by Donna Leon
‘Think of that vile article, the one in the magazine. It’s one of the major sources of information in this country and in it a sociologist - I don’t know where he teaches, but it’s certain to be at some important university, so he’s considered an expert and people will believe what he writes - can say that paedophiles love children. And he can say that because it’s convenient for men to have everyone believe it. And men run the country.’
She stopped for a moment, then added, ‘I’m not sure if this has anything to do with what we’re talking about, but I think another cause of the gulf that separates us on this - not just you and me, Guido, but all men from all women - is the fear that the idea that sex might sometimes be an unpleasant experience is real to all women and unthinkable to most men.’ As she saw him beginning to protest, she said, ‘Guido, the woman doesn’t exist who thinks for an instant that paedophiles love children. They lust after them or want to dominate them, but those things have nothing to do with love.’
He kept his head lowered; she saw that as she looked across the room at him. ‘That’s the second thing I want to say, dear Guido whom I love with all my soul. That’s how we look at it, most women, that love isn’t lust and domination.’ She stopped here and glanced down at her right hand, idly picking at a rough piece of cuticle on the nail of her thumb. ‘That’s all, I think. End of sermon.’
The silence between them stretched out until Brunetti broke it, but tentatively.
‘Do you believe all men or just some men think like this?’ he asked.
‘Just some, I think. The good ones - like you’re a good man - they don’t.’ But before he could say anything, she added, ‘They don’t think like us, either, like women. I don’t think that the idea of love as lust and violence and the exercise of power - I don’t think that idea is as entirely alien to them as it is to us.’
‘To all women? Alien to all of you?’
‘I wish. No, not to all of us.’
He looked up at her. ‘Have we resolved anything, then?’
‘I don’t know. But I want you to know how serious I am about this.’
‘And if I were to ask you to stop, not to do anything more?’
Her lips pressed together as she pulled her mouth closed, a gesture he’d watched for decades. She shook her head without saying anything.
‘Does that mean you won’t stop or you don’t want me to ask you?’
‘Both.’
‘I will ask you and I do ask you.’ But before she could give an answer, he raised a hand towards her and said, ‘No, Paola, don’t say anything because I know what you’ll say and I don’t want to hear it. But remember, please, that I’ve asked you not to do this. Not for me or my career, whatever that means. But because I believe that what you’re doing and what you think should be done is wrong.’
‘I know,’ Paola said and pushed herself to her feet.
Before she moved away from the desk he added, ‘And I too love you with all my soul. And always will.’
‘Ah, that’s good to hear, and know.’ He heard the relief in her voice and from long experience he knew that some dismissive, joking remark would have to follow it. As had been the case for all the important years of his life, she did not disappoint. ‘Then it’s safe to put knives on the table for dinner.’
* * * *
6
The next morning Brunetti did not take his usual route to the Questura but turned right after he crossed the Rialto Bridge. Rosa Salva, it was generally agreed, was one of the best bars in the city; Brunetti especially liked their small ricotta cakes. So he stopped there for coffee and a pastry, exchanged pleasantries with a few people he knew, nods with some he only recognized.
He left the bar, heading down Calle della Mandola towards Campo San Stefano, a route that would lead him eventually to Piazza San Marco. The first campo he crossed on his way was Campo Martin, where four workmen were lifting a large sheet of glass from a boat on to a wooden roller to transport it to the travel agency where it was to be installed.
Brunetti joined the other spectators who gathered to watch the men roll the plate of glass across the campo. The workmen had wadded towels between the glass and the wooden frame that held it upright. Two on either side, they rolled it towards the gaping hole that awaited it.
As the men crossed the campo, opinions rolled behind them from person to person. ‘Gypsies did it.’ ‘No, someone who used to work there came back with a gun.’ ‘I heard it was the owner who did it to collect the insurance.’ ‘What stupidity; it was hit by lightning.’ Typically, each of them was absolutely convinced of the truth of his version and had nothing but scorn for the alternatives.
When the wooden trolley reached the window, Brunetti pulled himself away from the small crowd and continued on his way.
Inside the Questura, he stopped at the large room where the uniformed officers worked and asked to see the crime reports of the previous night. Little had happened and none of it interested him in any way. Upstairs, he spent most of the morning in the seemingly endless process of moving papers from one part of his desk to another. His banker had told him, years ago, that all copies of any bank transactions, no matter how innocuous, had to be placed in an archive for ten years before they could be destroyed.
His eyes wandered away from the page, following his attention, and he found himself imagining an Italy entirely covered, to the height of a man’s ankles, with papers, reports, photocopies, carbon copies, tiny receipts from the bars, shops and pharmacies. And in this sea of paper, it still took a letter two weeks to get to Rome.
He was distracted from this train of thought by the arrival of Sergeant Vianello, who came to tell him that he’d managed to arrange a meeting with one of the petty criminals who sometimes gave them information. The man had told Vianello he had something interesting to exchange; but because the thief was afraid of being seen with anyone from the police, Brunetti had to meet him in a bar in Mestre, which meant he had to take the train to Mestre after lunch and a bus to the bar. It was not the kind of place a person went to in a taxi.
It all came to nothing, as Brunetti had secretly known it would. Encouraged by newspaper reports of the millions the government was giving to those who had turned on the Mafia and were testifying against it, the young man wanted Brunetti to advance him five million lire. The idea was absurd, the afternoon a dead loss, but at least it kept him in motion until well after four, when he got back to his office to find an agitated Vianello waiting for him.
‘What is it?’ Brunetti asked when he saw the expression on Vianello’s face.
‘That man in Treviso.’
‘Iacovantuono?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about him? Has he decided not to come?’
‘His wife’s been killed.’
‘How?’
‘She fell down the stairs in their apartment building and broke her neck.’
‘How old was she?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Thirty-five.’
‘Medical problems?’
‘None.’
‘Witnesses?’
Vianello shook his head.
‘Who found her?’
‘A neighbour. A man coming home for lunch.’
‘Did he see anything?’
Again, Vianello shook his head.
‘When did it happen?’
‘The man said he thinks she might still have been alive when he found her, a little before one. But he isn’t sure.’
‘Did she say anything?’
‘He called 113, but by the time the ambulance got there she was dead.’
‘Have they spoken to the neighbours?’
‘Who?’ Vianello asked.
‘The Treviso police.’
‘They haven’t spoken to anyone. I don’t think they’re going to speak to anyone.’
‘Why not, for the love of God?’
‘They’re treating it as an accident.’
‘Of course it would look like an accident,’ Brunetti e
xploded. When Vianello said nothing, Brunetti asked, ‘Has anyone spoken to the husband?’
‘He was at work when it happened.’
‘But has anyone spoken to him?’
‘I don’t think so, sir. Other than to tell him what happened.’
‘Can we get a car?’ Brunetti asked.
Vianello picked up the phone, punched in a number and talked for a moment. After he hung up he said, ‘There’ll be one waiting for us in Piazzale Roma at five thirty.’
‘Let me call my wife,’ Brunetti said. Paola wasn’t home, so he told Chiara to tell her that he had to go to Treviso and would probably be home late.
During his more than two decades as a policeman, Brunetti had developed an instinct that very often proved accurate and that allowed him to sense failure well before he encountered it. Even before he and Vianello set foot outside the Questura, he knew that the trip to Treviso was doomed and that any chance they had ever had of getting Iacovantuono to testify had died with his wife.
* * * *
It was seven before they got there, eight before they persuaded Iacovantuono to speak to them, ten before they finally accepted his refusal to have anything further to do with the police. The only thing in the entire evening’s doings that made Brunetti feel at all relieved or satisfied was his own refusal to pose the rhetorical question to Iacovantuono of what would happen to all their children if he failed to testify. It was too evident, at least it was evident from Brunetti’s reading of events, what would happen in that case: he and his children would remain alive. Feeling every kind of fool, he gave the red-eyed pizzaiolo one of his cards before he and Vianello went out to the car.
The driver was ill-tempered from having had to sit idly for so long, so Brunetti suggested the three of them stop and eat on the way back, though he knew it would delay his arrival at home until well after midnight. The chauffeur finally left him and Vianello at Piazzale Roma a little before one and an exhausted Brunetti decided to take a vaporetto rather than walk home. He and Vianello made desultory conversation while waiting for the boat and inside the cabin as it made its majestic way up the most beautiful waterway in the world.
Brunetti got out at San Silvestro, blind to the beauty of the moonlit night. He wanted nothing more than to find his wife and his bed, and to lose the memory of Iacovantuono’s sad, knowing eyes. Inside the apartment, he hung up his coat and went down the corridor towards their bedroom. No light came from either of the children’s rooms, but nevertheless he opened their doors and checked that they were both asleep.
He opened the door of their bedroom quietly, hoping to undress in the light that filtered in from the corridor and not to disturb Paola. But it was a vain courtesy: the bed was empty. Even though there was no gleam coming from under the door of her study, he checked to confirm his certainty that it was empty. No lights burned in any other part of the apartment, but he went into the living-room, half hoping, yet knowing how vain the hope was, that he would find her asleep on the sofa.
The only light in that part of the house flickered red from the answering machine. There were three messages. The first was his own phone call, made from Treviso at about ten, telling Paola that he would be delayed even longer. The second was a hang-up and the third, as he had both known and feared it would be, was from the Questura, Officer Pucetti asking the commissario to call as soon as he got home.
He did so, using the direct number to the officers’ room. It was answered on the second ring.
‘Pucetti, this is Commissario Brunetti. What is it?’
‘I think you’d better come down here, Commissario.’
‘What is it, Pucetti?’ Brunetti repeated, but his voice was tired, not at all brusque or imperative.
‘Your wife, sir.’
‘What’s happened?’
‘We’ve arrested her, sir.’
‘I see. Can you tell me more about it?’
‘I think it would be better if you came over, sir.’
‘May I speak to her?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Of course,’ Pucetti answered, relief flooding his voice.
After a moment, Paola asked, ‘Yes?’
Sudden rage swept him. She gets herself arrested and all she can do is act the prima donna. ‘I’m on my way down there, Paola. Did you do it again?’
‘Yes, I did.’ Nothing more.
He put down the phone, went into the kitchen and left a note, and the light burning, for the children. He headed towards the Questura, his heart heavier than his feet.
A light shower had begun to fall, really more a liquefaction of air than anything as distinct as rain. Automatically he pulled up his collar as he walked.
After a quarter of an hour he arrived at the Questura. A very worried-looking uniformed officer stood at the door and opened it for him with a salute so crisp it seemed out of place at this hour. Brunetti nodded at the young man - he couldn’t remember his name, though he knew he knew it - and took the steps up to the first floor.
Pucetti stood and saluted when he came in. Paola looked up at him from where she sat facing Pucetti, but she didn’t smile.
Brunetti took a chair on Paola’s side of the desk and pulled the arrest form that lay in front of his colleague towards him. He read it slowly.
‘You found her there, in Campo Manin?’ Brunetti asked the officer.
‘Yes, sir,’ Pucetti answered, still standing.
Brunetti motioned to the young man to sit down, which he did with obvious timidity. ‘Was anyone with you?’
‘Yes, sir. Landi.’
That cuts it, then, Brunetti thought and pushed the paper back across the desk. ‘What did you do?’
‘We came back here, sir, and we asked her, your wife, for her carta d’identità. When she gave it to us and we saw who she was, Landi called Lieutenant Scarpa.’
Landi was bound to do that, Brunetti knew. ‘Why did you both come back here? Why didn’t one of you stay there?’
‘One of the Guardia di San Marco heard the alarm and came, so we left him there until the owner showed up.’
‘I see, I see,’ Brunetti said, then, ‘Did Lieutenant Scarpa come in?’
‘No, sir. He and Landi talked. But he didn’t give any orders, just left it to us to do it the normal way.’
Brunetti almost said there probably was no normal way to arrest the wife of a commissario of police, but instead he stood and glanced down at Paola, addressing her for the first time. ‘I think we can go now, Paola.’
She didn’t answer, but immediately got to her feet.
‘I’ll take her home, Pucetti. We’ll be back here in the morning. If Lieutenant Scarpa asks any questions, tell him that, would you?’
‘Of course, sir,’ Pucetti answered. He started to add something, but Brunetti cut him off with an upraised hand.
‘It’s all right, Pucetti. You had no choice.’ He glanced at Paola and added, ‘And besides, it would have happened sooner or later.’ He tried to smile at the man.
When they got to the bottom of the stairs, they found the young policeman at the door, his hand already pulling it open. Brunetti let Paola pass in front of him, raised a hand without actually looking at him, and walked out into the night. The liquid air surrounded them, instantly turning their breath into soft clouds. They walked side by side, the sword of discord as palpable between them as their breath was visible in the air.
* * * *
7
Neither of them spoke on the way home, nor did they sleep for the rest of the night, save for odd patches of troubled dreams. A few times, as they drifted between waking and moments of forgetting, their bodies rolled together, but there was none of the ease of long familiarity in the contact. Quite the opposite: the touch could have been that of a stranger and each responded by moving away. They had the grace not to make it a sudden move, not to start in shock and horror at the touch of this stranger who had invaded their marriage bed. Perhaps that would have been more honest, to let the flesh give voice to the mind and the
spirit, but both of them managed to control that impulse, to beat it down out of some idea of loyalty due to memory or the love both of them feared had been damaged or somehow changed.
Brunetti forced himself to wait for the seven o’clock bells from San Polo, refused to let himself get out of bed until then, but they had not finished sounding before he was into the bathroom, where he stood under the shower for a long time, washing away the night and the thought of Landi and Scarpa, and what was bound to be waiting for him when he got to work that morning.