Rounding the Mark by Andrea Camilleri Page A

cause and the effect of a world filled with terrorists who could kill three thousand Americans in a single blow, with Americans who considered the thousands of civilians killed by their bombs “collateral damage,” with motorists who squashed pedestrians with their cars and never stopped to help them, with mothers who killed infants in their cradles for no reason at all, with children who slit the throats of mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters for money, with fraudulent balance sheets that according to new rules were no longer considered fraudulent, with people who should have been thrown in jail years ago but who were not only free but rewriting the rules and dictating the law.
    To distract himself and calm his nerves a little, he channel-surfed for a while until he came to a station showing two very swift sailboats racing neck-and-neck in a regatta.
    “This long-awaited, fierce, but highly sporting contest between the Stardust and the Brigadoon , permanent rivals, is about to draw to a close. Yet we still can’t say which will emerge as the winner of this magnificent competition. The upcoming turn at the buoy will surely be decisive.”
    There was a panning shot from a helicopter above. A dozen other boats straggled behind the two in the lead.
    “We’re at the buoy!” the announcer yelled.
    The first boat went into its maneuver, elegantly putting about and rounding the mark as closely as possible before heading back the same way it had come.
    “But what’s happening to the Stardust ?” asked the announcer, upset. “Something’s not right.”
    Strangely, the Stardust had made no sign of any maneuver, but just charged on straight ahead, even faster than before, riding a stiff aft wind. There was no getting around it. Was it possible the crew never even saw the buoy? Then something unheard of happened. Apparently out of control—maybe the rudder was stuck—the Stardust went and rammed straight into a kind of trawler sitting motionless in its path.
    “Unbelievable! She just rammed the officials’ boat broadside! The two vessels are starting to sink! Here comes help! Unbelievable! It looks like nobody’s hurt. Believe me, friends, in all my years covering sailing competitions, I have never seen anything like it!”
    Here the commentator started laughing. And Montalbano laughed, too, as he turned off the TV.
     
 
He slept poorly, drifting off into short dreams from which he woke up in a daze every time. One of these dreams struck him in particular. He was with Dr. Pasquano, who had to perform an autopsy on an octopus.
    Nobody seemed surprised by this. Pasquano and his assistants treated the matter like business as usual. Only Montalbano found the situation odd.
    “Excuse me, Doctor,” he said, “but since when have we been doing autopsies on octopi?”
    “Don’t you know? It’s a new directive from the minister of justice.”
    “Oh. And, afterwards, what are you going to do with the remains?”
    “They’re going to be distributed to the poor, for them to eat.”
    The inspector wasn’t convinced.
    “I don’t understand the reasoning behind this directive.”
    Pasquano gave him a long stare and then said:
    “It’s because things are not what they seem.”
    Montalbano remembered that this was the same thing the doctor had said to him about the corpse he’d found in the water.
    “Want to see?” asked Pasquano, brandishing the scalpel and then lowering it.
    Suddenly the octopus turned into a child, a little black boy. Dead, of course, but with his eyes still wide open.
     
 
As he was shaving, the scenes of the previous evening on the wharf ran through his head again. Little by little, as he reviewed them with a cold eye, he began to feel uneasy, disturbed. There was something that didn’t jibe, some detail that clashed with the rest.
    He stubbornly played the scenes over in his head, trying to bring them more into focus. No dice. He lost heart. This was surely a sign of aging. He used to be