The Patience of the Spider (25 page)

120 Operation Clean Hands: Clean Hands is English for Mani
Pulite, the name given by journalists to a nationwide judicial and police
investigation in the early 1990s that exposed the endemic corruption of

the Italian political system as well as the vast web of collusion between
certain politicians, business leaders, intelligence organizations, organized
crime, and extremist right-wing groups. After a rash of indictments of
political and business leaders, and even a few suicides, Mani Pulite ultimately
led to the demise and dissolution of the Christian Democratic
Party, which had governed Italy since the end of the Second World War.
The Italian Socialist and Social Democratic parties were also dissolved before
being reconstituted in other political formations. Unfortunately
many of the legal reforms institued during Mani Pulite have since been
reversed under the rule of Silvio Berlusconis Forza Italia Party.

123 Then, with the new law, he brought it back in, paid his
percentage, and put his affairs in order: Former prime minister
Silvio Berlusconis ruling party passed a law that allowed money that
had been illegally taken out of the country to be repatriated upon payment
of a relatively light fine. The law amounted to an amnesty for the
sort of corrupt activities that Mani Pulite had attempted to eradicate.

129 It was as if the inspector had spoken to crows: The Sicilian
expression parlare con le ciaor ciavule), i.e., to speak to crows,
means to be privy to information unknown to most people. Ciaor
ciavula) can also refer to a very talkative woman.

138 since Peruzzo was a victim of the communist judiciary:

In attempting to discredit the many judicial inquiries into his and others
corrupt business dealings and the conflicts of interest between their
private holdings and their public offices, (former) Prime Minister
Berlusconi has repeatedly and speciously claimed that the magistrates
behind these investigations are motivated not by any desire to enforce
the law but by communist ideology and sympathies, which would make
them the natural enemies of the free-enterprise system of which Il Cavaliere
presents himself as the champion. Thus any similar investigation
into shady financial maneuvers such as Peruzzos must have the same
motivations behind it.

148 Except that here the odor was denser. [...] It was,
moreover, brownish-yellow in color, with streaks of fiery

red.: As seen in many of the prior novels in this series, Montalbano has
a synaesthetic sense of smell, whereby he perceives odors as colors.

172 says hes the moon: Luna means moon in Italian.

173 Pay them no mind, but look and move on, as the poet
says: Mr. Luna is making the same mistake as many other Italians in
attributing this lineNon ti curar di lor, ma guarda e passato
Dante (the poet). In fact it is from the Emilio De Marchi translation
of La Fontaines Fables (in the story of The Lion, the Monkey,
and Two Donkeys). It must be said, however, that in translating in
this fashion the line mais laissons les gens (which simply means
but let us leave those people there), De Marchi (18511901) was
purposely echoing Dantes line (Inferno 3, 1. 51), Ma non ragionam
di lor, ma guarda e passa (Let us talk not of them, but look and
move on).

174 LOsservatore Romano: The official daily newspaper of the
Vatican.

175 Junior Woodchucks Guidebook: The Junior Woodchucks is a
scout organization in the fictional town of Duckburg, the setting for
the Donald Duck comic-book and cartoon stories. Donalds nephews
Huey, Dewey, and Louie are all Junior Woodchucks, and Scrooge Mc-
Duck provides the financial support for the organization. The Junior
Woodchucks Guidebook is the all-important manual that tells them how
to proceed in certain difficult situations, such as pulling people out of
quicksand, crossing a river full of crocodiles, or using pepper to make
dragons sneeze. Only Junior Woodchucks are allowed to use the Guidebook,
though an exception is made for Scrooge.

178 a kind of autostrada: The autostrada (like the German autobahn
and the French autoroute) is a high-speed superhighway.

178 ninety miles an hour: The Berlusconi government indeed
raised the maximum speed on the autostrada to 150 km/hr, roughly 90
mph.

181 Smoking makes you die of cancer: Cigarette packs in Europe
have much more dire warnings than their counterparts in the
United States, perhaps because Europeans still smoke more than Americans.

186 cavatuna [...] caponata: Cavatuna areakindof handmade
pasta crushed with a fork or ones thumb against a grater, so they remain
scored on the outside. The crushing makes them concave or hollowonone
side, hence thename(cavato means hollow or carved
out). Caponata is a kind of ratatouille of eggplant, tomato, green pepper,
garlic, onion, celery, black olives, vinegar, olive oil, and anchovies. It
is sometimes served as asidedish, sometimes asamaincourse, andhere
serves as the base for coniglio allagrodolce.

205 giuggiulena: Sicilian for sesame.

205 Trapanese pesto: Pesto alla trapanese, like its cousin, pesto alla
genovese, is a sauce for pasta with ground or finely chopped basil as its
foundation. The Trapanese version (from the Sicilian city of Trapani),
however, uses finely chopped and toasted blanched almonds instead of
pine nuts, as well as several finely chopped, uncooked tomatoes, which
are ground into the blend with garlic, olive oil, and black pepper. Finally,
after it served on the pasta one adds a sprinkling of toasted bread
crumbs in the place of cheese.

231 But I heard, without understanding at first, the sound a
phone makes when a receiver on an extension is picked up:

In Italy, a phone will give an ever so slight ring when the receiver or an
extension is either picked up or hung up.

Notes by Stephen Sartarelli