by Donna Leon
After a long time, Moro said, voice tired, "And I'd like to trust you,
Commissario. But I do not and will not." He saw Brunetti preparing to
object and quickly went on, "It's not because you don't seem like a
perfectly honest man but because I have learned to trust no one."
Brunetti tried to speak again, and this time Moro held up a hand to
stop him.
"Further, you represent a state I perceive as both criminal and
negligent, and that is enough to exclude you, absolutely, from my
trust."
The words, at first, offended Brunetti and roused in him a desire to
defend himself and his honour, but in the stillness that fell after
Moro stopped talking, he realized that the doctor's words had nothing
at all to do with him personally: Moro saw him as contaminated simply
because he worked for the state. Brunetti realized he had too much
sympathy for that position to attempt to argue against it.
Brunetti got to his feet, but he did so tiredly, with none of the faked
energy he had devoted to the same gesture when talking to Patta. "If
you decide you can talk to me, Dottore, please call me."
"Of course," the doctor said with the pretence of politeness. Moro
pushed himself from his own chair, led Brunetti to the door, and let
him out of the apartment.
Outside, he reached for his telefonino, only to realize he'd left it in
the office or at home in another jacket. He resisted the siren song
whispering to him that it was futile to call Signora Moro this late in
the afternoon, that she wouldn't talk to him. He resisted it, at any
rate, long enough to make two unsuccessful attempts to call her from
public phones. The first, one of the new, aerodynamic silver phones
that had replaced the reliable ugly oranges ones, refused to accept his
plastic phone card, and the second rejected his attempts with a
repeated mechanical bleat in place of a dialling tone. He yanked the
card from the phone, slipped it back in his wallet and, feeling
justified that he had at least made the effort, decided to go back to
the Questura for what little remained of the working day.
As he stood in the gondola traghetto that ran between the Salute and
San Marco, his Venetian knees adjusted automatically to the thrust and
counter-thrust between the strokes of the gondolieri's oars and the
waves of the incoming tide. He looked ahead as they made their slow
passage across
the Canal Grande, struck by just how jaded a person could become: ahead
of him lay Palaz/o Ducale, and behind it popped up the gleaming domes
of the Basilica di San Marco: Brunetti stared as though they were
nothing more than the painted backdrop in a dull, provincial production
of Otello. How had he got to the point where he could look on such
beauty and not be shaken? Accompanied by the dull squeal of the oars,
he followed this train of thought and asked himself how, equally, he
could sit across from Paola at a meal and not want to run his hands
across her breasts or how he could see his children sitting side by
side on the sofa, doing something stupid like watching television, and
not feel his bowels churn with terror at the many dangers that would
beset their lives.
The gondola glided in to the landing, and he stepped up on to the dock,
telling himself to leave his stupid preoccupations in the boat. Long
experience had taught him that his sense of wonder was still intact and
would return, bringing back with it an almost painful awareness of the
beauty that surrounded him at every turn.
A beautiful woman of his acquaintance had, years ago, attempted to
convince him that her beauty was in some ways a curse because it was
all that anyone cared about, to the almost total exclusion of any other
quality she might possess. At the time, he had dismissed it as an
attempt to win compliments, which he was more than willing to give, but
now perhaps he understood what she meant, at least in relation to the
city. No one really cared what happened to her how else explain her
successive recent governments? just so long as they could profit from
and be seen in the reflection of her beauty, at least for as long as
that beauty lasted.
At the Questura, he went up to Signorina Elettra's office, where he
found her reading that day's Gazzettino. She smiled at his arrival and
pointed at the lead story. The Americans' Appointed President seems to
want to eliminate all
restrictions on the burning of carbon-based fuels she said, then read
him the headline: "a slap in the face for the
FCOf OOTSTS"."
"Sounds like something he'd do Brunetti said, not interested in
continuing the discussion and wondering if Signorina Elettra had been
converted to Vianello's passionate ecological views.
She looked up at him, then back to the paper. "And this: "venice
condemned"."
"What?" Brunetti demanded, taken aback by headline and with no idea of
what it referred to.
"Well, if the temperature rises, then the ice-caps will melt, and then
the seas will rise, and there goes Venice." She sounded remarkably
calm about it.
"And Bangladesh, as well, one might observe Brunetti added.
"Of course. I wonder if the Appointed President has considered the
consequences."
"I don't think that's in his powers, considering consequences Brunetti
observed. It was his custom to avoid political discussions with the
people with whom he worked; he was uncertain whether foreign politics
were included under that ban.
"Probably not. Besides, all the refugees will end up here, not
there."
"What refugees?" Brunetti asked, not clear where the conversation was
going.
"From Bangladesh. If the country is flooded and finds itself
permanently under water, the people certainly aren't going to remain
there and agree to drown so that they don't inconvenience anyone.
They'll have to migrate somewhere, and as there's little chance they'll
be allowed to go east, they'll end up here."
"Isn't your geography a bit imaginative here, Signorina?"
"I don't mean they, the Bangladeshis, will come here, but
the people they displace will move west, and the ones they displace
will end up here, or the ones That they in then turn displace will."
She looked up, confused at his slowness in understanding. "You've read
history, haven't you, sir?" At his nod, she concluded, Then you know
that this is what happens."
"Perhaps," Brunetti said, his scepticism audible.
"We'll see," she said mildly and folded the paper closed. "What can I
do for you, sir?"
"I spoke to the Vice-Questore this morning, and he seemed reluctant to
put his entire faith in Lieutenant Scarpa's opinion that the Moro boy
killed himself."
"Is he afraid of a Moro Report on the police?" she asked, grasping at
once what Patta himself probably refused to admit.
"More than likely. At any rate, he wants us to exclude all other
possibilities before he closes the case."
There's only one other pos
sibility, isn't there?"
"Yes."
"What do you think?" She shoved the paper aside on her desk and leaned
slightly forward, her body giving evidence of the curiosity she managed
to keep out of her voice.
"I can't believe he committed suicide."
She agreed. "It doesn't make sense that a boy that young would leave
his family behind."
"Kids don't always have their parents' feelings in mind when they
decide to do something," Brunetti temporized, unsure why he did so;
perhaps to muster the arguments he knew would be presented against his
own opinion.
"I know that. But there's the little sister," she said. "You'd think
he'd give her some thought. But maybe you're right."
"How old is she?" Brunetti asked, intrigued by this mystery child in
whom both parents had displayed so little interest.
There was something about her in one of the articles about
the family, or perhaps someone I know said something about her,
Sigiiorma Eiettra answered, Everyone s talking about them now." She
closed her eyes, trying to remember. She tilted her head to one side,
and he imagined her scrolling through the banks of information in her
mind. Finally she said, "It must be something I read because I don't
have any emotional memory of having heard it, and I'd have that if
someone had told me about her."
"Have you saved everything?"
"Yes, all of the newspaper clippings and the articles from the
magazines are in the file, the same one that has the articles about
Dottor Moro's report." Before he could ask to see it, she said, "No,
I'll look through them. I might remember the article when I see it or
start reading it." She glanced at her watch. "Give me fifteen minutes
and I'll bring it up to you."
Thank you, Signorina," he said and went to his office to wait for her.
He called Signora Moro's number, but still there was no answer. Why
had she not mentioned the daughter, and why, in both houses, had there
been no sign of the child? He started to make a list of the things he
wanted Signorina Elettra to check and was still adding to it when she
came into the office, the file in her hand. "Here it is, sir," she
said as she came in. "Valentina. She's nine."
"Does it say which parent she lives with?"
"No, nothing at all," she said. "She was mentioned in an article about
Moro, six years ago. It said he had one son, Ernesto, twelve, and the
daughter, Valentina, three. And the article in La Nuova mentions
her."
"I didn't see any sign of her when I spoke to the parents."
"Did you say anything?"
"About the girl?"
"No, I don't mean that, sir. Did you say anything that might have
given her mother the opportunity to mention her?"
Brunetti tried to recall his conversation with Signora Moro. "No,
nothing that I can remember."
"Then it's possible she wouldn't have mentioned her, isn't it?"
For almost two decades, Brunetti had shared his home with one, then
both, of his children, and he could not recall a single instant when
physical proof of their existence had been absent from their home:
toys, clothing, shoes, scarves, books, papers, Discmen lay spread about
widely and chaotically. Words, pleas, threats proved equally futile in
the no-doubt biological need of the young of the human species to
litter their nest. A man of meaner spirit might have considered this
an infestation: Brunetti thought of it as one of nature's ways to
prepare a parent's patience for the future, when the mess would become
emotional and moral, not merely physical.
"But I would have seen some sign of her, I think," he insisted.
"Maybe they've sent her to stay with relatives," Signorina Elettra
suggested.
"Yes, perhaps," Brunetti agreed, though he wasn't convinced. No matter
how often his kids had gone to stay with their grandparents or other
relatives, signs of their recent habitation had always lingered behind
them. Suddenly he had a vision of what it must have been for the Moros
to attempt to remove evidence of Ernesto's presence from their homes,
and he thought of the danger that would remain behind: a single, lonely
sock found at the back of a closet could break a mother's heart anew; a
Spice Girls disc carelessly shoved into the plastic case meant to hold
Vivaldi's flute sonatas could shatter any calm. Months, perhaps years,
would pass before the house would stop being a minefield, every cabinet
or drawer to be opened with silent dread.
His reverie was interrupted by Signorina Elettra, who leaned forward to
place the file on his desk.
"Thank you," he said. "I have a number of things I'd like you to try
to check for me." He slid the paper towards her, listing them as he
did so.
*34
"Find out, if you can, where the girl goes to school. If she's living
here or lived here with either of them, then she's got to be enrolled
in one of the schools. There are the grandparents: see if you can
locate them. Moro's cousin, Luisa Moro I don't have an address for her
might know." He thought of the people in Siena and asked her to call
the police there and have them find out if the child was living with
them. She ran her finger down the list as he spoke. "And I'd like you
to do the same for his wife: friends, relatives, colleagues," he
concluded.
She looked at him and said, "You aren't going to let this go, are
you?"
He pushed himself back in his chair but didn't get to his feet. "I
don't like any of it, and I don't like anything I've heard. Nobody's
told me the truth and nobody's told me why they won't."
"What does that mean?"
Brunetti smiled and said it gently. "For the moment, all it means is
that I'd like you to get me all the information I've asked for."
"And when I do?" she asked, not for an instant doubting that she would
find it.
Then perhaps we'll start proving a negative."
"Which negative, sir."
"That Ernesto Moro didn't kill himself."
Before he left the Questura, he made one more call to Signora Moro's
number, feeling not unlike an importunate suitor growing ever more
persistent in the face of a woman's continued lack of response. He
wondered if he'd overlooked some mutual friend who might put in a good
word for him and realized how he was returning to the tactics of former
times, when his attempts to meet women had been animated by entirely
different hopes.
Just as he was approaching the underpass leading into Campo San
Bartolomeo, his mind on this unsettling parallel, he registered a
sudden darkness in front of him. He looked up, still not fully
attentive to his surroundings, and saw four San Martino cadets
wheeling, arms linked, as straight across as if on parade, into the
calk from the campo. The long dark capes of their winter uniforms
swirled out on either flank and effectively filled the entire width of
the calle. Two women, one old and one young, instinctively backed up
against the plate glass windows of t
he bank, and a pair of
map-embracing tourists did the same against the windows of the bar on
the
other side. Leaving the four shipwrecked pedestrians in their wake,
the unbroken wave of boys swept towards him.
Brunetti raised his eyes to theirs boys no older than his own son and
the glances that came back to him were as blank and pitiless as the
sun. His right foot might have faltered for an instant, but by an act
of will he shoved it forward and continued towards them, stride
unbroken, his face implacable, as though he were alone in Calle della
Bissa, the entire city his.
The boys drew closer, and he recognized the cadet to the left of centre
as the one who had tried to interrogate him at the school. The
atavistic urge of the more powerful male to assert his supremacy
shifted Brunetti's direction two compass points until he was heading
straight for the boy. He tightened his stomach muscles and stiffened
his elbows, preparing for the shock of contact, but at the instant
before impact, the boy next to the one who had become Brunetti's target
loosened his grip and moved to the right, creating a narrow space
through which Brunetti could pass. As his foot entered the space, he
saw, from the corner of his eye, the left foot of the boy he recognized
move minimally to the side, surely bent on tripping him. Carefully,
thrusting forward with his full weight behind him, he took aim at the
