by Donna Leon
For twenty years, this had gone on. The Master had gone on their honeymoon with them, was in the hospital when both of their children were born, seemed to tag along on every holiday they had ever taken. Stout, phlegmatic, possessed of a prose style that proved impenetrable to Brunetti, no matter how many times he tried to read him in either English or Italian, Henry James appeared to be the other man in Paola’s life.
‘What’s the quotation?’
‘He said it in response to someone who asked him, late in his life, what he had learned by all his experience.’
Brunetti knew what he was meant to do. He did it. ‘What did he say?’
‘ “Be kind and then be kind and then be kind,” ‘ she said in English.
The temptation proved too strong for Brunetti. ‘With or without commas?’
She shot him a grim look. Obviously not the day for jokes, especially about the Master. In an attempt to worm out from under the weight of that look, he said, ‘Seems a strange quotation to begin a literature class.’
She weighed whether to take his remark about the commas as still standing or to address herself to his next. Luckily, for he did want to eat dinner that night, she picked up the second. ‘We begin with Whitman and Dickinson tomorrow, and I’m hoping that the quotation will serve to pacify a few of the more horrible students in the class.’
‘Il piccolo marchesino?’ he asked, slighting, with the use of the diminutive, Vittorio, heir apparent to Marchese Francesco Bruscoli. Vittorio, it seemed, had been persuaded to terminate his attendance at the universities of Bologna, Padua and Ferrara, and had, six months ago, ended up at C à Foscari, attempting to take a degree in English, not because he had any interest in or enthusiasm for literature — indeed, for anything that resembled the written word — but simply because the English nannies who had raised him had made him fluent in that language.
‘He’s such a dirty-minded little pig,’ Paola said vehemently. ‘Really vicious.’
‘What’s he done now?’
‘Oh, Guido, it’s not what he does. It’s what he says, and the way he says it. Communists, abortion, gays. Any of those subjects just has to come up and he’s all over them, like slime, talking about how glorious it is that Communism’s been defeated in Europe, that abortion is a sin against God, and gays—’ She waved a hand towards the window, as if asking the roofs to understand. ‘My God, he thinks they should all be rounded up and put in concentration camps, and anyone with AIDS should be sequestered. There are times when I want to hit him,’ she said, with another wave of her hand but ending, she realized, weakly.
‘How do these subjects come up in a literature class, Paola?’
‘They rarely do,’ she admitted. ‘But I hear about him from some of the other professors.’ She turned to Brunetti and asked, ‘You don’t know him, do you?’
‘No, but I know his father.’
‘What’s he like?’
‘Pretty much the same. Charming, rich, handsome. And utterly vicious.’
‘That’s what’s so dangerous about him. He’s handsome and very rich, and many of the students would kill to be seen with a marchese, regardless, of what a little shit he is. So they ape him and repeat his opinions.’
‘But why are you so bothered about him now?’
‘Because tomorrow I begin with Whitman and Dickinson, I told you.’
Brunetti knew they were poets; had read the first and not liked him, found Dickinson difficult but, when he understood, wonderful. He shook his head from side to side, asking for an explanation.
‘Whitman was gay, and Dickinson probably was, too.’
‘And that sort of thing is not on il marchesino’s list of acceptable behaviour?’
‘To say the very least,’ replied Paola. ‘That’s why I want to begin with that quotation.’
‘You think something like that will make any difference?’
‘No, probably not,’ she admitted, sitting down in her chair and beginning to straighten out some of the mess on her desk.
Brunetti sat in the armchair against the wall and stretched his feet out in front of him. Paola continued closing books and placing magazines on neat piles. ‘I had a taste of the same today,’ he said.
She stopped what she was doing and looked across at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Someone who didn’t like gays.’ He paused and then added, ‘Patta.’
Paola closed her eyes for second, then asked, ‘What was it?’
‘Do you remember Dottoressa Lynch?’
‘The American? The one who’s in China?’
‘Yes to the first, and no to the second. She’s back here. I saw her today, in the hospital.’
‘What’s the matter?’ Paola asked with real concern, hands grown suddenly still over her books.
‘Someone beat her. Well, two men, really. They went to her place on Sunday, said they had come on business, and when she let them in, they beat her.’
‘How badly is she hurt?’
‘Not as badly as she could have been, thank God.’
‘What does that mean, Guido?’
‘She’s got a cracked jaw, and a few broken ribs, and some bad scrapes.’
‘If you think that’s not bad, I tremble to think of what would be,’ Paola said, then asked, ‘Who did it? Why?’
‘It might have something to do with the museum, but it might have something to do with what my American colleagues insist on calling her “lifestyle”.’
‘You mean that she’s a lesbian?’
‘Yes.’
‘But that’s insane.’
‘Agreed. But none the less true.’
‘Is it starting here?’ Clearly, rhetorical. ‘I thought that sort of thing happened only in America.’
‘Progress, my dear.’
‘But what makes you say that’s the reason?’
‘She said that the men knew about her and Signora Petrelli.’
Paola could never resist a set-up. ‘Before she went back to China a few years ago, you would have had trouble finding anyone in Venice who didn’t know about her and Signora Petrelli.’
More literal-minded, Brunetti protested, ‘That’s an exaggeration.’
‘Well, perhaps. But there was certainly talk at the time,’ Paola insisted.
Having corrected Paola once, Brunetti was content to leave it. Besides, he was growing hungrier, and he wanted his dinner.
‘Why wasn’t it in the papers?’ she suddenly asked.
‘It happened on Sunday. I didn’t find out about it until this morning and then only because someone noticed her name on the report. It had been given to the uniformed branch and was being treated as routine.’
‘Routine?’ she repeated in astonishment. ‘Guido, things like that don’t happen here.’
Brunetti chose not to repeat his remark about progress, and Paola, realizing he was going to offer no explanation, turned back to the desk. ‘I can’t spend any more time looking for it. I’ll have to think of something else.’
‘Why don’t you lie?’ Brunetti suggested casually.
Paola snapped her head up to look at him and asked, ‘What do you mean, lie?’
It seemed clear enough to him. ‘Just think of a place in one of the books where it might have been and tell them that’s where it is.’
‘But what if they’ve read the book?’
‘He wrote a lot of letters, didn’t he?’ Brunetti knew full well that he had: the letters had gone to Paris with them two years ago.
‘And if they ask what letter?’
He refused to answer so stupid a question.
‘To Edith Wharton, 26 July 1906,’ she supplied immediately, putting into her voice the tone of absolute certainty that Brunetti recognized as always sustaining her in her most outrageous inventions.
‘Sounds good to me,’ he said and smiled.
‘Me, too.’ She closed the last book, looked at her watch, then up at him. ‘It’s almost seven. Gianni had some beautiful lamb chops today.
Come and have a glass of wine and talk to me while I cook them.’
Dante, Brunetti recalled, punished the Evil Counsellors by enclosing them within enormous tongues of flame, where they were to twist and burn for eternity. There had been, he remembered, no mention of lamb chops.
* * * *
Chapter Seven
When the story finally appeared the following day, it carried the headline ‘Attempted Robbery in Cannaregio’ and gave the briefest of accounts. Brett was described as an expert on Chinese art who had returned to Venice to seek funding from the Italian government for the excavations in Xian, where she co-ordinated the work of Chinese and Western archaeologists. There was a brief description of the two men, who had been foiled in their attempt by an unidentified ‘amica’ who happened to be in the apartment with Dottoressa Lynch at the time. When he read it, Brunetti wondered at the identity of the ‘amico’ who had suppressed the use of Flavia’s name. It might well have been anyone, from the mayor of Venice to the director of La Scala, attempting to protect his chosen prima donna from the possibility of harmful publicity.
When he got to work, he stopped in Signorina Elettra’s office on the way up to his own. The freesias were gone today, replaced by a luminous spray of calla lilies. She looked up when he came in and said immediately, without even bothering to say good morning, ‘Sergeant Vianello asked me to tell you that there was nothing in Mestre. He said he spoke to some people there, but no one knew anything about the attack. And,’ she continued, looking down at a paper on her desk, ‘no one has been admitted to any of the hospitals in the area with a cut on his arm.’ Before he could ask, she said, ‘And nothing from Rome yet about the fingerprints.’
Faced with dead ends on every side, Brunetti decided it was time to see what else there was to be learned about Semenzato. ‘You used to work at Banca d’ltalia, didn’t you, signorina?’
‘Yes, sir, I did.’
‘And you still have friends there?’
‘And in other banks.’ Not one to hide her light, Signorina Elettra.
‘Do you think you could spin a web of gossamer with your computer and see what you can find out about Francesco Semenzato? Bank accounts, stock holdings, investments of any sort.’
Her response was a smile so broad as to leave Brunetti wondering at the exact velocity with which news travelled at the Questura.
‘Of course, Dottore. Nothing easier. And would you like me to check on the wife, as well? I believe she’s Sicilian.’
‘Yes, the wife as well.’
Even before he could ask, she volunteered. ‘They’ve been having trouble with their phone lines, so it might take me until tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Are you at liberty to reveal your source, signorina?’
‘Someone who has to wait until the director of the bank’s computer system goes home,’ was all she revealed.
‘Very well,’ Brunetti said, content with her explanation. ‘I’d like you to check it with Interpol in Geneva, as well. You can contact—’
She cut him short, but she smiled as she did it. ‘I know the address, sir, and I think I know whom to contact.’
‘Heinegger?’ Brunetti asked, naming the captain in charge of the office of financial investigation.
‘Yes, Heinegger,’ she answered and repeated his address and fax number.
‘How did you learn that so quickly, signorina?’ he asked, honestly surprised.
‘I dealt with him often in my last job,’ she replied blandly.
Though he was a policeman, the connection between Banca d’ltalia and Interpol was one he didn’t want to ask about just then. ‘So you know what to do,’ was all he could think of to say.
‘I’ll bring you Heinegger’s reply as soon as it comes in,’ she said, turning to her computer.
‘Yes, thank you. Good morning, signorina.’ He turned and left the office, but not before taking another look at the flowers, framed against the open window behind them.
* * * *
The rain of the last few days had stopped, taking with it the immediate threat of acqua alta and bringing, instead, crystalline skies, so there was no chance of catching Lele at home: he would be somewhere in the city, painting. Brunetti decided to go to the hospital and continue his questioning of Brett, for he still had no clear idea of the reasons that had brought her back halfway across the world.
When he entered the hospital room, he thought for a moment that Signorina Elettra had been at work here as well, for masses of flowers exploded from every available flat surface. Roses, iris, lilies and orchids flooded the room with their mingled sweetness, and the wastepaper basket overflowed with crumpled wrapping paper from Fantin and Biancat, the two florists where Venetians were most likely to go. He noticed that Americans, or at least foreigners, had also sent flowers: no Italian would have sent a sick person those immense bouquets of chrysanthemums, flowers used exclusively for funerals and for the tombs of the departed. He realized that it made him uncomfortable to be in a hospital room with them but dismissed the sensation as the worst sort of superstition.
Both women were, as he had either expected or hoped, in the room, Brett propped up against the raised back of the bed, head cushioned between two pillows, and Flavia sitting in a chair at her side. Spread out on the surface of the bed between them were a number of coloured sketches of women in long, elaborate gowns. Each wore a diadem that surrounded her head in a jewelled sunburst. Brett glanced up from the drawings when he came in, and her lips moved minimally; the smile was all in her eyes. Flavia, after a moment, and at a reduced temperature, did the same.
‘Good morning,’ he said to both of them and glanced down at the pictures. The wave-patterned border at the hem of two of the dresses made them look oriental. But, instead of the usual dragons, the dresses were patterned with abstract splashes that hurled violent colours at one another and yet managed to create harmony, not dissonance.
‘What are those?’ he asked with real curiosity and, as soon as he spoke, realized he should have been asking Brett how she was.
Flavia answered him. ‘Sketches for the new Turandot at La Scala.’
‘Then you are going to sing it?’ he asked. The press had been buzzing with this for weeks, even though the opening night was almost a full year away. The soprano whose name had been ‘hinted at’ as the one ‘rumoured to be’ the ‘possible choice’ — this was the way things were expressed at La Scala — had said she was interested in the possibility and would consider it, which clearly meant she wasn’t, and wouldn’t. Flavia Petrelli, who had never sung the role, was named as the next possibility, and she had issued, just two weeks ago, a statement to the press saying she refused absolutely even to consider the idea, as close to a formal acceptance as a soprano could be expected to come.
‘You should know better than to try to solve the riddles of Turandot,’ Flavia said, voice falsely light, letting him know he had seen something he was not to have seen. She leaned forward and gathered the drawings together. Quickly translated, both messages meant he was to say nothing about this.
‘How are you?’ he finally asked Brett.
Though her jaws were no longer wired together, Brett’s smile was still faintly idiotic, lips separate from one another and pulling up at the corners. ‘Better. I can go home in a day.’
‘Two,’ Flavia corrected.
‘A day or two,’ Brett amended. Seeing him standing there, still in his coat, she said, ‘Excuse me. Please sit down.’ She pointed to a chair that stood behind Flavia. He picked it up and placed it beside the bed, folded his coat over the back and sat.
‘Do you feel like talking about what happened?’ he asked, encompassing both of them in the question.
Puzzled, Brett asked, ‘But we talked about this before, didn’t we?’
Brunetti nodded and asked, ‘What did they say to you? Exactly. Can you remember?’
‘Exactly?’ she repeated, confused.
‘Did they say enough to let you know where they came from?’
Brunetti prompted.
‘I see,’ Brett said. She closed her eyes and put herself momentarily back in the hall of her apartment, remembered the men, their faces and voices. ‘Sicilian. At least the one who hit me was. I’m less sure about the other. He said very little.’ She looked at Brunetti. ‘What difference does it make?’
‘It might help us identify them.’
‘I certainly hope so,’ Flavia broke in, giving no clues whether she spoke in reproach or hope.
‘Did either of you recognize any of the photos?’ he asked, though he was sure the officer who had brought over the photos of men who matched the descriptions the two women had given would have told him if they had.