by Donna Leon
‘What did you talk about with the husband?’ Brunetti inquired.
‘Earth-moving equipment,’ the Conte said with singular lack of enthusiasm, ‘and other things.’ After the briefest of pauses, he said, ‘Cicero is infinitely more interesting.’
Brunetti remembered that his own copy of the speeches had been a Christmas gift from the Conte and that the dedication on the title page stated that it was one of the Conte’s favourite books. ‘But?’ he asked in response to his father-in-law’s tone.
‘But Cicero,’ the Conte answered, ‘is not much in demand among Chinese businessmen.’ He considered his own observation and then added, with a theatrical sigh, ‘Perhaps because he had so little to say about earth-moving equipment.’
‘Do Chinese businessmen have more to say?’ Brunetti prodded.
The Conte laughed. ‘You really can’t lose the habit of interrogation, can you, Guido?’ Before Brunetti could protest, the Conte went on, ‘Yes, the few I know are very interested in it, especially bulldozers. So is Cataldo, and so is his son – he’s the son from his first marriage – who runs their heavy equipment company. China’s gone crazy with a building boom, so their company’s got more orders than they can handle, which means he’s asked me to go into a limited partnership with him.’
Over the years, Brunetti had learned that circumspection was the appropriate response to anything his father-in-law might divulge about his business interests, so he did no more than mutter an attentive ‘Ah.’
‘But you can’t be interested in that,’ the Conte said, quite accurately as it happened. ‘What did you think of her?’
‘May I ask why you’re curious?’ Brunetti said.
‘Because I sat next to her at dinner a few months ago, after meeting her here for years and never really talking to her, and the same thing happened to me. We started talking about a story that had been in the paper that day, and then suddenly we were talking about the Metamorphoses. I don’t remember how it happened, but it was delightful. All those years, and we’d never talked, well, never about anything real. So I suggested Donatella put you across from her while I talked to the husband.’ Then, with remarkable self-awareness, the Conte added, ‘You’ve been forced to sit with so many of our dull friends all these years: I thought you deserved a change.’
‘Thank you, then,’ Brunetti said, choosing not to comment on the Conte’s assessment of his friends. ‘It was very interesting. She’s even read the argument against Verres.’
‘Oh, good for her,’ the Conte all but chirped.
‘Did you know her before?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Before the marriage or before the facelift?’ the Conte inquired neutrally.
‘Before the marriage,’ Brunetti said.
‘Yes and no. That is, she’s always been more Donatella’s friend than mine. Some relative of Donatella’s asked her to keep an eye on her when she came here to study. Byzantine history, of all things. But she had to leave after two years. Family trouble of some sort. Her father died, and she had to go home and find a job because the mother had never worked.’ Vaguely, he added, ‘I don’t remember all the details. Donatella probably does.’
The Conte cleared his throat and then said, sounding apologetic, ‘Hearing all this, it sounds like the plot summary of a bad television series. You sure you want to hear it?’
‘I never watch television,’ said a falsely virtuous Brunetti, ‘so I find it interesting.’
‘All right, then,’ the Conte said and continued. ‘The story I’ve heard – and I don’t remember whether it was Donatella or other people who told me – is that she met Cataldo while she was modelling – furs, I think – and the rest, as my granddaughter is in the annoying habit of saying, is history.’
‘Was divorce part of the history?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes, it was,’ the Conte answered ruefully. ‘I’ve known Maurizio a long time, and he is not a patient man. He offered his wife a settlement, and she accepted.’
The instinct developed over decades of prodding reluctant witnesses suggested to Brunetti that something was not being said here, and so he asked, ‘What else?’
There was a long silence before the Conte answered. ‘He was a guest at my table, so I don’t like to say these things about him, but Maurizio is also said to be a vindictive man, and this might have encouraged his wife to accept the terms he offered.’
‘I’m afraid I’ve heard this story before,’ Brunetti said.
‘Which one?’ the Conte asked sharply.
‘The same one you’ve heard, Orazio: the old man who meets the sweet young thing, leaves his wife, marries her in fretta e furia, and then perhaps they don’t live happily ever after.’ Brunetti himself did not like the sound of his own voice.
‘But it’s not like that, Guido. Not at all.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they are living happily ever after.’ The Conte’s voice held the same longing it had when he spoke of being able to spend an evening discussing Cicero. ‘Or at least that’s what Donatella tells me.’
After some time, the Conte asked, ‘Are you troubled by her appearance?’
‘That’s a delicate way of phrasing it.’
‘I’ve never understood it,’ the Conte said. ‘She was a lovely thing. No real reason for her to do it, but women today have different ideas about . . .’ the Conte said, letting the sentence wither.
‘It happened years ago. They went away, ostensibly on a vacation, but they were gone a long time: months. I can’t remember who told me.’ The Conte paused, then said, ‘Not Donatella.’ Brunetti was glad he said this. ‘At any rate, when they came back, she looked the way she looks now. Australia – I think that’s where they said they had been. But a person doesn’t go to Australia for plastic surgery, for God’s sake.’
Brunetti spoke without thinking, ‘Why would anyone do that?’
‘Guido,’ the Conte said after some time, ‘I’ve given that up.’
‘Given what up?’
‘Trying to understand why people do things. No matter how hard we try, we’ll never get it right. My father’s driver always used to say, “All we have is one head, so we can think only one way about anything.”’ The Conte laughed, and then said with sudden briskness, ‘That’s enough gossip. What I wanted to know was whether you liked her or not.’
‘Only that?’
‘I hardly thought you were going to run off with her, Guido,’ he laughed.
‘Orazio, believe me: one woman who reads is more than enough for me.’
I know what you mean, I know what you mean.’ Then, a bit more seriously, ‘But you still haven’t answered my question.’
‘I liked her. A great deal.’
‘Did she strike you as an honest woman?’
‘Absolutely,’ Brunetti answered instantly, not even having to think about it. But when he did, he said, ‘Isn’t that strange? I know almost nothing about her, but I trust her because she likes Cicero.’
Again, the Conte laughed, but in a softer voice. ‘It makes sense to me.’
The Conte seldom displayed such interest in a person, so Brunetti was led to ask, ‘Why are you curious about whether she’s honest or not?’
‘Because if she trusts her husband, then maybe he’s worth trusting.’
‘And you think she does?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I watched them last night, and there was nothing false about them. She loves him, and he loves her.’
‘But loving isn’t trusting, is it?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Ah, how good to hear the cool tones of your scepticism, Guido. We live in such sentimental times that I sometimes forget my best instincts.’
‘Which tell you what?’
‘That a man can smile and smile yet be a villain.’
‘The Bible?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Shakespeare, I think,’ the Conte said.
Brunetti suspected the conversation was over, but then the Conte said, ‘I wondered if you could do me a favou
r, Guido. Discreetly.’
‘Yes?’
‘You have information there, far better than I sometimes have, and I wondered if you could get someone to have a look around to see if Cataldo is anyone I would want to . . .’
‘Trust?’ Brunetti asked provocatively.
‘Never that, Guido,’ Conte Falier said with adamantine certainty. ‘Perhaps better to say whether he’s someone I would want to invest with. He’s in a terrible hurry for me to decide, and I don’t know if my own people can find . . .’ The Conte’s voice drifted away, as if he could not think of the words to express the precise nature of his interest.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ Brunetti said, realizing that he was curious about Cataldo but not wanting, just then, to try to figure out why.
He and the Conte exchanged pleasantries, and the conversation ended.
He glanced at his watch and saw that he would have time to speak to Signorina Elettra, his superior’s secretary, before going home to lunch. If anyone could have a discreet look into Cataldo’s business dealings, it was surely she. He toyed for a moment with the idea of asking her to check, while she was about it, for whatever she could find about Cataldo’s wife, as well. He felt a flush of embarrassment at his desire to see a photo of what she had looked like before the . . . before the marriage.
To enter Signorina Elettra’s office was to be reminded that it was Tuesday. An enormous vase of pink French tulips stood on a desk in front of her window. The computer which she had allowed a generous and grateful Questura to supply her with some months before – consisting of nothing more than an anorexic screen and a black keyboard – left ample room on her desk for an equally large bouquet of white roses. The coloured wrapping lay neatly folded in the bin used only for paper, and woe to the member of staff who forgot and stuffed paper carelessly in the regular garbage. Paper; cardboard; metal; plastic. Brunetti had once heard her on the phone with the president of Vesta, the private company which had been awarded – he turned his thoughts away from consideration of the factors that might have affected that choice – the contract to collect garbage in the city, and he still recalled the exquisite politeness with which she had called to his attention the many ways a police investigation or, worse, one from the Guardia di Finanza, could impede the easy running of his company and how expensive and troublesome could be the unexpected discoveries to which an official financial investigation often led.
After that conversation – but surely not as a result – the garbage men had altered their schedule and begun to moor their ‘barca ecologica’ in front of the Questura every Tuesday and Friday mornings after picking up paper and cardboard from the residents in the area of SS Giovanni e Paolo. The second Tuesday, Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta had ordered them to leave when he saw the boat moored there and had been outraged at the brutta figura of policemen seen carrying bags of papers from the Questura to a garbage scow.
It had taken Signorina Elettra no time at all to lead the Vice-Questore to see the tremendous publicity advantage to be gained from introducing an eco-iniziativa that was the product, of course, of Dottor Patta’s wholehearted commitment to the ecological health of his adopted city. The following week, La Nuova sent not only a journalist but a photographer, and the next day’s front page carried a long interview with Patta and above it a large photo. Though it did not show him actually carrying a bag of rubbish out to a garbage scow, it did show him at his desk, one hand placed assertively on a stack of papers, as if to suggest he could resolve the cases they documented by sheer force of will, and then diligently ensure that the papers were disposed of in the proper recycling receptacle.
As Brunetti entered, Signorina Elettra was just emerging from her superior’s office. ‘Ah, good,’ she said, when she saw Brunetti at the door. ‘The Vice-Questore wants to see you.’
‘About?’ he asked, all thought of Cataldo and his wife forgotten for the moment.
‘There’s someone in with him. A Carabiniere. From Lombardia.’ The Most Serene Republic had ceased to exist more than two centuries before, but those who spoke its tongue could still, with a single word, express their suspicion of those bustling, upstart Lombards.
‘Just go in,’ she said, moving closer to her desk to allow him free passage to Patta’s door.
He thanked her, knocked, and entered at Patta’s shout.
Patta sat at his desk, to one side the same stack of papers that had served as props in the photographs in the news-papers: for Patta, any large pile of papers could be only decorative. Brunetti noticed a man seated in front of Patta’s desk; when he heard Brunetti come in, he started to get to his feet.
‘Ah, Brunetti,’ Patta enthused, ‘this is Maggior Guarino. He’s from the Carabinieri in Marghera.’ The man was tall, about a decade younger than Brunetti, and very thin. He had an easy, lived-in smile and thick hair already greying at the temples. His dark eyes were deep-set and gave him the look of a man who preferred to study what went on around him from some safe, half-hidden place.
They shook hands and exchanged pleasantries, then Guarino moved aside to allow Brunetti to slip past him to the other chair in front of Patta’s desk.
‘I wanted you to meet the Maggiore, Brunetti,’ Patta began. ‘He’s come to see if we can be of any help to him.’ Before Brunetti could ask, Patta sailed on. ‘For some time, there’s been growing evidence of the presence, especially in the North-east, of certain illegal organizations.’ He glanced at Brunetti, who had no need to ask for clarification: anyone who read a newspaper – anyone, in fact, who had ever had a conversation in a bar – knew about this. To content Patta, however, Brunetti raised his eyebrows in what he hoped was a semblance of interested interrogation, and Patta explained, ‘Worse – and this is why the Maggiore is here – there is increasing evidence that legitimate businesses are being taken over, specifically the transportation industry.’ What was that story by the American writer, about the man who fell asleep and woke up after decades? Had Patta perhaps been hibernating in a cave somewhere while the Camorra moved north, and had he awoken to discover it only this morning?
Brunetti kept his eyes on Patta and pretended to pay no attention to the reaction of the man next to him, who cleared his throat.
‘Maggior Guarino’s been involved with this problem for some time, and his investigations have led him to the Veneto. As you might realize, Brunetti, this concerns all of us now,’ Patta continued, voice filled with the shock of the new. As Patta spoke, Brunetti tried to figure out why he had been asked to join them. Transportation, at least the kind that moved on road or rail, had never been a concern of the police in Venice. He had little direct experience with land transport, criminal or otherwise, nor could he remember that any of the men in his squad had, either.
‘. . . and so I hoped that, by introducing you two, some synergy could be created,’ Patta concluded, using the foreign word and again giving evidence of his ability to be fatuous in any language he used.
Guarino started to answer, but, seeing Patta’s not very discreet glance at his watch, seemed to change his mind and said, ‘You’ve already been too generous with your time, Vice-Questore: I can’t in conscience ask you to give us any more of it.’ This was accompanied by a large smile, which Patta returned affably. ‘Perhaps the Commissario and I,’ Guarino said, with a nod in Brunetti’s direction, ‘should talk about this together, and then get back to you to ask for your input?’ When Guarino used the English word, it sounded as though he knew what it meant.
Brunetti was amazed at the speed with which Guarino had acquired the pitch-perfect manner for addressing Patta and at the subtlety of his suggestion. Patta would be asked to give an opinion, but only after other men had done the work: thus he was to be spared both effort and responsibility and would still be able to take credit for any progress achieved. This for Patta would surely be the best of all possible worlds.
‘Yes, yes,’ Patta said, as if the Major’s words had suddenly forced him to reflect upon the burdens of office.
Guarino stood, followed by Brunetti. The Major made a few more remarks; Brunetti went to the door and waited for him to finish, then they left the office together.
Signorina Elettra turned to them as they emerged. ‘I hope your meeting was successful, Signori,’ she said pleasantly.
‘With an inspiration such as that presented by the Vice-Questore, Signora, it could have been nothing but,’ Guarino said in a dead level voice.
Brunetti watched as her attention turned to the man who had spoken. ‘Indeed,’ she answered, giving Guarino her brightest look. ‘I’m so pleased to discover another person who finds him inspiring.’
‘How could one fail to, Signora? Or is it Signorina?’ Guarino asked, injecting into his voice curiosity, or was it astonishment, that she might still be unmarried.
‘After the current head of our government, Vice-Questore Patta is the most inspiring man I’ve ever encountered,’ she answered, smiling, but responding to only the first of his inquiries.
‘I can well believe it,’ Guarino agreed. ‘Charismatic, each of them in his own way.’ Turning to Brunetti, he asked, ‘Is there a place where we can talk?’
Brunetti nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and they left the office. As they climbed the stairs, Guarino asked, ‘How long has she worked for the Vice-Questore?’
‘Long enough to fall completely under his spell,’ Brunetti answered. Then, at Guarino’s look, ‘I’m not sure. Years. It seems as if she’s always been here, though she hasn’t.’
‘Would things fall apart if she weren’t?’ Guarino asked.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
‘We have someone like her in the office,’ the Major answered. ‘Signora Landi: the formidable Gilda. Is your Signora Landi a civilian?’
‘Yes, she is,’ Brunetti answered, wondering that Guarino had failed to notice the jacket that had hung oh-so-negligently on the back of her chair. Brunetti knew little of fashion, but he could spot an Etro lining at twenty paces, and he knew that the Ministry of the Interior was not in the habit of using it in their uniform jackets. Guarino had apparently overlooked the clue.