The Potter's Field

–Several questions, therefore, arise here. Did Dolores latch on to Mimì because he was my second-in-command and she thus hoped to control the course of the investigation through him? Or did Dolores only discover afterwards that Mimì was my second-in-command and then decide to take advantage of the situation? In either case, Dolores’s purpose remains the same.

–Are Mimì and Dolores therefore plotting together to force me to turn the case over to Mimì?

–Does Mimì want it publicly known that he has insistently asked me to assign him the case so as to avoid conflict with Dolores?

–And if this is how things stand, how would you define Mimì’s behavior toward you?

At this point he had to stop, as his nausea had suddenly returned, stirring up a nasty, bitter sort of spittle in his mouth. He got up and went out onto the veranda. It was still dark outside. Not wanting to remain standing, he sat down on the bench.

What to call Mimì’s behavior?

He knew the answer. It had come to him at once, but he hadn’t wanted to say it or write it down.

Mimì had been disloyal to him; there could no longer be any doubt about this.

It wasn’t because he had a lover. That sort of thing, and Mimì’s private life in general, was of no concern to him. Even this time, it would have been of no concern to him—though Mimì was married with a young son—had Livia not dragged him into it.

No, the disloyalty had begun the moment Mimì realized that Dolores wanted something from him not as a lover but as a police officer. Although his vanity as a lady-killer must have taken quite a blow, he hadn’t been able or willing to break with Dolores. Maybe he was too taken with her. Dolores was, after all, the kind of woman who could reduce a man to the state of a postage stamp stuck to her skin. So, at that point, Mimì should have come to him and said, with an open heart: “Look, Salvo, I got involved in this affair, but then this and this happened, and now I need your help to get me out of these straits.” They were friends, weren’t they? But there was more.

Not only had Mimì told him nothing about the predicament he was in, but, faced with a choice between him and Dolores, he had chosen Dolores. He had teamed up with her to force him, Montalbano, to take certain steps. Mimì had thus acted in the woman’s interest. And a friend who acts not in your interest but in the interest of another without telling you, what has he done, if not betrayed your friendship?

At last the inspector was able to say it. Mimì was a traitor.

That word, traitor, once it had formed in his mind, blocked his thought process. For a brief moment the inspector’s brain was a total void. And the void became silence—not only an absence of words, but of even the slightest sound. The bright line barely visible in the darkness, formed by the surf at the edge of the beach, moved ever so gently back and forth, as always, except that now it no longer made its usual breathlike hiss. Now there was nothing. And the throbbing of the diesel of a fishing boat whose wan lights shone in the distance should have been audible from the veranda. But there was nothing. It was as though someone had turned off the soundtrack.

Then, within that silence of the world, perhaps of the universe, Montalbano heard a brief sound arise, unpleasant and strange, followed by another just the same, and still another, also the same. What was it?

It took him a while to realize that the sound was coming from him. He was crying inconsolably.

He made an effort to squelch the desire to let the whole thing slide all the way to hell, and bail out in any way he could. Because that’s the way he was. He was a man capable of understanding many things that others couldn’t or wouldn’t understand, moments of weakness, failures of courage, insolent disregard, lapses of attention, lies, ugly acts with ugly motives, things done out of laziness, boredom, self-interest, and so on. But he could never understand or forgive bad faith and betrayal.

Oh, yeah? My valiant knight, peerless and fearless, says he can never forgive betrayal?

Yes, it’s something I can’t even conceive of. And you, who are me, know this well.