The Potter's Field

Still, there might be a way.

Somewhere in his library he must have the four Gospels in a single volume. Where were they hidden? Why was everything always disappearing in this house? First the thermometer, now the Gospels . . . At last he found them, after half an hour of a panoply of curses unsuitable to the book he wanted to read.

He sat back down in the armchair and looked up, in the first Gospel, that of Matthew, the passage that recounted the suicide of Judas.

Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders,

Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? See thou to that.

And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.

And the chief priests took the silver pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put them into the treasury, because it is the price of blood.

And they took counsel, and bought with them the potter’s field, to bury strangers in.¹

The other Gospels didn’t talk about the death of Judas.

Though he didn’t quite know why, he felt excited. A sort of tremor ran through his whole body. He was like a dog pointing towards its prey. He sensed that there was something of great importance in those lines of Matthew.

With saintly patience he read the verses again, slowly, almost syllable by syllable.

When he reached the words, the potter’s field, he felt an actual shock.

The potter’s field.

All at once, he found himself again on a footpath, his clothes drenched with rain, looking out over a gorge made up of slabs of clay. And he heard the peasant’s words again:

“. . . this place’s always been called ’u critaru . . . I sell the clay to people who make vases, jugs, pots, that kind of thing . . .”

The potter’s field. Sicilian translation: ’u critaru.

That was the parallel thought he’d had.

But did it mean anything? Might it not be a simple coincidence ? Wasn’t he perhaps getting carried away by his imagination? Fine, but what was wrong with having a little imagination? How many times had things he’d imagined proved to be real?

Let’s allow, then, that this imagining meant something. What could it mean that the body of the murder victim was found in a potter’s field? The Gospel said that the priests had bought the field to bury strangers in . . .

Wait a second, Montalba.

Wasn’t it possible the victim was a “stranger”—in other words, a foreigner? Pasquano had found a bridge in his stomach, and this kind of bridge, according to Professor Lomascolo, was used by dentists in South America. So the stranger was probably from one of those countries—a Venezuelan or Argentinean . . . Or maybe Colombian. A Colombian with Mafia connections to boot . . .

Aren’t you perhaps sailing too far out to sea, Montalba?

As he asked himself this question, a cold shudder ran through his body, followed at once by a great wave of heat. He felt his forehead. The fever was rising again. But he didn’t worry, because he was certain that this change was due not to influenza but to the ideas percolating in his brain.

Better not push it, however. Better pause awhile and calm down. He realized his brain was overheating and ready to melt. He needed to seek distraction. How? The only solution was to watch television. So he turned it back on, but this time tuned in to the “Free Channel.”

They were broadcasting a softcore porn film, the kind where the actors and actresses only pretend to fuck, usually in rather uncomfortable places like inside a wheelbarrow or while holding on to a gutter pipe, and they’re worse than the hardcore flicks, in which they actually fuck. He sat and watched it for ten minutes or so and, as always happened, with softcore as well as hardcore, it put him to sleep. And he slept just like that, head bent backwards, mouth open.

He didn’t know how long he had slept, but when he woke up, in the place of the porn flick were four people around a small table talking about crimes that had never been solved. But even crimes that appear to have been solved—said a man with mustache and goatee a la D’Artagnan—all remain, in fact, unsolved. And he gave a sly smile and said nothing else. Since none of the other participants had understood a fucking thing of what they had just heard, another guy who was a professional criminologist (why do criminologists always have Mosesesque beards?) began to recount a crime committed in northern Italy, where a woman was murdered with mouse poison and then dismembered.

The same word Pasquano had used. Dismembered.

What, in fact, had the doctor said about this?

That the body had been cut into a certain number of pieces. Yes, but how many?

He shot to his feet, stunned and sweaty, his fever spiking a few degrees more. He ran to the telephone and dialed.

It rang and rang a long time with no answer. All right, multiplication tables for—come off it! Multiplication tables?! If these guys didn’t pick up, he was going to do a Columbine! He was gonna get in the car and go shoot them all, one by one! Finally a man’s voice answered, sounding so drunk he could smell the guy’s breath over the telephone line.

“H’lo? ’Ooziss?”