The Brewer of Preston by Andrea Camilleri

The truth is that any attempt to understand the adversary is a negotiation with the adversary himself. Talking, discussing, understanding, that’s all stuff for—”
    â€œFor old folks?”
    â€œI’m sorry, but that’s the way I see it.”
    He lowered his head, pulled a sheet of paper out of his satchel, and showed it to the others.
    â€œThis is a secret report from Palermo police commissioner Albanese to Minister of the Interior Medici. These are therefore the words of a fierce adversary of ours.”
    â€œNo,” said Ninì Prestìa, simply and succinctly, still staring at Traquandi, keeping him in his sights.
    â€œWhat do you mean, ‘no’?”
    â€œI mean that
my
fierce adversaries, as you call them, are not people like Albanese, because Albanese is not part of the human race but part of the shit that the human race produces each day.”
    â€œExplain yourself.”
    â€œLet me give an example, my good friend. Four years after the Bourbons’ hangman Maniscalco—with whom my dear friend Pippino Mazzaglia and I had various dealings—went off to Marseille to croak, his wife had the gall to ask the Italian government for a pension. The Accounting Office requested some information from Isidoro La Lumia, director of the Sicilian archives. La Lumia, who was an honest man, began his reply as follows: ‘I, the undersigned, am honored to convey the following information concerning the wicked scoundrel who went by the name of Salvatore Maniscalco, and who for ten years was the scourge of Sicily.’ So wrote La Lumia. But on that occasion, your enemy, my fine young Roman—Police Commissioner Albanese, that is—took care to make it known that he was not of the same opinion as Don Isidoro. ‘The widow should get her pension,’ he wrote, ‘because’—and I’m not changing so much as a comma—‘because Maniscalco, aside from his excesses, which were justified by circumstance, and aside from the misdeeds he committed by the bushel, had nevertheless been a loyal servant of the state,’ and it didn’t matter which state. Understand? Two turds, even when shat by different anuses, still have the same smell, and sooner or later end up understanding each other.”
    â€œThat’s fine with me, my friend. So, what should I do, not read it?”
    â€œNo, no, go ahead and read it,” Mazzaglia said curtly.
    â€œI’ll skip around as I read. ‘The public spirit in general’—these are Albanese’s words—‘and particularly in Palermo, is hostile to the government—there is no point in deluding ourselves—or at least accuses those in the government of levying heavy taxes, creating financial disorder, and preventing any growth of industry or commerce.’”
    He paused, wiped his lips with his handkerchief, adjusted his spectacles, and continued.
    â€œâ€˜Not a single new industry’—this is still Albanese speaking—‘has been developed or has created any demand for labor, nor have any large-scale public works provided any bread to workers. And the problem here is mostly bread and jobs. People are beginning to think that the cause may lie not in single individuals but in the institutions themselves; whence it follows that while, on the one hand, the enemies of the monarchy are sharpening their knives and the Mazzinian federalists are thinking of federalism and regional government, there is no lack of people calling for dictatorship. And more new taxes will generate still more discontent.’”
    Having finished reading from the document, he put it carefully back inside his satchel and pulled out another.
    â€œThis instead is a report from the commanding officer at Caltanissetta. He writes as follows: ‘Everyone in this land places his hopes in the anarchy that would follow the momentary triumph of the Mazzinian and socialist