The Dance of the Seagull

Notes

Zingarelli’s a dictionary: Zingarelli’s is one of the standard dictionaries of modern Italian.

municipal police officer: What Italians call a vigile urbano is part of a different department of law enforcement from the commissariato, of which Montalbano is chief, and which handles criminal cases.

“madhouse!” “But weren’t they abolished?”: In 1978, the passage of Law 180 (also known as the Franco Basaglia Law, after the famous psychiatrist-neurologist who inspired it) technically abolished insane asylums in Italy. Among other things, it eliminated “dangerousness” as an acceptable reason for internment. It did stipulate, however, that “obligatory mental health treatment” (Trattamento Sanitario Obbligatorio, or TSO) must be applied to individuals whose “psychological disturbances are such as to require urgent therapy,” if such therapy is not voluntarily accepted by the persons in question. Care to the mentally ill would be provided by a variety of institutions, including outpatient clinics, community centers, and “residential” and “semiresidential” centers.

Law 180 was slow in being applied. The first Berlusconi government moved in 1994 to close the remaining sanatoriums still open. But, as it turns out, the current system makes available to patients far more psychiatric services than before; the “residential centers” are, in effect, psychiatric hospitals. The inflexibly coercive nature of the pre-1978 asylums has, however, been considerably diminished.

Ragionier Muscetta: Ragioniere is a largely meaningless title given to accountants whose specialization does not go beyond that provided by vocational school. A full certified accountant is called a contabile.

“like one of those carabinieri jokes”: The carabinieri are often the butt of jokes in Italy, always having to do with their lack of intelligence.

Monsieur Lapalisse: A reference to the legendary Jacques de la Palisse (1470–1525), a French nobleman and military officer active in Francis I’s Italian campaign, during which he was killed. His epitaph reads: Ci gît Monsieur de La Palice: S’il n’était pas mort, il ferait encore envie (“Here lies Monsieur de la Palisse: Were he not dead, he would still be envied”). This was originally misread—by mistake, presumably—as saying “. . . S’il n’était pas mort, il serait encore en vie” (“Were he not dead, he would still be alive”), due perhaps to the potential confusion between f and s in serif script. The misreading gave rise to a whole tradition of burlesque song variants, with similar tautological plays on words, such as Il n’eût pas eu son pareil / S’il avait été seul au monde (“He would have had no equals / Had he been alone in the world”). The many variants were brought together into La chanson de La Palisse by Bernard de la Monnoye in the early eighteenth century, though other versions exist as well.

“if I sing the song, i’ comes out Surrientino”: Neapolitan dialect for Sorrentino.

Via Piscio: i.e., “Piss Street.”

Tertium non datur: “No third possibility is given” (Latin).

Mimì was speaking Italian, a bad sign: i.e., instead of Sicilian.

Pilatus docet: “As Pilate teaches,” that is, it’s better not to dirty one’s hands (Latin).