Andrea Camilleri - The Age Of Doubt

“Go there at once and forget about Ricca.”

He’d already stood up when the phone rang. To answer or not to answer? That was the question. Prudence suggested that it was best not to answer, but since he had given Laura this very number, he thought it might be her saying she had changed her mind, and so he picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Ah, Inspector Montalbano, what luck to find you in your office! Did you just get back?”

“This very moment.”

It was that humongous pain in the ass Dr. Lattes, called Lattes e mieles , chief of the commissioner’s cabinet, who, among other things, was convinced that Montalbano was married with children.

“Well, my friend, the commissioner has gone and left me with the task of contacting you.”

“What can I do for you, Doctor?”

“We urgently need to do a complete review of documents lost during that sort of flood that damaged your offices the other day.”

“I see.”

“Would you have an hour or so, or perhaps an hour and a half, to devote to this?”

“When?”

“Right now. It’s something we could even do over the phone. You need only have a list of the lost documents at hand. Let’s start by doing a summary check, which will later serve as…”

Montalbano felt lost. He would have to cancel the dinner engagement with Laura!

No, he would not submit to this revenge of the bureaucracy.

But how? How would he ever wriggle out of this?

Perhaps only a good improvised performance could save him. He would do the tragic-actor thing, and he got off to a flying start.

“No! No! Alas! Woe is me! I don’t have the time!” he said in a despairing voice.

It made an immediate impression on Lattes.

“Good God, Inspector! What’s wrong?”

“I just now got a call from my wife!”

“And?”

“She phoned me from the hospital, alas!”

“But what happened?”

“It’s my youngest, little Gianfrancesco. He’s very sick and I must immediately-”

Dr. Lattes didn’t hesitate for a second.

“For heaven’s sake, Montalbano! Go, and hurry! I shall pray to the Blessed Virgin for your little… What did you say his name was?”

Montalbano couldn’t remember. He blurted out the first name that came to mind.

“Gianantonio.”

“But didn’t you say Gianfrancesco?”

“You see? I can’t even think straight! Gianantonio is the oldest, and he’s fine, thank God!”

“Go! Go! Don’t waste any more time! And good luck! And tomorrow I want a full report, don’t forget.”

Montalbano was off like a rocket to Montereale.

But after barely a mile and a half, the car stalled. There wasn’t a drop of gasoline left in the tank. Fortunately there was a filling station a couple of hundred yards up the road.

He got out of the car, grabbed a jerry can from the trunk, ran to the gas station, filled up the can, paid, ran back to the car, poured in the gas, started up the car, stopped at the station again, filled up the tank, and drove off-cursing the saints all the while.

When he got to the restaurant, all sweaty and out of breath, Laura was already sitting at a table, nervously waiting for him.

“Five minutes more and I would have left,” she said, cold as a slab of ice.

Owing perhaps to the ordeal he had gone through to get there more or less on time, her words had the immediate effect of seriously pissing him off. He was unable to control himself, and out of his mouth came a declaration he would never have thought himself capable of.

“Well, then I’ll just leave myself.”

And he turned his back, went out of the restaurant, got in his car, and drove home to Marinella.

He wanted nothing more than to get into the shower and stay there for as long as it took to wash away his agitation.

Twenty minutes later, as he was drying himself off, he thought again with a cooler head about what he had done, and realized he’d committed an act of colossal stupidity. Because he absolutely needed Laura’s help if he was going to get anywhere in the investigation. Indeed, the only way Mimì Augello could come into contact with La Giovannini was through Laura.

That was what happened when you mixed personal matters with work.

He decided he would call her first thing in the morning and apologize.

He no longer felt hungry. Perhaps his appetite would return if he went out for a few minutes onto the veranda and breathed some sea air. He had noticed, on the way back from the restaurant, that it was less chilly than the previous evening and there wasn’t a breath of wind. So he went outside with only his underpants on. He flicked on the light for the veranda from the inside, grabbed his cigarettes, and opened the French door. And froze. Not because it was cold outside, but because there was Laura, standing before him, speechless, eyes lowered.

Apparently she had knocked on the door when he was in the shower and he hadn’t heard it, and so, knowing he must be at home, she had walked around the house to enter from the side facing the beach.

“Forgive me,” she said.

And she looked up. At once her grave expression vanished and she started laughing.

At that very same moment, as if seeing his reflection in her eyes, Montalbano realized he was in his underpants.

“Ahhh!” he screamed.

And he dashed back to the bathroom as if in a silent film.

He was so upset, so confused, that the comedy continued when, as he was standing and putting his trousers on, he slipped on the wet tiles and fell on his ass to the floor.

When at last he was able to think straight again, he emerged and went out to the veranda.

Laura was sitting on the bench, smoking a cigarette.

“I guess we’ve just had a quarrel,” she said.

“Yeah. I apologize, but, you see…”

“Let’s stop apologizing to each other. I owe you an explanation.”

“No you don’t.”

“Well, I’m going to explain anyway, because I think it’s necessary. Have you got any more of that wine?”

“Of course.”

He got up and went out, then came back with a new bottle and two glasses. Laura guzzled a whole glass before speaking.

“I had no intention of calling you today and had promised myself that, if you called me, I would say I wasn’t up to seeing you.”

“Why?”

“Let me finish.”

But Montalbano insisted.

“Look, Laura, if there was anything I said or did yesterday that may have offended you, for whatever reason-”

“But I wasn’t offended at all. On the contrary.”

On the contrary? What did she mean? He’d best sit tight and hear what she had to say.

“I didn’t want to see you because I was afraid I’d seem ridiculous. And anyway, it wouldn’t have been right.”

Montalbano felt dazed.

And he feared that anything he might say would be the wrong thing. He didn’t understand what was happening.

“And so I told myself that it would be a mistake for us to keep seeing each other. It’s the first time in my life this sort of thing has happened to me. It’s humiliating and demoralizing. I’m completely helpless and can’t do anything about it. My will counts for nothing. And in fact, when you called me, I didn’t know… Help me.”

She stopped, poured herself another glass, and drank half of it. As she brought it to her lips, Montalbano saw her eyes glisten, brimming with tears.

Help me, she’d said. But with what? And why was she crying? How could he help her if he didn’t have the slightest idea what was happening to her?

Then, all at once, Montalbano understood. And, at first, he refused to believe what he thought he’d understood.