Sciascia Leonardo — The Day of the Owl [441]

‘I,’ went on Don Mariano, ‘have a certain experience of the world; and what we call humanity – all hot air, that word-I divide into five categories: men, half-men, pigmies, arse-crawlers – if you’ll excuse the expression –and quackers. Men are very few indeed; half-men few, and I’d be content if humanity finished with them … But no, it sinks even lower, to the pigmies who’re like children trying to be grown-ups, monkeys going through the motions of their elders … Then down even lower we go, to the arse-crawlers who’re legion … And, finally, to the quackers; they ought to just exist, like ducks in a pond: their lives have no more point or meaning … But you, even if you nail me to these documents like Christ to His Cross, you’re a man.’ — Sciascia Leonardo, The Day of the Owl, 441

Note

The mafia don’s taxonomy of humanity delivered as a set piece — the structure of his moral universe, in which ‘man’ is a category of force and respect rather than ethics. The contrast between his idiom and Bellodi’s legal world is the novel’s central cultural collision made vivid.