Rounding the Mark

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 parra 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