The Great Silence

Days had gone by. The media speculated on the murder of the Italian inspector Andrea Montalbano, but the top echelons of the Police seemed unwilling to shift to fast-track mode.

Inspector Søren Farrugia had been invited for an interview with his superior, Mr Zahra, and subsequently prepared a report on the last evening he spent with Montalbano, having been the last person to see him alive. And then... nothing from HQ. Just a great silence.

The Italians were putting pressure on the government and the government gramophone kept dutifully playing the same record: “Let the institutions work.”

Theophano, Mr Zahra’s secretary and Farrugia’s on-and-off girlfriend, told him that rumour had it there was no appetite to tackle the case. Montalbano had come over to investigate the Sicilian Mafia’s connections in Malta and there was no rush to join the dots.

Søren was at home, intent on choosing a DVD to watch while day-dreaming about his girlfriend of sorts, she who kept him up-to-date with the developments taking place behind the scenes. As he chose the film he thought about her name. Theophano. His girlfriend had the name of a Byzantine princess.

He then remembered a collection of poems he had enjoyed, called Sex and the Civil Servant, by the Byzantine poet Paul the Silentiary. Most of Paul’s poems deal with eroticism and are remarkably witty and elegant, but nowadays the Silentiary has been virtually universally forgotten, even by the classicists.

But why on earth was he thinking of Paul the Silentiary? Ah, it was because of the movie he had chosen, Sergio Corbucci’s The Great Silence. But no! First he thought of Theophano, then of the Silentiary. He felt confused. The tension caused by Montalbano’s murder was taking its toll on him.

He sat down and played the DVD. As he rewatched the cult spaghetti Western, images of his Italian friend kept breaking gently on his memory’s shore.

Montalbano had often praised Corbucci’s masterpiece. A mute gunslinger defends a group of outlaws from murderous bounty killers. A perversely fascinating topic for cops. But more generally, the spaghetti Western formula was even more fascinating as it sometimes dealt with a good bully defending the helpless from bad bullies, a sort of samurai without a master. At times, the bad bullies were corrupt politicians.

Farrugia watched the movie with the intensity of he who wants to escape troubling thoughts. The beauty of the snowy Dolomites where the movie was shot and the beauty of Morricone’s score soothed him. Shooting, score... words with double meanings. Who knows if Montalbano’s shooting was meant to settle a score?

As Farrugia watched the movie, deep down inside him weevil larvae ate him alive, the parasites pigged it out on the anxiety caused by one big doubt: had the top echelons planned to leave stones unturned, abandon the manhunt, and, like monks waiting for the night to be over, keep the great silence?