Montalbano took her hand and brought it to his lips.
“Don’t get too attached to him.”
o o o
He delicately freed Francois from Livia’s embrace and laid him down to sleep on the sofa, which had already been made up. When he got into bed, Livia pressed her back against him, and this time did not resist his caresses. On the contrary.
“And what if the kid wakes up?” Montalbano asked at the crucial moment, still acting the swine.
“If he wakes up, I’ll go console him,” Livia said, breathing heavily.
o o o
At seven o’clock in the morning, he slipped softly out of bed and locked himself in the bathroom. As always, the first thing he did was look at himself in the mirror and twist up his mouth. He didn’t like his own face. So why the hell was he looking at it?
He heard Livia scream sharply, rushed to the door, and opened it. Livia was in the living room; the sofa was empty.
“He’s run away!” she said, trembling.
In one bound, the inspector was on the veranda. He could see him: a tiny little dot at the edge of the water, walking towards Vigata. Dressed as he was, in only his underpants, he dashed off in pursuit. Francois was not running, but walking with determination. When he heard footsteps coming up behind him, he stopped in his tracks, without turning round.
Montalbano, gasping for air, crouched down before him but said nothing.
The little boy wasn’t crying. His eyes were staring into space, past Montalbano.
“
Montalbano saw Livia approaching at a run, wearing one of his shirts; he stopped her with a single gesture, giving her to understand she should go back to the house. Livia obeyed.
The inspector took the boy by the hand, and they began to walk very, very slowly. For fifteen minutes neither of them said a word. When they came to a beached boat, Montalbano sat down on the sand, Francois sat beside him, and the inspector put his arm around him.
“
They started talking, the inspector in Sicilian and the boy in Arabic, and they understood each other perfectly.
Montalbano confided things he’d never told anyone before, not even Livia.
He told him about the nights when he used to cry his heart out, head under the pillow so that his father wouldn’t hear him, and the despair he would feel every morning, knowing his mother wasn’t in the kitchen to make him breakfast, or, a few years later, to make him a snack to take to school. It’s an emptiness that can never be filled again; you carry it with you to the grave. The child asked him if he had the power to bring his mother back. No, replied Montalbano, nobody has that power. He had to resign himself. But you had your father, observed Francois, who really was intelligent, and not only because Livia said so. True, I had my father. And so, the boy asked, am I really going to end up in one of those places where they put children who have no father or mother?
“That will never happen, I promise you,” said the inspector. And he held out his hand. Francois shook it, looking him in the eye.
o o o
When he emerged from the bathroom, all ready to go to work, he saw that Francois had taken the puzzle apart and was cutting the pieces into different shapes with a pair of scissors. He was trying, in his naive way, to avoid following the set pattern. All of a sudden Montalbano staggered, as if struck by an electrical charge.
“Jesus!” he whispered.
Livia looked over at him and saw him trembling, eyes popping out of his head. She became alarmed.
“My God, Salvo, what is it?”
His only answer was to pick up the boy, lift him over his head, look at him from below, put him back down, and kiss him.
“Francois, you’re a genius!” he said.
o o o
Entering the office, he nearly slammed into Mimi Augello, who was on his way out.
“Ah, Mimi. Thanks for the puzzle.”
Mimi only gaped at him, dumbfounded.
“Fazio, on the double!”
“At your service, Chief !”
Montalbano explained to him in great detail what he was supposed to do.
“Galluzzo, in my office!”
“Yes, sir.”
He explained to him in great detail what he was supposed to do.
