Acqua Alta

by Donna Leon

  ‘Such as?’ he asked.

  Lele came back towards him and studied the picture from the greater distance. He seemed pleased with whatever correction he had made. ‘Nothing specific. His reputation is very high in the city, and he has a lot of friends in high places.’

  ‘Then what do you mean?’

  ‘Guido, ours is a small world,’ Lele began and then stopped.

  ‘Do you mean Venice or those of you who work with antiques?’

  ‘Both, but especially us. There are only about five or ten of us in the city who really count: my brother, Bortoluzzi, Ravanello. And most of what we do is done by suggestions and hints so subtle that no one else would understand what was happening.’ He saw that Brunetti didn’t understand this, so he tried to explain. ‘Last week, someone showed me a polychrome Madonna with the Christ Child lying asleep in her lap. She was perfect fifteenth century. Tuscan. Perhaps even the end of the fourteenth century. But the dealer who showed it to me picked up the baby — they were carved in separate pieces — and pointed to a place on the back of the statue, just below the shoulder, where the faintest of patches could be seen.’ He waited for Brunetti’s response.

  When that didn’t come, he continued. ‘That meant it was an angel, not a Christ Child. The patch covered the place where the wings had been, where they had been taken out, who knows when, and covered up so that it would look like a Christ Child.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because there have always been more angels than Christs. So the removal of the wings. . .’ Lele’s voice trailed off.

  ‘Gave him a promotion?’ Brunetti asked, understanding.

  Lele’s shout of laughter filled the gallery. ‘Yes, that’s it. He was promoted to Christ, and the promotion meant he’d earn a lot more money when he was sold.’

  ‘But the dealer showed you?’

  ‘That’s what I’m getting at, Guido. He told me by not telling me, just by showing me that tiny patch, and he would have done the same with any one of us.’

  ‘But not a casual client?’ Brunetti suggested.

  ‘Perhaps not,’ Lele agreed. ‘The patch was so well done, and the paint covered it so perfectly, that very few people would have noticed it. Or if they had noticed it, would not have known what it meant.’

  ‘Would you have?’

  Lele nodded quickly. ‘Eventually, yes, I would have noticed it, if I had taken it home and lived with it.’

  ‘But not the casual buyer?’

  ‘No, probably not.’

  ‘Then why did he show you?’

  ‘Because he thought I might still like to buy the piece. And because it’s important to us to know that, at least among ourselves, we won’t lie or cheat or try to pass something off as what we know it isn’t.’

  ‘Is there a moral in all of this, Lele?’ Brunetti asked with a smile. Since his childhood, there had often been a lesson hidden in what Lele had told him.

  ‘I’m not sure if it’s a moral, Guido, but Semenzato is not a member of the club. He isn’t one of us.’

  ‘And who made that decision, he or you?’

  ‘I don’t think anyone ever really decided it. And I’ve certainly never heard anything about him directly.’ Lele, a man of images and not of words, looked out of the wide gallery window and studied the patterns of light on the canal beyond. ‘It’s more a question that he was never assumed to be one of us than that he was consciously excluded.’

  ‘Who else knows this?’

  ‘You’re the first person I’ve told about the majolica. And I’m not sure that anyone can be said to “know” this, at least not at any level he’d be aware of. It’s just something that we all understand.’

  ‘About him?’

  With a laugh, Lele said, ‘About most of the antique dealers in the country, if you want the truth.’ Then, more soberly, he added, ‘And, yes, about him, too.’

  ‘Not the best recommendation for the director of one of the leading museums in Italy, is it?’ Brunetti asked. ‘It would make a person reluctant to buy a polychrome Madonna from him.’

  With another loud burst of laughter, Lele said, ‘You should meet some of the others. I wouldn’t buy a plastic hairbrush from most of them.’ Both laughed at that for a moment, but then Lele asked, serious now, ‘Why are you interested in him?’

  Part of Brunetti’s sworn trust as an officer of the law was never to reveal police information to anyone unauthorized to hear it. ‘Someone doesn’t want him to talk about the China exhibition, the one held here five years ago.’

  ‘Um?’ Lele murmured, asking for more information.

  ‘The person who arranged the show had an appointment to see him, but she was beaten, badly beaten, and told not to keep it.’

  ‘Dottoressa Lynch?’ Lele asked.

  Brunetti nodded.

  ‘Have you spoken to Semenzato?’ Lele asked.

  ‘No. I don’t want to call any attention to him. Let whoever did this believe the warning worked.’

  Lele nodded and rubbed his hand lightly across his lips, something he always did when trying to work out a problem.

  ‘Could you ask around, Lele? See if there’s any talk about him?’

  ‘What kind of talk?’

  ‘I don’t know. Debts, perhaps. Women. Whether you can get an idea of who that dealer was, or any other people he might know who are involved in . . .’ He trailed off, not sure what to name it.

  ‘He’s bound to know everyone in the trade.’

  ‘I know that. But I want to know whether he’s involved with anything illegal.’ When Lele didn’t answer, Brunetti said, ‘I’m not even sure what that means, and I’m not sure you can find it out.’

  ‘I can find out anything,’ Lele said dispassionately; it was a statement of fact, not a boast. He said nothing for a moment, hand still rubbing lightly back and forth on his compressed lips. Finally, he took his hand down and said, ‘All right. I know a few people I can ask, but I’ll need a day or two. One of the men I need to talk to is in Burma. I’ll call you by the end of the week. Is that all right?’

  ‘It’s fine, Lele. I don’t know how to thank you.’

  The painter dismissed this with a wave of his hand. ‘Don’t thank me until I find out something.’

  ‘If there is anything,’ Brunetti added, as if to disarm the antipathy he had sensed in Lele towards the museum director.

  ‘Oh, there’s always something.’

  * * * *

  Chapter Six

  When he left Lele’s gallery, he turned left and ducked into the underpass that led out to the Zattere, the long, open fondamenta that ran alongside the canal of the Giudecca. Across the water he saw the church of the Zittelle and then, further along, that of the Redentore, their domes soaring up above them. A strong wind came in from the east, stirring up whitecaps that knocked and bounced the vaporetti around like toys in a tub. Even at this distance, he could hear the thundering reverberation as one of them crashed against its mooring, saw it buck and tear at the rope that held it to the dock. He pulled up his collar and let the wind push him forward, keeping to the right, close against the buildings, to avoid the spray that spewed up from the embankment. Il Cucciolo, the waterside bar where he and Paola had spent so many hours during the first weeks after their meeting, was open, but the vast wooden deck in front of it, built out over the water, was completely empty, stripped of tables, chairs and umbrellas. To Brunetti, the first real sign of spring was the day when those tables and chairs appeared after their winter’s hibernation. Today, the thought made him shiver. The bar was open, but he avoided it, for the waiters were the rudest in the city, their arrogant slowness tolerable only in exchange for idle hours in the sun.

  A hundred metres along, past the church of the Gesuati, he pulled open the glass door and slipped into the welcoming warmth of Nico’s bar. He stamped his feet a few times, unbuttoned his coat, and approached the counter. He ordered a grog and watched the waiter hold a glass under the spigot of the espresso machine an
d shoot it full of steam that quickly condensed to boiling water. Rum, a slice of lemon, a generous dash of something from a bottle, and then the barman placed it in front of him. Three sugars, and Brunetti had found salvation. He stirred the drink slowly, cheered by the aromatic steam that rose up softly from it. Like most drinks, it didn’t taste as good as it smelled, but Brunetti had grown so accustomed to this truth that he was no longer disappointed by it.

  The door opened again, and a rush of icy wind blew two young girls in before it. They wore ski parkas lined with fur that burst out and surrounded their glowing faces, thick boots, leather gloves, and woollen slacks. From the look of them, they were American, or possibly German; if they were rich enough, it was often hard to tell.

  ‘Oh, Kimberly, are you sure this is the place?’ the first one said in English, sweeping the place with her emerald eyes.

  ‘It said so in the book, Alison. Nico’s is, like, famous.’ (She pronounced ‘Nico’ to rhyme with ‘sicko’, a word Brunetti had picked up at his last Interpol convention.) ‘It’s famous for gelato.’

  It took a moment for the possibility of what might be about to happen to register on Brunetti. The instant it did, he sipped quickly at his grog, which was still so hot it burned his tongue. Patient, he took his spoon and began vigorously to stir the drink, moving it up high on the sides of the glass in hopes that this would somehow force it to cool more rapidly.

  ‘Oh there it is, I bet, under those round lid things,’ the first one said, coming to stand next to Brunetti and peering over the bar, down at where Nico’s famous gelato, production severely cut back in acknowledgement of the season, did indeed lie under those round lid things. ‘What flavour do you want?’

  ‘Do you think they’d have Heath Bar?’

  ‘Nah, not in Italy.’

  ‘Yeah, I guess not. I guess we’re gonna have to stick to, like, basics.’

  The barman approached, smiling in acknowledgement of their beauty and radiant good health, to make no mention of their courage. ‘Si?’ he asked, smiling.

  ‘Do you have any gelato?’ one of them asked, pronouncing the last word loudly, if not correctly.

  Without a pause, apparently accustomed to this, the barman smiled again and reached behind him to pull two cones from a tall pile on the counter.

  ‘What flavour?’ he asked in passable English.

  ‘What flavours have you got?’

  ‘Vaniglia, cioccolato, fragola, fior di latte, e tiramis ù .’

  The girls looked at each other in great perplexity. ‘I guess we better stick with vanilla and chocolate, huh?’ one asked. Brunetti could no longer distinguish between them, so similar was the bored nasality of their voices.

  ‘Yeah, I guess.’

  The first one turned to the barman and said, ‘Due vanilla and chocolatto, please.’

  In a moment, the deed was done, the cones made and handed across the counter. Brunetti found the only consolation he could in taking a long drink of his grog, holding the half-full glass under his nose for a long time after he had swallowed.

  The girls had to remove their gloves to take the cones, then one of them had to hold both cones while the other dug into her pockets for four thousand lire. The barman handed them napkins, possibly in the hope that this would keep them inside while they ate the ice cream, but the girls were not to be stopped. They took the napkins and wrapped them carefully around the base of the cones, pushed open the door, and disappeared into the increasing gloom of the afternoon. The bar filled with the sad boom of another boat as it crashed against the wharf.

  The barman glanced at Brunetti. Brunetti met his eyes. Neither said a word. Brunetti finished the grog, paid, and left.

  It was fully dark now, and Brunetti found himself eager to be at home, out of this cold, and away from the wind that still sliced across the open space along the waterside. He crossed in front of the French consulate, then cut back alongside the Giustiniani Hospital, a dumping ground for the old, and headed towards home. Because he walked quickly, it took him only ten minutes to get there. The entrance hall smelled damp, but the pavement was still dry. The sirens for acqua alta had sounded at three that morning, waking them all, but the tide had turned before the waters had seeped up through the chinks in the pavement. The full moon was only a few days away, and it had been raining heavily up north in Friuli, so there was a chance that the night would bring the first real flooding of the year.

  At the top of the stairs, inside his home, he found what he wanted: warmth, the scent of a fresh-peeled tangerine, and the certainty that Paola and the children were at home. He hung his coat on one of the pegs beside the door and went into the living room. There he found Chiara, propped on her elbows at the table, holding a book open with one hand and stuffing peeled sections of tangerine into her mouth with the other. She looked up as he came in, smiled broadly, and held out a section of tangerine to him. ‘Ciao, Pap à .’

  He came across the room, glad of the warmth, suddenly aware of how cold his feet were. He stood beside her and bent down far enough to allow her to pop a section of tangerine into his mouth. Then another, and another. While he chewed, she finished the peeled sections that lay on a dish beside her.

  ‘Papà, you hold the match,’ she said, reaching across the table and handing him a book of matches. Obedient, he peeled one off and lit it, holding the flame towards her. From, the pile on the table beside her, she selected a piece of tangerine peel and bent it until the two inner sides touched. As she did, a fine mist of oil shot out from the cracking skin and flared up in a blazing rocket of coloured flames. ‘Che bella’, Chiara said, eyes wide with delight that never seemed to diminish, no matter how many times they did this.

  ‘Are there any more?’ he asked.

  ‘No, Papà, that was the last one.’ He shrugged but not before a look of real sorrow flashed across her face. ‘I’m sorry I ate them all, Papà. There are some oranges. Do you want me to peel you one?’

  ‘No, angel, that’s all right. I’ll wait till dinner.’ He leaned to the right and tried to look into the kitchen. ‘Where’s Mamma?’

  ‘Oh, she’s in her study,’ Chiara said, turning back to her book. ‘And she’s in a really bad mood, so I don’t know when we’re going to eat.’

  ‘How do you know she’s in a bad mood?’ he asked.

  She looked straight up at him and rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, Papà, don’t be silly. You know what she’s like when she’s in one of her moods. Told Raffi she couldn’t help him with his homework, and she yelled at me because I didn’t take the rubbish downstairs this morning.’ She propped her chin on both fists and looked down at her book. ‘I hate it when she’s like that.’

  ‘Well, she’s been having a lot of trouble at the university, Chiara.’

  She turned a page. ‘Oh, you always stick up for her. But she’s no fun when she’s like that.’

  ‘I’ll go and talk to her. Maybe that will help.’ Both of them knew the unlikelihood of this but, the optimists of the family, they smiled to each other at the possibility.

  She slumped back down over her book, Brunetti bent and kissed the top of her head and switched on the overhead light as he left the room. At the end of the corridor, he stopped in front of the door to Paola’s study. Talking to her seldom helped, but listening to her sometimes did. He knocked.

  ‘Avanti,’ she called out, and he pushed back the door. The first thing he noticed, even before he saw Paola standing at the glass door that led to the terrace, was the chaos on her desk. Papers, books, magazines spilled across its surface; some open, some closed, some used to mark pages in others. Only the self-deceived or the vision-impaired would ever call Paola either neat or orderly, but this mess was pushed out way beyond even her very tolerant limits. She turned from the door and noticed the way he stared at her desk. ‘I’ve been looking for something,’ she explained.

  ‘The person who killed Edwin Drood?’ he asked, referring to an article she had spent three months writing the previous year.
‘I thought you found him.’

  ‘Don’t joke, Guido,’ she said, in that voice she used when humour was as welcome as the old boyfriend of the bride. ‘I’ve spent most of the afternoon trying to hunt down a quotation.’

  ‘What do you need it for?’

  ‘A class. I want to begin with the quotation, and I need to tell them where it comes from, so I’ve got to locate the source.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘The Master,’ she said, in English, and Brunetti watched her go all misty-eyed, the way she always did when she talked about Henry James. Did it make sense, he wondered, to be jealous? Jealous of a man who, it seemed to him from what Paola had said about him, not only couldn’t decide what his nationality was, but couldn’t seem to decide what sex he was, either?