LA BOLLA DI COMPONENDA / THE BULL FOR A COMPROMISE

Componenda: agreement, compromise, transaction intended to settle a dispute between parties. It recalls the agreement between two private parties or bargains of hidden, murky, secret powers. It is said that the Sicilians, for long lack of it, are thirsty for the state, and Camilleri expresses this thirst in his language of comic force and popular temperament, recounting some componende, or inventing them, until he comes across the most symbolic and incredible of all. The one the ecclesiastical power guaranteed to those who, by paying an obolus according to the crime, acquired a preventive right to absolution. Many, Camilleri demonstrates, alluded to it during depositions, reports and testimonies, without the investigators ever thinking of delving into it. But then, the Bolla di componenda, the document, was swallowed up in the history of Sicily (a history that is itself a great componenda).