The Waters of Eternal Youth

by Donna Leon

  Trousers – not easy, that – a shirt – child’s play – the heavy shoes Griffoni had advised him to wear – ­difficult – a tie, and his jacket. When he was dressed, he went over to the bed, bent and kissed the top of Paola’s head, and said, ‘I’ll go somewhere for lunch. I have to go out to the mainland to talk to people.’

  Paola mumbled something. He moved closer, the better to see the title at the top of the page of her book. He read the last words, ‘the Dove’, and realized there was no sense in trying to talk to her. The stairs were painful at first but became easier the more of them he descended, until he got to the ground floor and felt in control of his limbs. As he opened the door and stepped out into the sunny day, it occurred to him that she had left Henry James to go and check on him in the bathroom. He was immeasurably cheered by the thought.

  By the afternoon, he had learned how to use his body and could walk, bend to pick up objects – as long as they were on desks and not on the ground – and both sit down and get to his feet with reasonable ease. None of these actions was painless, but all were bearable. At two, having had only sandwiches for lunch so as to save time, Brunetti and Griffoni got into a squad car at Piazzale Roma, and the driver set off to the highway that would take them to Preganziol, on the outskirts of which was to be found the riding school.

  Griffoni wore a short woollen jacket, jeans, and a pair of boots, attire that, at first, made Brunetti suspect she had dressed for what the English called ‘mucking out’, which he thought was pretty much what Hercules had done with the Augean Stables. But a closer look suggested that the jeans would hardly lend themselves to work, and the tan boots, however worn they might be, had the thin double belt and metal toggle at the top that Paola had once pointed out to him on a similar pair in a shop.

  Her blonde hair was pulled back in a ponytail tied with a black ribbon: he wondered whether she perhaps had a black riding helmet in her bag.

  It was always a strange experience for Brunetti to travel by car. He’d become accustomed to them during the periods he’d been assigned to work in different cities on the mainland, but he hadn’t grown up with them, and so cars were ever alien to him and seemed unnecessarily fast and dangerous.

  Griffoni, perhaps sensing his nervousness, did most of the talking, finally drawing on her former career as a rider. ‘It’s true what people say, about a horse being able to read our feelings, although I think most animals manage to do that.’ She looked out of the window as she spoke, at the ­far-­off fields, barren and dry, and, between them and the road, the endless low clusters of shops, restaurants, and factories that lined the road on both sides.

  ‘I suppose all of this was once farmland,’ she said by way of general observation.

  The driver, who might have been ten years older than she, answered from his seat in front of her, ‘It was, Commissario. I grew up around here: my parents were farmers.’

  They passed an enormous agglomeration of buildings on the right: supermarket, garage, one shipping warehouse then another, a furniture store, enormous trucks backed up to the metal doors at the back of a ­single-­storey building.

  ‘Why do we need so much stuff?’ Brunetti asked, turning to look at the buildings on the other side, equal in kind, variety, and size.

  No one answered him. Perhaps because so many of us had second houses, he reflected, we had more space to fill with stuff, or perhaps people now had what was called ‘disposable income’, while his parents had barely had an income.

  ‘It’s only another couple of kilometres,’ the driver said.

  ‘You know the place?’

  The driver laughed at the thought. ‘I know about it, but I’ve never been there.’ He concentrated on passing another car and then said, ‘The only horse I ever touched was my father’s, and all that horse did was pull a wagon and eat a lot of grass.’

  ‘And you saw that?’ Brunetti asked, unable to stifle his reaction. ‘A wagon?’

  ‘Well, only for us kids. My parents never really used it, but every once in a while they’d hitch him up to it and take us all for a ride. We were mad for it. I was just a little kid, but I still remember.’

  ‘What happened to the horse?’ Griffoni asked.

  ‘Oh, he died.’

  ‘What did your parents do?’ Brunetti asked, curious to know how a dead horse could have been disposed of.

  The driver waited a long time before he asked, ‘Can I tell the truth?’

  ‘Of course,’ they both answered.

  ‘My father dug a hole in the field with his backhoe, and then he picked him up with the front end of it and lowered him into the grave, and we kids all threw flowers on him, and then he covered him over and told us not to tell anyone what he’d done.’ The driver had slowed down while he told them this, and first one car, then another, passed them without his seeming to notice.

  No one spoke until a wooden fence appeared and ran beside them on the right. ‘That’s it,’ the driver said, leaning forward to tap his finger on the screen of the GPS.

  Not far ahead of them, they saw a gate set back about ten metres from the road. The driver pulled up to it and stopped. There was a ­hand-­printed sign saying to close the gate after entering, so he got out, drove through, and then went back to close it. Brunetti noticed a speakerphone system in place on the left side of the gate, but the handset was cracked and hung from a wire.

  When he was behind the wheel again, the driver started up the narrow road running between twin ­wooden-­fenced paddocks on either side. ‘Just like Texas,’ he said.

  Neither of them answered. They drove forward on an asphalt road that had seen better times. Leaves from the plane trees on both sides lay thick but failed to buffer them from the holes into which the car drove, bouncing them about on the seat. They followed a curve in the road and drew to a stop in front of a low stone building with arched windows and a tiled roof.

  An old brown dog of indeterminate ancestry ambled around the corner of the building and approached the car. He ignored them and didn’t bother to bark, moved to the driver’s door and flopped down on the ground. The driver opened the door very slowly and climbed over the dog. He looked up at the driver, put his head down and appeared to go to sleep.

  Brunetti and Griffoni got out and all three of them closed their doors very quietly. A woman with short wispy grey hair came out of the front door of the house, looking worried. ‘Hector didn’t frighten you, did he?’ she asked with real concern. Her eyes were hazel and seemed lighter in contrast to her tan, the permanent sort common to people who spend most of their time outdoors. She smiled as she approached them. Small, well into her sixties by the look of her, she was wiry and ­quick-­moving, and wore jeans, riding boots, and a thick man’s sweater a few sizes too large for her.

  ‘You must be the police,’ she said, sounding delighted, as though the name cards on the dinner table said ‘Police’ and, now that they were there, dinner could finally begin. She smiled again, smoothing out for a moment the barcode wrinkles above her lips.

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti said, taking her extended hand. ‘I’m Commissario Brunetti.’ Her grip burst two of the blisters on his right palm and, had he been of weaker stuff, would have brought him to his knees.

  As it was, he sucked in some air and turned to his colleague, saying, ‘And this is Commissario Griffoni.’ The woman released his hand and took Griffoni’s, saying, ‘I’m Enrichetta degli Specchi. Thank you for coming.’

  Griffoni showed delight at her greeting and asked, ‘Are you Giovanni’s cousin?’

  The woman stepped back and took another look at Griffoni. ‘Yes, I am. Do you know him?’

  Griffoni’s face radiated her own pleasure. ‘We rode together, years ago,’ she said, then, after she’d spent a few seconds counting them, added, ‘almost twenty.’ And immediately, ‘He often spoke of you.’

  ‘Tell me your name again, please,’ the
woman asked, tilting her head and staring at Griffoni with great interest.

  ‘Griffoni. Claudia.’

  The woman’s face changed, her smile tossing away years and giving a flash of what a beauty she must have been before the sun had its way with her. ‘Claudia,’ she said, her voice filled with delight: Marcellina discovering her lost child. Unable to restrain her emotion, she put her arms around Claudia’s shoulders, though she had to stand on her toes to do it, and said, ‘Oh, thank you, thank you. You saved Giovanni’s life.’ Brunetti noted that she had unconsciously begun to address Claudia in the familiar ‘tu ’.

  As the woman removed her arms, Griffoni said, ‘I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration.’

  ‘But if you hadn’t spoken to him, he wouldn’t have ridden, and then he would have died,’ the woman insisted, stressing the final verb.

  ‘No, no, no,’ Griffoni insisted. ‘He just needed someone to tell him he was the best on the team.’ Then, with the force of truth, she added, ‘And he was.’

  ‘But still . . .’ the woman said, not convinced. She turned to Brunetti and explained, ‘My cousin has always suffered terrible panic attacks before competitions.’ Brunetti nodded, as if familiar with the emotional vagaries of athletes. ‘So you can imagine what the Olympics did to him. Jumping. He froze. Friends who were there told me he could barely walk.’ She glanced at Griffoni for confirmation. Griffoni nodded.

  ‘He couldn’t ride,’ the older woman went on, speaking to Brunetti. ‘The horse was saddled. But Giovanni was paralysed. And then she,’ she said and gave a dramatic pause to point to Griffoni, ‘took him aside and talked to him, and then he went back and got on his horse as if nothing in the world was bothering him.’

  Griffoni bent down and worked at removing a small stone embedded in the heel of her left boot.

  ‘Gold! He won the gold medal,’ the woman said, clapping her hands in delight. ‘And it was all due to you.’ She grabbed Griffoni’s right arm with both hands and gave her a little shake of thanks, then turned to Brunetti and said, ‘It’s true. He wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t talked to him.’

  ‘How is he?’ Griffoni asked, completely ignoring everything the woman had said.

  ‘Fine. Fine. Three kids. Growing olives in Tuscany: God knows why, when . . .’ She let this go and gave herself a ­little shake. ‘But you’re here about that girl, aren’t you?’

  ‘Manuela ­Lando-­Continui,’ Brunetti said. ‘Did you know her well?’

  ‘No. It was my late husband who ran the place then. I came here only twelve years ago, when we married.’

  ‘So your husband would have known her?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes, he did. He told me what happened to her.’ She held up her hands in a gesture that signified helplessness in the face of life.

  ‘Did he tell you anything else?’

  ‘No, only that she had the gift with horses.’ She looked at Griffoni, who nodded in understanding.

  Griffoni asked, ‘Is there anyone working here who might have been here then?’

  ‘Let me think,’ the woman said, and Brunetti watched as she started counting. She got to seven, extending a finger for each, then closed them all back into her palm until everyone had been eliminated.

  She looked at Brunetti. ‘No. They’re all gone.’ Her eyes drifted off to a field behind the house, where he saw a few horses grazing on the remaining grass. ‘Most of the horses are gone, too, I’m afraid.’ It sounded to Brunetti as though that were the part she regretted.

  ‘Are you still in contact with any of them?’

  She didn’t bother to use her fingers to count the possibilities. ‘No, I’m not.’ Then, with mixed explanation and apology she added, ‘People don’t stay a long time at this sort of job.’

  Brunetti saw that the driver was standing at the wooden fence, rubbing the head of one of the horses. As he watched, the driver bent down and ripped up a few tufts of grass on his side of the fence and held them out to the horse, who took them from his hand and munched on them. When she’d eaten them, the horse bumped her head against the man’s hand, and he obeyed by bending down for more grass.

  ‘They’re very smart,’ Griffoni said and walked towards the railing. Brunetti followed her, and the woman followed Brunetti. When the humans were all standing in a line, the horses in the field started to drift in their direction, and within five minutes the four humans were all busy pulling up grass to feed them.

  Griffoni stood on the bottom rung of the fence and leaned over towards the horses, two of whom responded and nuzzled at her hands and then her neck and then her face. She embraced them, arms spread, a hand on each of their necks, and then began slowly to scratch at the place just under their ears. The three of them seemed to enter into a trance, and only when a third horse approached and nipped at the flank of one of the others did they jerk away from Griffoni and, losing interest, turn and trot away.

  Griffoni turned to Brunetti and smiled, and he saw a new person hiding behind her face.

  From behind them, Signora degli Specchi said, ‘Come in and at least have something to drink.’ Griffoni started towards the building, and Brunetti followed. The driver bent down to tear up more grass.

  She led them through the house to the back, passing through rooms where the furniture all seemed to have served as resting places for Hector and whatever dogs had preceded him. Saddles occupied two chairs in the kitchen, where a large fire burned to challenge the cold that seeped up from the stone floor. It blazed and succeeded in making it warmer than outside, but not by much.

  They both said coffee would be fine, and she surprised them by going to a small Gaggia machine. With the ease of familiarity, she made three coffees quickly and brought them back to the table, where she’d told them to take seats.

  As they stirred sugar into their coffee, Brunetti asked, ‘If you knew nothing about Manuela, why did you tell us to come out here?’

  Keeping her eyes on her hands as she stirred her coffee, the owner said, ‘I had the idea that you were going to bring her.’

  ‘Her?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Manuela,’ she said, still not looking at him.

  ‘But what sense would that make if you never knew her, and no one who knew her is still working here?’ Brunetti asked. Halfway through his sentence, he realized how irritated he sounded and so moderated his tone until, by the end of it, he was merely asking a simple question.

  Clink and clink and clink, until she set the spoon down on the saucer. She took a sip, set the cup back and used the spoon to make a few more clinks. Finally, she tired of the attempt to delay and said, ‘Her horse is still here.’

  Brunetti set his own cup down, and Griffoni asked, ‘How old is she?’

  ‘She’s ­twenty-­one.’

  ‘And you thought . . .’ Griffoni started to ask but then ran out of ideas.

  ‘I thought she’d remember her.’

  The pronouns refused to make sense to Brunetti. ‘That the horse would remember her?’ he asked.

  ‘No. My husband told me about what happened to her. In the water.’

  Brunetti still didn’t understand. He waited.

  ‘I hoped she’d remember the horse.’

  16

  ‘My husband told me, before he died, that she’d suffered brain damage – people in the city told him – but he didn’t know how bad it was. Because he was so fond of her, I thought that, hoped that . . . well, that she’d be well enough to remember her horse or recognize her, and it might . . . it might help her. Somehow.’ As she spoke, she picked at a tiny flap of skin near one of her fingernails, reminding Brunetti of a much younger Chiara when she had to confess having done something stupid or wrong.

  Entirely at a loss, he looked at Griffoni, who held up her palm to silence him. ‘Did your husband say anything else about her?’ she asked.

  The sile
nce expanded so much that Brunetti thought the woman was not going to answer. He leaned back in his chair and looked around the room. It was much cleaner than the other rooms, the counters uncluttered, plates and glasses neatly stored in open cabinets on either side of the sink. The stone floor was spotless. The walls were filled with group photographs of horses and humans. He was close enough to see that some of them showed people with the haircuts and clothing of decades before. He saw young people wearing glasses with thick, rectangular plastic frames, a style so old it was on its way back. Other photos showed fashions closer to those of today. The horses always looked the same.

  The woman got to her feet and left the room without saying anything to them. Brunetti stood and walked over to the photos, some in colour and some older ones in black and white, wondering if Manuela was in any of them and forced to accept the fact that, even if she were, he might not recognize her. The likelihood would depend on his ability to ­carbon-­date clothing and hairstyles. What had young people – for most of the people in the photos were young – worn fifteen years ago? How had their hair been cut? In the photo he’d seen, she’d worn jeans and had long hair: that description would fit most of the people in these photos.

  He recognized, in a photo that must be recent, the young journalist who read the 8.30 news on local television. Usually he appeared wearing suit and tie, but here he was, looking not much younger, in sweatshirt and jeans, with tousled hair and his arms around the shoulders of the boy and girl on either side of him. Brunetti looked more closely at the photos. He saw a very faded photo of a ­light-­haired girl who looked a bit like Paola, but with a smaller nose. She stood beside a ­long-­haired young man who was not much taller, as smiling and ­fresh-­faced as she. He looked familiar, but Brunetti couldn’t place him. Perhaps this one had grown up to become the weatherman.

  He heard footsteps behind him; when he turned, the woman was back with papers in her hand. She went over to the table and laid them, only two of them, on the table: they were photos.