by Donna Leon
She dipped a corner of a biscuit in her caffè latte, ate it, and continued. ‘Never once have I heard anyone say, “Yes, Gemma’s really not very bright, so I understand why she didn’t do well in mathematics” or, “Nanni is a bit of a dope, you know, especially at languages.” Not a bit of it. Their children are always the best and the brightest, are perceived as spending every waking moment bent over their books, and into the lambent clarity of their minds no teacher has ever been capable of adding even the dimmest light or glimmer of improvement. Yet these are the same kids who come home with Chiara or Raffi and talk of nothing but pop music and films, seem to know nothing about anything except pop music and films and, when they can tear their attention away from pop music and films, do nothing except call one another on their telefonini or send SMS’s to each other, the grammar and syntax of which I most sincerely hope to be spared.’
Brunetti ate a biscuit, took another, looked across at her and asked, ‘Do you prepare these speeches when you’re washing the dishes, or do such rhetorical flourishes come to you unrehearsed?’
She considered his question in the spirit in which it had been asked and answered, ‘I’d say they come to me quite naturally, though I imagine I’m aided by the fact that I see myself as the Language Police, ever on the prowl for infelicities or stupidities.’
‘Lots of work?’ he asked.
‘Endless.’ She smiled, but the smile disappeared and she said, ‘All of that means I have no idea where she got it from.’
During all of this, his thoughts had never been far from the dead man, and so when she paused, he asked, ‘If you have any time left over after patrolling the language, could you think of someone at the university who might be able to identify an African by looking at a photo? I mean his tribe or where he might come from.’
‘The one who was shot,’ she said.
Brunetti nodded. ‘All we know is that he’s an African — presumably from Senegal — and not even that for sure. Is there anyone there who might help?’
She dipped another biscuit, ate it, took a sip of coffee, and said, ‘I know a man in the archaeology department who spends six months a year in Africa. I could ask him.’
‘Thanks,’ Brunetti said. ‘I’ll ask Signorina Elettra to send the photos to you at the university.’
‘Couldn’t you just bring them home and give them to me?’
‘They’re in the computer file,’ Brunetti said, speaking calmly so that it would sound as if he understood how this was possible.
She glanced at him, surprised. Then, reading his expression, she asked, ‘Who’s my little computer genius, then?’ She smiled.
Chagrined, he returned the smile, and asked, ‘How did you know?’
‘It’s part of being on the Language Police. We detect all forms of mendacity.’
He finished his coffee and set the cup down. ‘I should be home for lunch,’ he said as he got to his feet, then bent and kissed her on the head. ‘From policeman to policeman,’ he said, and left for the Questura.
When he reached his office, he found papers on his desk. The first page was a list of the addresses of the apartments owned by Renato Bertolli and Alessandro Cuzzoni, with a note stating that Cuzzoni was not married, and Bertolli’s wife owned nothing more than a half-interest in the apartment in which they lived.
Bertolli, whose home address in Santa Croce was given, owned six apartments, for two of which formal rental contracts were on record in the Ufficio delle Entrate. The fact that those two contracts dated back thirty-two and twenty-seven years, when Bertolli would have been a boy, suggested that they were in the hands of Venetian families whose right to remain in them, by now, was virtually beyond challenge. Bertolli and his wife were listed as resident in the third, but no contracts existed for the other apartments, suggesting they were empty, a suggestion which the information from Signorina Elettra’s friend called into question.
Attached was a note in Signorina Elettra’s hand, which read, ‘I called your friend Stefania at the rental agency and asked her to call around for me. She called back to say Bertolli rents all three of the apartments to foreigners by the week or month. She also asked me to tell you she’s still trying to sell the place near Fondamenta Nuove.’
Cuzzoni, then. He lived in San Polo, at an address only a few numbers distant from Brunetti’s, owned the apartment where he lived and a house in Castello, though no contract was on file at the Ufficio delle Entrate to indicate that the house was being rented.
How convenient, that the city offices never bothered with even the most simple cross-check. If no rental contract was on file, then there was no reason to believe that the owner was being paid rent, and who could be expected to pay tax if an apartment was empty? A person of a certain turn of mind might so argue, but Brunetti had spent decades looking into the myriad ways citizens cheated one another and everyone cheated the state, and so he assumed that there was some other game afoot here, some way that money was being made on the house and taxes avoided. Renting to illegal immigrants seemed as good a way as any.
He pulled down his copy of Calli, Campielli, e Canali and looked for Cuzzoni’s address: he found it on the other side of Rio dei Meloni, literally the building next but one to his own, though getting to it from his home would require walking up to Campo Sant’ Aponal, then turning back towards the water. Using the same book, he checked the address of the house Cuzzoni owned. It was a high number in Castello, a location that was, for many Venetians, as far away as Milano.
He could easily speak to Cuzzoni, either at home or in his shop, but first Brunetti decided he would go and have a look down in Castello to determine if there was any sign that people were living in his house and who those people might be. He remembered his promise to Gravini, not to act until the officer had had a chance to speak to the African he knew, but looking did not count as acting.
The weather had not changed, and cold assaulted him the instant he stepped from the door of the Questura. One end of his scarf whipped out like an eel on a fishing line and tried to fly away from him. He grabbed it and wrapped it around his neck, hunkered down, and went over the bridge in the direction of Castello.
His memory of the map was clear: also, he knew the building because a former classmate of his in middle school had lived in the house next door. To spare his face from the wind, he kept his eyes on the pavement and navigated by radar more than vision. He walked past the Arsenale, the lions looking far more pleased than they should have been at finding themselves out in this cold.
He turned left into Via Garibaldi and walked past the monument to the hero who, gazing down at the frozen surface of the water in the pool at his feet, looked more concerned about the cold than had the lions. He took the second turn on the right, made a quick left, and then as quickly another right. The number he sought was the second building on the left, but he walked quickly past it and went into a bar in the small campiello just ahead.
Three old men wearing overcoats and hats sat playing cards at a table in the corner, small glasses of red wine at their right hands. One of them tossed a card face-up on the table, followed by the second man, and then the third, who swept up all three with arthritic difficulty, tapped them into order on the table in front of him, closed his cards and then quickly fanned them open and laid a new card on the table. Brunetti went to the bar and ordered un caffè corretto, not because he wanted the grappa, but because it looked like the kind of bar where real men drank caffè corretto at eleven in the morning.
He walked to the end of the bar and opened the copy of La Nuova that lay there. When his coffee came, he accepted it with muttered thanks, stirred in two sugars, and turned a page of the newspaper. The old men continued to play cards, none of them talking, even when the hand came to an end and the winner shuffled the cards and dealt them out again.
On page twelve there was an article about the murder. ‘God, next thing you know, they’ll be shooting us, too,’ Brunetti said to no one in particular, careful to speak in V
eneziano. He finished his coffee and placed the cup back in the saucer. He continued reading to the end of the story, looked at the bartender, and asked, ‘Filippo Lanzerotti still live up at the corner?’
‘Filippo?’
Brunetti gave the explanation that had obviously been asked for, ‘We went to school together, but I haven’t seen him in years. I just wondered if he still lived down here.’
‘Yes. His mother died about six years ago, so he and his wife moved into the house.’
Brunetti interrupted him here. ‘I remember, with those windows looking back over the garden. We didn’t appreciate it then, that view.’ He put the paper on the counter and pushed it aside, reached into his pocket and pulled out some change. He gave an inquiring glance and paid what was asked.
He nodded towards the paper he had left open to the story of the murder and asked, ‘You have any of them around here, the vu cumprà?’ Even as he spoke, he regretted it: the words sounded leaden and forced, filled with inappropriate curiosity.
It was some time before the barman answered, ‘Not so anyone would notice.’
‘They come in here?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘No reason,’ Brunetti said. ‘Just that I know a lot of people don’t like them, but I’ve always found them very polite.’ Then, as if remembering, ‘One of them even lent me his telefonino one day when I forgot mine and had to make a call.’ He was talking too much and knew it, but still he could not stop.
His example must have fallen short as proof of human solidarity, for the barman said only, ‘I’ve got no complaint against them.’
‘Not like the Albanians,’ came a sepulchral voice from the card table. By the time Brunetti turned to look at them, the three men’s attention had returned to their cards, and there was no way to know which one of them had spoken. From the placidity of their faces, the voice might well have belonged to any member of the chorus.
‘If you see Filippo,’ Brunetti said, ‘tell him Guido said hello.’
‘Guido?’
‘Yes, Guido from maths class. He’ll remember.’
‘Good, I’ll do that,’ the barman said just as one of the men at the table called for more wine, and he turned away to take down a clean glass.
Outside, Brunetti retraced his steps until he was back on Via Garibaldi. He went into the fruit and vegetable shop on the left, saw that the endive was described as coming from Latina, and asked for a kilo. While the woman was selecting the stalks, he asked, still in dialect, ‘Is Alessandro still renting to the vu cumprà?’ He jerked his head back in the direction of the Cuzzoni address.
She looked up, surprised by his leap from endive to real estate. ‘Alessandro. Cuzzoni,’ Brunetti clarified. ‘A couple of years ago, he tried to sell me that house of his back there, around the corner, but I bought a place in San Polo. Now my nephew’s getting married, and they’re looking for a place, and so I thought of Alessandro. But someone told me he was renting to the vu cumprà, and I wondered if he still was. Before I say anything to my nephew, that is.’ Then, before she could grow suspicious of his question and of him, he said, ‘My wife told me to get some melanzane, but the long ones.’
‘All I’ve got are the round ones,’ she said, clearly more comfortable talking about vegetables than about the business of her customers.
‘All right. I’ll tell her it was all I could find. Give me a kilo of the round ones, then, as well.’
She pulled out a second paper bag and selected three plump melanzane. As if comforted by their solidity, she said, ‘I don’t think it’s for sale any more, that house.’
‘Ah, all right. Thank you,’ Brunetti said, understanding that she had answered his question without seeming to. She handed him the plastic bag of vegetables and he paid, hoping that Paola could find some use for them.
He decided to go home, where Paola was pleased at the quality of the endive and said they’d have it that evening. She made no comment on the aubergines, and he forbore to explain that they were, in a certain sense, part of his investigative technique.
Because the children were not home for lunch, the meal was, at least by Brunetti’s standards, spartan, nothing more than risotto with radicchio di Treviso and a plate of cheese. Seeing his badly concealed disappointment at the sight of the selection of cheeses, Paola came and stood close beside him. ‘All right, Guido. I’ll make the pork tonight.’
Brunetti cut a piece of taleggio and set it on his plate. Interested, he looked up at her and asked, ‘Which one?’
‘The one with olives and tomato sauce.’
‘And the endive?’
She looked away from him and addressed, it appeared, the light fixture, ‘How did this happen to me? I married a man, and I find myself living with an appetite.’
‘With butter and parmigiano?’ he asked, spreading a thick layer of the cheese on a slice of bread.
Deciding to ignore his promise to Gravini, he left the apartment at three-fifteen and walked up to Sant’ Aponal, then back towards Fondamenta Businello, where the apartment had to be. He found the number, where the only doorbell bore the name Cuzzoni. He rang, waited a moment, then rang again.
‘Sì?’ a man’s voice finally asked.
‘Signor Cuzzoni?’
‘Yes. What do you want?’
‘To talk to you. It’s the police.’
‘Talk to me about what?’ the voice went on calmly.
‘Some property of yours,’ Brunetti said with equal calm.
‘Come up, then,’ the man said, and the door snapped open.
Brunetti pushed it back and stepped into a large garden that gave evidence, even in its winter sleep, of being the pampered recipient of considerable care. Two Norfolk pines stood on either side of a brick path flanked by waist-high hedges still bearing their tiny leaves. Other bricks had been set into the grass to create two diamond-shaped gardens, where Brunetti saw flowers that looked like pansies huddled under large sheets of milky plastic sheeting. At the far end of the garden was a single door, flanked by enormous windows protected by a thick metal grating.
The door was open, and he went in and then up the broad flight of low marble steps that led to the piano nobile. As he reached the top of the steps, the door opened inward and he found himself looking at a face that had been familiar to him for years.
The man was a few years younger than he, though his hair, Brunetti was satisfied to notice, was far thinner than his own, something he had suspected in the past but could now confirm. As tall as Brunetti, though thinner, Cuzzoni had an elegant nose and large brown eyes, perhaps too large for his face. He was as surprised as Brunetti to find himself confronted by a face he recognized.
Recovering sooner than Brunetti, he extended his hand and said, ‘Alessandro Cuzzoni.’ Brunetti took the offered hand, but before he could say his name, Cuzzoni went on, ‘It’s very strange to meet you, after seeing you pass on the street all these years. It’s as though we know one another already.’
‘Brunetti, Guido,’ he said and followed Cuzzoni into the apartment. The first thing he noticed was a tremendous water stain on the back wall of the entrance hall and an equally dark circle on the ceiling above it. His eyes followed it down to the floor, where he saw strips of parquet lying about in concave ruin.
‘My God. What happened?’ he couldn’t stop himself from asking.
Cuzzoni looked at the wreckage of ceiling, wall, and floor and quickly away, as if to spare himself a painful experience. He raised a finger to the centre of the ravished ceiling. ‘It happened four days ago. The woman upstairs put a wash in her washing machine and went out to Rialto. The tube that’s supposed to drain the water came loose, so the entire cycle ended up coming down my wall. I had already gone to work, and she was out all morning.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Brunetti said. ‘Water. Nothing’s worse.’
Cuzzoni shrugged and tried to smile, but it was obvious that his heart was not in it. ‘Luckily — for her, at least — the building’s
all lopsided, so the water ran towards the wall and came down here. She didn’t have much damage at all.’
As the other man spoke, Brunetti studied the far wall, where he thought he saw rectangles of darker paint. The other walls held paintings and, ominously, prints and drawings, one of which might have been a Marieschi. ‘What was on the wall?’ he finally asked.
Cuzzoni took a deep sigh. ‘The title page of the Carceri. The first impression, and with a signature added that was probably his. And a small Holbein drawing.’
As when someone spoke of serious illness in their family, Brunetti didn’t know how to ask or what to say. ‘And?’ was the best he could think of.
‘Better not to ask.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Brunetti said. He knew better than to mention insurance. Even if Cuzzoni had it or the woman above had it, some things could not be repaired, nor could they be replaced. Besides, insurance companies never paid.
‘Come into my study. We can talk there,’ Cuzzoni said, turning to the right and opening a door. It was only then that Brunetti realized how hot the apartment was. Cuzzoni saw him start to unbutton his overcoat and said, ‘Here, let me take that. I have to keep the heat as high as possible until it’s dried out. The painters can’t do anything until the walls are dry.’
‘And the parquet?’ Brunetti asked, handing over his coat.
Cuzzoni hung it on a coat rack and waved Brunetti towards a long sofa against one wall. Cuzzoni seated himself in a comfortable looking old armchair that faced him and said, ‘The parquet is what I mind most, in a way. It’s cherry, eighteenth century, and I’ll never be able to replace it.’
‘Can it be saved?’
Cuzzoni shrugged. ‘Maybe. I’ve talked to someone who’s worked for me in the past, a retired carpenter, who said he’d come and have a look. If he thinks there’s anything he can do, he’ll pull it up and take it to his workshop. His son’s running the business now, but he still works. He may be able to soak it and put it under a press until it comes straight again. But he said it would be discoloured and he’d probably have trouble getting the same patina back.’