Rounding the Mark by Andrea Camilleri Read Free Book Online Page A

less lighted area of the wharf, where stood the remains of an old silo that had been ringed by a wall for security. He never knew what made him shout to the two policemen:
    “Stop! I’m Inspector Montalbano! Turn back! I’ll go after him myself!”
    The policemen obeyed.
    By now the inspector had lost sight of the kid, but the direction he’d taken could only have led him to one place, and that was an enclosed area, a kind of blind alley between the back of the old silo and the boundary wall of the port, which offered no path of escape. The space, moreover, was cluttered with empty jerry cans and bottles, hundreds of broken fish crates, and at least two or three scrapped outboard motors from fishing boats. It was hard enough to make one’s way through that jumble in the daytime, let alone by the faint glow of a street lamp. Certain that the kid was watching him, he assumed a falsely casual air, walking slowly, one step at a time. He even lit a cigarette. When he’d reached the entrance to the alley, he called out in a soft, calm voice:
    “Come out, little guy, I’m not gonna harm you.”
    No answer. But, listening very hard, he could distinctly hear, under the tide of shouts, wails, curses, car horns, sirens, and screeching tires that reached his ears from the wharf, the faint, panting breath of the little boy, who must have been hiding just a few yards away.
    “Come on out now, I’m not gonna harm you.”
    He heard some rustling. It came from a wooden crate right in front of him. The boy must have been huddled behind it. He could have leapt forward and nabbed him, but chose to keep still. Then he saw the hands, arms, head, and chest slowly appear. The rest of the little body remained hidden by the crate. The boy was holding his hands up, signaling surrender, eyes open wide in terror. But he was trying very hard not to cry, not to show any weakness.
    What corner of hell could he have come from, Montalbano suddenly asked himself in dismay, if at his age he’d already learned the terrible gesture of throwing one’s hands in the air, something he certainly hadn’t seen on television or at the movies?
    The answer came to him at once, in the form of a flash in his brain. And while it lasted, inside this flash—which was just like a photographer’s flash—the crate, the alley, the port, Vigàta itself all disappeared and then reappeared in black and white and shrunken to the size of an old photo he had seen many years before but which had been taken many years before that, during the war, before he was born, and which showed a little Jewish or Polish boy with hands raised and the very same wide-open eyes, the very same desire not to cry, as a soldier pointed a gun at him.
    The inspector felt a sharp pain in his chest, a twinge that took his breath away. Frightened, he closed his eyes tight, then reopened them. Finally, everything returned to normal size, to the light of reality, and the little boy was no longer Jewish or Polish but a little black boy again. Montalbano took a step forward, took the child’s freezing hands in his own and held them tight. And he remained that way, waiting for a little of his own warmth to pass into those tiny fingers. Only when he felt the little hands begin to relax did he take his first step, still holding him by one hand. The little boy followed, willingly entrusting himself to his care. In spite of himself, the inspector thought of François, the Tunisian boy who could have become his son, if Livia had had her way. He managed in time to suppress his emotion, biting his lower lip until it almost bled.
    The disembarkation continued. In the distance he saw a rather diminutive woman making a scene with two small children hanging on her skirts. She was shouting incomprehensibly, pulling her hair out, stamping her feet, tearing her blouse. Three policemen tried to calm her down, with little success. Then the woman spotted the inspector and the little boy, and there was no stopping her: