The Golden Egg

by Donna Leon

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Because in the end, we’re all the same: beaten down by this system that is never going to change, by the people who are on top and who do exactly what they want to do.’ She sounded not in the least angry. If anything, she sounded relieved, but that might be from nothing other than being able, finally, to say this to someone.

  Brunetti stopped to try to remember which was Ramo Sagredo or when he had last been near it. His feet suddenly remembered and took him to the left.

  He led her through the underpass and stopped at the corner. ‘Well?’ she asked.

  Brunetti gave her a level look. ‘It’s the twenty-first century, Griffoni. And that’s the future.’

  ‘You don’t mind?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course I mind,’ he answered. ‘But there’s nothing we can do.’

  She turned and looked at the slice of laguna exposed between the buildings. ‘Except talk to Signora Ghezzi?’ she finally guessed.

  ‘Exactly.’

  The old woman lived on the fourth floor, the windows of her kitchen, where she asked them to come to talk to her, looking out at the laguna and the cemetery. Though Brunetti knew from her pension records that she was eighty-four, Signora Ghezzi appeared at least a decade younger. White-haired and round-faced, she had the apple-skin wrinkles he had seen on the faces of his mother’s friends. Her expression, however, was that of a younger person, quick and intelligent. She offered them coffee, and both accepted.

  Griffoni went and stood at the window, watching the boats and clouds chase one another to the east. ‘How beautiful, to stand here,’ she said. Signora Ghezzi turned from taking cups and saucers from the cupboard and smiled at her, but Brunetti wondered uneasily if this were simply another attempt to flatter a witness into confiding in them.

  The coffee bubbled up and was quickly served. When it was put in front of them – Griffoni having taken her place at the table – Signora Ghezzi asked, ‘What is it you’d like to know?’

  ‘We wondered if you could tell us about Ana and about the Lembo family,’ Brunetti said, deciding that subterfuge was not likely to work with this woman.

  Signora Ghezzi spooned sugar into her coffee; Brunetti noticed the faint tremor in her hand, the grains of sugar on the table and in the saucer. ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘Because I don’t like the way Davide lived,’ Brunetti surprised himself by saying.

  He surprised Signora Ghezzi, too, who asked, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He was born with physical and mental problems, and his mother never did anything about them – to help him. That’s one thing, and it’s terrible. But no one else ever did anything to help. No doctor or social worker and no city office. Nothing. No one paid attention, and he grew up the way he did.’

  ‘I never saw him as a baby, you know.’

  They were speaking in Veneziano, hers the accent of deepest Castello, the one he loved the most. He glanced at Griffoni, who seemed to be following everything; not that he could stop to ask this, not now. What was it Ana Cavanella had never done? Helped? Cared enough? Had the intelligence to know how to help? Did what he, four decades later, thought she should have done? ‘She never tried to get him help,’ he repeated.

  ‘How do you know this?’ Signora Ghezzi asked.

  Brunetti opened his hands in a display of candour. ‘We’ve checked all the city records, and there’s no sign of Davide: no health card, and he never went to school, and he had no pension.’

  She looked away from Brunetti and out the window, as if only the long view across the water could help relieve her feelings. Neither Brunetti nor Griffoni said anything. ‘She must have done it like that,’ she said.

  Alert to her remark but not wanting her to realize that he was, Brunetti contented himself with saying, ‘Would you tell me about her, Signora?’

  ‘There’s not much to tell, really.’ She took a sip of coffee, reached her spoon towards the sugar bowl, but pulled it back, as if she heard the reproachful voice of her doctor telling her not to use so much sugar.

  ‘Ana was a simple girl. When she came. I don’t know how much schooling she’d had: maybe until a year before she came to us.’ Absently, she stirred her coffee.

  ‘There was a woman who did the laundry and the ironing – the signora was crazy for having things washed and ironed, and it took this woman three days a week to keep everything looking the way she wanted it.’ She took another sip of coffee, then got up and went to the cabinet for a plastic box filled with biscuits. She set them on the table and took one, dipped it into her coffee and bit off the very end of it. Both of them reached in and took a biscuit.

  ‘Where was I?’ she asked, looking from one to the other of them.

  ‘The ironing woman,’ Griffoni said.

  ‘Ah, of course. She left. No explanation. That happened a lot to the Signora. But before she went she told her that she knew a girl who could do the ironing and clean, too. She said she was a good girl.’ She stopped and looked at Brunetti.

  ‘Ana?’ he asked and took another biscuit.

  ‘Yes. Her mother brought her round, and she talked to the Signora. I wasn’t there. But two days later, Ana moved into a room up on the fourth floor and was in the storeroom all day long, ironing. Then she started to help me with the beds and cleaning.’ The woman’s eyes travelled to that distant past, when she could eat as much sugar as she pleased and had a young girl to help with the heavy work.

  ‘Did you talk to her, Signora?’ Griffoni asked. ‘She must have been lonely in such a big place,’ she added and took another biscuit.

  ‘I think she was. At the beginning. But the signora kept us busy.’

  So casually that Brunetti could do nothing but marvel at her skill, Griffoni dipped her biscuit into the coffee, bit off only the damp end, and smiled in continuing delight, then asked, ‘What was she like, the Signora?’ It was seamless, and Brunetti, if he had been asked, would have told her everything he knew.

  ‘She was very religious,’ Signora Ghezzi said, but it was a neutral word, without the least suggestion of approval. She might as well have been saying that the Signora was tall or right-handed. ‘There was a relative, a nun, who lived in the palazzo. We never saw much of her, but the Signora did. And the girls.’ She reached for another biscuit but resisted and settled for finishing her coffee. She looked across at Griffoni. ‘Have more of them. My daughter-in-law makes them.’

  ‘They’re wonderful,’ Griffoni said, taking another. She dipped it into her coffee and ate it with something approaching glee. Griffoni, he knew, hated coffee without milk and disliked sweets or pastries of any sort. She started to dip the stub end of the biscuit into the coffee but stopped herself, holding it up in the air as visual proof of how arrested she was by her own thought. ‘It can’t have been a very exciting place for young girls,’ she began, as though the idea had flashed upon her, then let her voice trail off, looked at Brunetti and said, ‘Sorry, Commissario.’ Then, to Signora Ghezzi, ‘I don’t mean to . . .’ and let that trail off, too, though this time she managed to blush. To cover that, she finished her coffee.

  Signora Ghezzi smiled and leaned forward to pat her arm. ‘Don’t worry, dear. You’re exactly right. And it was religion that made the Signora find out.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ Brunetti said for both of them.

  ‘She was away at one of her religious retreats. The Signora. She had another relative – I think it was an aunt – in a convent in Assisi, and she went to stay with her for a week every month. Her confessor was there – she was very close to him – and she told us how she lived with the sisters, following their rules: getting up and going to bed when they did, and eating with them. But not talking. For a week.’ She smiled at Brunetti and said, ‘We were all very impressed with that at the time, I can tell you.’

  ‘At the time.’ Brunetti was struck by Signora Ghezzi’s language. He smiled back at her but did not interrupt.

  ‘Well, anyway, this time the Signora was away for ten d
ays, and when she came back, Ana didn’t come to work for three days, so when she did, the Signora hadn’t seen her for almost two weeks, so she noticed the change in her.’ Signora Ghezzi touched the tips of her forefingers together and drew a wide arc above her stomach.

  Both Brunetti and Griffoni stared at her.

  ‘You hadn’t noticed?’ Griffoni asked. Better that she ask, Brunetti thought: this was women’s business.

  ‘Well, I knew something was wrong. But I wasn’t sure.’

  ‘Did anyone else in the house know?’ Griffoni asked.

  ‘Lavinia was away at school, and Lucrezia wasn’t paying attention to much of what was happening around her.’

  Like so much of what the old woman had said, that cried out for clarification. Brunetti nodded and waited for her to go on.

  ‘What happened?’ Griffoni asked.

  Signora Ghezzi shook her head. ‘I don’t know. The Signora spoke to her, and then she was gone. That’s when the Signora got sick. At the time, as I told you,’ she repeated, ‘I thought it must be because she was so religious.’ She stopped speaking and took another biscuit. She put it in her mouth all in one piece and chewed.

  Silence fell. From the direction of the laguna, they heard the motor of a large boat go past. Neither Brunetti nor Griffoni paid attention to it, not with the interesting sounds that were on offer here.

  Few people liked betrayal, he knew. To avoid it or the accusation of it, people would dodge around facts or present them in a way that hid them at the same time as it showed them. ‘“At the time,”’ Signora,’ Brunetti repeated in a level voice. When Signora Ghezzi responded with only a glance in his direction, he added, ‘We saw Lucrezia yesterday, Signora. She’s still not paying much attention to what’s going on around her.’

  He noticed Griffoni suddenly remove her arms from the table and sit farther back in her chair, as if to create a distance between herself and Signora Ghezzi. The old woman noticed it, too.

  ‘Did Signora Lembo ever mention Ana again?’ Brunetti asked.

  Surprised, Signora Ghezzi asked, ‘Did you know the Signora, then?’

  ‘No, Signora. I never met her.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said. She folded her hands on the table in front of her and looked down at her knuckles. Like Ana’s hands, hers had spent a great deal of time in cold water and harsh detergents. Like his mother’s hands, as well. She looked quickly across the table at him. ‘But you’ve learned enough about her to understand her,’ she observed.

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because of your question. That was her way: if she didn’t like something, she made it not exist any more.’ She folded her hands in her lap.

  Griffoni interrupted to ask, ‘So she made Ana not exist any more?’

  The old woman nodded.

  ‘And her baby?’ Griffoni asked.

  ‘Oh,’ she said in a normal voice, ‘She made him not exist, either.’

  25

  ‘What does that mean, Signora?’ Brunetti asked calmly. The boy had become a man, so there had been no abortion or miscarriage or early death. The woman had, however unknowingly, expressed what had been bothering Brunetti from the moment he first heard about Davide Cavanella’s death: his failure ever to exist.

  ‘She never talked about Ana again or allowed anyone to mention her.’ She looked into the past and said, ‘I can still hear her saying it, when Lucrezia asked where she was: “That person doesn’t exist.” The girl had been there for more than two years, and suddenly she didn’t exist.’ She looked at them, first at one, then the other. ‘That’s exactly what she said. Those were her words. “That person doesn’t exist.”’

  She remained silent for some time, so as to allow them to hear the words and then their echo. When she glanced at Brunetti again, it seemed to him that her face had changed somehow or that her eyes had become sharper and she had ceased being the retired old maidservant and become a younger and stronger woman.

  ‘Why are you asking this?’ she asked.

  Brunetti realized that, had the woman who had let them into the house and given them biscuits asked that question, he probably would have given her a sweet lie. But this woman would have none of that and, from the look of her, would laugh at him if he tried it.

  ‘I want him to have lived.’ He listened to that, unsure why he could not make things clearer.

  ‘Why does it concern you so much?’ Signora Ghezzi asked. Griffoni turned and looked at him, as curious as the other woman.

  ‘Because everything I’ve been told since he died means something different, and everyone I talk to has something to hide or that they don’t want me to know.’ He remembered the stone-blank faces of the neighbours and their truculent refusal to speak. Solidarity with an unfortunate woman who had lost her only son? Shame at having been part of the even greater silence that had filled the life of the deaf man?

  Brunetti shoved his chair back and got to his feet. He took two steps away from the table but turned back and sat down again. He looked across at Signora Ghezzi’s lined face, feeling himself reduced to honesty. ‘What should I know, Signora?’

  Slowly she got to her feet and stood for a moment to steady herself, the way many old people did when standing up after having been sitting for any length of time. She stacked her cup and Brunetti’s but, before she could reach for Griffoni’s, the younger woman stood and carried her cup to the sink. Taking the plastic box to the counter, she put on the cover and snapped it closed.

  She took the other cups from Signora Ghezzi, put them in the sink and ran cold water in them. After that she stood by the window, leaving it to the others to decide what was going to happen.

  Signora Ghezzi kept one palm flat on the table. ‘I think you should find out who owns the house where Ana lives,’ she said. ‘And I think you should bear in mind that most people don’t change as they go through life, and as life goes through them.’

  ‘Do you mean Ana?’

  ‘I mean all of them,’ she said. She appeared to consider this, then added, ‘Lucrezia is the best of them. Of all the people you’ll meet because of this, she’s the only honest one.’

  ‘Not Ana?’

  ‘Ana Cavanella is a cold-hearted viper,’ she said with no inflection whatsoever. ‘But Signora Lembo was worse.’

  If this kind-eyed old woman had hurled herself to the floor in a fit of demonic possession and begun to scream obscenities at him and Griffoni, Brunetti could have been no more startled. That would have shocked him only for herself, but her quietly spoken words spurred him to re-examine most of the people he had spoken to or heard about during the last days.

  Ana Cavanella was the bereaved mother; Lucrezia was a ruin; Signora Lembo the much-photographed wife, mother, and saint. The King of Copper remained an enigma: powerful, potent, always away on business.

  In a voice softer than Brunetti had ever heard her use, Griffoni broke the silence to ask, ‘Will you tell us more, Signora?’

  Neither woman moved, then Signora Ghezzi lowered herself into her chair, looked at both of them and finally said, ‘Most of them are dead, you know. All that’s left is the money, and it’s never done them any good. Now all they can do is fight over that. No, I don’t think I want to tell you any more. Because it doesn’t make any difference.’

  Brunetti opened his mouth to speak, perhaps to protest, but she raised a hand, and he stopped. ‘I’m older than you are, Signore,’ she told him and then, with a kind look towards Griffoni, ‘and much older than the Signora, and I have my own ideas about this, different from yours.’

  There was a ring of liquid on the surface of the table, and she stuck a forefinger into it and rubbed at it until it was gone. She looked at Brunetti and addressed him. ‘They all did things because of the way they are, you know, not because they wanted something or because of something special that happened. It’s just the way they are. And that doesn’t change.’

  She leaned forward, as if to push herself to her feet again, but gave up the eff
ort and settled back into her chair. ‘You can go now, and thank you for the visit. It’s nice for old people to see new faces. It’s not good for us always to look at the faces from the past.’ She smiled after she said this and waved a hand as a signal of some sort: to brush them out of her house; to wish them well; to sum up the futility of human desires. It could have been any one of these. Or all of them. They left.

  ‘Do we go and talk to her?’ Griffoni asked.

  It was convenience that decided him. They were less than a hundred metres from the Celestia stop, and he could hear the boat approaching from the right. Instead of answering, he turned away and walked quickly to the imbarcadero; she followed in his wake.

  As the boat pulled up, Brunetti turned and said, ‘Go back and find out who owns the house. Call me as soon as you know. I’ll be at the hospital.’

  Griffoni was walking away even before he was on the boat for the one-stop trip to the Ospedale. When he asked at the desk in the entrance hall, Brunetti was told that Signora Cavanella had been taken to Geriatria, the only ward with free beds.

  Brunetti made his way through the courtyard, decided to take the steps, and heard the ward as soon as he turned into the last flight. A high-pitched voice, no telling its sex, began to climb up the scales, dully repeating ‘No, no, no, no,’ until it reached the top of its vocal range and fell back down into the lower notes, only to begin again. Brunetti emerged at the nurses’ desk and asked where he could find Signora Cavanella.

  ‘Room fifteen,’ the nurse said, without glancing up from her magazine.

  He passed the room from which the voice was coming, turned right and then left at the end of the corridor, the voice growing fainter, but no less agonized, with each turn. He stopped just before the next to last room in the corridor, not certain how he was going to deal with a woman who had, with a phrase, been transformed from a bereaved mother to a cold-hearted viper. Deciding that he would leave it to events to resolve that, he knocked lightly on the side of the open door and went in.

  An old man slept in the bed closest to the door, toothless mouth agape. In the other bed, a long, mountainous form lay under the blankets; Brunetti didn’t even have to look at the bearded face to know it was a man and that he’d entered the wrong room. He turned and took one step towards the door and suddenly stopped as he saw a man he knew pass by, coming from the direction of the last room on the ward. Leaving him enough time to get beyond the door, Brunetti moved quickly over and put his head out into the corridor.