by Donna Leon
Brunetti laughed again, even longer this time. ‘That’s more than my father’s boss did for me.’
‘Where did you work?’ Vio asked, his curiosity real.
‘Anywhere. Everywhere. My father got hired by the day, or maybe by the week. Usually at Marghera, but sometimes at Rialto. I guess I went along to make up for what he couldn’t do.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Vio said.
‘My father’s lungs were no good, so he really couldn’t do a day’s work, but he had a good reputation: everyone knew he wouldn’t steal anything. So the boat owners called him, and he brought me along to make sure a full day’s work got done.’ Vio seemed fascinated by what Brunetti was telling him, perhaps surprised that a policeman could also be a real person.
‘I guess my father was a bit like your uncle,’ Brunetti said, smiling.
Vio looked puzzled. After a long time and with something approaching melancholy in his voice, he said, ‘Oh, no, not at all.’ A few seconds passed and Vio raised his hand, as if to cover his mouth or push back what he’d said.
Before Brunetti could ask anything else, they were interrupted by the arrival of a nurse, who entered after knocking only once. She was old enough to be Vio’s mother, heavy-bodied and round-faced. She nodded towards Brunetti but did not speak to him.
‘I’ve brought it, Marcello, I had to look for the right size for you.’ Smiling, she held up what looked like a bulletproof vest, dark brown and apparently stiff. ‘Wear this during the day, and I guarantee you can go back to work.’ She smiled again, obviously proud of having found the vest for him. She opened it as she approached the motionless Vio and said, ‘Here it is. Why don’t you try it on and see if it helps?’ She turned to Brunetti to explain: ‘It’s stiff, Signore, so it’ll hold him straight and keep his ribs away from his lungs.’ Turning back to Vio, she held the vest up higher and shook it, as if some surprise were going to jump out.
Vio made no move to do what she said and barely glanced at the vest.
‘Come on, Marcello; try it on. I’m sure the fit is perfect: I had to keep asking to see different ones in the rehab, and I’d almost given up when they found this one.’ She waved it again, smiling at Vio encouragingly.
The young man sat up straighter and slid his legs to the side of the bed. Gingerly, he lowered one foot to the floor, then the other until finally, hands braced on the bed behind him, he stood upright.
‘Turn around and put out your right arm.’ Vio obeyed, and she slipped the vest over it. Lured by the momentum of getting dressed, he turned slightly and slipped his other arm into the vest, then turned back to show her the result. Seeing this, Brunetti found himself thinking of a similar scene, the arming of Achilles with a ‘breastplate brighter than the flame of fire’.
The nurse stepped around Vio and checked the fit at the back. ‘As I said: perfect.’ She helped Vio seal the Velcro tabs that ran up the front of the vest and could be adjusted to the body of the wearer.
She made a sudden move and pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, waving it in the air.
‘Try to take this from me,’ she said.
Brunetti winced when he saw how low she suddenly held it and what that would require Vio to do, but the young man bent obediently forward and down. As he reached out, she bent with him and lowered the handkerchief even more. Vio continued towards it and grabbed it from her hand, laughing. He held it above his head and then passed it back to her, saying, ‘It’s magic, this thing. Nothing hurts.’
The nurse looked at Brunetti, a man closer to her in age and experience, and said, ‘They never listen.’
Brunetti smiled at her and said, ‘Brava, Signora.’
Vio leaned back against the bed and asked the nurse, ‘Can I keep it on?’
‘Yes. Wear it to sleep in tonight and wear it to the X-rays tomorrow morning. And then wear it all day for the first few days you’re home.’
‘Does this mean I’ll be able to go home sooner?’ Vio asked.
‘Of course you’ll get home soon,’ she said, smiling.
‘Good,’ Vio said. ‘I have to get back to work.’
The nurse reached over and touched his arm, saying, ‘Don’t rush things, Marcello.’ She waited until he was back under the covers again, then said goodbye to both of them.
‘Does it hurt less?’ Brunetti asked.
Vio tilted his head to one side and gave a minimal nod: he was a real man and pain didn’t matter to real men. ‘Yes, and I’ll try to be careful,’ he said. When he saw a look of real concern on Brunetti’s face, he added, ‘It’s not bad at all. I broke my foot once, and that was bad.’
‘Yes, feet are awful,’ Brunetti answered, thinking that Vio needed a bit of sympathy. Even if it was for a previous injury, it might help. He thrust around for a topic they might have in common. ‘I guess you’re lucky to have steady work to go back to.’
Vio’s face went blank. ‘Why?’ he asked, then added, ‘I don’t understand.’
‘My friends are always telling me their kids can’t find work, no matter what they do.’
Vio’s surprise was painted on his face. ‘I didn’t know that,’ he finally said.
‘Some of them have been out of school for years and haven’t even managed to get an interview.’
‘That’s too bad,’ Vio said with real sympathy. ‘A man needs to work.’
‘I think so, too,’ Brunetti answered, happy to speak to Vio with no ulterior motive. He decided not to suggest that a woman needed work, as well, and asked, instead, ‘Your friends are luckier?’
‘There’s always work if you’re willing to take it,’ Vio began. ‘The boats need men to fix them or load them, and you see the guys delivering freight all over the city: carrying it from the boats, stacking it up outside the supermarkets. There’s lots of jobs doing restoration, but Bosnians and Albanians have taken over the heavy work. If you know someone who has a company, or maybe someone in your family does, you can still get a job, even if it’s just hauling rubble to the boats or bringing the cement to the construction site.’ Vio rested his head against his pillow and closed his eyes. ‘And places like Ratti, and Caputo, they always need men to deliver the stoves and washing machines and connect them.’ He shifted in the bed and looked as though he were going to name more jobs available to young men not locked in chains by their university degrees and incapable of even so much as imagining that these jobs existed. But before he could continue, his eyes closed and his breath began its even, long rasp as he sank into sleep.
Brunetti watched Vio, thinking how much he looked like a large boy, face washed smooth by sleep and the relative absence of pain. Brunetti felt a sudden chill rise up from his past and remind him that, without the secure widow’s pension his mother had begun to receive when he was still a teenager, he would surely have thought himself lucky to find one of those jobs or to be recommended for one by some old friend of his father. Just last week, he’d read that Veritas had advertised three jobs as garbage men and had received almost two thousand applications, most of them from university graduates.
The country of Dante, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Galileo and Columbus, and two thousand men competed for jobs as garbage men. ‘O tempora, o mores,’ he whispered under his breath and left the room silently.
Outside the hospital, Brunetti called Vianello to see what his friends on the Giudecca might have said about Pietro Borgato. As it turned out, not much. From what Vianello had managed to discover without giving any sign he was trying to learn anything, Borgato was considered a hard man and an equally hard worker. His ex-wife, who was from a small town in Campania, still lived there with one of their two daughters. The other lived with her husband in Venice. His nephew worked for him, but there was general agreement that Marcello would not take over the business, for no better reason than that his uncle judged him incapable of running it. No one Vianello had spoken to dissented
from this judgement. There was a general belief that Marcello was a good boy, alas, in a world where good boys were not suited to running a business like his uncle’s, or like his uncle ran his business. When it was clear that this was all Vianello had to report, Brunetti thanked him and ended the call.
The officer at the reception window of the Questura saluted when he saw Brunetti but left his hand in the air, extended to stop him. ‘There’s someone waiting to talk to you, Commissario. He’s Venetian, so I told him to wait over there.’ He pointed to the other side of the large entrance hall.
Brunetti turned in time to see Filiberto Duso getting to his feet from one of the four chairs that stood in front of a faded photo of a previous Questore no one in the Questura had ever bothered to look at carefully.
The young man took a few steps towards Brunetti, stopped, then moved towards him again.
‘Ah, Signor Duso,’ Brunetti said. ‘Is there some way I can help you?’ He continued towards Duso with an extended hand.
Duso gave a weak smile, let go of Brunetti’s hand, cleared his throat a few times, and finally said, ‘I’d like to speak to you, Commissario.’ He looked at Brunetti, then around the room, and said, ‘I have to.’
‘Of course. What about?’
‘Marcello,’ he said, speaking in a hoarse voice, almost as if the name frightened him.
Responding to the urgent tone, Brunetti said, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘He’s afraid someone’s going to hurt him.’
17
Brunetti put his hand on the young man’s arm and left it there. Duso stood immobile, frightened at the sound of what he had just said.
‘Come back here with me,’ Brunetti told him, walking towards the guard. The man saw them coming and, responding to a gesture from Brunetti, unlocked the door to the small office next to his, where the translators listened to and transcribed the recordings of the interrogations where they had assisted the police in questioning suspects who did not speak Italian. As he had hoped, the room was empty. Table, four chairs, a locked cabinet with the tape recorders, and rows of files containing the transcripts.
Brunetti pulled out a chair for Duso and waited until he sat, head bowed, then moved around the table to sit opposite him. The young man had not shaved that morning and looked as though he had slept badly. Long experience had taught Brunetti to wait out the time that would ensue before the other person found the energy or courage to speak. He sat, folded his hands on the table in front of him, and looked down at them, not ignoring Duso but certainly not paying him over-much attention.
Footsteps passed beyond the door. The larger door to the riva, and to freedom, opened with a double squeak and closed with three. Brunetti, hearing it only a few times, realized that the sound would drive him mad if he sat near it all day. He looked at his wedding ring, twirled it around once or twice with his thumb. What pleasure it gave him to touch it, as though it were some sort of cult object, invested with magic powers, always near at hand, like a friendly spirit.
‘I went to see him yesterday,’ Duso said with no introductory noises or hesitation.
Brunetti nodded but made no mention of having been to the hospital himself that morning.
‘He looked awful and couldn’t stop moving around,’ Duso said. ‘He shifted from side to side, like he was trying to make the pain go away.’
Again Brunetti nodded.
‘I asked him if I could call a nurse or help him get up. I even asked if he needed to go to the bathroom,’ Duso said in a small voice, as though he were confessing some breach of the rules concerning intimacy between male friends.
‘He said no, that he was all right, but then he said he was frightened and didn’t know what to do.’
After some time had passed, Brunetti asked, ‘Did he say what he was frightened of?’
‘No, not at first. He changed the subject and asked me what I was doing, but it was obvious he wasn’t interested, not really.’ Duso threw his hands in the air, then clasped them together and allowed them to drop on his lap.
‘We’ve been best friends since we were kids,’ he said in a pleading voice, as though he wanted Brunetti to judge that Vio thus had the obligation to confide in his friend.
‘What did you do?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I stood up and said I’d leave unless he told me what was wrong, and he said I was free to go, but that wasn’t how friends were supposed to behave.’
Brunetti was struck by how young Duso sounded as he spoke, arguing about who was a best friend, then offended that his best friend was not playing by the rules.
Brunetti nodded. Time passed, but no matter how long Duso stared at his hands, they did not speak, nor did he. Finally Brunetti asked, ‘What happened?’
‘I went back and sat down again and just waited for him to talk.’ He looked up at Brunetti then, who smiled his approval.
‘Did he finally tell you?’
Duso nodded, but then changed the motion and shook his head. ‘I thought he did, but now I don’t know.’
Brunetti sat and waited.
Both men examined their hands, Brunetti’s fingers now intermeshed, Duso kneading the knuckles of one hand with the fingers of the other. The door to the riva opened and closed: once, twice.
‘He said that he was in trouble, bad trouble, and he didn’t know what to do.’ Before Brunetti could ask, Duso said, ‘No, not because of the accident – well, sort of, but not really. I told you the truth about that. So did Marcello. I rang what I thought was the alarm button, and I thought they’d be there in a minute, so we got away as fast as we could. Marcello was terrified they’d call the police: if they stopped us, they’d find out whose boat it was.’
‘If it’s not the accident, what is it he’s afraid of?’ Brunetti insisted.
Duso pressed his hands so hard that Brunetti could hear the joints cracking. He looked at Brunetti, then looked away. ‘I just told you,’ Duso said shortly. ‘He’s afraid of his uncle and going back to work for him.’
‘Did his uncle find out his boat was involved in the accident?’
Duso shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. When we got back to the Giudecca that night, Marcello moored it at the dock behind the office. It’s his uncle’s oldest boat – that’s why he let Marcello use it – so there were already a lot of dents and scratches, but it’s solid. There was no way anyone could tell the dent in the prow was new,’ he said, his relief audible. As memory came back he said, ‘There wasn’t much blood, really. I worked fast.’ He paused, remembering.
‘That’s when Marcello began to feel the pain.’ Duso grew thoughtful and added, ‘I think we were both so frightened we didn’t notice much until then, when it looked like it was all over, and we were safe.’ Perhaps it was that last word that stopped him short: for a long time Duso did no more than repeat the word: ‘Safe’.
Now that Duso had begun talking, Brunetti knew it was necessary to keep him from stopping. Screwing his face up in confusion, Brunetti said, ‘Since you were both safe, why is he afraid?’
Duso threw his hands up in the air. ‘I don’t know. Marcello loves his uncle because he took him in when his father died. Pietro has only the two daughters,’ Duso said and closed his eyes. ‘Maybe Marcello is some sort of substitute for the son he didn’t have. I don’t know.’
But still his nephew was not to be his heir, Brunetti thought. Of course, that didn’t mean he loved Marcello any less, only that he had weighed his nephew in the balance and found him wanting.
Duso shook his head wildly. ‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t know. All Marcello said was that his uncle had found out that we’d been questioned at the Questura.’ Bracing his elbows on the table, Duso put his face in his hands and shook his head.
‘Did he see his uncle?’
‘No. His cousin who lives here came to visit him in the hospital, and she said her father wa
s angry with Marcello because he’d talked to the police, really angry. Her father’s worried it could get him into trouble.’
‘Who?’ Brunetti asked, ‘Marcello or his uncle?’
Duso at first seemed confused by the question, but closed his eyes as if listening again to what his friend had told him. ‘His uncle,’ he said, surprised to hear himself say it.
A long pause radiated from that and lasted until Brunetti asked, ‘Do you know the uncle?’
Duso’s manner changed. He pushed his chair back from the table, as though wanting to establish a greater distance between Brunetti and himself. His face moved, but he said nothing. Brunetti thought he was trying to find the right way to answer the question.
Finally Duso said, ‘I met him once.’
‘When?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Ten years ago.’
‘And not since then?’
‘No.’
‘If I might speak as a father,’ Brunetti said with an easy smile, ‘that sounds very strange.’
Duso’s voice was nervous as he asked, ‘Why?’
‘Because my son has a lot of friends. I don’t know all of them, but I know his closest friend very well: he’s even come on vacation with us a few times.’
Duso stared across at Brunetti, as though assembling a new way of examining human relationships. ‘How long have they been friends?’
‘Since they began school. They sat in the same row then, and they still sit near one another at university,’ Brunetti said, as if ignorant of any other way for best friends to sit during the same class.
Duso looked down at his hands again, then pushed his chair even farther back to allow him to look at his shoes. Head still bowed, he asked, in a very low voice, ‘They’re only friends?’
Pieces of the puzzle slipped into place in Brunetti’s mind and he said, ‘They’re both heterosexual, if that’s what you mean.’ Then, after a pause, Brunetti added, ‘Not that I see it would make any difference.’