Wilful Behaviour - [Commissario Brunetti 11]

by Donna Leon

They crossed over the Rio di Sant’ Agostin and were quickly out into the campo. ‘It’s got to be over here on the right somewhere,’ Mingardo said, turning into the first calle. ‘I’m just assuming she’ll be at home,’ he said. ‘She hasn’t been back since the Signora’s death and I don’t know if she’d have the courage to try to find a new job on her own.’ Mingardo took the single step up to the building, looked at the names on the bells, and rang the bottom one. Brunetti could see that the name was ‘Luisotti’, which he did not think was an African name.

  ‘Si?’ a woman’s voice asked.

  ‘It’s me, Salima, Mario. I’ve come about the Signora.’

  They had to wait a long time before they heard footsteps behind the door, and an even longer time elapsed before it began to open. Mingardo put out his hand and pushed it open, stepping over the threshold and holding the door for Brunetti to follow him.

  When the woman inside saw a second man, she whipped around before Brunetti had a clear look at her and took one step towards the door that stood open halfway down the corridor, but Mingardo called out, ‘He’s a friend, Salima. It’s all right.’

  She froze in place, one arm still swung out in front of her to give extra momentum to help her flee towards safety. Slowly, she turned to look back at the two men, and when he saw her Brunetti took a short breath, struck both by her beauty and by the fact that Mingardo had said nothing about it.

  She was in her late twenties, perhaps even younger. She had the narrow face and skull, the fine arching nose, and eyes of such almond perfection as to awaken his memory of the bust of Nefertiti he had seen in Berlin many years ago. The skin under her eyes was darker still than the mahogany of the rest of her face but served only to make her teeth and eyes seem all the whiter. My God, he caught himself thinking, what must we look like to these people: great potato lumps with little pudding eyes? Solid hunks of some badly cured meat? How can they stand to move around our great hulking paleness, and what must it be to gaze from such beauty at such pale ungainliness?

  Mario said Brunetti’s name and he stepped forward, offering her his hand, hoping it would be the hand of friendship and not betrayal. ‘I’d like to talk to you, Signora,’ Brunetti said.

  Mingardo looked down at his watch, then up at the woman. ‘You can trust him, Salima,’ he said. ‘I have to get back to work but you’re all right with him. He’s my friend.’ He smiled at the woman, then at Brunetti, then turned and left quickly without offering his hand to either of them.

  Still the woman had not said a word, and still she stood in place and studied Brunetti, assessing what danger there was to be had from this man, even though Mingardo had said he was a friend.

  She unfroze and turned fully to walk towards her apartment, leaving Brunetti to follow. At the door she paused a moment and made a small bow, as if it were a ceremony too sacred to ignore, even with a man who brought she knew not what danger.

  Brunetti asked permission and went in. He put his hand on the handle of the door and looked at the woman, who indicated that he should close it. He did so and turned into the room. A simple woven rush mat lay on the floor, and beyond it a divan covered with a piece of dark green embroidered cloth and a small pile of similarly embroidered pillows. There was a small wooden table and two chairs, and against one wall a chest with five drawers. In the centre of the table was an oval wooden bowl containing apples, and against the back wall there was a hot plate and a small sink, above which hung a double-doored cabinet. The single door to the left must lead to the bathroom. The room breathed the exotic scent of spices, among which he thought he could identify clove and cinnamon, but it was far richer than those. Brunetti estimated that the total area of the apartment was smaller than his daughter’s bedroom.

  He went to the table and pulled out one of the chairs, then stood away from it, smiled and gestured to her to sit. When she did, he took the other, careful to place it as far from her as possible, and sat.

  ‘I’d like to speak to you, Signora.’ When she said nothing, he continued, ‘About Signora Jacobs.’

  She nodded to acknowledge that she understood but still said nothing.

  ‘How long did you work for her, Signora?’

  ‘Two years,’ she said, a phrase so simple as to give no indication of how well she spoke Italian.

  ‘Did you enjoy working for the Signora?’

  ‘She was a good woman,’ Salima said. ‘There was not a lot of work to do, and she was always as generous with me as she could be.’

  ‘Was she a poor woman, do you think?’

  She shrugged, as if any Western definition of poverty was bound to be absurd, if not insulting.

  ‘In what way was she generous?’

  ‘She would give me food and sometimes she gave me extra money.’

  ‘I would imagine many employers are not generous,’ Brunetti observed, hoping that this would somehow break through her formal reserve.

  But the attempt was too obvious, and she ignored his words, sat quietly and waited for his next question. ‘Did you have keys to her apartment?’ She looked up at him, and he saw her consider the risk of telling the truth. His impulse was to reassure her that there would be no danger in telling him the truth, but he knew that to be a lie and so he said nothing. ‘Yes.’

  ‘How often did you go?’

  ‘I went to clean once a week. But sometimes I went in to bring her a meal. She didn’t eat enough. And always smoking.’ Her Italian was excellent, and he realized she must be from Somalia, a place where his father had fought, he with his machine-gun against men with spears.

  ‘Did she ever talk about the things in her apartment?’ ‘They are harram,’ she said, ‘and she knew I didn’t like to talk about them or look at them.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Signora, but I don’t know what that means,’

  Brunetti confessed.

  ‘Harram, dirty. The Prophet tells us not to make pictures of people or animals. It is wrong, and they are unclean.’

  ‘Thank you, I understand now,’ he said, glad that she had explained, though he marvelled at the idea that anyone could think one of those delicate little dancing girls was unclean.

  ‘But did she ever talk about them?’

  ‘She told me that many people would value them, but I didn’t want to look at them for fear of what it would do to me.’

  ‘Did you ever meet the girl Signora Jacobs called her granddaughter?’

  Salima smiled. ‘Yes, I met her three or four times. She always called me “Signora” and spoke to me with respect. Once, when I was cleaning the bedroom, she made me a cup of tea and brought it to me. She remembered to put in a lot of sugar: I told her once that’s how my people like to drink it. She was a good girl.’

  ‘Did you know that she was killed?’

  Salima closed her eyes at the thought of that good girl, dead, opened them and said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you have any idea who might have wanted to harm her?’

  ‘How could I know that and not go to the police?’ she asked with real indignation, the first emotion she had shown since he began to talk to her.

  ‘Signor Mario told me you were afraid of the police.’ Brunetti said.

  ‘I am,’ she said shortly. ‘But that doesn’t matter, not if I knew something. Of course I’d tell them.’

  ‘So you know nothing?’

  ‘No. Nothing. But I think that’s what killed the Signora.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘She knew she was going to die. Some days after the girl died she told me that she was in danger.’ Her voice had returned to calm neutrality.

  ‘Danger?’ Brunetti repeated.

  ‘That’s the word she used. I knew about her heart and she was using her pills much more, taking many more of them every day.’

  ‘Did she say that was the danger?’ Brunetti asked.

  Salima considered his question for a long time, as if holding it up to the light at a different angle and seeing it in a different manner. ‘No.
She said only that she was in danger. She didn’t say from what.’

  ‘But you assumed it meant her heart?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could it have been something else?’

  Her answer was long delayed. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did she say anything else to you?’

  She pulled her lips together, and then he saw her tongue shoot out and moisten them. Her hands were folded primly on the edge of the table, and she looked down at them. She bowed her head and said something so softly that Brunetti couldn’t hear.

  ‘I’m sorry, Signora. I didn’t hear.’

  ‘She gave me something.’

  ‘What was that, Signora?’

  ‘I think it was papers.’

  ‘You only think?’

  ‘It was an envelope. She gave me an envelope and told me to keep it.’

  ‘Until when?’

  ‘She didn’t say. She just told me to hold on to it.’

  ‘When did she give it to you?’

  He watched her count out the time. ‘Two days after the girl died.’

  ‘Did she say anything?’

  ‘No, but I think she was afraid.’

  ‘What makes you say that, Signora?’

  She raised those perfect eyes to his and said, ‘Because I am familiar with fear.’

  Brunetti glanced away. ‘Do you still have it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Would you get it for me, Signora?’

  ‘You’re police, aren’t you?’ she asked, head still bowed, her full beauty hidden from him, as if fearful of what it could provoke in a man with power over her.

  ‘Yes. But you’ve done nothing wrong, Signora, and nothing will happen to you.’

  Her sigh was as deep as the gulf between their cultures. ‘What must I do for you?’ she asked, her voice tired now, resigned.

  ‘Nothing, Signora. Only give me the papers and then I’ll go. No more police will come to bother you.’

  She still hesitated, and he thought she must be trying to think of something she could have him swear by, something that would be sacred to both of them. Whatever it was she sought in that silence, she failed to find it. Without looking at him, she got silently to her feet and went to the chest of drawers.

  She pulled open the top drawer and from right on top pulled out a large manilla envelope that bulged with whatever was inside. Careful to hold it in both hands, she passed it to him.

  Brunetti thanked her and took it. With no hesitation, he unhooked the two metal wings that held it closed. It was not taped or glued, and he would not insult her by asking if she had ever opened it.

  He slipped his right hand inside and felt the soft crinkle of tissue paper extending from the top of what further exploration revealed were twin pieces of cardboard. At the bottom he felt another envelope, this one thick. He took his hand out and, using only the tips of his fingers, extracted whatever was held inside the sheets of cardboard. He slipped the tissue-clad paper from inside the cardboard and laid it on the table: it was a rectangle little larger than a book, perhaps the size of a small magazine. A small piece of paper was taped to the outside of the tissue paper, and on it a slanting hand, trained to write a script more angular than Italian, was written, ‘This is for Salima Maffeki, a free gift of something that has long been in my personal possession.’ It was signed ‘Hedwig Jacobs’ and bore a date three days before her death.

  Brunetti peeled back the tissue paper and opened it, as he would the doors of an Advent calendar. ‘Oddio,’ he said, exclaiming as he identified the sketched figure which lay in his mother’s arms. It could only be a Tiziano, but he did not have the expert’s eye to be able to say more than that.

  She had turned towards him, not in curiosity at the drawing but at his exclamation, and he looked up to see her turn away from that than which nothing could be more harram, an image of their false god, this god so false that he could die. She turned as from obscenity.

  Brunetti folded the tissue paper carefully closed and slipped the drawing back inside the joined sheets of cardboard, saying nothing. He set it aside and pulled out the second envelope. It, too, was unsealed. He lifted the flap and took out a batch of what might have been letters, all neatly folded into three horizontal sections held together by an elastic.

  He opened the first: ‘I, Alberto Foa, sell the following paintings to Luca Guzzardi for the sum of four hundred thousand lire.’ The paper was dated 11 January 1943 and contained a listing of nine paintings, all by famous artists. He opened two others and discovered that they, too, were bills of sale to Luca Guzzardi, both bearing dates before Mussolini’s fall. One of them referred to drawings; the other listed paintings and statues.

  Brunetti counted the remaining sheets of paper. Twenty-nine. With the three he had opened, a total of thirty-two bills of sale, no doubt all signed and dated and perfectly legitimate and, more importantly, legally binding proof that the objects in Signora Jacobs’s possession had been the legitimate possessions of Luca Guzzardi, her lover, mad and dead this half-century.

  More interestingly, that they were the inheritance of Claudia Leonardo, Guzzardi’s granddaughter, stabbed to death and dead intestate.

  He folded the three bills of sale and put them back on the pile, then caught them up in the elastic and slipped them back into their envelope.

  He put that and, very carefully, the Tiziano sketch back into the larger envelope. ‘Signora,’ he said, looking across at her. ‘I have to take this with me.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Signora, you must believe me when I tell you that you are in no danger. If you like, I will bring my wife and my daughter here and you can ask them if I am an honest man. I think they’ll tell you that I am, but I’ll do that if you want me to.’

  ‘I believe you,’ she said, still not looking at him.

  ‘Then believe this, Signora, because it’s important. Signora Jacobs has given you a great deal of money. I don’t know how much it is, and I won’t know until I speak to a man who can tell me. But it is a great deal.’

  ‘Is it five million lire?’ she asked with such longing that she must have believed that with that sum she could buy joy or peace or a place in paradise.

  ‘Why do you need that amount, Signora?’

  ‘My husband. And my daughter. If I can send them that much, then they can get out and come here. That’s why I’m here, to work and save and bring them.’

  ‘It will be more than that,’ he said, though he had no idea of the value of the drawing; at least that, probably inestimably more.

  He turned his attention to the envelope and started to bend the metal flanges together to seal it again, so he didn’t see her move. Her hands came up quickly and took one of his. Turning his hand palm down, she bowed over it and touched it with her forehead, pressing it there for long seconds. He felt her hands tremble.

  She released his hand and got to her feet.

  Brunetti stood and went to the door, the envelope dangling from one hand. At the door, he extended his hand to shake hers, but she shook her head and kept her hands at her sides, a modest woman who would not shake the hand of a strange man.

  * * * *

  23

  Brunetti walked away with knees he was surprised to find unsteady. He didn’t know if it was the effect of the woman’s strange gesture, one that had, he realized, created in him the obligation to see that she received the money that would bring her family to her, or whether his response was to the importance of the receipts she had given him.

  From a bar he called Lele Bortoluzzi and arranged to meet him at his gallery in twenty minutes, which is what he estimated it would take him to get there if he took the 82 from Rialto. When he arrived, the artist was talking to a client, an American who insisted on looking at all of his paintings, asking about the technique, the kind of paint, the light, Lele’s mood when he painted each picture and who, after almost a quarter of an hour, left the gallery without buying anything.

  Lele came over to Brunetti,
who stood in. front of a seascape, and embraced him, then kissed him on both cheeks. The closest friend of Brunetti’s late father, Lele had always displayed a paternal concern and affection for him, as if he could thus make up for Brunetti’s father’s inability to display whatever emotion he felt for his sons.

  With a nod of his head towards the painting, Brunetti said, ‘That’s beautiful.’

  ‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ the artist replied without the least awkwardness. ‘Especially that cloud on the left, there, just above the horizon.’ He placed the tip of his right forefinger just above the canvas, then tapped the end of his nail on the cloud once, twice. ‘It’s the most beautiful cloud I’ve ever painted, really wonderful.’