128 Like the coffee they gave Pisciotta and Sindona: Gas-pare Pisciotta (1924—1954) was an associate of Sicilian separatist rebel bandit Salvatore Giuliano, whom he claimed to have ultimately killed, contradicting the official version of Giuliano’s death. After conviction to life imprisonment, Pisciotta became violently ill after drinking coffee one morning and died forty minutes later. An autopsy showed the cause of death to be strychnine poisoning. Michele Sindona (1920—1986) was a banker with ties to the Mafia and the political underworld, as well as a history of unethical business practices. Convicted of a host of offenses including fraud, per-jury, and murder, he, too, was poisoned in his prison cell.
132 Three thousand lire: At the time worth about $1.50.
138 a poet once said: The poet is Attilio Bertolucci (1911—2000), father of the filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci.
150 The total came to 596,000. Not much if it was in lire:
At the time of the conversion to the euro, 596,000 lira was worth about $300.
157 From Sweden with love. Ingrid: A good friend of the inspector’s, Ingrid Sjostrom, a Swede married to a Sicilian and living in Vigata, figures in several of the other books in this series.
164 “the ‘Clean Hands’ judges”: See notes to pages 33 and 127.
174 Dacter Arquaraqua: Catarella’s mangling of Dr. Arqua’s name suggests the Sicilian term quaquaraqua, which variously means “worthless individual,” “blabbermouth,” and “squealer” or “informant.”
174 The tombs shall open, the dead shall rise: A line from the Italian national anthem, often ironically quoted to express astonishment at the occurrence of an unusual event.
178 TV movies: In English in the original text.
185 Boccadasse: The suburb of Genoa where Livia, Inspector Montalbano’s girlfriend, lives.
191 to play the fool to avoid going to war: Fa u fissa pi nun
iri a la guerra. A Sicilian-Calabrian expression that essentially means to “play dumb,” i.e., to feign ignorance.
201 cotechino: A large pork sausage served in slices.
206 “weak thought”: Il pensiero debole (weak thought) is a fundamental tenet of the philosophy of postmodern Italian thinker Gianni Vattimo (born 1936), for whom it constitutes a counterweight to such forms of pensiero forte (strong thought) as Christianity, Marxism, and other ideological systems, and is intended to overcome the violent clashes and intolerance often associated with these.
239 the dark wood: The original Italian is “selva oscura,” a direct quote from the opening of Dante’s Inferno.
Notes compiled by Stephen Sartarelli