The Terra-Cotta Dog

me!'

He paused warily, then changed his tone:

'Can you assure me, on your word of honor, that he's just some poor bastard who doesn't know any better?'

Realizing that it was Catarella who had answered the phone, Montalbano could reply with conviction.

'I can assure you. But why, may I ask, do you need my assurance?'

'Because if he meant to make fun of me or what I represent, I'll be down there at the station in five minutes and will give him such a thrashing, by God, he won't be able to walk!'

And just what did Cavaliere Misuraca represent? Montalbano wondered while the other continued threatening to do terrible things. Nothing, absolutely nothing from a, so to speak, official point of view. A municipal employee long since retired, he did not hold nor had he ever held any public office, being merely a card-carrying member of his party. A man of unassailable honesty, he lived a life of dignified quasi-poverty. Even in the days of Mussolini, he had refused to seek personal gain, having always been a faithful follower, as one used to say back then. In return, from 1935 onwards, he had fought in every war and been in the thick of the worst battles. He hadn't missed a single one, and indeed seemed to have a gift for being everywhere at once, from Guadalajara, Spain, to Birel Gobi in North Africa by way of Axum, Ethiopia. Followed by imprisonment in Texas, his refusal to cooperate, and an even harsher imprisonment as a result, on nothing but bread and water. He therefore represented, Montalbano concluded, the historical memory of what were, of course, historic mistakes, but he had lived them with a faith and paid for them with his own skin: among several serious injuries, one had left him lame in his left leg.

'Tell me,' Montalbano had mischievously asked him one day face-to-face, 'if youd been able, would you have gone to fight at alongside the Germans and the repubblichini?' In his way, the inspector was sort of fond of the old Fascist. How could he not be? In that circus of corrupters and corrupted, extortionists and grafters, bribe-takers, liars, thieves, and perjurersturning up each day in new combinations Montalbano had begun to feel a kind of affection for people he knew to be incurably honest.

At this question, the old man had seemed to deflate from within, the wrinkles on his face multiplying as his eyes began to fog over. Montalbano then understood that Misuraca had asked himself the same question a thousand times and had never been able to come up with an answer. So he did not insist.

'Hello? Are you still there?' Misuracas peevish voice asked.

'At your service, Cavaliere.'

'I just remembered something. Which is why I didn't mention it when I gave my testimony.'

'I have no reason to doubt you, Cavaliere. I'm all ears.'

'A strange thing happened to me when I was almost in front of the supermarket, but at the time I didn't pay it much mind. I was nervous and upset because these days there are certain bastards about who..'

'Please come to the point, Cavaliere.'

If one let him speak, Misuraca was capable of taking his story back to the foundation of the first Fascist militias.

'Actually, I cant tell you over the phone. I need to see you in person. Its something really big, if I saw right.'

The old man was considered someone who always told things straight, without overstating or understating the case.

'Is it about the robbery at the supermarket?'

'Of course.'

'Have you already discussed it with anybody?'

'Nobody.'

'Don't forget: not a word to anyone.'

'Are you trying to insult me? Silent as the grave, I am. I'll be at your office early tomorrow morning.'

'Just out of curiosity, Cavaliere: what were you doing, alone and upset, in your car at that hour of the night? You know, after a certain age, one must be careful.'

'I was on my way back from Montelusa, from a meeting of the local party leaders. I'm not one of them, of course, but I wanted to be present. Nobody shuts his door on Gerlando Misuraca. Someone has to save our partys honor. They can't continue to govern alongside those bastard sons of bastard politicians and agree to an ordinance allowing all the sons of bitches who devoured our country out of jail! You must understand, Inspector.'

'Did the meeting end late?'

'It went on till one oclock in the morning. I wanted to continue, but everyone else was against it. They were all falling asleep. They've got no balls, those people.'

'And how long did it take you to get back to Vig?'

'Half an hour. I drive slowly. But as I was saying..'

'Excuse me, Cavaliere, I'm wanted on another line,' Montalbano cut him off. 'See you tomorrow.'

5

'Worse than criminals! Worse than murderers! That's how those dirty sons of bitches treated us! Who do they think they are? The fuckers!'

There was no calming down Fazio, who had just returned from Palermo. German, Gallo, and Galluzzo served as his psalmodizing chorus, wildly gesticulating to convey the exceptional nature of the event.