The Waters of Eternal Youth

by Donna Leon

  Brunetti thought back to what Chiara had been at that age: sweet, affectionate, able to sound out and read aloud any text given to her and to understand some of what she read, trusting of all adults, in love with the neighbour’s dog. What a lovely age; how horrible to have it be prolonged year after year.

  He looked at Manuela’s mother with new eyes, and she looked back at him with a flash of the intelligence he had chosen not to notice before. ‘I can’t tell you how sorry I am, Signora,’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘Thank you. It doesn’t help in the least, but I thank you for your sympathy,’ she said sounding like an actress who had stepped out of role.

  The moment passed, and he laid all father aside and returned to being only a policeman. ‘Did you learn this from the hospital report, Signora?

  She considered that then said, ‘I don’t think I ever read it.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘I said I think I never read it,’ she repeated. ‘By the time Manuela came home from the hospital, it was obvious to me what was wrong with her. So what did I have to learn from the report? That I’d spend the rest of my life taking care of her? I could understand that myself: I didn’t need their medical jargon to tell me.’ Saying that had apparently provided her with momentum, and she continued. ‘You’ve seen her. Do you think there will be a time when I’m not going to have to take care of her?’

  Then, seeing his surprise, she added, ‘Her father took her to doctors all over Italy, to specialists, and for tests, and they all said what anyone could see – what I saw when they brought her home.’

  Brunetti remained silent. She asked him, ‘Do you have children?’

  He nodded, unable to find words. For the first time since entering it, Brunetti took a look around the room. Normal, everything was normal: sofas, chairs, a table, a bookcase, carpets, windows. Nothing out of place, nothing upset or broken, everything normal except for the lives of the people who entered and left this room.

  ‘I’m concerned about the original report, the one from the hospital here, Signora,’ he said. ‘Do you remember if they gave you a copy of the file?’ he asked, hoping to keep to the past and avoid the present and, please God, the future.

  ‘I suppose they must have.’

  His voice calm, as though this were the most normal thing in the world, he asked, ‘Would you still have it, do you think?’

  ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘I’d like to see it,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘There were so many doctors, so many reports,’ she said.

  ‘Could you try to find it, do you think?’ he insisted.

  She rose to her feet and said, suddenly eager, ‘I’ll have a look,’ then left the room.

  Brunetti walked over to the window, which was at the back of the house and thus provided a long view of Marghera and Mestre, a view he’d rather be spared. The laguna wasn’t visible from the top floor, but he could see the chimneys of the Marghera factories, busy with their life’s work: killing him. Over the last years, Brunetti had come to this conclusion about most industries: their desire was not to produce chemicals, refine petroleum, or make plasterboard, or jewellery, or indeed – in the factories of the hinterland – make anything. On the contrary, Big Business wanted nothing more than to take the life of Guido Brunetti and everyone in his family. His children’s concern for the environment had nudged him into reading and that had nudged him into paying attention and reading more widely, and that had led him down the slippery slope of information to arrive at this conclusion, one he had so far spared his children. Off there in the distance sat the daily reminder: a vast petrochemical complex that had spent decades pouring anything it wanted into the waters of the laguna, into the fish he ate, the clams his children loved, the radicchio grown on the farm someone in his wife’s family owned on the island of Sant’Erasmo, not to mention what had also been tossed up, ever so carelessly, within those enormous clouds that had billowed out of their smokestacks all these years.

  The sound of the opening door pulled Brunetti from his reflections. He turned to see Manuela entering the room, pushing in front of her a wheeled trolley draped in a white linen cloth, on which sat three cups of coffee, a chocolate cake the size of a pizza, plates and forks, and a large bowl of whipped cream. Manuela’s excited pleasure radiated from her, seeming to bounce around the room, calling out that there was cake and cream for everyone. Behind her came Griffoni and, carrying a manila envelope, Manuela’s mother.

  Manuela parked the trolley in front of the sofa and called to her mother, ‘Alina made a chocolate cake, Mamma. Alina made a cake.’

  ‘Oh, wonderful, Tesoro, and it’s your favourite, too.’

  ‘And my favourite,’ Griffoni chimed in.

  Brunetti did nothing more than smile, but Manuela, who had turned to see what he had to say, seemed pleased that he liked it, too. She waved to them all to take their places, and they responded to the lure of the cake and cream and took seats around the trolley, Brunetti holding chairs for both her mother and Griffoni.

  Manuela picked up the cake knife and looked tentatively at her mother, who nodded. Carefully, guiding her right hand with her left, Manuela set the point of the knife in the centre of the cake and cut down through it, then went back and cut an enormous piece, certainly twice as large as a normal piece would be.

  ‘Oh, good. May I have that one?’ Brunetti asked Manuela, knowing that Griffoni disliked sweet things.

  She started to turn to her mother for approval but couldn’t wait and said, ‘Oh, yes, please.’ Manuela tried to lift the slice of cake but had to use the fingers of her left hand to guide it to a plate, which she passed to Brunetti. He thanked her effusively and leaned forward to slather a mound of cream on it. Taking it upon himself to help, he placed cups of coffee in front of Griffoni and Manuela’s mother and, assuming that it must be hers, a glass of what looked like ­Coca-­Cola in front of Manuela’s empty chair.

  There were three moments of shared anxiety as Manuela cut the remaining three pieces of cake, but she managed to do it without creating much mess, giving her mother a small piece and cutting one as big as Brunetti’s for Griffoni and setting down the knife long enough to pass it to her, smiling.

  Last, she cut herself a ­normal-­sized piece and sat down.

  Her mother put a drop of cream on her cake and passed the bowl to Griffoni, who heaped three large spoonfuls on hers. Brunetti knew that she’d prefer not to, but also knew that she would eat it all, perhaps even ask for a second slice. In the past, he had watched her eat pies and cakes in order to placate possible witnesses or to win trust from people who should not have trusted her. Here, however, it had nothing to do with her profession: food is love, he believed, and Manuela needed to love.

  Griffoni asked her if she’d like cream and at her nod put a large spoonful on top of Manuela’s cake.

  ‘Buon appetito,’ her mother said, and they picked up their forks.

  Ah, Brunetti thought as he piled cream on his second bite of cake, who says that good actions are not rewarded?

  Automatically, the level of conversation became appropriate for Manuela: how good the cake was, how good Alina’s apple cake was, too, and Manuela always helped by peeling the apples; why is cream so good with chocolate cake, and where does cream come from; and would it be possible to ride a cow?

  When Manuela asked this question, her mother quickly ate her last bite of cake and asked her daughter if she could have another, although Brunetti suspected she was enjoying the cake as little as Griffoni.

  ‘Would you like another piece of cake, Signora?’ Manuela asked Griffoni, who put both hands over her stomach and said, ‘If I ate any more, I’d go “pop” and they’d hear it all over the city.’

  This set Manuela off into giggles, and the idea of riding a cow – of riding – was abandoned.

  When cake and more coffee had been refu
sed, and then refused again, Brunetti and Griffoni got to their feet and said they had to go back to work. Manuela found this thrilling and asked, ‘Do you get to chase bad guys?’

  ‘No, Signorina Manuela,’ Brunetti said, ‘usually we sit at our desks and read papers all day long. It’s really very boring. Much more fun to come here and have cake.’

  She laughed at this as though it were the funniest thing she’d ever heard, and again the bright sound of her laughter cut Brunetti to the heart.

  She went with them towards the door, leaning close to Griffoni as they walked. Just as they got there, Brunetti heard Signora ­Magello-­Ronchi call after him. ‘Commissario,’ she said, coming towards them. ‘You forgot this.’ She held up the manila envelope she had brought back from some other room.

  He took it and thanked her. Manuela’s name was on the cover. He turned the envelope over and looked at the flap. ‘Didn’t you open it?’

  ‘I told you. There was no need to,’ she answered, voice moving away from pleasantness.

  Griffoni, perhaps in response to the tension that had suddenly entered the room, asked Manuela a question and moved off from the others to hear the answer.

  Manuela’s mother closed her eyes for a moment and concentrated on taking a breath. When she opened her eyes, she said, ‘You can read it if you want. It doesn’t interest me.’ She looked towards the door, where Griffoni and Manuela stood close together, talking happily. ‘Only she does,’ she said in a tired voice. ‘Only my baby.’

  Brunetti reached out and took her hand and held it. ‘Thank you for talking to us, Signora,’ he said.

  ‘I hope you liked the cake,’ she chirped back in best hostess fashion, then smiled easily, looking remarkably like Manuela when she did.

  Griffoni and Brunetti took their leave, but not before having promised to come back and see Manuela another time.

  17

  The fastest way to get to the Questura was to take the Number One from San Silvestro. As they waited on the imbarcadero for the vaporetto, Brunetti said, ‘She’s a sweet girl, isn’t she?’ realizing only too late that he had referred to Manuela as a girl.

  Griffoni nodded but said nothing.

  ‘You got on with her very well, it seemed.’

  ‘All I had to do was think of my nieces.’

  ‘How old are they?’

  ‘One’s six and one’s eight. I said to her what I say to them.’ She walked back outside and leaned against the railing with folded arms, looking towards Rialto for a sign of the boat.

  Brunetti, without glancing at his watch, said, ‘Four minutes.’

  ‘Are you joking?’ Griffoni asked in surprise. ‘Do you all have computer chips in your ears with the boat times?’

  ‘It’s my stop,’ he said. ‘So I don’t need a chip.’

  She turned and glanced across the canal and said, ‘It’s strange: there are times when I begin to find all of this normal. It’s where I live and I move around on boats, and addresses mean nothing, and it’s faster to walk to work, and I’m even beginning to get used to the sound of Veneziano.’ She let her voice trail off and stop.

  ‘And other times?’

  ‘Other times I see how strange it all is. Everyone in my building is very friendly if we meet on the stairs, but no one’s invited me into their home, not even for a coffee, and I’ve been there for several years. The young people call me tu, but the old ones never will. I find the food insipid. I’ve almost died from every one of the pizzas I’ve tried to eat here. And I know the sun is going to disappear in about two months and we won’t see it again until March, except for a ­one-­week break in January, usually about the end of the first week.’

  Brunetti laughed out loud, as he suspected she wanted him to. ‘And at home, you’d be walking around in a sweater and eating pizza at every meal?’

  ‘No, not really. I’d probably be trying to figure out a way to get around the magistrates who are working for the Mafia; the same with my colleagues. And I’d be in the habit of carrying my pistol. Here,’ she began and pulled open her jacket to show that she was not wearing one, ‘I forget to carry it most of the time.’

  Brunetti, who did the same, said nothing.

  ‘What’s in the envelope?’ she asked, pointing to the one he was carrying.

  ‘It’s what the hospital gave her mother when she took Manuela home.’ He turned it over and showed her the sealed flap.

  ‘And she couldn’t open it,’ she said, sounding as if she understood such reluctance. ‘How awful it must be for her.’ She turned away from Brunetti and looked at the buildings on the other side of the canal, but they offered little solace.

  ‘Why?’ Brunetti asked, curious about Griffoni’s concern for the mother when she had spent most of her time with the daughter.

  ‘Because she understands. And the daughter doesn’t.’

  He turned and walked into the imbarcadero, and she followed him. ‘You heard it coming, didn’t you?’ she asked as she noticed the boat approaching. When it tied up, they moved on board and towards the back of the cabin, where some seats were empty.

  ‘I suppose I did. I’ve been listening to them all my life, so maybe my body feels their vibrations before I hear them. Never thought about it before.’

  He stood back and let her pass in front of him to take the seat by the window. When he turned to speak to her, he saw only the back of her head: she was glued to the window as if she were a tourist seeing these palazzi for the first time.

  He stuck his finger under the flap and prised it up. It opened easily, noiselessly. He reached in and pulled out a dark blue manila folder. Having heard the sound, Griffoni turned and watched him read.

  She gave him plenty of time. When he turned to the second page, she said, ‘Well?’

  ‘It gives a general description of her condition when she was brought to the Emergency Room: she was unconscious, but breathing; an ­X-­ray showed there was still water in her lungs; there was a wound on the side of her head.’ Brunetti had gradually been moving the papers farther away from him as he read but finally reached into the inner pocket of his jacket for his reading glasses.

  He read quickly down the second page then told Griffoni: ‘Aside from the wound on her head – there is no speculation here about what the cause might have been – there were bruises on her arms and neck.’ He flipped back to the first page. ‘These were written when she was admitted. It seems their chief concern was the water in her lungs.’

  He turned back to where he had been and again read quickly, skimming the text, searching for the point when the doctors began to understand the extent of her injuries.

  He took his eyes from the paper and stared ahead, blind to the people sitting in front of them, blind to the glory on both sides of the boat.

  ‘What is it?’ Griffoni asked.

  He pointed to the third paragraph and passed the papers to her, saying, ‘The second day. Look.’

  Griffoni read it and, just as Brunetti had, looked away from the page blankly in front of her.

  ‘Bloodstains seen on patient’s sheets necessitated a pelvic exam, performed in place on the ­still-­unconscious patient. Evidence of recent sexual activity of a violent nature, very likely rape.’

  Griffoni continued reading the report to the end. ‘She was unconscious for a week,’ she said. ‘And then she woke up naturally but could remember nothing – nothing – of the events before her fall – fall – into the water.’ She handed him the papers, saying, ‘Read the rest.’

  He did and had barely finished when the boat pulled up to the San Zaccaria stop. He followed Griffoni from the boat. They walked along the riva, both on autopilot, towards the Questura. At one point, uncertain of his memory of what they had both read, Brunetti stopped and took another look at the report. ‘When she finally did wake up, it took them only a day to see that something was wrong,’ he
said, then read aloud: ‘ “Patient has no memory of incident and great difficulty in explaining the events preceding it. Her language is childlike, and she seems not to understand her condition.” ’ He continued reading the doctors’ ­day-­by-­day evidence that far more was wrong with this girl than they had at first assumed, until that evidence became incontrovertible: an adolescent had fallen into the water, and a child had been pulled out.

  ‘They didn’t bother with a full examination when they brought her in,’ he said and closed his eyes. ‘A wound on her head, bruising on her body, pulled from the water, and they didn’t give her a full examination!’

  ‘And then, I suppose,’ Griffoni said in a voice she struggled to contain, ‘they thought they’d wait until she woke up before they told the mother or told the police.’

  Brunetti thought Griffoni’s anger might blossom into something else, but it did not. He started towards the Questura again. He wondered if the mother even knew; surely, they would have to have told her; the girl was a minor. Or maybe they thought that by giving her the medical files they were fulfilling their obligations.

  Griffoni followed him up to his office and sat opposite him; the sun streaming in from the windows turned her hair into a golden crown. ‘What now?’ she asked.

  ‘I still have to talk to the man who pulled her out of the water,’ Brunetti said. ‘I’m supposed to see him tomorrow at noon. I had to invite him to lunch to get him to talk to me.’

  ‘Do you think he knows anything?’

  Brunetti waved a hand in the air to show his uncertainty. ‘He’s a drunk. Everyone who’s spoken of him says he is. When I called to ask to speak to him, I could hear a glass clicking against the phone.’

  ‘They’re unreliable, drunks,’ Griffoni said.

  ‘And if his brain’s been soaking in alcohol for the last fifteen years, it’s even less likely he’ll remember anything.’

  ‘Then why bother?’

  ‘There’s nothing else,’ Brunetti admitted.