The Death of Faith

by Donna Leon

  After a year there, Padre Luciano was assigned to a small parish in the Dolomites, where he served for five years without distinction under a pastor the severity of whose rule was said to be unequalled in Northern Italy. Upon the death of that pastor, Padre Luciano was named pastor in his place but was transferred from that village two years later, mention being made of a ‘trouble-making, Communist mayor.’

  From there, Padre Luciano had been sent to a small church on the outskirts of Treviso, where he had remained a year and three months before his transfer, a year ago, to the church of San Polo, from which pulpit he now preached and from which church he was sent to contribute his portion to the religious instruction of the youth of the city.

  ‘How did you get this?’ Brunetti asked when he had finished reading.

  ‘The ways of the Lord are many and mysterious, Commissario,’ was her calm response.

  ‘This time I’m serious, Signorina. I’d like to know how you obtained this information,’ he said, not responding to her smile.

  She considered him for a moment. ‘I have a friend who works in the Patriarch’s office.’

  ‘A clerical friend?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Who was willing to give you this?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘How did you manage that, Signorina? I would imagine this is information they would want kept out of the hands of the laity.’

  ‘I would assume as much, Commissario.’ Her phone rang but she made no move to answer it. After seven rings, it stopped. ‘He’s having an affair with a friend of mine.’

  ‘I see,’ he said. Then he asked neutrally, ‘And you used that as blackmail?’

  ‘No. Not at all. He’s wanted to leave for months, just walk out and begin a decent life. But my friend has persuaded him to remain there.’

  ‘At the Patriarch’s office?’

  She nodded.

  ‘As a priest?’

  She nodded again.

  ‘Dealing with documents and reports as sensitive as this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘For what purpose does your friend want him to remain there?’

  ‘I would prefer not to tell you that, Commissario.’

  Brunetti refused to repeat his question, but he also refused to move away from her desk.

  ‘It’s in no way criminal, what he does.’ She considered what she had just said and added, ‘Just the contrary.’

  ‘I think I need to know that’s true, Signorina.’

  For the first time in the years they had worked together, Signorina Elettra looked upon Brunetti with open disapproval. ‘If I gave you my word?’ she asked.

  Before he answered, Brunetti looked down at the papers in his hands, badly made photocopies of the original documents. Badly blurred, but still visible at the top, was the seal of the Patriarch of Venice.

  Brunetti glanced up. ‘I don’t think that will be necessary, Signorina. I’d as soon doubt myself.’

  She didn’t smile, but the tension left her body and voice. ‘Thank you, Commissario.’

  ‘Do you think your friend could obtain information about a priest who is a member of an order, rather than a parish priest?’

  ‘If you gave me his name, he could certainly try.’

  ‘Pio Cavaletti, he’s a member of the Order of the Sacred Cross.’

  She noted the name and looked up. ‘Anything else, sir?’

  ‘There is one more thing. I’ve heard gossip about Contessa Crivoni.’ Because Signorina Elettra was Venetian, Brunetti did not have to specify the nature of the gossip. ‘About a priest. I have no idea who he is, but I’d like your friend to see if he can find out anything.’

  Signorina Elettra made another note, looked up, and said, ‘I won’t give him this until I see him, but I should see him at dinner tonight.’

  ‘At your friend’s place?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes. We never discuss any of this over the phone.’

  ‘For fear of what would happen to him?’ Brunetti asked, uncertain of how seriously he meant the remark.

  ‘Partly,’ she said.

  ‘And what else?’

  ‘Fear of what would happen to us.’

  He looked at her to see if she was joking, but her face was set and grim. ‘You believe that, Signorina?’

  ‘It is an organization that has never been kind to its enemies.’

  ‘And is that what you are, an enemy?’

  ‘With all my heart.’

  Brunetti was about to ask her why, but he stopped himself. It was not that he did not want to know — quite the opposite — just he did not want to begin a discussion of this topic now, and not in the office, standing in front of a door through which Vice-Questore Patta could walk at any moment. Instead, he said, ‘I’ll be very grateful to your friend for any information he can give me.’

  The phone rang again, and this time she picked it up. She asked who was speaking and then asked them to hold the line for a moment while she called the files up on her computer.

  Brunetti nodded in her direction and went back up toward his office, the papers still in his hand.

  * * * *

  Chapter Fifteen

  And this, Brunetti thought as he walked back up to his office, was the man to whom he had, all unwittingly, entrusted Chiara’s religious education. He could not say that they had done it together, for Paola had made it clear from the very beginning that she wanted no part of it. He had known, even back when the children were just beginning elementary school, that she opposed the idea, but the social consequences of an outright rejection of religious instruction would be endured by the children themselves and not by the parents making the decision for them. Where would a child whose parents rejected religious instruction sit while his or her peers were learning the catechism and the lives of the saints? What would happen to a child who did not join in the rites of passage marked by First Communion and Confirmation?

  Brunetti recalled a legal case much in the headlines last year that concerned a perfectly respectable couple, childless, he a doctor and she a lawyer. The high court of Torino had rejected their application to adopt a child because both of them were atheists, and it was determined that these people would not, therefore, be suitable parents.

  He had laughed at the story of those Irish priests in Dublin, as if Ireland were some Third World country in the death grasp of a primitive religion, yet here in his own country signs of the same grasp were surely to be seen, if only to the jaundiced eye.

  He had no idea what to do about Padre Luciano, for he knew he had no legal foothold. The man had never been charged with a crime, and Brunetti guessed it would be impossible to find anyone in his old parishes to speak out openly against him. The infection had been passed on for other people to deal with, a natural enough response, and those who were free of him were sure to remain silent, if only because this would assure that they would remain free of him.

  Brunetti knew that his society took a jocund view of sex offences, viewing them as little more than excesses of male ardour. It was not a view he shared. What sort of therapy, he wondered, was given to priests like Padre Luciano at this home where he had been sent? If Padre Luciano’s record since his stay there was any indication, whatever treatment he had been given had not proven effective.

  Back at his desk, he tossed the papers down in front of him. He sat for a while, then got up and went over to look out the window. Seeing nothing there to interest him, he returned to his desk and pulled together all of the reports and papers having to do with Maria Testa and the various events that could in any way be related to what she had told him that quiet day, now weeks ago. He read through them all, taking an occasional note. When he was finished, he stared at the wall for a few minutes, then picked up the phone and asked to be connected to the Ospedale Civile.

  To his surprise, he had no difficulty in being connected to the nurse in charge of the emergency ward, who told him, when he introduced himself, that ‘the police’s’ patient had b
een moved to a private room. No, there had been no change in her condition: she was still unconscious. Yes, if he waited a moment, she would go and get the police officer who was in front of her door.

  It turned out to be Miotti. ‘Yes, sir?’ he asked when Brunetti identified himself.

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘Quiet and more quiet.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Reading, sir. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘Better than looking at the nurses, I suppose. Anyone come to visit her?’

  ‘Only that man from the Lido. Sassi. No one else.’

  ‘Did you talk to your brother, Miotti?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Last night, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘And did you ask him about that priest?’

  ‘I did, sir.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, at first he didn’t want to say anything. I don’t know if it’s because he didn’t want to spread gossip. Marco’s like that, sir,’ Miotti explained, as if asking his superior’s forbearance about such weakness of character. ‘But then I told him I really needed to know, and he told me that there was talk — just talk, sir — that he was involved with Opus Dei. He didn’t know anything for sure, just that he had heard things. You understand, sir?’

  Yes, I understand. Anything else?’

  ‘Not really, sir. I tried to think of what you would want to know, what else you’d ask when I told you this, and I thought you’d want to know if Marco believed the talk, and so I asked him if he did.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And he believes it, sir.’

  ‘Thank you, Miotti. Go back to your reading.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘What is it you’re reading?’

  ‘ Quattroute,’ he said, naming the most popular of the automobile magazines.

  ‘I see. Thank you, Miotti.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Oh, sweet merciful Jesus on the cross, save us all. At the thought of Opus Dei, Brunetti could not prevent himself from giving inner voice to one of his mother’s favourite prayers. If any mystery was wrapped up in an enigma, it was Opus Dei. Brunetti knew no more than that it was some sort of religious organization, half clerical, half lay, which owed absolute allegiance to the Pope and which was dedicated to some sort of renewal of power or authority for the Church. And, as soon as Brunetti considered what he knew about Opus Dei and how he knew it, he was aware that he could not be sure of the truth of any of it. If a secret society is, by definition, a secret, then anything that is ‘known’ about it might well be mistaken.

  The Masons, with their rings and trowels and tiny cocktail waitress aprons, had always charmed Brunetti. He had little real information about them, but he had always considered them more harmless than menacing, and he had to realize that not a little part of this was the result of his having seen them too frequently neutralized by the beautiful fun of The Magic Flute.

  But Opus Dei was a different matter altogether. He knew less about them — had to admit that he knew almost nothing about them at all — but even the sound of the name was a cold breath on the back of his neck.

  He tried to distance himself from stupid prejudice and tried to remember anything that he had ever read or heard directly about Opus Dei, anything tangible and verifiable, but he came up with nothing. He found himself thinking about the Gypsies, for he ‘knew’ about the Gypsies in much the same way that he ‘knew’ about Opus Dei: as a result of things repeated, things passed on, but never a name or a date or a fact. The cumulative effect was the atmosphere of mystery that any closed society must exude to those who are not members.

  He tried to think of anyone from whom he could get accurate information, but he could think of no one except Signorina Elettra’s anonymous friend in the Patriarch’s office. Surely, if the Church was nursing an adder to its bosom, then it was in that bosom where information must be sought.

  She looked up when he came in, surprised to see him again. ‘Yes, Commissario?’

  ‘I have another favour to ask your friend.’

  ‘Yes?’ she asked, reaching for her notebook.

  ‘Opus Dei.’

  Her surprise, no more than a minimal widening of her eyes, was evident to Brunetti. ‘What would you like to know about them, sir?’

  ‘How they might be involved in what’s going on here.’

  ‘You mean these wills and that woman in the hospital?’

  ‘Yes.’ Then, almost as an afterthought, Brunetti asked, ‘And could you ask him to see if there’s any connection with Father Cavaletti?’

  She made a note of this. ‘And the priest whose name you don’t know? Contessa Crivoni’s priest, if I may call him that?’

  Brunetti nodded and then asked, ‘Do you know anything about them, Signorina?’

  She shook her head. ‘No more than anyone else does. They’re secret, they’re serious, and they’re dangerous.’

  ‘Don’t you think that’s exaggerating the case?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you know if they have a’ — Brunetti struggled for the proper term — ‘chapter in this city?’

  ‘I have no idea, sir.’

  ‘It’s strange, isn’t it?’ Brunetti asked. ‘None of us has any accurate information, but that doesn’t stop us from being suspicious and frightened of them?’ When she said nothing, he insisted, ‘It’s strange, isn’t it?’

  ‘I take the opposite view, sir,’ Signorina Elettra said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I assume that, if we did know about them, we’d be even more frightened.’

  * * * *

  Chapter Sixteen

  In the papers on his desk, he found the home number of Dottor Fabio Messini, dialled it, and asked to speak to the doctor. The person who answered, a woman, said that the doctor was too busy to come to the phone and asked who was calling. Brunetti said no more than ‘Police’, at which name she agreed, with audible reluctance, to ask the doctor if he could spare a moment.

  Many moments passed before a man’s voice said, ‘Yes?’

  ‘Dottor Messini?’

  ‘Of course. Who is this?’

  ‘Commissario Brunetti.’ Brunetti paused to let the rank sink in and then said, ‘There are some questions we’d like to ask you, Dottore.’

  ‘About what, Commissario?’

  ‘Your nursing homes.’

  ‘What about them?’ Messini asked, sounding more impatient than curious.

  ‘About some of the people who work there.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about staffing,’ Messini said casually, making Brunetti immediately curious about the Philippine nurses who worked at the nursing home where his mother was living.

  ‘I’d prefer not to discuss this on the phone,’ Brunetti said, knowing that a sense of mystery was often enough both to up the stakes and incite the curiosity of the person he was talking to.

  ‘Well, you hardly expect me to come to the Questura, do you?’ Messini asked, voice rich with the sarcasm of the powerful.

  ‘Not unless you want your patients to be disturbed by a raid from the Guardia di Frontiere when they come to question your Philippine nurses.’ Brunetti waited a hairbreadth before adding, ‘Dottore.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ insisted Messini in a voice that said quite the opposite.

  ‘As you choose, Dottore. I had hoped this was something we could discuss like gentlemen and perhaps settle before it became an embarrassment, but it seems that’s impossible. I’m sorry to have troubled you,’ Brunetti said in a voice he strained to make sound cordially terminal.

  ‘Just a moment, Commissario. Perhaps I spoke too soon, and it might be better that we met.’

  ‘If you’re too busy for it, Dottore, I understand perfectly,’ Brunetti said briskly.

  ‘Well, I am busy, but certainly I could find some time, perhaps this afternoon. Let me check my schedule here a moment.’ The sound grew muffled as Messini covered the phone and spoke to s
omeone at the other end. After a short pause, his voice returned. ‘I find that my lunch appointment has been cancelled. Could I invite you to lunch, Commissario?’

  Brunetti said nothing, waiting for the name of the restaurant, for that would indicate the size of the bribe Messini thought he would have to pay.