A 1043 diary. I liked this one. It had again a nice plot, various angles, a complex story. It’s not exactly difficult to find out ‘who did it’, actually that’s the easiest part but also, in a way, the less interesting, and one keeps following the story looking for the real reason, for the real explanation of what happened in 1943, for the real identity of all the characters involved, victim included.
So, I really liked this one.
Another thing that stands out is that they finally acknowledged the death of their doctor Pasquano, the forensic pathologist of this series. This one was the third movie without him, if I’m not mistaken, but it might be the fourth. In the last series they said he was busy elsewhere but the actor had already died. I appreciated that. This season, they said in the last movie that he was on vacation, quite weird since he (the character) had never before taken a day’s leave, and in this episode they said that he died, and the wife said that he had been ill for some time, there was the funeral and they mourned him eating cannoli together (I remember the episode when Montalbano stole one or two from his office..) and I liked that. It was well done, a dutiful goodbye. Even if I’ve heard that this one might be the last episode of this series, it was still a good thing to remember him like this.
On to the story:
When some old site is demolished, a diary of 1943 is found. Nicolò Zito brings it to Montalbano after reading it. It was written by Carlo, a young man, basically a boy, 15 years old or little more. He had been raised believing in the ideals of fascism and Mussolini, and didn’t like how the war was ending, and he was planning something tragic using granades that a certain T. had procured for him... but then the diary ended without a finale, without explaining what he did.
Montalbano meets John, whose real name when he lived in Italy was Giovanni Zucconi. He ended up in Texas (I don’t exactly remember why, right now, they say it at the beginning and I’ve forgotten already) and married a girl there. He planned to come back to Sicily with her, but then a lawyer informed him that his parents had died in a car accident and he had no more reasons to leave America. Now he’s alone, so he came to see Sicily one last time.
The episode’s ‘real case’ starts with the death of Todaro, an old man. Shot with a IIWW gun. Montalbano starts thinking it might be connected to the diary, but of course also follows the usual motives, questioning the family.
He had an estranged son, that he pushed away after a tragic incident. His older brother died after saving his life, and his father could never accept it. The old man also has a granddaughter who now runs his company. There’s the maid, who speaks of many girls in and out of the house because the old man wanted to scare her making her think that he wanted to replace her but he wouldn’t really di it (she thinks) and also of a girl that took him away in her car once... There’s the fact that Todaro wanted to donate 10 million euros ( !! ) to the church, to atone for some terrible thing he did in the past, but the bishop told him that he should talk about it with his family first ( !!!!! really?? humph, for real?? yeah sure... ).
Montalbano also wonders if Todaro might be the T. that procured the grenades. He finds out that something did happen back in 1943, there was an ‘accident’ and four American soldiers died, along with five Italian prisoners - brought along by the Americans to help in the work (I think they were getting rid of the many explosives or something?).
Carlo had a sweetheart, Anita, but she died ten years ago and Montalbano can only talk to her granddaughter who knows nothing about what happened so long ago, grandma never talked about it.
And now, the conclusion :
Montalbano becomes suspicious when he learns that the granddaughter lied about her alibis, and called an employee so that he would confirm it; also, she’s now working with her uncle, who was never allowed in the company when his father was alive, but they say they didn’t kill him for the donation money that would have bankrupted them; what she did was to ask for her uncle’s help and he knew how to convince the old man, talking to him about his lost son’s love for the company, and they did convince him.
Montalbano asks Zito to talk about Carlo on tv, looking for information, and a woman shows up saying that she knows him, that Carlo saved her life. Years ago she was an addict, and he helped her and also found her a job afterwards. After the war, he entered a monastery becoming a friar.
Talking about Carlo and Anita, Livia suggests the idea that maybe she wrote a diary too, and indeed she did, and the granddaughter finds him in her stuff. In this diary, they learn the conclusion of the story: poor Anita was raped by a group of American soldiers, and when Carlo learned about it he wanted to avenge her and to kill them, so that’s why he did what he did. She pleaded with him, tried to stop him, but to no avail.
Montalbano finds him and asks him about his story, and then asks the question that has bothered him the whole episode: is T. actually Todaro? Answer: no, it’s not.
The Zuccotti family had a house and some land, and someone made a lot of money out of it, while the son was far away and knew nothing. Todaro was the one who sabotaged the couple’s car causing the accident in which they died.
John went to him, talked with him about what he did. Todaro told him that he got a lot of money for what he did, but it never brought him any good: he lost a son, pushed away the other, his granddaughter grew up alone and hardened like him, there’s no joy in his life and he has never forgotten his sin. Now, he gives John a gun, and John shoots him dead.
Montalbano talks to John, and out of compassion lets him have one more day of freedom so he can watch the patron saint’s parade of St George (how to say in English festa di S. Giorgio o festa patronale? mah). The next day, no surprise here, the old man is found dead, he shot himself in the head.
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento