Death in a Strange Country cgb-2

by Donna Leon

  He continued to watch as, seeming to ignore him, she pulled down a tray, plates, and, from another cabinet, a metal tin that she prised open with a knife. From it, she removed pastries, and then more pastries, piling them high on one of the plates. From another tin, she took sweets wrapped in violent-coloured foil and stacked them on another plate. The coffee boiled up, and she quickly grabbed the pot, flipped it upside down in one swift motion, and carried the tray to the large table that took up most of one side of the room. Like a dealer, she passed out plates and saucers, spoons and cups, setting them carefully on the plastic tablecloth, and then went back to bring the coffee to the table. When everything was done, she turned to him and waved her hand towards the table.

  Brunetti had to push himself up out of the low chair, both hands pressing firmly down upon the arms. When he was at the table, she pulled his chair out for him and then, when he was seated, sat opposite him. The Capodimonte saucers both had hairline cracks in them, radiating from the edges to the centres like the papery wrinkles he remembered in his grandmother’s cheeks. The spoons gleamed, and beside his plate lay a linen napkin ironed into a state of rectangular submission.

  Signora Ruffolo poured two cups of coffee, placed one in front of Brunetti, and then put the silver sugar bowl beside his plate. Using silver tongs, she piled six pastries, each the size of an apricot, on his plate, and then used the same tongs to set four of the foil-wrapped sweets beside it.

  He added sugar to his coffee and sipped at it. ‘It’s the best coffee in Venice, Signora. You still won’t tell me your secret?’

  She smiled at that, and Brunetti saw that she had lost another tooth, this the right front one. He bit into a pastry, felt the sugar surge out into his mouth. Ground almonds, sugar, the finest of pastry dough, and yet more sugar. The next had ground pistachios. The third was chocolate, and the fourth exploded with pastry crème. He took a bite of the fifth and set half of it down on his plate.

  ‘Eat. You’re too thin, Dottore. Eat. Sugar gives energy. And it’s good for your blood.’ The nouns conveyed the message.

  ‘They’re wonderful, Signora Concetta. But I just had lunch, and if I eat too many of them, I won’t eat my dinner, and then my wife will be angry with me.’

  She nodded. She understood the anger of wives.

  He finished his coffee and set the cup down on the saucer. Not three seconds passed before she was up, across the room, and back with a carved glass decanter and two glasses no bigger than olives. ‘Marsala. From home,’ she said, pouring him a thimbleful. He took the glass from her, waited while she poured no more than a few drops into her own glass, tapped his glass to hers, and sipped at it. It tasted of sun, and the sea, and songs that told of love and death.

  He set his glass down, looked across the table at her, and said, ‘Signora Concetta, I think you know why I’ve come.’

  She nodded. ‘Peppino?’

  ‘Yes, Signora.’

  She held her hand up, palm towards him, as if to ward off his words or perhaps to protect herself from the malocchio.

  ‘Signora, I think Peppino is involved in something very bad.’

  ‘But this time . . .’ she began, but then she remembered who Brunetti was, and she said only, ‘He is not a bad boy.’

  Brunetti waited until he was sure she was not going to say anything else, and then he continued. ‘Signora, I spoke to a friend of mine today. He tells me that a man I think Peppino might be involved with is a very bad man. Do you know anything about this? About what Peppino is doing, about the people he’s been seeing since . . .’ He wasn’t sure how to phrase it. ‘Since he came home?’

  She considered this for a long time before she answered. ‘Peppino was with very bad people when he was in that place.’ Even now, after all these years, she could not bring herself to name that place. ‘He talked about those people.’

  ‘What did he say about them, Signora?’

  ‘He said that they were important, that his luck was going to change.’ Yes, Brunetti remembered this about Peppino: his luck was always going to change.

  ‘Did he tell you anything more, Signora?’

  She shook her head. It was a negation, but he wasn’t sure what she was denying. Brunetti had never been sure in the past just how much Signora Concetta knew of what her son actually did. He imagined she knew far more than she indicated, but he feared she probably kept that knowledge hidden even from herself. There is only so much truth a mother can permit herself.

  ‘Did you meet any of them, Signora?’

  She shook her head fiercely. ‘He will not bring them here, not to my home.’ This, beyond question, was the truth.

  ‘Signora, we are looking for Peppino now.’

  She closed her eyes and bowed her head. He had been out of that place for only two weeks, and already the police were looking for him.

  ‘What did he do, Dottore?’

  ‘We’re not sure, Signora. We want to talk to him. Some people say they saw him where a crime took place. But all they saw is a photo of Peppino.’

  ‘So maybe it wasn’t my son?’

  ‘We don’t know, Signora. That’s why we want to talk to him. Do you know where he is?’

  She shook her head, but, again, Brunetti didn’t know if that meant she didn’t know or she didn’t want to say.

  ‘Signora, if you talk to Peppino, will you tell him two things for me?’

  ‘Yes, Dottore.’

  ‘Please tell him that we need to talk to him. And tell him that these people are bad people, and they might be dangerous.’

  ‘Dottore, you’re a guest in my house, so I shouldn’t ask you this.’

  ‘What, Signora?’

  ‘Is this the truth or is this a trick?’

  ‘Signora, you tell me something to swear on, and I’ll swear this is the truth.’

  With no hesitation, she demanded, ‘Will you swear on your mother’s heart?’

  ‘Signora, I swear on my mother’s heart that this is the truth. Peppino should come and talk to us. And he should be very careful with these people.’

  She set her glass down, untasted. ‘I’ll try to talk to him, Dottore. But maybe it will be different this time?’ She couldn’t keep the hope from her voice. Brunetti realized that Peppino must have told his mother a great deal about his important friends, about this new chance, when everything would be different, and they would finally be rich.

  ‘I’m sorry, Signora,’ he said, meaning it. He got to his feet. ‘Thank you for the coffee, and for the pastries. No one in Venice knows how to make them like you do.’

  She pushed herself to her feet and grabbed a handful of the sweets. She slipped them into the pocket of his jacket. ‘For your children. They’re growing. Sugar’s good for them.’

  ‘You’re very kind, Signora,’ he said, painfully aware of how true this was.

  She walked with him to the door, again leading him by the arm, as if he were a blind man or liable to lose his way. At the door to the street, they shook hands formally, and she stood at the door, watching him as he walked away.

  * * * *

  15

  The next morning, Sunday, was the day of the week Paola dreaded, for it was the day when she woke up with a stranger. During the years of their marriage, she had grown accustomed to waking up with her husband, a grim, foul creature incapable of civility for at least an hour after waking, a surly presence from whom she expected grunts and dark looks. Not the brightest bed partner, perhaps, but at least he left her alone and let her sleep. On Sunday, however, his place was taken by someone who, she hated the very word, chirped. Liberated from work and responsibility, a different man emerged: friendly, playful, often amorous. She loathed him.

  This Sunday, he was awake at seven, thinking of what he could do with the money he had won at the Casinò. He could beat his father-in-law to the purchase of a computer for Chiara. He could get himself a new winter coat. They could all go to the mountains for a week in January. He lay in bed for half an hour, s
pending and respending the money, then was finally driven out of bed by his desire for coffee.

  He hummed his way to the kitchen and pulled down the largest pot, filled it, set it on the stove, and put a saucepan of milk next to it, then went into the bathroom while they heated. When he emerged, teeth brushed and face glowing from the shock of cold water, the coffee was bubbling up, filling the house with its aroma. He poured it into two large cups, added the sugar and the milk, and went back towards the bedroom. He set the cups on the table beside their bed, got back down under the covers, and fought with his pillow until he had beaten it into a position that would allow him to sit up enough to drink his coffee. He took a loud sip, wiggled himself into a more comfortable position, and said softly, ‘Paola.’

  From the long lump beside him, his fair consort made no response.

  ‘Paola,’ he repeated, voice a little louder. Silence. ‘Humm, such good coffee. Think I’ll have another sip,’ which he proceeded to do, loudly. A hand emerged from the lump, turned itself into a fist, and poked at his shoulder. ‘Wonderful, wonderful coffee. Think I’ll have another sip.’ A distinctly threatening noise emerged. He ignored it and sipped at his coffee. Knowing what was about to come, he placed the cup on the table beside the bed so that it would not be spilled. ‘Umm,’ was all he said before the lump erupted and Paola flipped herself onto her back, in the manner of a large fish, extending her left arm across his chest. Turning, he took the second cup from the table and placed it into her hand, then took it back and held it for her while she pushed herself up onto her pillow.

  This scene had first taken place the second Sunday of their marriage, they still on their honeymoon, when he had bent over his still-sleeping wife to nuzzle at her ear. The voice that had said, steel-like, ‘If you don’t stop that, I’ll rip out your liver and eat it,’ had informed him that the honeymoon was over.

  Try as he might, which wasn’t very hard, he could never understand her lack of sympathy with what he insisted upon seeing as his real self. Sunday was the only day he had during the week, the only day when he didn’t have to concern himself directly with death and disaster, so the person who woke up, he maintained, was the real man, the true Brunetti, and he could dismiss that other, Hyde-like creature as being in no way representative of his spirit. Paola was having none of this.

  While she sipped at her coffee and worked at getting her eyes open, he switched on the radio and listened to the morning news, though he knew it was likely to turn his mood until it resembled hers. Three more murders in Calabria, all members of the Mafia, one a wanted killer (one for us, he thought); talk of the imminent collapse of the government (when was it not imminent?); a boatload of toxic waste docked at Genoa, turned back from Africa (and why not?); and a priest, murdered in his garden, shot eight times in the head (had he given too severe a penance in confession?). He switched it off while there was still time to save his day and turned to Paola. ‘You awake?’

  She nodded, still incapable of speech.

  ‘What will we do with the money?’

  She shook her head, nose buried in the fumes of the coffee.

  ‘Anything you’d like?’

  She finished the coffee, handed the cup to him without comment, and fell back on her pillow. Looking at her, he didn’t know whether to give her more coffee or artificial respiration. ‘Kids need anything?’

  Eyes still closed, she shook her head.

  ‘Sure there’s nothing you’d like?’

  It cost her inhuman effort, but she got the words out. ‘Go away for an hour, then bring me a brioche and more coffee.’ That said, she flipped herself over onto her stomach and was asleep before he was out of the room.

  He took a long shower, shaving under the flood of hot water, glad that he didn’t have to fear the responses of the varied ecological sensibilities of the other members of the household, always ready to decry what they saw as waste or misuse of the environment. Brunetti believed himself to be a man whose family always chose enthusiasms and causes that contributed directly to his inconvenience. Other men, he was sure, managed to have children who contented themselves with worrying about things that were far away - the rainforest, nuclear testing, the plight of the Kurds. Yet here he was, a city official, a man the newspapers had even once praised, and he was forbidden, by members of his own family, from buying mineral water that came in plastic bottles. Instead, he had to buy water in glass bottles, then haul those bottles up and down ninety-four steps. And if he stayed under the shower for more time than it took the average human being to wash his hands, he had to listen to endless denunciations of the thoughtlessness of the West, its devouring of the resources of the world. When he was a child, waste was condemned because they were poor; now it was condemned because they were rich. At this point, he discovered how difficult it was to shave while grinning, so he abandoned the catalogue of his woes and finished his shower.

  When he emerged from the house twenty minutes later, he found himself swept by a boundless feeling of unspecified delight. Though the morning was cool, the day would be warm, one of those glorious sun-swept days that graced the city in the autumn. The air was so dry that it was impossible to believe the city was built on water, though a glance to the right as he walked past any of the side streets on his way towards Rialto was ample proof of that fact.

  Arriving at the major cross-street, he turned left and headed down towards the fish market, closed now on Sunday but still giving off the faintest odour of the fish that had been sold there for hundreds of years. He crossed a bridge, turned to the left, and went into a pasticceria. He ordered a dozen pastries. Even if they didn’t eat them all for breakfast, Chiara was sure to knock them off during the course of the day. Probably the morning. Balancing the rectangular package on his outstretched palm, he went back towards Rialto, then turned right and back up towards San Polo. At Sant’ Aponal, he stopped at the newsstand and bought two papers, Corriere and Il Manifesto, which he thought were the ones Paola wanted to read that day. Back home, the steps seemed almost not to be there as he climbed up to the apartment.

  He found Paola in the kitchen, coffee just brimming up in the pot. From down the hall, he heard Raffaele shouting to Chiara through the bathroom door, ‘Come on, hurry up. You’ve been in there all morning.’ Ah, the water police, back on duty.

  He set the package down on the table and tore back the white paper. The mound of pastries glistened with melted sugar, and some fine powdered sugar floated out to settle on the dark wood of the table. He grabbed a piece of apple strudel and took a bite.

  ‘Where’d they come from?’ Paola asked, pouring coffee.

  ‘That place down by Carampane.’

  ‘You went all the way there?’

  ‘It’s a beautiful day, Paola. After we eat, let’s go for a walk. We could go out to Burano for lunch. Come on, let’s do it. It’s a perfect day for the ride out.’ Even the thought of it, the long boat ride out to the island, the sun glimmering on the crazy patchwork of riotously coloured houses as they grew nearer, lifted his heart even higher.

  ‘Good idea,’ she agreed. ‘What about the kids?’

  ‘Ask them. Chiara will want to come.’

  ‘All right. Maybe Raffi will, too.’

  Maybe.

  Paola shoved the Manifesto towards him and picked up Corriere. Nothing would be done, no move to embrace this glorious day, until she had at least two more cups of coffee and read the papers. He took the newspaper in one hand, his cup in the other, and went back through the living room to the terrace. He set those things down on the balcony and went back into the living room for a straight-backed chair, which he propped up just the right distance from the railing. He sat, pushed the chair back, and rested his feet on the railing. Grabbing the paper, he opened it and began to read.

  Church bells sounded, the sun rained down abundantly upon his face, and Brunetti knew a moment of absolute peace.

  Paola spoke from the doorway to the terrace. ‘Guido, what was that doctor’s na
me?’

  ‘The pretty one?’ he asked, not looking up from his paper, not really paying attention to her voice.

  ‘Guido, what was her name?’

  He lowered his paper and turned to look at her. When he saw her face, he took his feet from the railing and set the chair down. ‘Peters.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, then handed him the Corriere, turned back to a page in the middle.

  ‘American Doctor Dead of Overdose’, he read. The article was a small one, easily overlooked, no more than six or seven lines. The body of Captain Terry Peters, a paediatrician in the US Army, had been found late Saturday afternoon, in her apartment in Due Ville, in the province of Vicenza. Doctor Peters, who worked at the Army hospital at Caserme Ederle, had been found by a friend, who had gone to see why the doctor had not shown up for work that morning. A used syringe was found by the doctor’s body, and there were signs of other drug use, as well as evidence that the doctor had been drinking. The Carabinieri and the American military police were handling the investigation.