by Donna Leon
From the kitchen Sergio appeared with three bottles of prosecco. 'Before the coffee’ he said, ‘I think we should say goodbye.'
The trays ended up on the low table in front of the sofa, and Gloria, Paola, and Chiara went back into the kitchen to return a few minutes later, each with six prosecco glasses sprouting out from the fingers of her upraised hands.
Sergio popped the first cork, and at the sound the mood in the room changed, as if by magic. He poured the wine into the glasses, making the round as the bubbles subsided. He opened another bottle and then the last, filling more glasses than there were people. Everyone crowded round the table and picked up a glass, then stood with it half raised, waiting.
Sergio looked across at his brother; but Brunetti raised his glass and nodded towards his elder brother, signalling that the toast, and the family, were now his.
Sergio raised his glass and the room grew suddenly still. He lifted it higher, looked around at the people in the room, and said, To Amelia Davanzo Brunetti and to those of us who love her still.' He drank down half the glass. Two or three people repeated his toast in soft voices, and then everyone drank. By the time they lowered their glasses, softness had stolen back into the room, and voices were natural again. The topics of life returned to their conversation, and with them the future tense sneaked back in.
Some glasses were abandoned and a number of people drank coffee, ate a few of the biscuits, and then they began to idle slowly towards the door, each of them pausing to speak to, and then kiss, both of the brothers.
In twenty minutes, there was no one left in the room except Sergio and Guido and their wives and children. Sergio looked at his watch and said, ‘I've reserved a table for all of us, so I think we should leave this here and go and have lunch’
Brunetti emptied his glass and set it beside the still full ones that stood abandoned in a circle on the table. He wanted to thank Sergio for having found something right but undramatic to say, but he didn't know how to do it. He started towards the door, then turned back and embraced his brother. Then he pulled away and went through the door. He went down the steps in silence and outside into the sun to wait for the rest of the Brunettis.
3
The funeral took place on a Saturday, so there was no need for any of them to stay home from work or school the following day. By Monday morning, life had been restored to a normal rhythm, and everyone went off at the usual hour, though in Paola's case, Monday being one of the days when she had no need to present herself at the university, her place of work would be her desk. Brunetti left her sleeping. When he let himself out of the building, he found the day warm and sunny but still faintly damp. He started down towards Rialto, where he could buy a newspaper.
He was relieved to find that he dragged only a slight burden of grief. The relief he felt that his mother had managed to escape from a situation she would have found intolerable had she been aware of it brought him something akin to peace.
The stalls selling scarves, ‘I-shirts, and tourist kitsch were all open by the time he passed them, but his thoughts kept him blind to their garish colours. He nodded to one or two people he recognized but kept walking at a pace intended to discourage anyone who might want to stop and speak to him. He glanced at the clock on the wall, as he did every time he passed it, then turned towards the bridge. Piero's shop, on his right, was the only one that still sold food: everyone else had switched to junk of one sort or another. He was suddenly assaulted by the smell of chemicals and dyes, as if he had been transported to Marghera or it had come to him. Sharp and cloying, the smell ate at the membranes of his nose and brought tears to his eyes. The soap shop had been there for some time, but until now only the artificial colours had offended him; today it was the stench. Did they expect people to wash their bodies with this?
On his way towards Campo San Giacomo he noticed packages of pasta, bottles of aceto balsamico, and dried fruit on stalls that had formerly sold fresh fruit. Their lurid colours screeched at him, the visual equivalent of the odours that had forced him to hasten his steps. Gianni and Laura had closed their fruit stand and gone years ago, and so had the guy with the long hair and his wife, though they seemed to have sold it to Indians or Sri Lankans. How long would it be before the fruit market disappeared entirely and Venetians would be forced, like the rest of the world, to buy their fruit in supermarkets?
Before he could dwell on this litany of misery, the memory of Paola's voice overrode his musings, and he heard her telling him that if she wanted to listen to old women complain about how good things had been in the old days and how the whole world was falling apart, she'd go and sit in the doctor's waiting room for an hour some morning: she did not want to have to listen to it from him, in her own home.
Brunetti smiled at the memory, reached the top of the bridge and unwrapped his scarf from his neck before he started down the other side. He cut to the left, past the Ufficio Postale, up and down the bridge, and into Ballarin for a caffe and a brioche. He stood, crowded by people on either side, and realized that the memory of Paola's complaint - a complaint about his complaints - had cheered him. He caught his own image in the mirror behind the bar and grinned back at it.
He paid and continued on his way to work, cheered by the warmer weather. As he crossed Campo Santa Maria Formosa, he unbuttoned his jacket. Approaching the Questura, he saw Foa, the pilot, leaning over the side of his launch and gazing up the canal towards the bell tower of the Greek church.
'What's happening, Foa?' he called and stopped beside the boat.
Foa turned and smiled when he saw who it was. 'It's one of those crazy tuffetti, Commissario. He's been fishing in there since I got here.'
Brunetti glanced up the canal towards the church tower but saw only the undisturbed surface of the water. 'Where is he?' he asked, walking alongside the boat until he came abreast of the prow.
'He went under just about there,' Foa said, pointing up the canal, *by the tree on the other side.'
All Brunetti could see was the water of the canal and, at the end, the bridge and the tilting bell tower. 'How long's he been under?' he asked.
'Seems like for ever, but it can't have been even a minute, sir,' Foa said, glancing at Brunetti.
Both men stood silently, staring up the canal, their eyes studying the surface of the water, waiting for the tuffetto to appear.
And then there he was, popping up from below like a plastic duck in a bathtub. One moment there was no sign of him, and the next he was sliding along silently, smoothly, tiny waves radiating out on the surface of the water as he paddled forward.
'You think it's good for him to eat those fish?' Foa -asked.
Brunetti looked down at the water just beside the boat: grey, motionless, opaque. 'No worse than it is for us, I suppose,' he answered.
When Brunetti looked back, the tiny black bird had disappeared beneath the water again. He left Foa to it, went inside and up to his office.
As he left the house that morning, one of Brunetti's preoccupations had been the iminent return of Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta. His immediate superior had been absent for two weeks, attending a conference on international police cooperation against the Mafia, held in Berlin. Though the invitation specified that attendees were to hold the rank of commissario or its equivalent, Patta had decided his own attendance was necessary. His absence had been facilitated by his secretary, Signorina Elettra Zorzi, who phoned him in Berlin at least twice a day, often more frequently than that, asking for his instructions about a number of ongoing cases. Since Patta could be counted on never to call the Questura while away, the possibility did not occur to him that Signorina Elettra had been calling him from a hotel in Abano Terme, where she had gone for two weeks of sauna, mud, and massage.
Brunetti went to his office and looked at the papers on his desk. He opened his newspaper and glanced at the front page. When he had read that, he skipped to pages eight and nine, where the existence of countries other than Italy might be acknowledged. Fixed ele
ctions in Central Asia, with twelve dead and troops in the streets; Russian businessman and two bodyguards killed in an ambush; mudslides in South America brought on by illegal logging and heavy rains; fear of the imminent bankruptcy of Alitalia.
Did these things happen, Brunetti wondered, with such dismaying regularity, or did the papers simply pull them out and use them when little had happened over a weekend and there was nothing else to write about except sports? He turned another page, but saw nothing he thought he could read with interest. That left culture, entertainment, and sports, but he could not deal with any of those this morning.
His phone rang. He answered with his name and the guard at the front door told him there was a priest there to see him.
'A priest?’ Brunetti repeated.
'Si, Commissario’
'Would you ask him his name, please?'
'Of course’ The officer covered the receiver, and then he was back. 'He says his name is Padre Antonin, Dottore.'
'Ah, you can send him up, then’ Brunetti said. 'Show him the way, and I'll meet him at the top of the steps.' Padre Antonin was the priest who had given the final blessing over his mother's coffin; he was Sergio's friend and not his, and Brunetti could think of no reason that would bring him to the Questura.
Brunetti had known Antonin for decades, since he and Sergio had been schoolboys. Antonin Scallon had come close to being a bully then, always trying to make the boys, especially the younger ones, do what he wanted, name him the leader of the gang. Sergio's friendship with him had never made any sense to Brunetti, though he did notice that Antonin never gave orders to Sergio. After middle school, the brothers had gone to different schools, and so Antonin fell out of Brunetti's orbit. Some years later, Antonin had decided to enter the seminary, and from there he had gone to Africa as a missionary. During the time he spent in a country the name of which Brunetti could never remember, the only news of him Sergio received was contained in a circular letter which came just before Christmas, talking enthusiastically about the work the mission was doing to save souls, and ending with a request for money. Brunetti had no idea whether Sergio had answered the request: out of principle, he had refused to send anything.
And then, about four years ago, Antonin was back in Venice, working as a chaplain in the Ospedale Civile and living with the Dominicans in their mother house beside the Basilica. Sergio had mentioned his return, just as he had occasionally shown him the letters from Africa. The only other time Sergio had mentioned his former friend was to ask Brunetti if he minded if the priest came to the funeral and gave a blessing, a request Brunetti could hardly have refused, even had he been inclined to do so.
He went to the top of the stairs. The priest, dressed in the long skirt of his calling, was just turning into the final flight. He kept his eyes on his feet and one hand on the banister. From above, Brunetti could see how thin the man's hair was, how narrow his shoulders.
The priest stopped a few steps from the top and took two deep breaths, looked up, and saw Brunetti watching him. 'Ciao, Guido’ he said and smiled. He was Sergio's age, which made him two years older than Brunetti, yet anyone looking at the three men together would assume the priest to be their uncle. He was thin, thin to the point of emaciation, with cheekbones that poked through the skin of his face to create taut dark triangles below.
He slid his hand up the banister, looked back at his feet, and continued up the stairs, and Brunetti could not help noticing the way he pulled on the railing with every step. At the top, the priest paused again, and put out his hand to shake Brunetti's. There was no attempt to embrace him or give him the kiss of peace, and Brunetti was relieved at that.
The priest said, ‘I can't seem to get used to stairs again. I didn't see them for twenty years or so, and I suppose I forgot about them. They still seem strange to me. And exhausting’ The voice was still the same, with the exaggerated sibilance common to the Veneto. He had lost the cadence, though, and with it had gone what would once have made him immediately recognizable as being from the province. When the other man still did not move, Brunetti realized that Antonin was talking about the stairs in order to give himself a chance to regain his breath.
'How long were you there?' Brunetti asked, doing his bit to stretch out the moment.
'Twenty-two years.'
'Where were you?' he asked before he remembered he should have known that, if only from the letters Sergio had received.
'In Congo. Well, it was called Zaire when I got there, but then they changed the name back to Congo’ He smiled. 'Same place, but different countries. In a way’
'Interesting’ Brunetti said neutrally. He held the door open for the other man, closed it behind him, and walked slowly after.
'Sit here,' Brunetti said, angling one of the chairs away from his desk, then turning another to face it, careful to pull it back to leave space between the two chairs. He waited for the priest to sit and then did the same.
'Thank you for coming to give the blessing,' Brunetti said.
'Not the best way to see old friends again for the first time’ the priest answered with a smile.
Was that meant as a reproach that neither he nor Sergio had made any attempt to contact him in the years since his return to Venice?
'I visited your mother in the nursing home’ Antonin continued. 'A number of the people I knew when they were first in the hospital went out there’ he added, meaning the private nursing home outside the city where Brunetti's mother had spent her last years. ‘I know it was very good; the sisters there are very kind.' Brunetti smiled and nodded. 'I'm sorry I was never there when you and Sergio were’ Abruptly the priest got to his feet, but it was only to pull his long skirt out from under him and flick it to one side; then he sat down again and went on. 'The sisters told me you went often, both of you.'
'Not as often as we should have, I suppose’ Brunetti said.
‘I don't think there's any "should" in these circumstances, Guido. You go when you can and you go with love’
'Did she know that we went?' Brunetti found himself asking.
Antonin studied his hands, folded together in his lap. ‘I think she might have. Sometimes. I never know what they think or what's going on inside them, these old people.' He raised his hands in an arc of confusion. ‘I think that what they do know is feelings. Or that they register them. I think they sense if the person with them is kind and is there because they love them or like them.' He looked at Brunetti and then again at his hands. 'Or pity them.'
Brunetti noticed that Antonin's fingernails covered only half of the bed of the nail, and at first he thought they must have been bitten down, a strange habit in a man of his age. But then he noticed that the nails were brittle and broken off in irregular layers, faintly concave and spotted, and he realized it must be some sort of disease, perhaps brought back from Africa. If so, why did he still have it?
'Do they register all those things the same way?' Brunetti asked.
'You mean the pity?' Antonin asked.
'Yes. It's different from love or liking, isn't it?'
'I suppose so,' the priest said and smiled. 'But the ones I saw were happy to get it: after all, it's much more than most old people get.' Absently, Antonin pinched up the cloth of his robe and ran the fold between the fingers of his other hand to make a long crease. He let it drop, looked at Brunetti and said, ‘Your mother was lucky that she still had so many people who came to her with love and liking.'
Brunetti shrugged that away. His mother's luck had run out years ago.
'Why is it you've come?' Brunetti asked, then added 'Antonin' when he heard how harsh his question sounded.
'It's for one of my parishioners’ the priest said, then immediately corrected himself, 'well, if I had a parish, that is. She would be, then. But as it is she's the daughter of one of the men I visit in the hospital: he's been there for months. That's how I've come to know her, you see.'
Brunetti nodded but remained silent, his usual tactic when he wanted to en
courage someone to continue speaking.
'It's about her son, actually, you see’ the priest said, looking back down at his skirt.
Because Brunetti had no idea of the ages of the man in the hospital or his daughter, he could have no idea of the age of the woman's son, which meant he could not anticipate the nature of the problem, though the fact that Antonin wanted to speak to him about it suggested it was something at variance with the law.
'His mother is very worried about him’ Antonin continued.
There were many reasons a mother could worry about her son, Brunetti knew: his own mother had worried about him and Sergio, and Paola worried about Raffi, though he knew that Paola had little reason to worry about what most mothers today feared for their children: drugs. How lucky to live in a city with a small population of young people, Brunetti reflected, not for the first time. If they had to live in a world driven by capitalism, then thank heaven for this fortuitous side-effect: with so small a target population, few would go to the trouble and expense of marketing drugs in Venice.
Into Brunetti's continuing silence, Antonin asked, 'Do you mind if I ask you about this, Guido?'
Brunetti smiled. ‘I still don't know what it is you're asking me about, Antonin, so I can't mind’ he said.
The priest at first looked surprised by Brunetti's remark, but then he gave a grin that managed to make him look almost embarrassed and agreed. 'Gia, gia. It's hard to talk about.' He paused, then added, ‘I suppose I'm not accustomed to the problems of luxury any more.'
'I'm not sure I understand’ Brunetti said. It was a statement, but it disguised a question.
'Where I was, in Congo, people had different problems: disease, or poverty, or starvation, or soldiers who came and took away their possessions, sometimes their children.' The priest looked across at Brunetti, to see if he was following. 'So I've sort of lost the knack of listening to problems that aren't concerned with survival; to problems that come from wealth, not poverty.'
