Patience of the Spider

by this thought, he decides to open his eyes just a crack.

o o o

Why could he no longer hear Fazio talking? He opened his eyes just a crack.The two men had stepped a short distance away from the bed and were over by the window. Fazio was talking and the doctor, dressed in a white smock, was listening, a grave expression on his face. Suddenly Montalbano realized he had no need to hear Fazio’s words to know what he was saying to the doctor. Fazio, his friend, his trusty right-hand man, was betraying him. Like Judas. He was obviously telling the doctor about the time he’d found the inspector lying on the beach, drained of strength after the terrible chest pain he’d had in the water . . . Imagine the doctors’ reaction upon hearing this wonderful news! Before ever removing that goddamned bullet, they would give him the works: examine him inside and out, poke him full of holes, lift up his skin piece by piece to see what there was underneath . . .

o o o

His bedroom is the same as it’s always been. No, that’s not true. It’s different, but still the same. Different because there are Livia’s things on the dresser: purse, hairpins, two little per-fume bottles. And, on the chair across the room, a blouse and skirt. And though he can’t see them, he knows there’s a pair of pink slippers somewhere near the bed. He feels a surge of emotion. He melts, goes all soft inside, turns to liquid. For twenty days this has been his new refrain, and he doesn’t know how to put a stop to it. The slightest thing will set it off and bring him, treacherously, to the point of tears. He’s embarrassed, ashamed of his new emotional fragility, and has to create elaborate defenses to prevent others from noticing. But not with Livia. With her he couldn’t pull it off. So she decided to help him, to lend him a hand by dealing firmly with him, not allowing him any opportunities to let himself go.

But it’s no use. Because this loving approach on Livia’s part also triggers a mixed emotion of happiness and sadness. He’s happy that Livia used up all her vacation time to come and look after him, and he knows that the house is happy to have her there. Ever since she arrived, when he looks at his bedroom in sunlight it seems to have its color back, as though the walls had been repainted a luminous white.

Since nobody can see him, he wipes away a tear with a corner of the bedsheet.

o o o

White all around, and amidst the white, only the brown of his naked skin (Was it once pink? How many centuries ago?). A white room, in which he’s being given an electrocardiogram. The doctor studies the long strip of paper, shakes his head in doubt. Terrified, Montalbano imagines that the graph the doctor is examining looks exactly like the seismograph of the Messina earthquake of 1908, which he once saw reproduced in a history magazine: a crazy, hopeless jumble of lines traced as if by a hand driven mad by fear.

They’ve found me out! he thinks to himself. They realize that my heart functions on alternating current, higgledy-piggledy, and that I’ve had at least three heart attacks!

Then another doctor, also in a white smock, enters the room. He looks at the strip, at Montalbano, and at this colleague.

“Let’s do it over,” he says.

Maybe they can’t believe their eyes, can’t understand how a man with an electrocardiogram like that is still in a hospital bed and not on a marble slab in the morgue. They look at the new strip, their heads now very close together.

“Let’s do a telecardiogram,” is the verdict.The doctors seem per-plexed.

Montalbano wishes he could tell them that, if this is the way it is, they shouldn’t even bother extracting the bullet.They should let him die in peace. But, dammit, he forgot to make a will. The house in Marinella, for example, should definitely go to Livia, so that some fourth cousin doesn’t show up and claim it.

o o o

Right, because the house in Marinella has been his for a few years now. He never thought he’d be able to buy it. It cost too much for the salary he earned, which barely let him set anything aside. Then one day his father’s former partner had written to him saying he was ready to liquidate his father’s share of the vineyard, which amounted to a considerable sum.

So not only had he had the money to buy the house, but there was a fair amount left over to put away. For his old age. And that was why he needed to draw up a will, since, without wanting to, he’d become a man with property. Once again, however, after he got out of the hospital he couldn’t bring himself to go see the notary. But if he ever did get around to seeing him, the house would go to Livia, that much was certain. As for Francois, the son who wasn’t his son but could have been, he knew exactly what to leave him. Enough money to buy himself a nice car. He could already see the indignant expression on Livia’s face. What? And spoil him like that?

Yes, ma’am. A son who wasn’t a son but could (should?) have been one should be spoiled much more than a son who’s really a son. Twisted logic, yes, but still logical. And what about Catarella? Surely he had to put Catarella in his will. So what would he leave him? Certainly not any books. He tried to recall an old song of the Alpine regiment called “The Cap-tain’s Testament” or something similar, but couldn’t remember it. The watch! That was it. He would leave Catarella his father’s watch, which his business partner had sent to him.

That way he could feel like part of the family. The watch was the answer.

o o o

He can’t read the clock on the wall in the cardiology unit because there is a kind of greyish veil over his eyes.The two doctors are very attentively watching some sort of TV screen, occasionally moving a computer mouse.

One of them, the doctor who’s supposed to perform the operation, is named Strazzera, Amedeo Strazzera. This time the machine spits out not a strip of paper but a series of photographs or something similar.The two doctors study and study them, then finally sigh as though worn out after a long walk. Strazzera approaches while his colleague goes and sits down in a chair—white, of course. The doctor looks sternly at the inspector and bends forward. Montalbano is expecting him to say: “You must stop pretending you’re alive! Shame on you!” How does the poem go?