by Donna Leon
'No,' Brunetti agreed. 'But I suspect that's only because there are standard editions of the basic texts. Otherwise, I'm sure they'd try, if they thought they could get away with it’ He saw that he had her interest, so he added, I've always been afraid of people in possession of what they believe is the truth. They'll do anything to see that the facts are changed and whipped into shape to agree with it’
'Did you study history, Commissario?' she asked.
Brunetti took this as a compliment. 'If I had, I doubt I would have lasted the course, either.' He stopped and they exchanged a smile, both struck by how immediate and democratic was the union of people who sought and found intellectual solace within the pages of books. He went on, giving no thought to the propriety of saying this to someone who was not a member of the forces of order: I still spend most of my time listening to lies, but at least some of the people who tell them to me are presumed to be lying because they're criminals. Ifs not like having to listen to a lie from someone who holds the chair in history at the university’ He almost added, 'Or the Minister of Justice’ but stopped himself in time.
That makes the lies they tell all the more dangerous, doesn't it?' she asked instantly.
'Absolutely,' he agreed, pleased that she so immediately saw the consequences. Almost reluctantly, he took the conversation back to where it had been before becoming an examination of historical truth. 'But what is it you wanted to ask me?' When she didn't answer, he continued, ‘I think my wife told you that I can't give you any information until I know the details.'
‘You won't tell anyone?' she blurted out. The tone in which she asked this reminded Brunetti that the girl was not much older than his own children and that her intellectual sophistication didn't necessarily imply any other sort of maturity.
'No, not if there's no sign of ongoing criminal activity. If what you want to ask about happened far enough in the past, then it’s likely that the statute of limitations has run out or a general amnesty has been granted.' Because the information Paola had given him was so vague, he decided to leave it to the girl to tell him more if she chose to do so.
There followed a pause in which Brunetti had no idea what the girl might be thinking. It went on so long that he looked away from her, and his eyes were automatically drawn to the printed words on the paper on his desk. He found himself, in the silence, beginning to read, almost against his will.
More time passed. Finally, she said, 'As I told your wife, it’s about an old woman I've always thought of as my third grandmother. I need the information for her. She's Austrian, but she lived with my grandfather during the war. My father's father, that is.' She looked across at Brunetti, checking to see if this explanation would suffice; he met her glance, looking interested but certainly not eager.
'After the war, my grandfather was arrested. There was a trial, and during it the prosecution presented copies of articles he had written for newspapers and journals where he condemned "alien art forms and practices". Brunetti recognized this as the Fascist code for Jewish art or art by anyone who was Jewish. 'Despite the Amnesty, they were still admitted as evidence.'
She stopped. When it became evident that she was not going to say more unless he prodded, he asked, 'What happened at the trial?'
'Because of the Togliatti Amnesty he couldn't be prosecuted for political crimes, so he was charged with extortion. For other things that happened during the war,' she explained. 'At least, this is what my grandmother has told me’ she continued. 'When it looked as if he was likely to be convicted, he had a sort of breakdown, and his lawyer decided to plead insanity.' Anticipating Brunetti's question, she added, ‘I wondered about that, but my grandmother said it was a real breakdown, not a fake one like they have today’
‘I see’
'And the judges believed it, too, so when they sentenced him, they sent him to San Servolo’
It would have been better to have gone to prison, Brunetti found himself thinking, though this was an idea he decided to spare the girl. San Servolo had been closed decades ago, and it was perhaps best to forget the horrors of what had gone on there for so many years. What had happened, had happened, not only to the other inmates, but probably to her grandfather, and there was no changing it. A pardon, however, if such a thing were possible, might change the way people thought about him. If - he found a cynical voice saying - anyone bothered to think about such things any more or if anyone cared about what had happened during the war.
'And what is it you want to obtain for him? Or your grandmother wants to obtain’ he added, seeking this way to encourage her to be more forthcoming about the source of her request.
'Anything that would exonerate him and clear his name.' Then, lowering both her voice and her head, she added, ‘It’s the only thing I could give her.' Then, more softly, ‘It’ s the only thing she wants.'
This was an area of the law with which Brunetti was not familiar, so he could consider her request only in terms of legal principles. He lacked the courage, however, to tell the girl that the law as it was enacted was not always the result of those principles. 'I think, in legal terms, what might apply here is a legal reversal or overturning of the original judgment. Once it was determined that the verdict was incorrect, your grandfather would, in effect, be declared innocent.'
'Publicly?' she asked. 'Would there be some official document that I could show my grandmother?'
'If the courts issued a judgment, then there would have to be official notice of it’ was the best answer he could supply.
She considered this for so long that Brunetti finally broke into her silence and asked, 'Was his name the same as yours?'
'No. Mine is Leonardo.'
'But he was your father's father?'
She said simply, 'My parents weren't married. My father didn't acknowledge my paternity immediately, so I kept my mother's name.'
Thinking it best not to comment on this, Brunetti asked only, 'What was his name?'
'Guzzardi. Luca’
At the sound of the name, the faintest of faint bells sounded in the back reaches of Brunetti's memory. 'Was he Venetian?' he asked.
'No, the family was from Ferrara. But they were here during the war.'
The name of the city brought the memory no closer. While seeming to consider her answer, Brunetti was busy trying to think of whom he could ask about events in Venice during the war. Two candidates sprang instantly to mind: his friend Lele Bortoluzzi, the painter, and his father-in-law, Count Orazio Falier, both men of an age to have lived through the war and both possessed of excellent memories.
'But I still don't understand,' Brunetti said, thinking that a-display of confusion would be a better means of obtaining information than open curiosity, 'what the purpose of legal action now would be. The original case should have been passed to the Court of Appeals.'
That was done at the time, and the conviction was upheld; so was the decision to send him to San Servolo.'
Brunetti assumed a befuddled expression. 'Then I don't understand, not at all, how a reversal of judgment would be possible or why anyone would want one.'
She gave him such a penetrating glance that he wiped the country bumpkin expression from his face and felt distinct embarrassment at having attempted to trick her into revealing the name of this grandmother who wanted to obtain the pardon, a desire he knew was motivated by nothing more than curiosity.
She started to speak, stopped, studied him as if remembering his attempt to appear less intelligent than he was, then finally said, with an asperity far in advance of her years, 'I'm sorry but I'm not at liberty to tell you that. All I've asked you to do,' she went on, and he was struck by the dignity with which she spoke, claiming equality with him and basing that claim on the brotherhood they'd established in their talk about books, 'is to tell me if if s possible to clear his name.' Even before he could ask, she cut him off and added, 'Nothing more.'
‘I see’ he said, getting to his feet, uncertain that he could be of much help to her but s
ufficiently charmed by her youth and sincerity to want to try.
She stood up as well. He came around the desk to approach her, but it was she who was the first to extend a hand. They shook hands. Quickly she went to the door and let herself out of the office, leaving Brunetti with the nagging sense that he had behaved foolishly but also with the desire to discover what the memory was that had awakened at the name Guzzardi.
When she was gone, Brunetti pulled the pile of papers that remained on his desk towards him, scribbled his initials on each of them without bothering to read a word, and moved them to his left, whence they would continue to meander through the offices of the Questura. It bothered him not at all to dismiss them thus; he thought it might be an intelligent policy to adopt from now on, or perhaps he could make a deal with one of the other commissari to trade off weeks reading them. He contemplated for a moment the possibility of making the same deal with all of the colleagues he trusted, to diminish this stupid waste of time, but was brought up short by how few names he could put on any such list: Vianello, Signorina Elettra, Pucetti, and one of the new commissari, Sara Marino.
The fact that Marino was Sicilian had at first made Brunetti wary of her, and then the revelation that her father, a judge, had been murdered by the Mafia had made him fear she might be a zealot. But then he had seen her honesty and enthusiasm for work; moreover, Patta and Lieutenant Scarpa both disapproved of her and so Brunetti had come to trust her. Aside from those four - and Sara's name was there only because his gut impulse told him she was an honourable person - there was no one else at the Questura in whom he could place blind trust. Rather than put his security in the hands of colleagues, all sworn to protect and uphold the law, how much sooner would he trust his life, career and fortunes to someone like Marco Erizzo, a man he had just advised to commit a crime.
He decided not to waste any more time sitting and making stupid lists. Instead he would go and talk to his father-in-law, another man he had come to trust, though it was a trust that never failed to make him uneasy. He sometimes thought of Count Orazio Falier as Orazio the Oracle, for he was certain that the myriad connections the Count had spent a lifetime forming could lead to the answer to any question Brunetti might ask about the people or workings of the city. In the past, the Count had passed on to Brunetti intimate secrets about the great and good, information which more often than not called into question both of those adjectives. The one thing he had never revealed, however, was a source, though Brunetti had come to believe implicitly in whatever the Count told him.
He called the Count in his office and asked if he could have a word with him. Explaining that he had an appointment for lunch and was leaving the city immediately afterwards, the Count suggested that Brunetti come over to Campo San Barnaba right then, where they could talk undisturbed about whatever it was Brunetti wanted to know. When he set the phone down, Brunetti realized that the Count's intuition made him nervous. He had assumed that Brunetti would have no other reason to ask to see him than to extract information, though he had mentioned it so casually as to make it impossible for Brunetti to take legitimate offence.
Brunetti left a note on his door, saying he had gone to question someone and would be back after lunch. The day had grown darker and colder, so he decided to take the vaporetto rather than walk. The Number One from San Zaccaria was jammed with an immense tourist group surrounded by a rampart of luggage, no doubt headed for the train station or Piazzale Roma and the airport. He stepped on board and made for the doors of the cabin, only to find his way blocked by an enormous backpack suspended from the shoulders of an even more enormous woman. It seemed to him that in the last few years American tourists had doubled in size. They had always been big, but big in the way the Scandinavians were big: tall and muscular. But now they were lumpish and soft as well as big, agglomerations of sausage-like limbs that left him with the sensation that his hand would come away slick if he touched them.
He knew it was impossible for human physiology to change at less than glacial speed, but he suspected that some shocking transformation had nevertheless taken place in what was required to sustain human life: these people seemed incapable of survival without frequent infusions of water or carbonated drinks, for they all clutched at their litre-and-a-half-bottles as though they alone offered the possibility of continued life.
A recidivist, he opened his Gazzettino and turned his attention to the second section, dedicating himself to its many delights until the vaporetto pulled up at the Ca' Rezzonico stop.
At the end of the long calk, he turned right in front of the church, then down into an ever narrower calle until he found himself at the immense portone of Palazzo Falier. He rang the bell and stepped to the right, placing himself in front of the speaker to announce himself, but the door was opened almost instantly by Luciana, the oldest of the servants who staffed the palazzo and who had, by virtue of devotion and the passage of time, become an ancillary member of the family.
'Ah, Dottor Guido’ she said, smiling and putting her hand on his arm to lead him through the doorway. Her instinctive gesture expressed happiness to see him, concern for his well-being, and something close to love. 'Paola? The children?'
Brunetti recalled that it was only a few years ago, when both children already towered over this tiny woman, that she had stopped referring to them as 'the babies'.
'Everyone's fine, Luciana. And we're all waiting for this .year's honey.' Luciana's son had a dairy farm up near Bolzano, and every year, for Christmas, she gave the family four one-kilo bottles of the different kinds of honey he produced.
'Is it all gone?' she asked, voice quick with worry. 'Would you like some more?'
He pictured her, if he said yes, catching the first train to Bolzano the next morning. 'No, Luciana, we still have the acacia. We haven't opened it yet. And there's still half of the castagno, so we should make it until Christmas. So long as we keep it hidden from Chiara.'
She smiled, long familiar with Chiara's wolfish appetite. Unpersuaded by his answer, she said, 'If you run out, let me know, and Giovanni can send some down. It's no trouble.'
With another pat on his arm, she said, ‘Il Signor Conte is in his office.' Brunetti nodded, and Luciana turned back toward the steps that led up to the first floor and the kitchen, where she reigned supreme; no one could recall a time when she had not done so.
The door to the Count's office was open when Brunetti arrived, so he entered with only a perfunctory tap on the jamb. The Count looked up and greeted him with a smile so warm Brunetti began to wonder if there was some information the Count wanted in exchange for whatever he could supply.
Brunetti had no idea how old the Count was, nor was it easy to gauge it from the man's appearance. Though his close-cropped hair was white, in combination with his sun-darkened skin, it gave an impression of vibrant, active contrast and removed any suggestion that the colour of his hair was an indication of age. Brunetti had once asked Paola how old her father was, and she had answered only that he'd have to find that out by having a look at the Count's passport; she'd gone on gleefully to explain that he had four of them, from four different countries, all with different dates and places of birth.
The piercing blue eyes and the beaked nose would, Brunetti was certain, appear on all of them; Paola had never said whether the names on the passports were all the same, and he had never had the courage to ask.
The Count crossed the room to meet his son-in-law with a firm handshake and a smile. 'How nice of you to come. Have a seat and something to drink. Coffee? Un'ombra?’
'No, thank you,' Brunetti said, taking a seat. 'I know you've got an appointment, so I'll just ask you what I've come for and try to be quick about it.'
Without looking at his watch, the Count said, 'I've got half an hour, so there's plenty of time for a drink.'
'No, really,' Brunetti insisted. 'Maybe after we've talked, if there's time.'
The Count went back around his desk and sat. 'Who is it?' he asked, showing his fami
liarity with Brunetti.
'An Italian named Luca Guzzardi who was convicted after the war, though I don't know for what crimes, and who, instead of going to prison, was sent to San Servolo, where he died.' Brunetti chose to say nothing about Claudia Leonardo nor to explain the reason for his questions. In any case, the Count usually didn't care why Brunetti wanted to know something; the fact that Brunetti was married to his daughter was sufficient reason to offer him any help he could.
The Count's face remained impassive as Brunetti spoke. When he stopped, the Count pursed his lips and tilted his head to one side, as if listening to a sound from one of the palazzi on the other side of the Grand Canal. When he looked back at Brunetti, he said, 'Ah, life really is long’
Brunetti knew that, like his daughter, the Count would not resist the temptation to elucidate. After a moment, he did so. ‘Luca Guzzardi was the son of a business associate of my father. He called himself an artist’ Seeing Brunetti's confusion, he explained, The son, not the father’
Presumably, the Count was arranging the facts in an orderly way so as to tell the story clearly. He went on.. 'He was not an artist, though he did have a minor talent as an illustrator. This served him in very good stead, for he became a muralist and poster designer for the party in power before and during the war’ There were times when Brunetti had no choice but to admire the Count's arrogance: just as a man in his position did not call his servants by their first names, so too did he refuse to pronounce the name of the political party that had reduced his country to ruins.
Brunetti, who was familiar with Fascisti, now remembered where he had heard the name Guzzardi, or at least read it: in a book on Fascist art, page after numbing page of well-fed factory workers and bright-eyed maidens with long braids, dedicated, in the most glaring of colours, to the triumph of people just like themselves.
'He was quite active during the war, Luca Guzzardi’ the Count went on, 'both in Ferrara, where his family was originally from - I believe they dealt in textiles - and here, where both he and his father held positions of some importance.'