The Track of Sand

He went out on the veranda. Leaning against the French door, he said to the two women:

“After we’ve eaten, I have something to tell you.”

He didn’t want to ruin the meal that was waiting for him with the tremendous bother of hugs, tears, emotions, and thanks.

“Let’s go see what Adelina has prepared for us,” he said.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Like the other novels with Inspector Montalbano as protagonist, the present one was suggested to me by two news items: a horse found slaughtered on a beach near Catania, and the theft of two horses from a stable in Grosseto province, in Tuscany.

By this point I think it useless to say—but I’ll do so anyway—that the names of the characters and the situations in which they find themselves have been entirely invented by me, and therefore have no connection whatsoever with any actual, living persons.

Should anyone happen to recognize him—or herself in this story, it only means they have a better imagination than I do.

,

Notes

1

“Tu che a dio spiegasti l’ali”: This is the title, and first line, of the final aria of Gaetano Donizzetti’s Lucia di Lamermoor (1835). It is sung by Edgardo, the heroine’s lover, after he learns that Lucia has died. The title means, “You who have spread your wings to God,” and the aria sings of the lovers’ imminent reunion in heaven.

2

all the vocumprà in the province: Vocumprà are the foreign peddlers, usually of North African or sub-Saharan origin, that one often encounters on the streets of today’s Italy.The name is derived from the question Vuoi comprare? (or Vuole comprare?—Do you want to buy?), which the peddlers shorten to Vocumprà (sometimes to Vucumprà), an abbrevation also redolent of the Neapolitan and Roman dialects, which may be where they first picked it up.

3

The bright-eyed goddess . . . : A common epithet for Greek goddess Pallas Athena.

4

cipuddrata: Sicilian for cipollata, that is, onion sauce.

5

“No,Vario’s his given name”: In Italian bureaucratic usage, the surname is always placed before the first name, giving rise to some confusion in cases such as the present one,Vario Ippolito, where both names could be first names.

6

wearing an expression fit for All Souls’ Day: In Italy, as in the Spanish-speaking world, All Souls’ Day (November 2, immediately following All Saints’ Day) is called the Day of the Dead, and commemorates the faithful departed. The Sicilian expression used by Camilleri actually translates literally as “a November-the- second face.”

7

Quartetto Cetra: The Quartetto Cetra, also known as I Cetra, was a popular Italian vocal quartet in the 1940s who performed for the stage and eventually, in the 1950s, for television. The Viscount of Castelfrombone and the Duke of Lomantò were two characters in their often satirical songs and skits.

8

It was like the ending of a tragic film: Namely Rossellini’s Viaggio in Italia (Journey to Italy, 1954), starring Ingrid Bergman and George Sanders, a moving tale of doomed love, the closing image of which has Bergman’s character being swept away by a surging throng of Neapolitans from her estranged husband, played by Sanders.

9

first with that twenty-year-old girl, whose name he did not even want to remember: See Andrea Camilleri, August Heat, Penguin 2009.