police. It was 1968. My mother got very worried and wanted to call a doctor. She thought I was in a deep coma.'
Professor Lovecchio had the look of a bank clerk. He didn't show his age of forty-five; a faint glint of madness sparkled in his eye. He was fueling himself on straight whisky at eleven in the morning.
'There was nothing miraculous about my sleep,' Lovecchio went on. 'To achieve a miracle you have to be out for at least twenty years. In the Koran, again, I think i'ts in the second suraits written that a man, whom the commentators identify as Ezra, slept for a hundred years. The prophet Salih, on the other hand, slept for twenty years, he, too, in a cave, which isn't the most comfortable place for getting a good sleep. Not to be outdone, the Jews, in the Jerusalem Talmud, boast of a certain Hammaagel, who, in the inevitable cave, slept for seventy years. And let's not forget the Greeks. Epimenides woke up after fifty yearsin a cave. In those days, in short, all you needed was a cave and somebody who was dead tired, and you had a miracle. The two youngsters you found had been sleeping for how long?'
'From 43 to 94. Fifty years.'
'The perfect time to be woken up. Would it complicate your deductions if I told you that in Arabic one uses the same verb for sleeping and dying? And that a single verb is also used for waking up and coming back to life?'
'What you're saying is absolutely spellbinding, but I've got an airplane to catch and have very little time. Why were you thinking of contacting me?'
'To tell you not to be fooled by the dog. And that the dog seems to contradict the jug and vice versa. Do you understand why?'
'Not a bit.'
'You see, the legend of the sleepers is not Oriental in origin, but Christian. In Europe, it was Gregory of Tours who first introduced it. It tells of seven youths of Ephesus who, to escape the anti-Christian persecutions of Decius, took refuge in a cave, where the Lord put them to sleep. The cave of Ephesus exists; you can even find it in the Italian Encyclopedia. They built a sanctuary over it, which was later destroyed. The Christian legend says there's a spring inside the cave. Thus the sleepers, as soon as they awoke, drank first, then sent one of their own in search of food. But at no time in the Christian legend, or in any of its endless European variants, is there any mention of a dog. The dog, whose name is Kytmyr, is purely and simply the poetic invention of Mohammed, who loved animals so much he once cut off a sleeve so as not to wake up the cat that was sleeping on it.'
'You're losing me.'
'But there's no reason to get lost, Inspector. I was merely trying to say that the jug was put there as a symbol of the spring that was in the Ephesian cave. So, to conclude: the jug, which thus belongs to the Christian legend, can only coexist with the dog, which is a poetic invention of the Koran, if one has an overview of all the variants that the different cultures have contributed to the story . . . In my opinion, the person who staged that scene in the cave can only be someone who, in his studies...'
...
He screeched to a halt in front of the Anti-Mafia Commission offices. The guard on duty raised his submachine gun in alarm.
'I'm Inspector Montalbano!' he shouted, holding up his drivers license, the first thing he'd happened to grab. Short of breath, he ran past another officer acting as usher and yelled: 'Please inform Mr. De Dominicis that Inspector Montalbano's on his way up, quick!'
In the elevator, taking advantage of being alone, Montalbano mussed up his hair, loosened his tie, and unbuttoned his top button. He thought of pulling his shirt a bit out of his trousers, but decided that would be excessive.
'De Dominicis, I've got it!' he said, panting slightly, closing the door behind him.
'You've got what?' asked De Dominicis, alarmed by the inspectors appearance and rising from his gilded armchair in his gilded office.
'If youre willing to give me a hand, I'll let you in on an investigation that..'
He stopped, putting a hand over his mouth as if to prevent himself from saying anything more.
'What's it about? Give me a hint, at least.'
'I can't, believe me, I really can't.'
'What am I supposed to do?'
'By this evening at the latest, I want to know what the subject of the university thesis of someone named Calogero Rizzitano was. His academic adviser was a certain Professor Cotroneo, I think. He must have graduated in late 1942. The subject of this thesis is the key to everything. We could deal a mortal blow to..'
Again he interrupted himself, became bug-eyed, and said to himself dementedly:
'I haven't said anything, you know.'
Montalbano's agitation infected De Dominicis.
'What can we do? The students ...at the time...why, there must have been thousands! Assuming the records still exist.'
'What are you saying? A few dozen, not thousands. At the time, all the young men were in the service. It should be easy to find out.'
'Then why don't you look into it yourself ?'
'They would be sure to waste a great deal of my time with their red tape, whereas for you they would open every door.'
'Where can I reach you?'
'I'm heading back to Vig in a hurry; I don't want to lose track of certain developments. Phone me as soon as
