He began to swim. And for a long stretch he swam rather slowly, necessarily using only his arms, stopping from time to time to catch his breath, or to see if the corpse was still attached to him. Slightly more than halfway to shore, he had to stop for a little longer than usual; he was huffing and puffing like a bellows. When he turned onto his back to do the dead man’s float, the dead man—the real one, that is—flipped face-down from the movement conveyed to him through the rope.
“Please be patient,” Montalbano excused himself.
When his panting had subsided a little, he set off again. After a spell that seemed endless, he realized he had reached a point where he could touch bottom. Slipping the rope off of his foot but hanging onto it with one hand, he stood up. The water came up to his nose. Hopping on tiptoe, he advanced a few more yards until he could finally rest his feet flat on the sand. At this point, feeling safe at last, he tried to take a step forward.
Try as he might, he couldn’t move. He tried again. Nothing. Oh God, he’d become paralyzed! He was like a post planted in the middle of the water, a post with a corpse moored to it. On the beach there wasn’t a soul to whom he might cry for help. Was it maybe all a dream, a nightmare?
Now I’m going to wake up, he told himself.
But he did not wake up. In despair, he threw his head back and let out a yell so loud that it deafened him. The yell produced two immediate results: the first was that a pair of seagulls hovering over his head and enjoying the farce took fright and flew away; the second was that his muscles and nerves—in short, his whole bodily mechanism—started moving again, though with extreme difficulty. Another thirty steps separated him from the shore, but they were like the climb up Mount Calvary. When he reached the beach, he dropped to the ground, on his ass, and stayed that way, still holding the rope in his hand. He looked like a fisherman unable to drag ashore an oversized fish he’d just caught. He consoled himself with the thought that the worst was over.
“Hands in the air!” a voice cried out behind him.
Befuddled, Montalbano turned his head to look. The person who had spoken, and who was taking aim at him with a revolver that must have dated from the Italo-Turkish War (1911-12), was a reed-thin, nervous man over seventy with wild eyes and sparse hair sticking straight up like iron wire. Next to him was a woman, also past seventy, wearing a straw hat and holding an iron rod that she kept shaking, either as a threat or because she suffered from advanced Parkinson’s Disease.
“Just a minute,” said Montalbano. “I’m—”
“You’re a murderer!” shouted the woman in a voice so shrill that the seagulls, who in the meantime had gathered to enjoy Act II of the farce, darted away, shrieking.
“But signora, I’m—”
“It’s no use denying it, you murderer, I’ve been watching you through my binoculars for the past two hours!” she shouted, even louder than before.
Montalbano felt totally at sea. Without thinking of what he was doing, he dropped the rope, turned around, and stood up.
“Oh my God! He’s naked!” the old lady screamed, taking two steps back.
“You swine! You’re a dead man!” the old man screamed, taking two steps back.
And he fired. The deafening shot passed some twenty yards away from the inspector, who was more frightened by the blast than anything else. Knocked another two steps back by the pistol’s kick, the old man stubbornly took aim again.
“What are you doing? Are you crazy? I’m—”
“Shut up and don’t move!” the old man ordered him. “We’ve called the police. They’ll be here any minute now.”
Montalbano didn’t budge. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the corpse slowly heading back out to sea. When the Lord was good and ready, two speeding cars pulled up with a screech. Seeing Fazio and Gallo, both in civilian dress, get out of the first one, Montalbano took heart. But not for long, because out of the second car stepped a photographer who immediately began shooting, rapid-fire. Recognizing the inspector at once, Fazio shouted to the old man:
“Police! Don’t shoot!”
“How do I know you’re not his accomplices?” was the man’s reply.
And he pointed his pistol at Fazio. But in so doing, he took his eye off Montalbano, who, feeling fed up by this point, sprang forward, grabbed the old man’s wrist, and disarmed him. He was not, however, able to dodge the fierce blow dealt him to the head by the old lady with her iron rod. All at once his vision fogged, his knees buckled, and he passed out.
After losing consciousness, he must have drifted into sleep, since when he awoke in his bed and looked at the clock, it was eleven-thirty. The first thing he did was sneeze, one sneeze after another after another still. He’d caught cold, and his head hurt like hell. He heard Adelina, his housekeeper, call to him from the kitchen.
“You awake, signore?”
“Yes, but my head hurts. Want to bet the old lady broke it?”
“Even bombs couldna brake dat head of yours, signore.”
The telephone rang. He tried to get up, but a sort of vertigo knocked him back down into bed. How could that old bag have had such strength in her arms? Adelina, meanwhile, answered the phone. He heard her saying:
“He jes’ woke uppa now. Okay, I tell him.”
She appeared with a steaming cup of coffee in her hand.
“Dat was Signor Fazziu. He says he comma to see you here in haffa nour atta most.”
“Adelì, what time did you get here?”
“At nine, as usual, signore. They ha’ put you inna bed, an’ Signor Gallu he stay behind to help. So I says, now I’m here, I can look afta you, an’ so he left.”
She went out of the room and came back with a glass in one hand and a pill in the other.
“I brung you some aspirin.”
Obediently, Montalbano took it. Sitting up in bed, he felt a few chills run through his body. Adelina noticed and, muttering to herself, opened the armoire, grabbed a plaid blanket, and spread it over the bedspread.
“At your age, signore, you got no business doin’ them kinda things.”
At that moment, Montalbano loathed her. He pulled the blanket up over his head and closed his eyes.
He heard the telephone ringing repeatedly. Why didn’t Adelina answer it? He staggered to his feet and went into the living room.
“H’lo?” he said in a congested voice.
“Inspector? Fazio here. I can’t come, I’m sorry to say. There’s been a snag.”
“Anything serious?”
“No, little shit. I’ll drop by in the afternoon. You take care of that cold in the meantime.”
He hung up and went in the kitchen. Adelina was gone. She’d left a note on the table.
You was sleeping and I din’t wanna wake you up. Annyway signor Fazziu’s gonna come soon. I make some food and put it in the fridge. Adelina.
He didn’t feel like opening the refrigerator. He had no appetite. Realizing he was walking around naked as Adam, he put on a shirt, a pair of underpants, and some trousers, and sat down in his usual armchair in front of the TV. It was a quarter to one, time for the midday news on TeleVigàta, a progovernment station whether the government was of the extreme Left or extreme Right. The first thing he saw was himself, stark naked, wild-eyed, mouth agape, hands cupped over his pudenda, looking like a chaste Susannah getting on in years, and a whole lot hairier. A caption under the image said:
“Inspector Montalbano (in the photo) saving a dead man.”
Montalbano remembered the photographer who had arrived behind Fazio and Gallo, and sent him, in his mind, best wishes for a long and prosperous life. Then the purse-lipped, chicken-ass face of Pippo Ragonese, the inspector’s sworn enemy, appeared on the screen.