IM10 August Heat (2008) Read Free

to Montereale. He called the mayor, who was very nice. He should be back at any moment.”
    “Why didn’t he call Salvo?”
    “He said he couldn’t bring himself to call the police over an invasion of cockroaches.”
    Guido pulled up some fifteen minutes later, followed by a car from the mayor’s office carrying four exterminators armed with poison canisters and brooms.
    Livia took Laura and Bruno back to Marinella with her, while Guido stayed behind to coordinate the disinfestation and clean up the house. Around four o’clock in the afternoon, he too showed up at Marinella.
    “They were coming straight up out of that crack in the floor. We sprayed two whole canisters down there, then cemented it up.”
    “There wouldn’t happen to be any more of those cracks, would there?” Laura asked, seeming not very convinced.
    “Don’t worry, we looked everywhere very carefully,” said Guido, settling the matter.“It won’t happen again.We can go back home without fear.”
    “Who knows why they all came out like that . . .” Livia cut in.
    “One of the exterminators explained that the house must have shifted imperceptibly during the night, causing the floor to crack. And the cockroaches, which were living underground, came up because they were attracted by the smell of food or by our presence. It’s hard to say.”
     
     
     
    On the fifth day came the second invasion. Not of cockroaches, this time, but of little rodents. Laura, when she got up that morning, saw some fifteen of them, tiny little things, even sort of pretty. But they fled out the French doors to the terrace at high speed as soon as she moved. She found another two in the kitchen, munching away at some bread crumbs. Unlike most women, Laura was not deathly afraid of mice. Guido called the mayor again, drove into Montereale, and came back with two mousetraps, a quarter pound of sharp cheese, and a red cat, pleasant and patient—so patient, in fact, that he didn’t take offense when little Bruno immediately tried to gouge out one of his eyes.
    “How can this be? First cockroaches climb up out of the floor, and now mice?” Livia asked Montalbano right after they got into bed.
    With Livia lying naked next to him, Montalbano didn’t feel like talking about rodents.
    “Well, the house hadn’t been lived in for a whole year . . .” was his vague reply.
    “It probably should have been swept, scoured, and disinfected before Laura and her family moved in . . .” Livia concluded.
    “I could use some of that myself,” Montalbano cut in.
    “Some of what?” asked Livia, confused.
    “A good scouring.”
    And he kissed her.
     
     
     
    On the eighth day came the third invasion. Again it was Laura, the first to get up, who noticed. She saw one out of the corner of her eye, jumped straight into the air, and, without knowing how, landed on top of the kitchen table, on her feet, eyes squeezed tightly shut. Then, when she felt it was safe enough, she slowly opened her eyes again, and, trembling and sweaty, looked down at the floor.
    Where, in fact, some thirty spiders were blithely strolling along, as in a representative parade of the species: One was short and hairy, another had only a ball-like head on very long, wiry legs, a third was reddish and big as a crab, a fourth was the spitting image of the dreaded black widow . . .
    Laura, who was unfazed by cockroaches and unafraid of mice, did, on the other hand, fly into convulsions the moment she saw a spider. She suffered from what is called arachnophobia.
    And so, with her hair standing straight on end, she let out an earsplitting scream and then fainted, plummeting from the table and onto the floor.
    In her fall she hit her head, which began at once to bleed.
    Woken up with a start, Guido bolted out of bed and rushed to his wife’s rescue. But he didn’t notice that Ruggero—that was the cat’s name—was racing out of the kitchen, terrorized first by Laura’s scream and then by the thud of her