The Potter's Field

“How are you doing, Chief?”

“Not great, not bad, just getting along.”

His dress rehearsal for retirement was going well. Indeed that was a typical reply for a retiree.

“I wanted to let you know that Inspector Augello left today with his wife and son for a couple of weeks’ rest in the town where Beba’s parents live. I also wanted to tell you how pleased I am at the way you were able to set everything right. When will you be back, Chief?”

“Tomorrow evening.”

The inspector went and sat by the big picture window. Livia would be pleased to hear about Beba and Mimi. Balduccio Sinagra had had his lawyer Guttadauro call Montalbano to tell him how pleased the boss was to see Dolores arrested. Fazio, too, was pleased. And so was Macannuco, whom the inspector had seen on television, being congratulated by journalists for his brilliant investigation. And surely Mimi, who’d been in a pretty nasty pickle, had to be pleased, even if he couldn’t admit it to anyone. So, when all was said and done, the inspector had managed to lead them all out of the treacherous terrain of ’u critaru. But what about him? How did he, Montalbano, feel?

“I’m just tired” was his bleak reply.

Some time ago he had read the title, and only the title, of an essay called: “God Is Tired.” Livia had once asked him provocatively if he thought he was God. A fourth-rate, minor god, he had thought at the time. But, as the years passed, he’d become convinced he wasn’t even a back-row god, but only the poor puppeteer of a wretched puppet theater. A puppeteer who struggled to bring off the performances as best he knew how. And for each new performance he managed to bring to a close, the struggle became greater, more wearisome. How much longer could he keep it up?

Better, for now, not to think of such things. Better to sit and gaze at the sea, which, whether in Vigata or Boccadasse, is still the sea.

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Author’s Note

As is obvious, the names of characters, companies, streets, hotels, etc., are fabricated out of whole cloth and have no connection to reality.

Notes

3–4 with a coppola on his head: The coppola is a typical Sicilian beret made of cloth and with a short visor.

4 Toto Riina: Savatore (“Toto”) Riina (born 1930) is the former leader of the infamous Corleonesi clan of the Sicilian Mafia and became the capo di tutt’i capi (“boss of bosses”) in the early 1980s. Riina’s faction was responsible for the spectactular murders of the anti-Mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino (both in 1992), crimes that led to a serious crackdown on the Mafia and ultimately the arrest of Riina in 1993. Riina, one of whose nicknames is La Belva, or “The Beast,” is known to be particularly bloodthirsty and violent.

4 Bernardo Provenzano for vice president, one of the Caruana brothers for foreign minister, Leoluca Bagarella at Defense: Provenzano (born 1932), another prominent member of the Corleonesi clan, became Riina’s de facto successor until his capture in 2006. Alfonso Caruana (born 1946), along with his brothers Gerlando and Pasquale, ran a vast international network of drug trafficking, shifting their bases from Sicily to Canada to Venezuela and back to Canada by way of Switzerland and London (hence the “foreign minister” post in Montalbano’s dream); he was captured in 1998 and convicted in Canada, then extradited to Italy in 2004, where he had already been twice convicted in absentia, and where he still awaits final sentencing. Leoluca Bagarella (born 1932), another Corleonese and Riina’s brother-in-law, was arrested in 1995, ultimately convicted for multiple murders, and is currently serving a life sentence.

9 a “white death”—the shorthand used by journalists when someone suddenly disappears without so much as saying goodbye: Literal translation of the Italian morte bianca.

17 Montalbano recalled having seen something similar in a famous painting. Brueghel? Bosch?: The painting is The Blind Leading the Blind (1568), by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, at the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples. It is inspired by a statement by Jesus Christ in the Gospels (Matthew 15:13–14 and Luke 6:39–40): “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into the ditch?” (Gospel of Luke)

17 ’u critaru: Sicilian for il cretaio, or “the clay field.” From creta (crita in Sicilian), which means “clay.”

40 Don’t you like Guttuso?: Renato Guttuso (1911–1987) was a Sicilian-born painter and passionate anti-Fascist and Communist who rose to prominence after the Second World War.

54 A joyous start is the best of guides, as Matteo Maria Boiardo famously said: Matteo Maria Boiardo (1440–1494), a poet of the Italian Renaissance who thrived at the court of the dukes of Este in Ferrara, is best known for writing the chivalric verse romance Orlando Innamorato, first published in 1495.

67 He committed a massacre of nunnati—newborns, that is: Nunnatu, Sicilian for neonato, or “newborn” (also called cicirella in certain other parts of Sicily), is a tiny newborn fish available only at certain times of the year. Whitebait.

68 purpiteddro a strascinasali: Baby octopus cooked in salted water and dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.

68 aggravated, as the ancient Romans used to say: From the Latin ad + gravare, “to make heavy.”

95 His eye fell upon a book by Andrea Camilleri . . . a popular version of the Passion of Christ: Cf. Andrea Camilleri, La scomparsa di Pato (Milan: Mondadori, 2000).

149 “I’m coming too,” . . . “No, you stay here”: A wry reference to the 1968 pop hit single “Vengo anch’io. No tu no” by Vincenzo Jannacci (born 1935), whose title Camilleri cites verbatim in this brief exchange between Montalbano and Fazio.

203 another Vittorio Emanuele, Umberto’s son, the one known in the scandal sheets for a stray shot he had once fired: In 1978, when his rubber dinghy was accidentally taken from the docks after a violent storm off the Corsican shore, Vittorio Emanuele IV, banished heir to the throne of Italy, carelessly shot at a man on the yacht to which the dinghy had been attached. He missed his target but mortally wounded Dirk Hamer, a young German who had been sleeping belowdecks.

203 As the lady was fumbling with the napoletana: A napoletana is a Neapolitan coffeepot consisting of two superimposed cylindrical elements, formerly of aluminum, and a double filter. When the water in the lower part begins to boil, one is supposed to turn the pot over to allow filtration.

226 the miraculous intervention of Padre