ABSTRACT: The author recalls Manzoni referring to the word "Mafia" in his reading of Don Quixote, but he, Sciascia has never managed to discover the word in Cervantes masterpiece. He also recalls Borges, in speaking about Argentina, writing about "men of honour" in a way that fit the Sicilian Mafia to a T. Thus, there is something Spanish in Mafia "feelings". What today, therefore, non-Sicilians find unpleasant in Sicilians has ancient roots in the thing that Borges felt and noted. It is not a question of "connivance" but of a "way of being". Not for all

Sicilians however, for culture has managed to eliminate certain kinds of behaviour.

(L'ESPRESSO, March 16, 1986)

Manzoni read Don Quixote in Spanish. And when he ran across words or expressions that still existed in the Milanese dialect he diligently made note of them. Then he made a list which he gave to his friends. And they have preserved it for us. The word "Mafia" is in the list which is not included in Spanish dictionaries and which I - up to now - have not managed to find in Don Quixote. I have looked for it in the Aguilar edition of Cervantes' works in all of those places where I thought it might be found. I have asked for help from friends who are much better versed in Spanish and in Cervantes. Uselessly. There is nothing left for me to do but to read the book again, after thirty years, from beginning to end. And I foresee it as a laborious task if my delight in re-reading it is to be threatened and spoiled by the hunt for that one word.

It interests me to find that word, not only to free myself from an obsession - small as you like, yet an obsession - but also to find how it corresponds to a passage in Borges which struck my eye as it were when finding it isolated in the book »Borges From A to Z recently published by Ricci, which is a kind of Borges dictionary compiled by Gianni Guadalupi. Under the heading "Argentinian" which Guadalupi finds in »Evaristo Carriego , Borges says that he always thought Argentina to be entirely different from Spain, but at a certain point two lines from Don Quixote sufficed to convince him that he was wrong. The two lines are these: "... that in the next world everyone will have to face up to his sins", but that in this world "it is not right for men of honour to sit in judgement on other men who have done them no harm whatsoever".

I too thought, like Borges, that in the Mafia, in "Mafia feelings", in the indifference of most Sicilians towards the Mafia, there was nothing Spanish. But this passage from Borges, with the two lines it contains from Cervantes, has convinced me that I was wrong. And then there is that word, that till now undiscovered word that Manzoni notes. I mean to say: what today, while the great trial against the Mafia is being held, non-Sicilians find unpleasant and condemnable in the Sicilians, has this ancient root: not wanting to sit in judgement on men who have done them no harm whatsoever.

Not all Sicilians, obviously, because culture - of the real kind - has managed to eliminate in many of them this feeling and attitude. And it is understandable that when a non-Sicilian runs up against it gives him the impression of connivance, complicity. However it is simply a question of a "way of being". This feeling and attitude is all the more negative in that many support its validity by saying that they have not personally been damaged at the hands of the Mafia, whereas certainly and inevitably all Sicilians have been indirectly damaged and to an enormous extent.

Clearly I am not taking refuge in literature in order to find an excuse, but - as always - in order to understand. Certainly there are other reasons that justify the indifference or skepticism of the Sicilians, of those from Palermo in particular, in the face of the great trial. And not the least of these reasons is that shopkeepers are having to make protection pay-offs just as before, perhaps worse than before. But to those who can well see the meaning of this trial, this is not a reason for attributing little importance to it. The trial is important and its effects will be felt in the future.