by Donna Leon
Professoressa Crosera shifted in her chair, suddenly restless, perhaps eager to leave now that someone else was going to take care of things. No, that was not to do her justice. ‘Could you give me your phone number?’ Brunetti asked.
As she did, Brunetti wrote it in his notebook, then wrote above it, ‘Albertini’, just in case someone found his book and was curious about whom he had spoken to.
He realized that, as there was so little he could do, there was nothing else to say. One glance at her told him she had little power to tell him anything more, and far less willingness.
Brunetti got to his feet and thanked her for coming to see him. She seemed surprised by this badly disguised dismissal but allowed herself to be accompanied to the door. In an attempt to make up for his sharpness when questioning her, Brunetti smiled and promised to do what he could, not telling her how little that was. After she was gone, he went back to the window to think about the visit and about this woman’s sorrow. He was relieved to see that the rain had stopped.
5
After lunch, Brunetti phoned Vianello and asked him to come up. When the Inspector arrived, Brunetti offered him a seat and told him at some length about his meeting with Professoressa Crosera.
Vianello nodded and asked, ‘The kids go to the Albertini?’
‘Does that make a difference?’
The Inspector crossed his legs and waved one foot in the air. ‘It might have, five years ago, but I don’t think it does any more: they can find drugs everywhere now.’ He uncrossed his legs and set his foot on the floor. Brunetti suddenly noticed how much grey there was in his friend’s hair and how his face seemed to have grown thinner. ‘It used to be that the kids in the private schools used them less; but that’s changing. At least that’s what I’ve been told.’
‘By whom?’ Brunetti asked, realizing too late that he should not have. Everyone at the Questura kept the name of their sources to themselves.
After a moment, Vianello said mildly, ‘By someone who knows. He told me all the schools have the problem now, to one degree or another.’
Brunetti knew this, of course, just as he knew that the air in the city in winter was polluted far beyond the limits which some European scientific agency had established for human safety. But so long as he didn’t smell it or feel it in his lungs, Brunetti ignored it, aware that there was nothing he could do to avoid the air except leave the city. So, too, with drugs. So long as it wasn’t your own kids …
‘Thank God we were born when we were,’ he surprised Vianello by saying.
‘What does that mean?’
‘That there were fewer drugs around when we were in our teens. Or at least they didn’t seem so … normal, the way they do now. Some of my friends tried them, but I can’t remember anyone who used them all the time.’ When Vianello nodded in agreement, Brunetti added, ‘Besides, I didn’t have the money for them.’
‘I tried hashish once,’ Vianello said, looking at his feet.
‘You never told me.’
Vianello laughed at Brunetti’s tone and said, ‘I try to keep some secrets, Guido.’
‘What happened?’
‘I was at a party at a friend’s house, and I was given some herbal tea,’ Vianello explained.
Brunetti found his use of the passive voice interesting. ‘You didn’t smoke it?’
‘No. If I’d gone home smelling of it, my father would have …’
‘Would have what?’ Brunetti asked, aware of how seldom Vianello spoke of his father.
‘I don’t know. Threatened to knock me into next week, probably.’
‘Only threatened?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes,’ Vianello answered without hesitation or explanation, then asked, ‘What did Professoressa Crosera want?’
Putting aside his curiosity to know the rest of Vianello’s story, Brunetti sifted through obvious reasons and real reasons and finally answered, ‘I think she wanted us to make the problem go away. All we had to do was arrest the people who sell her son drugs.’
Vianello raised his eyebrows at this.
‘Even though she offered no concrete information,’ Brunetti said. ‘She wouldn’t tell me who told her daughter that Sandro was in trouble, and she made it clear there was no specific mention of drugs.’ He added, his irritation audible, ‘I don’t know what she thinks we’re supposed to do.’
‘It’s like that Greek thing you’ve mentioned,’ Vianello said, to Brunetti’s absolute confusion. The one with the Latin name.’
‘Deus ex machina?’ Brunetti asked, suddenly understanding and smiling at Vianello’s reference. ‘How helpful that would be: a god flies in, grabs up the problem, and takes it away into the skies with him.’
He gave the god time to fly out of the room before he returned to less fanciful solutions. ‘Unless she helps us by talking to her son, there’s not much we can do.’
‘And so?’ Vianello asked.
When Brunetti didn’t answer, Vianello got to his feet. ‘Let’s have a coffee.’
The only interesting thing that happened during the rest of the day was a telephone call from one of Brunetti’s informants, who told him that a visit should be made to the fish market – not the one at Rialto but the wholesale one at Tronchetto – the following morning. Brunetti thanked him and said he’d inform the local police and the food fraud branch of the Carabinieri.
‘Tell them to look at the clams,’ the man said in his usual cheerful manner. ‘And perhaps check the tuna. It’s travelling without a passport.’ He gave a sanctimonious ‘tsk tsk tsk’ and hung up.
Brunetti had never met this man, although they had spoken on the phone for years. He had first called Brunetti’s telefonino number six or seven years before, ignoring Brunetti’s question of how he’d obtained the number and saying he had some information for him. His call led to the arrest of two men who had robbed a jewellery shop three days before. When he’d called some months later, Brunetti had tried, clothing his question in euphemism and discretion, to ask how he wanted to be paid, which question provoked a burst of laughter. ‘I don’t want anything,’ the man had insisted. ‘I just want the fun of doing it.’
Brunetti had demurred at asking what fun it could possibly be and decided to accept the information as the man intended it: a gift. The man called three or four times a year, always with accurate information that led to an arrest but, surprisingly, never about the same crime twice. Fake Parma ham coming in from Hungary; two tonnes of contraband cigarettes landed on a beach near Grado; the man who had stolen an X-ray machine from a dentist’s office in Mirano; even the two Romanian con men who had cheated a series of old women into paying what they persuaded them were supplementary electricity bills. Brunetti knew nothing about his caller other than what he had inferred from the familiarity he showed with crime and criminals: it suggested someone who had, in the past, taken part in crimes such as the ones he reported but who had, for reasons Brunetti could not imagine, turned against his former colleagues. This would explain the accuracy of the information in his calls as well as his complete lack of indignation about the crimes he reported. It might be a private vendetta – thieves falling out – or he could well be a criminal himself, interested only in limiting the competition. Even apart from the value of his calls, Brunetti had grown sufficiently fond of the man to feel concern for his safety and hoped he had given thought to the risk he was running.
After he passed on the informant’s message about the fish market, Brunetti decided he had done enough for the day and could leave early. Without telling anyone, he turned right when he left the Questura, then left over the first bridge and away from the centre of the city, letting his feet decide where to take him. He worked his way out to the bacino, turned left and headed down farther into Castello, still with no idea of where he wanted to go.
He turned into Via Garibaldi, surprised to find so many people on the street. Had November become a tourist month while he wasn’t paying attention? A hundred metres on, he calmed down
at the realization that almost everyone around him was Venetian. He didn’t need to hear them speaking dialect: their clothing and the unconscious ease with which they walked – not on the alert for something quaint to photograph or a tiny shop where they could find real local handicrafts – told him that they were. His pace slowed, and he went into a bar for a coffee, but changed it to a glass of white wine when he discovered a small bowl with pretzels on the counter. He glanced at the headlines on a copy of the Gazzettino and was puzzled by how familiar it all sounded until he glanced at the date and saw that it was yesterday’s edition. He closed it, wondering how it was that every issue could contain at least eight pages with headlines that blared news of profound schisms and new formations that would completely change the face of national politics at the same time as nothing changed and nothing happened.
Brunetti fished a Euro out of his pocket and placed it on the bar. ‘How is it that we haven’t had an elected government for more than five years?’ he asked. It wasn’t really a question, merely an attempt to voice his perplexity.
The barman put the coin in the till and rang up a receipt for Brunetti. Placing it on the counter next to the empty glass, he said, ‘So long as we have football on television, no one much cares if we elect a government or if some ancient politician appoints one.’
Brunetti, who had not been expecting an answer, stood still and considered the man’s explanation. ‘Ciò,’ he said, thinking that his agreement could best, perhaps only, be expressed in Veneziano. He left the bar and continued down Via Garibaldi and deeper into the rabbit warren of Castello.
He didn’t get home until after seven, having walked as far as San Pietro in Castello, where he went in to light a candle for his mother’s soul, being of a mind that doing it was probably as good for his own soul as was the glass of wine. The faint odour of cloves greeted him when he got home, luring him into the kitchen to see what Paola was up to. Spezzatino di manzo with exotic spices, it seemed, and if he knew anything about vegetables, Cavolini di bruxelles alla besciamella.
‘If I promise to clean my plate, will you run off to Tahiti with me for a week of wild excess?’ he asked as he put his arms around Paola and nuzzled at the back of her neck.
‘If you promise to shave before you kiss my neck again, it’s a deal,’ she said, wriggling away from him and rubbing at his kiss with the palm of her right hand. ‘Though I think there’s small risk you won’t clean your plate.’ The smile she gave him as she said this removed any sting from her words.
Having the night before finished reading The Oresteia for the first time in twenty years, he went to Paola’s study to consult the shelves that contained his books to decide what he would read next. He decided to stay with drama and bent closer to the bookshelves to study the titles. Still not free of the memory of his meeting with Professoressa Crosera and her terrible fear for her son, he was struck by how often the Greeks, too, worried about their children; most of the plays seemed to deal with the devastation children brought upon their parents. Or, he had to admit after a moment, parents upon their children.
He saw the plays of Euripides and recalled a production of Medea he’d seen in London, dragged there by Paola, what was it, twenty years ago, more? His eyes remained on the spines of the books, but his memory went to the final scene, she on an elevated platform above the stage, clinging to her two children. And then, instead of carrying them offstage to do the wicked deed, she drew a knife and stabbed and killed them both. Even at the memory of the scene, Brunetti winced and felt a stab to his own stomach.
During his career, Brunetti had watched as a man was murdered in cold blood, and he had seen other people die. The Greeks were right. They knew. We aren’t meant to see such things happen: they were meant to horrify, not entertain. No, not Medea. He reached forward and pulled out the plays of Sophocles, instead.
Both children were home for dinner, and the sight of them confirmed Brunetti in his decision to avoid reading Medea. Without thinking, he reached across the table and put his hand on Raffi’s arm. His son looked up, surprised. Brunetti fingered the cloth of Raffi’s sweater and said, ‘I don’t remember seeing this before.’
‘Mamma brought it back from Rome last winter. Do you like it?’
Brunetti took the opportunity this question offered him to remove his hand and shift back to get a better look at the sweater. ‘It’s very nice.’ He looked across at Paola and said, ‘Good choice,’ then asked for more spezzatino.
I will not ask them about drugs. I will not ask them about drugs. Reciting this mantra, Brunetti ate his spezzatino, then asked for another piece. Chiara asked Raffi if he’d take a look at her physics homework and tell her if her answers made any sense. ‘I don’t understand why I have to study this,’ she said. ‘I’m never going to have to think about it again, once the class is over.’
‘Isn’t it supposed to train your mind by showing you the laws that govern the universe?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Did you take it in school?’ Chiara asked him.
‘Of course.’
‘Did you learn …’ she began but then changed her question to: ‘Do you remember anything?’
Unasked, Paola got to her feet and leaned over to spoon two pieces of cauliflower on to his plate, giving Brunetti time to organize an answer.
Deciding to tell the truth, he said, ‘I remember some of the laws and that, at the time, I enjoyed being made to think in a different manner about phenomena I’d never understood. It made me look at the world in a new way. I think I found it comforting that there was order in what happened in the universe, even on the grandest scale. And rules.’
‘If what our professor tells us is right,’ Chiara began, ‘then a lot of what you were taught has been – what’s the word? – repealed – and I’m being taught new rules or laws of nature. What’s to say that my children won’t listen to their teachers repeal all the laws I’m being taught now?’
Raffi broke in to say, ‘There are Big Rules, and they’re not going to change. The universe isn’t all some random system that does what it wants and that we’ll never understand.’
‘The rules also show that the gods can’t interfere where they want and do what they want,’ Paola added, no doubt happy to have been given the opportunity to take a gratuitous whack at religion in any form.
‘But it’s a year of my life,’ Chiara whined, as though she were tied down and suffering the bastinado.
‘Would you rather be taught how to knit and darn socks, the way I was?’ Paola demanded, reducing the choices to two.
Brunetti summoned up the image of Paola darning a sock, attempted to stifle his reaction, but quickly lost control of himself and burst into a fit of giggles. He slapped his hand over his mouth, but that proved useless; if anything, the sight of her astonished glance made things worse for him, and he was forced to close his eyes and press his hand harder. All that did was squeeze tears from his eyes until he had to put his napkin to them.
No one at the table spoke; the kids kept their eyes on their plates while Paola studied the top of Brunetti’s lowered head. He wiped his eyes and put his napkin back on his lap, then looked across at her.
‘I’m tempted to send you to your room without dessert, Guido,’ she said amiably, meeting his glance. ‘I confess: I was never taught to darn socks, but that’s because I refused to take the class in Home Management.’ To ward off any accusation of dishonesty the children might launch, she went on, ‘I invented the darning as an example of the sort of thing I was forced to do that wasted my time when I was at school. I hope you’ll consider it the rhetorical flourish it was.’ Her explanation apparently concluded, she gave a gracious wave of her hand to her children, who nodded. Paola smiled, and all the world was gay.
6
As if the departing tourists had decided to take crime with them, little of it was reported to the Questura during the next week. Brunetti called a friend at the Carabinieri to ask about the situation of drugs in the schools and was told that i
t was already under investigation by a special squad based in Treviso. His conscience salved, Brunetti sought no farther information. He spent some time reading through the files that had accumulated on his desk, five of them containing the CVs of people who were to rotate to the staff of the Questura in February. He found time to go to the firing range in Mestre to fulfil last year’s obligation to practise shooting at least once a year. There, he was encouraged to try out new pistols, Signorina Elettra somehow having found sufficient funds to update and upgrade the pistols issued to commissari and higher ranks. After test-firing three of them, then his own service weapon, Brunetti decided that one of the new pistols was lighter and smaller and thus would be less of an encumbrance in those few times he remembered to carry it. The officer in charge was a tall, robust man probably serving his last few years before retirement. He told Brunetti that the pistol he preferred would be available either in May or perhaps not until the end of the summer.
Brunetti slid the pistol across the counter, slipped his own weapon into its holster and put it inside his briefcase. ‘Should I call you?’ he asked. He snapped his bag closed and prepared to leave.
‘No, Commissario. I’ve been in touch with Signorina Elettra, and I’ll call her when they arrive. You can come back then and try it out; see if you still prefer the new model.’
Brunetti thanked him and snapped his briefcase closed. ‘Well, I’ll look forward to seeing you then.’ The thought came to Brunetti, and he asked, ‘What happens to our old guns?’
‘You mean the ones we replace, sir?’
‘Yes.’
‘They’re sent to a foundry and melted down.’
Brunetti nodded, pleased by the answer. ‘Better than having them lying around somewhere.’
‘Absolutely, sir. Guns are nothing but trouble.’
Brunetti put out his hand. ‘I’ll remember you told me that,’ he said and smiled to suggest he was joking. Brunetti disliked guns, disliked having his, had felt uncomfortable the few times he carried it, and had never in all these years so much as pointed it at a person. It often spent weeks sequestered in a locked metal box at the back of the shelf where he kept his underwear. The bullets lived in a similar locked box, sharing a shelf with the cleaning products in the closet behind the kitchen.