The Potter's Field

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 thenapoletana: 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 Pio: Pio of Pietrelcina, whose given name was Francesco Forgione (1887–1968), was a devout priest (Padre Pio means “Father Pius”) reputed to perform miracles. Among other things he “received the stigmata” and was said by witnesses to have levitated while saying the Mass. Immensely popular during his lifetime, he was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2002 and remains widely venerated in Italy, particularly in the South.

228 the arrest of two regional parliamentary deputies of the Center-Right on suspicion of collusion with the Mafia. While we have, of course, only the deepest respect for the magistrature, we cannot help but note that it moves all too often in only one direction: The despised Pippo Ragonese is using the same argument as has been made ad nauseam by Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi during his repeated legal troubles: to wit, that the magistrature—the Italian state institution least compromised by the endemic corruption that plagues the other branches of government—prosecutes only politicians of the Right and Center-Right (in other words, Berlusconi’s own coalition) because it is irredeemably “communistic” and therefore prejudiced against its “ideological enemies.”

238 A nice little pact between the Mafia and the ’Ndrangheta : The ’Ndrangheta is the Calabrian Mafia. In this statement the Mafia is intended to refer specifically to the Sicilian Mafia.

243 killed bylupara bianca:Lupara (“wolf gun”) is the Sicilian term for a sawed-off shotgun, formerly the weapon of preference of the Mafia. Lupara bianca, or “white lupara,” is a term coined by Italian journalists to designate those deaths at the hands of the Mafia where the victims vanish without a trace.

265 hair standing straight up so that he looked like the advertisement for Presbítero pencils: Camilleri is referring to Italian ads from the first half of the twentieth century that featured the face of a man with spiky hair consisting of pencils standing on end.

Notes compiled by Stephen Sartarelli

Also by Andrea Camilleri

The Shape of Water

The Terra-Cotta Dog

The Snack Thief

Voice of the Violin

Excursion to Tindari

The Smell of the Night

Rounding the Mark

The Patience of the Spider

The Paper Moon

August Heat

The Wings of the Sphinx

The Track of Sand

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1

Matthew 27: 3–7.