by Donna Leon
'May I get you something to drink?' their hostess asked. In response to their replies, she brought juice for the women and mineral water for the men. As Brunetti glanced around the room, he saw that this was the standard choice.
The men, as did he and Vianello, all wore suits and ties; the women tended to wear trousers or skirts that fell below the knee. No beards, not a tattoo in sight, and no piercing, though some of the people seemed to be still in their twenties. What makeup the women wore was subdued and none of them wore any kind of low-cut blouse or sweater.
Brunetti looked at Paola and found that she was already talking to a middle-aged man and woman. Not far from her, Vianello stood, holding his glass in one hand, while Nadia smiled as she listened to a white-haired woman who had placed one hand familiarly on her arm.
The room was decorated with ceramic plates bearing the names of restaurants and pizzerias. The one closest to him had a folkloristic painting of a man and woman in some sort of traditional costume: long skirt and high shoes for the woman, baggy trousers and broad-brimmed hat for the man. Not far from it was a fuming volcano with Pizzeria Vesuvio' arching over it in pink letters.
On the far wall, above the chair, hung a large crucifix with crossed olive branches wedged behind it. Through the door at one side of the room, he could see a kitchen where the counter held tall glass jars of pasta, rice, and sugar and more paper containers of fruit juice.
He turned his attention back to Paola and heard the middle-aged woman say,'... especially if you have children’
The man nodded, and Paola said, 'Of course’ Brunetti was suddenly conscious of a diminution of sound behind him as conversation dropped away. He saw Paola glance towards the silence, and he turned to face it.
A door on the wall opposite the kitchen had opened, and a tall man stood with his back to them, pulling it closed. Brunetti saw grey hair, cut very short, a thin stripe of white above the collar of a black jacket, and very long legs encased in baggy black trousers. The man moved across the room. Brunetti noticed his thick eyebrows, an even paler grey than his hair, and a large nose in the centre of a clean-shaven face. His eyes seemed almost black by contrast, his mouth warm and relaxed into an expression that could very easily become a smile.
As the man crossed the room slowly, he nodded to a few people, pausing once or twice to place his hand on someone's arm as he said something, but never slowing in his progress towards the chair that stood facing the others.
By unspoken agreement, everyone set their glasses on the table and made their way towards the neatly aligned folding chairs. Brunetti, Vianello, and their wives followed and found four seats at the end of the last row. From here, they could see not only the man facing them but the sides of the faces of some of the people sitting in front of them.
The tall man waited for a moment before the people, looking across at them and smiling. He raised his right hand, fingers half cupped and half pointing at them, a gesture Brunetti had seen in countless paintings of Christ newly risen from the grave. The man made no attempt to make the sign of the cross over the heads of his seated audience.
The smile that had been the promise of his mouth broke forth as he began to speak. Tt gives me great joy to be with you again, my friends, because it means that, together, we can examine the idea of doing some good in the world. We live in a time, as you all know, when there isn't a lot of good in evidence where we would most like to see it. Nor do we see much virtue in the people whose duty it is to offer an example.'
The man did not specify, Brunetti noticed, just who these people might be. Politicians? Priests? Doctors? For all Brunetti knew, he could be talking about film producers or television comedians.
'Now, before you ask me who I'm talking about,' the man went on, raising his hands in a gesture that attempted to quell even their unasked questions, 'let me explain that I'm talking about us, about those of us here in this room.' He smiled as though he knew he had just played a joke on them, inviting them to be as amused by it as he was.
'It's too easy to talk about politicians and priests and bishops and I don't know who else, about their duty to set us a good example. But we can't force them to behave in a way we think is good unless we are willing to commit ourselves to the good.' He paused a long moment and then added, 'And, I'm afraid, not even then.
'The only person we can influence in any way to do what we think is good is ourselves. Not our wives or husbands, nor our children, or relatives, or friends or the people we work with, and not the politicians we have elected to act on our behalf. We can tell them, of course, and we can complain about them when they don't do what we think is right. And we can gossip about our neighbours,' and here he gave a complicit smile, as if to suggest he was one of the first to do this, ‘But we can't affect their behaviour, not in any positive way.
'The simple fact is that we can't force people to be good; we can't beat them with a stick, the way we can a donkey or a horse. Well, of course we can force them to do some things: we can get children to do their homework, or we can make people give us money and we can give that money to a charity. But what happens when we put the stick away? Do people continue to give money? And do the children continue to do their homework?'
A number of people in front of Brunetti shook their heads or turned aside to whisper. He glanced at Paola and heard her say, 'Clever, isn't he?'
'... only ourselves that we can make do good things, because it's only ourselves that we can persuade to want to do good things. I know this must sound like an insult to the intelligence of all of you here, and I apologize for that. But it is a truth, at least I think it is a truth, so self-evident that it is easy, too easy, to overlook it. We cannot make people want to do things.
'By now, I'm sure most of you are thinking how easy it is for me to talk about doing good. And I agree: it's too easy to sit and tell people that they should do good, but it's not at all easy to decide just what good is. I know, I know, those of you who have studied more than I have - and that's probably most of you, I'm afraid -' he said with a proper note of humility, 'you know that philosophers have been arguing about this for millennia, and they're still arguing about it today.
'Yet while philosophers argue about it and write treatises about it, you and I have an instinctive understanding of what good means. We know, in the instant that we see or hear something, that this is good or that is good, or that that other thing is not good.'
He closed his eyes and when he opened them he seemed to be studying the floor in front of his feet. 'It's not my place to tell you what is good and what is not. But I will tell you that goodness usually leaves people who receive it, and those who do it, better in spirit. Not richer, not more wealthy, not with a bigger house or a better car, but simply aware that the sum of goodness in the world has been increased. They can give or they can receive, but afterwards they are richer in spirit and can live more easily in the world.'
He raised his eyes and gazed out at each of the faces in front of him. 'And at the base of this idea of goodness is nothing more complicated than simple human kindness and generosity of spirit. Because we are united here in the Christian spirit, we most often turn to the Gospels for our examples of human kindness and goodness, to the Beatitudes and to the example set by Jesus Christ in His dealings with the world and with the people around Him. He was a well of forgiveness and patience, and His anger, those few times when it was shown, was always directed at offences that we too would see as wrong: turning religion into a business run for profit, corrupting children’
After some time, he went on, 'People sometimes ask me how they should behave’ He smiled, as though he found the very idea absurd. 'And I have little to tell them, for the example is already there, in the life of Christ and in the examples He has given us. So I think I will do what comes most naturally and most easily to me: I will ask you to speak to my boss’ He laughed, and the others joined him.
'Or perhaps better to say "our boss", for I assume that all of you here tonight beli
eve that He is the one who can tell us and show us by His example how to do good. He never used a stick, never even thought of using a stick. He simply wanted us to learn to see that the good is there for us to choose, and He wanted us to choose it’
He stopped speaking, raised his hand to the height of his shoulder, and let it fall again.
As the silence lengthened, Brunetti decided that the man had finished, and he turned to Paola, but then the man resumed, though what he said was little different from what had gone before. Citing the Gospels, he gave examples of Christ's charity and goodness and pointed to the spirit of loving kindness that must have animated Him to behave in this fashion. He spoke of Christ's sacrifice, described His suffering, both before and during the Crucifixion, in vivid detail, always explaining that these were things that Christ had chosen to do in order that good would result. Few things, he said, were a greater good than giving mankind the gift of salvation.
He repeated that Christ had not needed to use a stick. The metaphor, so often repeated, could well have sounded hackneyed or absurd if spoken by someone less in harmony with his audience, but it did not. If anything, its clarity and the tone in which he proposed such a ridiculous possibility struck the audience with great force; Brunetti appreciated the rhetorical power of the argument, however absurd he thought it to be.
Another quarter of an hour passed, and Brunetti's attention drifted away from the speaker to what he could see of the audience. He noticed nods and heads turned aside as people whispered; he saw men place their hands on those of the women sitting beside them; one woman reached into her purse and took out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. After another five minutes the man lowered his head, then brought his hands, palms pressed together, up to touch his lips.
Brunetti waited for the applause, but there was to be none. Instead, Signora Sambo, who had been sitting in the front row, got to her feet. She took a step forward and then turned to face the others. ‘I think we've all been given a great deal to think about tonight.' She smiled at them, looked briefly down at her shoes then back at them again. Brunetti realized that speaking like this to a group made her nervous.
She gave a very small smile. 'But we all have families to get back to and things that we must do, and so I think it might be time for us to go back into the world' - here she smiled again, even more nervously - 'and continue with our daily attempt to do good for those around us - family, friends, and strangers.'
It was awkwardly said, and she knew it, but no one in the room seemed to mind, if the expressions on their faces were any indication. They got to their feet; a few went over to speak to her, and some went to speak to the man in the chair, who rose as they approached.
Brunetti and Vianello exchanged a glance, gathered up their wives, and were the first to leave the apartment.
10
Downstairs, they filed outside, none of them saying a word. They walked back to San Giacomo dell'Orio and headed across the campo. When they entered the narrow calle that would take them back towards Rialto, Brunetti saw Paola, who was walking in front, glance over her shoulder, as if to check that none of the other people who had been at the meeting were behind them. Seeing no one, she stopped, turned and approached Brunetti. She bent and rested her forehead against his chest. Voice muffled by the fabric of his jacket, she said, ‘I am the only one who can make myself want to do the good of putting alcohol into my body. I will run screaming mad if I do not have that goodness. I will perish, I will die, if I do not have a drink’
A deadpan Nadia put her hand on Paola's shoulder and gave it a comforting squeeze. ‘I, too, want that goodness’ she said, and then to Brunetti, 'and you can do one
good thing by saving this woman's life, and mine, by finding us a drink.'
'Prosecco?' he suggested.
'Heaven will surely be yours,' Nadia agreed.
Brunetti, not to put too fine a point on it, was astonished. He had known Nadia for years, for almost as long as he had known Vianello. But it had been a formal sort of knowing: telephone calls when he was looking for her husband; requests for information about people she might know. But he had never seen her as a person, a separate entity with a spirit and a mind and, it seemed, a sense of humour. She had always been, in a way he was embarrassed to admit even to himself, an appendage to Vianello.
Paola, he knew, spoke to her occasionally, met her now and again for a coffee or a walk, but she never told him what they talked about. Or he had never asked. And so here she was, after all these years, a stranger.
Rather than reflect upon this, Brunetti led them into a bar on the left and asked the barman for four proseccos. When the wine came, they did not bother with toasts or the business of clicking their glasses together: they drank it down and set the glasses back on the counter with relieved sighs.
'Well?' Vianello asked. None of them believed this was a question about the quality of the wine.
'It was all very slick,' Paola said, 'all very "touchy-feely", as the Americans would say.'
'All very positive and heart-warming,' Nadia added. 'He never criticized anyone, never talked about sin or its consequences. All very uplifting.'
'There's a preacher in Dickens,' Paola said. 'Bleak House, I think.' She closed her eyes in a way long familiar to Brunetti, who could all but see her leafing through the thousands of pages that lay stored in her memory.
She opened her eyes and said, ‘I can't remember his name, but he has the wife of Snagsby, the law stationer, in thrall, and so he's a permanent guest at their dinner table, where he spends most of his time spouting platitudes and asking rhetorical questions about virtue and religion. Poor Snagsby wants to drive a stake through his heart, but he's so much a prisoner of his wife that he doesn't even know he wants to do this.'
'And?' Brunetti asked, curious as to why they had all been taken to dinner with this Snagsby, whoever he was.
'And there is a sort of generic resemblance between him and the man we just listened to - Brother Leonardo - if that's who he was,' Paola answered, reminding Brunetti that Signora Sambo had not bothered to use the man's name, nor had anyone in the room used it during the evening.
'Nothing he said was in any way exceptional, just the same sort of pious platitudes you get in the editorials in Famiglia Cristiana’ Paola went on, leaving Brunetti to wonder how on earth she could be familiar with them. 'But it's certainly the sort of thing people like to hear,' she concluded.
'Why?' Vianello asked, then waved to the barman, passing his hand over the four glasses.
'Because they don't have to do anything’ Paola answered. 'AH they have to do is feel the right things, and that makes them believe they deserve credit for having done something.' Her voice deepened into disgust and she added, 'It's all so terribly American.'
'Why American?' Nadia asked, reaching for one of the fresh glasses the barman set on the counter.
'Because they think it's enough to feel things: they've come to believe it's more important than doing things, or it's the same thing or, at any rate, deserves just as much credit as actually doing something. What is it that poseur of a president of theirs was always saying, "I feel your pain"? As if that made any difference to anything. God, it's enough to choke a pig.' Paola picked up her glass and took a hefty slug.
'All you've got to do is have the proper feelings,' she went on, 'the fashionable sentiments, and make a business about how delicate your sensibility is. And then you don't actually have to do anything. All you do is stand there with your precious sentiments hanging out while the world falls over itself applauding you for them and giving you credit for having the same feelings that any sentient being would have.'
Brunetti had seldom seen Paola respond so savagely. 'My, my, my’ he observed and took a sip of his prosecco.
Her head whipped towards him, her eyes startled. But then he watched her play her remarks back and take another hefty swig before saying, 'It was exposure to all that goodness, I think. It goes right to my head and provokes the worst parts o
f my character.'
They all laughed and the conversation became general.
'I'm always nervous when people don't use concrete nouns when they speak’ Nadia said.
'It's why she never listens to politicians’ Vianello said, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her closer to him.
‘Is that how you keep her in thrall, Lorenzo?' Paola asked. 'You read her a list of nouns every morning?'
Brunetti glanced at Vianello, who said, 'I'm not a big fan of preachers, myself, especially when they make it sound like they aren't preaching.'
'But he wasn't preaching, was he?' Nadia asked. 'Not really.'
'No’ Brunetti said, 'not at all. But I think we should remember that he saw four people there he had never seen before, and it might be that he was keeping things light and general until he found out who we were.'
'And I'm the one with the low opinion of human nature?' Paola asked.
'It's only a possibility’ Brunetti said. 'I was told that there is generally a collection, or at least people pass him envelopes, but there was none of that tonight.'
'At least while we were still there’ Nadia said.
'True enough’ Brunetti admitted.
'So what do we do?' Paola asked. Turning to Brunetti, she said, 'It will put our marriage in serious peril if you ask me to go again.'
'Peril peril, or pretend peril?' he asked.
Brunetti saw her lips draw together as she considered how to answer him. 'Pretend peril, I suppose’ she finally admitted, 'though the thought of having to go again would drive me to drinking the cooking sherry in the afternoon.'
'You already do’ he said, putting an end to the discussion of Brother Leonardo.
11
The next day, Brunetti had barely seated himself at his desk when he received a call from Signorina Elettra, newly returned from Abano, who informed him that the Vice-Questore, himself just back from the crime seminar in Berlin, wanted to have a few words with him. This phrase, 'have a few words with him', struck an odd note: its measured neutrality had none of Patta's usual aggressive bluster, nor did it reflect the patent falsity of Patta's amiability when he felt himself in need of a favour.