What Happens to Montalbano?

Camilleri, the father of the Italian police commissioner Salvo Montalbano, which became a series of mystery stories published by Sellerio, was originally a stage director and playwright. It is tempting to compare him to Pirandello, the Sicilian author known for his plays and short stories and awarded the Nobel prize in 1934. Camilleri died at the age of 93 in 2019 and left his last episode unfinished, not to be published till after his death. Beginning in 1993 his stories were transferred to the Italian small screen, starring Luca Zingaretti as the police commissioner. They were unbelievably popular and now, to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the author’s birth, they will be re-proposed on RAI, the Italian television. His last episode, never turned into a TV episode, may even finally make its way to the small screen although the author himself seems not to have been satisfied with this final version.

With a friend of mine we tried to track down this last episode, aware that Camilleri had his misgivings. We finally succeeded. The book, titled Riccardino, was not easy to find. It has now also been translated into English although there is no way in which the “Sicilian” language, in part invented by Camilleri, can be transposed into another language. Riccardino is a curious interplay of real and fictitious characters that include Montalbano, as personified in the TV series by the actor Luca Zingaretti, the Montalbano Camilleri created in his books, and the Author himself. Camilleri discarded the idea of having his fictitious Montalbano die and his solution was to have Montalbano’s TV alter ego finally fade away, leaving only a blank page so that his creator would be free to continue – creating.

For a while it worked, and with his rather imperious creation put to rest, the Author was in charge of what he was creating. Yet the Camilleri that was has now also faded away, been absorbed, and neither he nor Montalbano will have new stories to tell. They do however continue to play a part in the stories of others. I wonder if we are not all creations, destined in the end to disappear and become blank pages. But perhaps though, all things considered, they are not really blank, for traces always remain, including those of Camilleri and his brainchild Montalbano, and the pages of the past can never be completely expunged.