IM7 Rounding the Mark (2006)
Page 21
65 u zù Stefanu: Uncle Stefano, in Sicilian.
66 Capo Passero: Cape at the southeastern tip of Sicily, near the island of the same name (Isola di Capo Passero).
66 Pachino: A town near the southeastern tip of Sicily, near Capo Passero.
70 Eliot . . . “Death by Water”: From Part IV of The Waste Land.
87 The dust or the altar, that was the question: A reference to the poem “Il cinque maggio” (“May the Fifth”) by Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873), dedicated to Napoleon and written upon hearing the news of his death on May 5, 1821. The key passage:
tutto ei provò: la gloria
maggior dopo il periglio,
la fuga e la vittoria,
la reggia e il tristo esiglio;
due volte nella polvere,
due volte sull’altar.
[he went through it all: greater
glory after danger, flight
and victory, the palace royal
and unhappy exile;
twice in the dust,
twice on the altar.]
99 Road Police: The Road Police (Polizia Stradale) are a separate branch of the Italian police forces, something like the State Troopers and Highway Patrol in the United States.
112 ‘Tutto va ben, mia nobile marchesa’: “All goes well, my noble marchesa.” A sarcastic song from the Fascist period, performed by a well-known musical revue, which alluded ironically to the fact that everything was going quite badly.
119 It was time to eat. Since most people were at home . . . : In Italy, especially in the South, many people leave work to go home for their lunch break (often three hours long).
122 Signora Cappuccino in person: Although this woman is the wife of Gaetano Marzilla, in Sicily she may be called by either her maiden name (Cappuccino) or her married name (Marzilla). This is a remnant of the Spanish custom of a wife’s preserving her maiden name as part of her full name after marriage. Sicily, like much of Southern Italy, was under Spanish rule for centuries.
144 a politician killed by the Red Brigades: A reference to Aldo Moro, kidnapped and murdered by the Red Brigades, an armed revolutionary group, in 1978.
146 to mangle Eliot again: The opening line of “East Coker,” the second of the Four Quartets, is “In my beginning is my end.”
147 rotating the forefinger of his left hand, gesturing “later, later”: This is a common Italian hand gesture. The hand is held horizontally, with the forward rotation of the forefinger implying the passage of time.
151 Matre santa: Holy Mother (Sicilian dialect).
197 Heri dicebamus: (Lat.) “Yesterday we were saying.”
200 Durazzo: Port city in western Albania.
202 americanate: This is the plural of americanata, a slang term roughly meaning a grandiose, somewhat unlikely endeavor of the sort that Americans are typically thought to engage in. In reference to film, it might translate as “American pulp.”
205 the province’s remaining insane asylum: In the 1980s, the majority of Italy’s state-run mental hospitals were closed due to lack of funding.
217 Now shalt thou prove thy mettle: “Qui si parrà la tua nobilitate ”: Dante, Inferno II, line 9, in which the poet exhorts his own memory to rise to the task remembering the marvels he has seen.
222 ragioniere Gargano’s: See A. Camilleri, The Smell of the Night.
222 lansquenets: 17th- and 18th-century German mercenary soldiers known for their unruly behavior.
231 the air he was breathing had a rotten yellow color: As seen in several other books in the series, starting with The Terra Cotta Dog, Inspector Montalbano has the synaesthetic ability to envision odors as colors.
Notes by Stephen Sartarelli