The Snack Thief

You don’t know this, of course, but almost a year ago I put in a request for early retirement.” “Oh God, don’t tell me they—”

“Yes, they granted it.”

“But why do you want to retire?”

“Because I no longer feel in step with the world, and because I feel tired. To me, the betting service for soccer matches is still called Sisal.”

The inspector didn’t understand.

“I’m sorry, I don’t get it.”

“What do you call it?”

“Totocalcio.”

“You see? Therein lies the difference. A while ago, some journalist accused Montanelli of being too old, and as proof, he cited the fact that Montanelli still called Totocalcio Sisal, as he used to call it thirty years ago.” “But that doesn’t mean anything! It was only a wise-crack!”

“It means a lot, Montalbano, a lot. It means unconsciously holding on to the past, not wanting to see certain changes, even rejecting them. And I was barely a year away from retirement, anyway. I’ve still got my parents’ house in La Spezia, which I’ve been having refurbished. If you like, when you come to Genoa to see Miss Livia, you can drop in on us.” “And when are—”

“When am I leaving? What’s today’s date?”

“The twelfth of May.”

“I officially leave my job on the tenth of August.” The commissioner cleared his throat, and the inspector understood that they had now come to the second thing, which was perhaps harder to say.

“About the other matter . . .”

He was hesitant, clearly. Montalbano bailed him out.

“It couldn’t possibly be worse than what you just told me.”

“It’s about your promotion.”

“No!”

“Listen to me, Montalbano. Your position can no longer be justified. In addition, now that I’ve been granted early retirement, I’m not, well, in a strong bargaining position. I have to recommend your promotion, and there won’t be any obstacles.” “Will I be transferred?”

“There’s a ninety-nine percent chance of it. Bear in mind that if I didn’t recommend you for the appointment, with all your successes, the ministry might see that in a nega-tive light and could end up transferring you anyway, but without a promotion. Couldn’t you use a raise?” The inspector’s brain was running at full speed, smoking, in fact, trying to find a possible solution. He glimpsed one and pounced on it.

“And what if, from this moment on, I no longer arrested anyone?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I mean, what if I pretend not to solve any more cases, if I mishandle investigations, if I let slip—”

“—rubbish, Montalbano, the only thing you’re letting slip is idiocies. I just don’t understand. Every time I talk to you about promotion, you suddenly regress and start reason-ing like a child.”

o o o

He killed an hour lolling about the house, putting some books back on the shelf and dusting the glass over the five engravings he owned, which Adelina never did. He did not turn on the television. He looked at his watch: almost ten p.m. He got in his car and drove to Montelusa. The three cinemas were showing the Taviani brothers’ Elective Affinities, Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty, and Travels with Goofy. Without the slightest hesitation, he chose the cartoons. The theater was empty. He went back to the man who had torn his ticket.

“There’s nobody there!”

“You’re there. What do you want, company? It’s late. At this hour, all the little kids are asleep. You’re the only one still awake.”

He had so much fun that, at one moment, he caught himself laughing out loud in the empty theater.

o o o

There comes a moment—he thought— when you realize your life has changed. But when did it happen? you ask yourself. And you have no answer. Unnoticed events kept accumulating until, one day, a transformation occurred—or perhaps they were perfectly visible events, whose importance and consequences, however, you never took into account. You ask yourself over and over, but the answer to that “when” never comes. As if it mattered!

Montalbano, for his part, had a precise answer to that question. My life changed, he would have said, on the twelfth of May.

o o o

Beside the front door to his house, Montalbano had recently had a small lamp installed that went on automatically when night fell. It was by the light of this lamp that he saw, from the main road, a car stopped in the clearing in front of the house.

He turned onto the small lane leading to the house, and pulled up a few inches from the other car. As he expected, it was a metallic gray BMW. Its license-plate number was am 237 gw.