by Donna Leon
'That's rather a severe opinion, if I may say so,' Brunetti ventured.
‘Is it?' she asked, seeming honestly puzzled. Tm sure there are some perfectly nice and decent ones, but I think that, as a group, clerics are best avoided.' Before he could comment, she added, 'Unless, of course, one is forced into their company, in which case they deserve common civility. I suppose.' He waited, familiar with her pauses. 'It's their interest in power, I think, that makes me so dislike them: so many of them are driven by it. I think it distorts their souls.'
'Would you include a man like Leonardo Mutti in what you've just said?' Brunetti asked. He was never sure how to take the Contessa's opinions and wondered if this would prove to have been a long prelude to some sort of revelation about the man.
The glance she gave him was very shrewd but quickly vanished. 'I've heard the name. I just have to remember who it was that mentioned him. When I do, I'll let you know.'
‘Is there any way you could ... ?' 'Refresh my memory?' she asked. 'Yes.'
'I'll ask some of my friends who are given to that sort of association.' 'With the Church?'
She paused for a good while before she answered him. 'No, I was thinking more of - what shall I call it, Guido? The ancillary Church? The non-mainstream Church? You didn't give him a title, and you didn't say what parish he's associated with, so I must assume he's on the fringe somewhere. Involved with ...' There followed another long pause, which she concluded by asking, 'Religion Lite?'
After her comments, Brunetti was not surprised by the phrase. 'Do you have friends in this fringe?' he asked.
She gave the tiniest of shrugs. ‘I know a number of people who are interested in this approach to ... to God.'
'You sound sceptical’ Brunetti said.
'Guido, it seems to me that the chance for irregularity, to give it a polite name, expands exponentially once you start moving away from the standard churches. There, if nothing else, they have a reputation to preserve, and so they keep an eye on one another and try to stop the worst abuses, even if from no higher motive than self-interest.'
'Not to frighten the horses?' he asked.
'That was about sex, Guido, as we both know’ she said with a certain measure of asperity, as if she had sensed the test he'd set by making the reference. 'I'm talking about fraud. Once a group calling itself a religion has no respectability to lose, no vested interest in preserving the faith and goodwill of its believers, then Pandora's box is opened. And, as you know, people will believe in anything.'
The question was out before Brunetti could think. 'Does any of what you've just said affect the way you and Orazio deal with the clergy?' To temper this open avowal of curiosity, he added, ‘I ask because I know you have to meet them socially, and I assume Orazio has got to deal with them professionally.' Brunetti had learned little over the decades about the precise source of the Faliers' wealth. He knew there were houses, apartments, and the leases on shops here in the city and that the Count was often called away to visit companies and factories. But he had no idea if the Church hierarchy was involved in any of his financial dealings.
The Contessa's face took on the look of near-theatrical confusion which he had so often observed. He had never, however, caught her in the act of applying it, as if it were a fresh coat of lipstick, but to see it so easily appear persuaded him that it was just as artificial and as easily put on or removed. 'Orazio has been telling me since I first met him that power is superior to wealth’ she said, smiling. 'If truth be told, it's the same thing the men in my family were always saying.' Again, that bland, almost blank, smile: where had she learned it? 'I'm sure it must mean something.'
When they had first met, Brunetti's initial impression had been that the Contessa failed to understand, not only much of what was said to her, but much of what she said herself. With the glittering penetration of youth, he had dismissed her as a woman given exclusively to society and frivolity, whose one saving grace was her dedication to her husband and her daughter. But over the years, as he watched people outside the family form what was in essence the same opinion, he had paid closer attention to her remarks, and he began to find, camouflaged in the most vapid of cliches and generalizations, observations of such incisive accuracy and insight as to leave him gasping. By now, however, her disguise had become so perfect that few people would think of bothering to penetrate it or even realize that there was anything to penetrate.
'Are you sure you wouldn't like something to drink?' she enquired.
Her words pulled him back and he said, looking at his watch, 'No, thank you, really. I think I'll go home: it's almost time for lunch.'
'How lucky Paola is that you work in the city, Guido, so she always has someone to cook for.' The wistfulness in her voice would lead a listener to believe she longed for nothing beyond spending her days at the stove, cooking for the people she loved, and that she spent her every free hour poring over cookbooks to find new dishes with which to tempt them, when, in fact, Brunetti was sure the Contessa had not been inside the kitchen for decades. Luciana would probably have stopped her at the door, anyway.
He got to his feet, and she did the same. She walked with him to the door of her study, reminding him to give her love to Paola and the children. He bent to kiss her again.
'I'll let you know if I hear anything,' she promised, and he went home to lunch.
6
When Brunetti reached the landing just below their apartment, the air brought no hint of lunch. If Paola had, for some reason, not had time to prepare it, perhaps they could go out. Antico Panificio, not two minutes away, made pizza at lunch, and even though he usually preferred to eat it in the evening, Brunetti thought he would quite like a pizza today. Perhaps with rucola and speck, or that one with mozzarella di bufala and pomodorini. As he walked up the last steps, he busied himself adding and subtracting toppings from his notional pizza until, as he put his key in the door, he was left with rucola, hot sausage, and mushrooms, though he did not know where those last two had come from.
All thought of pizza fled when he opened the door to the apartment and caught sight of Paola turning into the living room with an enormous bowl of salad in her hands. That meant one of the children, no doubt in a moment
of suicidal optimism, had decided they should have lunch on the terrace. Without even closing the door, Brunetti took three steps down the corridor and, sticking his head into the living room, called out to the three of them, now seated outdoors and waiting for him: 'My chair goes in the sun.' By this time of year, the sun appeared on their large terrace for a few hours each day, the period growing longer as the year advanced. But in these first weeks it fell only on the far end of the terrace and then for just two hours, one on either side of true noon. So only one chair could be placed in the sun, and since Brunetti considered it an act of sovereign madness to eat outside this early in the year, he always claimed that seat as his own.
Having staked his claim once again, he went back and shut the front door. From the terrace, he heard scraping sounds. Here in the living room, the sun had been coming in for much of the morning.
His place, the sun shining on to the back of the chair, was at the head of the table. He walked towards it, patting Chiara's shoulder as he passed her. Chiara wore a light sweater, Raffi only a cotton shirt, though Paola wore both a sweater and a down vest he thought belonged to Raffi. How was it that parents as cold-blooded as he and Paola had produced these two tropical creatures?
He was instantly glad of the warmth on his back. Paola reached for Chiara's plate and, from a large bowl in the centre of the table, spooned up fusilli with black olives and mozzarella: it was a bit early in the season for a dish like this, but Brunetti rejoiced in the sight and scent of it. After setting the plate in front of Chiara, she passed her a small dish of whole basil leaves: Chiara took a few and ripped them into small pieces to sprinkle over the top of the pasta.
Paola then served Raffi and Brunetti, both of whom added torn basil leaves to their past
a, and then she served herself. Before she sat down, she set the spoon aside and covered the bowl of pasta with a plate.
'Buon appetito’ Paola said and began to eat. Brunetti took a few bites, letting his whole body remember the taste. The last time they had eaten this dish had been towards the end of the summer, when he had opened one of the last bottles of the Masi rosato to go with it. Was it too early in the year for rosato? he wondered. Then he saw the bottle on the table and recognized the colour and the label.
'There are calamari ripieni after’ Paola declared, no doubt hoping to make it easier for them to decide who wanted to finish the pasta. Chiara, who had the day before added fish and seafood to the list of things she, as a vegetarian, would not eat, opted for more pasta, as did Raffi, who would no doubt go on to pack away his sister's portion of calamari with undiiriinished appetite and a clear conscience. Brunetti poured himself a glass of wine and assumed the expression of a man who would never think of taking the food from the mouths of his own hungry children.
Chiara helped carry the plates back to the kitchen and returned with a dish of carrots and peas, while Paola brought out a platter of calamari, and he thought he could smell the carrots and leeks - perhaps even chopped shrimp - with which they were filled. Conversation was general: school, school, and school, leaving Brunetti to say he had seen the Contessa that morning and brought her love to all of them. Paola turned her head and gave him a long look when he said this, though the children found it in no way strange.
Seeing Chiara reach for the platter, Paola distracted Raffi by asking him if he and Sara Paganuzzi were still planning to go to the cinema that evening and, if so, would he like to eat something before they went? He explained that the film had been supplanted by a Greek translation Sara had still to finish, and so he would be going to her home that evening, both for dinner and to help her with the translation.
Paola asked him what the text was, and that led to a discussion of the rashness and folly of the Peloponnesian War, which both found sufficiently interesting to distract them from the sight of Brunetti and Chiara finishing the calamari. Nor did they notice Brunetti lift his empty plate and use it to cover his daughter's.
Athens defeated and the walls destroyed, Raffi finished the vegetables and asked about dessert.
But by then the sun had disappeared, not only from Brunetti's back but from the sky, which was suddenly covered by clouds slipping in from the east. Paola got to her feet and gathered up the plates, saying there was only fruit for dessert, and they could eat it inside. Relieved, Brunetti pushed back his chair, picked up the empty vegetable bowl and the bottle of wine, and went back towards the kitchen.
Long exposure to the vagaries of springtime had chilled him sufficiently to render the thought of fruit unattractive. Paola told him she'd make coffee while doing the dishes and sent him into the living room to read the paper.
She found him there about twenty minutes later. The unopened newspaper lay on his lap, and Brunetti stared off at the rooftops and the sky. That day's headline, giving further details about the recent capture of one of the chief leaders of the Mafia, looked up at the room, shouting for attention.
She stopped behind the sofa, two cups of coffee in her hands, and asked, 'Reading about your triumph?'
Brunetti closed his eyes. 'Indeed,' he answered. 'A triumph.'
'It's enough to make a person give serious thought to emigration, isn't it?' she asked.
'He's been on the run for forty-three years, and they find him two kilometres from his home.' He raised a hand and let it fall with a helpless slap on the open newspaper. 'Forty-three years, and the politicians fall over themselves praising the police. A triumph.'
'Perhaps what they really mean is that it's a triumph for the power of the Mafia,' Paola suggested. 'It would all be so much easier if the government simply gave them the right to appoint their own minister.' There followed a reflective pause, after which she asked, 'But what to call him? Minister of Alternative Power? Minister of Extortion?'
She placed the coffee on the table and sat beside him.
Knowing he should not say it, Brunetti asked, 'What makes you think they don't?'
'Don't what?'
'Have their own minister.'
Her glance was sudden, alarmed, as she registered that she had just heard something he was not meant to have said.
Her silence grew eloquent until he was forced to speak into it. 'There are voices,' he said and leaned forward to take his coffee.
'Voices?'
Brunetti nodded and sipped at his coffee, keeping his eyes turned away from her.
Paola read this correctly, as a sign that the subject needed to be changed, and so she asked, 'What did my mother have to tell you?'
'That priest friend of Sergio's - the one who came to the funeral: Antonin Scallon - he asked me to find out about someone.'
'You working for Opus Dei now, Guido?' she asked with feigned horror.
It took a few minutes for him to explain Antonin's visit and its purpose, and as he spoke he realized how uncomfortable he felt in recounting the story. Something about it did not harmonize either with his memories of Antonin or with his own dramatic instincts: he could not believe in the motives Antonin attributed to anyone in his story nor, for that matter, in the priest's declared motives for coming to see him.
'Do you think there's something going on between Antonin and the man's mother?' Paola asked when he had repeated everything the priest had told him.
'Trust you to go right for his throat,' he said, not without admiration.
‘I don't think it's his throat that's involved here,' Paola observed, taking up her cup of coffee.
Brunetti grinned and considered this, wishing that he had a grappa, or perhaps a cognac, to replace the missing fruit. Then he said, 'I'd thought of that. Certainly it's a possibility. After all, the poor devil spent two decades in Africa.'
Her answer was immediate. 'Does that mean he's bound to have been turned into a sex-crazed maniac by the propensity of the lower races toward sexual excess?'
He laughed, amused at her tendency always to assume that he thought the worst of human nature. Though Paola could now only with difficulty bring herself to vote for the politicians who represented the Left, Brunetti was pleased that her instinct to defend the underdog was still intact. 'Quite the opposite, in fact. My guess is that he saw himself as so superior to Africans that he'd have no real contact with them, and that when he got back here, he'd go after the first European woman who looked at him.'
'And vows of celibacy?' she asked.
As he knew she knew, Brunetti said, 'Celibacy has little to do with chastity, as I have no need to remind you. They have to take a vow not to get married, after which most of them manage to interpret the rule in the way most convenient to them.'
Brunetti leaned back and closed his eyes, and after a time he heard her set her cup down on the table. 'Do you think it's possible that he's telling the truth and he's really worried that this man will be tricked into giving his money and his home away?' she asked.
'What makes you ask that?'
'Because he was good to your mother, Guido.'
He turned, surprised, to look at her. 'How do you know that?'
'The sisters at the hospital told me. And once, when I went out to visit her, I found him in her room. He was holding her hand, and she looked very happy.'
After a long pause, and not believing his own words, Brunetti said, 'It's possible, I suppose.' Because he had to leave soon, he failed to pursue this possibility. He thought back over the events of the morning and recalled his earlier dismay. 'I couldn't think of anyone I knew who would admit that they believe in God,' he said.
'Boaster,' Paola said, restoring his good spirits.
* * *
Though he was tempted to stop for a cognac on the way back to the Questura, Brunetti resisted, feeling more than a bit proud of himself for his self-restraint. His route that day took him through Campo SS. Giovanni e Pa
olo, so he decided to stop at the rectory and see if Antonin was there. Or better, that Antonin was not there, and he would thus be free to make enquiries about him.
This in fact turned out to be the case, for when he asked the housekeeper who answered the door for Padre Antonin, she said that he was out and asked if he would like to speak to the parroco, instead. Brunetti recognized the white-haired woman, then tried to remember why he should do so.
Finally he had it. 'The flower stall at Rialto,' he said.
Her smile threw her wrinkles into confusion. 'Yes. With my grand-niece. I help out on Tuesday and Saturday, when they come in with the flowers.' She placed a hand on his arm and said, 'We've known each other for years, haven't we, Signore?' Then she added, 'And your wife and daughter, too. She's a very pretty girl.'
'So's your great-niece, Signora.'
'We'll have lots of iris this Saturday,' she said, delighting him that she remembered about the flowers.
'Keeps peace in the family if I bring them,' he answered with mock resignation.
'I've seen little need of that over the years, Signore, if you don't mind my saying so.' She stepped back to let him enter, having no doubt assumed that he would want to speak to the pastor.
‘I don't mean to disturb the parroco’ he lied.
'No, it's no trouble for him, Signore. Believe me. Padre Stefano's just finished lunch, so he's free.' She started towards the steps leading to the upper part of the house, then looked back at him to add in a softer voice, 'He'll be glad of the company, I'm sure.'
While she paused at the top to draw a few deep breaths, Brunetti admired a print of the Sacred Heart on the wall to his right. The long-haired Christ pressed one hand to his chest and held up the other, first finger raised as though trying to get the waiter's attention.