Rounding the Mark (26 page)

 
 
When the inspector regained consciousness, he was inside a car with Gallo at the wheel. Fazio was behind him with his arms around him, as the car bounced high along a road full of holes. They had removed his sweater and improvised a temporary bandage over the wound. He felt no pain from it; perhaps that would come later. He tried to speak, but on first try nothing came out, because his lips were too dry.

“. . . Livia . . .’s flying in . . . this morning . . . Punta Raisi.”

“Don’t you worry,” said Fazio. “One of us will go pick her up, you can count on it.”

“Where are you . . . taking me?”

“To Montechiaro hospital. It’s the closest.”

Then something happened that Fazio found frightening. He realized that the noise coming from Montalbano was not a cough or him clearing his throat. The inspector was laughing. What was there to laugh about in this situation?

“What’s so funny, Chief?” he asked, concerned.

“I wanted to screw . . . my guardian angel . . . by not going to the doctor . . . But he . . . screwed me . . . by sending me to the hospital.”

Hearing this answer, Fazio got really scared. The inspector was apparently delirious. More terrifying still was the injured Montalbano’s sudden yell.

“Stop the car!”

Gallo slammed on the brakes; the car skidded.

“Up there . . . is that . . . the fork in the road?”

“Yes, Chief.”

“Take the road to Tricase.”

“But, Chief . . .” Fazio cut in.

“I said take the road to Tricase.”

Gallo started out slowly, turned right, and then almost at once Montalbano ordered him to stop.

“Put on your brights.”

Gallo obeyed, and the inspector leaned out the car window. The mound of gravel was no longer there. It had been used to level the road.

“It’s better this way.”

Suddenly, the wound began to hurt him terribly.

“Let’s go to the hospital,” he said.

They drove off.

“Oh, Fazio, another thing . . . ,” he continued with great effort, running a dry tongue over his parched lips, “don’t forget . . . don’t forget . . . to tell Pontius Pilate . . . he’s at the Hotel Regina.”

Madunnuzza santa!
Now he’s raving about Pontius Pilate! Fazio humored him, as one does with the insane.

“Of course we’ll tell him, Chief, of course. Just stay calm. I’ll do it myself, first thing.”

It was too much of an effort to talk, to explain. Montalbano let himself go, falling into a half swoon. Fazio, all sweaty from the fright these meaningless words were giving him, leaned forward and whispered to Gallo:

“Come on, for Chrissakes, step on it! Can’t you see the Chief’s not right in the head?”

Author’s Note

The names, characters, and situations represented in this novel are, of course, wholly invented.

The statistics on the illegal immigration of minors into Italy, on the other hand, are drawn from an investigation by Carmelo Abbate and Paolo Ciccioli, published in the September 19, 2002, edition of
Panorama
, and the information on the human traffickers derives from an article published in the September 26, 2002, edition of the Italian daily,
La Repubblica
. The story of the phony death was likewise suggested to me by a news item (
Gazzetta del Sud
, August 17, 20, and 24, 2002).

Notes

1 octopus
a strascinasali
or sardines
a beccafico
:
Octopus
a strascinasali
consists of small octopi (
polipetti
in Italian,
purpiteddri
or
frajeddi
in Sicilian) simply boiled in salted water, then dressed in olive oil and lemon juice.
Sarde a beccafico
is a famous Sicilian specialty named after a small bird, the
beccafico
(
Sylvia borin,
garden warbler in English), which is particularly fond of figs (
beccafico
means “fig-pecker”). The headless, cleaned sardines are stuffed with sautéed breadcrumbs, pine nuts, sultana raisins, and anchovies, then rolled up in such a way that they resemble the bird when they come out of the oven.

 
1 the police raid of the Diaz School during the G8 meetings in Genoa:
The G8 meetings held in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001, were marred by unusual violence by the forces of order against protesters, culminating in the shooting death of a young man who had threatened a group of carabinieri with a fire extinguisher. Among the brutal police tactics was the nighttime raid of the Diaz School, where a number of protesters and independent journalists were staying. All of the details related by Camilleri in regard to this event, including his assertion that high functionaries of the police bureaucracy were involved in the Diaz raid, are true and well documented in the mainstream press. Many of those attacked by police during the raid, including British freelance journalist Mark Covell, were severely injured; others were taken from the school to a temporary detention center called Bolzaneto, where they were subject to further beatings and humiliation. Two separate trials against no fewer than seventy-three members of police, carabinieri, and prison officers were ongoing as of December 2005, with charges including abuse of authority and unlawful violence, as well as trespass, false arrest, inflicting or authorizing grievous bodily harm, not to mention fabricating the evidence intended to justify the raid at the Diaz School.

 
2 as the government watchfully looked on:
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, a media tycoon in his own right, is known to exercise tight control on the news and information propagated in private as well as state-owned media.

 
2 brought to mind long-buried episodes of the Fascist police or the Scelba period:
Minister of the interior during successive postwar governments from 1947 to 1953, Mario Scelba (1901-1991) was a fierce anti-Communist known for his brutal repression of demonstrations and his use of the police and antiriot squads to that end.

 
6 Imagine ever finding any obscene graffiti in Sicily without the word “cuckold” in it!
The Italian word for cuckold,
cornuto
, a common insult throughout the country, is a special favorite among southerners, Sicilians in particular.

 
9 solitary walks along the jetty . . . hours spent sitting on the rock of tears:
As described in earlier books in this series, the inspector is fond of taking solitary walks along the jetty in the port of Vigàta. Under the lighthouse at the end of the jetty, there is a rock, one of the many that make up the breakwater, on which he likes to sit to collect his thoughts. It was on this rock that he first came to terms with his father’s death and wept for him, whence the name, the “rock of tears.” (See A. Camilleri,
The Snack Thief
and subsequent books in the series.)

 
9
càlia e simenza
:
A mix of chickpeas and pumpkin seeds, and sometimes peanuts. There is a shop at the start of the jetty that sells this snack, often an integral part of Montalbano’s solitary walks. (See previous note.)

24 “My husband Angelo and I are both from Treviso”:
Treviso is in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy, one of the strongholds of the Northern League, a right-wing, anti-Southern political party.

28
L’Avvenire
and
Famiglia Cristiana
:
L’Avvenire
(which means “The Future”) is a Catholic daily;
Famiglia Cristiana
is a weekly magazine published by the Catholic Church.

28
E passeranno i giorni
:
“And the days will go by.” A line from the aria
Ch’ella mi creda
, in
La Fanciulla del West
, an opera by Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924).

 
29 Nothing but angels up there:
Aside from observing that all the persons are named either Angelo or Angela, Montalbano is making a wry comment on the staunch Catholicism for which the people of the Veneto are well-known, and on the hypocrisy that allows them to consider themselves more virtuous than the Sicilians.

38 “Here, Ingrid, . . . I can’t keep up with you”:
Ingrid is a former race-car driver. (See A. Camilleri,
The Shape of Water
.)

 
53 the inspector thought of François, the Tunisian boy who could have become his son, . . . :
See A. Camilleri,
The Snack Thief
and
Voice of the Violin.

57 Cozzi-Pini law:
A thinly disguised reference to the Bossi-Fini law, conceived by Umberto Bossi and Gianfranco Fini, respective leaders of the xenophobic Northern League and the National Alliance, a right-wing party descended directly from the neo-Fascist MSI party founded after World War II. Enacted in 2002 by the Italian parliament, with the ruling coalition of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia party and these two smaller parties holding an absolute majority, this heavy-handed law, among its many provisions: (1) makes it illegal for individuals not belonging to European Union member nations to enter the country without a work contract; (2) requires all non-E.U. individuals who lose their jobs while in the country to repatriate to their country of origin; (3) abolishes the sponsorship system that had previously enabled non-E.U. individuals to enter the country under the patronage of a sponsor already in Italy; (4) establishes the government’s right to decree a quota of the number of non-E.U. individuals allowed to enter the country over the period of one year; and (5) makes all foreign nationals not in conformity with these new guidelines subject to criminal proceedings and/or forced repatriation.

63 De Rege brothers:
Guido (“Bebè”) De Rege (1891-1945) and Giorgio (“Ciccio”) De Rege (1894-1948) were a celebrated slapstick comedy team of the thirties and forties who performed their routines in variety theatres and in the variety shows that often preceded the screening of films. Perhaps their most famous routine was their oft-repeated opening act, when Bebè, alone on the stage, would look to the wings and say “
Vieni avanti, cretino!
” (“Come out here, idiot!”), whereupon his brother would enter, stammering and babbling nervously until he inevitably blurted out some bit of comically ingenious nonsense.

 
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:

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.