and got stuck inside. Enough to drive you crazy. He’d ended up throwing it out the window, which triggered another memorable spat.
Second, he would wake himself up, intentionally, a bit earlier than necessary, some ten minutes earlier at the very least.
These were the best ten minutes of the day ahead. Ah, how wonderful it was to lie there in bed, under the covers, thinking of idiocies!Should I buy that book everybody’s calling a masterpiece, or not? Should I eat out today, or come home and scarf down what Adelina’s prepared for me? Should I or shouldn’t I tell Livia that I can’t wear the shoes she bought me because they’re too tight?That sort of thing. Poking about with the mind. While carefully avoiding, however, any thought of sex or women. That could be dangerous terrain at that hour, unless Livia were there sleeping beside him, ready and happy to face the consequences.
One morning a year earlier, however, things had suddenly changed. He had barely opened his eyes, calculating that he had a scant fifteen minutes to devote to his mental dawdlings, when a thought—not a whole one, but the start of one— came into his mind, and it began with these exact words: “When your dying day comes…”
“What was this thought doing there with the others? How gutless! It was like suddenly remembering, while making love, that he hadn’t paid the phone bill. Not that he was inordinately frightened by the idea of dying; the problem was that six-thirty in the morning was hardly the proper time and place for it. If one started thinking about death at the crack of dawn, certainly by five in the afternoon one would either shoot oneself or jump into the sea with a rock around one’s neck. He managed to prevent that phrase from proceeding any further, blocking its path by counting very fast from one to five thousand, with eyes shut and fists clenched. Then he realized that the only solution was to set about doing the things he needed to do, concentrating on them as though it were a matter of life or death. The following morning was even more treacherous. The first thought that entered his mind was that the fish soup he’d eaten the night before had lacked some seasoning. But which? And at that exact moment, the same accursed thought came back to him: “When your dying day comes…”
As of that moment, he realized that the thought would never go away again. It might lie buried deep inside some curlicue in his brain for a day or two only to pop back out into the open when he least expected it. For no reason he became convinced that his very survival depended on preventing that sentence from ever completing itself. For if it did, he would die when the last word came.
Hence the alarm clock. To leave not even the slightest fissure in time for that accursed thought to slip through.
“When she came to spend three days in Vigata, Livia, as she was unpacking, pointed at the nightstand and asked: “What’s that alarm doing there?” He answered with a lie.
“Well, a week ago I had to get up really early and—” “And a week later it’s still set?”
When she put her mind to it, Livia was worse than Sherlock Holmes. Slightly embarrassed, he told her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Livia burst out: “You’re demented!”
And she buried the alarm clock in a drawer inside the armoire.
The following morning it was Livia, not the alarm, that woke Montalbano. And it was a beautiful awakening, full of thoughts of life, not death. But as soon as she left, the clock was back on the nightstand.
“Aahh, Chief, Chief!” “What is it, Cat?”
“There’s some lady waiting for you.” “For me?”
“She din’t say what it was f’you poissonally in poisson, she just said she wanted a talk to somebody from the police.” “So why couldn’t she talk to you?”
“Chief, she said she wanted a talk to somebody superior to me.”
“Isn’t Inspector Augello here?”
“No sir, he called to say he was comin’ in late ‘cause he’s runnin’ late.”
“And why’s that?”
“He says last night the baby got sick, and so today the medical doctor’s gonna come by.”
“Cat, you don’t have to say ‘medical doctor’; just ‘doctor’ is more than enough.”
“Iss not enough, Chief. Iss confusing. Take you, f’rinstance. You’s a doctor, but not o’ the medical variety.”
“What about the mother, Beba? Can’t she wait for the med…the doctor herself?”
“Yessir, Miss Beba’s there, Chief, but she says she wants him to be there, too.”
“What about Fazio?”
“Fazio’s with some kid.”
“What did this kid do?”
“Didn’t do nothin’, Chief. He’s dead.”
“How’d he die?”
“Doverose.”
“Okay, tell you what. I’m going into my office now. You wait about ten minutes, then send in the lady.”
The inspector felt furious at Augello. Ever since the baby was born, Mimi hovered over the kid as much as he’d hovered over women before. He was head over heels in love with his young son, Salvo. That’s right: Not only had he
