TeleVig had immediately discovered the proper angle from which to present the story. The first thing one saw on the evening news at 8:30 was Prests excited face announcing an extraordinary scoop for which, he said, they were in debted to one of those ingenious intuitions that make Inspector Salvo Montalbano of Vig, a figure perhaps unique among crime investigators across the island of Sicily and, why not?, in all of Italy. He went on to recount the inspectors dramatic arrest of the fugitive Tano the Greek, the bloodthirsty Mafia boss, and his discovery of the weapons cache inside the Crasticeddru cave. Then they played some footage of the press conference held after Tanos arrest, in which an insane-looking, stammering man who answered to the name and title of Inspector Montalbano, was having trouble putting together four consecutive words. Prest resumed his account of how this exceptional detective had become convinced that behind the cave of weapons there must be another cave connected to it.
'Trusting in the inspectors intuition,' said Prest 'I followed him, assisted by my cameraman, Gerlando Schirir'
At this point Prest adopting a tone of mystery, raised a few questions: 'What sort of secret, paranormal powers did the inspector possess? What was it made him think that an ancient tragedy lay hidden behind a few rocks blackened by time? Did the inspector have X-ray vision, like Superman?'
Upon hearing this last question, Montalbano who was watching the broadcast from his home and for the last half hour had been unsuccessfully searching for a clean pair of underpants, which he knew must be around somewhere, told the newsman to go fuck himself.
As the chilling images of the bodies in the cave started rolling, Prest expounded his thesis with conviction. Since he didn't know about the hole in the mans head, he spoke of two people who had died for love. In his opinion, the lovers, their passion opposed by their families, had shut themselves up in the cave, sealing off the passage way and letting themselves starve to death. They had furnished their final refuge with an old rug and a jug full of water, and had waited for death in each others arms. Of the bowl full of coins he said nothing: it would have clashed with the scene he was painting. The two, Prest went on, had not been identified; their story had taken place at least fifty years ago. Then another newscaster started talking about the days events: a six- year-old girl raped and bludgeoned to death with a stone by a paternal uncle; a corpse discovered in a well; a shoot-out at Merfi resulting in three dead and four injured; a laborer killed in an industrial accident; the disappearance of a dentist; the suicide of a businessman who had been squeezed by loan sharks; the arrest of a town councillor in Montevergine for graft and corruption; the suicide of the provincial president, who had been indicted for receiving stolen goods; a dead body washed ashore...
Montalbano fell into a deep sleep in front of the television.
...
'Hello, Salvo? Gege're. Let me talk, and don't interrupt with your usual bullshit. I need to see you. I need to tell you something.'
'Okay, Gege. Even tonight's okay, if you want.'
'I'm not in Vig, I'm in Trapani.'
'So when?'
'What day is today?'
'Thursday.'
'How about Saturday midnight at the usual place?'
'Listen, Gege. Saturday night I'm having dinner with someone, but I can come anyway. If I'm a little late, wait for me.'
The phone call from Gege, who from his tone of voice sounded worried enough not to tolerate any joking, had woken him up just in time. It was ten oclock, and he tuned in to the Free Channel. Nicolto, with his intelligent face, red hair, and Red ideas, opened the newscast with the story of a laborer who died at his workplace in Fela, roasted alive in a gas explosion. He listed a series of examples to demonstrate how, in at least ninety percent of the cases, management was blithely indifferent to safety standards. He then moved on to the arrest of some public officials charged with various forms of embezzlement and used this instance to remind viewers of how several different elected governments had tried in vain to pass laws that might prevent the cleanup operation currently under way. His third item was the suicide of the businessman strangled by debts to a loan shark, and here he criticized the governments provisions against usury as utterly inadequate. Why, he asked, were those investigating this scourge so careful to keep loan-sharking and the Mafia separate? How many different ways were there to launder dirty money?
Finally, he came to the news of the two bodies found in the cave, but he approached it from a peculiar perspective, indirectly challenging the angle that Prest and TeleVig had taken on the story. Somebody, he said, once asserted that religion is the opium of the people; today, instead, one would have to say that the real opium is television. For example: Why had certain people presented this case as a story of two lovers thwarted in their love? What facts authorized anyone to advance such a hypothesis? The two were found nude: what had happened to their clothes? No trace of any weapon was found in the cave. How would they have killed themselves? By starving to death? Come on! Why did the man have a bowl beside him containing coins no longer current today but still valid at the time of their deaths? To pay Charons toll? The truth, claimed the newsman, is that they want to turn a probable crime into a certain suicide, a romantic suicide. And in our dark days, with so many threatening clouds on the horizon, he concluded, we puff up a story like this to drug people, to distract their attention from the serious problems and divert them with a Romeo-and-Juliet story, one scripted, however, by a soap-opera writer.
'Darling, it's Livia. I wanted to tell you I've booked our tickets. The flight leaves from Rome, so you'll have to buy a ticket from Palermo to Fiumicino; I'll do the same from Genoa. We'll meet at the airport and board together.'
'Mm-hmm.'
'I've also reserved our hotel. A friend of mine has stayed there and said it's really nice without being too fancy. I think you'll like it.'
'Mm-hmm.'
'We leave in two weeks and a day. I'm so happy. I'm counting the days and the hours.'
'Mm-hmm.'
'Salvo, what's wrong?'
'Nothing. Why should there be anything wrong?'
