A Question of Belief

by Donna Leon

  Riverre smiled. ‘Sure thing, Commissario. Anything special you’d like?’ When Brunetti hesitated, Riverre suggested, ‘Crab? Egg salad?’

  In this heat, those were probably the two most likely to go off, but Brunetti said only, ‘No, maybe tomato and prosciutto.’

  ‘How many, sir? Four? Five?’

  Good Lord, what did Riverre think he was? ‘No, thanks, Riverre. Two ought to be enough.’ He reached into his pocket for his wallet, but the officer held up both hands, like a Christian catching sight of the devil. ‘No, sir. Don’t even think of it. You’ll insult me.’ He started towards the door, calling back over his shoulder, ‘I’ll get you some mineral water, too, sir. Got to drink a lot in this heat.’

  Brunetti called his thanks after Riverre’s retreating back, then said under his breath, in English, though he was never entirely certain of the context in which this phrase was meant to be used: ‘From the mouths of babes.’

  Someone had left the computer with its Internet connection open, so Brunetti, using four fingers, typed in ‘Oroscopo’.

  When Riverre returned more than an hour later, Brunetti was still at the computer, though it was a wiser man who sat there. One site had led to another, one reference had spurred him to think of something else, and so he had, in that brief time, taken a tour through a world of belief and faith and the sort of deception so obvious as to leave him marvelling. ‘Horoscope’ had led to ‘Prediction’, which had led to ‘Card Reader’, and that in its turn had led to ‘Psychic Consultant’, ‘Palm Reader,’ and an endless list of consultants who answered specific needs. He found, as well, a long list of interactive sites which, for a price, opened the portals to real-time contact with ‘Astral consultants’.

  Some dedicated themselves to the solving of problems of business or finance; many others to questions of love and affection; others handled difficulties at work or with colleagues; while yet others promised help in consulting departed relatives and friends. Or pets. There were those who offered astral help in losing weight, stopping smoking, or avoiding falling in love with the wrong person. Strangely enough, and though he searched, Brunetti found no one offering astral help in stopping drug addiction, though he did find one site that promised to tell parents which of their children were most at risk of drug dependence: it was all foretold in their stars.

  Brunetti’s degree was in law, and though he had never taken the state exam nor practised law, he had spent decades paying close attention to language, its use and misuse. His work had presented him with countless examples of deliberately misleading statements and contracts; thus over the years he had developed the skill to spot a lie, no matter how elaborately it was disguised and no matter how successfully the language in which it was presented removed it from all liability for false claims or promises.

  The information in these sites had been written by experts: they created hope without making any pledge that punctilious minds might view as legally binding; they fostered certainty with never a binding promise; they pledged calm and tranquillity in exchange for an act of faith.

  And payment? Crass lucre? Ask people to pay for their services? The very question was absurd. Probably insulting as well to the people who offered their services for the good of troubled mankind. What was ninety cents a minute to a person who needed help and who could find that help at the other end of a phone line? The chance to speak directly to a professional who was trained to understand the problems and suffering of a person who was fat/thin/divorced/unmarried/in love/out of love/lonely/trapped in an unhappy relationship – was that not worth ninety cents a minute? Besides, in some cases, there was the chance that your call would be among those taken live during the television show, and thus your name and problem would be known to a broader public, and that could lead only to greater sympathy and understanding for you and your suffering.

  Brunetti could but admire such ingenuity. He quickly did the maths. At ninety cents a minute, a ten-minute conversation would cost nine Euros, and an hour would cost fifty-four. Assume that there were ten people answering the calls, or twenty, or a hundred; and assume that these lines were open twenty-four hours a day. A ten-minute call? Was he mad? This was an opportunity to speak to a compassionate listener, to reveal the painful details of the injured, unappreciated self. Besides, the ads said that the people who took the calls were ‘trained professionals’. Surely they had been trained to listen, though Brunetti was of a mind that the goal of their listening might be something other than the provision of aid and assistance to the low of spirit and weak of heart. Who could resist the lure to speak of the endlessly fascinating self? Who was immune to the question asked with sympathy and expressive of the desire to know the caller more deeply?

  Brunetti had a reputation at the Questura as a skilled interrogator, for he often managed to enter into conversation with even the most hardened old lag. He kept to himself the truth that his goal was not conversation, but monologue. Sit, look interested, ask the occasional question but say as little as possible, be sympathetic to what is said and to the person saying it; and few detainees or suspects can resist the instinct to fill the silence with their own words. A few of his colleagues had the same skill, Vianello chief among them.

  The more sympathetic the interrogator seemed, the more important it became for the person being questioned to win their goodwill, and that could be achieved most easily, many suspects believed, by making the interrogator understand their motives, and that, naturally, required a good deal of explanation. During most interrogations, Brunetti’s prime interest was in discovering what the other person had done and having them admit to it, while that other person too often became fixed on earning Brunetti’s comprehension and sympathy.

  Just as the people who spoke to him seldom considered the legal consequences of their talk, those who spoke to the trained professionals in their various call centres would hardly consider the economic consequences of their own garrulity.

  ‘Here are the tramezzini, sir,’ he heard Riverre say. Brunetti turned to thank him, but before he could speak, Riverre, seeing the screen, said, ‘Oh, you use them, too, Commissario?’

  Not trusting himself to speak, Brunetti took the paper bag holding the sandwiches and two half-litre bottles of mineral water and set it beside the computer. ‘Oh, I’m not sure I use them,’ he then said casually, quite as though he did, ‘but I like to check them every so often to see if there’s anything new.’ Deciding that instant to dine in the squad room, Brunetti opened the bag and took out one of the sandwiches. Tomato and prosciutto. He peeled back the napkin wrapping it and took a bite.

  Chewing, he pointed with the tramezzini towards the screen and asked, ‘You have any favourites, Riverre?’

  Riverre removed his jacket and stepped aside to drape it over the chair at his desk, then came back to Brunetti. ‘Well, I can’t say it’s my favourite, sir, but there’s one woman – I think she’s in Torino – who talks about children and the sort of problems they can have. Or that parents can have with them.’

  ‘The way kids are today,’ Brunetti agreed soberly, ‘that’s got to be a good thing.’

  ‘That’s what I think, sir. My wife has called her a few times to ask what we should do about Gianpaolo.’

  ‘He must be twelve by now, isn’t he?’ Brunetti asked, taking a stab at the age.

  ‘Fourteen, sir. But just turned. And he’s not a little boy any more, so we can’t treat him like he is.’

  ‘Is this what she’s said, the woman from Torino?’ Brunetti asked, finishing the first tramezzino and pulling out one of the bottles of mineral water. With gas. Good. He opened it and offered it to Riverre, but the policeman shook his head. ‘No, sir. It’s what my mother says.’

  ‘And the woman in Torino? What does she say?’

  ‘She’s got a course we can take. Ten lessons that we can do, my wife and me together.’

  ‘In Torino?’ asked Brunetti, unable to hide his surprise.

  ‘Oh, no, sir,’ Riverre said wit
h a gentle laugh. ‘We’re in the modern age now, me and my wife. We’re on line, so all we have to do is sign up, and the class comes to our computer, and then we watch the lessons and take the tests. They send you everything – quizzes and tests and study aids – at your email, and you send them back, and then they send you grades and comments.’

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti said, and took a sip of water. ‘It’s ingenious, isn’t it?’

  Riverre couldn’t stop himself from smiling at Brunetti’s comment. ‘Only thing is, sir, I don’t think we can do it right now, what with the vacation to pay for: we’re going to Elba next week. Camping, but it’s still expensive, for the three of us.’

  ‘Oh,’ Brunetti said with mild interest, ‘how much does the class cost?’

  ‘Three hundred Euros,’ Riverre answered and looked at Brunetti to see how he responded to the price. When his superior raised his eyebrows by way of answer, Riverre explained, ‘That’s with the tests and all the grading, you see.’

  ‘Humm,’ Brunetti said and nodded; he reached into the bag for the other sandwich. ‘It’s not cheap, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Riverre said with a resigned shake of his head. ‘But he’s our only child, and we want the best for him. I guess that’s sort of natural, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Yes, I think it is,’ Brunetti said and took a bite. ‘He’s a good boy, isn’t he?’

  Riverre smiled, frowned in thoughtful consideration, then smiled again. ‘I think he is, sir. And he does well in school. No trouble.’

  ‘Then maybe you could wait a while on that class.’ He finished the second sandwich, regretted that he had asked Riverre to bring him only two, and drank the rest of the water.

  Looking around, Brunetti said, ‘Where does the bottle go?’

  ‘Over there by the door, sir. The blue bin.’

  Brunetti walked over to the plastic bins, put the bottle in the blue one and the paper bag and napkins in the yellow. ‘I see the hand of Signorina Elettra at work here,’ he said.

  Riverre laughed. ‘I thought she’d have to use force when she first told us about them, but we’re used to it by now.’ Then, as though revealing a truth he had been considering for some time, he said, ‘It’s really a shame she isn’t in charge here, isn’t it, sir?’

  ‘You mean the Questura?’ Brunetti asked. ‘The whole thing?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it?’

  Brunetti opened the second bottle of water and took a long drink. ‘My daughter has an Iranian classmate: sweet young girl,’ he said, confusing Riverre, who had perhaps expected a response to his question.

  ‘Whenever she wants to express happiness, the expression she uses is, “Much, much, too, very.” ’ He took another drink of water.

  ‘I’m not sure I follow you, sir,’ Riverre said, his words mirrored in his face.

  ‘It’s the only thing I can think of to say in response to the idea of Signorina Elettra taking over here: “Much, much, too, very.” ’ He twisted closed the bottle, thanked Riverre for his lunch, and went downstairs to ask Signorina Elettra to make the changes to Scarpa’s staffing plans.

  7

  For the next few days, it appeared that some cosmic governing force had heard Brunetti’s wish that a deal be made with the forces of disorder, for crime went on holiday in Venice. The Romanians who played three card monte on the bridges appeared to have gone home on vacation, or else they had moved their work site to the beaches. The number of burglaries declined. Beggars, in response to a city ordinance banning them and subjecting them to severe penalties, disappeared for at least a day or two before going back to work. Pickpockets, of course, remained at their posts: they could go on vacation only in the empty months of November and February. Though the heat often drove people to violence, that was not the case this year. Perhaps there was some point where heat and humidity made the effort to throttle or maim too exhausting to be considered.

  Whatever the cause, Brunetti was glad of the lull. He used some of his free time to consult more sites that offered spiritual or other-worldly help to those in need of it. He had read so widely in the Greek and Roman historians that he found nothing strange at all in the desire to consult the oracles or to find some way to decipher the messages of the gods. Whether it was the liver of a freshly killed chicken or the patterns made in the air by a flock of birds, the signs were there for those who could interpret them: all that was necessary was someone willing to believe the interpretation, and the deal was done. Cumae or Lourdes; Diana of Ephesus or the Virgin of Fatima: the mouth of the statue moved, and the truth came forth.

  The women of Brunetti’s family had told the rosary, and as a boy he had often returned home from school on a Friday afternoon to find them kneeling on the floor in the living room, reciting their incantations. The practice, and the faith that animated it, had seemed to him then, and still seemed to him now, two generations later, an ordinary and understandable part of human life. Thus, to transfer belief in the beneficent powers of the Madonna to belief in the power of a person to make contact with departed spirits seemed – at least to Brunetti – a very small step along the highway of faith.

  Never having dealt with a case that involved the misrepresentation of faith – if this, indeed, was what was at work in the strange behaviour of Vianello’s aunt – Brunetti was uncertain about the laws that operated. Italy was a country with a state religion; thus, the law tended to take a tolerant attitude towards the Church and the behaviour of its functionaries. Charges of usury, involvement with the Mafia, the abuse of minors, fraud, and extortion: these all managed to disappear, as if waved off by the legal equivalent of aspergillum and incense.

  These sites, however, represented the competition to the religion of the state, and so the law might well take a dimmer view of their activities. And if the promises made in the churches were just as valid as those made on the websites, where did truth lie? Brunetti’s speculations were halted by the telephone.

  Happy at the interruption, he answered with his name.

  ‘It’s me, Guido,’ Vianello said. ‘Loredano just called me. The bank director called him: he’s got my aunt there. She just withdrew three thousand Euros. He asked her to come up to his office for a moment to sign some papers.’

  ‘Who’s on patrol?’

  ‘Pucetti and a new recruit are on the way to Via Garibaldi.’

  Brunetti sent his memory down one side of Via Garibaldi, up the other. ‘Banco di Padova?’

  ‘Yes. Next to the pharmacy.’

  ‘Did he say how long he can keep her there?’

  ‘Ten minutes. He said he’ll ask how the family is doing: that ought to keep her talking for a while.’

  ‘Where are you?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘On Murano. Someone tried to grab a woman’s bag, and a mob formed and threw him in a canal. We had to come over to get him out.’

  ‘I’ll go and have a look,’ Brunetti said and replaced the phone, but not before he heard Vianello say, ‘She’s wearing a green shirt.’

  He was so preoccupied with Vianello’s call that he was not prepared for the heat that hit him as he emerged from the Questura. It flowed over him in a single wave, and for a moment Brunetti didn’t know if the attack of sodden air would permit him to breathe. He stopped, stepped back into the miserable shadow cast by the lintel of the door, and took out his sunglasses. They cut the light, but they did nothing to help against the heat. His jacket, lightweight blue cotton, clung to him like an Icelandic sweater.

  So sudden had been the assault of heat and light that it took Brunetti a moment to remember why he had come outside and then another to remember the way to Via Garibaldi.

  ‘Lunacy,’ he muttered to himself and crossed the bridge. He had no choice but to keep his eyes lowered against the glare and leave it to his feet to find the way. He wove left and right, giving no conscious thought to where he was going. His feet took him over another bridge, then to the right, and then he emerged into Via Garibald
i and wished he had not. The paving stones had had hours to bake, and the heat they sent up seemed a form of protest at their own helplessness. Caught between the unrelenting sun and the radiant heat from below, Brunetti could think of no way to protect himself. A woman brushed past him, saying ‘Con permesso’ more forcefully than she might have, but he was, after all, standing motionless on the pavement and blocking her exit from the calle. Her remark unblocked him and he stepped back into the entrance to the calle, which offered the minimal protection of shade.

  After a moment, Brunetti mustered the courage to take a step out into Via Garibaldi and the heat. The bank stood down on the right; farther along, some tables hid under the umbrellas in front of a bar. At one of them sat Pucetti and a young woman, who was laughing at something the young officer said. She had light hair, cut boyishly short, which impression was contradicted by the tight white T-shirt she wore. Both of them wore sunglasses and Pucetti a black T-shirt that was every bit as tight as the girl’s without provoking the same effect.

  Brunetti retreated into the calle, waited what he calculated to be a minute but knew must be less, and stepped forward again. Pucetti and the girl were getting to their feet. Brunetti noticed that she wore a very short skirt that showed tanned and attractive legs; both of them wore sandals. Between him and the two young police officers, an elderly woman stood in front of the bank, caught in that characteristically Venetian moment of calculating the shortest way to get somewhere. She looked up at the sky, as if she believed the exact temperature would be written there. She wore loose cotton trousers and a light green shirt with long sleeves. Her shoes were sensible brown pumps with a low heel, and she had the sturdy body common to women who have had many children and have been active all their lives. She carried a brown leather bag on her shoulder, both hands held in a firm grip on the straps. She set off to her left, down towards the embarcadero and Riva degli Schiavoni. As she walked, she stooped forward a bit and seemed to favour her left leg.

  Just as she turned, the attractive young couple, who were farther along toward the boat stop, turned in the same direction and started walking ahead of her. Pucetti draped his arm over his companion’s shoulders, but it proved too hot, so they settled for holding hands as they walked. They paused to look into the window of a sporting goods shop, and the old woman passed them, paying no attention. They followed slowly, and Brunetti followed the three of them.