The Terra-Cotta Dog

'What if I told you that times are changing and that the wheel is turning fast?'

'That would be a little more convincing.'

'You see, when I was a little kid, my father who was a man of honor when the word honor still meant something, my father, rest his soul, used to tell me that the cart that men of honor traveled on needed a lot of grease to make the wheels turn, to make them go fast. When my fathers generation passed on and it was my turn to climb aboard the cart, some of our men said: Why should we keep on buying the grease we need from the politicians, mayors, bankers, and the rest of their kind? Let's make it ourselves! We'll make our own grease! Great! Bravo! Everyone agreed. Sure, there was still the guy who stole his friends horse, the guy who blocked the road for some associate of his, the guy who would start shooting blindly at some other gangs cart, horse, and horseman . . . But these were all things we could settle among ourselves.The carts multiplied in number, there were more and more roads to travel. Then some genius had a big idea, he asked himself: Whats it mean that were still traveling by cart? We're too slow, he explained, were getting screwed, left behind, everybody else is traveling by car, you cant stop progress! Great! Bravo! And so everybody ran and traded in their cart for a car and got a drivers license. Some of them, though, didn't pass the driving-school test and went out, or were pushed out.

Then we didn't even have the time to get comfortable with our new cars before the younger guys, the ones who'd been riding in cars since they were born and who'd studied law or economics in the States or Germany, told us our cars were too slow. Now you were supposed to hop in a race car, a Ferrari, a Maserati equipped with radiophone and fax, so you could take off like a flash of lightning. These kids are new, brand-new, they talk to cell phones instead of people, they don't even know you, don't know who you used to be and if they do, they don't give a fuck. Half the time they don't even know each other, they just talk over the computer. To cut it short, these kids don't ever look anyone in the eye. As soon as they see you in trouble with a slow car, they run you off the road without a second thought and you end up in the ditch with a broken neck.'

'And you don't know how to drive a Ferrari.'

'Exactly. That's why, before I end up dead in a ditch, it's better for me to step aside.'

'But you don't seem to me the type who steps aside of his own choosing.'

'It's my own choosing, Inspector, all my own, I assure you. Of course, there are ways to make someone act freely of his own choosing. Once a friend of mine who was educated and read a lot told me a story which I'm gonna repeat to you exactly the way he told it, somethin' he read in a German book. A man says to his friend: Want to bet my cat will eat hot mustard, the kind that's so hot it makes a hole in your stomach? But cats don't like mustard, says his friend. Well, I can make my cat eat it anyway, says the man. Do you make him eat it with your fist or with a stick? asks the friend. No sirree, says the man, he eats it freely, of his own choosing. So they make the bet, the man takes a nice spoonful of mustard, the kind that makes your stomach burn just to look at it, picks up the cat and wham! shoves it right up the animals ass. Poor cat, feeling his asshole burn like that, he starts licking it. And so, licking it up little by little, he eats all the mustard, of his own choosing. And that, my friend, says it all.'

'I see what you mean. Now let's go back to where we started.'

'I was saying I want to be arrested, but I'm going to need some theatrics to save face.'

'I don't understand.'

'Let me explain.'

He explained at great length, drinking a glass of wine from time to time. In the end Montalbano was satisfied with Tanos reasons. But could he trust him? That was the question. In his youth, Montalbano had a great passion for card-playing, which he had luckily grown out of; for this reason he now sensed that Tano was playing him straight, with unmarked cards. He had no choice but to put his faith in this intuition and hope that he was not mistaken. And so they meticulously, painstakingly worked out the details of the arrest to ensure that nothing could go wrong. When they had finished talking, the sun was already high in the sky. Before leaving the house and letting the performance begin, the inspector gave Tano a long look, eye to eye.

'Tell me the truth.'

'At your command, Inspector.'

'Why did you choose me?'

'Because you, as you are showing me even now, are someone who understands things.'

As he raced headlong down the little path between the vineyards, Montalbano remembered that Agatino Catarella would now be on duty at the station, and that therefore the phone conversation he was about to engage in promised at the very least to be problematic, if not the source of unfortunate and even dangerous misunderstandings. This Catarella was frankly hopeless. Slow to think and slow to act, he had been hired by the police because he was a distant relative of the formerly all-powerful Chamber Deputy Cusumano, who, after spending a summer cooling off in Ucciardone prison, had managed to reestablish solid enough connections with the new people in power to win himself a large slice of the cake, the very same cake that from time to time was miraculously renewed by merely sticking in a few new candied fruits or putting new candles in the place of the ones already melted.

With Catarella, things would get most muddled whenever he got it in his head, which happened often to speak in what he called Talian.

One day he had shown up with a troubled look.

'Chief, could you by any chance be able to give me the name of one of those doctors called specialists?'

'Specialist in what, Cat?'

'Gonorrhea.'

Montalbano had looked at him open-mouthed.

'Gonorrhea? You? When did you get that?'

'As I remember, I got it first when I was still a lil thing, not yet six or seven years old.'

'What the hell are you saying, Cat? Are you sure you mean gonorrhea?'

'Absolutely. Had it all my life, on and off. It's here and gone, here and gone. Gonorrhea.'