Sciascia Leonardo — The Day of the Owl [129]

The informer would have been astounded to know that the man he was facing, a carabiniere and an officer too, regarded the authority vested in him as a surgeon regards the knife: an instrument to be used with care, precision and certainty; a man convinced that law rests on the idea of justice and that any action taken by the law should be governed by justice. His was a difficult and ungrateful profession; but the informer only saw him as a happy man, happy in the joy of being able to abuse his powers, a joy the more intense the more suffering can be inflicted on others. — Sciascia Leonardo, The Day of the Owl, 129

Note

The same man seen through two radically incompatible lenses — Bellodi’s own conviction that law rests on justice versus the informer’s certainty that the policeman enjoys abusing power. The chasm between the officer’s self-conception and how the governed read him is the failure at the heart of the novel.