by Donna Leon
detected signs of the second.
"But you see that only now?" he asked, offering her the briefest of
recitativi as a means of prompting the aria.
"We used to see them, my friends and I, swarming around the city in
their capes, and we thought they were the most exciting, wonderful boys
in the world. Whenever one of them spoke to one of us, it was as
though the heavens had opened to allow a god to descend. And then one
of them .. ." she began. Then, seeking the proper words, she changed
her mind and went on, "I began going out with one of them."
"Going out?" he inquired.
"For a coffee, for a walk, just to go down to the Giardini to sit on a
bench and talk." With a rueful smile, she corrected herself. To
listen, that is." She smiled across at him. "I believe one could
employ a new noun here, sir: a listen, instead of a conversation.
That's what I had whenever we met: a listen."
"Perhaps it was a quicker way for you to get to know him Brunetti
suggested drily.
"Yes," she said brusquely. The got to know him."
He didn't know quite what question to ask. "And what was it that makes
you say those things about him?"
"That he was a snob and a Fascist and a bully?"
"Yes."
"You know Barbara, don't you?" she asked, mentioning her older
sister.
"Yes."
"She was in medical school at the time, living in Padova, so I didn't
see much of her except on the weekends. I'd been going out with Renzo
for about three weeks when she came home one weekend, and I asked her
to meet him. I thought he was so wonderful, so clever, so thoughtful."
She snorted at the memory of her own youth and went on. "Imagine that,
thoughtful. At eighteen." She took a deep breath and smiled at him,
so he knew that this story was going to have a happy ending.
"Whenever we were together, he talked about politics, history, all
those things I'd heard Barbara and my parents talk about for so long.
Nothing he said sounded much like what they said. But he had dark blue
eyes, and he had a car at home, in Milano, a convertible." Again, she
smiled at the memory of the girl she had been, and signed.
When she seemed reluctant to continue, he asked, "And did Barbara meet
him?"
"Oh yes, and they hated one another after three words. I'm sure he
thought she was some sort of Communist cannibal, and she must have
thought he was a Fascist pig." She smiled again at him.
"And?"
"One of them was right."
He laughed outright and asked, "How long did it take you to realize
it?"
"Oh, I suppose I knew it all along, but he did have those eyes. And
there was that convertible." She laughed. "He carried a photo of it
in his wallet."
At first, it was difficult for Brunetti to picture a Signorina Elettra
capable of this folly, but after a moment's reflection, he realized
that it didn't surprise him all that much.
"What happened?"
"Oh, once Barbara started on him, when we got home, it was as if how do
they describe it in the Bible? as if "the scales fell from my eyes"?
Well, it was something like that. All I had to do was stop looking at
him and start listening to what he said and thinking about it, and I
could see what a vicious creep he was."
"What sort of things?"
"The same things people like him are always saying: the glory of the
nation, the need to have strong values in the family, the heroism of
men in war." She stopped here and shook her head again, like a person
emerging from rubble. "It's extraordinary, the sort of things a person
can listen to without realizing what nonsense it is."
"Nonsense?"
"Well, when the people who say it are still children, I suppose it's
nonsense. It's when adults say it that it's dangerous."
"What became of him?"
"Oh, I don't know. I imagine he graduated and went into the Army and
ended up torturing prisoners in Somalia. He was that kind of
person."
"Violent?"
"No, not really, but very easily led. He had all of the core beliefs.
You know the sort of things they say: honour and discipline and the
need for order. I suppose he got it from his family. His father had
been a general or something, so it's all he'd ever been exposed to."
"Like you, only different?" Brunetti asked, smiling. He knew her
sister, and so he knew what the politics of the Zorzis were.
"Exactly, only no one in my family has ever had a good
word to say about discipline or the need for order." The pride with
which she said this was unmistakable.
He started to ask another question, but she got to her feet, as though
suddenly conscious of how much she had revealed, and leaned forward to
place the file on his desk. That's what's come in, sir," she said with
a briskness that was strangely dissonant with the easy familiarity of
their conversation up to that point.
Thank you," he said.
"It should all be clear, but if you need any explanation, call."
He noticed that she didn't tell him to come down to her office or to
ask her to come up to explain. The geographical limits of their
formality had been reestablished. |
"Certainly," he said, and then repeated, as she turned i toward the
door, Thank you."
The folder contained photocopies of newspaper articles about Fernando
Moro's careers as doctor and politician. The first seemed to have led
to the second: he had first caught the public eye about six years ago,
when, as one of the inspectors commissioned to examine the quality of
hospital care in the Veneto, he had submitted a report calling into
question the statistics issued by the provincial government, statistics
which boasted one of the lowest patient to doctor ratios on the
continent. It was the Moro Report which indicated that the low figure
resulted from the inclusion in the statistics of three new hospitals,
facilities which were planned to provide medical care at the highest
level. Money had been allocated for their construction, and that money
had been spent, and thus the statistics included these hospitals and
factored in all of the services they were planned to provide. The
resulting figures were a three-day marvel, for the Veneto was thus
shown to have the best health care in Europe.
It was Fernando Moro's report that pointed out the
inconvenient fact that those three hospitals, however grandiose their
plans, however extensive their staffs, and however varied the services
they were meant to provide, had never actually been built. Once their
services were subtracted from the tabulations, the health care provided
to the citizens of the Veneto fell to where its patients were
accustomed to judging it to be: somewhat below that of Cuba, though
certainly above that of Chad.
In the aftermath of the report, Moro had been lauded as a hero by the
press and had become one in the popular mind, but he found that the
administration of the hospital where he worked had decided that his
man
y talents would be better utilized if he were to take over the
administration of the old people's home attached to the hospital. His
protest that, as an oncologist, he would be better employed in the
hospital's oncology ward was brushed aside as false humility, and his
lateral transfer was confirmed.
This in its turn led to his decision to attempt to achieve public
office before his name dropped from public memory; perhaps a tactical
decision, but a no less successful one for that.
Moro had once remarked that his long familiarity with terminal illness
was perhaps the best preparation he could have had for a career in
Parliament. Late at night and only when among old and trusted friends,
he was rumoured to expand upon that metaphor, a fact which was not long
in filtering back to his fellow parliamentarians. This might well have
affected the nature of the committees to which he was appointed.
As he read the newspaper articles, all purporting to be neutral
presentation of fact but all tinted by the political affiliation of the
particular paper or journalist, Brunetti realized that he was colouring
the articles with the hues of his own memory. He had known, or at
least heard, about Moro for years, and as he tended to share the man's
political
leanings, he knew he was prejudiced in the man's favour and that he
presupposed his honesty. He knew just how dangerous this sort of
thinking was, especially for a policeman, yet Moro was hardly a
suspect: the totality of his grief excluded him from any suspicion of
involvement in his son's death. "Or else I've never had a son; or else
I've never had a soul Brunetti caught himself whispering out loud.
He looked up at the door, embarrassed to have been so distracted by his
thoughts, but no one was there. He continued reading: the other
articles merely repeated the essential information contained in the
first few. Regardless of how insinuating the tone of some of the
journalists, no matter how carefully they constructed their specious
explanations of Moro's behaviour, not even the dullest reader could
doubt the man's integrity.
The tone of innuendo became even stronger in some of the articles
dealing with Moro's sudden withdrawal from Parliament, a decision he
refused to attribute to anything other than 'personal reasons'. The
first article, written by one of the best-known apologists of the
Right, raised the rhetorical question of the sort of connection that
might exist between Moro's resignation and the arrest, two weeks
before, of one of the last members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. "None,
probably," Brunetti found himself whispering again, as had become his
annoying habit when reading this particular adornment of the free
press.
The shooting of Moro's wife was mentioned in two small articles,
neither of which did more than report the barest facts of the case. The
second article, however, provided the name of the people with whom she
was staying at the time of the shooting.
He picked up the phone and dialled 12, then asked for the number of
Giovanni Ferro in Siena or in the province of Siena. There were two,
and he took down both numbers.
He dialled the first number and a woman answered.
"Signora Ferro?"
Who's calling, please?"
This is Commissario Guido Brunetti, in Venice/ he said.
He heard a startled gasp and then she asked, voice tight and fast and
apparently beyond her control, Is it Federica?"
Tederica Moro?" he asked.
The woman was evidently too shaken to do more than answer, "Yes."
"Signora, nothing's happened to her, please believe me. I'm calling to
ask about the incident two years ago." She said nothing, but Brunetti
could hear her rapid breathing on the other end of the line. "Signora,
can you hear me? Are you all right?"
There was another long silence, and he was afraid she was going to hang
up or already had, but then her voice came back, "Who did you say you
were?"
"Commissario Guido Brunetti. I'm with the police in Venice, Signora."
Again, silence. "Signora, can you hear me?"
"Yes," she said, The can hear you." There was another long pause, and
then the woman said, "I'll call you back', and was gone, leaving
Brunetti with the memory of her terror and the strong aspirants of her
Tuscan speech.
And indeed, thought Brunetti, as he replaced the receiver, why should
she believe that he was who he said he was? There was no way to prove
it, and the call was being made about a woman who had been shot and
whose assailant, presumably, had never been found by the police
Brunetti claimed to represent.
The phone rang after a few minutes. He picked it up on the first ring
and gave his name.
"Good/ she said. "I wanted to be certain."
That's very wise of you, Signora/ he said. The hope you're reassured
that I am who I said I was."
"Yes/ she agreed, then went on, "What do you want to know about
Federica?"
"I'm calling about the shooting because there's a case it might be
related to. The newspapers said that she was staying with you and your
husband when it happened."
"Yes."
"Could you tell me something more about it, Signora?"
Yet again there was a long pause, and then the woman asked, "Have you
spoken to her?"
"Signora Moro?"
"Yes."
"No, I haven't, not yet." He waited for her to speak.
"I think you should talk to her Signora Ferro said.
There was something in the way she said the last word that warned
Brunetti not to dispute this. "I'd very much like to be agreed
amiably. "Could you tell me where I might find her?"
"Isn't she there?" the woman asked, the nervousness flooding back into
her voice.
He adopted his most soothing tone. "You're the first person I've
called, Signora. I haven't had time to try to locate Signora Moro." He
felt like an explorer on a glacier who suddenly sees an enormous
crevasse yawn open in front of him: so far he had said nothing about
the death of Signora Moro's son and to do so at this point would be
impossible. "Is she here with her husband?"
Her voice became bland and noncommittal. "They're separated," she
said.
"Ah, I didn't know that. But is she still here in Venice?"
He could all but follow her thoughts as she considered this. A
policeman would find her friend; sooner or later, he'd find her. "Yes/
she finally answered.
"Could you give me the address?"
Slowly she answered: "Yes, wait while I get it, please." There was a
soft tap as she set the phone down, then a long
silence, and then the woman was back. "It's San Marco 2823," she said,
then gave him the phone number, as well.
Brunetti thanked her and was considering what else he could ask her
when the woman said, "What you need to do is let the phone ring once
and then call back. She doesn't want to be disturbed."
"I can understand that, Signora/ he said, the memory of Ernesto Moro's
limp body suddenly appearing to him like the ghost of one of Ugolino's
sons.
The woman said goodbye and hung up, leaving Brunetti, he realized, in
possession of little more information than he had had before he made
the call.
He was aware of how dark his office had become. The late afternoon sun
had faded away, and he doubted that he could any longer see the numbers
on the phone clearly enough to dial them. He walked over to the switch
by the door and turned on the light and was surprised by the
unaccustomed order he had established on his desk while talking to
Signora Ferro: a stack of folders sat at the centre, a piece of paper
to one side, a pencil placed across it in a neat horizontal. He
thought of the obsessive neatness of his mother's house in the years
before she- lapsed into the senility in whose embrace she still lay,
and then the explosion of disorder in the house during the last months
before she was taken from it.
Seated at his desk again, he was suddenly overcome by exhaustion and
had to fight the impulse to lay his head on the desk and close his
eyes. It had been more than ten hours since they had been called to
the school, hours during which death and misery had soaked into him