Grandfather dictated, Arianna wrote. The grandfather was now blind, but beautiful words lived in him. characters and worlds never seen even by those who see. In the last year of his very long life that began exactly one hundred years ago, on 6 September 1925, Andrea Camilleri asked his granddaughter Arianna Mortelliti, daughter of his daughter Andreina, his eldest, to help him write a book. The last. She was just a girl, not a writer: she would become one later. Their adventure together gave us Cain’s Self-Defense (Sellerio), but it gave Arianna much more.
Why did her grandfather ask her this?
«I don’t know, and I didn’t expect it. We got along well, we looked alike. I was, in some way, his blank page. He taught me to never judge anything or anyone, not even Cain.”
How did your word factory work?
«We began with research, from the Bible downwards. We put them in a folder on the PC, but grandfather never had them read to him: he had learned them by heart. When he began dictating to me, he already had the entire book in his head, and once the work was finished he began repeating it, word for word. Only minimal revisions were necessary.”
What type of worker was Camilleri?
«A workaholic. There was no Easter or Christmas. He would get up early, have breakfast, get dressed to the nines and then dictate the book to me. After lunch and a nap we started again until the evening, and he was already 93 years old. In the meantime, he also broke his femur: he left the hospital on a Sunday, and on Monday morning we were there again writing. By putting the characters on stage, he changed the voices and created theatre: the room became a stage, and I loved all those characters”. Tell us about your first memory of your grandfather. «I’m six or seven years old, it’s dawn, he’s already up and so am I. We are in the beloved home of Porto Empedocle. Grandpa is declaiming something out loud, staring at a point. I get closer, and I realize that he is talking to a pigeon that is watching him from the living room table. Andrea Camilleri was a charmer who knew how to listen. Irresistible”.
Is it true that he had a very feminine sensitivity?
«When we talked, I felt like I was in the company of a wise friend. He had always been surrounded by women: his wife, mother and mother-in-law who lived with them, three daughters and two granddaughters, waiting for their first son. I felt understood. The year spent with him was the best of my life. I’m happy, in the end, to have said thank you.”
What was Camilleri like, seen so closely?
«A good and stubborn man, a little spoiled by all those women and incapable of envy. A lovable and challenging person, because he is very intelligent. A perfect mix of calm and neurosis. Even the animals were listening to him, even my little dog, not just that famous pigeon.”
How did you experience the enormous success?
«Without changing a comma: the hurricane had hit him without overwhelming him. I met so many people who knew him, and I wonder how many lives my grandfather lived. Well, the affection that still surrounds him remains impressive.”
Let’s go back to that room, with the two of you writing.
«He was very quick at dictating, and I was afraid of losing even a single word, I wondered how I would catch it again. I had the feeling that this blind man was somewhere reading his unwritten book. There was something miraculous about his brain. But ideas never came to him by chance: he thought a lot, especially early in the morning, when he started walking around looking for thread. And then in the evening, before sleeping.”
What did he tell her?
«The things from when he was a boy, from when he left Sicily to move to Rome. And then the Academy of Dramatic Art, the years in Rai, the radio plays that he loved very much. Almost all things before Montalbano, despite being so important to him.”
In your opinion, is there a Camilleri who should be better known?
«Perhaps that of the trilogy on metamorphoses, fairy tales for adults beyond reason, which is also the theme of the latest edition of the prize that we created to remember Camilleri in his various fields: fairy tales, radio plays, short stories and poems».
How much Sicilian remains in all this?
«It’s a feeling that runs through our blood before words. I am Roman, my mother too, but when I go to Sicily I feel that it is my home.”
What was empathy, for Camilleri?
«Really put yourself in the shoes of others, whether they were Eve, God, Adam or your neighbor. He changed the way I look. We always know too little about parents and grandparents: we should fill them with questions while we still have time.”
How did you experience your loss?
«With great anger, especially at the beginning. But how, I thought, are you taking him away from me right now?
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