The Potter's Field

“And there was no report of this man’s disappearance over those two months?”

“There are two possibilities, Chief: either it wasn’t reported, or it was.”

Montalbano gave him a look of mock admiration.

“Well put, Fazio! Ever heard of Monsieur de la Palisse?”

“No, Chief. Who was he?”

“A man who fifteen minutes before he died was still alive.”

Fazio immediately got it.

“Come on, Chief! You didn’t let me finish my thought!”

“All right then, go on. For a brief moment I thought you’d been infected by Catarella.”

“What I meant was that it’s possible somebody reported the dead man’s disappearance, but since we don’t know who the dead man is—”

“I get your point. The only thing we can do is wait till tomorrow to see what Pasquano has to tell us.”

Once home, Montalbano was greeted by the telephone, which started ringing as he was trying to unlock the door, fumbling with the keys.

“Ciao, darling, how are you?”

It was Livia, sounding cheerful.

“I’ve had a pretty rough morning. How about you?”

“I’ve been great, for my part. I didn’t go to the office today.”

“Oh, really? Why not?”

“I didn’t feel like it. It was such a beautiful morning. It seemed like a terrible shame to go to work. You should have seen the sun, Salvo. It looked like yours.”

“So what did you do?”

“I went out and had fun.”

“Well, you can allow yourself such luxuries.”

It had slipped out, and Livia didn’t let it slide.

A little while later, still in a bad mood, he settled in to watch some television. On a chair beside his armchair he had set two dishes, one full of green and black olives and salted sardines, the other with cheese, tumazzo and caciocavallo di Ragusa. He poured himself a glass of wine but kept the bottle within reach, just in case. Then he turned on the TV. The first thing that came on was a film set in some Asian country during the monsoon. What? It’s deluging outside and now he has to watch a fake deluge on TV? He changed the channel. Another movie. A woman lay naked on a bed, batting her eyelashes at a young guy undressing and seen from behind. When the kid took off his underpants, the woman’s eyes opened wide and she brought a hand to her mouth, surprised and amazed by what she saw. He changed the channel. The prime minister was explaining why the country’s economy was going to the dogs: the first reason was the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers; the second was the tsunami in the South Seas; the third was the euro; the fourth the Communist opposition that refused to cooperate, and . . . He changed the channel. There was a cardinal talking about the sacred institution of the family. In the first row of the audience were an array of politicians, two of whom had been divorced, another who was living with a minor after leaving his wife and three children, a fourth who maintained an official family and two unofficial families, and a fifth who had never married because, as was well known, he didn’t like women. All nodded gravely in agreement with the cardinal’s words. He changed the channel. The screen filled with the chicken-ass face of Pippo Ragonese, the top honcho newsman of TeleVigata.

“. . . and so the discovery of the corpse of a man brutally murdered, cut into small pieces, and put into a garbage bag disturbs us for several reasons. But the principal reason is that the investigation has been assigned to Chief Inspector Salvo Montalbano of the Vigata Police, on whom we have, unfortunately, had occasion to focus our attention in the past. Our criticisms were directed not so much at the fact that he has political ideas—indeed every word he says is steeped in Communist beliefs—but at the fact that he has no ideas at all during his investigations. Or else, when he does, they are always absurd, outlandish, and utterly groundless. So we would like to give him some advice. But will he listen? The advice is the following. Only two weeks ago, in the area around the place called ’u critaru, where the corpse was found, a hunter ran across two plastic bags containing the remains of two suckling calves. Might there not be a connection between these two occurrences? Might it not involve some satanic rite that—”

He turned off the TV. Satanic rite my ass! Aside from the fact that the two bags had been found two and a half miles away from ’u critaru, it was discovered that they’d been dumped following an operation by the carabinieri to stop unauthorized animal slaughter.

He went to bed feeling fed up with all of creation. But before lying down he took an aspirin, cursing the saints all the while. Given the soaking he’d endured that morning and his wretchedly advancing age, perhaps it was best to be cautious.

The following morning, after awaking from a night of rather agitated sleep and opening the window, the inspector rejoiced. A July sun shone in a sky scrubbed perfectly clean and sparkling. The sea, which for two days had completely covered the beach, had receded, but had left the sand littered with garbage bags, empty cans, plastic bottles, bottomless boxes, and various other filth. Montalbano recalled how in now distant times, when the sea withdrew, it would leave behind only sweet-smelling algae and beautiful shells that were like gifts to mankind. Now it only gave us back our own rubbish.

He also remembered a comedy he had read in his youth, called The Deluge, which claimed that the next great flood would be caused not by water from the heavens, but by the backing up and overflowing of all the toilets, latrines, cesspools, and septic tanks in the world, which would start chucking up their contents relentlessly until we all drowned in our own shit.

He went out on the veranda and stepped down onto the beach.

He noticed that the space between the cement slab holding up the veranda’s tiled floor and the sand below had become clogged with a fine assortment of smelly debris, including the carcass of a dog.

Cursing like a madman, he went back inside, slipped on a pair of dishwashing gloves, grabbed a sort of grapple