“They honfuse me”: In accentuating the many cultural differences between the continental Italians and Sicilians in this book, and among the continental Italians themselves, Camilleri has included a great variety of divergences of speech, expressions, and dialect. In addition, to highlight Prefect Borduzzi’s pompous Florentine manner, the author has translated orthographically the Tuscan habit of aspirating or sometimes suppressing the hard “c” (or “k”) sound when it falls between vowels or at the beginning of a word. Thus when Bortuzzi says, for example, “We’re at the gates with stones in our hands,” the original Italian is written “Siamo alle porte hoi sassi,” whereas it would normally be “. . . coi sassi.” To give another example, a Tuscan will pronounce la casa as either la hasa or la ’asa. To carry over some of the humor and derision created in the original text by these strange orthographies, I have taken the liberty of making Prefect Bortuzzi aspirate almost all cases of hard “c” sounds that fall between vowels. Here, therefore, “confuse” becomes “honfuse.” Perhaps the most absurd instance of this idiosyncrasy of speech in this book is when Giagia, the prefect’s wife, pronounces the name of the Italian composer Boccherini as Bohherini (see p. 212).
“a lupara hidden in your trousers”: Lupara (“wolf-gun”) is the Sicilian term for sawn-off shotgun, formerly the weapon of preference of the Mafia.
“Punta Raisi’s not a very good place for kites”: And yet in the modern age it became the site of the airport of Palermo, despite the treacherous winds described in the short paragraph that follows this statement. Indeed, airplanes often encounter the same problems as the kites mentioned here, not to mention that the surrounding terrain is mountainous, making it the most dangerous airport in Europe. Rumor has it that the site was chosen to satisfy the desires of the Mafia.
On the morning of the day he was killed: An echo of the opening of Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel García Márquez: “On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning . . .” (translated by Gregory Rabassa, Knopf, 1982).
“Friends! To the brewery / we merrily run!”: The libretto passages in Camilleri’s text are taken directly from the 1847 original of Luigi Ricci’s Il Birraio di Preston. I have translated them into English to facilitate comprehension of the audience’s reactions to them.
“No need to look anywhere for horns. They grow all by themselves”: In Italian, “to grow horns” is to be cuckolded.
“with his unpleasant vocation / of living by the balls . . . of the cannon”: In this instance I had to take a little liberty in the translation of the original libretto to create a line that would evoke the sort of derision that takes place in the theater. The original states “Se quel brutto mestiero / di stare tra le palle e la mitraglia . . .” Not missing an opportunity to make sport of some infelicitous phrasing, Camilleri has the audience burst into laughter after the phrase “stare tra le palle . . . ,” which is a rather vulgar way of saying “to be in the way” or, in a sense, “to be a pain in the ass.” Literally, it means “to get between one’s balls.” In the libretto’s context, however, palle is intended to mean “bullets” and the whole phrase to mean “that nasty job / of living between bullets and guns.”
“Ladies and, so to speak, gentlemen”: The opening line recited by Nyukhin at the start of Anton Chekhov’s On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco (1886, 1902).
Turiddru Macca, son: The opening of Giovanni Verga’s “Cavalleria Rusticana” (1884), the short story, later turned into a play, that served as the basis of the opera of the same name by Pietro Mascagni, with a libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci.
Only the young have such feelings: An echo of the opening of Joseph Conrad’s novella The Shadow-Line (1917): “Only the young have such moments.”
“You know how I feel about this”: A direct quote of the opening line to Leonardo Sciascia’s 1987 novel Porte aperte (Open Doors).
Piemontese falso e cortese, as the saying went: “Piedmontese are false and polite,” an Italian commonplace that has fallen somewhat out of use in our time.
From the moment Vidusso walked out, the prefect had been sitting with his head in his hands, sputtering curses that grew more and more elaborate as he invented them: The Tuscans are known for improvising curses, to the point that some Tuscan villages even have summer contests to see who can come up with the most creative, blasphemous curse. Never having witnessed any such competitions myself, I was once told, however, that one year the winner of a certain village’s contest had said: “Madonna impestata,” a curse of manifold meanings, perhaps the most immediate being “Syphilitic Madonna.”
The early morning sun hung milky and wan behind layers of cloud: An almost exact quote of the opening sentence of “Tonio Krüger,” the story by Thomas Mann: “The early morning sun, poor ghost of itself, hung milky and wan behind layers of cloud . . .” (translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter. Thomas Mann, Stories of Three Decades. New York: Knopf, 1936).
Late as usual: The opening line of a short novel by Aldous Huxley, After the Fireworks (1930).
I wish either my father or my mother: The opening to chapter one of Tristram Shandy (1760), by Laurence Sterne.
the Meo Patacca: The Meo Patacca, by Giuseppe Berneri (1637–1701), whose full title is Meo Patacca ovvero Roma in Festa nei trionfi di Vienna, is a seriocomic “epic” written in Roman dialect. It remains an important document on the language, customs, and sensibilities of the Romans in the late seventeenth century.
By now everyone knew him as Don Ciccio: An almost exact echo of the opening line of Quer pasticciaccio brutto de Via Merulana (That Awful Mess on Via Merulana), by Carlo Emilio Gadda, which begins: “By now everyone called him Don Ciccio.”
the Temple of Concordia: The Temple of Concordia is the most important and best preserved of the seven Greek temples, all in the Doric style, preserved in the Valley of Temples outside of Agrigento, Sicily, the city that serves as the model for Camilleri’s fictional Montelusa.
Dio bonino: “Good little God.” Another example of Tuscan creativity in cursing, in this case euphemistically. See note to page 79 on page 241.
“Madonna ’amiciaia”: “Shirt-making Madonna.” Another instance of the Tuscan elision of the hard “c” between vowels. Normally the word would be camiciaia. See note to page 32 on page 239.
“tanger . . . Étagère”: In the Sicilian dialect of the region of Agrigento (where Camilleri sets his story), the word tanger, derived from the French étagère, is used for a variety of furnishings that range from sets of shelves to pieces that combine shelves and cabinets. In the present case, it would appear to be the latter form that is referred to.
The wind rose from the west: An echo of the incipit of Manalive (1912), by G. K. Chesterton: “A wind sprang high in the west . . .”
In endeavoring to describe the truly painful events that have occasioned such damage and unrest in the town of Vigàta: Cf. Dostoyevsky, The Possessed (1871), which begins: “In undertaking to describe the recent and strange incidents in our town . . .”
“Oh, what a beautiful day!”: Slight variation on the opening line of the poem L’è el dì di Mort, alegher! (1932), by Milanese dialect poet Delio Tessa (1886–1939): “My, what a beautiful day!”
And how are your horns?: A reference to the fact that the commissioner’s wife is cheating on him, making him a cornuto.
tresette . . . briscola: Italian card games.
And it’s a good thing, thought Salamone, that your horns don’t yet reach the chandelier: See note to p. 141.
How much longer is this going to last?: The opening to Arthur Schnitzler’s novella None but the Brave (Leutnant Gustl) (1901).
I am an elementary school teacher: The opening to Il maestro di Vigevano (1962), a novel by Lucio Mastronardi (1930–1979). The book was made into a film with the same title, by Elio Petri, in 1963.
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br /> field watcher: In Sicily, major landowners often resorted to the use of private guards, called campieri, to protect their lands and crops from bandits. They were also used as strongmen and avengers. As mentioned in the text that follows, it is only the latter purpose to which this man is put in this case.
Fannu tutte accussì by a certain Mozzat . . . U flautu magicu: With a hilarious touch appreciable perhaps only to Italian ears, Camilleri has his character Sicilianize the Italian titles of the Mozart operas Così Fan Tutte and The Magic Flute, which would be Il Flauto Magico in proper Italian.
An ordinary-looking young man: An echo of the opening of The Magic Mountain, by Thomas Mann: “An unassuming young man . . .” (translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter, 1924).
If on a winter’s night already: A send-up of the opening line and title of If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, by Italo Calvino (1981).
It was a pleasure to set the fire: A variation on the opening of Fahrenheit 451 (1953), by Ray Bradbury: “It was a pleasure to burn . . .”
Giagia my dear: A direct quote of the opening of Anime e nudo, a play by Marco Praga (1862–1929).
Aleardi, the poet over whose pages, in the years that followed, we were to weep so many tears, heave so many sighs: Aleardo Aleardi (1812–1878), a late-Romantic poet of aristocratic birth who was known mostly for his high-blown eloquence in celebration of civic values. One of his more famous pieces is called Il matrimonio (1842), which celebrates marriage as civic virtue. It is with tongue firmly in cheek that Camilleri makes Aleardi Prefect Bortuzzi’s favorite poet.
The oranges were more plentiful than usual that year: A direct quote of the opening of Clea (1965), by Lawrence Durrell.
“the difference between a common bully and a man of honor”: In the common ethos of the “old Mafia,” a “man of honor” is indeed a mafioso. But, as the term implies, the mafioso was held to a code of honor that implied, among other things, no harming of women and children, and no arbitrary violence against personal enemies. Violation of this code could lead to elimination by one’s peers. Obviously this code is now a thing of the past, though some of the elder members of the current Sicilian Mafia still use the term “man of honor” to mean a member of la Cosa Nostra.
Notes by Stephen Sartarelli
1 Idiot.
2 Bottom, bum.
3 Asshole.
4 Fuck off; get stuffed.
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