Giosuè Contino’s attempted suicide

Giosuè Contino’s attempted suicide is recalled as a moment when Salvo Montalbano’s routine walk turns into an urgent rescue. Beneath the lighthouse at Vigàta, Montalbano finds the elderly schoolteacher balanced at the edge of the breakwater and pulls him to safety. Only afterward does Contino explain that his wife’s infidelity has driven him to attempt suicide; the episode also discloses that he and Montalbano share a secret.

Circumstances of the Encounter

Six months before the present scene, Montalbano had been taking one of his customary walks, which he allowed himself two or three times a week along the eastern jetty toward the lighthouse. Before setting out, he stopped at Anselmo Greco’s shop, a hovel incongruous among the clothing boutiques and mirrored cafés of the corso. Greco sold old-fashioned wares, including terracotta dolls and rusty weights for nineteenth-century scales, as well as càlia e simenza, roasted chickpeas mixed with salted pumpkin seeds. Montalbano bought a paper cone of the mixture and continued to the point.

As he turned back beneath the lighthouse, he noticed an elderly man sitting on a block of the low concrete breakwater, his head lowered and his body still. Montalbano looked more closely to see whether he was holding a fishing line, but the man was not fishing or doing anything else. The ordinary ambiguity of the scene ended when he stood, quickly made the sign of the cross, and balanced himself on his tiptoes.

The Rescue and Contino’s Explanation

Montalbano shouted for the man to stop. Contino froze, having thought himself alone. Montalbano crossed the short distance in a couple of bounds, seized him by the lapels, lifted him bodily, and carried him to safety. The rescue is physical and immediate: Montalbano acts before he knows who the man is or why he is at the edge.

Asked whether he had been trying to kill himself, Contino answered yes. Asked why, he said that his wife was cheating on him. Montalbano had not expected this explanation; the man appeared to have passed his eightieth year. The sharp contrast between Contino’s age and the force of his despair shapes the exchange, but the account gives no further explanation of the marriage or of what followed from his accusation.

The Secret and the Scene’s Narrative Role

While driving six miles back to Vigàta at breakneck speed, Montalbano remembers Contino not merely as someone he knows, but as someone with whom he shares a secret. The recollection therefore brings a private history into the present investigation without yet disclosing the secret itself. The attempted suicide is both a rescue and a point of withheld knowledge: the reader learns the stated cause of Contino’s act and the existence of a bond with Montalbano, while the nature of that bond remains unstated here.

The scene also turns on a change in perception. At first the still figure beneath the lighthouse might be mistaken for a fisherman; the sign of the cross and the precarious stance reveal the danger, and Montalbano’s intervention prevents the act. Only once Contino is safe does speech provide his reason. The episode thus establishes their connection through two different forms of knowledge: Montalbano’s quick reading of a bodily crisis, followed by Contino’s brief disclosure of the distress behind it.