Gianrico Carofiglio - Temporary Perfections

Baskerville only has one ear, I said to myself. And so that tail-wagging behemoth with both paws planted on my chest and his nose just inches from my face wasn’t Baskerville. I gulped uncomfortably, struggling to read the dog’s expression and figure out whether, having greeted me joyfully, he was now ready to rip me limb from limb. But the monster did seem friendly, and he was licking my hands. I was wondering how I could disengage from my new friend’s embrace without hurting his feelings when a skinny young man hurried around the corner and came toward us. When he reached us, the first thing he did was to snap a leash onto the dog’s collar and pull him away. Then, as he struggled to catch his breath, he spoke to me.

“I’m so sorry, forgive me. We let him off the leash in the store, and a customer left the door open, and he got out. He’s always trying to get out. He’s just a puppy. He’s not even a year old yet. I hope he didn’t scare you.”

“No, not a bit,” I said, which was a half truth. When it dawned on me that this dog wasn’t Baskerville, I have to admit an icy shiver ran down my spine, but I didn’t think it was necessary to give this young man all the details.

“Rocco’s a gentle dog. He loves children. We got a Corso because we wanted a guard dog, but I’m afraid he’s a big softie.”

I gave him a knowing smile but said nothing more. The young man seemed a little too chatty and I didn’t want to encourage him; the next thing you know he’d be telling me the story of his life, starting with his first pet hamster. So I said good-bye to him and to Rocco, and as they headed off down the sidewalk I leaned down to snap my bicycle lock shut.

The little padlock made its usual reassuring click. I stood up, and a thought popped into my brain. This new thought was buzzing around, from one side of my head to the other. It was just out of reach, though, and I couldn’t quite articulate it.

I tried to reconstruct the last few minutes.

The dog had trotted toward me. I’d whistled for him, expecting Nadia to come around the corner any minute. The dog greeted me enthusiastically. I scratched the dog’s ears, and that was when I’d realized it wasn’t Baskerville. A second later the dog’s owner appeared and… wait, wait, back up, Guerrieri.

I’d scratched the dog behind its ears and that was when I realized it wasn’t Baskerville. That was exactly when this new thought occurred to me. I frantically tried to put the idea into words.

Pino, also known (to me) as Baskerville, was identified by the fact that he was missing an ear. So he was identified by an absence. A non-presence.

Deep thoughts, I said to myself in an attempt at sarcastic wit. The barb fell flat. There really was something important there that I couldn’t quite grasp.

Baskerville. A missing ear. Something that’s missing explains everything. What? Something missing.

Baskerville.

Sherlock Holmes.

The dog didn’t bark.

The phrase formed in my head, suddenly, and began blinking like a neon sign in the desert.

A dog failing to bark was the famous “curious incident of the dog in the night-time” in the Sherlock Holmes story The Hound of the Baskervilles. Or maybe it was another book. I needed to check immediately, even though I wasn’t yet sure why.

I went upstairs to the office; no one was there. They were all out visiting court clerks and taking care of business. I was glad to be alone. I made myself an espresso, turned on my computer and Googled “Holmes” and “the dog did nothing.”

The phrase wasn’t in The Hound of the Baskervilles; it was in “Silver Blaze.” As I read, I remembered. The short story was about the theft of a thoroughbred racehorse that Holmes solved by observing “the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.” The curious incident in question was the fact that the dog had not barked. Therefore, the horse thief was someone the dog knew well.

The key to the mystery was something that didn’t happen. Something that should have been there but wasn’t.

What did all this have to do with my investigation?

What was missing, that should have been there?

When the answer began to take shape, a bout of nausea came along with it, like a sudden wave of seasickness.

I picked up the file, pulled out Manuela’s phone records, and examined them again. I paged through them, and I found clear confirmation of my hypothesis-that is, I failed to find what ought to have been there. I noticed an absence I’d failed to notice until that instant. The nausea grew and spread, becoming so intense that I was sure I’d vomit any minute.

The dog didn’t bark. And I knew that dog very well.

I turned on my cell phone and found four calls from Caterina’s number.

I wondered if it would be best to wait. Then I immediately decided it would not.

So I called Caterina. She answered on the second ring, sounding cheerful.

“Ciao, Gigi. How nice to see your name on my cell phone.”

“Ciao, how are you?”

“Fine. In fact, now that you’ve called me, I feel wonderful. I saw that you called me last night, but I turned off my phone. I was exhausted.” She paused, giggled, then resumed speaking. “I went right to bed like a five-year-old girl. This morning I tried to call you several times, but I couldn’t get through.”

“I was in court. I just got back to my office. Listen, I was thinking…”

“Yes?”

“What do you say if I come by and pick you up and we go get something to eat somewhere along the coast?”

“I’d say yes, what a fantastic idea. I’ll run and get ready. I’ll see you in twenty minutes. I’ll wait for you downstairs, in front of my building.”

I pulled up exactly twenty minutes later, the time it took to get the car out of the garage and drive to her house. I was just double parking to wait for her when she emerged from the apartment building. She was all smiles as she climbed into the car. She leaned over, kissed me, then fastened her seat belt. She seemed to be in an excellent mood, even happy. She was truly beautiful. Mental images of our night in Rome flickered before my eyes for a moment, like still images edited for subliminal effect into a feature film about something else-a movie that did not have a happy ending. It took my breath away, sadness and desire mixing cruelly.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Where would you like to go?”

“How about we go to La Forcatella and eat some sea urchin?”

La Forcatella is a little fishing village on the coast to the south of the city, just beyond the line between the provinces of Bari and Brindisi. It’s famous for its excellent sea urchin.

The car ran with silent precision along a highway surrounded by fields. The clouds were magnificent and clean; the scene looked like an Ansel Adams photograph. Spring was bursting out all around us, and it communicated a thrilling, dangerous euphoria. I did my best to focus on my driving and on the individual acts involved-shifting up and down, gently hugging the curves, glancing up at my rearview mirror-and I tried not to think.

There weren’t a lot of people in the restaurant, so we were able to get a table overlooking the water. Just a few feet from us, the waves lapped delicately at the rocks. The air was fragrant, and on the horizon a clear and perfect boundary was visible where the deep blue of the sea pressed up against the light blue of the sky.

Damn, I thought to myself as I sat across the table from her.

We ordered fifty sea urchins and a carafe of ice-cold wine. A little later, we ordered another fifty and another carafe. The sea urchins were plump and delicious, their orange flesh offering up their mysterious taste. Between the sea urchins and that cold, light wine, my head began to spin slightly.