The Golden Egg

by Donna Leon

  ‘Dare I ask the name of his secretary?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Lucia Ravagni,’ Signorina Elettra answered.

  ‘Is she by any chance the part owner of a shop in Campo San Barnaba?’ he asked, almost as if a voice had whispered the necessary question into his ear.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If he’s a lawyer and she’s running a shop, when is it that they find time to work as a regional counsellor and a secretary? And where?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘There’s an office assigned to them in the Uffici Regionali.’

  ‘“Assigned?”’

  ‘A friend of mine who works in one of the offices on the second floor – their offices are on the first – says they are seldom in evidence.’

  ‘No doubt keeping a careful eye on sporting events,’ Brunetti suggested.

  ‘Or students,’ she added in the bright tone she used in response to life’s many absurdities. But then Signorina Elettra’s voice grew serious and she asked, ‘Why do we tolerate this? Why do we let them appoint their friends and their wives and their children and not go after them with clubs?’

  Brunetti, as he did with increasing frequency, chose to treat her outburst seriously. ‘I think it’s because we’re a tolerant people and understand human weakness. And because, for most of us, the only people we trust fully are members of our families, so we understand when other people do, as well.’

  ‘Do you trust yours?’ she asked in an uncharacteristic display of curiosity.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Everyone in it?’

  ‘More than I would the state, or most of its representatives, yes,’ Brunetti said and then, to extricate himself – perhaps both of them – from the unwonted intimacy of the conversation, said, ‘I’d like you to find out anything else you can about them.’

  ‘I’ve asked some people,’ was her answer.

  Very conscious of the fact that, as a civilian employee, Signorina Elettra had no official role in the work of the police and had taken no oath to the state, and thus should in no way be made privy to the investigations of the police, Brunetti said, ‘The mayor wants Patta to be sure that nothing is made public about the bribes her partner has been paying the vigili.’

  She hit a key, and the screen grew dark. Idly, she turned it towards her but kept her eyes on Brunetti. ‘I wonder what’s going on.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Brunetti said.

  As if surprised by her own realization, she said, ‘There’s something of the purity of a syllogism in my eagerness to work on this.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘I want bad things to happen to politicians. The mayor is a politician. Therefore, I want bad things to happen to the mayor.’

  Her smile positively glowed. ‘It leaves me little choice, does it?’ she asked.

  ‘As a syllogism, there is no flaw in it,’ Brunetti said, logic having been one of his heart’s delights at university. Then, soberly, ‘But it deals with emotions, not really with facts, doesn’t it, so I’m not sure that it is within the mandate of the syllogism. At least as a means of proof.’

  Her look was sober when she said, ‘There is no error of fact, Dottore: not in the first premise, and not in the second, and certainly not in the conclusion.’ Then, lightly, ‘I’ll let you know whatever I find.’

  It made no sense. It made no sense. It made no sense. Brunetti repeated this to himself as he climbed the steps to his office. Then, for the last flight: no sense, no sense, no sense. What did the mayor have in mind when

  he asked Patta to see if things could be kept quiet? The more people who were told to keep something quiet, the greater the certainty that it would become public information. Or was the mayor, like so many of his colleagues, convinced that he was somehow above the normal rules that governed human behaviour? Why else would politicians continue to speak so openly of their crimes and misdemeanours on telefonini that even they must know were open to the ears of many of the forces of order? Why continue to discuss bribes with the men who paid them? Why give thousands of Euros to prostitutes and, when caught, claim it was a payment made to keep them from falling into prostitution? How stupid they must believe us to be; what contemptible sheep we are to them.

  Surely, not all politicians could be like this. Were this the case, Brunetti realized, the only options open to a decent person would be emigration, or suicide.

  His phone was ringing when he entered his office. Believing it might be Patta, suddenly returned to the Questura, he answered with his name.

  ‘You know the boy who doesn’t talk?’ Paola asked. ‘At the dry cleaner’s?’

  His mind still on politicians and Patta, Brunetti could think of nothing more than, ‘What?’

  ‘The boy who worked in the dry cleaner’s. The deaf one.’ He could tell from her voice that Paola was troubled, but it took him a moment to recall the boy, who sometimes used to be seen in the back room of the shop, folding things or standing idly, head moving back and forth as his eyes followed the motions of the iron that imposed order on shirts and dresses. Brunetti’s memory of him was hazy, save for the folding and for the odd, arrhythmic way the boy moved.

  ‘Yes,’ he finally said. ‘Why?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Paola said, sounding saddened by the news. But then she said, ‘At least that’s the rumour in the neighbourhood.’

  ‘What happened?’ Brunetti asked, wondering what sort of accident could have befallen him and how his deafness might have contributed to it. Many of the delivery men who pushed their wheeled metal carts around the city cried ahead to warn people to get out of the way: because he could not hear, the boy might have been run over, crushed, anything. Or knocked down the steps of a bridge or into the water.

  ‘A man at the bar where I was having coffee said he saw an ambulance in front of a house this morning, and when they came out they were carrying one of those plastic boxes. He knew that’s where he lived – the deaf boy – so he asked the men if that’s who it was. All they told him was that it was someone from the first floor, a man.’ She paused, then asked, ‘They carry dead people in those, don’t they?’

  Brunetti, who had seen too many of them, confirmed this.

  There was a long silence, and then Paola said, ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  Her remark confused Brunetti. If he was dead, there was nothing she, or anyone, could do. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘His family. Do something for them.’

  ‘Do you even know who his family is?’

  ‘It’s the people at the dry cleaner’s, isn’t it?’

  Brunetti felt a flash of irritation that his time was being taken up with this, and that was followed by a flash of shame. Was he meant to reprimand his wife for an excess of compassion? ‘I don’t know. I’ve never paid attention.’

  ‘It must be,’ Paola said. ‘He was pretty useless as a worker. I always figured he was the son of the woman who runs the place or maybe of the one who irons. No one else would have hired him.’ After a moment, she added, ‘Though I haven’t seen him there for a long time. I wonder what happened?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Brunetti said. ‘You can’t very well ask, can you?’

  ‘No. No.’

  ‘Maybe the newsagent?’

  ‘You know I can’t ask him,’ Paola said.

  Four years ago, Paola and the newsagent had got into a heated discussion when she asked him why he sold a certain newspaper and the man replied that it was because people wanted it. That had led Paola, a woman not known for moderation in argument, to ask if he’d use the same justification if he sold drugs, before putting down the money for her newspapers and walking away.

  It had been Brunetti, after she recounted the incident at dinner, who had told her that the man’s son had died some years before of an overdose, information that had reduced Paola to tears of shame. She had gone back the next day and tried to apologize, but the man had turned his back on her and returned to untying a parcel of magazines. Since then, it had fallen to Brunetti to b
uy the newspapers.

  ‘Would you ask him? Or someone else in the neighbourhood?’ she asked.

  Before he agreed, Brunetti wanted to know: ‘Is this curiosity or concern?’

  ‘Concern,’ she answered immediately. ‘He was such a miserable creature. I don’t even know how long I saw him there. Or on the street. Or standing there in the back room, folding clothes or watching them work. And always looking so terribly sad.’

  Brunetti remembered the boy’s awkward gestures, the odd jerking of his head that suggested other problems more serious than the deafness that had cut him off from the world.

  ‘Was there anything else wrong with him?’ he broke in to ask.

  ‘What do you mean? Isn’t being a deaf mute enough?’

  ‘Was he mute, too?’

  ‘Did you ever hear him speak?’

  ‘No,’ Brunetti answered, unsure whether this meant he had to be dumb, as well as deaf. ‘I told you; I hardly noticed him.’

  Paola sighed, ‘I’m afraid that’s what most people will say. How awful, eh?’

  ‘Yes. It is.’

  ‘Oh my God,’ Paola said. ‘I don’t even know his name if I want to ask about him. He’s just the boy who doesn’t talk. Didn’t talk.’

  ‘I think people will know who you mean.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m talking about, Guido,’ she said, words that would usually be spoken angrily but now radiated only sadness. ‘That’s what’s so awful. Think about how old he must have been. Thirty-five? Forty? More? And we all referred to him as a boy.’ Then, after another pause, ‘The boy who doesn’t talk.’

  ‘I’ll see if they know anything downstairs,’ Brunetti volunteered. ‘And at the hospital.’

  ‘Thanks, Guido,’ she said. ‘I know it sounds as if I’m being a baby over this, but it’s terrible – to have a life like that, and then die, and people don’t even know your name.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can find out,’ Brunetti said and replaced the phone.

  He picked it up immediately and dialled the number of the morgue. Identifying himself to Rizzardi’s assistant, he asked if they had had a man brought in from San Polo that morning.

  ‘He’s with him now,’ the man explained, quite as though Rizzardi were a normal doctor and were in the examining room having a look to see what the problem was.

  ‘I’m in my office. Would you ask him to call me when he’s finished?’

  ‘Of course, Dottore.’

  Paola was right, he realized. To have lived a life, even a life cut short in the middle, and not to have a name to be called by, to live among people who did not know your name – Brunetti had no word to describe it. If the man – he would call him a man now, not a boy – had been mute as well as deaf, how had he communicated with the world around him? How had he expressed even the most simple desire, save by pointing at the thing he wanted? But what if he were cold or hot or wanted something to eat: was he reduced to a life of pantomime? Had someone taught him to read? To write? To sign? And if not, then how did he establish contact with the world?

  It daunted Brunetti, the pathos of it.

  The phone rang, and when he answered he heard Rizzardi’s voice. ‘Ciao, Guido. Franco said you called about the man from San Polo.’

  ‘Yes. My wife called me and told me he was dead. We knew him. Sort of.’

  Rizzardi did not ask for clarification, leading Brunetti to wonder whether all any of us ever do is sort of know people. He continued, ‘So I called to ask you to tell me what you can about him.’

  ‘His name is,’ Rizzardi began, said, ‘Wait a minute,’ and set the phone down. He was back in a few seconds

  and said, ‘Davide Cavanella, or at least that’s the name written on the papers that came with him. Someone at the address must have given it to them.’

  ‘What caused his death?’

  ‘It could be suicide,’ the pathologist said.

  ‘Suicide?’ repeated an astonished Brunetti. ‘But he was a deaf mute. And he may have been retarded.’ He had no idea why those two things should exclude the possibility of suicide, but they did.

  ‘I’m not sure I see the connection,’ Rizzardi answered mildly. ‘If anything, I’d think those poor devils would be more likely to kill themselves than the rest of us. At least we have the comfort of complaining about our lives and having people listen to us.’

  ‘Are you joking, Ettore?’ Brunetti asked.

  After a brief pause, Rizzardi said, ‘I might have been, when I said it, but I think it’s true. I don’t know about you, but it helps me to be able to complain or to be angry and have people tell me I’m right to think the way I do.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Brunetti agreed. Then he asked, ‘How’d he die?’

  ‘It started out the most peaceful way, and then it got ugly,’ the pathologist said.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘He took sleeping pills, quite a lot of them, with what I think was hot chocolate and something sweet: biscuits or cake. And a lot of these pills are brightly coloured.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘You said he might have been retarded,’ the pathologist explained. ‘The pills might have looked like sweets to him.’

  Brunetti considered this possibility and then asked, ‘And then?’

  ‘He fell asleep on his back, and then he started to vomit,’ Rizzardi began, paused and then asked, ‘You know what happens, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was some time before Rizzardi spoke again. ‘It must be awful. You think you’re going to go to sleep peacefully, and then you end up choking to death. Poor devil. Terrible. Terrible.’

  It had happened to Brunetti only once, choking, when he was a young man and a piece of bread got caught in his throat. Luckily, he’d been eating in a trattoria, and even more luckily, the waiter serving the next table had dropped the plates he was carrying and grabbed Brunetti from behind, yanking him to his feet and enclosing him in an iron grip. A terrified Brunetti had coughed up the piece of bread, followed quickly by everything he had eaten that day. Draped across the table, his sleeve in a plate of pasta, Brunetti had slowly gasped himself back to life and, returned to it, had been astonished to find himself in an almost empty room.

  Decades later, he could still remember the terror that had gripped him and the certainty that he was going to die. One thing that had astonished him at the time was his perception that everything was happening with courtly slowness. His hands had moved at a snail’s pace to grasp his own throat; the plates the waiter let fall when he started towards Brunetti had floated to the floor as slowly as snowflakes. And the sharp jolt of pressure to his chest that had saved his life had taken for ever to come.

  He still remembered that strange prolongation of time, and the sense, when he looked up from the table, breathing almost normally, that time had slipped back to its normal pace.

  ‘ . . . no sign of organic damage,’ he heard Rizzardi say.

  ‘What?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘I didn’t find any sign of organic damage.’

  ‘But he died,’ said a confused Brunetti, trying to recall what little he knew of physiology. ‘Choking would stop the oxygen, wouldn’t it?’ Beyond that, he had no idea what the actual cause of death would be. Lack of oxygen to the brain? Or to the lungs and then to the brain? But what did that do?

  ‘Oh, there was that,’ Rizzardi said. ‘I was talking about his ears. I didn’t see any sign of injury or scarring from illness that would have caused the deafness.’ The pathologist continued, reflectively, ‘But if it was genetic, then there’d be nothing to see, anyway. There was no sign of damage to his vocal cords, either.’

  Brunetti, still puzzled as to what the actual physical cause of death might have been, didn’t react to this and only asked, ‘Would the pills have killed him, anyway? Even without the choking?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Only think?’

  With a voice into which he put an almost parental calm, Rizzardi said,
‘I’m waiting for the results of the lab tests.’

  ‘Let me know when you get them, will you?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘I’ll send the report to you,’ Rizzardi said, then added, as if he had the power to read Brunetti’s mind, ‘The choking cuts off oxygen to the brain, and that shuts down the whole system. It can happen in a few minutes. That’s enough.’ That said, the pathologist put down the phone.

  The very words, ‘a few minutes’, renewed Brunetti’s memory of and terror at his own experience. What would it be like to choke for minutes? And had this poor dead man experienced the bizarre elasticization of time?

  5

  Brunetti had time to tell Paola only the bare facts of the man’s death before the kids arrived for lunch, which put an end to the subject. Over a salad of carpaccio of red beet, ruccola and parmigiano, Chiara asked permission to go on a school trip to Padova that coming Saturday, and over involtini of chicken breast, which she ignored and replaced with cheese, her parents gave their permission for her to go. As soon as everyone was finished, Chiara went to her room to study, and Raffi went off to play soccer with friends on what the family agreed was probably going to be one of the few remaining mild afternoons of the autumn. Brunetti returned to the Questura.

  Signorina Elettra had left before lunch, having selected herself as the person to attend an afternoon presentation by the Guardia di Finanza on the newest techniques for detecting and combating identity theft and computer hacking. When Brunetti had learned of this, he had expected protest from those police officers who might more rightfully have been chosen to attend. Not a whimper.

  Had it been any other employee, Brunetti realized, he would have looked askance at her self-selection, but the ways of Signorina Elettra, though they were not beyond reproach, were assuredly beyond question: like his sense

  of time when he had choked on the piece of bread, her prerogatives had expanded.

  Dutifully, Brunetti spent the afternoon going through the files that had accumulated on his desk during the last weeks, reading through them methodically, or at least allowing his eyes to pass methodically over the words. Because he had lived for more than two decades with a woman who responded to infelicities of language with the ardour of a shark greeted by a bleeding wound, Brunetti’s interest was kept alive, if not by the subject matter of the documents, then by the language in which these subjects were presented. A man who had beaten his wife senseless, causing her to lose the sight of one eye, spoke during his questioning of his ‘difficulty in sustaining a life-affirming relationship’; the wife of a prominent lawyer, caught at the doors of the Armani shop wearing a short leather jacket with the price tags carefully sliced from it, maintained that she had ‘serious problems in recognizing the arbitrary distinctions in ownership between shop and client’, and maintained that she was, anyway, merely stepping into the calle to see how the colour looked in the light of day. The fact that the bag she wore across her shoulder held five T-shirts and two pairs of slacks did nothing to clarify her rhetoric, though it did clarify the situation. It had taken her husband less than two hours to arrive at the Questura with a certificate from a psychiatrist, attesting the woman’s pre-existing ‘difficulties in ownership assignment’, and thus she had been released.