The Temptation of Forgiveness

by Donna Leon

  She stopped then and, after allowing herself enough time to grow calmer, looked across at Brunetti. ‘In all of this,’ she said, ‘I did one consciously wicked thing.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘I left him there.’

  Brunetti could think of nothing to say.

  ‘I’m a doctor, and I left him there.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I heard the boat from the station pulling up at San Stae, and then people in the campo. I could hear their voices, coming towards me. Us. I knew they’d find him. Or maybe I only hoped they would and decided that was enough. I don’t know. I ran away. I turned back towards Rialto and ran to the first turn and then walked back towards San Stae. I went out to the embarcadero, and about ten minutes later, I heard an ambulance coming. I waited until it turned in at Ca’ Pesaro. When it left, I went home.’

  She stopped and looked across at Brunetti, then lowered her eyes.

  Brunetti noticed her hands, folded properly, like a schoolgirl’s, on the table. They were smooth, and as yet there were no dark spots. He thought of those amber eyes and pale skin. She’d done right to stay out of the sun. Well, she was a doctor, and doctors knew enough now to warn people to avoid the sun if possible. Pity that she had not managed to avoid the other risks life had presented to her. If only Gasparini had been a blackmailer, after all. She could have paid him from her share of the illicit gains made possible by her violation of her oath. And so much pain could have been avoided.

  ‘Do no harm.’ Well, to whom had she done harm? The health system was an open fountain from which all could drink to the degree of their thirst. Have your bunion fixed because you need to walk. Have your hip replaced for the same reason. Everyone paid; everyone was helped.

  Brunetti pulled himself free from his reverie and looked across at Dottoressa Ruberti. She appeared distracted and inattentive: Brunetti wondered if she, too, was thinking of choices she’d made or not made.

  She unfolded her hands and slid them back and off the table. She looked at him. ‘Do you know what will happen?’

  ‘I can’t tell you, Dottoressa. It will depend on how the judges view what happened and what they believe were the causes of it.’

  She tilted her head to the right and looked upwards in an attempt, he thought, to let her eyes focus on something more distant than him or his face. A long time passed, but there was no help he could give her.

  Finally she asked, ‘What do I do until it all starts?’

  ‘You continue with your life, Dottoressa.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ she asked with sudden anger, as if he’d provoked her. ‘Don’t you want to arrest me?’

  ‘I’d like you to come to the Questura with me and make a statement to a magistrate and sign it. The magistrate will decide whether to let you go home or not.’

  ‘And after that?’

  ‘I don’t decide that,’ Brunetti said.

  She lapsed into silence again and looked out of the window at the opposite wall.

  How many questions she had, Brunetti thought; so much uncertainty. How very much like Professoressa Crosera she was, their lives dependent now on what happened to Gasparini, whether he lived or died or what he could remember if he emerged from his coma. What would happen to their children? To their professions? To their lives?

  They both seemed, he thought, decent, honest women, but in the case of Dottoressa Ruberti, that was now to be questioned. There was the son, who would have his father’s surname. Knowing that, Signorina Elettra could find his medical records. Dottoressa Ruberti was probably ingenuous enough to have opened his bank account at the same bank where she kept her own money, and thus it could be easily found, at least by someone who knew about the existence of the account and knew enough to search for it under the father’s name.

  It came to him then: if she said nothing about the account while being questioned, it might well be left undiscovered and untouched and could eventually be used for her son’s care after whatever money she had was gone. If she spoke of it to the magistrate, what was to stop the judges from eventually declaring that, as the profits from a series of crimes, the money was forfeit to the state? How much care would go into deciding the origin of the money deposited; what rapacious functionary of the state existed who would see a difference between the money she had stolen and the money she had earned? They’d confiscate the lot and have done with it, and tough luck to her son.

  If she told the magistrate about it, she’d lose it all.

  ‘Dottoressa,’ he began, swept by the temptation to tell her what to do.

  She continued to stare out of the farther of the two windows, seeming no longer to be aware of his presence.

  ‘Dottoressa,’ he repeated. This time she looked up, perhaps responding to some sudden urgency in his voice.

  Brunetti paused, thinking about what he wanted to say, but then thinking of the needle stuck into the back of Signor Gasparini’s hand. ‘If you’re ready, we can go back to the Questura.’

  She got to her feet and followed him from her office. Though it took them twenty minutes to walk there, neither spoke until they reached the Questura, when Brunetti left her with the officer at the door, said goodbye, and went up to speak to the magistrate who would question her.