The Potter's Field

Fazio became alarmed.

“Are you going to Boccadasse? What happened?”

“I’m not going to Boccadasse. I hope to be back this evening or tomorrow morning at the latest. If I get back tonight I’ll give you a ring, even if it’s late. All right?”

“Whatever you say, Chief.”

“Don’t forget that thing I asked you about. You absolutely must find out why Pecorini left Vigata two years ago.”

“Don’t worry.”

“This morning one of Alfano’s friends is coming to the station. I talked with two others yesterday evening. I want you to question the one today.”

“All right.”

“The keys Dolores gave you to the apartment in Gioia Tauro, where are they?”

“On my desk, in an envelope.”

“I’m going to take them. Oh, and listen. If you happen to run into Inspector Augello today, don’t tell him I’ve gone to Gioia Tauro.”

“Chief, the guy doesn’t talk to any of us anymore. But if he happens to ask me, what do I tell him?”

“Tell him I’ve gone to the hospital for a routine checkup.”

“You, go to the hospital of your own will? He’ll never believe it! Can’t you think of anything better?”

“You think of something. But he mustn’t suspect in any way that I’m doing something related to the critaru murder.”

“I’m sorry, Chief, but even if he does suspect something, what’s the problem?”

“Just do as I say and don’t argue.”

The inspector hung up.

Ah, how foul and swampy, how treacherous the ground was around the potter’s field!

Could he have spared himself the journey he was about to make? A journey which, for as poor a driver as he, represented a major effort? Of course, with the help of a good road atlas, he needn’t even have left home. But going in person to see how things stood wasn’t only the better, more serious course of action; it was also possible that the place itself, when seen with his own eyes, would suggest some other, new hypotheses for him to consider. But despite all the justifications he kept coming up with for making this trip, he knew he hadn’t yet admitted the real reason for it. Once past Enna, however, when, on the left, he began to glimpse the mountains in whose folds lay towns like Assoro, Agira, Regalbuto, and Centuripe, he understood why he had left Marinella. Without a doubt, the investigation did have something to do with it, and how. But the truth of the matter was that he had wanted to see the landscape of his youth again, the one he had all around him when he was a deputy inspector at Mascalippa. Wait a second! Hadn’t he found that same landscape depressing at the time? Didn’t the very air in Mascalippa get on his nerves, because it smelled of straw and grass? All true, all sacrosanct. A line of Brecht came to mind: “Why should I love the windowsill from which I fell as a child?” But that line still didn’t quite say it, he thought. Because sometimes, when you’re already almost old, the hated windowsill from which you fell as a little kid comes urgently back into your memory, and you would even go on a pilgrimage to see it again, if you could see it the way you did then, with the eyes of innocence.

Is this what you’ve come looking for? he asked himself as he rolled along the Enna to Catania autostrada at a snail’s pace, driving to distraction all the other motorists unfortunate enough to be traveling the same route as he. Do you think that seeing those mountains from afar, breathing that air from afar, will bring back the ingenuousness, the naivety, the enthusiasm of your first years with the police? Come on, Inspector, get serious; accept that what you’ve lost is gone forever.

He suddenly accelerated, leaving that landscape behind. The Catania–Messina autostrada wasn’t too busy. And, in fact, he was able to board the twelve-thirty ferry across the Strait. Thus, since he had left home at seven, it had taken him five and a half hours to go from Vigata to Messina. It would have taken somebody like Fazio, driving as he normally did, two hours less.

As soon as the ferryboat had passed the statue of the Blessed Virgin that wishes happiness and good health to all voyagers, and began to dance on the mildly choppy sea, the salty air stirred up a beastly hunger in Montalbano’s stomach. The night before, he hadn’t had a chance to eat anything. He quickly climbed a small staircase that led to the bar. On the counter was a small mountain of piping hot arancini. He bought two and went out onto the deck to eat them. Attacking the first, he reduced it by half with a single bite, and of this half, he swallowed a good portion. He realized his grave mistake at once. How could they call arancini these rice balls fried in hundred-year-old oil and cooked by a cook suffering from violent hallucinations? And how acidic the meat sauce was! He spit the rest of the arancino he still had in his mouth into the sea, and the remaining half and whole arancini met the same watery end. He went back to the bar and drank a beer to get rid of the nasty taste in his mouth. Later, as he was easing his car out of the ferryboat, that little bit of foul arancino, combined with the beer, bubbled up into his throat. The acid burned so badly that, without realizing it, he swerved and suddenly found himself sideways on the ramp, with the car’s nose pointing out over the water.

“What the hell are you doing? What the hell are you doing?” yelled the sailor who was directing the disembarking vehicles.

Sweating all over, the inspector coaxed the car, one millimeter at a time, back into the proper position, while the eyes of the man driving the tractor trailer behind him seemed to say he was ready to slam him from behind and send him the fuck onto the dock or into the sea, take your pick.

At Villa San Giovanni he went and ate at a truckers’ restaurant where he’d already been twice before. And this third time he was not disappointed either. After an hour and a half at table, that is, around three o’clock in the afternoon, he got back in his car and headed toward Gioia Tauro. He took the autostrada, and in a flash he was already past Bagnara. Continuing on the A3, he was about twenty kilometers from Gioia Tauro when he decided to take the final stretch nice and slow, looking for the bypass to Lido di Palmi. There was a bypass for Palmi, but not for Lido di Palmi. How could that be? He was sure he hadn’t missed it and driven past it. He decided just to continue on to Gioia Tauro. Leaving the autostrada, he headed towards town and stopped at the first filling station he found.