“You should have seen the castle he made! It was fantas-tic! It looked like Gaudi!”
“He’ll have time to make another.”
He was determined not to give up. Like a cop, and a jealous one at that.
“What store did you find the puzzle in?”
“I didn’t buy it myself. Mimi came by this afternoon, just for a second. The puzzle belongs to a nephew of his who—” He turned his back to Livia, thrust his hands in his pockets, and walked away, imagining dozens of Mimi’s nephews and nieces in tears, systematically despoiled of their toys by their uncle.
“Come on, Salvo, stop acting like a jerk!” said Livia, running up to him.
She tried to slip her arm in his; Montalbano pulled away.
“Fuck you,” Livia said calmly, and she went back to the house.
What was he going to do now? Livia had avoided the quarrel, and he would have to get it out of his system on his own. He walked irritably along the water’s edge, soaking his shoes and smoking ten cigarettes.
He went home. Livia was sitting in front of the television, which she had turned down very low in order not to wake Francois, who was sleeping in their bed.
“I’m sorry, seriously,” he said to her as he walked past her on his way to the kitchen.
In the oven he found a casserole of mullet and potatoes that smelled inviting. He sat down and tasted his first bite: exquisite. Livia came up behind him and stroked his hair.
“Do you like it?”
“Excellent. I must tell Adelina—”
“Adelina came this morning, saw me, said ‘I don’ wanna disturb,’ turned around, and left.”
“Are you telling me you made this casserole yourself ?”
“Of course.”
For an instant, but only an instant, the casserole went down the wrong way when a thought popped into his head: that she’d made it only to win forgiveness for this business with Mimi. But then the deliciousness of the dish prevailed.
o o o
Before sitting down beside Montalbano to watch television, Livia stopped a moment to admire the jigsaw puzzle. Now that Salvo had calmed down, she could freely talk about it.
“You should have seen how fast he put it together. It was stunning. You or I would have taken longer.”
“Or we would have got bored first.”
“But that’s just it. Francois also thinks puzzles are boring, because they have fixed rules. Every little piece, he says, is cut so that it will fit with another. Whereas it would be more fun if there were a puzzle with many different solutions!” “He said that?”
“Yes. And he explained it better, since I was drawing it out of him.”
“And what did he say?”
“I think I understood what he meant. He was already familiar with the Statue of Liberty and therefore when he put the head together he already knew what to do; but he was forced to do it that way because the puzzle’s designer had cut out the pieces in a way that obliged the player to follow his design. Is that clear so far?” “Clear enough.”
“It would be fun, he said, if the player could actually create his own alternative puzzle with the same pieces. Don’t you think that’s an extraordinary thought for so small a child?” “They’re precocious nowadays,” said Montalbano, immediately cursing himself for the banality of the expression.
He’d never talked about children before, and couldn’t help but to resort to cliches.
o o o
Nicolo Zito gave a summary of the Tunisian government’s official statement on the fishing-boat incident. Having conducted the necessary investigations, they had no choice but to reject the protest of the Italian government, since the Italians were powerless to prevent their own fishing boats from invading Tunisian territorial waters. That night, a Tunisian military patrol boat had sighted a trawler a few miles from Sfax. They gave the order to halt, but the fishing boat tried to flee. The patrol then fired a burst of warning from the ship’s machine gun that unfortunately struck and killed a Tunisian fisherman, Ben Dhahab, whose family had already been granted substantial aid by the government in Tunis. The tragic incident should serve as a lesson.
“Have you managed to find out anything about Francois’s mother?”
“Yeah, I have a lead, but don’t get your hopes up,” replied the inspector.
“If . . . if Karima were never to come back . . . what . . .
would happen to Francois?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“I’m going to bed,” said Livia, abruptly standing up.
