The Shape of Water (19 page)

83
“tens of millions of lire!”:
tens of thousands of dollars.

 
84
corso:
A central, usually broad and commercially important, street in Italian cities and towns.

93
the prince of Salina:
Prince Fabrizio Corbera di Salina is the protagonist of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s historical novel about Sicily at the time of the Italian Wars of Unification,
Il Gattopardo (The Leopard
). In a famous passage, it is actually the prince’s nephew Tancredi who says, “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”

 
106
“eighty million lire”:
A little more than 53,000 dollars.

106
“ten million lire”:
around 6,700 dollars.

 
109
“Sicilchim”:
The name of the abandoned chemical factory. It’s shorthand for Sicilia Chimica, or Sicilian Chemicals.

148
thirty thousand in gas:
About eighteen dollars’ worth.

 
150
would jerk her head backwards, as if repeatedly saying no:
In Sicily, this gesture expresses a negative response.

188
an army patrol of Alpinists:
The
Alpini
are a division of the Italian army trained in mountain warfare and tactics. Sporting quaint Tyrolean feathered caps as part of their uniform, their sudden appearance at this point in the story, though perfectly plausible and consistent with the government policy (mentioned on page 3) of dispatching army units to Sicily for the maintenance of order, is sort of a sight-gag, one that inevitably calls attention to the endlessly complicated and crisscrossing chains of command between the military and the local police forces in Italy.

 
211
goat-tied:
The Sicilian word is
incaprettato
(containing the word for goat,
capra
), and it refers to a particularly cruel method of execution used by the Mafia, where the victim, face-down, has a rope (in this case, a wire) looped around his neck and then tied to his feet, which are raised behind his back as in hog-tying. Fatigue eventually forces him to lower his feet, strangling him in the process.

 
Notes compiled by Stephen Sartarelli

Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbo mystery series, bestsellers in Italy Germany, have been adapted for Italian television and translated into eight languages. He lives in Rome.Stephen Sartarelli is a poet ans translator. He lives in upstate New York