by Donna Leon
‘Buon giorno, Dottore. I’d like to thank you for helping my mother.’ It sounded as if he had practised the line, and he delivered it formally, as from one trying to be a man to one who already was. He had his mother’s dark eyes, but his face was longer and narrower.
‘Me too, Mamma,’ the girl piped up, and, when Flavia was slow to respond, stood and held her hand out to Brunetti. ‘I’m Victoria, but my friends call me Vivi.’
Taking her hand, Brunetti said, ‘Then I’d like to call you Vivi.’
She was young enough to smile, old enough to look away before she blushed.
He pulled out a chair and sat, then angled the chair to get his face info the sun. They talked generally for a few minutes, the children asking him questions about being a policeman, whether he carried a gun, and when he said he did, where it was. When he told them, Vivi asked if he had ever shot anyone and seemed disappointed when he said that he had not. It didn’t take the children long to realize that being a policeman in Venice was a great deal different from being a cop on Miami Vice, and after that revelation, they seemed to lose interest both in his career and in him.
The waiter came and Brunetti ordered a Campari soda; Flavia asked for another coffee, then changed it to a Campari. The children grew audibly restless, until Flavia suggested that they walk up along the embankment to Nico’s and get themselves gelato, an idea that was met with general relief.
When they were gone, Vivi hurrying to keep up with Paolo’s longer steps, he said, ‘they’re very nice children.’ Flavia said nothing, so he added, ‘I didn’t know you’d brought them to Venice with you.’
‘Yes, it’s seldom that I get a chance to spend a weekend with them, but I’m not scheduled to sing the matinee this Saturday, so we decided to come here. I’m singing in Munich now,’ she added.
‘I know. I read about you in the papers.’
She gazed out over the water, across the canal to the church of the Redentore. ‘I’ve never been here in the early spring before.’
‘Where are you staying?’
She pulled her eyes back from the church and looked at him. ‘At Brett’s.’
‘Oh. Did she come back with you?’ he asked. He had last seen Brett in the hospital, but she had stayed there only overnight, then she and Flavia had left for Milan two days later. He’d had no word of either of them until the day before, when Flavia had called and asked him to meet her for a drink.
‘No, she’s in Zurich, giving a lecture.’
‘When will she come back?’ he asked politely.
‘She’ll be in Rome next week. I finish in Munich next Thursday night.’
‘And then what?’
‘And then London, but only for a concert, and then China,’ she said, voice carrying her reproach that he had forgotten. ‘I’m invited to give master classes at the Beijing Conservatory. Don’t you remember?’
‘Then you’re going to go through with it? You’re going to take the pieces back?’ he asked, surprised that she would do it.
She made no attempt to disguise her own delight. ‘Of course we are. That is, I am.’
‘But how can you do that? How many pieces are there? Three? Four?’
‘Four. I’m carrying seven pieces of luggage, and I’ve arranged it that the Minister of Culture will meet me at the airport. I doubt that they’re going to look for antiques being smuggled into the country.’
‘What if they find them?’ he asked.
She gave a purely theatrical wave of the hand. ‘Well, I can always say that I was bringing them to donate to the people of China, that I was going to present them after I’d taught the classes, as a token of my gratitude for their having invited me.’
She’d do it, too, and he was certain she’d get away with it. He laughed at the thought. ‘Well, good luck to you.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, certain that she’d need no luck there.
They sat in silence for a while, Brett a third party, invisible but present. Boats puttered past; the waiter brought their drinks, and they were glad of the diversion.
‘And after China?’ he finally asked.
‘Lots of travelling until the end of summer. That’s another reason I wanted to spend the weekend with the children. I’ve got to go to Paris, then Vienna; and then back to London.’ When he said nothing she tried to lighten the mood by saying, ‘I get to die in Paris and Vienna, Lucia and Violetta.’
‘And in London?’ he asked.
‘Mozart. Fiordiligi. And then my first attempt at Handel.’
‘Will Brett go with you?’ he asked and sipped at his drink.
She looked over to the church again, the church of the Redeemer. ‘She’s going to stay in China for at least a few months,’ was all the answer Flavia gave.
He sipped again and looked out over the water, suddenly conscious of the dance of light on its rippled surface. Three tiny sparrows came and landed at his feet, hopping about in search of food. Slowly, he reached forward and took a fragment of the brioche that still lay on a plate in front of Flavia and tossed it to them. Greedily, they pounced on it and tore it into pieces, then each flew off to a safer place to eat.
‘Her career?’ he asked.
Flavia nodded, then shrugged. ‘I’m afraid she takes it far more seriously than . . .’ she began, but then she trailed off.
‘Than you take yours?’ he asked, not ready to believe it.
‘In a way, I suppose that’s true.’ Seeing that he was about to protest, she placed her hand on his arm and explained. ‘Think of it this way, Guido. Anyone at all can come and listen to me and shout his head off, and he doesn’t have to know anything about either music or singing. He just has to like my costume, or the story, or perhaps he just shouts “brava” because everyone else does.’ She saw that he didn’t believe this and insisted, ‘It’s true. Believe me. My dressing room is filled with them after every performance, people who tell me how beautiful my singing was, even if I sang like a dog that night.’ He watched the memory of this play across her face, and then he knew she was speaking the truth.
‘But think about what Brett does. Very few people know anything about her work except the people who really know what she’s doing; they’re all experts, so they understand the importance of her work. I suppose the difference is that she can be judged only by her peers, her equals, so the standards are much higher, and praise really means something. I can be applauded by any fool who chooses to cheer.’
‘But what you do is beautiful.’
She laughed outright. ‘Don’t let Brett hear you say that.’
‘Why? Doesn’t she think it is?’
Still laughing, she explained, ‘No, Guido, you misunderstand. She thinks what she does is beautiful, too, and she thinks the things she works with are as beautiful as the music I sing.’
He remembered then that there had been something unclear in Brett’s statement and he had wanted to ask her about it. But there had been no time: she’d been in the hospital and then had left Venice immediately after signing a formal statement. ‘There’s something I don’t understand,’ he began and then laughed outright when he realized how very true that was.
Her smile was tentative, questioning. ‘What?’
‘It’s about Brett’s statement,’ he explained. Flavia’s face relaxed. ‘She wrote that La Capra had shown her a bowl, a Chinese bowl. I forget what century it was supposed to be from.’
‘The third millennium before Christ,’ Flavia explained.
‘She told you about it?’
‘Of course she did.’
‘Then maybe you can help me.’ She nodded and he continued. ‘In her statement, she said that she broke it, that she let it fall to the floor, knowing it would break.’
Flavia nodded. ‘Yes, I talked to her. That’s what she said. That’s what happened.’
‘That’s what I don’t understand,’ Brunetti said.
‘What?’
‘If she loves these things so much, if she’s so devoted to
them, to saving them, then the bowl had to have been a false one, didn’t it, another of those fakes that La Capra bought, thinking that they were real?’
Flavia said nothing and turned her head away to stare off towards the abandoned mill that stood at the end of the Giudecca.
‘Well?’ Brunetti insisted.
She turned and faced him, sun shining down on her from the left and chiselling her profile against the buildings across the canal. ‘Well what?’ she asked.
‘It had to be a fake, didn’t it, for her to destroy it?’
For a long time, he thought she was going to ignore him or refuse to answer him. The sparrows came back and, this time, Flavia tore the remaining heel of brioche into tiny fragments and tossed it down to them. They both watched as the small birds swallowed the golden crumbs and looked up towards Flavia for more. At the same time, they glanced up from the peeping birds, and their eyes met. After a long moment, she glanced away from him and off down the embankment, where she saw her children coming back towards them, ice cream cones in their hands.
‘Well?’ Brunetti asked, needing an answer.
They both heard Vivi’s hoots of laughter ring out over the water.
Flavia leaned forward and put her hand on his arm again. ‘Guido,’ she began, smiling. ‘It doesn’t matter, does it?’