by Donna Leon
Brunetti was released from contemplation by the sound of the woman's feet moving off down the corridor. He was suddenly aware of how cold it was in the hallway, cold and damp as though the springtime that was busy with the rest of the city had not yet found time to get here. He understood, now, why the woman wore two thick sweaters and heavy brown stockings of the sort he had not seen for decades.
She stopped outside a door on the right and knocked a few times, waited a moment, and then knocked again with force sufficient to do an injury either to her knuckles or the panelling of the door. She must have heard something, for she opened the door and stepped inside, saying loudly, 'Padre Stefano, there's someone to see you.'
Brunetti heard a man's voice answer, but he could not make out the words. The woman appeared at the door and waved him inside. 'Would you like something to drink, Signore? He's had his coffee, but I could easily make you one.'
'That's very kind of you, Signora,' Brunetti said, 'but I just had one in the campo’
She wavered, caught between the demands of hospitality and those of age, so Brunetti insisted, 'Really, Signora, it's as though I'd accepted.'
This seemed to satisfy her. She told him she would be downstairs if he wanted anything and left the room.
Brunetti moved towards where the voice had come from. To the left of the windows that looked out on the campo, but facing away from them, an old man sat in a deep armchair, looking as lost between its arms as the Contessa had in hers. Woolly white hair surrounded a natural tonsure that was, like the skin of his face, almost as white as his hair. The eyes of a child looked out of the face of an ascetic. He glanced up at Brunetti, braced his hands on the arms of the chair, and started to push himself to his feet.
'No, Father, please don't bother,' Brunetti said and closed the distance between them before the older man could hoist himself up from the chair.
Brunetti bent over and extended his right hand. 'How nice to see you, my son. How kind of you to come and visit an old man.' He spoke in Veneziano in a sweet, high tenor. Had the old man's hand been made of paper, Brunetti could have been no more frightened of crushing it with his own.
He must have been a tall man once, Brunetti thought. He saw it in the long bones of the priest's wrists and in the length of bone between ankle and knee. The old man wore the long white tunic of his order, his black scapular rusty with age and repeated washing. He wore black leather bedroom slippers, the sole of one of them hanging loose like a cat's mouth.
'Please, please, have a seat’ the priest said, looking about with puzzled eyes, as if suddenly conscious of where he was and concerned about finding a chair for his guest.
Brunetti found a heavy wooden armchair with a tattered embroidery seat and carried it over. He sat and smiled at the older man, who leaned forward, reaching across the narrow distance between them, to pat Brunetti's knee. 'How nice to see you, my son. How nice that you've come to see me.' The old man considered this marvel for some time and then asked, 'Did you come for me to hear your confession, my son?'
Brunetti smiled and shook his head. 'No, Father, thank you.' When Brunetti saw the look he gave at this, he raised his voice and said, 'I've already made my confession, Father. But it's very kind of you to ask.' Well, he had made his confession, hadn't he? And there certainly was no need to tell this old man how many decades ago it had been made.
The priest's expression softened and he asked, 'What may I do for you, then?'
'I'd like to ask you about your guest.'
'Guest?' the old man repeated, as if he weren't sure he had heard the word correctly or, if he had, what the word might mean. He glanced over Brunetti's shoulder and had a look around the room. Guest?
'Yes, Father. About Padre Antonin Scallon.'
The priest's face changed; perhaps it was nothing more than a sudden tightness around the mouth, a fading of the brightness in his eyes. 'Padre Scallon?' he asked in a neutral voice, and Brunetti heard thunder in his failure to refer to his guest by his first name.
'Yes,' Brunetti said, as though unaware of the change in the priest's manner. 'He came to my mother's funeral last week, and I wanted to thank him for it.' As he realized how loud he was speaking and felt almost deafened by it, he watched the priest's reaction to the neutrality in his voice. Just to make the message clear, Brunetti added, 'My wife said I should come and thank him.'
'And without your wife's suggestion?' the priest enquired, and the astuteness with which he asked the question made Brunetti revise his assessment of this man as perhaps feeble of mind as well as hearing.
Brunetti gave something that was meant to resemble a shrug and then, as though suddenly conscious of how rude this might appear, he said, 'It's the correct thing to do, Padre. He was at school with my brother, and so someone from the family should thank him.'
'And your brother?' the old man asked.
Making an attempt to look evasive, Brunetti said, 'My brother couldn't come, so he asked me to.'
‘I see, I see,' the priest answered and staring at his own hands, one of which, Brunetti noticed only now, held a rosary. He looked up and asked, 'Was there no time at the funeral?'
'Well, we were all a bit ... how shall I say this? We were distracted, and so when we got back to Sergio's house we realized that none of us had thought to invite him along with us.'
'But if he said the Mass, wouldn't he have been invited?' the old man asked.
Brunetti did his best to look embarrassed. 'My mother's parish priest said the Mass, Padre. Padre Scallon,' he said, referring to him formally, 'was at the cemetery, and he gave a blessing there.'
'Ah, I understand now’ the priest said. 'So you'd like to thank him for giving the blessing?'
'Yes. But if he's not here, perhaps I could come back’ Brunetti suggested, though he had no intention of doing so.
'You could leave him a note’ the old man said. ‘I know, I know. I could have done that. But it was a sign of respect for our mother for him to come, and
so .. ‘ Brunetti let his voice trail off. ‘I hope you can understand, Padre’
'Yes’ he said with a smile that enveloped Brunetti in its sweetness, 'I think I can understand that.' He lowered his head, and Brunetti saw a few of the beads pass through his fingers. Then he looked back at Brunetti and said, ‘It's strange, the death of our mothers. It's usually one of the first funerals we go to, and at the time I'm sure we think it's the worst. But if we're lucky, then it turns out to be the best.'
Brunetti let some time pass then said, 'I'm not sure I follow you, Padre.'
'If we were lucky, then all we'll have is good memories and not painful ones. I think it's easier to let someone go when that's true. And we usually have good memories of a mother. If we're luckier still, we were good to them and don't have anything to reproach ourselves with: often, that's so.' When Brunetti did not speak, he asked, 'Were you good to yours?'
Brunetti, having deceived this man about Antonin, owed him the truth at least about this, and so he said, 'Yes. I was good to her. But now that she's gone, I keep thinking that I wasn't good enough.'
The priest smiled again and said, 'Oh, we're never good enough to anyone, are we?'
Brunetti restrained the impulse to put his hand on the old man's arm. Instead, he asked, 'Am I correct in thinking that you have some reservations about Antonin, Padre?' Before the priest could answer, Brunetti said, 'I'm sorry if I put it that way: I don't want to create an awkward situation for you. You don't have to answer: it's none of my business, really'
The priest thought this over and then surprised
Brunetti by saying, If I have any reservations, my son, it's about you and why you're trying so hard to disguise this interrogation.' He smiled, as if to sweeten his words, then added, 'You ask questions about him, but it seems to me that you've already made up your mind about him.'
After a brief pause the old man went on. 'You seem like an honest man, so it confuses me that you come here and ask about him in this way, with a suspi
cion you try to hide.' Almost as if a light had been turned on behind them, the priest's eyes had taken on a new intensity. 'May I ask you one thing, my son?'
'Of course,' Brunetti answered, meeting the old man's eyes but wanting to look away.
'You don't come from Rome, do you?'
Given that they were carrying on the conversation in Veneziano, the question puzzled Brunetti, who replied, 'No, of course not. I'm Venetian. Like you.'
The priest smiled, either at Brunetti's claim or at the intensity of it.
'No, I don't mean that, my son. I hear it in every word you say. I mean do you represent Rome?'
'You mean the government?' Brunetti asked, confused.
It took the priest some time before he said, 'No, the Church.'
'Me?' Brunetti asked, scandalized.
The old priest smiled, gave a snort of laughter, tried to stifle the sound, but then gave in and put his head back and started to laugh. The sound was remarkably deep, like water running in a far-off pipe. He leaned across and patted Brunetti's knee, still laughing, then fought for a moment until he could control himself. 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, my son,' he said at last, then pulled up the bottom of his scapular and wiped tears from his eyes. 'But you do have the air of a policeman, so I thought you might be from them.'
‘I am a policeman,' Brunetti said, 'but a real one.'
For some reason, this set the priest laughing again, and it was some time before he stopped, and more time before Brunetti had explained fully the reason for his curiosity about Antonin. Brunetti realized he was now just as curious about the reason for the old priest's suspicions of him as he was about Antonin.
A comfortable silence fell between them after Brunetti had stopped speaking, until finally the old man said, 'He is a guest in my home, and so I have towards him the obligation of a host.' From the way the priest spoke, Brunetti had no doubt that he would defend his guest with his life, should that be necessary. 'He was sent back from Africa amidst circumstances which were not made clear. The official documents I received telling me that Padre Antonin' - Brunetti was conscious of the warmth with which the old man now used the first name - 'would be my guest made it clear that he is considered to be in disgrace by the people who sent him.'
He paused, as if inviting questions. When Brunetti asked none, he went on. 'He has been with me for some time now, and I have seen nothing that would explain that opinion. He is a decent and kind man. Perhaps he is too convinced of the lightness of his judgements, but that is something that can be said of most of us, I'm afraid. As we get older, some of us become less certain about what we think we know.'
'Apart from the certainty that we're never good enough to anyone?' Brunetti asked.
'That surely.'
Brunetti took this as the admonition it so clearly was and nodded in agreement. He saw that exhaustion had slipped into the room and taken its place in the old man's eyes and mouth.
'I would like to know how much he is to be trusted’ Brunetti suddenly said.
The old man shifted his weight to one side of the chair, and then to the other. He was so frail that it was more a matter of shifting bones and the cloth that covered them. ‘I believe he deserves not to be distrusted, my son,' the priest said, and then added, looking secretly gleeful when he said it, 'but at my age that's advice I give about almost everyone, and to almost everyone.'
Brunetti proved incapable of resisting the temptation to ask, 'Unless they come from Rome?'
The old priest's face grew serious and he nodded.
'Then I'll take your advice as given,' Brunetti said, getting to his feet. 'And thank you for giving it to me.'
7
As he continued on the way to the Questura, Brunetti considered what the priest had told him. Decades of exposure, not only to criminality, but to the daily business of life, had worn from Brunetti the capacity for instinctive trust. Perhaps, like the Contessa's faith and in the face of experience, it was something a person had to choose.
Good sense interrupted his reflections to remind him that nothing anyone had told him mentioned any specific action on the part of Antonin that would or could render him suspect in any way. In fact, all Antonin had done was come to give a blessing at the funeral of the mother of an old friend: what prevented Brunetti, then, from viewing this as an act of simple generosity? Decades ago, Antonin had brushed past Brunetti with an abrasive edge, and then he had become a priest.
Despite his mother's faith, anti-clericalism was part of Brunetti's genetic structure: his father had had only the worst to say about the clergy, an attitude explained by the contempt for power his experience of war had created in him. His mother had never offered opposition to her husband's beliefs just as she had never offered a good word about the clergy, though she was a woman who managed to find something good to say about most people - once even about a politician. These thoughts and memories kept pace with him as he walked back to work.
On his desk at the Questura, as he had feared, Brunetti discovered the fallout from Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta's attendance at the Berlin conference - no doubt transmitted by phone from his room at the Adlon. Their weekly 'crime alert' would next week be dedicated to the Mafia, no doubt with a view to extirpating it root and branch, something the country had been trying to do, with varying degrees of flaccidity, for more than a century.
He read through the copy of Patta's message, probably emailed to the Questura by Signorina Elettra from her own room in Abano Terme.
This is a war situation: we must consider ourselves to be at war with the Mafia, which is to be treated as a separate state existing within other states.
All of our forces to be mobilized.
Inter-agency cooperation to be maximized.
Liaison officer to be named.
Ministry of the Interior, Carabinieri, Guardia di Finanza contacts to be created and maintained.
Application to be made for special funding under Legge 41 bis.
Inter-Cultural dynamics to be stressed.
Brunetti stopped reading here, perplexed by the precise meaning of 'Inter-Cultural dynamics'. He knew from long experience that the people of the Veneto viewed things differently from those of Sicily, but he did not believe it was a gulf that required bridging by 'inter-cultural' anything. But trust Patta to have already seen the advantage to be offered by the possibility of 'special funding'.
Brunetti turned his attention to the growing file of papers and witness statements that had accumulated about a knife-fight that had taken place the week before in front of a bar on the riva of the Giudecca. The fight had ended with two men in the hospital, one with a lung that had been punctured by a fish-scaling knife and the other with an eye he was likely to lose, the result of a wound caused by the same knife.
The statements given by four witnesses explained that the knife had been drawn during an exchange of words, after which it had been thrust, then dropped, by one of the men, only to be picked up by the other and used again. Where the statements did not concur was in the attribution of ownership and original use of the knife, and in the chronology of the struggle. The brother and cousin of one man, who had been in the bar at the time the fight broke out, insisted that he had been assaulted, while the brother-in-law and friend of the other said that he had been the victim of unprovoked aggression. On both sides thus was simple truth suppressed. Both men's fingerprints were on the handle, both men's blood on the blade. Six of the other people in the bar, all natives of the Giudecca, could not remember seeing or hearing anything, and two Albanian workers who had stopped for a beer disappeared after the original questioning but before being asked for identity papers.
Brunetti looked up from reading the last papers in the file, struck by just how similar cultural dynamics on the Giudecca were to those said to be current in Sicily.
Vianello appeared at the door to Brunetti's office. 'You hear anything about this fight?' Brunetti asked, using the pages of the report to wave the Inspector to a seat.
'Yo
u mean those two idiots who ended up in hospital?'
'Yes.'
'One of them used to work in Porto Marghera, unloading boats, but I heard they had to get rid of him.' 'Why?' Brunetti asked.
'Usual stuff: too much alcohol and too few brains, and too much gone missing from what he was unloading.' 'Which one is he?'
'The one who lost an eye,' Vianello answered. 'Carlo Ruffo. I met him once.'
'You sure?' Brunetti asked. The medical report in the file had said only that the eye was in danger. 'About the eye, I mean.'
'It seems so. He picked up some sort of infection in the hospital, and the last I heard there was no hope they could save the eye. The infection seems to have spread to the other one.'
'So he'll be blind?' Brunetti asked.
'Perhaps. Blind and violent.'
'Odd combination.'
'Didn't stop Samson, did it?' Vianello asked, surprising Brunetti with the reference, before going on, 'I know this guy. Being blind and deaf and dumb wouldn't stop him from being violent.'
'You think he started it?'
Vianello's shrug was eloquent. 'If he didn't, then the other one did. In the end, it's the same thing.'
'Another violent man?'
'So I'm told, only he usually takes it out on his wife and kids.'
Brunetti paused then said, 'You make it sound like it's common knowledge.' 'On the Giudecca, it is.' 'And no one says anything?'
Again, that shrug. 'They figure it's none of their business, which is the way they think, and they also figure we wouldn't be able to do anything about it, and that's probably true.' Vianello crossed his legs and pushed himself back in the chair. 'If I ever raised a hand to Nadia, she'd have me pinned to the wall of the kitchen with the bread knife in two seconds.' After a reflective pause, he added, 'Maybe more women ought to respond like that.'
Brunetti was not in the mood for this sort of discussion and so he asked, 'You got a favourite for the owner of the knife?'