by Donna Leon
‘Surely you’re joking,’ she said in feigned astonishment.
‘No, who?’
‘On my colleagues. The students, poor babies, they’re just young and callow and will grow up, most of them, and turn into reasonably pleasant human beings. It’s my colleagues I long to destroy, if only to put a stop to the endless litany of self-congratulation I have to listen to.’
‘All of them?’ he asked, accustomed to hear her denounce particular people and thus surprised at her scope.
She considered this, as if she knew there were six bullets in his gun and she was preparing a list. After a while she said, not without a certain disappointment, ‘No, not all of them. Maybe five or six.’
‘But that’s still half of your department, isn’t it?’
‘Twelve on the books, but only nine teach.’
‘What do the other three do?’
‘Nothing. But it’s called research.’
‘How can that be?’
‘One of them is aggressive and probably gaga; Professoressa Bettin had what is described as a crisis of nerves and has been put on medical leave until further notice, which probably means until she retires; and the Vice-Chairman, Professore Delia Grazia, well, he’s a special case.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘He’s sixty-eight and should have retired three years ago, but he refuses to leave.’
‘But he doesn’t teach?’
‘He can’t be trusted with female students.’
‘What?’
‘You heard me. He can’t be trusted with female students. Or, for that matter,’ she added after a reflective pause, ‘with female faculty.’
‘What does he do?’
‘With the students it’s a kind of dirty-minded subtext to everything he says during his tutorials, well, when he still used to have them. Or he’d read graphic descriptions of sex in his classes. But always from the classics, so no one could complain, or if they did, he’d take on an attitude of shocked disdain, as if he were the only protector of the Classical tradition.’ She paused for him to respond, but when he didn’t she went on: ‘With the younger faculty members I’ve been told that he blocks their chance of promotion unless there’s an exchange of sex. He’s the Vice-Chairman of the department, so he gets to approve promotions or, in some cases, disapprove them.’
‘You said he’s sixty-eight,’ Brunetti said, not without a certain disgust.
‘Which, if you think about it, just gives you some idea of how long he’s got away with it.’
‘But no longer?’
‘To a lesser degree, at least since he was taken out of the classroom.’
‘What does he do?’
‘I told you, research.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It means he collects his salary and, when he decides to leave, he’ll collect a generous bonus and then an even more generous pension.”
‘Is all of this common knowledge?’
‘Among the faculty, certainly; probably among the students, as well.’
‘And nothing is done about it?’
As soon as he spoke, he knew what she was going to answer, and she did. ‘It’s no different from what Marco told you today. Everyone knows these things go on, but no one is willing to take the risk of making a formal complaint because of the consequences. To be the first one to make this public would be professional suicide. They’d be sent to some place like Caltanissetta and made to teach a class in something like ...’ He watched her attempting to formulate a subject of sufficient horror. ‘Elements of Bardic Verse in Early Catalan Court Poetry.’
‘It’s strange,’ he said. ‘I suppose we’ve all come, more or less, to expect this sort of thing in a government office. But we all think, or maybe we hope - or maybe I do, anyway - that it’s somehow different in a university.’
Paola repeated her imitation of Saint Agatha and soon after they went to bed.
* * * *
In the morning, over coffee, Paola asked, ‘Well?’
Brunetti knew exactly what this referred to: the answer he had not given the previous evening, when Paola had told him about the request of her student, and so he said, ‘It depends on what the crime was that was committed, and what the sentence was.’
‘She didn’t say what the crime was, only that he was convicted and sent to San Servolo.’
Idly stirring his coffee, Brunetti asked, ‘And the woman’s Austrian? Did she say who the man was?’
Paola thought back to her hurried conversation with the girl, trying to remember details. ‘No, but she did say the woman was an old friend of her grandfather, so I assume she’s talking about him.’
‘What’s the girl’s name?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Why do you need to know that?’
‘I could ask Signorina Elettra to see if there’s anything in the files.’
‘But the old woman isn’t related to her,’ Paola protested, somehow reluctant to give the girl up to police investigation, no matter how delicate and no matter how well intended that investigation might be. Who knew the consequences of introducing her name into the police computer?
‘Presumably her grandfather would be,’ Brunetti said, sounding far more pedantic than he wanted to but irritated that his wife had brought this homework back with her.
‘Guido,’ Paola said in a voice she herself found unusually firm, ‘all she wanted to know was whether it was theoretically possible that a pardon could be granted. She didn’t ask for a police examination, just for information.’ Paola, a professor of the old school, could not shake herself of the belief that, in some way, she functionedin loco parentis to her students, a belief which hardened her resolve not to reveal the girl’s name.
He set his cup down. ‘I don’t think I can do anything until I know what he was convicted of, this man who is or is not her grandfather.’ If things like this had ever come up in any of his university law classes, he had long since forgotten. ‘If it was something minor, like theft or assault, a pardon would hardly be necessary, especially after all this time, but if it was a major crime, like murder, then perhaps, perhaps .. ,’ He considered further. ‘Did she say how long ago it happened?’
‘No, but if he was sent to San Servolo, then it had to be before the Legge Basaglia, and that was in the Seventies, wasn’t it?’ Paola said.
Brunetti considered this. ‘Umm,’ he muttered. After a long silence, he said, ‘It’ll be hard, even if we learn his name.’
‘We don’t need to know his name, Guido,’ Paola insisted. ‘All the girl wants is a theoretical answer.’
‘Then the theoretical answer is that no other kind of answer is possible until I know what the crime was,’
‘Which means no answer is possible?’ Paola asked acerbically.
‘Paola,’ Brunetti said in much the same tone, ‘I’m not making this up. It’s like asking me to put a value on a painting or a print without letting me see it.’ Both of them, later, were to recall this comparison.
‘Then what am I supposed to tell her?’ Paola asked.
‘Tell her exactly what I’ve said. It’s what any lawyer of good conscience . . .’ he began, ignored Paola’s raised eyebrows at this most absurd of possibilities, and went on, ‘would tell her. What is it that schoolmaster in that book you’re always quoting says? “Facts, facts, facts”? Well, until I have the facts or anyone else has the facts, that’s the only answer she’s going to get.’
Paola had been weighing the cost and consequences of further opposition and had decided they were hardly worth it. Guido was acting in good faith, and the fact that she didn’t much like his answer didn’t make it any less true. ‘Good, I’ll tell her,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’ Smiling, she added, ‘It makes me feel like that other Dickens character and makes me want to tell her that she’s saved five million lire in lawyer’s costs and should go right out and spend it on something else.’
‘You can always find whatever you’re looking for in a book, can’t you?
’ he asked with a smile.
Instead of a simple answer, something she seldom gave him, Paola said, ‘I think it was Shelley who said that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. I don’t have any idea if that’s true or not, but I do know that novelists are the unacknowledged gossip-mongers of the world. No matter what it is, they thought of it first.’
He pushed back his chair and stood. ‘I’ll leave you to the contemplation of the splendours of literature.’
He leaned down to kiss her head and waited for her to come up with another literary reference, but she did not. Instead, she reached behind with one hand and patted him on the back of his calf, then said, ‘Thank you, Guido. I’ll tell her.’
* * * *
4
Because the requests for information came from what might be termed minor players in their lives, both Brunetti and Paola forgot about them or at least allowed them to slip to the back of their minds. A police department burdened with the increase in crime resulting from the flood of unregulated immigration from Eastern Europe would no more have concerned itself with the attempt to stamp out minor corruption in a city office than Paola would have turned from rereading The Golden Bowl to attend to those semicolons in Calvino.
When Claudia did not show up for the next lecture, Paola realized that she felt almost relieved. She didn’t want to be the bringer of her husband’s news, nor did she want to grow more involved in the personal life or non-academic concerns of one of her students. She had, as had most professors, done so in the past, and it had always either led nowhere or ended badly. She had her own children, and their lives were more than enough to satisfy whatever nurturing instincts the current wisdom told her she must have.
But the girl was present the following week. During the lecture, which dealt with the parallels between the heroines of James and those of Wharton, Claudia behaved as she always did: she took notes, asked no questions, and seemed impatient with the student questions that displayed ignorance or insensitivity. When the class was over, she waited while the other students left the room and then came up to Paola’s desk.
‘I’m sorry I wasn’t here last week, Professoressa.’
Paola smiled but before she could say anything Claudia asked, ‘Did you have time to speak to your husband?’
It occurred to Paola to ask the girl if she thought that perhaps she might not have had occasion to speak to her husband during the last two weeks. Instead, she turned to face Claudia and said, ‘Yes, I asked him about it, and he said that he can’t give you an answer until he has an idea of the seriousness of the crime for which the man was convicted.’
Paola watched the girl’s face register this information: surprise, suspicion, and then a quick assessing glance at Paola, as if to assure herself that no trick or trap lay in her answer. These expressions flashed by in an instant, after which she said, ‘But in general? I only want to know if he thinks it’s possible or if he knows there’s some sort of process that would allow, well, that would allow a person’s reputation to be restored.’
Paola did not sigh, but she did speak with a sort of over-patient slowness. ‘That’s what he can’t say, Claudia. Unless he knows what the crime was.’
The girl considered this, then surprised Paola by asking, ‘Could I speak to your husband myself, do you think?’
Either the girl was too obsessed with finding an answer to care about the distrust her question showed of Paola or too artless to be aware of it. In either case, Paola’s response was a lesson in equanimity. ‘I see no reason why you couldn’t. If you call the Questura and ask for him, I’m sure he’d tell you when you could go and speak to him.’
‘But if they won’t let me speak to him?’
‘Then use my name. Tell them you’re calling for me or that I told you to call. That should be enough to make them put you through to him.’
‘Thank you, Professoressa,’ Claudia said and turned to leave. As she turned, she bumped her hip against the edge of the desk, and the books she was holding fell to the floor. Bending to pick them up, Paola, with the instinct of every lover of books, had a look at them. She saw a book with a title in German, but because it was upside down she couldn’t make it out. There was Denis Mack Smith’s history of the Italian monarchy as well as his biography of Mussolini, both in English.
‘Do you read German, Claudia?’
‘Yes, I do. My grandmother spoke it to me when I was growing up. She was German.’
‘Your real grandmother, that is?’ Paola said with an encouraging smile.
Still on one knee, arranging the books, the girl shot her a very suspicious glance but answered calmly, ‘Yes, my mother’s mother.’
Not wanting to be perceived as prying, Paola contented herself with saying only, ‘How lucky you were to be raised bilingual.’
‘You were, too, weren’t you, Professoressa?’
‘I learned English as a child, yes,’ Paola said and left it at that. She did not add that it had not been from her family but from a succession of English nannies. The less any student knew about her personal life, the better. With a gesture to the Mack Smith books, Paola asked, ‘What about you?’
Claudia got to her feet. ‘I’ve spent summers in England.’ That, it seemed, was the only explanation Paola was going to get.
‘Lucky you,’ Paola said in English and then added with a smile, ‘Ascot, strawberries, and Wimbledon.’
‘It’s more like mucking out the stables at my aunt’s place in Surrey,’ Claudia answered in the same accentless English.
‘If your German is as good, it must be quite extraordinary,’ Paola said, not without a trace of envy.
‘Oh, I seldom get to speak it, but I still like to read in it. Besides,’ she said, hefting the books on to her hip, ‘it’s not as if there were any Italian accounts of the war that are particularly reliable.’
‘I think my husband will be pleased to talk to you, Claudia. He’s very fond of history, and I’ve listened to him say for years what you’ve just said.’
‘Really? He reads?’ Claudia asked, then, aware of how insulting that sounded, added lamely, ‘History, I mean.’
‘Yes,’ Paola answered, gathering up her papers and resisting the impulse to add that her husband was also able to write. In a voice just as pleasant as previously, she said, ‘Usually the Romans and the Greeks. The lies they tell seem to leave him less angry than the ones contemporary historians tell, or so he says.’
Claudia smiled at this. ‘Yes, I can understand that. Would you tell him that I’ll call him, probably tomorrow? And that I’m very eager to meet him?’
Paola found it remarkable that this attractive young woman seemed to find nothing at all unusual in telling another woman how eager she was to meet her husband. The girl was by no means stupid, so it must result only from a sort of ingenuousness Paola had not seen in a student in quite some time or from some other motive she could not discern.
It went against everything she had learned about the necessity of avoiding involvement with students, but curious now to know what was behind Claudia’s request, she said, ‘Yes, I’ll tell him.’
Claudia smiled and said, quite formally, Thank you, Professoressa.’
Bright, apparently widely read, at least trilingual, and respectful to her elders. Considering these things, it occurred to Paola that perhaps the girl had been raised on Mars.
* * * *
5
Because Paola had told him the night before that the girl wanted to talk to him directly, Brunetti realized who it must be when the guard at the entrance to the Questura phoned him to say that a young woman was downstairs, asking to speak to him.
‘What’s her name?’ Brunetti asked.
There was a pause, after which the guard said, ‘Claudia Leonardo.’
‘Show her up, please,’ Brunetti said and set down the phone. He finished reading a paragraph from a meaningless report on spending proposals, set the paper aside and picked up another, not at all unaware that
this would show him to be busy when the girl arrived.
There was a knock, the door opened, and he saw a uniformed arm, quickly withdrawn, and then a young woman. She came into the office, certainly looking far too young to be a university student preparing for her last exams, as Paola had said.
He stood, motioning toward the chair that faced him. ‘Good morning, Signorina Leonardo. I’m very glad you found time to come and see me,’ he said in a tone he attempted to make sound avuncular.
Her quick glance told him she was accustomed to being patronized by older people; it also showed him how little she liked it. She seated herself, and Brunetti did the same. She was a pretty girl in the way young girls are almost always pretty: oval face, short dark hair and smooth skin. But she seemed bright and attentive in a way they seldom are.