Andrea Camilleri - The Age Of Doubt

“If anyone asks for me, I’m at home. I’ll be back at work around four.”

He got back in the car and drove off.

Naturally, though covered so thoroughly by the bedsheets he looked like a mummy, he couldn’t fall asleep.

There was no wonder as to the cause of this bout of melancholy. He knew it perfectly well. It even had a name: Laura. Perhaps the moment had come to consider the whole matter in the most dispassionate manner possible, provided, of course, that he could manage to be dispassionate.

He had liked Laura a great deal at first sight. He’d felt something emotional, something deep, almost moving, the likes of which he hadn’t felt since the days of his youth.

But this probably wasn’t something that happened only to him. No doubt it happened to a great many men well past the age of fifty. But what was it? Nothing more than a desperate, and useless, attempt to feel young again, as if the feeling alone could wipe out the years.

And this was precisely what was muddying the waters, because he could no longer tell whether this feeling was real and genuine or false and artificial, since it arose in fact from the illusion of being able to turn the clock back. Hadn’t the same thing happened to him with the equestrienne [11]? With Laura, however, he hadn’t had a chance to put his thoughts in order. He was letting himself be carried away by the current he himself had created when the unforeseeable had happened.

That is, when Laura had told him she felt the same attraction to him. And how had he reacted?

He’d felt simultaneously scared and happy.

Happy because the girl loved him? Or because he’d succeeded, despite his age, in making a young woman fall in love with him?

There was a pretty big difference between the two.

And didn’t fearing the consequences actually mean that the intensity of his feeling was weak enough to allow him still to consider it rationally?

In matters of love, reason either resigns or sits back and waits. If it’s still present and functioning, and forces you to consider the negative aspects of the relationship, it means it’s not true love.

Or maybe that wasn’t quite the way things were.

Maybe the fear had arisen in him from the very feeling he’d had when hearing Laura’s words. The sense, that is, that he wasn’t up to the task. That he no longer had the strength to bear the violence of a genuine emotion.

This last consideration-perhaps the most accurate so far-gave rise to a suspicion in him.

When he’d thought of using Laura to put Mimì in contact with the owner of the yacht, did he not, perhaps, have another, inadmissible, intention?

Feel like saying it out loud, Montalbà?

Didn’t you know that by introducing Laura to Mimì, the whole thing risked taking a different turn? Had you not factored this in? Or-and here, please try to be sincere-had you factored it in to perfection? Didn’t you have a secret wish that Laura would end up in Mimì’s bed? Didn’t you practically pass him off to her with your own two hands?

For this last question he had no answer.

He lay in bed for another half hour or so, then got up.

But he’d achieved a fine result. His melancholy, instead of dissipating, had increased and turned into a black mood. “Black mood at sunset,” as Vittorio Alfieri once put it.

“Ahh, Chief Chief! Dacter Pisquano phoned lookin’ f’yiz sayin’ as how as ’e’s lookin’ f’yiz a talk t’yiz poissonally in-”

“Did he say whether he’d call back?”

“-poisson. Nah, Chief. ’E said sumpin’ ellis.”

“What’d he say?”

“’E said as how y’oughter call ’im atta Isstitute a Lethal Midicine.”

“It’s Legal Medicine, Cat, not lethal medicine.”

“Iss whatever it is, Chief, ’slong as y’unnastand.”

“Call the Institute and when you’ve got the doctor on the line, put him through to me.”

About ten minutes later, the telephone rang.

“What’s going on, Doctor?” the inspector asked.

“Are you surprised?”

“Of course. A phone call from you is so rare an occurrence, we’re liable to get an earthquake tomorrow!”

“Well, aren’t you the wit! Listen, since the mountain didn’t come to Mohammed, Mohammed has gone to the mountain.”

“But in this specific case, the mountain had no reason to go to Mohammed.”

“That’s true. Which is why this time it was up to me to come and break your balls.”

“Go right ahead. It’ll make up for all the times I’ve done the same to you.”

“Not so fast, my friend! Don’t get smart with me! I’ve still got a lot of credit left! You can’t compare the incessant, humongous ball-bustings I’ve had to put up with, with this one-”

“Okay, okay. Don’t keep me on tenterhooks.”

“See what old age does? You used to hate clichés and now you’re using them! At any rate, I’m writing up the report on the unknown corpse found in the dinghy.”

“While we’re on the subject, I should tell you that he’s no longer unknown. I found his passport, which says his name is Émile Lannec, French, born at-”

“I couldn’t give a flying fuck.”

“About what?”

“About his name or the fact that he’s French… To me he’s just a corpse and nothing else. I wanted to tell you that I performed a second autopsy because there was something that had left me wondering.”

“Namely?”

“I’d noticed some scars, despite the fact that they’d smashed up his face… It looked like he’d had it remade.”

“What?”

“Is your question an expression of surprise or do you want to know what he’d had remade?”

“Doctor, I understood perfectly well that he’d had his face remade.”

“What a relief! You see, there are a few things you can still grasp.”

“Are you sure he’d had such an operation?”

“Absolutely certain. And it wasn’t just a snip here and a tuck there, mind you, but a major transformation.”

“But why then-”

“Listen, I’m not interested in your whys and wherefores. It’s not up to me to give you the answers. You have to find them yourself. Or, at your advanced age, are your brain cells so deteriorated that-”

“You know what I say to you, Doctor?”

“No need to tell me. I can intuit exactly what you want to say to me, and I return the compliment with all my heart.”

When he carefully considered the information Pasquano had just given him, it wasn’t as if it changed the general picture much.

What difference did it really make whether the Frenchman’s face was the one Mother Nature had given him or a fake, remade face?

Whoever killed him wanted to make it so that the dead man’s face, whatever it was at that time, couldn’t be recognized. Why?

He’d already dealt with this question, but maybe it was best to come back to it for a minute.

Especially because, searching Lannec after he was dead, the killers realized he didn’t have his passport on him. And so they rightly concluded he’d left it at the hotel. Therefore, if the victim’s face appeared on television or in the newspapers, it would be easy for the hotel people to…

Wait a second, Montalbà!

He grabbed the phone book, looked up the number of the Bellavista Hotel, and dialed it.

An unknown voice picked up. In must have been the day-shift porter.

“Inspector Montalbano here.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Is Signor Toscano there?’

“He called to say he wouldn’t be in today. You can reach him at the furniture factory.”

“Could you please give me the number?”