by Donna Leon
‘And he’s never spoken of serious problems with other people.’ She spread her arms in a show of exasperation. ‘You know him, for God’s sake: can you imagine Freddy – Freddy – having an enemy?’
‘Exactly,’ Brunetti said.
She opened her eyes in a response that was meant to display confusion, but it didn’t work; at least it didn’t work with Brunetti.
Saying nothing, she pushed off the arm of the chair and moved around to sit in it, facing him and recrossing her arms on her chest. Finally she said, ‘All right, what do I have to tell you?’ putting on the trappings and the suits of truth.
‘How long have you been living here?’
‘Four weeks. I had permission to come late to the rehearsal, so I got here a week after the others.’
‘How is it that you’re staying here?’ Brunetti asked, waving around the small room.
‘I didn’t tell Freddy I was coming,’ she said, as if to refute the accusation of freeloading. ‘He saw my name in the programme when the season was announced last autumn.’
‘And?’
She gave an exasperated breath, the way a child does when it wants to show that an adult is being needlessly difficult. ‘He called me and told me I had to stay here, in this apartment.’ She saw the way Brunetti greeted this and added, ‘It’s really not so bad. This is the worst room in it: I don’t know why I brought you in here.’
Brunetti assumed she had chosen it because it was closest to the door, and it would thus be easier to get rid of him quickly. But he said, ‘The theatre didn’t find you a place?’
‘Them?’ she asked, genuinely surprised. ‘All they do is send a list of agents.’
‘Did you call any of them?’
She started to speak, but then looked at him and stopped. ‘No. I didn’t have time. Besides, it was easier to stay here.’
‘I see,’ he said mildly. ‘Did you spend much time with them?’
‘Who them?’
‘Freddy and Silvana. Or with Freddy.’
‘I went out to dinner with both of them a number of times,’ she said. Brunetti waited. ‘Sometimes with Freddy alone,’ she added. Before Brunetti could ask about this, Flavia said, ‘Silvana isn’t interested in opera, not at all; besides, it’s an awkward . . .’ The sentence dragged to a stop as Flavia failed to find the proper word.
Brunetti shrugged but didn’t bother to answer. ‘So you could have been seen with him?’
‘I suppose so,’ she answered, this time like a child with the sulks.
Brunetti got slowly to his feet and walked over to the window. Though his closeness enlarged his angle of view, all it showed him was more of the brick wall of the house on the other side of the calle. How could Freddy have kept this small, poky room and not knocked down the wall again to give it more light, more life, more freedom? At that thought, Brunetti paused to wonder what the doctors had discovered and how much light, life, and freedom Freddy was going to have.
He turned back to her and, with no introduction, said, ‘I need to know about your lovers during recent years, Flavia. I don’t care who they were, or are, but I need to know their names and how things ended, whether there were bad feelings.’ If he had leaned across a dinner table and spat in her soup she could have looked no more shocked. And disgusted.
‘And do you want to know what I did with them, too?’
‘Save the drama for the stage, Flavia,’ he said, suddenly tired of her. ‘Whoever did this to Freddy is the same person who’s been leaving you flowers and who pushed that girl down the bridge. You’re the only connecting link between them.’ Brunetti gave her a chance to object or voice her anger, but she sat silent, staring at him, her face still stiff with surprise and red with a rush of anger.
‘I’m assuming this person is jealous, either of something you once had together and lost, or that you have now with some other person. Or both. Nothing else makes any sense.’
‘I don’t agree with you,’ she said, voice loud, anger on the rise.
‘Do you have a better explanation?’ Brunetti demanded.
‘No, of course I don’t,’ she said. ‘But there’s no proof the two attacks are connected.’
Brunetti walked back towards her and stood less than a metre from her chair. ‘Don’t be stupid, Flavia,’ he said, leaning towards her. ‘You’re not that, whatever else you might be.’ Then, ‘How much proof do you need? That someone gets killed?’
As if resisting his words, she got to her feet and moved away from him.
‘How many more people have to be attacked before you’ll admit this?’ he asked, making no attempt to muffle his own growing anger. ‘You’ve been here a month, and this person has been watching you. I’m sure you’ve spoken to a lot of people: how many of them have to be hurt before you’ll admit what’s happening?’ He took a step in her direction.
No sooner was he opposite her than she went to stand by the window but turned to face him. They stood like that, each of them waiting for some concession from the other. They waited a long time, but Brunetti refused to break the silence.
‘How many years?’ she asked, turning to look out the window.
‘Two. Three,’ Brunetti said.
‘There aren’t many,’ she said, as if confessing to weakness. Brunetti took out his notebook, opened it at random, and pulled a pen from the pocket of his jacket. With her back to him, she didn’t see what he was doing.
‘Franco Mingardo. He’s a doctor in Milano. I took my daughter to him when she had a throat infection.’ She paused but Brunetti said nothing. ‘Three years ago. It lasted a year. He met someone else.’ Brunetti wrote the name and briefly noted the bare bones of a love affair. He waited.
‘Anthony Watkins,’ she said. ‘He’s an English stage director. Married, two children. It lasted as long as Così at Covent Garden.’ Then, with wry resignation, ‘I’d thought it would last longer, but apparently he sees it as part of his job, and it ends when the production does.’ Just in case Brunetti didn’t get it, or perhaps to remind herself what a fool she had been: ‘He thinks it’s his right to have an affair with the prima donna.’ He heard the change in her voice and glanced in her direction to see she had turned and was facing him. ‘I suppose if I’d been singing Despina, he wouldn’t have bothered with me.’
Brunetti made no response, and she continued. ‘There’s one more,’ she said, ‘and that’s all. Gerard Piau. He’s a lawyer. I met him at a dinner in Paris, where he lives.’
Brunetti nodded. ‘No one else?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said.
To save Signorina Elettra time, he asked, ‘Do you know where these three men are? Now?’
‘Franco’s married and has a baby boy. Anthony is in New York, directing Puritani at the Met,’ she said, then added, ‘and having an affair with the Elvira, who is a friend of mine.’ She let a moment pass. ‘Gerard will come to Barcelona.’
He was reluctant to ask again, but thought he had to. ‘No one else? I mean something that wasn’t serious?’
‘I don’t do that,’ she said simply, and he believed her.
‘Do you think any of these men capable of what’s happened?’
Without hesitation, she shook her head. ‘No.’
Like antagonists who sense a lull in the battle, both of them returned to their chairs. Briefly, they observed a truce, but then Brunetti decided it was time to resume.
‘Aside from what you’ve told me about the things disappearing from your dressing rooms, the phone call to your friend, and the flowers, has anything else happened that might be related to this?’
She shook the question away.
‘Has anyone come to thank you after a performance and seemed particularly insistent?’ She shot him a quick glance, then shook her head again. ‘Or behaved in a way that seemed strange to you?’ he added.
She propped her elbows on her thighs, rested her chin in her hands and began to push the skin back from both sides of her mouth. She did this a number of ti
mes, then put her palms together as if in prayer and rested her lips against her raised forefingers. She nodded once but said nothing. Then she nodded again a few times and said, ‘Yes. One time.’
‘Tell me.’
She lifted her head and said, ‘It was in London, the night the flowers came down the first time.’ She looked at him, then lowered her head and pressed her fingers against her mouth. But it was too late: she’d begun to tell him.
‘It was a woman. I think French, but I’m not sure.’
‘What language did you speak to her in?’ Brunetti asked.
It took her a moment to remember. ‘Italian, but I heard an accent. It might have been Spanish, but it might have been French. She acted French.’
‘What does that mean?’ Brunetti asked.
‘The Spanish are warmer, friendlier. They call you “tu” from the very beginning and will touch your arm without thinking about it. But she didn’t. She stood back from me, used “Lei” and seemed very uncomfortable. The Spanish seem more relaxed, happy.’
‘What did she say?’ Brunetti asked.
‘The usual. She enjoyed the performance, had seen me sing before, said my singing gave her pleasure.’
‘But?’ he inquired, hoping to lead her to remember or to reveal what she had thought at the time.
She nodded, and her nose bumped against the top of her fingers, though she seemed not to notice. ‘She was crazy.’
‘What?’ Brunetti asked. ‘And you think of this only now?’
‘I saw her just that once, two months ago. And then I forgot about it.’ Then, almost reluctantly, she added, ‘Or made myself forget about it.’
‘What did she do that made you think she was crazy?’
‘Nothing. Nothing at all. She was very formal and polite, but underneath it there was this awful longing.’ She saw his failure to understand and went on. ‘You get to recognize it. They want something: friendship or love or acknowledgement or . . . something. I don’t know.’
She raised a hand towards him. ‘It’s terrible. All this wanting, and you don’t want to give them anything, don’t even know what they want. They probably don’t, either. I hate it.’ Her voice had grown jagged. She placed her hands flat on her thighs, pressing down on them as if to push her ideas away.
‘What did she look like?’ Brunetti asked.
Flavia kept pressing on her hands. ‘I don’t know,’ she finally said.
‘How could she cause this strong a reaction in you, yet you don’t remember what she looked like?’ Brunetti demanded.
Flavia shook her head repeatedly. ‘You don’t know what it’s like, Guido, to have all those people crowding round, all of them wanting something, to tell you something about themselves. They think they want to tell you how much they liked your performance, but what they really want is to make you remember them. Or like them.’
She looked across at him, face tense. ‘She might have been wearing a hat. She was thin and didn’t wear any makeup.’ She closed her eyes, and he imagined she was back there, after the opera, tired, pleased or displeased with her performance and thinking about that, but having to seem relaxed and happy in front of her fans. Of course her memory would be vague.
‘Do you remember anything she said?’ Brunetti persisted.
‘No, only this terrible anguish she made me feel. She was so out of place there.’
‘Why? How?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe because she seemed so alone in the middle of all of those people. Or maybe because I sensed how strange she was and didn’t want her around me and didn’t know how to disguise it.’ She pushed herself back in the chair and placed her hands flat on the arms. ‘It’s awful, to have to do this after a performance. All you can think about is having a glass of wine and something to eat and maybe talking to friends or colleagues, but you’ve got to stop and smile at people, and sign discs and photos, when all you want to do is see people you know and talk about ordinary things until the buzz starts to disappear and you know you’ll be able to get to sleep.’
As she spoke, the fingers of her left hand ran back and forth against the pile of the velvet covering of the chair. She looked at him with the open, direct gaze he remembered from years before. ‘You know, if it weren’t for the singing, none of us would do this,’ she said fiercely. ‘The travel, living in hotels, eating in restaurants, always having to be careful not to be seen doing anything that might damage your career, always thinking of the consequences of what you say because of the risk of bad publicity, trying to sleep enough, not eating or drinking too much, always being polite, especially to fans.’
Brunetti thought most of these limitations applied to any public person, but he didn’t think it wise to voice his opinion, not with Flavia in this mood.
‘And then there’s the physical strain of it. Hours of practising every day, every day, every day, and then the stress of performance, and more study, and every year at least two or three new roles to prepare.’
‘And the glamour?’ Brunetti asked.
She laughed, and he thought she was going to lose control of herself, but then he realized it was a natural, easy laugh, as at the end of a good joke. ‘The glamour? Of course, the glamour.’ She reached across and tapped his knee. ‘Thanks for reminding me about it.’
‘All right; forget the glamour,’ he said, and returned to more important things. ‘Have you seen this woman here?’
Flavia shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t recognize her if I did, I’m afraid.’ Before Brunetti could ask, she explained, ‘My response to her was so strong that I didn’t want to look at her. The idea of any sort of physical contact with her – even shaking her hand – was repellent.’
Brunetti knew what she meant. It had happened to him a few times; the feeling was no respecter of sex: he’d felt it both with men and women. It was the way animals sometimes reacted to one another, he supposed. So why not we?
‘Did she say anything that made you feel that way? Ask questions about your life? Say anything that frightened you?’ What he wanted to ask her was whether the woman had done anything real, but he knew that the feeling Flavia was trying to describe was not real in a sense that could be conveyed in words, though it was no less real for that.
‘No, nothing at all. Just what I’ve heard from fans for years. It had nothing to do with what she said: it was about the way she was. Is.’
A dull noise came from outside the room, freezing them both. Brunetti rose to his feet and slipped around her chair, placing himself between Flavia and the door. He flexed his knees and looked around for anything he could use as a weapon. But then he recognized the wasp-buzz coming from the hallway.
Flavia hurried past him and out into the hall, and he heard her answer with her name. He went back to his chair and lowered himself into it, thinking what a fool he was.
Brunetti had some time to consider this theme before she returned to the room, without her telefonino. ‘It was Silvana. The doctors said the blade couldn’t get through the fat and muscle. One hit his belt and slipped off into his buttock. Two went between his ribs, and one went towards his right lung, but the blade was too short.’
He looked away from her stunned face, as he would look away from a friend if he came upon them naked. He thought of his vow never to chide Freddy about his weight. Now he vowed to take him, or send him, the biggest box of chocolates he could find in the city.
He heard a choking noise and turned back to see Flavia, one hand propped against the back of her chair, her face buried in the other. Her shoulders heaved with each sob. She cried the way a child does: relentlessly, as at the end of the world. After some time, she wiped her face with the sleeve of her sweater.
‘I can’t do the last performances,’ she said in an unsteady voice. ‘I can’t do this. It’s bad enough being up there in normal circumstances, but this is too much.’ Though she had wiped her face, tears continued to run from her eyes. When they reached her lips, she wiped her face again.
‘I’ve n
ever seen an opera from backstage,’ Brunetti said before he thought about it.
Confused, she looked across at him. ‘Most people haven’t,’ she said, then choked back another sob.
‘I could come to the performances.’ Again, he spoke without considering the consequences of what he proposed, and no sooner had he made the proposal than he wondered if Vianello would want to come along.
‘And do what?’ she asked, utterly at a loss. ‘You’ve already seen it.’
He thought he might have to hit her over the head with a stick to make her understand. ‘To see that nothing happens,’ he said, only then realizing how very presumptuous that was. ‘I’ll ask someone else to come with me.’
‘And you’ll be backstage?’
‘Yes.’
She wiped at her face again, and he saw that she had stopped crying. ‘With another policeman?’
‘Yes.’
‘In Tosca,’ she said, ‘all of the policemen are bad.’
‘We’ll be there to show that some aren’t,’ Brunetti said, which made Flavia smile but also turned his thoughts back to Lieutenant Scarpa.
23
Brunetti left soon after, assuring Flavia that he and Vianello would be there for the last two performances. Glancing at his watch, he was astonished to see that it was almost nine. He called Paola and said he was on his way and would be there in fifteen minutes. She muttered something he didn’t understand and hung up.
He called Vianello, who must have been at home or at least in a place where there was a television, for in the background Brunetti could hear the patently artificial voices of the Italian-speakers who did the voice-over for foreign films. Vianello told him to wait, and the sound diminished as he moved away from it. Brunetti explained what he had volunteered them for, and Vianello said that the idea of going to the opera appealed far more than the thought of another two nights of reruns of Downton Abbey, which he could not abide but with which Nadia was enchanted. ‘You think you could organize a permanent assignment until this series is over?’
Brunetti laughed and said he’d see him the following morning. When he reached the Accademia Bridge, he heard the sound of a boat approaching from the right and quickened his steps to catch it. Luckily, it was a Number One, which would take him closer to home than the Two. He went into the cabin to look for a seat, and the sudden warmth of the enclosed space triggered the same rush of exhaustion he had felt in front of the hospital. He turned away from the sight of the passengers and faced front, but that did not relieve the heat or lessen the assault of tiredness. Hoping that fresh air would help, he returned to the deck and leaned back against the window of the cabin, but his terrible lethargy remained. So this is what old age feels like, he told himself. Falling asleep as soon as you enter a warm room. Needing a wall to prop you up so you don’t fall asleep. Longing to be home and in your bed.