by Donna Leon
"A practical juke that went wrong, one he was playing 01 that someone
was playing on him. If that was the case, then I think the people
involved would have panicked and done the first thing that they thought
of: faking a suicide." He stopped there, hoping to provide the boy
with the opportunity to agree, but Giuliano remained silent.
"Or else," Brunetti continued, 'for reasons I don't understand, he was
killed, either deliberately or, again, when something went wrong or got
out of hand. And then the same thing happened: whoever did it tried to
make it look like a suicide."
"But the newspapers say it was suicide," the aunt interrupted.
That doesn't mean anything, Zia," the boy surprised Brunetti by
saying.
Into the silence that radiated from this exchange, Brunetti said, "I'm
afraid he's right, Signora."
The boy put both hands on the surface of the bed and hung his head, as
if examining the jumble of shoes and boots that lay on the floor.
Brunetti watched his hands turn into fists then unfold themselves
again. He looked up, suddenly leaned aside, and picked up the pack of
cigarettes on the table beside him. He held it tight in his right
hand, like a talisman or the hand of a friend, but he made no move to
take a cigarette. He switched the pack to his left hand and finally
took a cigarette from it. Standing, he tossed the pack down on the bed
and came towards Brunetti, who remained motionless.
Giuliano took a disposable plastic cigarette lighter from the desk and
went to the door. Saying nothing, he left the room, closing the door
behind him.
His aunt said, "I've asked him not to smoke in the house."
"Don't you like the smell?" Brunetti asked.
She pulled a battered packet of cigarettes from the pocket of her
sweater and said, holding it up to him, "Quite the
opposite. But Giuliano's father was a heavy smoker, so my sister
associates the smell with him: we both smoke only outside the house not
to upset her."
"Will he come back?" Brunetti asked; he had made no attempt to stop
Giuliano from leaving and was fully convinced that the boy could not be
forced to reveal anything he did not want to.
There's nowhere else he can go his aunt said, though not unkindly.
They sat in silence for a while, until Brunetti asked, "Who runs this
farm?"
"I do. With a man from the village."
"How many cows do you have?"
"Seventeen."
"Is that enough to make a living?" Brunetti asked, curious to learn
how the family managed to survive, though he admitted to himself he
knew so little about farming that the number of cattle could give him
no indication of wealth or the ability to produce it.
There's a trust from Giuliano's grandfather she explained.
"Is he dead?"
"No."
Then how can there be a trust?"
"He set it up when his son died. For Giuliano."
Brunetti asked, "What does it stipulate?" When she didn't answer, he
added, "If you'll permit me to ask."
"I can't stop you asking anything she said tiredly.
After some time, she apparently decided to answer the question.
"Giuliano receives a sum every four months she told him.
A certain hesitation at the end of her statement led Brunetti to ask,
"Are there any conditions?"
"So long as he is actively pursuing a career in the military, he'll
continue to receive it."
"And if he stops?"
"It does, too."
"His time at the Academy?"
That's part of the pursuing."
"And now?" he asked, waving a hand to indicate the unmilitary chaos of
Giuliano's room.
She shrugged, a gesture he was beginning to associate with her, then
answered, "So long as he's still officially on leave, he's considered
..." her voice trailed off.
"Pursuing?" Brunetti ventured and was pleased by her smile.
The door opened then and Giuliano came into the room, bringing with him
the scent of cigarette smoke. He walked back to the bed, and Brunetti
noticed that his shoes left muddy tracks on the tiles of the floor. He
sat, propping his hands on either side, looked at Brunetti and said, "I
don't know what happened."
"Is that the truth or what you decided to tell me while you were
outside?" Brunetti asked mildly.
"It's the truth."
"Do you have any idea at all?" Brunetti asked. The boy gave no sign
that he had even heard the question, so Brunetti asked an even more
hypothetical question: "Or of what might have happened?"
After a long time, head still lowered and eyes still on his shoes, the
boy said, The can't go back there."
Brunetti did not for an instant doubt him: no one who heard him would.
But he was curious about the boy's reasons. "Why?"
"I can't be a soldier."
Why is that, Giuliano?" he asked.
"It's not in me. It just isn't. It all seems so stupid: the orders
and the standing in line and everyone doing the same thing at the same
time. It's stupid."
Brunetti glanced at the boy's aunt, but she sat motionless,
staring at her nephew, ignoring Brunetti. When the boy spoke again,
Brunetti turned his attention back to him. "I didn't want to do it,
but my grandfather said it's what my father would have wanted me to
do." He glanced up at Brunetti, who met his eyes but remained
silent.
That's not true, Giuliano/ his aunt interrupted. "He always hated the
military."
Then why did he join?" Giuliano snapped back, making no attempt to
disguise his anger.
After a long time, as if she'd considered the effect her words were
bound to have, she answered, "For the same reason you did: to make your
grandfather happy."
"He's never happy," Giuliano muttered.
A silence fell on them. Brunetti turned and looked out the window, but
all he saw was the long expanse of muddy fields and, here and there, a
tree trunk.
It was the woman who finally broke the silence. "Your father always
wanted to be an architect, at least that's what your mother told me.
But his father, your grandfather, insisted that he become a soldier."
"Just like all the other Ruffos," Giuliano spat out with undisguised
contempt.
"Yes/ she agreed. "I think that was part of the cause of his
unhappiness."
"He killed himself, didn't he?" Giuliano startled both of the adults
by asking.
Brunetti turned his gaze back to the woman. She looked at him, then at
her nephew, and finally said, "Yes."
"And before, he tried to kill Mamma?"
She nodded.
"Why didn't you ever tell me?" the boy asked, his voice tight and
close to tears.
Tears appeared in her eyes too and began to spill down her face. She
drew her mouth tight, incapable of speech, and shook her head. Finally
she held up her right hand, her palm
facing her nephew, as if asking him to be patient long enough for words
Lo come back lo her. More lime passed and then she said, "I was
afraid."
"Of what?" the boy demanded.
To hurt you she said.
"And a lie wouldn't?" he asked, but in confusion, without anger.
She turned her palm upwards, splaying open her fingers, in a gesture
that spoke of uncertainty and, in a strange way, of hope.
"What happened?" Giuliano asked. When she didn't answer, he added,
"Please tell me, Zia."
Brunetti watched her struggle towards speech. Finally she said, "He
was jealous of your mother and accused her of having an affair." As
the boy showed no curiosity about this, she went on. "He shot her and
then himself."
"Is that why Mamma is the way she is?"
She nodded.
"Why didn't you tell me? I always thought it was a disease you were
afraid to tell me about." He stopped and then, as if carried forward
on the current of his own confessions, added, "That it was something in
the family. And it would happen to me, too."
This broke her, and she started to cry openly, silently, save for an
occasional deep intake of breath.
Brunetti turned his attention to the boy and asked, "Will you tell me
what you think happened, Giuliano?"
The boy looked at Brunetti, at the weeping woman, and then back at
Brunetti. The think they killed him," he finally said.
"Who?"
The others."
"Why?" Brunetti asked, leaving for later the question of who 'they'
were.
"Because of his father and because he tried to help me."
"What did they say about his father?" Brunetti asked.
Thai he was a traitor."
"A traitor to what?"
"La Patria," the boy answered, and never had Brunetti heard the words
spoken with such contempt.
"Because of his report?"
The boy shook his head. "I don't know. They never said. They just
kept telling him his father was a traitor."
When it seemed that Giuliano had reached a halting place, Brunetti
prodded him by asking, "How did he try to help you?"
"One of them started talking about my father. He said he knew what had
happened and that my mother was a whore. That there wasn't any
accident, and that she'd gone crazy when my father killed himself
because it was her fault that he did."
"And what did Moro do?"
"He hit him, the one who said this, Paolo Filippi. He knocked him down
and broke one of his teeth."
Brunetti waited, not wanting to press him, afraid that it would break
the thread of the boy's revelations.
Giuliano went on. "That stopped it for a while, but then Filippi began
to threaten Ernesto, and then a bunch of his friends did, too."
Branetti's.attention was riveted by the name Filippi, the third-year
student whose father supplied material to the military.
"What happened?"
The don't know. I didn't hear anything that night, the night he died.
But the next day they all seemed strange worried and happy at the same
time, like kids who have a secret or a secret club."
"Did you say anything? Ask anyone?"
"No."
"Why?"
Giuliano looked straight at Brunetti as he said, "I was
afraid', and Brunetti was struck by how much courage it took for him to
say that.
"And since then?"
Giuliano shook his head again. "I don't know. I stopped going to
classes and stayed in my room most of the time. The only people I
talked to were you and then that policeman who came to the bar, the
nice one."
"What made you leave?"
"One of them, not Filippi, but one of the others, saw me talking to the
policeman, and he remembered him from when he was asking questions at
the Academy, and then Filippi told me if I talked to the police I
better watch out..." His voice trailed off, leaving the sentence
unfinished. He took a deep breath and added, "He said I should be
careful and that talking to the police could drive a person to suicide,
and then he laughed." He waited to see what effect this would have on
Brunetti, and then said, "So I left. I just walked out and came
home."
"And you're not going back his aunt startled them both by interrupting.
She got to her feet, took two steps towards her nephew, and stopped.
Looking across at Brunetti, she said, "No more. Please, no more of
this."
"All right," Brunetti agreed, standing. For a moment, he debated
whether to tell the boy he would have to make a formal statement, but
this was not the time to try to force anything from him, especially not
with his aunt present. In future, they could deny that this
conversation had taken place or they could admit it. Which they chose
to do was irrelevant to Brunetti: what interested him was the
information he had obtained.
As they made their way back to the front hall, he heard the deep,
comforting bass of Vianello's voice, interspersed with a light female
warbling. When Brunetti and the others entered the room, Giuliano's
mother turned to greet them, her face aglow with joy. Vianello stood
in the middle of the room, a
wicker basket full of brown eggs dangling from his right hand.
Giuliano's mother pointed to Vianello and said, "Friend
On the way back to Venice, Brunetti explained that, although they now
had enough to warrant calling the Filippi boy in for questioning, he
would prefer them to dedicate their energies to seeing what they could
find out about his father.
Vianello surprised him by suggesting he take a few hours the next day
to have a look on the Internet to see what he could discover. Brunetti
forbore from comment on his phrase, 'have a look', which sounded to him
like vintage Signorina Elettra, when he considered the relief that
would come to him if someone other than Signorina Elettra, someone to
whom he was less beholden by the heavy demands of past favours, were to
be the one to discover sensitive information.
"How will you do it?" he asked Vianello.
Keeping his eyes on the traffic that filled the roads leading towards
Venice, Vianello said, The same way Signorina Elettra does: see what I
can find and then see what my friends can find."
"Are they the same friends as hers?" Brunetti asked.
At this question, Vianello took his eyes from the road and permitted
himself a quick glance in Brunetti's direction. "I suppose."
Then perhaps it would be faster to ask Signorina Elettra/ a defeated
Brunetti suggested.
He did so the following morning, stepping into her office and asking
her if her military friend was back from Livorno and, if so, whether he
would allow her to have a look at their files. As if she had known
upon rising that the day would cause her to engage the military,
Signorina Elettra wore a dark blue sweater with small buttoned tabs on
the shoulders not unlike epaulettes.
"You wouldn't.happen to be wearing a sword, would you?" Brunetti
asked.
"No, sir she answered, "I find it very inconvenient for daytime wear."
Smiling, she pressed a swift series of keys on her computer, paused a
moment, then said, "He'll start wor
king on it now."
Brunetti went back to his office.
He read two newspapers, calling it work, while he waited for her, then
made a few phone calls, not attempting to justify them as anything
other than maintaining good relations with people who might some day be
asked to provide him with information.
When there had been no sign of Signorina Elettra before lunchtime, he
left the Questura without calling her, though he did call Paola to say
he would not be home for lunch. He went to da Remigio and ate insalata
di mare and coda di rospo in tomato sauce, telling himself that,
because he drank only a quartino of their house white wine and limited
himself to a single grappa, it was a light meal and would entitle him
to have something more substantial that evening.
He looked into Signorina Elettra's office on his way up to his own, but
she was gone. His heart dropped, for he feared that she had left for
