Wilful Behaviour - [Commissario Brunetti 11]

by Donna Leon

  When he was finished, Paola said, ‘I’m not sure Claudia would like other people to know about this. She asked if she could talk to you, but I don’t think she’s the sort of person who’d like her family’s business being made public.’

  ‘Talking to your father is hardly making what she told me public,’ Brunetti said shortly.

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she returned in the same tone. ‘I assumed that she spoke to me in confidence.’

  ‘I didn’t make the same assumption,’ Brunetti said and waited to see Paola’s response. ‘She came to see me in the Questura, so she knows I’m a policeman. How else am I supposed to answer?’

  ‘As I remember, the question was only a theoretical one.’

  ‘I needed to know more about it to be able to answer her,’ Brunetti explained for what seemed the hundredth time, conscious of how similar their conversation had become to the one he’d heard on entering the apartment, which conversation, he was happy to note, appeared to have concluded. ‘Look,’ he added in an effort at reconciliation, ‘your father said he’d try to remember more about what happened.’

  ‘But is there any chance of some sort of legal rehabilitation?’ she asked. ‘That’s all she wants to know.’

  ‘As I said to you before, I can’t answer that until I know more.’

  She studied him a long time, her right hand fiddling idly with one of the earpieces of her glasses, then said, ‘It sounds like you already know enough to be able to give her an answer.’

  ‘That it’s impossible?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It probably is,’ he said.

  ‘Then why ask my father about it? Is it because you’re curious?’ When he didn’t answer, she said, in a far softer voice, ‘Has my knight in shining armour climbed yet again upon the broad back of his noble steed, prepared to ride off in pursuit of justice?’

  ‘Oh, stop it, Paola,’ he said with an embarrassed smile. ‘You make me sound like such a fool.’

  ‘No, my dear,’ she said, picking up her glasses and putting them on again. ‘I make you sound like my husband and the man I love.’ Hiding whatever expression accompanied these words, she looked at the papers and added, ‘Now go into the kitchen and open the wine. I’ll be out as soon as I finish correcting this paper.’

  Wishing the children could see and then emulate the celerity with which he obeyed their mother’s command, Brunetti went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. He took out a bottle of Chardonnay and set it on the counter, opened the drawer to search for the corkscrew, then changed his mind, replaced the bottle, and took out one of prosecco. ‘The workman is worthy of his hire,’ he muttered as he popped the cork. Taking glass and bottle, he retreated to the living room in hopes of finishing that day’s Gazzettino.

  Twenty minutes later, they sat down to lunch. The argument over the CD had apparently been settled, he hoped most fervently in Chiara’s favour. She at least still remained browbeaten by her parents into using a Discman: Raffi had last year bought a small stereo system for his room and insisted upon using it to broadcast to the family, and to that part of the world within a fifty-metre radius of their home, a sort of music which made Brunetti think longingly of the symptoms of tinnitus he’d once read about: constant mechanical roaring or buzzing in the ear that blocked out all other sound.

  In keeping with the change in season, Paola had made risotto di zucca and into it at the last minute had tossed grated slivers of ginger, its sharp bite softened to amiability by the chunk of butter and the grated parmigiano that had chased it into the pot. The mingled tastes drove all dread of Raffi’s music from Brunetti’s mind, and the chicken breast grilled with sage and white wine that followed replaced that music with what Brunetti thought must be the sound of angels’ singing.

  Brunetti set down his fork and turned to his wife. ‘Bring me a Braeburn apple, a thin slice of Montasio and a glass of Calvados,’ he began, ‘and I will cover you in diamonds the size of walnuts, place pearls as white as truffles at your feet, pluck emeralds as large as kiwi fruit.. .’

  Chiara cut him off before he could continue. ‘Oh, Papà, all you ever think about is food.’ Coming from someone as voracious as she, this was the basest sort of hypocrisy, but before Brunetti could reproach her, Paola put a large bowl of apples in front of him. ‘Besides,’ Chiara continued, ‘how could anyone wear an emerald as big as a kiwi fruit?’

  His plate disappeared, replaced by a clean fruit plate, a small knife and fork.

  ‘Mamma would just use it as a paperweight, anyway,’ Raffi said, reaching for an apple. He bit into it and asked if he could be excused to go and finish his calculus homework.

  ‘If I hear a single note of that noise before three this afternoon, I will come into your room and drive bamboo shoots into your eardrums, permanently deafening you,’ his loving mother said, nodding to him that he could leave the table and letting Brunetti know who had won possession of the CD. Raffi grabbed two more apples and left, quickly followed by Chiara, who slipped away in his wake.

  ‘You spoil him,’ Brunetti said, cutting a not particularly thin slice of Montasio. ‘I think you should be firmer with him, perhaps begin by threatening to tear out his fingernails.’

  ‘He’s only two years younger than some of my students,’ Paola said, picking up an apple and beginning to peel away the skin. ‘If I began doing any of these things to him, I’m afraid of what I might be led to do to the students. I might be maddened by the smell of teenage blood.’

  ‘It can’t be that bad,’ Brunetti said in an interrogative voice.

  Once the apple was peeled, Paola quickly cut it into eight slices and removed the pieces of core. She jabbed her fork into the first and ate it before she said, ‘No, I suppose it’s not as bad as what you do. But, believe me, there are days when I long to be locked in a cell: me, two strong policemen, one of the students, and a wide array of fearsome implements.’

  ‘Why is it so bad all of a sudden?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘It’s not really all of a sudden. It’s more that I’ve become aware of how bad it’s become.’

  ‘Give me an example,’ he said.

  ‘Ten years ago, I could force them into accepting the fact, or at least giving lip service to the idea, that the culture that formed me, all those books and ideas that our generation grew up on - Plato, Virgil, Dante - that it was superior in some way to whatever fills their lives. Or, if not superior, then at least interesting enough to be worthy of study.’ She ate three more pieces of apple and a thin slice of Montasio before she went on. ‘But that doesn’t happen any more. They think, or at least they seem to think, that their culture, with its noise and acquisitiveness and immediate forgettability is superior to all of our stupid ideas.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Like our no doubt ridiculous idea that beauty conforms to some standard or ideal; like our risible belief that we have the option to behave honourably and should take it; and like our idiotic idea that the final purpose of human existence is something more than the acquisition of wealth.’

  ‘No wonder you want the fearsome implements,’ Brunetti said and opened the Calvados.

  * * * *

  8

  Back in his office that afternoon, faintly conscious that he had perhaps dined too well, Brunetti decided he might try to get more information about Guzzardi from Lele Bortoluzzi, another prime source of the sort of information that in more ordered societies would lead to accusations of slander. Ordinarily, he would have made the trip across the city to Lele’s gallery, but today Brunetti felt himself weighed down by the Calvados, though he told himself it had been little more than a whisper, and so decided to phone, instead.

  ‘Si,’ Lele answered after the second ring.

  ‘Ciao, Lele,’ Brunetti said, not bothering to give his name. ‘I need to pick through your archive again, this time for someone called Luca Guzzardi, who ...’

  ‘Quel figlio di mignotta,’ Lele interrupted, his voice shot through with an ange
r Brunetti was unaccustomed to hearing from the painter.

  ‘So you remember him,’ Brunetti said with a laugh, trying to disguise his surprise.

  ‘Of course I remember him,’ Lele said. ‘Bastard: he got exactly what he deserved. The only pity is that he died so soon: he should have been kept alive longer, living there like a larva.’

  ‘At San Servolo?’ Brunetti asked, though there was little doubt what his friend meant.

  ‘Where he deserved to be. Better than any prison they could have sent him to, the bastard. I’m sorry for the other devils who were kept there: none of them deserved to live like that, worse than animals. But Guzzardi deserved it all, and more.’

  Brunetti knew that whatever reason Lele had for this passionate disgust would soon be made clear. Prodding, Brunetti said, ‘I never heard you talk about him before. Strange, if you feel so strongly about him.’

  Lele continued. ‘He was a thief and a traitor, and so was his father. There was nothing they wouldn’t do, no one he wouldn’t betray.’

  Brunetti noticed that Lele’s condemnation was so much more forceful than the Count’s, but then he recalled that his father-in-law had said he had not been in Venice during the war. Lele had been, for all of it, and two of his uncles had died, one fighting with the Germans and one fighting against them. Brunetti cut into the string of epithets that continued to pour from the phone and said, ‘All right, all right, I understand your feelings. Now tell me why.’

  Lele had the grace to laugh. ‘It must be strange, this anger after so long. I haven’t heard his name in, oh, I don’t know, twenty years, but all I needed was to hear it, and everything I knew about him came back.’ He paused for a moment and then added, ‘It’s strange, isn’t it, how some things just don’t go away? You’d think time would have softened some of it. But not with Guzzardi.’

  ‘What hasn’t been softened?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Well, obviously, how much we all hated him.’

  ‘All?’

  ‘My father, my uncles, even my mother.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Are you sure you have time to listen?’ Lele asked.

  ‘Why else call?’ Brunetti asked in response, grateful that Lele hadn’t bothered to ask why he was curious about Guzzardi.

  By way of answer, Lele began by asking, ‘You know my father was an antiquarian, a dealer?’

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered. He had a vague memory of Lele’s father, an enormous man with a white moustache and beard who had died when Brunetti was still a young boy.

  ‘There were a lot of people who wanted to leave the country. Not that there were many places where they could go, not go and be safe, that is. But at any rate, after the war began, some of them approached my father, asking if he could sell things for them.’

  ‘Antiques?’

  ‘And paintings, and statues, and rare books, just about anything that had beauty and value.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He acted as agent,’ Lele said, as though that explained everything.

  ‘What does that mean, that he acted as agent?’

  ‘Just that. He agreed to find buyers. He knew the market and he had a long list of clients. And in return he took ten per cent.’

  ‘Isn’t that normal?’ Brunetti asked, aware that he was missing whatever message Lele thought he was conveying.

  ‘There was no such thing as normal during the war,’ Lele said, again as though that would explain everything.

  Brunetti interrupted. ‘Lele, there’s too much going on here that I don’t understand. Make things clear to me, please.’

  ‘All right. I always forget how little people know, or want to know, about what happened then. It was like this. When people were forced to sell things or were put into positions where they had no choice but to sell things, they had the option of trying to do it themselves, which is always a mistake, or they could turn to an agent. Though that was just as often a mistake.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because some of the dealers had smelled the scent of money, great sums of money, and many of them, once they realized how panicked the sellers were, went mad with it.’

  ‘Went mad how?’

  ‘By raising their percentages. People were desperate to sell and get out of the country if they could. Towards the end, most of them finally realized that they would die if they stayed here. No,’ he corrected himself, ‘not die: be killed. Be sent off to be murdered. But some of them still lacked the courage to cut and run and leave everything behind them: houses, paintings, clothing, art, papers, family treasures. That’s what they should have done, just left it all and tried to get to Switzerland or Portugal, even to North Africa, but too many of them weren’t willing to take the loss. But then finally they had no choice.’

  ‘And so?’ Brunetti prodded.

  ‘So, in the end, they were forced to sell everything they had, turn it into gold or stones or into foreign currency, into something they thought they could carry out of the country with them.’

  ‘Couldn’t they?’

  ‘This is going to take a long time to explain, Guido,’ Lele said, almost apologetically.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘All right. It worked, at least many times, it worked like this. They contacted the agents, many of whom were antiquarians, either here or in one of the big cities. Some of the big collectors even tried to deal with Germans, men like Haberstock in Berlin. The word had got around that Prince Farnese in Rome had managed to sell a lot of things through him. But, anyway, people contacted the agents, who came and had a look at what they had to sell, and then they offered to buy what they liked or thought they could sell.’ Again, Lele stopped.

  Puzzled about what in all of this could have turned Lele pyrotechnic, Brunetti prompted. ‘And?’

  ‘And they’d offer a fraction of what the objects were worth and say that’s all they could expect to get for them.’ Even before Brunetti could ask the obvious question, Lele explained. ‘Everyone knew it wasn’t worth the trouble to contact anyone else. They’d formed a cartel, and as soon as one of them gave prices, he’d tell all the others what the prices were, and none of them would offer more.’

  ‘But what about men like your father? Couldn’t people contact him?’

  ‘By then my father was in prison.’ Lele’s voice was like ice.

  ‘On what charge?’

  ‘Who knows? What does it matter? He was reported to have made defeatist remarks. Of course he did. Everyone knew we had no chance of winning the war. But he made those remarks only at home, only with us. It was the other agents. They gave his name and the police came around and took him away, and it was made clear to him while he was being questioned that he should no longer work as an agent.’

  ‘For people who wanted to leave the country?’

  ‘Among others. He was never told just whom he shouldn’t deal with, but he didn’t have to be, did he? My father got the message. By the third beating, he got the message. So when they let him go, and he came home, he no longer attempted to help those people.’

  ‘Jews?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Primarily, yes. But also non-Jewish families. Your father-in-law’s, for example.’

  ‘Are you serious, Lele?’ Brunetti asked, unable to disguise his astonishment.

  ‘This is a subject about which I do not joke, Guido,’ Lele said with unusual asperity. ‘Your father-in-law’s father had to leave the country, and he came to my father and asked if he would handle the sale of certain items for him.’

  ‘And did he?’

  ‘He took them. I think there were thirty-four paintings and a large collection of Minutius first editions.’

  ‘He wasn’t afraid of the warning he’d just had?’

  ‘He didn’t sell them. He gave the Count a certain sum of money and told him he’d keep the paintings and books for him until he came back to Venice.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘The family, including your father-in-law, went overla
nd to Portugal and then to England. They were among the lucky ones.’

  ‘And the things your father had?’

  ‘He put them in a safe place, and when the Count and his family came back after the war, he returned all of them.’

  ‘Where did he keep them?’ Brunetti asked, not because it made any difference but because the historian in him needed to know.

  ‘I had an aunt who was a Dominican abbess, in the convent over by the Miracoli. She put all of them under her bed.’ Brunetti was too amazed to say anything, but Lele explained, anyway. ‘Actually, there was a large space beneath the floor of the abbess’s bedroom, and she placed her bed directly over the entrance to it. I never thought it polite to ask what an abbess would want to hide there, so I don’t know what its original purpose was.’