Hunting Season: A Novel by Andrea Camilleri Read Free Book Online Page A

in a manner of speaking. Happy now?” And she smiled a distant smile, as if, in the devastated landscape of her memory, a tiny, happy island had suddenly appeared. Troubled, but afraid to take things any further, the marchese decided to come to the point.
    “Your husband the marchese had an autopsy performed on Rico.”
    “What does that word you said mean?”
    “It means they had a look inside him. And they found these.”
    He extracted a large jewel case and opened it. A gold necklace sparkled inside, studded with gemstones and lead.
    “See these? They’re the five bullets that were found in Rico’s body. Your husband had them mounted. You were right all along, Marchesa. He was shot.”
    “How beautiful,” said Donna Matilde, picking up the necklace, drawn to the glitter like a magpie and forgetting her victory—that is, the confirmation that her son died in the manner she had always maintained.
    “My respects, Marchesa.”
    Having taken a proper bow, Don Filippo was about to withdraw when he was stopped by his wife’s voice.
    “Is that gentleman with you?”
    “What gentleman?” said the marchese, looking around and seeing no one.
    “Why, that one there,” the marchesa replied with irritation, pointing at the cat, Mustafà, who was asleep at the foot of the bed.
    “No, that gentleman came in on his own.”
    In the corridor, as he was heading towards his room, Don Filippo stopped short, seized by a sudden idea.
    If my wife can no longer distinguish between a cat and a man, why would she be able to distinguish between a goat and a woman? I think, one of these days, I will bring Carmelina home with me and introduce her to Matilde. I’ll tell her she was Rico’s secret fiancée, and she should treat her like a daughter .

    “That makes three games in a row you’ve lost, Marchese. You seem a bit distracted. What’s on your mind?”
    “A goat.”
    “A goat goat?”
    “That’s right.”
    Barone Uccello felt sorry for his friend. Apparently the marchese was having trouble getting over the loss of his son. They played another game, also won by the baron.
    “I think it’s not my day,” said Don Filippo, and he added, “I wanted to ask you something, carissimo . It’s a private matter, and you must feel absolutely free not to answer.”
    “Let’s hear it.”
    “Are you fond of your two daughters-in-law?”
    “I don’t know why you’re asking me this, and I don’t want to know. But I will answer. You see, when Sarina, my elder son’s wife, comes to see me, I fall into a trance just looking at her and I cannot keep myself from sighing from time to time. If she ever happens to want anything, I am ready to oblige her. And when she thanks me in that sweet little voice of hers, I melt. With Luisina, my younger son’s wife, it’s something else entirely, by God!”
    “Are you not fond of her?”
    The baron had a look around, grabbed his chair, moved it, and sat down beside Don Filippo so he could speak softly.
    “I’m going to tell you something in confidence that I’m embarrassed to admit, and so I don’t want you looking at me when I say it. A few nights ago I had a dream about Luisina, and we had just finished doing what a man and a woman do together, if you know what I mean. The moonlight was filtering through the shutter as I lay there contemplating her naked, white body. This, old boy, just to give you an idea.”
    He paused.
    “You, unfortunately, will never know this, but a father always falls in love with his son’s beloved.”
    At that moment the marchese saw her in the clearing at the edge of the wood: the fine, white-and-brown, Agrigento longhair nanny goat, with big moist, frightened eyes, coiling horns like a unicorn’s, and a sweet, sweet udder the color of baked bread. And through this vision of Carmelina, the marchese understood in a flash what his son was about, and what, as a man, he had lost in losing him. For the first time since the misfortune, a genuine feeling of utter