by Donna Leon
It was only now, having to explain, that Brunetti realized how vague his understanding was. ‘There’s a man who keeps asking Chiara and some of her friends for money. Over near her school. She says he’s very insistent.’
‘Insistent how?’ Vianello asked.
‘She said he puts his hand on “your arm”. And she sounded . . . troubled.’
‘Is it one of the new Africans?’ Vianello asked.
‘Am I the last one to know about them?’
As if to prepare himself for a longer conversation, Vianello got to his feet so as not to have his superior remain standing while he sat behind his desk as they talked. ‘Hard not to notice them,’ Vianello said, leaning back to half-sit on his desk.
‘How are they new?’ Brunetti asked.
‘They don’t come from Senegal, so the vu cumprà want no part of them. They don’t seem to work, don’t speak much Italian, and they have a very insistent way of asking for money. The Mafia’s trained the vu cumprà because that’s who they work for, so they’ve learned not to insist, and they certainly don’t put their hands on people. They don’t cause trouble.’ Vianello nodded in appreciation of their behaviour and added, ‘The new ones look different, too. The Senegalesi are tall and thin, but these guys are shorter and thicker. And rougher looking.’ Reflecting on all of this, Vianello added, ‘I’ve never had trouble with the vu cumprà.’
It bothered Brunetti that he had not noticed these new Africans, or perhaps had noticed them but not paid special attention to them. They’d hardly approach a man in a suit to ask for charity. Women and tourists would be their chief objects, he assumed, the first rendered generous by sympathy, the second perhaps by shame. Or fear?
‘Is there anything we can do about him?’ Brunetti asked, aware that, in the absence of a legal option, their only choice was to attempt persuasion. Both of them remained silent for a long time, considering possibilities.
‘My God,’ Brunetti burst out, ‘this is how ordinary people feel.’
‘Excuse me?’ Vianello asked.
‘If you have no official power, there’s nothing you can do when someone bothers you. Chiara can ask me, but as a father I can’t do anything to make him stop if he doesn’t want to.’
Vianello picked up the ball and ran with it. ‘We can tell him he has to pay a fine.’ He gave a snort of grim laughter. ‘Or tell him he’ll have to leave the country if he does it again.’ Vianello stood up and set the file of papers on another desk.
When he came back, Brunetti had his hands in his pockets and was studying his shoes. Vianello sat in his chair.
‘There’s nothing we can do,’ Brunetti continued. ‘And we’re the police, for God’s sake.’
Vianello shrugged, as though to suggest to Brunetti that they were discussing the self-evident. ‘You wonder why people vote for the Lega?’ he asked. He pulled a smaller pile of files towards him, looked up at Brunetti, and said, ‘I’ll walk by the school this afternoon and have a word with him.’ The Inspector opened the next file.
Brunetti thanked him, then went slowly back to his own office. He had forgotten about the Contessa. By virtue of his authority, he could send a police officer to speak to the man and suggest to him that he stop bothering the girls at the school. If he succeeded, the African would simply go and bother someone else, somewhere else: a different group of schoolgirls, women on their way to do the shopping, people trying to shop for fish at Rialto.
It didn’t matter how he had entered the country: the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants had long since been abandoned by the press, as had the term ‘clandestina ’. Brunetti assumed that most of these men wanted work, and he similarly assumed that they would not find it. The state had given them places to stay and paid them a minimum daily sum, enough to survive, but it couldn’t provide them with something to do.
He marshalled all his bien pensant principles about social justice, equality, and human rights, but was left only with anger that any man could touch his daughter against her will. How close we are to the cave, he thought, but still his anger remained.
To rid himself of these thoughts he turned on his computer and, in the absence of any word from Signorina Elettra, put in the name of Contessa Demetriana Lando-Continui, then hit ENTER boldly, sending a wish off to the cybergods.
His prayer was answered with a long list of entries bearing her name, although he soon understood that the major portion of them were offers to provide the Contessa’s address and phone number and nothing else. Her photo appeared in a number of articles about dinners and parties given by Salva Serenissima. He studied the photos and thought he saw her in two of them, nestled amidst small groups of women of her age and, he assumed, social stature and wealth.
After three such articles, as well as repeated references to the Contessa on Facebook, he gave up and switched to reading that day’s papers. The experience was hardly more informative.
‘How about Salva Serenissima?’ he asked himself aloud and turned his attention to that organization. He found a long list of articles. There was no Wikipedia entry, but a Facebook page and a Twitter account were given as possible sources of information. Brunetti was not lured into consulting either one. He found a listing of the board of directors and spent some time studying it. There was the usual sprinkling of noble names, their titles dazzling forth from the screen: he particularly enjoyed reading the hyphenated surnames tumbling one after the other, like otters in a shallow pool. In the shadow cast by the noble titles huddled the commoners, some of whose names he recognized. One name towards the end of the list caught Brunetti’s eye because he had, more than once, been in the Questura when this man’s wife was brought in, accused of shoplifting.
‘Lookie, lookie,’ another name caused him to exclaim, having picked up the expression from Paola, who used it to proclaim surprise and delight. There was his old friend Leonardo, Marchese di Gamma Fede, who had been at university with Brunetti, then disappeared into the family textile business in Asia, remaining in intermittent touch over the years. Brunetti remembered the letters and cards Lolo had sent him during the years when the kids were interested in collecting stamps: enormous manila envelopes half covered with scores of brightly coloured stamps of very low denomination, but always more than enough to get the envelope, however slowly, to Italy. There had been a herd of elephants from India, near-fluorescent birds from Indonesia, and a mob of kangaroos from Australia. He still remembered them all, as did the kids.
Brunetti hadn’t heard from Lolo in more than a year, even though they now communicated by email. No stamps, alas. It delighted him to see Lolo’s name on the list, for it meant that he must be spending time in Venice; only after that did it occur to him to be glad of it for professional reasons. Lolo was not a fool, and Brunetti had always thought him to be an honest person. He made a mental note to contact Lolo.
He returned to his consideration of the list. One of the nobles on it had years ago rented an apartment to a friend of Brunetti’s, who had discovered only when he moved in that the elevator shaft also served as a conduit of smells from the Chinese restaurant on the ground floor. The smell from the elevator filled the landing in front of their door, but worse came from an exhaust shaft that ran past their bedroom and flooded it with the same odours. Giving in to the landlord’s threats of legal action should they break their contract by leaving, they had, in the end, been forced to pay three thousand euros to be quit of the place, and of him. Seeing this noble name on the ‘Honorary Board’ brought Brunetti a smile and a sense of the rightness of the world.
Alessandro Vittori-Ricciardi was listed among the members of the ‘Administrative Board’, whatever that was. He was in company with a count and a viscount as well as three lesser mortals.
It was only after Brunetti finished reading through the list a second time that he noticed that fewer than half of the names were Italian. Then he saw that
some appeared on the list twice. He marvelled at the various categories into which they were divided, each group with a title. He recalled being at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, at a particularly tedious performance of something by Verdi; so many years had passed that he couldn’t now remember what the opera had been. During one of the intermissions, he had opened the programme and found the seemingly endless list of patrons: at least the Americans had the courage of their vulgarity and listed them according to how much they gave.
His father-in-law had once told Brunetti that he joined only the boards of profit-making enterprises. ‘They don’t fool around and waste your time by inviting you to parties,’ he said, ‘and they don’t expect you to pay to get your name on the list.’
Contessa Lando-Continui was on the International Board, third in a list that was not in alphabetical order, and that left Brunetti curious about the ranking system and what spats and sulkings must have arisen from it.
He recalled a remark that Conte Falier’s daughter, his own dear wife, had made, not about boards, but about Brunetti’s response to the people who sat on them. ‘I’d hoped you’d learn to leave your past behind you, Guido, and forget your class prejudices,’ she’d said to him once, years ago, after listening to him criticize the appointment of the new Rector of the University, who bore the surname of two doges. ‘If his name were Scarpa, you wouldn’t think his appointment worthy of comment.’
Brunetti had burned with embarrassment for a week, a feeling that returned whenever he caught himself taking pot shots at the rich and nobly born. His was hardly the resentment of the son of toiling workers, protesting because they had not been recognized for their efforts. His father had returned from the war a hopeless layabout who saw no reason to work if he could avoid it.
As though his spirit had been given a thwack on the head with a rolled-up newspaper, Brunetti looked at the list again and told himself that he, and all Venetians, should be grateful that the Contessa gave of her wealth to help the youth and save the monuments in the city.
He thought of Pucetti, the most promising of the younger officers, who had told him some weeks before that he might be moving to Marghera, should his girlfriend be transferred there to teach mathematics. Castello-born, Pucetti seemed to know everyone in the sestiere. He had once told Brunetti that his grandfather was the first person in his family to learn Italian and that his father still spoke it as a second language. His great-grandmother had never left Castello, never once in her life.
Why didn’t the other foundations emulate the Contessa and do something for Venetians instead of for Venice? The city, for all its promises, was unlikely to do so. The last time a large public building had been divided up into private apartments and offered for sale at affordable prices, a suspicious number of them had been sold to politicians and their wives. Brunetti pulled his mind back: only trouble would come of thinking of these things.
Going downstairs, he thought of Muhammad and the mountain. As he entered her office, he saw Signorina Elettra at her desk and was instantly alerted to danger by the expression on her face. Her narrow smile was lethal, lips denying her adversary the sight of her teeth, perhaps to minimize the idea of them as a weapon.
Brunetti followed her eyes and found Lieutenant Scarpa standing in front of the window nearest the open door and thus hidden by it from anyone passing in the corridor outside. The Lieutenant, his uniform a study in sartorial perfection, leaned back against the windowsill from which Brunetti usually conversed with Signorina Elettra and which, quite understandably, Brunetti thought of as his place.
‘The very last thing I’d ever do, Lieutenant, is question your integrity,’ Brunetti heard Signorina Elettra say as he entered her office. ‘I couldn’t live with myself if I had to entertain the thought that you were less than fully loyal to the service to which you are an adornment.’ The dead tone – a bad actress reading a bad script, badly translated from some other language – was so at variance with the words themselves as to render the scene hallucinogenic. Her lips moved horizontally in what Brunetti suspected was meant to suggest a smile, but did not.
‘That’s a great comfort for me to learn, Signorina,’ the Lieutenant said with syrupy piety. He cast his eyes in Brunetti’s direction but made no other acknowledgement of his presence. Returning his glance to Signorina Elettra, he went on, ‘Then I must look elsewhere for the person who attempted to hack into my computer.’ After all the soft pleasantries, this last phrase came like the snap of a whip.
Aha! Brunetti thought: that’s what she’s been up to. He knew she had access to the Vice-Questore’s computer; she was probably more familiar with what was in it than Patta himself. She’d known Lieutenant Scarpa’s password for ages, but perhaps he’d changed it and she’d been forced to break in again. Had she left the equivalent of a trace of her perfume, a dropped handkerchief, while she was having a look around?
Drawing himself to his full height and taking one step into the small office, Brunetti waved a hand toward his ear, a gesture Lieutenant Scarpa could interpret as a salute and, if so, would have to stand up straight to return. The habit of obedience brought the Lieutenant forward and upright. He raised his right hand to his forehead, and as he did he gave a very knowing smile that showed how well he understood Brunetti’s attempt to impose his power and found it quaint, if not useless. ‘Commissario,’ he said, as if he’d only then noticed Brunetti.
‘Is that all you wanted, Lieutenant?’ Signorina Elettra asked, this time not wasting any energy in a smile.
‘For the moment, yes, Signorina,’ the Lieutenant said and took his leave.
When he was sure that Scarpa had started up the stairs, Brunetti asked, ‘Did he catch you reading his emails?’
‘Good heavens, no,’ she said, voice rich with astonishment at the very idea. ‘But someone else has been in there, looking around.’
‘Who?’ Brunetti inquired.
She shook his question away and said, ‘It might be the same person who’s been looking at the Vice-Questore’s.’
‘Someone from the Ministry?’ he asked, wondering what could be going on if the Ministry were spying on its own internal correspondence. ‘Is he good enough,’ Brunetti asked, tilting his head towards the door Scarpa had just used, ‘to detect it?’
‘Perhaps,’ she said, and Brunetti had to confess that the admission came to her grudgingly.
‘Do you have any idea what they might be after?’
She raised her chin, as though to provide herself with a better view of the ceiling. Or the stars. The only sign that she had not lapsed into a profound coma was her mouth. Her lips drew together as though about to sip at a mountain pool, pulled back in a grimace of mild exasperation, then relaxed completely as she continued her communion with something Brunetti would never grasp.
Without warning, her Higher Power released her, and she looked across at Brunetti to say, ‘Giorgio will find out.’
Giorgio, Brunetti thought, the cyber equivalent of the deus ex machina. ‘Do you need his help for this?’
She propped her chin on her left palm and poked idly at her keyboard: a pianist in search of a better tune, a small bird pecking for something to eat.
‘Yes, I do, Commissario,’ she said and looked up at him. ‘It matters enough to involve him. What happened to the Vice-Questore’s mail was not a friendly thing: it was attempted burglary. So if we can find out who did it, we can perhaps get an idea of what they’re looking for. It’s always good to know what even the enemies of your enemies are after.’
‘Do you think the Vice-Questore and the Lieutenant have enemies?’ he asked, goading her into a startled look.
When she refused to answer, he asked, ‘Is there any reason they’d have enemies?’
She smiled. ‘Let me count the ways.’
7
‘And Contessa Lando-Continui?’ he asked,<
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Rather than answer, Signorina Elettra turned away from him and hit the keys of her computer, eyes riveted to the screen. ‘Have a look,’ she said eagerly, waving at Brunetti to come around and stand behind her.
He saw what looked like the first page of Il Gazzettino. The page layout was the one they’d long ago abandoned; the date was fifteen years before. ‘Young Noblewoman Injured in Accident,’ he read. ‘Last night, near midnight, Manuela Lando-Continui, daughter of Teodoro Lando-Continui and Barbara Magello-Ronchi and granddaughter of the late Conte Marcello Lando-Continui and Contessa Demetriana Lando-Continui, was rescued from the waters of the Rio San Boldo. A passer-by who saw her struggling dived into the dark waters of the canal and pulled the girl to safety before himself collapsing.
‘Another man rushed to the assistance of both and administered artificial respiration to the girl, who was later taken to the Ospedale Civile, where her prognosis is reported as “critical”. The police, who arrived at the scene, are treating the incident as an accident.’
Just as Brunetti finished reading it, Signorina Elettra, who had taken his position on the windowsill, said, ‘The next two articles continue the story.’
He scrolled the page down and saw the photo of a young girl dressed in a white shirt, perhaps a man’s, the bottom almost reaching the knees of her faded jeans. She stood with her left arm hanging loose in front of her, the ends of the reins woven around her fingers, her right arm draped over the shoulder of a dark horse whose head was lowered and pressed into her stomach, showing only one eye and ear. The horse’s mouth was open, and it appeared to be nibbling at one of the buttons on her shirt.
The girl’s hair, long and dark, was brushed back from a broad forehead. She smiled happily at the camera, fresh-faced, caught just at the point in her life when she would begin the change from a pretty girl to a beautiful woman. Her expression asked the person taking the photo if this weren’t perhaps the most wonderful day of their lives? She wore riding boots and stood on tiptoe the better to embrace her horse.