The Safety Net (Inspector Montalbano, #25)

by Andrea Camilleri

As he walked away, he had one question in his head. How was it possible, in the age of global communication, where all cultural, linguistic, geographical, and economic borders had been erased from the face of the earth, that this vast new realm had only created a multitude of loners, infinite numbers of lonely people in communication with one another, yes, but still in a state of utter solitude?

How had these kids’ brains developed over time? They were capable of maintaining a simultaneous interest in a thousand different stimuli: music, images, words, sounds, symbols, noises . . . And they seemed able to absorb it all with an ease that was probably only superficial, but involved a vast, all-encompassing surface, the surface of the whole world. He, for his part, had been taught to dive deep, whereas they had learned to navigate on the open seas.

There was a widespread desire to feel safe from everything: from what is known, what is unknown, from what might be but is not necessarily certain to be, from those who arrive from the sea, from those who worship a different God, or from those who worship the same God but pray in a different way. And so it was always best to play it safe. And the forms of protection proliferated.

In his youth, in 1968, he, too, had cried out that telling the truth was a revolutionary act, that the truth must always be told. No, no . . . For some time now he’d known that the truth was sometimes better kept under wraps, in the darkest darkness, without so much as the glow of a lighted match.