by Donna Leon
‘Yes. Do you know her?’
‘No, but I used to work with her sister. At the bank. She was one of the assistant directors. Nice person.’
‘She ever have anything to say about her sister?’
‘Not that I can remember,’ Signorina Elettra said. ‘But I suppose I can ask her. I see her once in a while on the street, and occasionally we have a coffee.’
‘Does she know where you work?’
‘No. I told her I got a job at the Commune: that’s usually enough to kill anyone’s interest.’
‘From what the person I spoke to said, I gather that Fontana is interested in her sister.’
‘And she’s not in him?’
‘No.’
‘Sounds familiar,’ she said and turned to her computer.
‘That’s very much like her,’ Paola said that evening, stretched out on the sofa and listening to him tell her about his conversation with Signorina Elettra and her remarks about dishonesty and deceit: ‘that she thinks it’s more dishonest to deceive a woman. I thought the days of feminine solidarity were over.’
‘It wasn’t exactly feminine solidarity, so far as I could tell,’ Brunetti replied. ‘I think it’s simply that she believes dishonesty is in proportion to how much trust you’re betraying, not to the lie you actually tell. And, from what she said, men are more indiscreet, more prone to boasting, and in those circumstances she thinks she’s got the right to use anything they say.’
‘And women?’
‘She thinks they need to trust people more before they reveal things.’
‘Or perhaps what women reveal is usually weakness, but what men talk about is strength,’ Paola suggested. She looked at her bare feet and wiggled her toes.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Think about the dinners we’ve been to, or conversations you’ve had with groups of men alone. There’s usually some tale of conquest: a woman, a job, a contract, even a swimming race. So it’s more boasting than confession.’ When he looked sceptical, she said, ‘Tell me you’ve never listened to a man boast about how many women he’s had.’
After a moment’s reflection, Brunetti said, ‘Of course I have,’ sitting up a bit straighter as he said it.
‘Women, at least women my age, would not do that in front of women they don’t know.’
‘And in front of the ones they do know?’ asked an astonished Brunetti.
Ignoring him, she said, in a completely different tone, ‘But deceit does have its uses: without it, and without betrayal, there’d be no literature.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ Brunetti replied, not certain how talk of Signorina Elettra’s reflections on honesty had led them to the point of literature, however familiar that point was and however varied Paola’s wiles in getting them to it.
‘Think of it,’ she said, stretching an expansive arm towards him. ‘Gilgamesh is betrayed, so is Beowulf, so is Otello, someone leads the Persians around behind the Spartans. .’
‘That’s history,’ Brunetti interrupted.
‘As you will,’ Paola conceded. ‘Then what about Ulysses? What is he if not the grand betrayer? And Billy Budd, and Anna Karenina, and Christ, and Isabel Archer: they’re all betrayed. Even Captain Ahab. .’
‘By a whale?’
‘No, by his megalomania and his desire for revenge. You could say by his own weaknesses.’
‘Aren’t you stretching things a bit, Paola?’ he asked in a reasonable tone. Tired by a long day, his mind swirled off to the cases that weren’t cases, where he could proceed only unofficially and where he wasn’t even sure there was a crime. He had to consider two cases of what was probably human betrayal, and his wife wanted to talk about a whale.
She sobered instantly and turned to punch at the pillow lying against the arm of the sofa. ‘I was trying it out. To see if it might prove an interesting idea for an article.’
‘It’s wide of the field of Henry James, isn’t it?’ he asked, not absolutely certain that she had mentioned a James character in her list.
She grew even more sober. ‘I’ve been thinking that of late,’ she said.
‘Thinking what?’
‘That the world of Henry James is becoming very small for me.’
Brunetti got to his feet and looked at his watch: it was after eleven. ‘I think I’ll go to bed now,’ he said, too stunned to think of anything else to say.
13
The Ferragosto holiday seemed to expand each year, as people added days to either side of the official two-week period, in the hope of expanding their vacation as much as avoiding the traffic. The news, both radio and television, was filled with injunctions about safe driving and spoke of the twelve million cars — or fourteen, or fifteen — that were projected to be on the roads that weekend. One of the news reporters said that, if placed bumper to bumper, these cars would stretch in an unbroken line from Reggio Calabria to the Gotthard Pass. Brunetti, having no idea of the average length of an automobile, didn’t even bother to check the numbers. Though he had a licence, he was in truth a non-driver and was almost entirely without interest of any sort in automobiles. They were big or small, red or white or some other colour, and far too many young people died in them every year. He had decided to travel by train: even to discuss renting a car was to run the risk of one of Chiara’s ecological denunciations. They would go to Malles, where a car would meet their train and take them to his cousin’s house; there was a bus that went up and down to Glorenza twice a day.
Preparing for their holiday, each of the family had begun to pack. Paola created a pile of books on the top of their dresser, whose composition changed each day in conformity with the books she thought she would select for the class in the British Novel she was to teach during the coming term. Brunetti studied the titles every night and thus became party to the ongoing struggle: Vanity Fair lost place to Great Expectations, a substitution Brunetti attributed to weight; The Secret Agent lasted three days but was replaced by Heart of Darkness, though the weight differential seemed minimal to Brunetti; a day later, Barchester Towers took over from Middlemarch, suggesting that the weight rule was back in force. Pride and Prejudice appeared the first evening and stayed the course.
Three nights before their expected departure, curiosity got the better of him, and he asked, ‘Why is it that all the fat books have disappeared, and A Suitable Boy, which is the fattest, remains?’
‘Oh, I’m not going to teach that,’ Paola said, as if surprised by his question. ‘I’ve wanted to reread it for years. It’s my reward book.’
‘What are you being rewarded for?’ Brunetti asked.
‘You can ask that of a person who teaches at Cà Foscari? In the Department of English Literature?’ she asked, using the voice she reserved for Expressions of Public Outrage.
Then, in a more moderate tone, she said, ‘I’ve looked at the books you’re taking.’
Brunetti had hoped she would, thinking the sobriety of his choices would set a salutary example against the vain frivolity of some of hers.
‘Do I detect an unwonted modernity in your choices?’ she asked.
‘I’ve decided to read some modern history,’ he asserted proudly.
‘But why Russian?’ she asked, pointing to a book entitled A People’s Tragedy.
‘It interests me, the Revolution,’ he said.
‘What interests me is the way so many of us bought it all,’ she said in a voice that had suddenly grown harsh.
‘We in the West, you mean?’
‘We. In the West. Our generation. The workers’ paradise. Brothers under Socialism. Whatever nonsense we wanted to spout to show our parents that we didn’t like their choices in life.’ She covered her face with her hands, and Brunetti detected nothing false in the gesture. ‘To think I voted Communist. Of my own free will, I voted for them.’
The only consolation Brunetti could think of to offer her was to say, ‘History swept them away.’
‘But not soon enough,’ she said savagely.
‘You know me well enough to know I’m not much for shame or guilt, but I will forever feel guilty that I voted for those people, that I refused to listen to common sense or believe what I didn’t want to believe.’
‘They never had any real power here,’ Brunetti said. ‘You know that.’
‘I’m not talking about them, Guido; I’m talking about me. That I could have been so stupid and have been so stupid for so long.’ She picked up his book and flipped through it, stopped to look at some of the photos, then closed it and set it down. ‘My father always hated them. But I wouldn’t listen to him. What could he know?’
‘You think we’ll have to put up with the same thing?’ he asked to change the subject. ‘From our kids?’
She opened a drawer and pulled out a sweater, the very sight of which caused Brunetti to break out in a sweat. ‘Raffi came to his senses quickly enough,’ she said. ‘I suppose we should be grateful for that. But they’re sure to drag home some other ideas sooner or later.’
Brunetti moved over to the window that gave on to the north and felt the faint stirring of a breeze. ‘You think the weather could be changing?’ he asked.
‘Getting hotter, probably,’ she said and pulled out another sweater.
The next day Signorina Elettra was meant to have coffee with her admirer at the Tribunale. Brunetti assumed she would want to get the flowers early in the morning, before the heat had a chance to grab the city by the throat. Allowing time for a leisurely coffee, interspersed with interesting conversation about common acquaintances and people at the Tribunale, she would probably get to the Questura by eleven, he estimated. He was prevented from going down to see if she had arrived, however, by a long phone call from a friend who worked in the Palermo Questura, asking him if he knew anything about two new pizzerias and a hotel that had recently opened in Venice.
Brunetti had heard a number of things about them and about their ownership, both apparent and real. What his friend had to tell him concerned the real owners. Of greatest interest to Brunetti was his friend’s explanation of the unwonted speed with which permits had been granted for extensive restoration of both pizzerias and the hotel.
The permits for the hotel, strangely enough, had been granted in less than two weeks. Further, permission had been granted for the crews to work round the clock, something virtually unheard of in the city. The pizzerias required less work; these permits took just under a week to be granted.
When his friend in Palermo admitted to having a special interest in the director of the office granting the permits, Brunetti could only sigh, so familiar to him was the name and so useless did he judge any attempt to investigate the methods used in conceding permissions.
With a noise that wanted to be laughter, but failed, Brunetti said, ‘Once, when I was working in Naples we parked a truck down the street from a pizzeria and left it there, filming everyone who went in and out. We even had another camera directly opposite the place, so we could film anyone who sat at the tables, until they closed.’
‘How much business did they do?’
‘Eight people went in and stayed long enough to eat. We filmed them waiting for their pizzas and eating them. And one man went in and took home six pizzas.’
‘Let me guess,’ the voice came down the line: ‘the total intake for the day showed something more than fourteen pizzas.’
Brunetti could only laugh. ‘They took in more than two thousand Euros.’
‘What did you do?’
‘We gave the film to the Guardia di Finanza.’
‘And?’
‘And it ended up in court, and the judge ruled that the cameras were an invasion of privacy, and the film could not be used as evidence because the people shown in it had not been warned that they were being filmed.’ After a moment, Brunetti added, ‘It’s the same thing that happened with the baggage handlers at the airport.’
‘I read about it.’
Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that it was almost noon. Suddenly eager to speak to Signorina Elettra before she could leave for lunch, he said, ‘I’ll let you know if I hear anything,’ and brought the conversation to a close.
To disguise, perhaps to himself, how much he wanted to speak to her, Brunetti delayed his arrival by stopping at the squad room to show Gorini’s photo to some of the men on duty. Though it was a strong face, none of them could remember ever having seen him in the city. He left the photo with the request that the rest of the squad have a look and went downstairs, where he found Signorina Elettra at her desk, idly rubbing at the palm of her hand. Two bunches of flowers lay on the windowsill, half unwrapped and beginning to wilt.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
‘A disaster. The whole thing was a disaster.’
‘Tell me,’ he said, pushing the flowers aside and leaning back against the windowsill, arms folded.
With a conscious effort she pressed her palms flat on either side of her keyboard. ‘I got the flowers, then went over to the Tribunale and up to his office. He was there, working, so I suggested we go out for a coffee.
‘We went down to Caffè del Doge, and he suggested we sit down at a table instead of standing at the bar. I said I didn’t have a lot of time, but I let him persuade me to sit down, and we started talking. He told me about his job, and I listened as if I were interested.
‘The only way I could think of to get him to talk about Fontana was to speak of one of the other ushers, Rizzotto, because I went to school with his daughter and I’ve met him in the building a few times. And then I mentioned Fontana, said I’d heard he was an excellent worker. And that started the stories about him, about how dedicated he was and how efficient, and how long he’s been there, and how such men are an example to us all, and just when I thought I was going to start screaming or hit him with the flowers, he looked up and said, “Why, there he is.”
‘So before I could stop him, he went over and brought Fontana back with him. He was wearing a suit and tie. Would you believe it? It’s 32 degrees, and he’s wearing a suit and tie.’ She shook her head at the memory.
To Brunetti it hardly sounded like a disaster.
‘So he joined us,’ she went on. ‘He’s a meek little man; he ordered a macchiato and a glass of water and said almost nothing, while Umberto kept talking and I tried to be invisible.’ Brunetti doubted that.
‘And then, as the three of us were sitting there all friendly, who walks in but my friend Giulia, with her sister Luisa?’
‘Coltellini?’ Brunetti asked, even though he knew he didn’t have to.
‘Yes.’
‘Giulia saw me and came over and said hello, and then her sister came over, and I thought poor Fontana was going to faint. He stood up so quickly, he knocked over his coffee and got it on his trousers. It was terrible: he didn’t know whether to shake Giulia’s hand or not, he was so happy to see them there, but all Giulia could do was hand him a napkin. He started to wipe at the coffee. It was grotesque. Poor little man. He couldn’t hide it. If he’d had a sign, we all could have read it: “I love you, I love you, I love you.” ’
‘And the judge?’
‘She said hello, and then she ignored him.’
‘It doesn’t sound like much of a disaster to me,’ Brunetti said.
‘That came when Umberto introduced us. When the judge heard my name, she couldn’t hide her surprise, and then she looked at Umberto, and at Fontana, and then she shook my hand and tried to smile.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I pretended I hadn’t noticed anything, and I don’t think she saw that I did.’
‘What happened?’
‘She sat down with us. Before that, she looked as if all she wanted to do was run from the place rather than have to be anywhere near Fontana, but she sat down with us and started to talk.’
‘About what?’
‘Oh, where I worked now that I didn’t work at the bank any more.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘That I worked at
the Commune, and when she asked more questions, I said it was all so boring I couldn’t stand to talk about it, and asked her about the blouse she was wearing.’
‘Did she say anything else?’ Brunetti asked.
‘After a while, when she realized she wasn’t going to get anything out of me, she asked Fontana what we had been talking about, though she made it all sound cute and friendly: “And what interesting things have you been talking about, Araldo?” ’ she said, sprinkling saccharine on her voice.
‘Poor man. His face got red when she used his first name, and I thought he was going to have a seizure.’
‘But he didn’t?’
‘No, he didn’t. And he didn’t answer, either, so Umberto told her we’d been talking about work at the courthouse.’ She paused, shaking her head. ‘Probably the worst thing he could have said.’ She looked at Brunetti. ‘You should have seen her face when he said that. It could have been made from ice.’
‘How long did she stay after that?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I don’t know. I picked up the flowers and said I had to get back to the office. Umberto said he’d walk me to the traghetto: he thinks I work in Cà Farsetti, so I had to take it across the canal and then go into the main entrance because Umberto was on the other side, waving at me.’
‘But the judge doesn’t think you work there?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Hardly. It was written all over her face. She’s a judge, for heaven’s sake: of course she’d know who works at the Questura.’
‘Perhaps,’ Brunetti tried to temporize.
Signorina Elettra pushed herself to her feet and came towards him so quickly that Brunetti stepped aside to avoid her. Ignoring him, she picked up the flowers and ripped the paper from them. She set them on her desk, walked over to her armadio and took out two large vases, then went out into the hall. Brunetti remained where he was, considering what she had just told him.
When she returned, he took one of the water-filled vases from her and set it on the windowsill. She put the other one on the small table against the wall, then went over and picked up one of the bunches of flowers. With no ceremony, she pulled the rubber bands from the stems, tossed them on her desk, and stuffed the flowers into the first vase, then repeated the process with the second bunch.