The Day of the Owl Read Free

at least.'
    'I can't remember,' said the conductor, 'by my mother's soul I can't remember. Just now I can't remember a thing. It all seems a dream.'
    'I'll wake you up,' raged the sergeantmajor, 'I'll wake you up with a couple of years inside ... ' He broke off to go and meet the police magistrate who had just arrived. While making his report on the identity of the dead man and the flight of the passengers, the sergeantmajor looked at the bus. As he looked, he had an impression that something was not quite right or was missing, as when something in our daily routine is unexpectedly missing, which the senses perceive from force of habit but the mind does not quite apprehend; even so its absence provokes an empty feeling of discomfort, a vague exasperation as from a flickering light-bulb. Then, suddenly, what we are looking for dawns on us.
    'There's something missing,' said the sergeantmajor to Carabiniere Sposito, who being a qualified accountant was a pillar of the Carabinieri Station of S., 'there's something or someone missing.'
    'The fritter-seller,' said Carabiniere Sposito.
    'The fritter-seller, by God!' The sergeantmajor exulted, thinking: 'An accountant's diploma means something.'
    A carabiniere was sent off at the double to pick up the fritter-seller. He knew where to find the man, who, after the departure of the first bus, usually went to sell his wares at the entrance of the elementary schools. Ten minutes later the sergeantmajor had the vender of fritters in front of him. The man's expression was that of a man roused from innocent slumber.
    'Was he there?' the sergeantmajor asked the conductor.
    'He was,' answered the conductor gazing at his shoe.
    'Well now,' said the sergeantmajor with paternal kindness, 'this morning, as usual, you came to sell your fritters here ... As usual, at the first bus for Palermo ...'
    'I've my licence,' said the fritter-seller.
    'I know,' said the sergeantmajor, raising his eyes to heaven, imploring patience. 'I know and I'm not thinking about your licence. I want to know only one thing, and, if you tell me, you can go off at once and sell your fritters to the kids: who fired the shots?'
    'Why,' asked the fritter-seller, astonished and inquisitive, 'has there been shooting?'

    *

    'Yes, at half past six. From the corner of Via Cavour. A double dose of lupara {1} probably from a twelve-bore, maybe from a sawn-off shotgun ... Nobody on the bus saw a thing. A hell of a job to find out who was on the bus. When I got there they had all made off. A man who sells fritters remembered - after a couple of hours -seeing something like a sack of coal. He's made a vow of half a peck of chick-peas to Santa Fara because by a miracle he didn't get some of the lead, he says, standing as near as he was to the target... The conductor didn't even see the sack of coal... The passengers, those sitting on the right-hand side, say the windows were so steamy they looked like frosted glass. Maybe true ... Yes, head of a co-operative building company, a small one which seems never to have taken on contracts for more than twenty million lire ... small building lots, workers' houses, drains, secondary roads ... Salvatore Colasberna, Co-la-sbe-rna. Used to be a bricklayer. Ten years ago he formed the company with two of his brothers and four or five local bricklayers; he was in charge of the work, though a surveyor figured as director, and used to keep the accounts. They got along as best they could. He and his associates were content with a small profit, as though they were working for wages ... No, it seems they didn't do the sort of job that gets washed away by the first shower of rain ... I've seen a farm building, brand new, caved in like a cardboard box because a cow rubbed against it... No, built by the Smiroldi company, big building contractors. A farm building smashed by a cow! ... Colasberna, they tell me, used to do a solid job. There's the Via Madonna di Fatima here, made by his outfit, which hasn't