109 “Having faith is always best” ... “If you don’t sleep, you still can rest”: Montalbano is simultaneously mocking religion and the comforting adage for insomniacs: Il letto è una gran cosalSe non si dorme s‘arriposa (Of all things the bed is best / If you can’t sleep you still can rest), quoted in A. Camilleri, Voice of the Violin.
116 couldn’t bring himself to call them “repenters,” much less state’s witnesses: See note to page 59.
119 medical-service cards: In order to use the public healthcare system in Italy, one must present a government-issued medical card.
119 “certificate of living existence”: Certificato di esistenza in vita, in Italian. This bureaucratic oddity was created, among other reasons, to prevent retirement pensions from being paid out to people who are dead.
123 “the ROS”: The Reperto Operativo Speciale, an elite unit of the carabinieri, the national police force.
128 “I’ve got a heart like a lion and another like a donkey”: This is the literal translation of a Sicilian expression that means, more or less, “I’m of two minds” or “I’m torn.” Montalbano here purposely uses a Sicilian idiom to confuse the commissioner, who he knows will not understand it.
132 It was as if they were at Pontida: On April 7, 1167, the Lombard League, a federation of North Italian communes in the province of Lombardy (Brescia, Bergamo, Cremona, Mantua, and later Milan), was founded at the Convent of Pontida to fight the hegemonic designs of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa across the region. The solemn Oath of Pontida, taken on this occasion, has been grotesquely re-created in our time by the right-wing separatist, anti-immigrant party of Umberto Bossi, originally also called the Lombard League, now renamed the Northern League, which re-enacts the oath annually.
134 “Pisello districk” ... Fava district: Pisello means pea and fava is fava bean, hence Catarella’s confusion.
138 goat-tying: My rendering of the Sicilian verb incaprettare (containing the word for goat, capra), which refers to a particularly cruel method of execution used by the Mafia. Lying facedown, the victim has a rope looped around his neck and then tied to his feet, which are raised behind his back, as in hog-tying. Fatigue eventually forces him to lower his feet, strangling him in the process.
146 “These words content me much”: Henry VI, Part II, act 3, scene 2.
183 “Beddra Matre santissima!”: Most holy beautiful Mother (Sicilian dialect).
186 “passbook with the post office”: In Italy one can conduct a variety of transactions with the postal service, including banking.
188-89 Vittorio Emanuele III ... Umberto I ... “Gentleman King”: Three kings of Italy. The “Gentleman King” (il re galantuomo) was Vittorio Emanuele II. All the Italian kings since the foundation of the modern monarchy have been of the House of Savoy.
189 “verba volant” and “scripta manent”: “The spoken word flies” and “the written word remains” (Latin).
190 “It’s Ciampi”: Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, still the Italian president of the Republic, a largely ceremonial position. Executive power is invested in the office of the presidente del Consiglio, or prime minister.
192 “a hundred million”: About fifty thousand dollars.
212 Caponata: A zesty traditional southern-Italian dish, often served as an appetizer or side dish, made up of sautéed eggplant, tomato, green pepper, garlic, onion, celery, black olives, vinegar, olive oil, and anchovies. In this instance, Montalbano eats a large helping of caponata as his main course.
225 “she left her stable and hide”: In Italian, an insignificant inheritance is sometimes described idiomatically as una stalla e una salma, or “a stable and a corpse.” In Sicilian, however, the term salma is also an ancient and sometimes modern unit of surface measurement, equivalent to 1.76 hectares, or about four and a half acres. As a Sicilian, Montalbano seems to be unaware of the Italian expression, since in this conversation he momentarily takes the term salma (rendered as “hide”) literally; he is also unaware of the rather obscure Sicilian unit of measure. A hide was a unit of measurement in medieval England of varying size, starting around sixty acres. Translating salma as hide, while increasing the area some fifteen times, does, however, make it possible to reproduce the protagonist’s incomprehension in this situation, as it rather fortuitously and symmetrically preserves the original term’s double meaning of “corpse” and “land area.” What is inevitably lost is Camilleri’s rather sly literalization of an idiomatic metaphor.
279 prepared for the year 2000: This book was written in 1999 and first published in 2000.
Notes compiled by Stephen Sartarelli
FOR MORE MONTALBANO NOVELS, LOOK FOR THE
The Shape of Water
The first book in Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano series, The Shape of Water is sly, witty, and engaging. Early one morning, Silvio Lupanello, a big shot in the village of Vigata, is found dead in his car in a scandalous set of circumstances. Enter Inspector Salvo Montalbano, Camilleri’s cynical, humorous, shrewd, and unyielding detective who goes head to head with the most powerful and corrupt figures in Vigata to solve the murder.
ISBN 0-14-200239-9
The Terra-Cotta Dog
Second in the Montalbano series, The Terra-Cotta Dog opens with the tenacious Inspector’s mysterious tête-à-tête with a Mafioso, some inexplicably abandoned loot from a supermarket heist, and dying words that lead him to an illegal arms cache in a mountain cave. There, in a secret grotto, he finds a harrowing scene: two young lovers, dead fifty years and still embracing, watched over by a life-size terra-cotta dog. Montalbano’s passion to solve this old crime takes him, heedless of personal danger, on a journey through the island’s past and into a family’s dark heart amid the horrors of World War II bombardment. ISBN 0-14-200263-1
The Snack Tkief
When an elderly man is stabbed to death in an elevator and a crewman on an Italian fishing trawler is machine-gunned by a Tunisian patrol boat off Sicily’s coast, only Montalbano, with his keen insight into human nature, suspects the link between the two incidents. His investigation leads to the beautiful Karima, an impoverished housecleaner and sometime prostitute, whose young son is caught stealing other schoolchildren’s midmorning snacks. But Karima disappears, and the young snack thief’s life—as well as Montalbano‘s—is on the line. The third in the series, The Snack Thief is full of Humor, cynicism, compassion, and earthiness. ISBN 0-14-200349-2
Voice of the Violin
Montalbano’s gruesome discovery of a lovely, naked young woman suffocated in her bed immediately sets him on a search for her killer. Among the suspects are her aging husband, a famous doctor; a shy admirer, now disappeared; an antiques-dealing lover from Bologna; and the victim’s friend Anna, whose charms Montalbano cannot help but appreciate. But it is a mysterious, reclusive violinist who holds the key to the murder.
ISBN 0-14-200445-6
IM5 Excursion to Tindari (2005) Page 23
