by Donna Leon
boy's ankle and felt a satisfying jolt as the toe of his shoe found its
target, glanced off, and came down on the pavement. Not pausing for an
instant, Brunetti strode on and out into the campo, cut left, and
started for the bridge.
Because Raffi as well as Chiara was at dinner, and because he thought
it unseemly to manifest pride in such mean spirited behaviour in their
presence, he said nothing about his meeting with the cadets and
contented himself with the meal. Paola had brought home ravioli di
zucca and had prepared them with salvia leaves quickly sauteed in
butter, then smothered them with Parmigiano. After that, she had
switched to fennel, serving it interspersed with pan-fried veal
pieces that had spent the previous night in the refrigerator,
marinating in a paste of rosemary, garlic, fennel seed and minced
pancetta.
As he ate, delighted by the mingled tastes and the pleasant sharpness
of his third glass of Sangiovese, he remembered his earlier uneasiness
about the safety of his children, and the thought made him feel
foolish. He could not, however, dismiss it or allow himself to scoff
at the desire that nothing would ever invade their peace. He never
knew if his perpetual readiness for things to change for the worse was
the result of his native pessimism or of the experiences his profession
had exposed him to. In either case, his vision of happiness had always
to pass through a filter of uneasiness.
"Why don't we ever have beef any more?" Raffi asked.
Paola, peeling a pear, said, "Because Gianni can't find a farmer he
trusts
"Trusts to do what?" Chiara asked between grapes.
To have animals he's sure are healthy, I suppose," Paola answered.
"I don't like eating it any more, anyway," Chiara said.
"Why not? Because it'll make you crazy?" her brother asked, then
amended it to "Crazier?"
"I think we've had more than enough mad cow jokes at this table," Paola
said with an unusual lack of patience.
"No, not because of that," Chiara said.
Then why?" Brunetti asked.
"Oh, just because Chiara answered evasively.
"Because of what?" her brother asked.
"Because we don't need to eat them
That never bothered you before," Raffi countered.
"I know it never bothered me before. Lots of things didn't. But now
they do She turned to him and delivered what she clearly thought would
be a death blow. "It's called growing up, in case you've never heard
of it
Raffi snorted, driving her to new defences.
"We don't need to eat them just because we can. Besides, it's
ecologically wasteful she insisted, like someone repeating a lesson,
which Brunetti thought was most likely the case.
"What would you eat instead?" Raffi asked, 'zucchini?" He turned to
his mother and asked, "Are we allowed to make mad zucchini jokes?"
Paola, displaying the Olympian disregard for the feelings of her
children which Brunetti so admired, said only, Till take that as an
offer to do the dishes, Raffi, shall I?"
Raffi groaned, but he did not protest. A Brunetti less familiar with
the cunning of the young would have seen this as a sign that his son
was willing to assume some responsibility for the care of their home,
perhaps as evidence of burgeoning maturity. The real Brunetti,
however, a man hardened by decades of exposure to the furtiveness of
criminals, could see it for what it was: cold-blooded bargaining in
which immediate acquiescence was traded for some future reward.
As Raffi reached across the table to pick up his mother's plate, Paola
smiled upon him with favour and, displaying a familiarity with slyness
equal to that of her husband, got to her feet, saying, Thank you so
much, dear, for offering, and no, you cannot take scuba lessons."
Brunetti watched her leave the room, then turned to watch his son's
face. Raffi's surprise was patent, and when he saw that his father was
looking at him, he removed that expression but had the grace to smile.
"How does she do that?" Raffi asked. "All the time."
Brunetti was about to offer some bromide about its being one of the
powers of mothers to be able to read the minds of their children, when
Chiara, who had been busy finishing the fruit on the platter, looked up
at them and said, "It's because she reads Henry James."
In her study, Brunetti told Paola about his run-in with the cadets,
deciding not to mention the rush of animal triumph he had felt when his
foot made contact with the boy's ankle.
"It's a good thing it happened here she said when he finished, then
added, 'in Italy."
"Why? What do you mean?"
"There are a lot of places where something like that could get you
killed."
"Name two he said, offended that she could so cavalierly dismiss what
he saw as evidence of his bravery.
"Sierra Leone and the United States, to begin with she said. "But that
doesn't mean I'm not happy you did it."
Brunetti said nothing for a long time, then asked, "Does it show, how
much I dislike them?"
Them who?"
"Boys like that, with their wealthy, well-connected families and their
sense of command."
"Families like mine, you mean?" In their early years together, before
Brunetti came to realize that the shocking brutality of Paola's honesty
was often entirely unaggressive, he would have been astonished by her
question. Now all he did was answer it. "Yes."
She laced her fingers together and propped her chin on her knuckles. "I
think only someone who knows you very well would see it. Or someone
who pays close attention to what you say."
"Like you?" he asked, smiling.
"Yes."
"Why do you think it is, that they get to me so easily?"
She considered this; it was not that she had not thought about it
before, but he had never asked the question so directly. "I think part
of it is your sense of justice."
"Not jealousy?" he asked, trying to make sure she would be
complimentary.
"No, at least not jealousy in any simple sense." He leaned back on the
sofa and latched his fingers behind his head. He shifted around,
seeking a comfortable position, and when she saw that he'd found it,
she went on. "I think part of it comes from your resentment not that
some people have more than others, but that they don't realize or don't
want to admit that their money doesn't make them superior or give them
the right to anything they choose to do." When he didn't query this
she continued: "And from their refusal to consider the possibility that
their greater fortune is not anything they've earned or merited." She
smiled at him, then said, "At least I think that's why you dislike them
as much as you do."
"And you?" he asked. "Do you dislike them?" With a ringing laugh,
she said, There are too many of them in my family to allow me to." He
laughed along with her, and she added, "I did, when I was young and
more idealistic than I am now. But then I realized they weren't going
to change, a
nd I had come by then to love some of them so much and I
knew nothing was ever going to change that, so I saw that I had no
choice but to accept them as they are." "Love before truth?" he
asked, striving for irony. "Love before everything, I'm afraid, Guido
she said in deadly earnest.
As he walked to the Questura the next morning, it occurred to Brunetti
that he had been overlooking at least one anomaly in all of this: why
had the boy been boarding at the school? So caught up had he been in
the order and rules of life at the Academy that, as he searched
Ernesto's room, the obvious question had not arisen: in a culture that
encouraged young people to live at home until their marriage, why was
this young man living away from home, when both parents lived in the
city?
At the Questura, he almost bumped into Signorina Elettra
emerging from the front door. "Are you going somewhere?" he asked.
She glanced at her watch. "Do you need something, sir?" she asked,
not really an answer, though he didn't notice.
"Yes, I'd like you to make a phone call for me."
She stepped back inside the door and asked, To whom?"
The San Martino Academy."
With no attempt to disguise the curiosity in her voice, she asked, "And
what would you like me to tell them?" She started to walk back towards
the stairs that led to her office.
"I want to know if it's obligatory for the boys to sleep in the
dormitory or if they're allowed to spend the night at home if their
parents live in the city. I'd like to get an idea of just how
inflexible the rules are there. Perhaps you could say you're a parent
and want to know something about the Academy. You can say your son is
just finishing school and has always wanted to be a soldier, and as
you're Venetian, you'd like him to have the opportunity to attend the
San Martino because of its high reputation."
"And is my voice to be filled with pride and patriotism as I ask these
questions?"
"Choking with them he said.
She could not have done it better. Though Signorina Elettra spoke an
Italian as elegant and pure as any he had heard, as well as a very
old-fashioned Venetian dialect, she managed to mingle the two perfectly
on the phone and succeeded in sounding exactly like what she said she
was: the Venetian wife of a Roman banker who had just been sent north
to head the Venice branch of a bank she carelessly avoided naming.
After making the secretary at the Academy wait while she found a pen
and pencil and then apologizing for not having them next to the phone
the way her husband insisted she do, Signorina Elettra asked for
particulars of the date of the beginning of the next school term, their
policy on late admission, and where to have letters of recommendation
and
academic records sent. When the school secretary offered to provide
details about school fees and the cost of uniforms, the banker's wife
dismissed the very idea, insisting that their accountant dealt with
things like that.
Listening to the conversation on the speaker phone, Brunetti was amazed
at the way Signorina Elettra threw herself into the role, could all but
see her returning home that evening after a hard day's shopping to
check if the cook had found real basilica genovese for the pesto. Just
as the secretary said she hoped that young Filiberto and his parents
would find the school satisfactory, Signorina Elettra gasped, "Ah, yes,
one last question. It will be all right if he sleeps at home at night,
won't it?"
"I beg your pardon, Signora/ the secretary said. The boys are expected
to live here at the school. It's included in the fees. Where else
would your son live?"
"Here with us in the palazzo, of course. You can't expect him to live
with those other boys, can you? He's only sixteen." Had the secretary
asked her to give her life-blood, the banker's wife could have sounded
no less horrified. "Of course we'll pay the full fees, but it's
unthinkable that a child that young should be taken from his mother."
"Ah," the secretary answered upon hearing the first part of Signorina
Elettra's last sentence, managing not to register the second, 'in a few
cases, with the approval of the Comandante some exceptions can perhaps
be made, though the boys have to be at their first class at eight."
That's why we have the launch was Signorina Elettra's opening shot in
her last volley, which drew to a close with her promise to send the
signed papers and the necessary deposit off by the end of the week,
followed by a polite goodbye.
Brunetti found himself filled with unwonted sympathy for Vice-Questore
Patta: the man simply didn't have a chance. "Filiberto?" he asked.
"It was his father's choice Signorina Elettra replied. "And yours?
Eustasio?" "No, Eriprando."
The information that exceptions to the school rules could be made at
the discretion of the Comandante did not tell Brunetti anything he had
not already suspected: where the children of the wealthy and powerful
congregated, rules were often bent to follow the whim of their parents.
What he did not know was the extent of the Comandante's subservience.
Nor, he had to admit, did he have a clear idea of how this might be
related to Ernesto's death.
Deciding not to speculate further, Brunetti dialled Signora Moro's
phone again, and again the phone rang on unanswered. Spurred by some
impulse he registered but did not question, he decided to pass by her
apartment and see if any of her neighbours could give him an idea of
where she was.
He chose to take the vaporetto to San Marco, then cut back towards the
apartment. He rang the bell, waited, and rang again. Then he rang the
bell to the left of hers, waited, then rang the others in succession,
working his way across and down, like a climber rappelling down the
face of a cliff. The
first response came from an apartment on the first floor, the bell of
which bore the name Delia Vedova. A woman's voice answered, and when
he explained that he was from the police and needed to speak to Signora
Moro, the door clicked open. As he entered, the light in the dim hall
flashed on, and a few moments later a woman's voice called from above,
"Up here, Signore."
He ascended the steps, and noted that attached to one side of them was
a system which would allow a wheelchair to move up and down. The
explanation waited just inside the door at the top of the steps: a
young woman in a wheelchair, an enormous grey cat resting on her lap.
As he reached the landing, she smiled at him and, shifting the cat to
one side, reached up with her right hand. "Beatrice Delia Vedova/ she
said, "My pleasure to meet you."
He gave his name and rank, then she put both hands on the wheels of her
chair, whipped it around in a neat half-circle and propelled herself
back into the apartment. Brunetti followed her inside, closing the
door behind him.
She led him into a living room in the centre of which stood an
architect's
drawing board that had been lowered almost a metre to a
height that would allow her wheelchair to slip comfortably under it.
Its surface was covered with water colour sketches of bridges and
canals, painted in the Day-Glo colours tourists seemed to favour. By
contrast, the three views of the facades of churches San Zaccaria, San
Martino and San Giovanni in Bragora that hung on the rear wall all
showed a close attention to architectural detail that was absent from
the paintings on the drawing board. Their muted colours captured the
glowing warmth of stone and the play of light on the canal in front of
San Martino and on the facades of the other churches.
She spun around and saw him studying the drawings on the wall. That's
what I really do," she said. Then, with a vague swipe at the paintings
on the board, she added, "And
that's what I get paid to do." She bent down to the cat and whispered
in its ear, "We've got to keep you in Whiskas, don't we, fatty?"
The cat rose slowly from her lap and jumped, with a thump that surely
could be heard in the entrance hall below, to the floor. Tail raised,
it walked from the room. The woman smiled up at Brunetti. "I never
know if he's offended at my comments about his weight or if he just
doesn't like being made to feel responsible for those paintings." She
let this lie in the air between them, then with a smile added, "Either
position seems justified, wouldn't you say?"
