by Donna Leon
like liquid into blotting paper. Not for the first time in his career
he found himself wondering how much longer he could continue to do this
work. In the past, he had comforted himself with the belief that a
vacation would help, and often his physical removal from the city and
the crimes he saw there did in fact serve to
lift his mood, at least for the time he was away. But he could think
of no removal in time or space that would lift from him the sense of
futility that he now felt assailing him from every side.
He knew he should try to call Signora Moro, willed himself to reach for
the phone, but he could not do it. Who was it whose gaze could turn
people to stone? The Basilisk? Medusa? With serpents for hair and an
open, glaring mouth. He conjured up an image of the tangled, swirling
locks, but could not remember who had painted or sculpted them.
His departure from the Questura had the feel of flight about it, at
least to Brunetti. His chair remained pushed back from his desk, his
door open, the papers set neatly at the centre of his desk, while he
fled the place and went home in a state not far from panic.
His nose brought him back to his senses. As he opened the door to the
apartment he was greeted by aromas from the kitchen: something
roasting, perhaps pork; and garlic, so pervasive it suggested that an
entire field of garlic had been seized and tossed into the oven along
with the pork.
He hung up his jacket, remembered that he had left his briefcase in his
office and shrugged off the thought. He paused at the door to the
kitchen, hoping to find his family already seated at the table, but the
room was empty, except for the garlic, the odour of which seemed to be
coming from a tall pot boiling over a low flame.
Devoting his entire attention to the smell, he attempted to remember
where he had smelled it before. He knew it was familiar, as a melody
is familiar even when a person cannot remember the piece from which it
comes. He tried to separate the scents: garlic, tomato, a touch of
rosemary, something fishy like clams or shrimp probably shrimp and,
perhaps, carrots. And the garlic, a universe of garlic. He summoned
up the sensation he had experienced in the office, of his spirit being
steeped in misery. He breathed deeply, hoping that the
garlic would drive the misery out. If it could drive away vampires,
then surely it could work its herbal magic against something as banal
as misery. He stood propped against the jamb, his eyes closed,
inhaling the scents, until a voice behind him said, "That is not the
proud stance of a defender of justice and the rights of the
oppressed."
Paola appeared beside him, kissed his cheek without really looking at
him, and slipped past him into the kitchen.
"Is that Guglielmo's soup?"
"The very same," Paola said, lifting the lid from the pot and taking a
long wooden spoon from the counter to stir at the contents. Twelve
heads of garlic," she whispered, her voice filled with something that
approached awe.
"And we've survived it every time," Brunetti added.
"Proof of divine intervention, I think," Paola suggested.
"And, if Guglielmo is to be believed, a sure cure for worms and high
blood pressure."
"And an even surer way to get yourself a seat on the vaporetto
tomorrow."
Brunetti laughed, feeling his tension begin to evaporate. He
remembered their friend Guglielmo, who had served as military attache
in Cairo for four years, during which time he had studied Arabic,
converted to Coptic Christianity, and made a fortune smuggling
archaeological artefacts out of the country on military aeroplanes.
Devoted to food, he had taken with him, when he left, a broad variety
of recipes, most of which called for inordinate quantities of garlic.
"Is it true that they've found dried-up garlic in mummy coffins?"
Brunetti asked, pushing himself away from the door.
"You'd probably find it in the pockets of Guglielmo's dress uniform,
too," Paola observed, replacing the lid and taking her first good look
at her husband. Her voice changed. "What's the matter with you?"
He tried to smile but failed. "Bad day."
"What?"
"A suicide that might not be."
"Who?"
"A boy."
"How old?"
"Seventeen."
The death, the gender and the age stopped Paola in her tracks. She
took a deep breath, shook her head as if to dismiss superstitious
possibility, and put her hand on his arm. "Tell me about it."
For a reason he didn't understand, perhaps the same superstition,
Brunetti didn't want to have to look at Paola as he told her about
Ernesto Moro, so he busied himself with taking down two glasses and
getting a chilled bottle of Tocai out of the refrigerator. As he went
through the business of opening the bottle, he spoke, deliberately
slowing his actions so that they would last as long as the explanation
he had to give. "He was a student at the San Martino. We had a call
this morning, and when we got there, we found him hanging in the
shower. Vianello did, that is."
He poured two glasses of wine and handed one to Paola, who ignored it
and asked, "Who was he?"
"Fernando Moro's son."
"Dottor Moro?"
"Yes," Brunetti said and pressed the glass into her hand until she
accepted it.
"Does he know?"
Brunetti turned away from her, set his glass down, and opened the
refrigerator, searching for something he could eat by way of
distraction. His back to her, he went on, "Yes."
She said nothing while he rooted around and found a plastic container
of olives, which he opened and placed on the counter. As soon as he
saw them, dark and plump in their yellow oil, he lost the taste for
them and picked up his glass again. Conscious of Paola's attention, he
glanced at her.
"Did you have to tell him?"
"He came while I was there with the boy's body, then I went and talked
to him at his home."
Today?" she asked, unable to disguise what was either astonishment or
horror.
"I wasn't there long he said and regretted the words the instant they
were out of his mouth.
Paola shot him a look, but what she saw on his face made her let his
remark pass without comment. The mother?" she asked.
"I don't know where she is. Someone said she was here, in the city,
but I couldn't call her." Perhaps it was the way he said 'couldn't'
that caused Paola not to question him about this, either.
Instead, she asked, "What makes you think it might not be?"
"Habit," he ventured.
The habit of doubt?" she asked. "I suppose you could call it that,"
Brunetti answered and finally allowed himself a sip of wine. Cool,
tight on his tongue, it gave him little comfort, though it reminded him
that comfort did exist in the world.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Paola asked, sipping for the first
time at her own wine.
"Later, perhaps. After dinner."
<
br /> She nodded, took another sip, and set the glass down. "If you want to
go and read for a while, I'll set the table. The kids should be home
soon she began, and both of them were conscious of the word 'kids' and
the casual assertion it made that things had at least remained the same
for them, their family safe. Like a horse suddenly breaking stride to
avoid a hole below its front foot, her voice jogged over into
artificial jollity and she added, "And then we'll eat."
Brunetti went into the living room. He placed his glass on the table,
sat on the sofa, and picked up his book, Anna Comnena's life of her
father, the Emperor Alexius. Half an
hour later, when Chiara came in to tell her father that dinner was
ready, she found him on the sofa, his book lying open and forgotten in
his lap, as he stared out at the rooftops of the city.
Much as Brunetti hoped that talking to Paola about the boy's death
would serve to lessen the horror with which it filled him, it did not.
In bed, Paola curled beside him, he told her the events of his day,
struck by the grotesqueness of their bedtime talk. When he finished,
not hiding from her the anguish that had caused him to flee from-his
office without trying to contact Signora Moro, she propped herself up
on one elbow and looked down at his face.
"How much longer can you do this, Guido?" she asked.
In the dim moonlight, he glanced at her, then returned his attention to
the opposite wall, where the mirror glowed dimly in the light reflected
from the tiles of the terrace.
She allowed a certain time to pass in silence, and then asked,
"Well?"
"I don't know," he answered. "I can't think about that until this is
finished."
"If it's decided he committed suicide, then isn't it already finished?"
she asked.
The don't mean finished that way he said dismissively. "I mean really
finished."
"Finished for you, you mean?" she asked. At other times, the words
would have been a demand, perhaps even a sarcastic observation, but
tonight they were only a request for information.
"I suppose so," he admitted.
"When will that be?"
The accumulated exhaustion of the day enveloped him, almost as if it
had decided to wrap its arms around him and lull him to sleep. He felt
his eyes close and he rested in those other arms for a moment. The
room began to move away from him as he felt himself drawn towards
sleep. Suddenly able to see the events affecting the Moro family only
as a triangle created by coincidence, he whispered, "When the lines
aren't there," and gave himself to sleep.
The next morning, he woke to ignorance. The rays of the sun, reflected
off the same mirror and on to his face, pulled him from sleep, and in
the first moments of waking, he had no memory of the events of the
previous day. He moved a bit to the right and his body sensed Paola's
absence; he turned his head to the left and saw the bell tower of San
Polo, the sunlight so clear upon it that he could make out the grey
blobs of cement that held the bricks together. A pigeon glided toward
the eaves under the tower roof, spread its wings to reduce speed, and
then set itself down in a soft-footed landing. It turned around twice,
bobbed about a bit, and then tucked its head under one wing.
Nothing the bird did was reminiscent of the events of the previous day,
but as its head disappeared under its wing, Brunetti had a sharp vision
of Ernesto Moro's face at the moment that Vianello pulled the hem of
his cape across it.
Brunetti got out of bed and, careful to avoid himself in the mirror,
went down to the bathroom to take a shower. As he stood there,
shaving, he had no choice but to confront his
own eyes, and the face he saw looking back at him had the weary
dullness of every grief-stricken parent he had ever had to speak to.
How to explain that a child was dead, and even if it could be
explained, what explanation could hope to stem the torrent of grief
that must flow from those words?
Paola and the children were long gone, so he left the house, glad of
the chance to drink his coffee in the company of a familiar
pasticceria, with conversation no more demanding than the idle comments
someone might make to him. He bought both // Tempo and II Gazzettino
at the edicola in Campo Santa Marina and went into Didovich for a
coffee and a brioche.
CADET AT EXCLUSIVE VENETIAN SCHOOL HANGS HIMSELF, the first paper
declared on one of the inner pages, while the front page of the second
carried the headline, son of ex parliamentarian FOUND DEAD AT SAN
MARTINO. The loWCr case headlines informed the people of Venice that
the father of the victim had resigned from Parliament after his hotly
contested health report had been condemned by the then Minister of
Health, that the police were investigating the boy's death, and that
his parents were separated. Reading the lead paragraphs, Brunetti was
sure that anyone who read them, regardless of the information contained
in the article that followed, would already suspect that the parents or
the way they lived was somehow related to, if not directly responsible
for, the boy's death.
Terrible, isn't it? This boy?" one of the women at the counter asked
the owner, waving her hand towards Brunetti's newspaper. She bit into
her brioche and shook her head.
"What's the matter with kids today? They have so much. Why can't they
be content with it?" another one answered.
As if on cue, a third woman the same age as the other two, her hair the
standard post-menopausal red, set her coffee cup resoundingly back into
its saucer and said, "It's because the
parents don't pay attention to them. I stayed home to take care of my
children, and so nothing like this ever happened." A stranger to this
culture might well assume that no option was open to the children of
working mothers but suicide. The three women nodded in united
disapproval at this latest proof of the perfidy and ingratitude of
youth and the irresponsibility of all parents other than themselves.
Brunetti folded his paper, paid, and left the pasticceria. The same
headlines blared forth from the yellow posters taped to the back wall
of the edicola. In their real grief, attacks like this could do no
more than glance off the souls of the Moros: this belief was the only
comfort Brunetti could find in the face of this latest evidence of the
mendacity of the press.
Inside the Questura, he went directly to his office, where he saw new
files lying on his desk. He dialled Signorina Elettra, who answered
the phone by saying, "He wants to see you immediately."
It no longer surprised him when Signorina Elettra knew that it was he
who was calling: she had spent considerable police funds in having
Telecom install a new phone line in her office, though the moneys
currently available could not provide for anyone except her to have a
terminal on which the number of the caller appeared. Nor was he
surprised by her use
of the pronoun: she granted this distinction only
to her immediate superior, Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta.
"Immediately now?" he asked.
"Immediately yesterday afternoon, I'd say," she answered.
Brunetti went downstairs and into her office without taking time to
examine the folders. He had expected to find Signorina Elettra at her
desk, but her office was empty. He stuck his head back outside the
door to check to see if she were in the hallway, but there was no sign
of her.
Reluctant to present himself to Patta without first having some
indication of his superior's mood or what it was Patta wanted to see
him about, Brunetti toyed with the idea of
going back to his office to read the folders or to the officers' room
to see if Vianello or Pucetti were there. As he stood undecided, the
door to Vice-Questore Patta's office opened, and Signora Elettra
emerged, today wearing what looked very much like a bomber jacket,
buttoned tight at the waist, puffy and full over the bust and
shoulders; well, a bomber jacket, were bombardiers given to the wearing
of uniforms made of apricot-coloured raw silk.
Patta had a clear view from his office into hers. "I'd like to see
you, Brunetti," he called. Brunetti glanced at Signorina Elettra as he
turned toward Patta's door, but the only thing she had time to do was
push her lips tightly together in either disapproval or disgust. Like